Body Exposure and Embalming in the Tibetan Empire and Beyond: A Study of the btol Rite

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-650
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Significance ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Funeral Ceremony

The paper puts forward a new interpretation of the problematic word btol that is sparsely attested in Old Tibetan sources. The philological analysis is supported by a lexicological survey of potential cognates; taken together these allow us to sketch the word family of btol, and thus to better understand the underlying semantics of the word. It is argued that the term denoted a rite within a funeral ceremony; to be specific, the rite of exposure of the deceased’s body before it was interred. In order to contextualise the rite and to assess its cultural significance, this paper also discusses certain funeral customs of later periods.

Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Contextual Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Spaghetti Westerns ◽  
Comprehensive Study ◽  
National Local

This comprehensive study brings together leading international scholars in a variety of disciplines to both revisit the Spaghetti Western genre's cultural significance and consider its ongoing influence on international film industries. The book provides a range of innovative perspectives on this discrete and perennially popular topic. The book consists of four sections: Trans-Genre Roots; Ethnic Identities, Transnational Politics; Asian Crossovers; and Routes of Relocation, Transition, and Appropriation. Its rigorous historical, cultural, and political enquiry engages with current scholarly trends and balances specialized contextual knowledge with recognition of the instability of national/local identities. The book provides fresh interrogations of the myriad ways in which the Spaghetti Western has influenced contemporary filmmaking practice across national industries.

Shale Resources, Parks Conservation, and Contested Public Lands in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park: Is Fracking Booming?

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Miriam R. Aczel ◽  
Karen E. Makuch
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Natural Beauty ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt National Park ◽  
Bakken Shale

This case study analyzes the potential impacts of weakening the National Park Service’s (NPS) “9B Regulations” enacted in 1978, which established a federal regulatory framework governing hydrocarbon rights and extraction to protect natural resources within the parks. We focus on potential risks to national parklands resulting from Executive Orders 13771—Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs [1]—and 13783—Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth [2]—and subsequent recent revisions and further deregulation. To establish context, we briefly overview the history of the United States NPS and other relevant federal agencies’ roles and responsibilities in protecting federal lands that have been set aside due to their value as areas of natural beauty or historical or cultural significance [3]. We present a case study of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) situated within the Bakken Shale Formation—a lucrative region of oil and gas deposits—to examine potential impacts if areas of TRNP, particularly areas designated as “wilderness,” are opened to resource extraction, or if the development in other areas of the Bakken near or adjacent to the park’s boundaries expands [4]. We have chosen TRNP because of its biodiversity and rich environmental resources and location in the hydrocarbon-rich Bakken Shale. We discuss where federal agencies’ responsibility for the protection of these lands for future generations and their responsibility for oversight of mineral and petroleum resources development by private contractors have the potential for conflict.

Apartheid Aesthetics and Insignificant Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.

The Power of Interpretation: The Revival of 1857-58 and the Historiography of Revivalism in America

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-105
Author(s):  
Kathryn T. Long
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Prayer Meetings

For quite some time Timothy L. Smith and J. Edwin Orr have been nudging other historians to sit up and take notice of a revival that is so haphazardly interpreted that there exists little unanimity on what even to call it.So began a 1982 essay by Leonard Sweet on the Revival of 1857-58, an event usually remembered for its widely publicized urban prayer meetings. As Sweet alluded, lack of consensus on what to call this revival reflected only the tip of an iceberg of interpretative confusion. In addition to what they should title it, historians have differed over where the revival began, how long it lasted, which regions of the country were involved, its religious and cultural significance, and even whether anything happened that actually had significance worthy of academic investigation.

Vyshnivetsky Castle Library of Prince Mychailo Servaty Vyshnivetsky – Historical Book Heritage and Object of Bibliological and Historical Reconstruction

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Iryna Tsiborovska-Rymarovych
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Definition Of

The article has as its object the elucidation of the history of the Vyshnivetsky Castle Library, definition of the content of its fund, its historical and cultural significance, correlation of the founder of the Library Mychailo Servaty Vyshnivetsky with the Book.The Vyshnivetsky Castle Library was formed in the Ukrainian historical region of Volyn’, in the Vyshnivets town – “family nest” of the old Ukrainian noble family of the Vyshnivetskies under the “Korybut” coat of arm. The founder of the Library was Prince Mychailo Servaty Vyshnivetsky (1680–1744) – Grand Hetman and Grand Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilno Voievoda. He was a politician, an erudite and great bibliophile. In the 30th–40th of the 18th century the main Prince’s residence Vyshnivets became an important centre of magnate’s culture in Rich Pospolyta. M. S. Vyshnivetsky’s contemporaries from the noble class and clergy knew quite well about his library and really appreciated it. According to historical documents 5 periods are defined in the Library’s history. In the historical sources the first place is occupied by old-printed books of Library collection and 7 Library manuscript catalogues dating from 1745 up to the 1835 which give information about quantity and topical structures of Library collection.The Library is a historical and cultural symbol of the Enlightenment epoch. The Enlightenment and those particular concepts and cultural images pertaining to that epoch had their effect on the formation of Library’s fund. Its main features are as follow: comprehensive nature of the stock, predominance of French eighteenth century editions, presence of academic books and editions on orientalistics as well as works of the ideologues of the Enlightenment and new kinds of literature, which generated as a result of this movement – encyclopaedias, encyclopaedian dictionaries, almanacs, etc. Besides the universal nature of its stock books on history, social and political thought, fiction were dominating.The reconstruction of the history of Vyshnivetsky’s Library, the historical analysis of the provenances in its editions give us better understanding of the personality of its owners and in some cases their philanthropic activities, and a better ability to identify the role of this Library in the culture life of society in a certain epoch.

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.

Mainstreaming Third-Gender Healers: The Changing Perceptions of South Asian Hijras

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pooja Jagadish
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Gender Group ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
British Rule ◽  
False Identity ◽  
Third Gender

Mainstreaming is the act of bringing public light to a population or issue, but it can have a deleterious impact on the individuals being discussed. Hijras comprise a third-gender group that has long had cultural and religious significance within South Asian societies. Described as being neither male nor female, hijras were once called upon for their religious powers to bless and curse. However, after the British rule and in the wake of more-recent media attention, the hijra identity has been scrutinized under a harsh Western gaze. It forces non-Western populations to be viewed in terms of binaries, such as either male or female, and it classifies them by inapplicable Western terms. For example, categorizing a hijra as transgendered obfuscates the cultural significance that the term hijra conveys within their societies. Furthermore, media representations of hijras cause consumers to view themselves as more natural, while hijras become objectified as occupying a false identity. This has caused them to be pigeonholed within the very societies that once legitimated their existence and respected them for their powers. With their cultural practices being seen as outmoded, and their differences from Western people be- ing pointed out in the news and on television, hijras have faced significant discrimination and ridicule. After providing a discussion of relevant Western and non-Western concepts, I seek to describe hijras and the effects of mainstreaming on their lives. Finally, I offer a critique of cur- rent research on this population and provide solutions to improve their plight.

BKR (BADAN KEAMANAN RAKYAT): Cikal Bakal Tentara Indonesia?

Metahumaniora ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
Widyo Nugrahanto
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
New Interpretation

AbstrakPenelitian ini berjudul BKR (Badan Kemanan Rakyat):Cikal Bakal Tentara Indonesia?!. Penelitian ini merupakan interpretasi baru tentang cikal bakal TNI, yang umumnya banyak merujuk pada PETA (Pembela Tanah Air). Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah Metode Sejarah.Metode Sejarah memiliki empat tahapan yaitu Heuristik, Kritik, Interpretasi dan Historiografi.Sumber-sumber penelitian ini menggunakan koran-koran sezaman, majalah sezaman, dan buku. BKR dianggap sebagai cikal bakal TNI didasarkan beberapa sebab. Pertama, atas dasar legalitas formal, PETA telah dibubarkan sehingga BKR adalah satuan militer yang pertama kali dibentuk setelah Indonesia merdeka. BKR selanjutnya melahirkan pembentukan TKR (Tentara Keamanan Rakyat), TKR (Tentara Keselamatan Rakyat), TRI (Tentara Republik Indonesia) dan TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). Kedua, jika PETA dianggap sebagai cikal bakal TNI, maka KNIL dan beberapa satuan keprajuritan diabaikan. Padahal, beberapa bekas perwira KNIL memiliki peran penting di tubuh BKR hingga TNI.Kata kunci: BKR, Tentara, TNIAbstractThe main subject this study is BKR – Indonesian civil defense corps – as origin of Indonesian Military. This study is new interpretation about the origin of TNI (Indonesian National Armed Forces) now. Many opinion refer to PETA as civil defense corps in Japanese occupation era. Study emlpoys a Historical Method, which consists of four stage: Heuristic, Critic, Interpretation, Historiography. The study utilize some sources such as newspaper, magazine, and book. Main finding of this study is PETA had dispersed as legality and formally and BKR was formed as the firts corps after Independence of Indonesia. Futhermore, BKR changed to TKR (Tentara Keamanan Rakyat), TKR (Tentara Keselamatan Rakyat), TRI (Tentara Republik Indonesia) until TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). If PETA is considered as origins of Indonesian Military, then it ignore KNIL – a colonial armed forces – and the other defence corps. Even though the eks KNIL’s officer have important role in military managenment of BKR until TNI.Keywords: BKR, Military, TNI

BKR (BADAN KEAMANAN RAKYAT): Cikal Bakal Tentara Indonesia?

Metahumaniora ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
Widyo Nugrahanto
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
New Interpretation

AbstrakPenelitian ini berjudul BKR (Badan Kemanan Rakyat):Cikal Bakal Tentara Indonesia?!. Penelitian ini merupakan interpretasi baru tentang cikal bakal TNI, yang umumnya banyak merujuk pada PETA (Pembela Tanah Air). Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah Metode Sejarah.Metode Sejarah memiliki empat tahapan yaitu Heuristik, Kritik, Interpretasi dan Historiografi.Sumber-sumber penelitian ini menggunakan koran-koran sezaman, majalah sezaman, dan buku. BKR dianggap sebagai cikal bakal TNI didasarkan beberapa sebab. Pertama, atas dasar legalitas formal, PETA telah dibubarkan sehingga BKR adalah satuan militer yang pertama kali dibentuk setelah Indonesia merdeka. BKR selanjutnya melahirkan pembentukan TKR (Tentara Keamanan Rakyat), TKR (Tentara Keselamatan Rakyat), TRI (Tentara Republik Indonesia) dan TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). Kedua, jika PETA dianggap sebagai cikal bakal TNI, maka KNIL dan beberapa satuan keprajuritan diabaikan. Padahal, beberapa bekas perwira KNIL memiliki peran penting di tubuh BKR hingga TNI.Kata kunci: BKR, Tentara, TNIAbstractThe main subject this study is BKR – Indonesian civil defense corps – as origin of Indonesian Military. This study is new interpretation about the origin of TNI (Indonesian National Armed Forces) now. Many opinion refer to PETA as civil defense corps in Japanese occupation era. Study emlpoys a Historical Method, which consists of four stage: Heuristic, Critic, Interpretation, Historiography. The study utilize some sources such as newspaper, magazine, and book. Main finding of this study is PETA had dispersed as legality and formally and BKR was formed as the firts corps after Independence of Indonesia. Futhermore, BKR changed to TKR (Tentara Keamanan Rakyat), TKR (Tentara Keselamatan Rakyat), TRI (Tentara Republik Indonesia) until TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). If PETA is considered as origins of Indonesian Military, then it ignore KNIL – a colonial armed forces – and the other defence corps. Even though the eks KNIL’s officer have important role in military managenment of BKR until TNI.Keywords: BKR, Military, TNI

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