scholarly journals From the Trees to the Wood: Alternative Spirituality as an Emergent ‘Official Religion’?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 187-213
Author(s):  
Jan Kapusta ◽  
Zuzana Marie Kostićová

Abstract In this introductory study, we place the articles collected in this special issue on ‘spirituality’ in a more general context. In so doing, we contest the idea that alternative spirituality is best studied within the conceptual framework of the ‘vernacular.’ We argue that such an approach tends to unintentionally overstate the empirical particularities and overlook the broader aspects of the subject in question, which results in unreflexively accepting alternative spirituality’s own claim that it is ‘doctrine-free’ and ‘non-institutional’ by nature. Contrary to this claim, we show that alternative spirituality is (a) pregnant with a distinguishable doctrine despite being glocal and inventive; (b) profoundly social and effectively socialized; (c) about to be visibly socially organized and institutionalized; and (d) a way of addressing and redressing the key existential issues of human life, just as any other religion.

Jurnal KATA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Nanny Sri Lestari

<p>Sebuah peristiwa, dalam kehidupan manusia, dapat menjadi inspirasi bagi penulisan sebuah cerita. Pengarang, sebagai bagian dari masyarakatnya, mengangkat relung-relung kehidupan manusia, ke dalam sebuah cerita. Namun harus dipahami, bahwa pengalaman pengarang dalam kehidupannya sehari-hari, juga mempengaruhi subjek yang ditulisnya. Saat ini tidak dapat dipungkiri lagi, bahwa teknologi komunikasi yang sangat canggih, telah mempengaruhi perkembangan karya sastra. Media penulisan karya sastra, tidak lagi melalui media cetak seperti kertas tetapi sudah melalui peralatan modern yang sesuai jamannya. Namun demikian ragam karya sastra prosa, seperti cerita pendek, justru mampu mengisi ruang media kommunikasi tersebut. Dua orang pengarang, yang menulis cerita pendek di media masa, berusaha mengangkat isu tentang lingkungan. Isu yang diangkat, lebih menekankan kepada masalah lingkungan alam dengan mengangkat isu tentang pohon sebagai bagian dari kehidupan manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini, untuk menelusuri struktur cerita pendek yang mengangkat isu lingkungan dalam jalinan ceritanya. Untuk memenuhi tujuan penelitian, langkah awal dari penelitian ini, adalah melakukan pendekatan struktur cerita, yang kemudian dikaitkan dengan pencarian makna cerita tersebut. Sering sekali di balik sebuah cerita ada pesan yang ingin disampaikan kepada masyarakat pembacanya. Bentuk pesan tersebut tersirat, dalam jalinan struktur cerita pendek tersebut. Pesan yang disampaikan, dalam kedua cerita pendek tersebut,  adalah pesan tentang lingkungan alam, yang  saat ini tidak pernah diperhatikan oleh masyarakat. Dengan alasan, kebutuhan ekonomi yang sangat dominan.</p><p><em>An event, in human life, can be an inspiration for writing a story. The author, as a part of his society, lifts the niches of human life, into a story. But it must be understood, that the author's experience in everyday life, also affects the subject he wrote.</em><em> </em><em>Today it is undeniable, that highly sophisticated communication technology, has influenced the development of literary works. Media writing literature, no longer through print media such as paper but have been through modern equipment that fit his era.</em><em> </em><em>However, the variety of prose literary works, such as short stories, is able to fill the media space communications. Two authors, who write short stories in the mass media, try to raise issues about the environment. Issues raised, more emphasis on the issue of the natural environment by raising the issue, about the tree as part of human life. The purpose of this research, is to trace the structure of short stories, which raised environmental issues in the composition of the story. To fulfill the purpose of research, the first step of this research, is to approach the structure of the story, which is then linked with the search for the meaning of the story. Very often, behind a story, there is a message to be conveyed to the readers. The form of the message is implied, in the composition of the short story structure. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society.</em></p>


2017 ◽  
pp. 527-537
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Ljustina

Migration is one of the oldest and most used strategies for overcoming negative social issues. Despite the fact that it is historically deeply rooted, environmental migration as a social phenomenon has only recently become the subject research of numerous scientific fields. However, the study of current environmental migration is characterized by a number of issues, such as absence of an adequate definition and multi-causality of environmental migration. In this paper, through conceptual framework, author analyzed two main questions: who are environmental migrants and what reasons cause environmental migration. Due to the destruction of the global environmental balance, as well as accumulated environmental disturbances, it is likely that environmental migration will increase in future and there is nowhere you cannot make more use of scientific and professional projection of the future than in demographic and environmental spheres of human life. There is no doubt that our future is unpredictable. However, the environmental factors influencing the pattern of human interaction with the environment must be taken into account when projecting future development of the modern society. Such is the context in which the complex relation among migration, change and the environment has to be studied. In order to establish the basis for controlling environmental migration caused by negative changes in the environment, it is necessary to adopt a consistent strategy instead of ad hoc activities that are being used. In this paper, author analyzed societal response for the challenges caused by environmental migration, specifically regarding actions related to governing environmental migrations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 287-291
Author(s):  
Annette L. Gardner ◽  
Peter Bishop

The subject of evaluating foresight work has been around for almost as long as the professional practice itself has, but the field has done little to move closer to a systematic evaluation of its work. This special issue marks the second collection of articles on that project after a special issue of Futures in 2012 (Van Der Duin and Van Der Martin 2012). This issue takes a three-part approach: Part 1: evaluation of foresight in general and evaluation approaches and methods that can support designing an appropriate evaluation; Part 2: evaluation of foresight work in organizations and its impact on long-term thinking and decision-making; and Part 3: evaluation of specific foresight activities—an undergraduate learner foresight experience and a health sector scenario development exercise. The foreword ends with a reflection on the continuing issue of foresight and evaluation.


Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boaz Miller ◽  
Isaac Record

AbstractPeople increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject's beliefs that are formed based on internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Bonet

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper. Findings – On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self. Originality/value – The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.


2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Syed Zahir Idid ◽  
Abdurezak A. Hashi

Among the basic objectives of the Islamic Shari‘ah is to protect the human life and human intellect ‒ as such, the consumption of mind-altering and intoxicative substances is prohibited in Islam. Furthermore, Islam imposes criminal penalties on those who consume intoxicative substances such as wine. Muslim jurists (fuqahā) have provided descriptive accounts on the foundations of the Islamic antidrug abuse teachings, categories of mind-altering substances, and preventive laws. They also identified three categories of mind-altering substances: al-muskirāt, al-mukhaddirāt, and al-muftiraāt. This paper aims to explore the rationale and jurisprudential foundations of Islamic antidrug abuse education. While highlighting the philosophical background of the Islamic antidrug teachings, the paper presents the jurisprudential foundations of the legal penalties for drug abusers. The Qur’ānic terms and the Prophetic statements related to the subject will be referred to, while the opinions of Muslim jurists and theologians on the subject will be unveiled.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Munoda Mararike

The subject of coloniality is a phenomenon of consciousness. It explores belief systems, culture, and ethics using conviction and rhetorical force. Mugabe is good at captivating rhetoric. His sophisticated philosophical conundrum derives from modernity, emancipation as it looks at land as a political and economic structure of decolonization. Thus, in him, the belief of self-consciousness and conviction leads to positive confrontation and violence. Peace is universally known to be a product of protracted violence. Zimbabwe went through a war of colonial genocide and mass massacres in the Second Chimurenga. Mugabe’s decolonial agenda is an epistemological extension of coloniality and neo-colonial struggles originated and revisited by Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Samora Machel. Mugabeism thrives on instilling fear into the perpetrators of violence and imperialism by using rhetoric. The doctrine—therefore—reaffirms emancipation and empowerment through postcolonial agrarian revolution rather than “land grabs.” Its magnetic effect is like opposite poles of a magnet—revolutionary versus dictatorship—sharply in contra-distinction with repression, barbarism, and cannibalism. Mugabeism means working toward a common vision of human life for Africans, it means emancipation and freedom. It is a life which is not dependent on an imposed superstructure of oppression of Blacks by Caucasians.


Author(s):  
Samuel Brown

In a paper which was read before the Institute of Actuaries on the 31st May, 1852, “On the Uniform Action of the Human Will, as exhibited by its Mean Results in Social Statistics,” I drew attention to the remarkable regularity with which marriages are contracted in any country, and the very small limits of difference from the average number which appear from year to year. The observations made by M. Quetelet in Belgium, from 1825 to 1845, showed that the extreme difference in the total number of marriages was little more than half the difference of the extremes in the number of deaths in the same period. Such a conclusion seemed to imply that the subject was worthy of more research. If the law of mortality can be so accurately defined at different ages, that pecuniary interests, amounting to some hundreds of millions sterling, can be valued and adjusted with the greatest nicety, it is reasonable to conclude that the labour of a statistical inquiry into the proportion of marriages at different ages would be rewarded with the discovery of some equally defined law, since the variations from year to year in a given number of facts appear, from a large number of observations, to be even less than in the former case. It is true that, as human life must fail at some time, from the natural decay of the powers of life, every interval of age after man has once attained maturity may be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to show a steady and progressive increase in the liability to disease and death. On the other hand, it may be, argued that marriage is the exercise of the free will of man—that consequently, it does not depend on the age or period of life, but on the arbitrary exertion of those feelings or mental and moral qualities which are not subject to natural laws, or at least not to such laws as we are able to express numerically in the same manner we can the law of mortality in any given population. If we consider, however, marriage as, in one sense, the natural provision for the preservation or increase of the species, and the counteraction to the law of mortality by which the species would perish, we should not be surprised to find that, however imperceptibly to individuals, there is a tendency to obey some unknown law of nature which at the period of maturity would lead to the maximum of marriages, and gradually diminish with age in the same manner as the tendency to disease and death increases with age. The motives and caprices of individuals would only have the same effect on the general results which the different habits of individuals may have in increasing or diminishing the rate of mortality. Accordingly, M. Quetelet, in a comparison of the number of marriages in Belgium for each five years of age after 21, for both sexes, for a period of five years consecutively, showed that the average results in each period scarcely differed at all from year to year. The table is so remarkable, that I have reduced the proportion to 100 of the total marriages in each year, and present it to show the small differences which will then be seen to prevail.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (65) ◽  
pp. 377-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soledad Carretero Pérez ◽  
Silvia Ana Español

Abstract An interpretative review of research on adult-infant interactions involving the analysis of movement behaviors is presented, systematically linking previous studies to current research on the subject. Forty-two articles analyzing the dyad's interactive movement in the period 1970-2015 were found. Twelve papers were excluded, including only those that studied the phenomenon in the baby's first year of life. The results revealed that movement was a central topic in early interaction studies in the 70s. In the 1980's and 1990's, its study was marginal and it is currently resurging under the embodiment perspective. The conceptual framework and research methods used in the pioneering work are presented, and the thematic foci shared with current research are highlighted. Thus, essential keys are provided for the updated study of early interactions from a multimodal perspective.


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