scholarly journals Civil Religion: USA Phenomenon and China's Prospects

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
Marina A. Khaimurzina ◽  

The concept of civil religion today acquires great significance for Chinese society. Confucianism is the subject of active discussions about the civil religion in China. Confucianism underlies the basic identities of Chinese society, it’s the core for future transformations and upgrades. Despite the anti-Confucian campaigns of the twentieth century, Confucianism is alive at the level of human relations and in the way of life of the Chinese. The prospects for the formation of the Chinese civil religion are in the plane of personal ethics and morality. Civil religion exists in the norms of behavior, habits and moral consciousness of people. Taking into account the characteristics of Confucian religiosity, in Chinese civil religion the sacrality of the social unity of the people is based on the “superhumanistic” nature of values and duty of everyone to respond to the call of the transcendent (Heaven). Building civil society in China, based on traditional Confucian concepts, not only ensures the continuity of generations and the legitimacy of political power, but can also be seen as the transcendent goal of all political processes.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Tushar Kadian

Actually, basic needs postulates securing of the elementary conditions of existence to every human being. Despite of the practical and theoretical importance of the subject the greatest irony is non- availability of any universal preliminary definition of the concept of basic needs. Moreover, this becomes the reason for unpredictability of various political programmes aiming at providing basic needs to the people. The shift is necessary for development of this or any other conception. No labour reforms could be made in history till labours were treated as objects. Its only after they were started being treating as subjects, labour unions were allowed to represent themselves in strategy formulations that labour reforms could become a reality. The present research paper highlights the basic needs of Human Rights in life.


Author(s):  
Galina S. Gultyaeva ◽  

Chinese folk painting nianhua (literal translation, “New Year’s picture”) is a kind of Chinese graphic art, which received a wide popularity in the late XIX – early XX centuries. On the eve of the New Year in China everywhere decorated interiors of living rooms with colorful pictures containing New Year’s greetings, they were pasted on windows, doors, gates. Decorative pictures had a utilitarian and cultic purpose: images of mythological characters and gods symbolized happiness, longevity, prosperity, protected from disasters and misfortunes. At the beginning of the 20th century, nianhua was produced in the woodcutting shops in a woodcut way, since the middle of the 20th century have been used modern technologies, including printing. New Year’s paintings significantly different from national academic painting. The philosophical concept of New Year’s painting was to reflect the spiritual life of the people, moral values, and artistic tastes. The images were built on the basis of folklore motifs, a rhythmic combination of bright colors created a decorative effect, so nianhua is a valuable material that demonstrates the aesthetic representations of the Chinese people, their folk traditions and symbols. The themes of the New Year’s paintings are extremely diverse and includes the following: scenes from classical literature, religious and symbolic and benevolent drawings, genre art painting, calendars depicting 12 cyclic signs of animals, agricultural calendars and advertising pictures. During the history of its existence, the New Year’s picture plays an important political and ideological role. Traditional paintings propagated the foundations of the orthodox Confucian ideology about social and ethical relationships, including hierarchy in the family and society: “Wu lun – the five principles of relationships”, “Xiao – filial piety”, “Ren – patience”. In the second half of the XX century, the New Year's picture is developing as an agitational poster. Under the influence of European painting and modern political processes in Chinese society, artists began to use a new artistic method - revolutionary realism on purpose to illuminate sociopolitical events, propagandize government tasks and resolutions. The basic principles of painting the New Year’s picture are the decorative character (the brightness of colors, the rhythmic combination of color spots), the hyperbolism and idealization of images, the folklore basis of plots and the conventional symbolic-metaphoric language.


Author(s):  
Kirill G. Morgunov

During the period of liberal reforms of Emperor Alexander II in Russia in 1864, the zemstvo reform began, which was a continuation of the peasant reform of 1861. Zemstvo institutions were introduced in the country, in the Tauride province they appear two years later - in 1866, zemstvo institutions were in charge of local social and economic issues. One of the important issues that fell on the shoulders of the zemstvos was the issue of the development of medicine. Taking care of the people's health was not one of the mandatory zemstvo duties, but the growth of infectious diseases and the high mortality rate largely prompted the zemstvo authorities to promote the development of medical affairs. The work of the zemstvo bodies was especially difficult at the very beginning of the formation of zemstvo medicine, when the zemstvos had to raise to a new level everything that they had inherited in 1866. The first decade of zemstvo activity for the development of medical science is the subject of this study. The article deals with the regional features of the districts of the Tauride province and their importance in the development of public health in the region. The relevance and novelty of the study is added by the reflection of the influence of the social composition of the county zemstvo vowels on the modernization of the social sphere of the province. In conclusion, information is provided on the results achieved by local self-government bodies by the end of the third zemstvo triennial in relation to 1866. The results of the research provide information on the state of medical affairs of the Tauride province in 1875 in relation to the rest of the zemstvo provinces of the Russian Empire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-180
Author(s):  
Henry Kerger

Abstract The subject of this article points beyond a purely literary or literary-historical approach. The question is, whether and how a human being is able to change the (social) conditions of their life by changing himself through transition into another form of existence. In order to overcome established (social) conditions and one’s self, it is necessary to begin with a vision, a utopian dream. Those who pursue the utopian dream of overcoming their current (social) conditions must acknowledge their own good and evil, that is, their position vis-à-vis equality and justice, law and morality. The person itself, and its personality, is revealed in the relation between the utopia of changing its current way of life and its social reality. The ultimate question is: what is the essence of humanity, the ecce homo? Both the transition into a new form of being and the utopian dream differ decisively in Don Quixote and Zarathustra. It is not my concern to compare them as literary figures.


Author(s):  
Hadina Habil

Email communication has been the communication medium for most organizations nowadays as the Internet has become a way of life for most people. To serve the purposes of communication in organizations, email is used to coordinate action, share information and satisfy social needs. This research was carried out to examine the patterns of email communication in a public higher education institution in Malaysia. A total of 86 emails consisting of 40 email chains and five one-way communication emails were collected over a period of four weeks. These emails were analyzed for functions and strategies used by the email writers. It was found that writers of email are aware of the strategies available for disseminating information and they used the strategies differently depending on the situation, the people involved in the interaction and the subject matter.


Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Reay

More bad history has been written about sex than any other subject. Our ignorance about the sexual attitudes and behaviour of people in the past is compounded by a desire to rush to rash generalisation. This is unfortunate, for (consciously or not) our perceptions of the present are shaped by our assumptions about the past. Britain's current preoccupation with ‘Victorian values’ is but a politically visible example of a more general phenomenon. And, more specifically, we do not know a great deal about lower-class sexuality in nineteenth-century England. There are studies of bourgeois desires and sensibilities, but little on the mores of the vast bulk of the population.As Jean Robin has demonstrated recently, one of the most fruitful approaches to the subject is the detailed local study – the micro-study. It may not appeal to those with a penchant for the broad sweep, but such an approach can provide a useful entry into the sexual habits of the people of the past. This article is intended as a follow-up to Robin's work. It deals with a part of rural Kent and, like Robin's work, it covers an aspect of nineteenth-century sexuality – in this case, the social context of illegitimacy. More particularly, this study (and here I differ from Robin) will question the usefulness of the concept of a ‘bastardy-prone sub-society’ (more of which later), a term still favoured by many historical sociologists. The experience of rural Kent suggests that bearing children outside marriage should be seen not as a form of deviancy but rather as part of normal sexual culture.


Author(s):  
Sergey N. Smolnikov ◽  

The article considers the place of social justice in modern law. Various aspects are noted: its relationship with the social state, legal state, civilizational particularities, historical features. The question of the significance of choice between the legality and legitimacy of power as a factor in the establishment of social justice is considered. The article raises the issue of the subject-object essence of social justice. It provides a comparison of two approaches to social justice in modern Russia — liberal and conservative, and notes the contradictory nature of both. Attention is drawn to the role of elites, the intelligentsia and the people in the embodiment of the liberal project. The author reveals the historical and civilizational prerequisites for the conservative project domination, its being in demand on the part of both the authorities and significant segments of the population, and its correspondence to the historical moment. The similarity of the conservative response to the challenges facing the society in the United States, Japan, Britain and Russia is substantiated. A sociological comparison of positions on the issues of law as social justice in the West and in Russia is given. There is an increasing divergence in understanding social justice both in the countries of the West (destruction of the social contract, welfare state) and between the West and the rest of the world. The theme of justice is increasingly playing a role in causing mutual claims rather than in stabilizing and maintaining international and civil peace. The paper considers attempts to create domestic models of a just society. Social justice is regarded as a projective concept and presupposes the existence of models of the expected and ideal future of society. The world trend towards change in the ideas of the subject of law and of the paradigm shift from liberalism to transhumanism is noted. It is argued that it is impossible to identify law with social justice.


Author(s):  
Ygor Alves ◽  
Pedro Gomes Pereira

This article is based on ethnographic research that has developed in the São Paulo region known as Cracolândia. Ethnographic accounts are added to the portion of academic literature on the subject, some news in the media and excerpts from conversations with visitors from that specific part of the neighborhood of Luz. Through them, we seek to make sense of a more human picture of the place and the people who have found a way of life there. We have come to know that people who use crack in that context cannot be scaled solely by their drug use; and that even Cracolândia can be perceived and experienced as a place full of joy and humanity, despite the moral panic surrounding crack.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAOLA BERTUCCI

In the eighteenth century, dramatic electrical performances were favourite entertainments for the upper classes, yet the therapeutic uses of electricity also reached the lower strata of society. This change in the social composition of electrical audiences attracted the attention of John Wesley, who became interested in the subject in the late 1740s. The paper analyses Wesley's involvement in the medical applications of electricity by taking into account his theological views and his proselytizing strategies. It sets his advocacy of medical electricity in the context of his philanthropic endeavours aimed at the sick poor, connecting them to his attempts to spread Methodism especially among the lower classes. It is argued that the healing virtues of electricity entailed a revision of the morality of electrical experiment which made electric sparks powerful resources for the popularization of the Methodist way of life, based on discipline, obedience to established authorities and love and fear of God.


2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-188
Author(s):  
Jean Lloyd

I'm sure that I speak for the three of us who were lucky enough to attend this year's IALL conference when I say that it was one of the most intense, interesting and enjoyable of experiences. Intense because of the nature of the subject matter of the conference, interesting because it was a country which none of us had visited before and enjoyable because of the people, the social events and the weather.


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