The Experts below are selected from a list of 360 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
David Maxwell - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
african gifts of the spirit pentecostalism the rise of a zimbabwean transnational Religious Movement
2006Co-Authors: David MaxwellAbstract:Introduction Print, Post & Proselytism in the Making of Global Pentecostalism Missions & Independency: The Southern African Pentecostal Movement ca. 1908-1950 Sects & the City: Nationalism, Evangelism & Respectability in the Making of The Assemblies of God, African 1950s-1970 'Pooma Satani' Chasing out the Demons of Sin, Sickness & Poverty: Church Growth in the Decade of National Liberation 1970 - 1980 'A Sleeping Giant' Religious, History & Identity in the 1980s Managing Ministry: Mission, Money & Memorialisation 1990s-2000sTaking up the Missionary Mantle: Transnational Expansions in a Post-Colonial World 1980s-2000s 'Priests for our Families': Poverty, Prosperity & Pentecostal Spirituality in Neo-Liberal Zimbabwe Conclusion.
-
sacred history social history traditions and texts in the making of a southern african transnational Religious Movement
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2001Co-Authors: David MaxwellAbstract:The study of African Christianity by social historians and social scientists currently flourishes after a period in which it excited relatively little interest. For useful recent surveys see: Terence Ranger, “JSAS and the Study of Religion”, Journal of Southern African Studies 25th Anniversary Conference, “Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regained,” York University (1994); Norman Etherington, “Recent Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 22, 2 (1996), 201–19; Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies 36, 2 (1998), 175–201; Adrian Hastings, “African Christian Studies, 1967–1999: Reflections of an Editor,” Journal of Religion in Africa 30, 1 (2000), 30–44. Its revival lies, first, in the re-emergence of what can broadly be defined as intellectual history after a period of materialist dominance which focused research on issues of underdevelopment, dependency and political economy. Since the late 1980s Africanist scholars have been exploring the missionary contribution to ideas about ethnicity, environment, and gender. Secondly, at the same time, partly as a result of the closure of classical research fields, and partly through the belated recognition that the interaction of African cultures and mission Christianities was the supreme anthropological topic, social anthropologists began to turn to work on mission archives. Here the publication initially of a provocative series of articles by Jean and John Comaroff, and then the first of their two-volume study of the London Missionary Society among the Southern Tswana, led the way. Ranger, “JSAS and the Study of Religion,” 3. Jean and John Comaroff, “Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa,” American Ethnologist 13 (1986), 1–20; “Through the Looking Glass: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind,” Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1988), 6–32; The Colonization of Consciousness in South Africa, Economy and Society 18 (1989), 267–95; Of Revelation and Revolution Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991); and Vol. 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997). This revived scholarly interest in African Christianity has evolved in two interrelated ways: there is a growing interest in studying the construction of specifically Religious identities, and greater attention is paid to texts produced by African Christians themselves which, with a few notable exceptions, have been hitherto ignored by scholars. An important exception was Wyatt Macgaffey's use of the official catechism of the Kimbanguist Church, in Modern Kongo Prophets. Religion in a Plural Society (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983).
Carlo Barone - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
A Neo-Durkheimian analysis of a new Religious Movement: The case of Soka Gakkai in Italy
Theory and Society, 2007Co-Authors: Carlo BaroneAbstract:Soka Gakkai is one of the world’s fastest-growing Religious Movements and Italy figures among the western nations where this Religious group has been most successful. This article aims at explaining this success-story: why has Soka Gakkai, and particularly its Italian affiliation, grown so rapidly in recent years? This research question gives the opportunity to assess the applicability of the economic theory of religion to the growth of new Religious Movements. Hence, in order to explain the expansion of Soka Gakkai, this work begins with an examination of the adaptive strategies developed by a Japanese organization in the Italian Religious market. It is claimed, however, that a rational choice explanation cannot stand on its own and that we must take into account the dynamics of pre-contractual solidarity that promote trust, especially when the expected benefits promised by this organization to its adherents do not materialize. Moreover, these solidarity dynamics generate intense emotional gratification that works as a highly motivating incentive to sustain members’ commitment and to prevent them from dropping out. This pre-contractual solidarity is actively produced and continuously reproduced by means of ritual interaction along the lines suggested by Collins’s theory.
Lorne L Dawson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
cults and new Religious Movements a reader
2003Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Book and The Subject. 1. The Study of New Religious Movements:. Eileen Barker, The Scientific Study Of Religion? You Must Be Joking!. James A. Beckford, The Continuum Between "Cults" and "Normal" Religion. 2. The Nature of New Religious Movements:. Roy Wallis, Three Types of New Religious Movement. William Sins Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models. 3. New Religious Movements in Historical and Social Context:. Philip Jenkins, False Prophets And Deluded Subjects: The Nineteenth Century. Robert Wuthnow, The New Spiritual Freedom. 4. Joining New Religious Movements:. Lorne L. Dawson, "Who Joins New Religious Movements And Why: Twenty Years Of Research And What Have We Learned?. Saul Levine, The Joiners. 5. The 'Brainwashing' Controversy:. Margaret Thales Singer, The Process Of Brainwashing, Psychological Coercion, And Thought Reform. James T. Richardson, A Critique Of 'Brainwashing' Claims About New Religious Movements. Thomas Robbins, Constructing Cultist 'Mind Control'. 6. Violence and New Religious Movements:. John R. Hall, The Apocalypse At Jonestown. Jean--Francois Mayer, "Our Terrestrial Journey is Coming to an End": The Last Voyage of the Solar Temple. 7. Sex and Gender Issues and New Religious Movements:. Elizabeth Puttick, Women In New Religious Movements. Susan J. Palmer, Women's 'Cocoon Work' In New Religious Movements: Sexual Experimentation And Feminine Rites Of Passage. 8. New Religious Movements and The Future: Rodney Stark, Why Religious Movements Succeed Or Fail: A Revised General Model. Lorne L. Dawson And Jenna Hennebry, New Religions And The Internet: Recruiting In A New Public.
-
The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai
Sociology of Religion, 2001Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:This paper advances previous arguments I have made about assessing the cultural significance of new Religious Movements (Dawson 1998a, 1998b) using the example of Soka Gakkai. An examination of this Japanese-based, but now world-wide, new religion highlights two things: (I) it denumstrates that there is an intimate relationship between the investigation of the "success" and the "significance" of a new Religious Movement, though the two concerns are not necessarily linked; adul (2), and it points to the most methodologically sound foci for future research on both topics through the comparative analysis of new Religious Movements. The success and significance of Soka Gakkai in the West is explained in terms of certain organizational adaptations and the elective affinity of its ethos with the emergent Religious sensibilities of advanced industrial societies. Implicit to the study of new Religious Movements is the assumption that they are somehow of cultural significance, either as individual phenomena or as part of a larger pattern of social development. It is widely recognized, however, that even the most successful new Religious Movements (hereafter NRMs) are unlikely to achieve a size sufficient to directly influence the development of any Western society in the foreseeable future. Rather, as socially segregated and permitted realms of lifestyle experimentation, the significance of NRMs rests with their potential status as windows into broader patterns of social change. But what kind of change, and how are the different NRMs connected with the patterns of change? Sociologists have been trying to answer these basic questions for some time, acquiring in the process a much better grasp of the forms, functioning, and possible futures of the new religions in our midst (e.g., Bellah 1976; Wilson 1976; Campbell 1978; Stone 1978; Westley 1978; Hunter 1981; Johnson 1981; Robertson, 1985; Robertson and Chirico 1985; Bromley and Busching 1988; Robbins and Bromley 1992; Dawson 1998a and 1998b). But the efforts made to date are still fragmentary and handicapped by an explicit or implicit reliance on the conceptual parameters set by the debate over secularization in Western societies.
Renate L Fernandez - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
returning to the path the use of iboga ine in an equatorial african ritual context and the binding of time space and social relationships
The Alkaloids: Chemistry and Biology, 2001Co-Authors: James W Fernandez, Renate L FernandezAbstract:Publisher Summary The chapter presents a study on the re-examination of the late 1950s ethnographic work among iboga(ine) users in Equatorial Africa in light of Western societies' current questions regarding the craving for, addiction to, withdrawal from, and relapse back into the hard drugs. The possibility of the addiction interruption obtained by this alkaloid for harder drugs in the West relates to its use in Africa as transitional to the rediscovery of a fully consecrated and dedicated existence. Initiates and members of Bwiti, the Religious Movement that regularly used iboga(ine) to obtain its ritual effects, were what is now called “consonant addicts,” if one can talk about iboga addiction at all. They ingested the alkaloid willingly and without noticeable regret or remorse, and almost exclusively as a ritually circumscribed routine. They regarded iboga(ine) as a sacred substance capable of both prolonging and enhancing their weekly Religious experience and confirming and consecrating them in a revitalized relation to their ancestors and to their descendants. This consonance causes to reflect on the words “addiction,” “craving,” “withdrawal,” or “relapse” so central to the “drug wars” of the West, and prompts to reexamine the ritual context and social consequences of iboga(ine)'s use in Bwiti. In this autochthonous context, the words hardly have equivalent meanings to those of the West, for iboga is there regarded as crucial to the management of space and time and generational relationships. It effects a time and space binding of social experience in the broadest sense.
Titti Kristina Schmidt - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
morality as practice the santo daime an eco Religious Movement in the amazonian rainforest
2007Co-Authors: Titti Kristina SchmidtAbstract:This study deals with Santo Daime, a Religious and environmental Movement in the Brazilian Amazon. It is based on 15 months of anthropological fieldwork in the foundational centre of the Santo Daime Movement, Ceu do Mapia, Heaven of Mapia, located deep inside the Brazilian State of Amazonas. In Ceu do Mapia most followers of the Movement are Brazilian peasants and workers collectively known as caboclos. Progressively the Movement has also attracted urban middle-class followers, both Brazilians and foreigners. The main reason for people coming to Ceu do Mapia to join the Movement is the daime, a psychoactive brew (generally known as ayahuasca) used by the members during their rituals. The members claim that the daime is able to cure various kinds of diseases, including fatal diseases like AIDS and cancer. They also claim that it enhances the members’ desire to protect nature. During the last twenty years, the Movement has been expanding significantly and new Santo Daime centres have been set up in Latin America as well as in Europe, the United States and Japan. A concomitant of this process of globalisation is a steadily intensifying focus on environmental issues. The establishment of a National Park around Ceu do Mapia has facilitated the active engagement by the members in a variety of ecological projects.Besides describing and analysing the growth of the Santo Daime Movement in accordance to theories concerned with the growth of new social and Religious Movements in Latin America, the Movement is also described and analysed in terms of moral practice. For members of the Movement their moral practice is dictated by the daime (and the spirit residing within this psychoactive brew), which is seen as the sole agent of the contemporary expansion, an interpretation which implicitly rejects more conventional theories concerned with the growth of new social and Religious Movements. In order to understand and do justice to the specific Santo Daime rationale, i.e. that agency is vested solely in the daime, the author suggests that we need an alternative way to conceptualise action, one which is non-instrumental and non goal-oriented.