Before the Religion

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-94
Author(s):  
Donald Westbrook
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Western Religion ◽  
Spiritual Counseling ◽  
Popular Psychology ◽  
New Religion

This chapter examines some of the psychological, philosophical, theological, and legal foundations of the Scientology religion in postwar America in the early 1950s. The process by which L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics movement transformed into the institutionalized religion of Scientology provides scholars of American religion a documented history of the birth and construction of a new religion in Cold War America—one that freely assimilated influences from Eastern and Western religion, popular psychology, and science fiction. In the 1950s, Dianetics organizations faced a major legitimation crisis when the legal rights to use “Dianetics” were temporarily lost to an outside investor. Before reacquiring them, Hubbard had already begun to brand “Scientology” as the spiritualized (and administratively centralized) outcome of Dianetics techniques. Two of the most central innovations during this transition were an emphasis on out-of-body experiences (“exteriorizations”) and especially the recollection of past lives, both of which informed Hubbard’s mental and spiritual counseling.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM OF THE SMOLENSK REGION (1917–1922)

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kupchenko ◽  
Nikolay Fedoskin
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Party State ◽  
State Regional ◽  
Soviet Experience

The article analyzes the results of the state policy implementation withing the formation and development of the Soviet judicial system on the example of Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors set the goal, based on the analysis of sources not introduced into a wide scientific circulation, primarily stored at the State Archive of the Smolensk Region to restore the history of the creation and operation of justice institutions in the Smolensk region in the 1918s–1923s. The source base of the study was composed of documents stored at Smolensk State Regional Archive, materials on the history of the judiciary, statistical materials of the period under the study, documents on the history of the party-state bodies of the Smolensk region. The article studies current office documentation of both the higher and regional state bodies (Workers 'and Peasants' Government, People's Commissariat of Justice, Smolensk Governoral Executive Committee) and local authorities (Smolensk Council of Working People's Deputies, Executive Committee of Smolensk Governoral Council of Workers, Peasants' and Red Army Deputies), as well as Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors analyze the Soviet experience in the formation and development of judicial bodies under specific historical conditions; they consider transformations in the judicial system of the Smolensk Governorate in the 1917s–1922s, as well as the formation of Smolensk Governoral Court. The article studies legal foundations of the Soviet judicial system formation, characterizes processes of creating a judicial apparatus in the first years of Soviet power and analyzes activities of Smolensk Governoral Court during its formation. The authors reveal the essence, degree of efficiency, concrete results, political and socio-economic consequences, positive and negative lessons from the Soviet judicial system existed in Russia. The authors assume that the development of new legislation system in the 1920s was caused by the need to reform legal sources as the main means of socialism building. The authors conclude that the transformation of the Soviet judicial system completed the transition from the principle of «revolutionary expediency» to the principle of «revolutionary legality».

The Trouble with Foreign Investor Protection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gus Van Harten
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Foreign Investor ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Massive Growth ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations

Governments are rightly discussing reform of investment treaties, and of the powerful system of ‘investor–state dispute settlement’ (ISDS) upon which they rest. It is therefore important to be clear about the crux of the problem. ISDS treaties are flawed fundamentally because they firmly institute wealth-based inequality under international law. That is, they use cross-border ownership of assets, mostly by multinationals and billionaires, as the gateway to extraordinary protections, while denying equivalent safeguards to those who lack the wealth required to qualify as foreign investors. The treaties thus have the main effect of safeguarding an awe-inspiring set of rights and privileges for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of countries and their populations. This book shows how ISDS came to explode in a global context of extreme concentration of wealth and of widespread poverty. The history of early ISDS treaties is highlighted to show their ties to decolonization and, sometimes, extreme violence and authoritarianism. Focusing on early ISDS lawsuits and rulings reveals how a small group of lawyers and arbitrators worked to create the legal foundations for massive growth of ISDS since 2000. ISDS-based protections are examined in detail to demonstrate how they give exceptional advantages to the wealthy. Examples are offered of how the protections have been used to reconfigure state decision making and shift sovereign minds in favour of foreign investors. Finally, the ongoing efforts of governments to reform ISDS are surveyed, with a call to go further or, even better, to withdraw from the treaties.

Popular Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of popular fiction in Australia. The question of place has always been central to Australian fiction, not only as a thematic element but also as a critical or political preoccupation. In part, this is because popular fiction writers, wanting to attract broad audiences, either exploited their Australian content to appeal to international readers or have excised the local to produce a generic and thus more readily accessible setting for outsiders. The chapter considers works by popular fiction writers who adopt a range of positions in relation to their focus on place, but often tackle many different aspects of Australian social and historical change. These novels cover various genres such as crime fiction, historical fiction and romance, science fiction and fantasy, and include Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957), Damien Broderick's The Dreaming Dragons (1980), and Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (2001).

Genre Fiction since 1950

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lawn
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Domestic Fiction ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of genre fiction in New Zealand since 1950. Crime writers such as Vanda Symon and Paul Cleave exploit the phenomenon of ‘glocalization’ by locating an international genre in distinctively local settings. Others, like Nalini Singh and Phillip Mann, embrace the alternative worlds of science fiction and fantasy without any sense that a local referent is necessary or desirable. The chapter first considers how New Zealand crime writers add distinctively Kiwi twists to their work before turning to crime thrillers by Paul Thomas and others. It also examines fiction featuring female detectives, including those written by Vanda Symon, as well as genre hybrids such as historical crime and domestic fiction. Finally, it analyses examples of literary noir by Charlotte Grimshaw, Carl Nixon, and Chad Taylor and political dystopias from C. K. Stead to Bernard Beckett.

Salvage

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-859
Author(s):  
EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Insurance Law ◽  
Future Possibility ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Personal Risk ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of

This essay develops a history of salvage both as particular activity and as concept, arguing that it has quietly become one of the fundamental structures of thought that shape how we envision future possibility. However, the contemporary sense of the word, which designates the recuperation or search for value in what has already been destroyed, is a recent one and represents a significant transformation from the notion of salvage in early modern European maritime and insurance law. In that earlier iteration, salvage denoted payment received for helping to avert a disaster, such as keeping the ship and its goods from sinking in the first place. Passing through the dislocation of this concept into private salvage firms, firefighting companies, military usage, avant-garde art, and onto the human body itself in the guise of “personal risk,” the essay argues that the twentieth century becomes indelibly marked by a sense of the disaster that has already occurred. The second half of the essay passes into speculative culture, including fiction, video games, and film, to suggest that the most critical approaches to salvage have often come under the sign of science fiction but that the last decade in particular has shown how recent quotidian patterns of gentrification and defused antagonism have articulated stranger shifts in the figure of salvage than any speculative imaginary can currently manage.

scholarly journals Votes at work in Britain: shareholder monopolisation and the ‘single channel’

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan McGaughey
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Single Channel ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Board Governance ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Participation Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Enterprise Governance

Why do shareholders monopolise voting rights in UK companies, and are trade unions the only way to get meaningful workplace representation? In 1967 a Labour Party policy document first coined the phrase that a ‘single channel’ for representation should ‘in the normal’ case mean trade unions. Since then, it has been said the labour movement embraced an ‘adversarial’ rather than a ‘constitutional’ conception of corporations, neglecting legal rights to worker voice in enterprise governance. This article shows that matters were not so simple. It explains the substantial history of legal rights to vote in British workplaces, and competition from the rival constitutional conception: employee share schemes. The UK has the oldest corporations – namely universities – which have consistently embedded worker participation rights in law. Britain has among the world’s most sophisticated ‘second channel’ participation rights in pension board governance. Developing with collective bargaining, it had the world’s first private corporations with legal participation rights. Although major plans in the 1920s for codetermination in rail and coal fell through, it maintained a ‘third channel’ of worker representatives on boards during the 20th century in numerous sectors, including ports, gas, post, steel, and buses. At different points every major political party had general proposals for votes at work. The narrative of the ‘single channel’ of workplace representation, and an ‘adversarial’ conception of the company contains some truth, but there has never been one size of regulation for all forms of enterprise. (2018) 47(1) Industrial Law Journal 76.

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