scholarly journals Strategies of action and marginalised identities in Pop Culture Paganism and Magic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Todd

<p>In this thesis I will argue that marginalised individuals are highly represented in the Pop Culture Paganism and Magic community, because it is a religious movement which encourages participants to use the cultural symbols that populate the media for religious meaning-making. The availability of media symbols for this purpose is important for marginalised individuals, who do not access the same ‘traditional’ religious resources or symbols as other individuals in society due to the sense of exclusion which arises from their marginality, but still seek religious meaning-making.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Todd

<p>In this thesis I will argue that marginalised individuals are highly represented in the Pop Culture Paganism and Magic community, because it is a religious movement which encourages participants to use the cultural symbols that populate the media for religious meaning-making. The availability of media symbols for this purpose is important for marginalised individuals, who do not access the same ‘traditional’ religious resources or symbols as other individuals in society due to the sense of exclusion which arises from their marginality, but still seek religious meaning-making.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanthi Balraj Baboo

Many children grow up in contemporary Malaysia with an array of new media. These include television, video games, mobile phones, computers, Internet, tablets, iPads and iPods. In using these new media technologies, children are able to produce texts and images that shape their childhood experiences and their views of the world. This article presents some selected findings and snapshots of the media lifeworlds of children aged 10 in Malaysia. This article is concerned with media literacy and puts a focus on the use, forms of engagement and ways that children are able to make sense of media technologies in their lives. The study reveals that children participate in many different media activities in their homes. However, the multimodal competencies, user experiences and meaning-making actions that the children construct are not engaged with in productive ways in their schooling literacies. It is argued that media literacy should be more widely acknowledged within home and school settings.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Goldberg ◽  
Neal Rosenburg ◽  
Jean Watson

Although health care institutions continue to address the importance of diversity initiatives, the standard(s) for treatment remain historically and institutionally grounded in a sociocultural privileging of heterosexuality. As a result, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) communities in health care remain largely invisible. This marked invisibility serves as a call to action, a renaissance of thinking within redefined boundaries and limitations. We must therefore refocus our habits of attention on the wholeness of persons and the diversity of their storied experiences as embodied through contemporary society. By rethinking current understandings of LGBTQ+ identities through innovative representation(s) of the media, music industry, and pop culture within a caring science philosophy, nurses have a transformative opportunity to render LGBTQ+ visible and in turn render a transformative opportunity for themselves.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eckehart Velten Schäfer
Keyword(s):  

ZusammenfassungDer Aufsatz untersucht am Beispiel der Skateboard-Praktik den Einfluss audiovisueller Medien auf die Produktion von Bewegungen und die Konstitution von Stil-Kulturen in neuen sportiven Prakti­ken. Der Zusammenhang von Bewegungen und Bildtechnologien wird als „intermediale Konstella­tion“ (Stern, 2010) analysiert. Zeigen lässt sich, wie seit den 1970er Jahren der Gebrauch sich wan­delnder Medientechnologien nicht nur das Aneignen von Manövern beeinflusst und beschleunigt. Auch auf die Vergemeinschaftung der Teilnehmer zu stilistischen ‚Kulturen‘ hat diese Entwicklung erheblichen Einfluss, indem sie immer wieder neue AutorenInnen und Bildgenres zulässt. Eine Zä­sur markiert der in den frühen 1980er Jahren durchgesetzte Videorekorder, auf dessen Basis sich das ‚klassische‘ Skateboard-Video etabliert: Die Praktik verbreitet sich in körperlicher Aneignung von „Rockvideos über Sport“ (Klein, 2005), die zugleich Imagefilme von Jugendmarken sind. Dieser Prozess, so die These, platziert ihre Träger exakt im Schnittpunkt von Sport- und Popkultur - und macht die Skateboard-Praktik zu einer exemplarischen Selbsttechnik, in denen sich ab 1980 das „konsumatorische Kreativsubjekt“ (Reckwitz, 2006) der postmodernen Ordnung heranbildet.


2021 ◽  
pp. 58-88
Author(s):  
Marion Grau

This chapter outlines the author’s approach to research and method, as well as the scope and timeline of participant observation. The redevelopment of the Norwegian pilgrimage network comes on the heels of the post–World War II European efforts to build transregional and transnational peace. Historic pilgrimage routes become part of this network but are slow to begin in Protestant contexts. In contemporary pilgrimage, embodiment and relations to other pilgrims are central ingredients. It is through physical relations to landscape and people that sacred, transforming encounters are sought. Ritual creativity features strongly in how such encounters are facilitated by pilgrim priests, hosts, government, local officials, artists, and scores of volunteers. Religious meaning-making and secular nation-building are closely intertwined in these efforts to lift up and preserve, if not stage, local heritage. A consistent ambivalence is the overlap between pilgrims and tourists, and questions of spirituality and consumption. As Norway’s population has become more diverse religiously and ethnically, actors continually adjust the pilgrimage network to the needs of a changing population and a wide range of social issues.


2019 ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
James W. Jones

An increasingly popular approach to thinking about religion from a psychological perspective is to treat religions as “meaning systems.” A lot of research in the psychology of religion has been conducted within this “meaning systems” paradigm. Such research also demonstrates the positive role religious meaning-making can play in health and resilience, stress and coping, and pro-sociality. The research cited in this book suggests that our embodiment directly impacts our understanding of how meanings are arrived at. This, in turn, affects the ways in which we understand religious meaning-making and moves the concern with justifying the religiously lived life in a more pragmatic direction.


2020 ◽  
pp. 145507252093680
Author(s):  
Piotr Kępski

Aim: This study analyses discourses on marijuana in the Polish daily press and explores ways of defining “the marijuana problem” during a debate about legalisation of medical marijuana. Methods: 384 press articles published in three national newspapers in 2015–2016 were analysed. The method used was discourse analysis. The theoretical background was social constructionism, including Spector and Kitsuse’s four-stage constructionist model of defining social problems. Results: The study shows that marijuana problems were mainly constructed through criminal and politically medical discourses. In addition to celebrity and pop culture discourses, recreational marijuana use discourses and social problems discourses were identified. Discussion: The marijuana problem can be defined differently through various discourses. Definitions pertain to diverse marijuana meanings ranging from a negative marijuana-as-drug, through an ambivalent recreational marijuana up to a positively valued medical marijuana. The research pointed out that, from a discursive standpoint, the marijuana problem may be viewed as a complex network of relations between particular discourses, marijuana meanings, claim-makers and the media. Conclusion: Different definitions of the marijuana problem are constructed through a dynamic discursive and social process. Various claim-makers try to impose their meanings on marijuana. Mass media are not neutral. They also participate in defining the marijuana problem.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-229
Author(s):  
Lourens Minnema

AbstractGardens have always meant a lot to people. Gardens are as much about nature as they are about culture. The extent to which gardens carry and embody both similar and different layers of meaning will be demonstrated by comparing two classical gardens, the Taj Mahal tomb garden of the Mughal rulers in Agra, India, and the Ryoan-ji dry landscape garden of the Zen monks in Kyoto, Japan. Parallels will be drawn by offering a (diachronic) analysis of the historical accumulation of layers of meaning associated with each one of these two gardens, and (synchronic) structural comparisons will be drawn by raising two thematic issues in particular, the inside-outside relationship and the nature-culture relationship. The roles that Islam and Zen Buddhism play in the religious meaning making of these two classical gardens turn out to be strikingly similar, in that they confirm rather than transform other layers of cultural meaning.


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