Spirit Cults in Yan’an

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ka-ming Wu
Keyword(s):  
Rural Area ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Folk Religion ◽  
Major Site ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communal Relations ◽  
New Form

This chapter examines the public secrecy and popularity of spirit cults in Yan'an in the context of the urbanization of the rural area. It first provides an overview of folk popular religion and spirit possession in and out of China before discussing how deity worship figures as a form of unspoken yet widely circulated knowledge, communal bonds, and spiritual services in rural Yan'an. It then considers how spirit cults in Yan'an produce what it calls a “surrogate rural subjectivity” and proceeds by turning to the emergence of women spirit mediums in the 1990s. The chapter argues that, in the context of rapid urbanization, spirit cults provide occasions for the expression of disappearing rural communal relations, folk values, and ritual memories. It also suggests that folk religion now constitutes a new form of rural discourse through which the urbanizing rural subject of China is recognized. Finally, it describes spirit cults as a major site through which rural norms, values, dispositions, and desires are de facto produced and reconstructed in the urbanization of the rural area.

New Folk Music as Attempted Repatriation in Romania

2018 ◽  
pp. 436-452
Author(s):  
Maurice Mengel
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
New Products ◽  
New Product ◽  
The State ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
New Form

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.

Sociology after Fordism: Prospects and problems

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Holmwood
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Sociological Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Knowledge ◽  
New Form

A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies ( Burawoy, 2005 ; Steinmetz, 2005 ). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This development has had a particular impact upon sociology. Savage and Burrows (2007) , for example, argue that sociological knowledge no longer has a privileged claim to authority and is increasingly in competition with social knowledge produced by the private sector and agencies of the public sector. The response of many sociologists to such claims has been to reassert the importance of the discipline as the purveyor of critically relevant knowledge about society. The article traces how the idea of internal critique within sociology has developed to embrace ‘knowing capitalism’ ( Thrift, 2005 ), at the same time as declaring the impossibility of sociological knowledge. The critique of sociology also becomes the critique of critique and what remains is the instrumentalization of knowledge. Where many sociologists continue to claim a special interest in critical knowledge, the article suggests that, in contrast, we potentially confront the problem that such knowledge may itself be facing a crisis of reproduction.

scholarly journals A Systematic Analysis on the Admissibility of Digital Documents as Evidence in Malaysian Syariah Courts

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Abdul Fattah Wan Ismail ◽  
Ahmad Syukran Baharuddin ◽  
Lukman Abdul Mutalib ◽  
Mohamad Aniq Aiman Alias
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Documents ◽  
Digital Document ◽  
New Form ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
Civil Courts ◽  
The Web

Digital document is a relatively new form of evidence, particularly for use in the Malaysian Syariah courts. This scenario contrasts with civil courts, which started using digital documents in court proceedings as early as the 1950s. The use of the digital document as evidence is intended to strengthen other methods of proof further. However, the Syariah courts are still less exposed to a new proofing method because there are no specific provisions according to Islamic law to allow it. Not only that, but Syariah law practitioners are also rarely exposed to cases related to the use of digital documents. Therefore, this qualitative study will analyse the admissibility of the digital document as evidence under Islamic law through a systematic analysis. This study uses the PRISMA methodology with the range of data stored on the web at www.scopus.com and http://myjurnal.my, which brings together thousands of scientific writings worldwide. The final screening results found a total of 21 articles that discussed the practice of digital documents as evidence under Islamic law. Furthermore, from the final filter, the researchers found several works of literature that previously discussed the usage of digital documents as evidence in a trial proceeding, which indirectly shows that the Syariah court has begun to accept this type of evidence. It is expected that the results of this study will assist legal practitioners in the Syariah court and become a reference point for researchers, academics and the public in Malaysia.

Preconditions for a general-purpose central bank digital currency

FEDS Notes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2839) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Cheng ◽  
◽  
Angela N Lawson ◽  
Paul Wong ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Currency ◽  
Stakeholder Support ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
New Form

Over the last few years, interest in the potential issuance of a general-purpose central bank digital currency (CBDC) has increased. Introducing and operating a CBDC would require actions by many stakeholders and not just the central bank. In view of the far-reaching implications of introducing a new form of money to the public, the decision cannot be taken lightly. This paper outlines foundational preconditions and proposes areas of work that may help achieve them prior to the possible implementation of a potential future general-purpose CBDC in the United States. These foundational preconditions include clear policy objectives, broad stakeholder support, a strong legal framework, robust technology, and readiness for market acceptance and adoption.

Reform and the Widening Muslim Sphere, 1800–1890

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laffan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Form ◽  
Court Mandated ◽  
Printed Materials ◽  
Short Courses

This chapter discusses the rise, largely in the nineteenth century, of a new form of populist authority that expanded the scope of Islamic activity beyond the reach of ever more marginalized courts. Indonesian Islam, supported in some instances by a growing native economy, moves away from court-mandated orthodoxy towards a closer connection with Mecca and the Middle East mediated by independent teachers. In some instances, these independent religious masters were able to prosper and to adapt to new modes of Sufi organization that saw the adoption of the tariqas in favor in the Ottoman Empire. By the century's end, the Naqshbandis in particular were exploring new ways of broadening their constituencies. These included somewhat controversial short-courses of instruction and the dissemination of printed materials that were increasingly available to a pesantren-schooled section of the public.

Incisions and Inscriptions

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-151
Author(s):  
Trais Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Death Certificate ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Boundary Object ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Form ◽  
British Physician ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This chapter follows the dead body as it moved out of the public spaces of vernacular forensics and into the sequestered space of medicolegal science, the morgue. It attends to the efforts of the Siamese state to implement medicolegal science in the form of autopsies (incisions) capable of producing forms of documentary evidence (inscriptions) that foreign consular courts would recognize in the prosecution of foreign residents accused of having harmed Siamese subjects. Engaging with science studies scholarship on the work of mediation, the chapter focuses on the collaborative work of Dr. P. A. Nightingale, a British physician in the employ of the Siamese state, and Mo (Dr.) Meng Yim, his Sino-Thai assistant and translator. It discovers in the documentary fruits of their collaborative labor, the death certificate, a “boundary object” capable of entertaining discordant forms of knowledge. It became a testament to the emergence of a new form of necropolitics in Siam.

Events Reconsidered

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Weiner ◽  
Chris Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Literature ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
Real Importance ◽  
New Form ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Work Done

It is unfortunately not possible to follow in any detail every stage of Smith Woodward’s activities at Piltdown. No diaries or note-books exist of the work done, there is nowhere a complete record of the various finds as they were made. Woodward kept copies of very few of his own letters and we have only the letters written to him and now preserved at the British Museum. When the American palaeontologist Osborn came over in 1920, Woodward dictated some notes which help to allocate the various discoveries. Apart from these notes and the one-sided record of the correspondence, there are only the reports in the scientific literature and popular lectures on Piltdown as primary sources. Woodward does not appear in general to have been a secretive man, but over the Piltdown material he went to some lengths to keep the whole affair as quiet as possible until near the time of the public meeting in December 1912. He did not consult any of his colleagues in the Museum about the finds or about the interpretation he was to place on them. Mr. Hinton says that to his colleagues at South Kensington Woodward’s diagnosis of E. dawsoni came as a surprise mingled with some dismay, for there was much scepticism of the new form amongst his museum colleagues, including Oldfield Thomas and Hinton himself. They would have advised caution, he says. Keith knew nothing of the events in Sussex until rumours reached him in November. He wrote asking for a view of the exciting material, but on his visit on 2 December to the Museum he was received rather coldly and allowed a short twenty minutes. But, judging from Dawson’s letters in 1912, it seems fair to say that Woodward was merely seeking to avoid a premature disclosure, for he had decided early on that Piltdown would indeed prove a sensational event. Woodward did not want any of Dawson’s ‘lay’ friends to come along on his first visit to the gravel when he had yet to make up his mind about the real importance of Dawson’s find and of the necessity for systematic excavation.

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