Sociology and Monasticism: Between Innovation and Tradition -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Introduction: The State of the Art in the Sociology of Monasticism -- PART 1: Catholic Monasticism -- 1 Monastic Asceticism and Everyday Life -- 2 Virtuosity, "Folklorisation" and Cultural Protest: Monasticism as a Laboratory of the Confrontation between Christianity and Modernity -- 3 Female Monasticism in Italy: A Sociological Investigation -- 4 Ethnography of Cloistered Life: Field Work into Silence -- 5 Redefinition of the Role of Monks in Modern Society: Economy as Monastic Opportunity -- 6 An Innovative Return to Tradition: Catholic Monasticism Redux -- 7 New Spirituality in Old Monasteries? -- PART 2: Ex Oriente lux: Ot her forms of Monasticism -- 8 Athos Outside of Athos: Orthodox Monasticism in the West -- 9 Spiritual Direction in Orthodox Monasticism: The Elder Beyond Weber's Theory of Charisma -- 10 A National Monasticism? Monastic Politics of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Syria -- 11 Contemplative Spirituality and the Intermonastic Encounter Movement -- 12 Experiencing the Liminal: Understanding Separation and Transition among Buddhist Monastic Women in Contemporary Britain -- 13 A Space of Mountains within a Forest of Buildings? Urban Buddhist Monasteries in Contemporary Korea -- PART 3: Methodology and Classical Authors of the Sociology of Monasticism -- 14 Studying Contemporary Monasticism in Italy: An Anthropological and Historical Perspective -- 15 Monasticism and Society in Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch -- 16 Séguy and the Monastic Utopia -- 17 A Sociology of Imagined Societies: Monasticism and Utopia -- Index.