Historisizing the ‘Dreaming’

Author(s):  
M. A. Smith

The ‘Dreaming’ is an elaborate belief system that forms the governing ideology of Indigenous Australia. It religiously sanctions the relationship between people and place, and articulates it in a large repertoire of land-based mythology. The historical development of the ‘Dreaming’ is not known in any detail. Salomon Reinach and Émile Durkheim at the turn of the twentieth century saw it as preserving an elementary form of religious life. However, the long history of Aboriginal societies in Australia (now known to be at least 50,000–60,000 years) suggests that this belief system may itself have a long history of development and elaboration. Taking arid Australia as a case study, this article outlines the principal features of the ‘Dreaming’ in its ethnographic form and asks how we might trace it archaeologically. On the basis of current evidence, the ‘Dreaming’, in its classic form, appears to have taken shape during the last few millennia when many of its perquisites emerge in the archaeological record, although the possibility that it has more ancient roots is not discounted.

EMPIRISMA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Arif Dan Yuli Darwati

This paper will try to explain the relationship between religion and culture. These two topics are the most important items that are inseparable in the history of human civilization from the classical to the modern period. Religion is ahuman belief system that is related to God. If the rule comes from God, then it cannot be said to be a culture, because it is not human creation, but God’s creation that is absolute. Religion is interpreted as part of the life (culture) ofindividuals or groups, each of which has the authority to understand religion and apply it. With the characteristics as indicated by Fazlur Rahman, wherever religion is located, it is hoped that it can provide guidance on values or moralsfor all activities of human life, whether social, cultural, economic or political. Not infrequently also religion becomes a determining factor in the adhesive process of social cultural interaction of the community as well as unifying thenation. Culture and religion are something different but can influence each other so that new cultures or mixing of cultures emerge. The opinion of Endang Saifudin Anshari who said in his writing that religion and culture do notinclude each other, in principle one is not part of the other and each consists of itself. Between them, of course, they are closely related like us, we see in everyday life and human life. As also seen in the close relationship between husband and wife who can give birth to a son but the husband is not part of the wife, and vice versa. Religion and culture are two different things but cannot be separated. The existence of a religion will be greatly influenced and affect thepractice of a religion in question. And conversely, a culture will be greatly influenced by the beliefs of the society in which culture develops. Therefore religion is not only an individual problem but religion is also a social affair whichultimately religious people are not only able to give birth to individual piety but also must be able to give birth to social piety.Key words: Interaction, Religion, Culture,


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1097
Author(s):  
Atina Krajewska

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between reproductive rights, democracy, and the rule of law in transitional societies. As a case study, it examines the development of abortion law in Poland. The article makes three primary claims. First, it argues that the relationship between reproductive rights and the rule of law in Poland came clearly into view through the abortion judgment K 1/20, handed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment and the context in which it was issued and published are interpreted as reflections of deep-lying processes and problems in Polish society. Consequently, second, the article argues that analysis of the history of reproductive rights in recent decades in Poland reveals weak institutionalization of the rule of law. This is manifest in the ways in which different professional groups, especially doctors and lawyers, have addressed questions regarding abortion law. Therefore, third, the article argues that any assessment of the rule of law should take into account how powerful professional actors and organizations interact with the law. The Polish case study shows that reproductive rights should be seen as important parts of a “litmus test,” which we can use to examine the efficacy of democratic transitions and the quality of the democracies in which such transitions result.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica DeLisi

AbstractThis paper examines the relationship between typology and historical linguistics through a case study from the history of Armenian, where two different stress systems are found in the modern language. The first is a penult system with no associated secondary stress ([… σ́σ]ω). The other, the so-called hammock pattern, has primary stress on the final syllable and secondary stress on the initial syllable of the prosodic word ([σ̀ … σ́]ω). Although penult stress patterns are by far more typologically common than the hammock pattern in the world’s languages, I will argue that the hammock pattern must be reconstructed for the period of shared innovation, the Proto-Armenian period.


Race & Class ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Val Colic-Peisker ◽  
Farida Tilbury

This article presents a case study in Australia's race relations, focusing on tensions between urban Aborigines and recently resettled African refugees, particularly among young people. Both of these groups are of low socio-economic status and are highly visible in the context of a predominantly white Australia. The relationship between them, it is argued, reflects the history of strained race relations in modern Australia and a growing antipathy to multiculturalism. Specific reasons for the tensions between the two populations are suggested, in particular, perceptions of competition for material (housing, welfare, education) and symbolic (position in a racial hierarchy) resources. Finally, it is argued that the phenomenon is deeply embedded in class and race issues, rather than simply in youth violence.


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 248-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Alan Goldberg

The relationship between European sociology and European anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is investigated through a case study of one sociologist, Émile Durkheim, in a single country, France. Reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism are distinguished and contrasted to Durkheim's sociological perspective. Durkheim's remarks about the Jews directly addressed anti-Semitic claims about them, their role in French society, and their relationship to modernity. At the same time, Durkheim was engaged in a reinterpretation of the French Revolution and its legacies that indirectly challenged other tenets of French anti-Semitism. In sum, Durkheim's work contains direct and indirect responses to reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism, and together these responses form a coherent alternative vision of the relationship between modernity and the Jews.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle J. Anderson

AbstractIn this article, I detail the British imperial system of human resource mobilization that recruited workers and peasants from Egypt to serve in the Egyptian Labor Corps in World War I (1914–18). By reconstructing multiple iterations of this network and analyzing the ways that workers and peasants acted within its constraints, this article provides a case study in the relationship between the Anglo-Egyptian colonial state and rural society in Egypt. Rather than seeing these as two separate, autonomous, and mutually antagonistic entities, this history of Egyptian Labor Corps recruitment demonstrates their mutual interdependence, emphasizing the dialectical relationship between state power and political subjectivity.


1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Loius Lucaites ◽  
Charles A. Taylor

Prudence has long been an important topic for rhetorical theorists and its place in intellectual history is becoming increasingly well documented. This essay develops a conception of prudence as an ideological construct, a term crafted in the history of its public usages to govern the relationship between common sense and political action as enacted in the name of historically situated social actors. From this perspective, prudence represents the recursive interaction between a rhetoric of judgment and the grounds on which that rhetoric is evaluated by a historically particular community of arguers. A case study of the 1991 U.S. Senate debate regarding the authorization of offensive military action in the Persian Gulf illustrates how competing standards of prudential judgment are crafted and evaluated in discursive controversy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Safrillah - Safrillah

Balia is a traditional ritual which is potentially disappeared due to the development of modern health care and the influence of Islam. In fact, balia still exists in this ever changing world. Balia even attracts public attention when it was performed in the main stage of Festival Nomoni in 2016. Balia has become ‘the bridge’ between the history of Kaili and Bugis through Sawerigading. Balia is a symbolic expression of the relationship between human beings and their spiritual nature that was originated from belief system towards god (dewa) and spirit (roh) which control the object of nature. Balia can survive because of its efficacy to cure diseases even though it is economically quite expensive. The efficacy of balia seems to confirm the view that disease is a 'spiritual game', which is identified with idolatry (kemusyrikan). In the face of conflict with the teachings of Islam, Kaili residents use the strategy of 'cultural dialogue' by integrating elements and symbols of Islam in the implementation of the tradition of balia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1.4) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Francesco Alberti ◽  
Raffaele Paloscia

The upgrading of riverfronts is a theme that has long played a central role in the renewal programs of large, medium and small cities throughout Europe. The case study presented in this paper is Florence, whose Roman origins and development, from the Middle Ages to today, are closely linked to the Arno River, which runs from east to west. After briefly reviewing some salient moments in the history of the relationship between the city and the river, the paper illustrates some research and projects carried out within the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, focused on the role that Arno can still play in the future of the Florentine metropolitan area, as a catalyst for interventions aimed at improving urban sustainability, livability and resilience to climate change.


1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (4II) ◽  
pp. 631-638
Author(s):  
Paul Oslington

There are many ways we could approach the history of development economics. We could tell a story of theories replacing and supplementing each other, finishing with the current body of knowledge. Alternatively we could explore the relationship between the evolution of theory and the development experience. Another way of telling the story would be to put the evolution of theory in a wider social, political and philosophical context and explore the interactions. This historical outline will be mainly restricted to the first and simplest method but at certain points where insights from the other two methods can be gained they will be used. Searching for the roots of development economics is also problematic. One possible beginning for this historical outline would be the beginnings of peoples reflections on the evolution of societies, perhaps to the reflections embodied in early mythology. A less extreme approach would begin with the first systematic reflections on the material progress of societies. Moving closer to the approach of most histories of development economics we could begin with systematic reflections on the first industrial revolutions in Europe or finally we could begin after World War II when this sort of enquiry was applied to Asia, Africa and Latin America and began to be called development economics. The beginning chosen depends on the purpose of the history, and here because the focus is on the academic discipline of development economics the story will begin after WWII.


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