Download or read book Sharing the Sacra written by Glenn Bowman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Shared” sites, where members of distinct, or factionally opposed, religious communities interact—or fail to interact—is the focus of this volume. Chapters based on fieldwork from such diverse sites as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Vietnam demonstrate how sharing and tolerance are both more complex and multifaceted than they are often recognized to be. By including both historical processes (the development of Chinese funerals in late imperial Beijing or the refashioning of memorial commemoration in the wake of the Vietnam war) and particular events (the visit of Pope John Paul II to shared shrines in Sri Lanka or the Al-Qaeda bombing of an ancient Jewish synagogue on the Island of Djerba in Tunisia), the volume demonstrates the importance of understanding the wider contexts within which social interactions take place and shows that tolerance and intercommunalism are simultaneously possible and perpetually under threat.

Download or read book UNIVAC Programmer s Handbook written by and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Spirituality Social Justice and Language Learning written by David I. Smith and published by Information Age Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to explore the intersections between matters not frequently yoked in academic discussions: spirituality, social justice, and the learning of world languages. The contributing authors contend not only that these intersections exist, but that they are the site of issues and realities that require the attention of language educators and point to avenues of growth for the language teaching profession. The essays included seek to indicate the possibilities of a neglected area of inquiry, not only in terms of theory but also in terms of the practices of language education. Given this aim of opening up fresh questions, the book is arranged so as to show the relevance of the nexus of spirituality and social justice to teacher education (chapters 3 and 4), language classroom practices (chapters 5 and 6), and the theoretical sources that inform scholarly discussion of language education (chapters 7 and 8). The opening chapters place these explorations in a larger context by showing how they fit into existing social contexts and academic discussions.

Download or read book Pious Pursuits written by Michele Gillespie and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays re members of the Moravian Church; although many of these Protestant immigrants spoke German, they originated in various countries.

Download or read book On the Margins of Religion written by Frances Pine and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on places, objects, bodies, narratives and ritual spaces where religion may be found or inscribed, the authors reveal the role of religion in contesting rights to places, to knowledge and to property, as well as access to resources. Through analyses of specific historical processes in terms of responses to socio-economic and political change, the chapters consider implicitly or explicitly the problematic relation between science (including social sciences and anthropology in particular) and religion, and how this connects to the new religious globalisation of the twenty-first century. Their ethnographies highlight the embodiment of religion and its location in landscapes, built spaces and religious sites which may be contested, physically or ideologically, or encased in memory and often in silence. Taken together, they show the importance of religion as a resource to the believers: a source of solace, spiritual comfort and self-willed submission.

Download or read book When God Comes to Town written by Rik Pinxten and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around 1800 roughly three per cent of the human population lived in urban areas; by 2030 this number is expected to have gone up to some seventy per cent. This poses problems for traditional religions that are all rooted in rural, small-scale societies. The authors in this volume question what the possible appeal of these old religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam could be in the new urban environment and, conversely, what impact global urbanization will have on learning and on the performance and nature of ritual. Anthropologists, historians and political scientists have come together in this volume to analyse attempts made by churches and informal groups to adapt to these changes and, at the same time, to explore new ways to study religions in a largely urbanized environment.

Download or read book Conceptualizing Religion written by Benson Saler and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How might we transform a folk category - in this case religion - into a analytical category suitable for cross-cultural research? In this volume, the author addresses that question. He critically explores various approaches to the problem of conceptualizing religion, particularly with respect to certain disciplinary interests of anthropologists. He argues that the concept of family resemblances, as that concept has been refined and extended in prototype theory in the contemporary cognitive sciences, is the most plausible analytical strategy for resolving the central problem of the book. In the solution proposed, religion is conceptualized as an affair of "more or less" rather than a matter of "yes or no," and no sharp line is drawn between religion and non-religion.

Download or read book Handbook of Olive Oil written by Jozef Miloš and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the latest research in olive oil. Topics included in this book include biomedicinal activities of olive oil phenolic compounds, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, cardiovascular, endocrine, anticancer and central nervous system effects. Also, some insights related to bioavailability and synergistic activities are presented; a summary and critical analysis of the available information about phenolic compounds in VOO; the beneficial effects of phenolic compounds, contained in extra virgin olive oil, which have been reported in the last few years; an overview of different analytical approaches, including the most recent advances, and the difficulties regarding phenolic compounds determination in olive oil; olive oil wastes (OMW) characteristics, bio-valorisation potentialities and treatment options with regard to the economic feasibility, environmental regulations and challenges of existing waste disposal practices in olive-growing countries are discussed; the health effects of olive oil, including for the liver; a summary of the knowledge of the in vitro and in vivo effects of oleocanthal comparing, where available; the determinant factors that affect Japans olive oil imports; research on oleocanthal and its promising applications as a preventive and/or therapeutic agent for several diseases; and an examination of the organic olive oil sector, demonstrating its importance in terms of wealth and economic impact.

Download or read book Spirits and Letters written by Thomas G. Kirsch and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter' as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between 'charisma' and 'institution' by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

Download or read book Heaven on My Mind written by George E. Vaillant and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heaven fascinates us, yet we lack any empirical information about it. Why, despite our multiple faith traditions, does Heaven have such positive connotations for us all? Why, despite no tangible evidence, should autobiographies by authors who claim to have visited Heaven, usually through near death experiences, attract literally millions of readers? Why does virtually everyone, even non-believers, agree with the old adage that "There is nothing better than Heaven"? Since a picture is worth a thousand words, Heaven on My Mind will focus more on true stories than on explication. In this book, the author shows how the prospectively gathered spiritual and religious biographies of the men in Harvard's legendary Study of Adult Development (The Grant Study) cast light upon the significance of faith and hope for love in Heaven in real lives.The author intends to show that putting the newly discovered concept of prospection together with our ancient faith in heaven allows us to understand the value of ruminating on an afterlife. Indeed, the life histories of the 184 men followed for their life-time in Harvard's path-breaking Study of Adult Development faith in Heaven is significantly associated with leading more successful lives.Due to recent advances in neurophysiology, the study of prospection reflects a paradigm shift in our understanding of the human mind. Prospection reflects the fact that the brain combines incoming information with stored information to build "mental representations" of the external world.Dr. Seligman and his colleagues' book, Homo Prospectus (2016) revolutionizes modern psychology and supplants the past oriented psychology of Skinner, Freud and cognitive psychology with future oriented psychology suggested by this recently discovered neuroscience. It is prospection that allows us "to fight the next war, not the last war."The author received a Templeton grant to study prospection by reanalyzing The Harvard Study of Adult Development (The Grant Study). Since 1939, the landmark Grant Study has conducted a prospective - in contrast to retrospective - lifelong social and medical study of a cohort of healthy college males.In order to document whether religious affiliation increased over time, beginning at age 47, every 6 years the author, as the longtime Grant Study Director, has asked the men about the intensity of their religious affiliation and the degree of their belief in life after death. Heaven on My Mind uses these spiritual and religious biographies to illuminate the significance of faith and hope for Heaven. In short, Heaven on My Mind will reflect the "natural history" of the men's religious affiliation and their prospection of - and their expectations about - Heaven over the course of their lives.Admittedly, the Study surveyed a very narrow sample; it only studied the lives of 184 socially privileged, not very religious, Jewish and Christian men born around 1920. However, it is to the author's knowledge that this is the only study in the world to follow prospectively the religious development of human beings over a lifetime. As in time-lapse photography, all of the men visibly evolved; "caterpillars" were transformed into "butterflies". The majority of men became more resilient, more mature and more open.For 40 years, readers have found such human transformations in the longitudinal studies of the author's books fascinating. The author believes Heaven on my Mind will be yet another major chapter in the research toward fully understanding the Study of Adult Development.

Download or read book God botherers and Other True believers written by F. G. Bailey and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When reason fails to guide us in our everyday lives, we turn to faith, to religion; we close our minds; we reject austere reasoning. This rejection, which is a faith-based social and intellectual malignancy, has two unfortunate consequences: it blocks the way to knowledge that might enhance the quality of life and it opens the way to charlatans who exploit the faith of others. Examining two unquestionable malignancies of “the Christian Right” in present-day politics in the United States and the “secular religion” of Hitler’s National Socialism, as well as the third, more complex case of Gandhi, the author asserts that we need religion, but we also need to make sure it does no harm.

Download or read book On Prayer written by W. S. F. Pickering and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) never completed his Doctoral thesis on prayer. Yet his scarcely mentioned introduction (Books I and II) of 176 pages and privately printed in 1909, can be seen as some of his most important work. His argument that much of prayer is a social act will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists and theologians. Here, the first English translation to be published, is preceded by a general introduction by W.S.F.Pickering and finally a specific commentary on Mauss's use of ethnographic material.

Download or read book Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes written by Samuli Schielke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.

Download or read book Gender Sex and the City written by R. Vanita and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the urban, cosmopolitan sensibilities of Urdu poetry written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Lucknow. Ruth Vanita analyzes Rekhti, a type of Urdu poetry distinguished by a female speaker and a focus on women's lives, and shows how it becamea catalyst for the transformation of the ghazal.

Download or read book The Last Shaman written by Andrew Gray and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arakmbut are an indigenous people who live in the Madre de Dios region of the southeastern Peruvian rain forest. Since their first encounters with missionaries in the 1950s, they have shown resilience and a determination to affirm their identity in the face of many difficulties. During the last fifteen years, Arakmbut survival has been under threat from a goldrush that has attracted hundreds of colonists onto their territories. This trilogy of books traces the ways in which the Arakmbut overcome the dangers that surround them: their mythology and cultural strength; their social flexibility; and their capacity to incorporate non-indigenous concepts and activities into their defence strategies. Each area is punctuated by the constant presence of the invisible spirit, which provides a seamless theme connecting the books to each other. The death of a shaman in 1980 had an enormous spiritual and political consequences for one of the Arakmbut communities, resulting in a shift in its social organization from comparative hierarchy to a more egalitarian system. The author uses this case as an illustration to challenge the idea that indigenous peoples live in fossilized, static worlds. He shows that political activities in conjunction with shamanic communication with the spirit world provide the impetus and context for change. Buy all three volumes for 20% discount

Download or read book Fortune and the Cursed written by Katherine Swancutt and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation-making is a classic theme in anthropology that reveals how people fine-tune their ontologies, live in the world and conceive of it as they do. This ethnographic study is an entrance into the world of Buryat Mongol divination, where a group of cursed shamans undertake the 'race against time' to produce innovative remedies that will improve their fallen fortunes at an unconventional pace. Drawing on parallels between social anthropology and chaos theory, the author gives an in-depth account of how Buryat shamans and their notion of fortune operate as 'strange attractors' who propagate the ongoing process of innovation-making. With its view into this long-term 'cursing war' between two shamanic factions in a rural Mongolian district, and the comparative findings on cursing in rural China, this book is a needed resource for anyone with an interest in the anthropology of religion, shamanism, witchcraft and genealogical change. Katherine Swancutt is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She has carried out fieldwork on shamanic religion across Inner Asia, working among Buryats in northeast Mongolia and China since 1999, and among the Nuosu of Southwest China since 2007.

Download or read book Virtual Immortality God Evolution and the Singularity in Post and Transhumanism written by Oliver Krüger and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, ideas of post- and transhumanism have been popularized by novels, TV series, and Hollywood movies. According to this radical perspective, humankind and all biological life have become obsolete. Traditional forms of life are inefficient at processing information and inept at crossing the high frontier: outer space. While humankind can expect to be replaced by their own artificial progeny, posthumanists assume that they will become an immortal part of a transcendent superintelligence. Krüger's award-winning study examines the historical and philosophical context of these futuristic promises by Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Frank Tipler, and other posthumanist thinkers.