Chinese Religion and the Challenge of Modernity in Malaysia and Singapore: Syncretism, Hybridisation and Transfiguration

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Goh
Keyword(s):  
Reform Movement ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Chinese Religion ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spirit Mediumship ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Charismatic Christianity ◽  
Nation State Formation

AbstractThe past fifty years have seen continuing anthropological interest in the changes in religious beliefs and practices among the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore under conditions of rapid modernisation. Anthropologists have used the syncretic model to explain these changes, arguing that practitioners of Chinese "folk" religion have adapted to urbanisation, capitalist growth, nation-state formation, and literacy to preserve their spiritualist worldview, but the religion has also experienced "rationalisation" in response to the challenge of modernity. This article proposes an alternative approach that questions the dichotomous imagination of spiritualist Chinese religion and rationalist modernity assumed by the syncretic model. Using ethnographic, archival and secondary materials, I discuss two processes of change — the transfiguration of forms brought about by mediation in new cultural flows, and the hybridisation of meanings brought about by contact between different cultural systems — in the cases of the Confucianist reform movement, spirit mediumship, Dejiao associations, state-sponsored Chingay parades, reform Taoism, and Charismatic Christianity. These represent both changes internal to Chinese religion and those that extend beyond to reanimate modernity in Malaysia and Singapore. I argue that existential anxiety connects both processes as the consequence of hybridisation and the driving force for transfiguration.

ON THE NEED TO COLLECT, PRESERVE AND STUDY DISAPPEARED NAMES OF SETTLEMENTS

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-192
Author(s):  
S.A. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Local History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
The Disappeared

The article deals with the problem of collecting, preserving and researching the disappeared names of localities in the subjects of the Russian Federation, which for centuries have become an integral part of the historical and cultural heritage of the peoples of our country. The author believes that only a comprehensive analysis of the past oikonyms in nominational, lexical-semantic, historical-cultural, historical-ethnographic, local history aspects will restore the linguistic and cultural systems of different time periods in different microareals of the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that in order to preserve the historical memory of the disappeared names of geographical objects, local researchers need the support of regional state authorities and local self-government.

scholarly journals The Study of Three-Dimensional Fingerprint Recognition in Cultural Heritage

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Dzemila Sero ◽  
Isabelle Garachon ◽  
Erma Hermens ◽  
Robert Van Liere ◽  
Kees Joost Batenburg
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Fingerprint Recognition ◽  
Person Identification ◽  
Imaging Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reconstruction Methods ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Digital Fingerprint

Fingerprints play a central role in any field where person identification is required. In forensics and biometrics, three-dimensional fingerprint-based imaging technologies, and corresponding recognition methods, have been vastly investigated. In cultural heritage, preliminary studies provide evidence that the three-dimensional impressions left on objects from the past (ancient fingerprints) are of paramount relevance to understand the socio-cultural systems of former societies, to possibly identify a single producer of multiple potteries, and to authenticate the artist of a sculpture. These findings suggest that the study of ancient fingerprints can be further investigated and open new avenues of research. However, the potential for capturing and analyzing ancient fingerprints is still largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage research. In fact, most of the existing studies have focused on plane fingerprint representations and commercial software for image processing. Our aim is to outline the opportunities and challenges of digital fingerprint recognition in answering a range of questions in cultural heritage research. Therefore, we summarize the fingerprint-based imaging technologies, reconstruction methods, and analyses used in biometrics that could be beneficial to the study of ancient fingerprints in cultural heritage. In addition, we analyze the works conducted on ancient fingerprints from potteries and ceramic/fired clay sculptures. We conclude with a discussion on the open challenges and future works that could initiate novel strategies for ancient fingerprint acquisition, digitization, and processing within the cultural heritage community.

Nowcasting with Data Assimilation: A Case of Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1409-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigenori Otsuka ◽  
Shunji Kotsuki ◽  
Takemasa Miyoshi
Keyword(s):  
Data Assimilation ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Motion Vectors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Variational Techniques ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter ◽  
Global Precipitation ◽  
Time Extrapolation ◽  
Satellite Mapping

Abstract Space–time extrapolation is a key technique in precipitation nowcasting. Motions of patterns are estimated using two or more consecutive images, and the patterns are extrapolated in space and time to obtain their future patterns. Applying space–time extrapolation to satellite-based global precipitation data will provide valuable information for regions where ground-based precipitation nowcasts are not available. However, this technique is sensitive to the accuracy of the motion vectors, and over the past few decades, previous studies have investigated methods for obtaining reliable motion vectors such as variational techniques. In this paper, an alternative approach applying data assimilation to precipitation nowcasting is proposed. A prototype extrapolation system is implemented with the local ensemble transform Kalman filter and is tested with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) product. Data assimilation successfully improved the global precipitation nowcasting with the real-case GSMaP data.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

School Notes: Committee on Historical Studies

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-236
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Graduate Faculty ◽  
New School ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Historical Moment

The Committee on Historical Studies was established in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1984. The Graduate Faculty has long emphasized the contribution of history to the social sciences. Committee on Historical Studies (CHS) courses offer students the opportunity to utilize social scientific concepts and theories in the study of the past. The program is based on the conviction that the world changes constantly but changes systematically, with each historical moment setting the opportunities and limiting the potentialities of the next. Systematic historical analysis, however, is not merely a diverting luxury. Nor is it simply a means of assembling cases for present-oriented models of human behavior. It is a prerequisite to any sound understanding of processes of change and of structures large or small.

Musical life stories coherence through musicking in the prison setting

2022 ◽  
pp. 174165902110591
Author(s):  
Kjetil Hjørnevik ◽  
Leif Waage ◽  
Anita Lill Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
The Past

Despite the strong relationships evidenced between music and identity little research exists into the significance of music in prisoners’ shifting sense of identity. This article explores musicking as part of the ongoing identity work of prisoners in light of theory on musical performance, narrative and desistance and discusses implications for penal practice and research. Through the presentation of an ethnographic study of music therapy in a low security Norwegian prison we show how participation in music activities afforded congruence between the past, the present and the projected future for participants by way of their unfolding musical life stories. Complementing existing conceptualisations of music as an agent for change, our study suggests that musicking afforded the maintenance of a coherent sense of self for participating prison inmates, whilst offering opportunities for noncoercive personal development. We argue that research into musicking in prison offers fruitful ways of tracing how the complexities inherent in processes of change are enacted in everyday prison life, and that it can advance our knowledge of relationships between culture, penal practice and desistance.

Protean Passions

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-193
Author(s):  
Kirk Essary
Keyword(s):  
Reform Movement ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical Mythology ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Affective Analysis ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Do So

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the manner in which Erasmus employs examples from and the genres of classical mythology in order to explain the emotions, but also to show how he utilizes affective meanings of myths to describe current events. Given Erasmus’ influence, and the burgeoning field of emotions history, my aim is to interject Erasmus more fully into the ongoing conversation about the ways in which emotions were understood in the past. I will do so by considering 1) his adaptation of Quintilian’s taxonomy of emotions as either tragic or comic; 2) his use of classical literature to explore and explain the emotions; and 3) his affective analysis of what he deems the “tragedy” of Martin Luther’s reform movement.

Religion and Culture in Uganda

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
David A. Hoekema
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities

In the past two centuries, relations among Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim communities in Uganda have been marked by competition and mistrust more than cooperation. The interfaith initiative of northern religious leadersv is a noteworthy exception. In this chapter the history of these communities is briefly reviewed, setting the background for the group’s formation. An important historical event that helped bring Catholics and Protestants together was the execution of 45 Christian pages to the Buganda king in 1886. Mention is also made of the far more prominent role that religion plays in public life in East Africa than in Europe and North America, and of the persistence of traditional beliefs and practices.

scholarly journals Archaeology, climate, and global change in the Age of Humans

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (15) ◽  
pp. 8250-8253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben C. Rick ◽  
Daniel H. Sandweiss
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Political Uncertainty ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Human Ecodynamics ◽  
The Future ◽  
Shed Light

We live in an age characterized by increasing environmental, social, economic, and political uncertainty. Human societies face significant challenges, ranging from climate change to food security, biodiversity declines and extinction, and political instability. In response, scientists, policy makers, and the general public are seeking new interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches to evaluate and identify meaningful solutions to these global challenges. Underrecognized among these challenges is the disappearing record of past environmental change, which can be key to surviving the future. Historical sciences such as archaeology access the past to provide long-term perspectives on past human ecodynamics: the interaction between human social and cultural systems and climate and environment. Such studies shed light on how we arrived at the present day and help us search for sustainable trajectories toward the future. Here, we highlight contributions by archaeology—the study of the human past—to interdisciplinary research programs designed to evaluate current social and environmental challenges and contribute to solutions for the future. The past is a multimillennial experiment in human ecodynamics, and, together with our transdisciplinary colleagues, archaeology is well positioned to uncover the lessons of that experiment.

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