Cannabis cultivation within a religious context: A case study of Ghomara in the Rif Mountain (Northern Morocco)

Abstract The present article, based on field evidence collected in 2017, deals with a very recent phenomenon — the Orthodox Old Believers in Uganda. This faith originated in Russia, however in Uganda all its adherents belong to African ethnic groups. We describe the short by now history and current state of the Old-Believer communities in Uganda and then concentrate on their members’ motivation for converting to Old Believers vs. knowledge of this religion. We show that what brings them to Old Believers is the search for the true faith associated with the original and hence correct way of performing Christian rites. In this we see an intricate interplay of the features typical for authentic African cultures and acquired by them in the course of interaction with the wider world. Basing on our case study, we discuss how globalist and anti-globalist trends manifest themselves in the religious context in contemporary Africa.

Download Full-text

‘Faithful Men of a Faithful God’? Masculinities in the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa

Exchange ◽

10.1163/1572543x-12341249 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 34-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ezra Chitando ◽

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Group ◽

Religious Beliefs ◽

Assemblies Of God ◽

Cultural Economic ◽

Religious Context ◽

Historical Factors

Abstract Many scholars have examined masculinities in African societies. However, these examinations cannot be generalised across Africa, given the socio-cultural, economic, political and historical factors that infringe with religious beliefs. This article offers a case study of masculinities in a specific religious context, the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (zaoga), a Pentecostal church. It utilises zaoga’s teachings on masculinities against the background of Shona religion and culture (the dominant ethnic group in Zimbabwe). The analysis specifically focuses on the role of the Jesus-figure in the discourse on masculinity in zaoga, exploring whether Jesus presents a model of ‘redemptive masculinity’ or rather reinforces hegemonic notions of masculinity. The article highlights the ambiguity of Pentecostal masculinity and offers an overall critique of the effects of masculinities upon Pentecostal faith and practice.

Download Full-text

The Transmission of Foreign Medicine via the Silk Roads in Medieval China: A Case Study of Haiyao Bencao

Asian Medicine ◽

10.1163/157342008x307866 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 241-264 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Chen Ming

Keyword(s):

Cultural Exchange ◽

Materia Medica ◽

Religious Context ◽

Medical Context ◽

Medieval China

The importance of cultural exchange along the Silk Routes to the cosmopolitan identity of High Tang culture has long been acknowledged. This paper develops that understanding for the medical context by examining the Haiyao bencao 海瑶本草 (Overseas Pharmacopoeia), a specialist materia medica work made up of foreign remedies. With a deeper understanding of the sociocultural and religious context within which its author, Li Xun 李恂), a Persian born in China, worked we can begin to build a vivid picture of the background against which foreign medicines arrived from the Western regions to Medieval China.

Download Full-text

Heresy, Medicine and Paracelsianism in Sixteenth-Century Italy: the Case of Girolamo Donzellini (1513–1587)

Gesnerus ◽

10.1163/22977953-07101001 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 5-37

Author(s):

Alessandra Celati

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Medical Science ◽

Specific Character ◽

Good Case ◽

Religious Context ◽

The Way ◽

Religious Nonconformity

Many Italian physicians embraced Protestant ideas during the sixteenth Century: this suggests a connection between medical science and religious nonconformity. But why were physicians so exposed to the influence of Protestantism? Can we suppose that their heretical views affected the way in which they conceived medicine? And can we posit a particular link between certain kinds of medical thinking and specific religious doctrines? In order to analyse this relationship, I will focus on a specific character: Girolamo Donzellini. As a physician of great renown, put on trial five times by the Venetian Inquisition and eventually sentenced to death, Donzellini is a good case study. Moreover, his exposure to the works of Paracelsus allows one to put forward some considerations on Italian Paracelsianism, showing that medical attitudes often described as incompatible by historians could actually coexist in the same person, as a result of the complexity of the cultural and religious context.

Download Full-text

Beirut in Berlin? Interreligiöse Bildung in der Spannung zwischen Globalem und Lokalem

Evangelische Theologie ◽

10.14315/evth-2014-0303 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 74 (3) ◽

pp. 167-179

Author(s):

Henrik Simojoki

Keyword(s):

Religious Education ◽

Initial Conditions ◽

Living Environment ◽

Sociological Perspective ◽

Present Contribution ◽

Religious Context ◽

The Social ◽

Global And Local ◽

Interreligious Education

Abstract Religious pedagogy largely agrees that within religious education, interreligious instruction has to be aligned to the living environment of present-day children and youths. Yet in current concepts, this environmental context is normally interpreted in terms of the social proximity of the students, thus neglecting that the concept of religious contextuality has to be broadened as it develops in the interaction of global and local realities. Based on a case-study from the multi-religious context of Berlin, the present contribution discusses the initial conditions of interreligious education which are being changed by globalization. In a first step, the ambivalent presence of remoteness within the religious environment of modern youths is analyzed from an external sociological perspective. This is done in dialogue with selected sociological theories of reference which help to understand the »new contextuality « of the interreligious sphere as regards its basic dynamics of motivation. Subsequently, the essay focuses on inside aspects of this development: It addresses the question of how the spatial melting of the world influences the perception of the self and the other. Finally an approach is presented that substantiates the increasing globalization of religious environments from a youth-sociological perspective and makes it accessible to empirical analysis.

Download Full-text

The Experience of the Recited Qurʾan

International Journal of Middle East Studies ◽

10.1017/s002074381500152x ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 124-128

Author(s):

Lauren E. Osborne

Keyword(s):

Religious Context ◽

Level Of Experience ◽

The Way

In this thought piece, I use the recited Qurʾan as a case study for asking what it may mean to feel sound—and more specifically, “religious sound,” or sound in a religious context. A range of scholars, including myself, have asked related questions about what the recited Qurʾan sounds like, and why it may sound the way(s) it does. Here I consider the sound of the Qurʾan on the level of experience or nondiscursive meaning, asking what the recited Qurʾan feels like.

Download Full-text

Titus und kein Ende

POETICA ◽

10.30965/25890530-05102006 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (3-4) ◽

pp. 333-360

Author(s):

Tobias Döring

Keyword(s):

Recent Criticism ◽

English Reformation ◽

Titus Andronicus ◽

Revenge Tragedy ◽

Religious Context ◽

Strong Conclusion ◽

Fall Of Rome

Abstract As part of the discussion on the poetics of endings, this paper looks at Shakespeare’s early Roman revenge tragedy as a particularly rich case study. Readers, spectators, and critics of Titus Andronicus have long been puzzled and sometimes annoyed by the sense of uncertainty and irresolution which this play seems to leave us with, even though its final speeches take us through the motions of a strong conclusion. Recent criticism has especially focussed on the figure of the new emperor, whose words close the tragedy with traditional burial orders but whose authority remains in doubt. My paper reopens the case by drawing also on two German adaptations, Heiner Müller’s Anatomie Titus Fall of Rome (1984) and Botho Strauß’s Schändung (2005), as heuristic texts to highlight fundamental ruptures that are at stake here. Trying to put the question of endings also into the religious context of the English Reformation and into the culture of the playhouse, the paper argues that Shakespeare’s dramatic non-ending in Titus may indeed be quite productive.

Download Full-text

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x13009850 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 (01) ◽

pp. 102-129

Author(s):

ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽

EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

El Salvador ◽

Early Years ◽

Left Wing ◽

Internal Dynamics ◽

Internal Coherence ◽

The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

Download Full-text

Culture and the plasticity of perception

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19002887 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Lifshitz ◽

T. M. Luhrmann

Keyword(s):

Cultural Context ◽

Sensory Experience ◽

Cultural Learning ◽

The World

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.

Download Full-text

Dual systems for all: Higher-order, role-based relational reasoning as a uniquely derived feature of human cognition

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19000451 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel J. Povinelli ◽

Gabrielle C. Glorioso ◽

Shannon L. Kuznar ◽

Mateja Pavlic

Keyword(s):

Temporal Reasoning ◽

Higher Order ◽

Important Case ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Relational Reasoning ◽

Dual Systems ◽

First Order ◽

Reasoning System ◽

Role Based

Abstract Hoerl and McCormack demonstrate that although animals possess a sophisticated temporal updating system, there is no evidence that they also possess a temporal reasoning system. This important case study is directly related to the broader claim that although animals are manifestly capable of first-order (perceptually-based) relational reasoning, they lack the capacity for higher-order, role-based relational reasoning. We argue this distinction applies to all domains of cognition.

Download Full-text