The Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors in Igbo traditional religion: evidence from Otanchara and Otanzu

Africa ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. N. Ubah
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Autonomous Communities ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious System ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Supreme Being

Opening ParagraphThe subject of Igbo traditional religion has aroused a considerable amount of interest among scholars in the past few decades. The works of early ethnographers like Talbot (1926), Meek (1937) and Basden (1938) eloquently spelt out some of its principal themes. Among these are what we may refer to as the three major pillars of Igbo traditional religion, namely the Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors.One of the problems with most of the existing studies is the tendency to generalize for the whole of Igboland on the basis of evidence which is valid for some Igbo areas only. Given the Igbo type of political system which is characterized by the existence of a very large number of autonomous communities, it is not surprising that there is a greater amount of heterogeneity in the religious system than is the case in the centralized kingdoms of pre-colonial Africa. To understand the diversity of Igbo religious beliefs and practices there is an imperative need for the study of the religious systems of specific Igbo communities.

Traditional Religion, Popular Piety, or Base Superstition? The Cause for the Beatification of Teresa Higginson

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Davies
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Great Flexibility ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Religious System ◽  
The People ◽  
The Relationship

Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars has reinvigorated the debate over the nature of late mediaeval religious practice and belief, examining the ‘richness and complexity of the religious system by which men and women structured their experiences of the world, and their hopes and aspirations within and beyond it.’ Duffy questions the assumption that there was in that period a wide gulf between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion. In so doing he has not only illuminated the religious practices and beliefs of late mediaeval England but he has stimulated discussion about the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion in other periods. Duffy eschews the use of the term ‘popular religion’, which he argues carries questionable assumptions about the nature of ‘non-popular’ religion and about the gap between the two. He prefers ‘traditional religion’, on the grounds that it does greater justice to ‘the shared and inherited character of the religious beliefs and practices of the people…’ ‘Traditional religion’ while being rooted in inherited and shared beliefs was, nevertheless, capable of great flexibility and variety.

scholarly journals The activities of the second and third Orbán governments in the first hundred days

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 114-125
Author(s):  
Ádám Nyerges
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Government Work ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The subject of the present study is an examination of the activities of two governments with a two-thirds parliamentary majority. For the past 10 years, it has been these governments with two closed cycles of government that have had the authority to structurally transform the Hungarian political system without the involvement of the opposition. The study will also present the measures taken over the first hundred days, as well as, to a lesser extent, the political environment of each government and the predestined goals. The summary also highlights some similarities and differences in the speed and quality of government work and its decision-making, which requires a qualified majority.

Secularization in Israel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Ben-Porat
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Complex Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Private Beliefs ◽  
Jewish Religion

Neither the study of the political system nor surveys of individual religiosity capture the full picture of secularization in Israel. The power of religious parties seems unshaken, and formal changes in religious policies and legislation are few. A large number of Israelis maintain their attachment to Jewish religion in beliefs and practices, and the Jewish majority agrees that Israel is and must remain a “Jewish state.” However, economic and demographic trends in the past two decades have caused incremental changes, not registered in formal political channels, toward the partial yet significant secularization of Israel. Religion still has a hold on private beliefs and practices, but secularization will unfold in societal changes involving a decline of religious authority over significant spheres of life. A more complex concept of secularization allows for contradictions observed in Israel and helps to explain how secularization can occur while religion remains embedded in state and society.

Public Interest Environmental Groups in the United States and Britain

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy O'Riordan
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Function ◽  
The Subject

In a democratic political system policymaking takes place as a consequence of the clash of competing interests promoted in part by pressure groups. In the past many pressure groups operated in the shadows between the spotlight of intense publicity and the dark spaces where decision-takers and their advisers are to be found. More recently, especially in the case of the “ cause ” groups that form the subject of this analysis, pressure groups are working more consciously in the public arena both to arouse support and to widen the general understanding of the causes they espouse. Broadly speaking the political function of a pressure group is to recognize and publicize deficiencies in governmental activity; to try to influence in their favour governmental decisions; to provide information about events or problems that otherwise might not be available for decision-takers to consider; and, in some instances, to focus public attention on and increase public understanding of particular issues of wide social and moral significance.

Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba

Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Analytic Description ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kinship System ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThis paper presents an analytic description of the principles underlying the traditional kinship system of the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria in the community of Oshogbo. Aggregation into large-scale urban-like communities which are characterized by the close interdependence of their political constitution and their economic and religious systems is a striking feature of Yoruba social organization. In these communities we find that the behaviour of individuals to one another, in the past at least, was very largely regulated on the basis of kinship and it would be accurate, I think, to state that among the Yoruba kinship was the usual means of articulation between the various elements of the social organization. Today, under the influence of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old. New values and attitudes have intruded and there is an increased fluidity in social norms. In the present generation the bonds of kinship have been greatly weakened as a foundation for social organization and as a mechanism for co-ordinating and regulating social behaviour. Yoruba society is indeed transitional in the sense that the old is in the process of disintegration and new forms are rapidly emerging. However, it is the internal and traditional patterns that determine the particular form and direction of the effects which the external alien forces of change exert. Consequently, in this paper, we shall place primary emphasis on the principles of kinship as they emerged as regulative factors in the traditional life of the Yoruba in the belief that, apart from purely ethnographic value, they will provide us with a better understanding of the manifold changes that have become apparent.

Beyond Belief: Religious Experience, Ritual, and Cultural Neuro-phenomenology in the Interpretation of Past Religious Systems

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Dornan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
State Level ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Religious System ◽  
Religious Systems

While there is growing agreement within anthropology and archaeology that notions of ‘experience’ can contribute to our interpretations of the past, this article suggests that there is a need to incorporate insight gathered from the fields of cultural phenomenology and cultural neuro-phenomenology into general anthropological understandings of cross-cultural religious experience. Specifically, this article explores the insight offered by cultural neuro-phenomenology into the relationships between religious symbolism, ritual, power, religious belief, and individual religious experience. In assessing the role that belief, as instantiated through ritually-induced religious experience, plays in the maintenance or alteration of state-level religious systems, this article will outline the ways in which this insight may both help us better to understand past religious experience as well as to interpret the maintenance and alteration of past religious systems. To demonstrate the potential of this approach, this article will conclude with a brief discussion of the fall of the Classic Maya state religious system.

PRACTICAL BASE OF FORMULATING RETRAINING PROGRAMS ON ETHNIC MINORITY AFFAIRS KNOWLEDGE FOR CADRES, CIVIL SERVANTS UP TO 2030

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Dung ◽  
Giang Khac Binh
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Training Program ◽  
Political System ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Training Programs ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
The Political ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past

As developing programs is the core in fostering knowledge on ethnic work for cadres and civil servants under Decision No. 402/QD-TTg dated 14/3/2016 of the Prime Minister, it is urgent to build training program on ethnic minority affairs for 04 target groups in the political system from central to local by 2020 with a vision to 2030. The article highlighted basic issues of practical basis to design training program of ethnic minority affairs in the past years; suggested solutions to build the training programs in integration and globalization period.

Pakistan’s Development: Successes, Failures, and Future Tasks (Presidential Remarks)

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Golden Jubilee ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Do So

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.

TARP DVIEJŲ KOLONŲ: XVIII A. PABAIGOS – XIX A. PRADŽIOS VILNIAUS MASONŲ KASDIENYBĖ SIMBOLIKOJE

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-163
Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Secular World ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Craft Guilds

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.

Performance Management Transformation

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Performance ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Research

No other talent process has been the subject of such great debate and emotion as performance management (PM). For decades, different strategies have been tried to improve PM processes, yielding an endless cycle of reform to capture the next “flavor-of-the-day” PM trend. The past 5 years, however, have brought novel thinking that is different from past trends. Companies are reducing their formal processes, driving performance-based cultures, and embedding effective PM behavior into daily work rather than relying on annual reviews to drive these. Through case studies provided from leading organizations, this book illustrates the range of PM processes that companies are using today. These show a shift away from adopting someone else’s best practice; instead, companies are designing bespoke PM processes that fit their specific strategy, climate, and needs. Leading PM thought leaders offer their views about the state of PM today, what we have learned and where we need to focus future efforts, including provocative new research that shows what matters most in driving high performance. This book is a call to action for talent management professionals to go beyond traditional best practice and provide thought leadership in designing PM processes and systems that will enhance both individual and organizational performance.

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