scholarly journals Sporting Space, Sacred Space: A Theology of Sporting Place

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Robert Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Ordinary Space ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Special Places ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Way

Religion often designates locations that are considered sacred, marked off from ordinary space. Sporting venues also take on a significance for players and supporters that is seldom adequately explained in solely sporting terms. Can theological understandings of place illuminate the way in which players and spectators relate to the ‘sacred space’ of their sporting endeavors? In this paper, I explore and assess the theological and religious significance of sporting space by reflecting upon descriptions of both religious and sporting special places. I use a range of types of descriptions of experiences of such spaces together with theological ideas and concepts, including Christian notions of incarnation, sacrament, and Trinity, which are found to be useful resources, undermining a strict binary of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ space. I then build upon previous theological and empirical work with sports participants to explore a theological understanding of special sporting places and the experiences of those who play and support sporting endeavors in them.

scholarly journals Generating Sacred Space beyond Architecture: Stacked Stone Pagodas in Sixth-Century Northern China

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 730
Author(s):  
Jinchao Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Structural Resemblance ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
The Way

A large number of stone blocks, stacked up in diminishing size to form pagodas, was discovered in northern China, primarily eastern Gansu and southeastern Shanxi. Their stylistic traits and inscriptions indicate the popularity of the practice of making stacked pagodas in the Northern dynasties (circa the fifth and sixth centuries CE). They display a variety of Buddhist imagery on surface, which is in contrast with the simplification of the structural elements. This contrast raises questions about how stone pagodas of the time were understood and how they related to contemporaneous pagoda buildings. This essay examines these stacked pagodas against the broader historical and artistic milieu, especially the practice of dedicating Buddhist stone implements, explores the way the stacked pagodas were made, displayed, and venerated, and discusses their religious significance generated beyond their structural resemblance to real buildings.

scholarly journals Fellow Traveller Versus Moral Stranger: How Overall Views of Offenders Impact on Punishment and Rehabilitation Decisions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephanie Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Fellow Traveller ◽  
The Media ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Objective View ◽  
Moral Stranger ◽  
The Way

<p>Theoretical discussions have proposed that opinions relating to offenders can be viewed along a continuum, with the moral stranger at one end and the fellow traveller at the other (Connolly & Ward, 2008). At the very basic level the moral stranger is the offender who is a bad person, while the fellow traveller is the offender who has done a bad thing. It is proposed that where an individual’s view of offenders sits on the continuum will help determine punishment and rehabilitation decisions that they make about offenders. It is further proposed that these views are influenced by outside factors such as the way that the media portrays offenders. The media is an important source of information on crime and offenders (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000; Klite, Bardwell, & Salzman, 1997), and so the way that the media write about offenders can influence the public’s opinions about offenders. The moral stranger and the fellow traveller are theoretical concepts at present, so the aim of the current research was to investigate these concepts in an empirical context. Firstly, Studies 1 and 2 presented crime vignettes written from either the moral stranger perspective or the fellow traveller perspective and then investigated what punishment and rehabilitation differences there were. Study 3 then developed a measure to evaluate individuals’ opinions about offenders, to create an empirical basis for the existing theory. The Opinions about Criminal Offenders (OCO) Scale was developed in Study 3. Study 4 then tested the psychometric properties of this Scale, and through further factor analysis the scale was pared down to 12-items made up of four subscales. Study 5 then brought together the empirical work from Studies 1 and 2 and the developed measure from Studies 3 and 4. Participants were presented with two vignettes, one written from a subjective view and the other from an objective view. They were also given the 12-item OCO Scale. Structural Equation Modelling was then used to extend the work of Studies 1 and 2, and to further develop the decision making process individuals go through. Results indicated that each subscale of the OCO predicted different judgements made about the offender, in terms of his characteristics and likelihood of reoffending, and that these judgements then predicted different judgements about the outcome of the offence, including punishment motive. These studies, together, show that the moral stranger and fellow traveller concepts do exist, as a continuum, and the development of the OCO Scale showed that there is utility in the scale in terms of the type of judgements made about an offender and an offence. The current study was conducted with a sex offence in the vignettes and so further research needs to extend this by using different offence types and different offender characteristics, to investigate how generalisable these findings are.</p>

Le « mythe » de l’adolescence dans Le roman de l’adolescent myope de Mircea Eliade

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Simona Jișa
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
The Self ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
World Vision ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Literary Myth ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Way

"The Myth of Adolescence in Mircea Eliade’s Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent. The article investigates the origins of this novel, which was published decades after its completion, thus identifying the elements that are specific to the genres of the self (autobiography, journal, Bildungsroman). It analyzes some key terms of Mircea Eliade’s world vision which can be pertinently applied to the Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent. The article demonstrates the way in which the young Eliade conceives his relation to the profane time of adolescence (the high school years), as well as to its profane spaces (such as the school, the attic, the library), and how he is able to move towards a sacred spatiality and temporality, both of which are spiritualized through his readings and imaginary. This return ab origo, aiming at a better understanding of the homo saber that Mircea Eliade has become, facilitates the sketching of a literary myth – i.e., that of adolescence. Keywords: Mircea Eliade, Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent, Bildungsroman, sacred and profane, the myth of adolescence "

Sacred and profane: Pastoral care in the parish church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Varnam
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Church Art ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This chapter argues that the profane challenge posed by lay misbehaviour and sacrilege in the church paradoxically strengthens sacred space. Sermon exempla from the literature of pastoral care (e.g. Mirk’s Festial, Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne) show how devils and demons assist in the cleansing of the church from profane contamination and the chapter argues for the integral relationship between violence and the sacred, focusing on the punishment of sinners and on the sacrificial blood of Christ, depicted in lyrics and wall paintings. The chapter reassesses the relationship between church art and sermon exempla and argues for a symbiotic relationship that presents the material church and its devotional objects as living, breathing actors in the drama of salvation. The performance of narrative exempla animates the visual depictions of angels, devils, and saints in the church who come to life to protect and fight for their sacred spaces.

scholarly journals ‘Dark tourism’ and the ‘kitschification’ of 9/11

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey J Potts
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Ground Zero ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Commodity Culture ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Way

This article aims to interrogate the framing of New York’s Ground Zero as a ‘dark tourist’ destination, with particular reference to the entanglement of notions of kitsch in academic discussions of the events of 11 September 2001. What makes Ground Zero contentious, even scandalous, for many scholars is the presence of a conspicuous commodity culture around the site in the form of tourist souvenirs, leading to accusations of kitschification of memory and the constitution of visitors as ‘tourists of history’. Drawing upon theoretical ideas of Jacques Rancière, Bruno Latour and W. J. T. Mitchell around image politics, the alignment of kitsch with the figure of the tourist will be questioned, along with the conviction that the so-called teddy-bearification of 9/11 threatens the formation of dangerous political subjectivities. In attempting to rid the debates of their default settings, and reliance on essentialist notions of kitsch, it is hoped that that the way will be cleared for the sociological, ethnographic and empirical work necessary to consider the cultural and political significance of the Ground Zero souvenir economy.

Annualised Hours Contracts: The Way Forward in Labour Market Flexibility?

2003 ◽  
Vol 185 ◽  
pp. 64-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N.F. Bell ◽  
Robert A. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Service Demand ◽  
Labour Market Flexibility ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Way

Under annualised hours' contracts (AHCs), workers and management agree to the length and scheduling of working hours over a 12-month period. Such contracts have been widely seen as a potentially important way of achieving greater labour market flexibility and enhanced efficiency in work organisation. There exists very little empirical work on these contracts and this study is intended to provide insights into their British labour market role and potential. Especially for workers who are not in management or a profession, the costs of switching to AHCs are substantial. The enterprises that are likely to gain from the switch are those that (a) experience significant fluctuations in output/service demand and (b) desire to utilise plant and space more intensively over the calendar year. In this latter respect, plants incorporating complex shift operations are particularly associated with AHCs.

scholarly journals An Inquiry into the Role of Women in Pre-Ahom and Ahom Society with Special Focus on the Institution of Kamakhya

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-298
Author(s):  
Nilam Kakati
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Mixed Methodology ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Way

The role of women in Pre- Ahom and Ahom society could be regarded in the broader environment within the ambit of sacred space dedicated to them. Kamakhya temple, situated near Guwahati, Assam is the most profound illustration of the sacred space of women. It is celebrated as one of the renowned centres of Tantra in India in general and Assam in particular. It has established itself not only as an eminent Tantric centre but also as a menstruating Goddess. However, menstruation has been treated as a taboo since the earliest times in various religious texts. It represented the image of impurity and pollution and was dubbed as hot and dangerous. However, in Kamakhya temple, annual menstruation of the goddess is celebrated as a festival. In June every year, Ambubachi Mela represents one of the chief celebrations of the temple. The paper attempts to analyze the theme of menstruation, placing it in the border context of Kamakhya. The article also highlights the unrestricted movement of women in the pre- Ahom and Ahom society owing to its characteristics of the tribal bearing. The study claims that the inherent dichotomy of pure-impure, auspicious- inauspicious becomes unfitting in the case of Kamakhya and her annual menstruation festival. This specifics could pave the way to identify the theme of menstruation as a lone entity beyond the dichotomy which might aid in offering a fresh understanding of the same. The study employs the mixed methodology of hermeneutics and feminist theology.

scholarly journals The Subjective Wellbeing of Healthcare Staff and their Patients

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Vlaev ◽  
Henry A Lee ◽  
Paul Dolan ◽  
Ara Darzi
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Subjective Wellbeing ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Healthcare Setting ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Abstract Subjective wellbeing (SWB) is a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions (e.g., health or work), and global judgements of life satisfaction. Measures of SWB offer a means to gauge the impact of events in the lives of individuals. This article examines for the first time the ways in which measures of SWB can be used within a healthcare setting, which brings a new perspective to the way that SWB is considered and applied in determining health policy. The research uses methods for SWB data collection developed through innovative empirical work. The study is a cross sectional survey of the adult inpatient population of an NHS hospital and the nurses caring for the patients, which was undertaken at two time points: summer and winter. This work on the SWB of the staff and inpatients of an acute NHS hospital generated new data sets in clinical populations. The SWB of patients was shown to be significantly affected by severe levels of EQ5D states. When considering the data on a ward-by-ward basis, it was shown that nurses health and job satisfaction were important determinants of patient SWB. We discuss the implications of this research and explain how, when and where SWB measures, when used in healthcare, can be used in health policy. We offer a novel perspective that ensures a greater focus is placed on the way that patients experience health interventions when developing health policy.

scholarly journals Fellow Traveller Versus Moral Stranger: How Overall Views of Offenders Impact on Punishment and Rehabilitation Decisions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephanie Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Fellow Traveller ◽  
The Media ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Objective View ◽  
Moral Stranger ◽  
The Way

<p>Theoretical discussions have proposed that opinions relating to offenders can be viewed along a continuum, with the moral stranger at one end and the fellow traveller at the other (Connolly & Ward, 2008). At the very basic level the moral stranger is the offender who is a bad person, while the fellow traveller is the offender who has done a bad thing. It is proposed that where an individual’s view of offenders sits on the continuum will help determine punishment and rehabilitation decisions that they make about offenders. It is further proposed that these views are influenced by outside factors such as the way that the media portrays offenders. The media is an important source of information on crime and offenders (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000; Klite, Bardwell, & Salzman, 1997), and so the way that the media write about offenders can influence the public’s opinions about offenders. The moral stranger and the fellow traveller are theoretical concepts at present, so the aim of the current research was to investigate these concepts in an empirical context. Firstly, Studies 1 and 2 presented crime vignettes written from either the moral stranger perspective or the fellow traveller perspective and then investigated what punishment and rehabilitation differences there were. Study 3 then developed a measure to evaluate individuals’ opinions about offenders, to create an empirical basis for the existing theory. The Opinions about Criminal Offenders (OCO) Scale was developed in Study 3. Study 4 then tested the psychometric properties of this Scale, and through further factor analysis the scale was pared down to 12-items made up of four subscales. Study 5 then brought together the empirical work from Studies 1 and 2 and the developed measure from Studies 3 and 4. Participants were presented with two vignettes, one written from a subjective view and the other from an objective view. They were also given the 12-item OCO Scale. Structural Equation Modelling was then used to extend the work of Studies 1 and 2, and to further develop the decision making process individuals go through. Results indicated that each subscale of the OCO predicted different judgements made about the offender, in terms of his characteristics and likelihood of reoffending, and that these judgements then predicted different judgements about the outcome of the offence, including punishment motive. These studies, together, show that the moral stranger and fellow traveller concepts do exist, as a continuum, and the development of the OCO Scale showed that there is utility in the scale in terms of the type of judgements made about an offender and an offence. The current study was conducted with a sex offence in the vignettes and so further research needs to extend this by using different offence types and different offender characteristics, to investigate how generalisable these findings are.</p>

scholarly journals Trust and The Acquisition and Use of Public Health Information

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Holland ◽  
Jamie Cawthra ◽  
Tamara Schloemer ◽  
Peter Schröder-Bäck
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Trust In Institutions ◽  
The Way

AbstractInformation is clearly vital to public health, but the acquisition and use of public health data elicit serious privacy concerns. One strategy for navigating this dilemma is to build 'trust' in institutions responsible for health information, thereby reducing privacy concerns and increasing willingness to contribute personal data. This strategy, as currently presented in public health literature, has serious shortcomings. But it can be augmented by appealing to the philosophical analysis of the concept of trust. Philosophers distinguish trust and trustworthiness from cognate attitudes, such as confident reliance. Central to this is value congruence: trust is grounded in the perception of shared values. So, the way to build trust in institutions responsible for health data is for those institutions to develop and display values shared by the public. We defend this approach from objections, such as that trust is an interpersonal attitude inappropriate to the way people relate to organisations. The paper then moves on to the practical application of our strategy. Trust and trustworthiness can reduce privacy concerns and increase willingness to share health data, notably, in the context of internal and external threats to data privacy. We end by appealing for the sort of empirical work our proposal requires.

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