Introduction: Religion and the Novel

Author(s):  
Christina Phillips

This chapter introduces the topic of religion and literature, theorises the novel as a secular genre, and develops a concept of religion as the other in the Arabic novel. It begins with a discussion of the relationship between religion and literature, identifying imagination, metaphorical language and mythos as areas of overlap, before turning to the question of religion and the Arabic novel as a modern form which eschews faith and dogma but is nevertheless packed with religious themes, images, characters, language and intertextuality. This is accounted for by the form’s secularism, which is theorised in terms of Charles Taylor’s conditions of belief. Literary secularism is not static and stable however, thus religion emerges as the other in the Egyptian novel, with all the ambivalence which alterity characteristically entails. This religious other calls into question postcolonial studies’ over-valorisation of the East/West binary insofar as it has obscured the critical role of religion in Arab postcolonial literature and identity.

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederike Felcht

Abstract Torgrim Eggen’s Hilal (1995) is an early example of literature on the subject of Islam in Norway in its global contexts. As a romantic love story with elements of an action thriller and science fiction in form of future technological inventions, the novel combines an intense reading experience with thought provoking reflections on the role of religion and religious conflicts in secular societies. Based on Almuth Hammer’s ideas on the relationship between religion and literature as well as Jan Assmann’s theses on functions of oral and written language in religions, my essay analyzes the representation of Islam in Hilal and shows parallels between the structure of love and faith in the novel.


2019 ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Noah Buchholz ◽  
Darby Jared Leigh

This chapter represents the first-ever effort to examine the role of religion in the realm of deaf identities. The authors, both of whom are deaf religious leaders, with one representing Christianity and the other Judaism, provide a cutting-edge analysis of the relationship between religion and deaf identities. They present different interpretations based on religious treatises that include perspectives of deaf people. These perspectives are fraught with the complexities of multiple social identities that interact with the deaf identity component. While religion has the potential to coalesce deaf people and affirm their deaf identities, the chapter also explores how the religious setting can manifest the dynamics of oppression, dynamics that potentially may result in personal and community dissociation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulkader Cassim Mahomedya

Despite the concerted efforts of recent Islamic scholarship to establish a distinct identity for Islamic economics, they have enjoyed little success in doing so. One of the most important reasons for this vision of Islamic sciences remaining unfulfilled is that scant attention has been paid to the critical role of epistemology in the founding of an academic discipline. Consequently, and not unlike the other areas of Islamic social science, Islamic Economics has remained embedded within the epistemological-ontological foundations of Occidentalism, thereby enslaving itself to the mainstream theories and tools of neoclassical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics. This has been the central debility facing Islamic economists in establishing a distinct identity for their field of inquiry. This paper aims to highlight the importance of the relationship between epistemology, science, and Islamic economics. Only after this nexus is understood and appreciated, will it meaningful to articulate an episteme for Islamic economics, and to derive therefrom and construct thereupon a matrix of concepts, ontological categories and axioms opposite to that episteme. This is critical if Islamic economists and Muslim social scientists aspire to realise the objectives of Islam and avoid the pitfalls of their counterparts in the western world. They have to chart a new and fresh way forward for their science, consistent with a worldview based on Islam's authentic sources. =========================================== Meskipun upaya-upaya terpadu pengetahuan Islami terkini untuk membangun suatu identitas yang berbeda bagi ilmu ekonomi Islam, ada sedikit keberhasilan dari upaya- upaya tersebut. Salah satu alasan yang paling penting untuk visi ilmu pengetahuan Islami yang masih belum diisi adalah minimnya perhatian yang ditujukan kepada peranan kritis epistemology dalam membentuk suatu disiplin akademik. Oleh karena itu, tidak seperti area-area lain dalam ilmu sosial Islami, Ekonomi Islam telah dan masih menyertakan dasar-dasar epistemology-ontology kebiasaan orang-orang barat (occidentalisme), sehingga masih terikat pada teori- teori arus utama dan perangkat ekonomi mikro neo-klasik dan ekonomi makro Keynesian. Hal ini menjadi kelemahan utama yang dihadapi oleh para ekonom Islam dalam membentuk suatu identitas yang berbeda dalam bidang penelitiannya. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menekankan pentingnya hubungan antara epistemologi, ilmu pengetahuan, dan ekonomi Islam. Setelah keterkaitan ini dipahami dan disadari, hal ini akan memberi arti dalam mengartikulasikan suatu episteme bagi ekonomi Islam dan untuk memperoleh darinya dan kemudian mengkonstruksikan sebuah matrix konsep, kategori ontology dan aksioma yang tepat bagi episteme tersebut. Hal ini sangat mendesak jika para ekonom Islam dan para ahli ilmu sosial muslim bercita-cita untuk mewujudkan tujuan- tujuan Islam dan menghindari jebakan rekan- rekannya di dunia barat. Mereka harus merencanakan sebuah cara baru dan berbeda dalam memajukan ilmu pengetahuannya, konsisten dengan pandangan yang berdasarkan sumber-sumber Islam yang asli.


Numen ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 141-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorne L. Dawson

Abstract The role that religion plays in the motivation of “religious terrorism” is the subject of much ongoing dispute, even in the case of jihadist groups. Some scholars, for differing reasons, deny that it has any role; others acknowledge the religious character of jihadism in particular, but subtly discount the role of religion, while favoring other explanations for this form of terrorism. Extending an argument begun elsewhere (Dawson 2014, 2017), this article delineates and criticizes the influence of a normative religious bias, on the one hand, and a normative secular bias, on the other hand, on scholarship addressing the relationship between religiosity and terrorism. I examine two illustrative studies to demonstrate the complexity of the conceptual issues at stake: Karen Armstrong’s best-selling book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014) and a recent article by Bart Schuurman and John G. Horgan on the rationales for terrorist violence in homegrown jihadist groups (2016).


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Feldman

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wykowska ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Stefan Kopp

This booklet is a collection of the position statements accepted for the HRI’20 conference workshop “Social Cognition for HRI: Exploring the relationship between mindreading and social attunement in human-robot interaction” (Wykowska, Perez-Osorio & Kopp, 2020). Unfortunately, due to the rapid unfolding of the novel coronavirus at the beginning of the present year, the conference and consequently our workshop, were canceled. On the light of these events, we decided to put together the positions statements accepted for the workshop. The contributions collected in these pages highlight the role of attribution of mental states to artificial agents in human-robot interaction, and precisely the quality and presence of social attunement mechanisms that are known to make human interaction smooth, efficient, and robust. These papers also accentuate the importance of the multidisciplinary approach to advance the understanding of the factors and the consequences of social interactions with artificial agents.


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 137-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Miyahara ◽  
M. Takano ◽  
T. Noike

The relationship between the filter media and the behaviour of anaerobic bacteria was studied using anaerobic fixed-bed reactors. At an HRT of 48 hours, the number of suspended acidogenic bacteria was higher than those attached to the filter media. On the other hand, the number of attached methanogenic bacteria was more than ten times as higher than that of suspended ones. The numbers of suspended and deposited acidogenic and methanogenic bacteria in the reactor operated at an HRT of 3 hours were almost the same as those in the reactor operated at an HRT of 48 hours. Accumulation of attached bacteria was promoted by decreasing the HRT of the reactor. The number of acidogenic bacteria in the reactor packed sparsely with the filter media was higher than that in the closely packed reactor. The number of methanogenic bacteria in the sparsely packed reactor was lower than that in the closely packed reactor.


Author(s):  
Leana A. Bouffard ◽  
Haerim Jin

This chapter provides an overview of the literature examining the role of religion and military service in the desistance process. It also identifies outstanding issues and directions for future research. It first presents an overview of research examining the role of religion in desistance and highlights measurement issues, potential intervening mechanisms, and a consideration of faith-based programs as criminal justice policy. Next, this chapter covers the relationship between military service and offending patterns, including period effects that explain variation in the relationship, selection effects, and the incorporation of military factors in criminal justice policy and programming. The chapter concludes by highlighting general conclusions from these two bodies of research and questions to be considered in future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Richard Larouche ◽  
Nimesh Patel ◽  
Jennifer L. Copeland

The role of infrastructure in encouraging transportation cycling in smaller cities with a low prevalence of cycling remains unclear. To investigate the relationship between the presence of infrastructure and transportation cycling in a small city (Lethbridge, AB, Canada), we interviewed 246 adults along a recently-constructed bicycle boulevard and two comparison streets with no recent changes in cycling infrastructure. One comparison street had a separate multi-use path and the other had no cycling infrastructure. Questions addressed time spent cycling in the past week and 2 years prior and potential socio-demographic and psychosocial correlates of cycling, including safety concerns. Finally, we asked participants what could be done to make cycling safer and more attractive. We examined predictors of cycling using gender-stratified generalized linear models. Women interviewed along the street with a separate path reported cycling more than women on the other streets. A more favorable attitude towards cycling and greater habit strength were associated with more cycling in both men and women. Qualitative data revealed generally positive views about the bicycle boulevard, a need for education about sharing the road and for better cycling infrastructure in general. Our results suggest that, even in smaller cities, cycling infrastructure may encourage cycling, especially among women.


2021 ◽  
pp. 082957352110347
Author(s):  
Luis Francisco Vargas-Madriz ◽  
Chiaki Konishi

Canada’s high school graduation rates are still low when compared to other members of the OECD. Previous studies have found academic involvement is associated with positive trajectories toward graduation, that social support promotes student engagement, and that school belonging could mediate this relationship. Still, little is known about the specificity of such mediation, especially in Québec. Therefore, this study examined the role of belonging as mediator of the relationship between social support and academic involvement. Participants ( N = 238) were high-school students from the Greater Montréal Area. All variables were measured by the School-Climate Questionnaire. Results from hierarchical multiple regressions indicated parental support had a direct relationship, whereas peer and teacher support had a mediated relationship by school belonging with academic involvement. Results highlight the critical role of school belonging in promoting academic involvement in relation to social support.


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