Ascetism in modern monasticism: changing religious body

My project for a post-doctoral research ensues from my PhD. thesis about the economy of monasteries nowadays and deals with contemporary mutations of asceticism. This phenomenon has rarely been studied by sociology although it is an up-to-date topic which handles representations of the body in society. During my PhD inquiries, I noted that monks did not speak about asceticism spontaneously to describe their monastic life if I did not. On the contrary, they speak about self-fulfilment or personal realization. Asceticism is not the goal of religious life: it is only a way to aim perfection by those that Weber call "virtuosi". But if asceticism no longer matters to these professionals, how can be defined the modern religious virtuosity ? Beyond the Christian case, asceticism interrogates the current issue of ascetic virtuosity which can go to deliberate martyrdom and to death. More precisely, concerning the occidental monasticism, this topic opens some new perspectives of research. The first question is to know if the decline of asceticism - probably more quantitative than qualitative - is connected with other evolutions of monastic life, work for instance. The second one seeks to understand the sense given to asceticism and its place in modern virtuosity. This question involves a redefinition of virtuosity, directly bound with the issue of body in religion. Self-fulfilment and government of the body are at the heart of these shifts which have to be replaced in the perspective of the evolution of individualism in monastic communities. Ascetic practices from now on are left in each monk`s hands and some monasteries develop activities concerning well-being which are very far from mortifications of the monks of the desert. So body is a privileged observation point for the changing religious sphere which concerns consecrated life and lay people. Asceticism indeed is part of a changing religious system which bounds sin to salvation. If the issues of sin and eschatological salvation no longer matter to people, what is the sense of asceticism? From compunction to hedonism, the religious body is undergoing massive changes. Thanks to the sociology of religion and sociology of the body, I will try to stake out the new form of asceticism and discipline of the body in modern monastic life.