Forthcoming books
The vow of stability: An ethnography of monastic life
Richard D. G Irvine
Though monastic life is often imagined to be a flight from the world, Benedictine monks take on the intense social commitment of life in close community. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork in a Catholic English Benedictine monastery, this book traces the monks’ daily lives as they confront the eternal in the fabric of the everyday.
Bringing into focus the vow of stability – a lifelong commitment to the monastery and its community – this ethnography explores the rhythms and architecture that sustain shared life in a world of movement and fleeting interaction. At the same time, it analyses those social processes that damage and undermine the monastic institution and those in contact with it – in particular the harm caused by sexual abuse.
Engaging with the everyday dynamics of life in close community while paying close attention to the time-depth of monastic history, this is a study of how religious institutions endure and change through generations.
This book will be published open access under a CC BY-NC Licence.
Publication date: May 2025
ISBN: 9781917341097 (Hardback) | 9781917341080 (Paperback) | 9781917341110 (PDF) | 9781917341103 (EPUB)
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Richard D.G. Irvine is Senior Lecturer and Director of Teaching in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.
His work spans the anthropology of religion and environmental anthropology, and he has carried out fieldwork in the UK and Mongolia.
His previous book was An Anthropology of Deep Time (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
For more details see Richard’s full profile: Dr Richard Irvine - School of Philos Anthro and Film Studies.
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Part I: The nature of stability
Chapter 1 The promise of stability
Chapter 2 The architecture of stability
Chapter 3 The rhythm of stability
Part II: Prayer, private and public
Chapter 4 Liturgical prayer and the limits of participation
Chapter 5 Contemplative prayer and the problem of other people
Chapter 6 Reading as prayer and learning to listen
Part III: Flight from the world?
Chapter 7 Work and pray
Chapter 8 Abuse and the failure of responsibility
Chapter 9 Leaving home
References
Index