The Politics of Religious Conversion among the Ethnic Chin in Burma

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-211
Author(s):  
Pum Za Mang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Western Frontier

Through an analysis of some possible reasons for religious conversion among the ethnic Chin in the western frontier of modern-day Burma to Christianity from their old religion that historically shaped and impacted Chin society for centuries, this article argues that missionary agency, Chin religion, social change and political awakening after the Chin were finally exposed to the wider modern world appear to have played a critically crucial role in a long process of the choice of religious conversion among the Chin when Christian missionaries came to their country and evangelised them at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, their newly adopted religion has been not only a historical source of political awareness and social progress, but also a hallmark of their ethnic identity. Chin leaders now proudly maintain that Christianity has provided them with a cementing source for retaining their ethnic identity and that Chin identity and Christianity have become interwoven.

War in Social Thought

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Joas ◽  
Wolfgang Knöbl
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Original Argument

This book provides a sweeping critical history of social theories about war and peace from Thomas Hobbes to the present. It presents both a broad intellectual history and an original argument as it traces the development of thinking about war over more than 350 years—from the premodern era to the period of German idealism and the Scottish and French enlightenments, and then from the birth of sociology in the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. While focusing on social thought, the book draws on many disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, and political science. It demonstrate the profound difficulties most social thinkers—including liberals, socialists, and those intellectuals who could be regarded as the first sociologists—had in coming to terms with the phenomenon of war, the most obvious form of large-scale social violence. With only a few exceptions, these thinkers, who believed deeply in social progress, were unable to account for war because they regarded it as marginal or archaic, and on the verge of disappearing. This overly optimistic picture of the modern world persisted in social theory even in the twentieth century, as most sociologists and social theorists either ignored war and violence in their theoretical work or tried to explain it away. The failure of the social sciences and especially sociology to understand war, the book argues, must be seen as one of the greatest weaknesses of disciplines that claim to give a convincing diagnosis of our times.

The Music of the Past in Modern Baltic Paganism

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Strmiska
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Post Soviet Period

Modern Baltic Paganism grew out of nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklore research into the folk music, folklore and traditional ethnic cultures of Latvia and Lithuania. Research into native Latvian daina and Lithuanian daino folk songs with their rustic beauty, symbolic richness, and intriguing linkages to ancient Indo-European cultures and religions generated a new sense of pride and ethnic identity among Latvians and Lithuanians. Spiritually inclined folklorists developed religious movements that recreated rituals and beliefs linked to the dainas and dainos. Repressed during Soviet times, these movements have reemerged and flourished in the post-Soviet period. There can be no doubt that music, which over the centuries has played such a crucial role in the transmission of Latvian and Lithuanian folk traditions including native Pagan religions, will remain front and center in the continuing evolution of modern Baltic Pagan religions in Latvia and Lithuania and beyond.

Political Participation and Political Elites in Early Republican China: The Parliament of 1913–1914

1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
P'eng-Yüan Chang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Complex Patterns ◽  
Early Republican

The expansion of political participation is generally recognized as an essential aspect of modernization. China's twentieth-century experience certainly fits this model. Yet we are far from understanding the processes by which participation expanded in China—especially in the early twentieth century, when complex patterns of social change and institutional reform brought new groups to political awareness. Who comprised the newly participant strata in the first decades of this century? How large and powerful were they? How did their members participate? Who were their leaders?

Psychology, Art, and Antifascism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Rose
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Integrate Science

The book presents a vivid portrait of two remarkable twentieth-century thinkers and their landmark collaboration on the use and abuse of caricature and propaganda in the modern world. In 1934, Viennese art historian and psychoanalyst Ernst Kris invited his mentee E.H. Gombrich to collaborate on a project that had implications for psychology and neuroscience, and foreshadowed their contributions to the Allied war effort. Their subject: caricature and its use and abuse in propaganda. Their collaboration was a seminal early effort to integrate science, the humanities, and political awareness. In this fascinating biographical and intellectual study, this book explores the content of Kris and Gombrich's project and its legacy.

scholarly journals Jesuit Catechisms for Soldiers (Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries): Changes and Continuities

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-623
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Lavenia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Military Chaplains ◽  
The Great War

This paper proposes a literary journey through the manuals for soldiers written by Jesuits prior to the twentieth century. After briefly outlining the debut of these publications, at the hands of Antonio Possevino and of Thomas Sailly, who led the first permanent mission of military chaplains in Flanders, it will focus on three moments: the second half of the seventeenth century, when the wars of religion wound down and we find the first manuals where, alongside the desire to impose discipline on armies, a patriotic rhetoric begins to be heard; the middle years of the eighteenth century, before the French Revolution, when, after the establishment of barracks and permanent chaplaincies, even texts aimed at the Christian soldier transposed the vocabulary of the Droit des gens in; finally, the nineteenth century, when the Society was restored and undertook the religious conversion of the soldiery against the perils of the modern world. In Belgium, the birth of a liberal Catholic regime supported a patriotically-toned missionary effort from Jesuit chaplains. Later, the mystique of the nation would affect the majority of texts aimed at combatants and their chaplains during the Great War.

Conformity and Idiosyncrasy: Jean Rhys

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vike Martina Plock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Professional Mobility

By looking at Jean Rhys’s ‘Left Bank’ fiction (Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Good Morning, Midnight, ‘Illusion’, ‘Mannequin’), this chapter investigates how new operational procedures such as Fordism and Taylorism, which were introduced into the French couture industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, affected constructions of modern femininity. Increasingly standardized images of feminine types were produced by Paris couturiers while the new look of the Flapper seemingly advertised women’s expanding social, political and professional mobility. Rhys, this chapter argues, noted fashion’s ability to provide resources for creative image construction but she simultaneously expressed criticism of its tendency to standardize female costumes and behaviour. Ultimately, Rhys demonstrates in her fiction that the radically modern couture of the early twentieth century was by no means the maker of social change and women’s political modernity. To offset the increased standardization of female images that she witnessed around her, Rhys created heroines and texts that relied on an overt display on difference.  

Realignment and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Societal Changes

Affluent democracies have experienced tremendous socio-economic changes since the mid- twentieth century, which has reshaped public opinion, party programs, and electoral choices. This chapter first summarizes the societal changes that have been a driving force behind the political changes described in this study. One pattern involves the longstanding economic issues of contemporary democracies, and shifting social positions on these issues. In addition, an evolving cultural cleavage and its ties to broader attitudes toward social change have altered citizen policy preferences. In most affluent democracies, the parties’ responses to these changing citizen demands have produced a realignment to represent both economic and cultural positions. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for the working of electoral systems and the democratic process more broadly.

Two Centuries of Excavating Merovingian-Era Cemeteries In France

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-95
Author(s):  
Bonnie Effros
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Central Place ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Formal Training ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Private Funding ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Creation

The excavation of Merovingian-period cemeteries in France began in earnest in the 1830s spurred by industrialization, the creation of many new antiquarian societies across the country, and French nationalism. However, the professionalization of the discipline of archaeology occurred slowly due to the lack of formal training in France, weak legal protections for antiquities, and insufficient state funding for archaeological endeavors. This chapter identifies the implications of the central place occupied by cemeterial excavations up until the mid-twentieth century and its impact on broader discussions in France of national origins and ethnic identity. In more recent years, with the creation of archaeological agencies such as Afan and Inrap, the central place once occupied by grave remains has been diminished. Rescue excavations and private funding for new structures have brought about a shift to other priorities and research questions, with both positive and negative consequences, though cemeteries remain an important source of evidence for our understanding of Merovingian society.

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