scholarly journals Spiritual Legitimacy in Contemporary Japan: A Case Study of the Power Spot Phenomenon and the Haruna Shrine, Gunma

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Shin Yasuda

Since the 2000s, Japanese internet media as well as mass media, including magazines, television and newspapers, have promoted the concept of a “power spot” as part of the spirituality movement in the country. This emerging social environment for the power spot phenomenon has developed a new form of religiosity, which can be called “spiritual legitimacy,” according to the transformation of religious legitimacy embedded in Japanese society. This paper, therefore, examined the emergence of a new form of spiritual legitimacy utilizing a case study of the power spot phenomenon in the Haruna Shrine, Gunma Prefecture, in Japan. The development of the power spot phenomenon in the Haruna Shrine indicates that consumption of spiritual narratives has strongly promoted the construction of a social context of spiritual legitimacy, such as through shared images and symbols related to the narratives in the sacred site. As a result, this paper clarifies that this new form of spiritual legitimacy embodies stakeholders’ social consensus on spiritual narratives, which people have struggled to construct a social context for spiritual legitimacy to ensure hot authentication of their individual narratives and experiences.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
Ririn Risnawati

This study examines the Political News Analysis of the Sovereignty of the People's Sovereignty on Eradicating Corruption as the Independence of the Mass Media in Proclaiming the Performance of the Jokowi-JK Government which focuses on 1 year of its administration (20 October 2014 October 20 2015). This research is based on two things, namely: first, how is the analysis of the political news regarding Corruption Eradication in the local mass media (Kedaulatan Rakyat) in reporting on the performance of the Jokowi-JK government; second, how the independence of the local mass media in reporting on the performance of the Jokowi-JK government in the area of ??corruption eradication. Media independence is seen from the method of Qualitative Approach with Critical Paradigm namely Critical Discourse Analysis; using Teun A. van Dijk's Model Analysis of text production involving aspects of cognition and social context.  The production of text in the political news regarding the Eradication of Corruption in Judging the Performance of the Jokowi-JK Government presented by the Kedaulatan Rakyat SKH is a strong text structure. The Kedaulatan Rakyat Daily Newspaper is able to provide detailed Semantic Structure and more coherent relationships between words / sentences. In addition, the Kedaulatan Rakyat Daily Newspaper minimizes graphics and metaphor as rhetorical elements so as to be able to present more real and factual news. starting from text, social cognition and social context. The news on SKH Kedaulatan Rakyat is able to present the factual news objectivity in accordance with the truth and relevance. Not only that, the objectivity of the news about justice is able to be fulfilled by the People's Sovereignty SKH by presenting balanced news and explaining it more neutral without the support of the mass media. Keywords: Political News, Independence, Mass Media, Eradication of Corruption


2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.


ARCHALP ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (N. 4 / 2020) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Giromini

New Alpine companies, like Crans-Montana on the Haut-Plateau, remain, more often than not, trapped in representative logic opposing the clan of modernists to that of defenders of values anchored in an ideal-typical tradition. The Haut-Plateau territory, so named due to its geographic location and topographic conformation – not for the morphology of the soil – was still a space free of any construction in the mid-nineteenth century. This vast alpine meadow was marked by a few utility buildings for sheltering cattle and hay during the intermediate seasons that precede the full summer. At the turn of the 3rd millennium, the built heritage, essentially consisting of hotel structures and holiday residences, is no longer able to welcome the new socio-economic dynamics linked to the mono-culture of skiing. This crisis calls habits, both old and new, into question, given the youth of the tourist resort. In June 2000, a Federal programme selected Crans-Montana as a case study for testing an Environment and Health Action Plan. This provided an opportunity for a group of architects to formulate an inter-municipal blueprint that activated a series of urban renewal projects. The new architectural formulae that emerge try to go beyond stylistic modernism by reinterpreting the relationship with the built environment and its social context.


Author(s):  
Maurice Mengel

This chapter looks at cultural policy toward folk music (muzică populară) in socialist Romania (1948–1989), covering three areas: first, the state including its intentions and actions; second, ethnomusicologists as researchers of rural peasant music and employees of the state, and, third, the public as reached by state institutions. The article argues that Soviet-induced socialist cultural policy effectively constituted a repatriation of peasant music that was systematically collected; documented and researched; intentionally transformed into new products, such as folk orchestras, to facilitate the construction of communism; and then distributed in its new form through a network of state institutions like the mass media. Sources indicate that the socialist state was partially successful in convincing its citizens about the authenticity of the new product (that new folklore was real folklore) while the original peasant music was to a large extent inaccessible to nonspecialist audiences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.


2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Hofheinz

Muhammad Majdhūb was one of many Muslims who in the nineteenth century argued against strict adherence to the established madhhab system and sought ways to overcome it. This case study, based on an examination of Majdhūb's writings and contemporary documents, analyses what this position meant in practice, how it was expressed, and what it signified in a given social context. The challenge to madhhab affiliation appears to have been more radical in theory than in practice. While dismissing fiqh rationality and basing himself on Prophetic Tradition and inspiration, Majdhūb's practical conclusions consistently - if implicitly - agree with the Shāfi ī school. In the context in which such views were propagated, however, we find interesting social and political factors that contributed to their attractiveness. Here, they served to transcend a politicised deadlock between proponents of different madhhabs while lending 'Prophetic' support to the local as opposed to the ruling Ottoman party.


Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-397
Author(s):  
Jan Joris Rietveld

AbstractThe Cariri region is the most isolated and poor part of the rural zone of the diocese of Campina Grande in the Paraiba state of Brazil. The Catholic Church has been present here for a relatively short time: 335 years. Moreover the region has an isolated context and this favors conservatism so that only fundamental changes have an impact. These facts make the Cariri an interesting region for a case study about how Catholicism develops. I distinguish five periods, which are described with religious key words and situated in the socio-cultural context. This classification is a schematization: different types of Catholicism often exist together. It is obvious that the dominant features of Catholicism change with time, but in the mainstream of the fifth period we see a small revolution. Now there are not only influences in the socio cultural context and factors in the Church itself that cause changes, but there are also influences of powerful newcomers, the evangelical churches. Their main impact is that many people have left the Catholic Church and are going to live their old faith in a new form. The Catholic Church is searching for adequate ways to respond to this phenomenon.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document