Urbanisation, migration, depopulation and virtual ritual community - the village kurban as a shared meal

Between agape and blood sacrifice. Kurban in the religious life of Orthodox Christian (Western Rhodopes, Bulgaria)The article is an excerpt of the dissertation „Religious syncretism and anti-syncretism in the light of the coexistence between Muslims (Pomaks) and Orthodox Christians in the Western Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria”. Dissertation is based on field research I did in 2005–2009 in the area of Gotse Delchev, a town in Blagoevgrad Province. I have interviewed community members invested with considerable symbolic potential, such as the mayor and the mufti, Orthodox clerics, hodjas, teachers and quack doctors. I conducted a total of 63 in-depth interviews with 76 people.My findings show that the local Orthodox population is more susceptible to the influence of Islam than vice versa. What is quite striking in this context is that examples of deep syncretism can actually be found among the Christians. This includes the practice of kurban or blood sacrifice, which they regard as a replication of Abraham’s sacrifice and invest with a level of importance that makes it a central aspect of their religious life (possibly more important than the Eucharist). Although Balkan Slavs had practiced blood sacrifice even before the arrival of Islam in the region, the Christian interpretations of the practice evince deep parallels with the Muslim practice of kurban. Both religious groups identify Abraham’s sacrifice as the origin of the practice, and treat the sacrificial lamb as a substitute for a specific human life.Although the scholar Florentina Badalanova has interestingly suggested that the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice, which is popular in Bulgarian folklore, may have persisted in an unchanged form ever since it originally emerged in ancient Ur and became transmitted orally to the Balkans, her thesis must remain purely conjectural. Where it comes to the Western Rhodopes, I suppose that the motif of Abraham’s sacrifice filtered into Christian religious symbols and narratives via the traditions of adat Islam, many of which had retained close links with Judaism. By adopting the Ottoman Turkish term (kurban) rather than its Semitic variant (qorban), the Christians also adopted the related set of ideas about the sacrifice and its sacred aetiology. The precise ramifications of this example of deep syncretism for the religious experience of Orthodox Christians, though interesting, would require additional in-depth research.

This paper concentrates on the changes in knowledge transfer in northern Namibia with respect to sexual norms, behavioural advice and sexual health information. The research was conducted in a small village community in Ohangwena region, where over 100 semi-structured and structured interviews were held with a sample of 67 community members and 50 professionals dealing with HIV/AIDS issues. The results of the research indicate the change in social roles in family and community dynamics, especially between generations, and thus a change in trust, respect and responsibility attached to information sharing. This further exerts pressure on the classification, choice, adaptation and transmission of information at both the individual and family level. Secondly, and partly as a consequence of this, the levels of indigenous, community level information from elders to youth and the level of institutionalised information sharing leave space for variations in behavioural norms. The research contributes to the discussion on problems in information sharing, knowledge transfer and adaptation of behavioural advice in HIV/ AIDS work.

Many benefits of online communities---such as obtaining new information, opportunities, and social connections---increase with size. Thus, a "successful'' online community often evokes an image of hundreds of thousands of users, and practitioners and researchers alike have sought to devise methods to achieve growth and thereby, success. On the other hand, small online communities exist in droves and many persist in their smallness over time. Turning to the highly popular discussion website Reddit, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of communities, we conducted a qualitative interview study examining how and why people participate in these persistently small communities, in order to understand why these communities exist when popular approaches would assume them to be failures. Drawing from twenty interviews, this paper makes several contributions: we describe how small communities provide unique informational and interactional spaces for participants, who are drawn by the hyperspecific aspects of the community; we find that small communities do not promote strong dyadic interpersonal relationships but rather promote group-based identity; and we highlight how participation in small communities is part of a broader, ongoing strategy to curate participants' online experience. We argue that online communities can be seen as nested niches: parts of an embedded, complex, symbiotic socio-informational ecosystem. We suggest ways that social computing research could benefit from more deliberate considerations of interdependence between diverse scales of online community sizes.

Marine communities : governing oil & gas activities and cruise tourism in the Arctic and the Caribbean

This chapter addresses church-state collaboration in the context of ‘spiritual national defence’; it compares different views represented in cultural productions on the tragedy of the submarine Kursk, that which sank in the Barents Sea, on 12 August 2000. It suggests that the Russian secular leadership’s reluctance to deal with the management of the past, especially concerning the punishment of Stalinist oppressors, is compensated by glorifying victims – here, the seamen of the Kursk – having died on duty, as martyrs. Тhe glorification of martyrs derives from Old Testament theology of blood sacrifice (2 Moses, 24:8), and makes it possible to commemorate Muslim martyrs together with Orthodox Christian ones. Some theologians have claimed that Russia had needed these sacrifices to spiritually wake up in the post-atheist vacuum of values, and that the Russian people had to repent for having abandoned their forefathers’ Christian faith. In this line of apologetics of blood sacrifices and need to repent, the New Testament’s promise of Jesus’s complete purgation and redemption of sin through perfect sacrifice (Matt. 26:28) is not mentioned. My reading elaborates on the commemorative album Everlasting Lamp of Kursk by (then) Hegumen Mitrofan (Badanin) (2010), as well as on the drama film Kursk by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (2018), whose film illustrates pan-European visions, based implicitly on the New Testament promise.

In light of the increasing loss of species diversity and human cultural diversity and the pressure topdown nature conservation has often placed on local cultures around the world, understanding the linkages between conservation and cultural sustainability and finding ways to address them in an integrated way have become critically important. The potential for linking conservation and cultural sustainability is examined through the case of the Paphos Forest in Cyprus. In the Paphos Forest, the Cyprus mouflon (Ovis gmelini ophion), an endangered subspecies of wild sheep, faces an uncertain future, while small village communities are experiencing decline and are struggling to sustain their way of life. This paper describes the historical context that has guided conservation policy in Cyprus and presents the findings of a preliminary qualitative inquiry conducted in the summer of 2000 in four village communities in the Paphos Forest. The inquiry revealed that local people are greatly concerned about the future of their villages and find intolerable the agricultural damages caused by mouflon, which place an additional strain on local agriculture. Despite these problems, there is potential for linking conservation with efforts to enhance the viability of the village communities. Local people value the forest and generally support the conservation of the Cyprus mouflon, which is considered an element of the local culture. Furthermore, people would welcome opportunities to participate in conservation programs, with the hope that this would benefit both mouflon and their communities.

The chlorinator is use as a discharge for chlorine which service as a disinfectant of bacterial in the rural water treatment plant in a small village community in Borno State. The percentage of chlorine was evaluated to be approximately 0.00002% which is within the accepted international standard limit for drinking water. The retention time of 5hrs was taken for the tank with volume of 0.0101m 3 and diameter of 250mm and a calculated height of 206mm, the diameter of the orifice is approximately 1.5mm. Wood was use as the material for the construction of the tank because of its high resistance to chemicals.

Time is crucial in managing human relationships, especially when talking about communities of people: timetables govern most of our labor activities, our family rhythms, and the organization of our personal life. Strangely, time management have received a great attention in office automation software, like Project management tools, agendas, to-do lists etc, but has been totally forgot in what nowadays is the absolute dominator of human-computer interactions, i.e. social networks, and even in e-learning system. In this paper, we will present the main characteristics of services like meeting organization, shared agendas, shared calendars, task management and to-do lists services added to our virtual community platform, used in educational settings. They are not just a customization of existing similar services: the fact of being integrated and available inside the virtual community gives them many new possibilities of usage and usefulness for end-users. The scope of the virtual community and its well defined mission for participants (a classroom, a research group, a meeting, a secretariat etc) maximizes the benefits obtainable from the usage of these services inside the community with the other members. In the paper, these aspects will be presented together with the theoretical aspects related to time-based interaction among virtual communities. Some of these services will be presented in the details of their structure and in the great potential that could be expressed when used as a support to the virtual community life, like for example the task-list service, a quite sophisticated, CPM (critical path method)-compatible planner resembling project management software and used to plan, monitor and manage the activities of community members. The results of early experimentations on virtual learning communities composed by teachers, students and tutors will be illustrated

Caves have been used in various ways across human society but despite the persistence within popular culture of the iconic caveman, deep caves were never used primarily as habitation sites for early humans. Rather, in both ancient and contemporary contexts, caves have served primarily as ritual spaces. In Sacred Darkness, contributors use archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic studies of modern ritual practices to envision the cave as place of spiritual and ideological power and a potent venue for ritual practice. Covering the ritual use of caves in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest and Eastern woodlands, this book brings together case studies by prominent scholars whose research spans from the Paleolithic period to the present day. These contributions demonstrate that cave sites are as fruitful as surface contexts in promoting the understanding of both ancient and modern religious beliefs and practices. This state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use will be one of the most valuable resources for understanding the role of caves in studies of religion, sacred landscape, or cosmology and a must-read for any archaeologist interested in caves.

Health status of infants in a small village community near Shiraz, Iran.

The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa was an unprecedented epidemic of a highly fatal infection. Unexpectedly, after 12 months it was still raging, taking more than two years to control. It threatened international borders, dominated headlines and evoked fear around the globe. A contagious viral disease that causes a fatal haemorrhagic fever, Ebola is publicly perceived as having the capacity to cause a ‘Plague’ of catastrophic consequences. Plagues historically have not discriminated; they have afflicted humans of all levels of society, having both immediate and long-term consequences. The aftermath has had significant influences on public health, medicine, education, communication, societal practices, national economies, as well as cultural and religious beliefs. The 2014/2015 outbreak was the largest epidemic caused by a Filovirus such as Ebola, since Zaire ebolavirus was first identified in the 1970s. Having infected over 28,000 persons in West Africa it was slow to be recognised and contained. Unfortunately, resolving this epidemic was difficult and protracted, taking two years because of the unexpected appearance of late cases, some without links to someone with clinical disease. This created apprehension in the countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia; nations which were economically and socially anxious that the epidemic was officially declared over. This was a plague of modern times and revealed a number of unexpected outcomes. It changed paradigms not only in our understanding of this disease but also how new vaccines, medicines and diagnostic technologies could be fast-tracked, and changed how international responses to global infectious disease threats could be handled better in the future. This epidemic impacted on the small village communities as well as large urban centres. It changed practices and local perceptions of infectious diseases, re-established the critical importance of basic health infrastructure and highlighted the crippling impact that such gripping infectious diseases have on the struggling economies of developing countries. Ebola: The Most Feared Contagion In central Africa Ebola viruses are known to periodically strike remote villages, causing a terrifying haemorrhagic fever with high mortality. Unexpectedly in December 2013, at a distance of 3000 km west of the known heartland of Ebola in Central Africa, an outbreak of a mysterious disease began to spread, extracting a terrifying toll and killing many.

<i>Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender, and Ethnic Identity</i> by Anna Grabolle-Çeliker

Most of the three million Mexicans and their descendants who are immigrants come from small village communities where family ties were strong and closely controlled by tradition and public opinion. After migration the functional relationships of the members of the family to each other are likely to change. Economic insecurity and high mobility as well as cultural and ethnic discrimination affect family life.

Aims Two markers show a constant positive association with infant birth weight: maternal pre-pregnancy weight for height and weight gain during pregnancy. Both are dependent on a positive energy balance in pregnancy where nutritional calorific intake is greater than energy expended. Our pilot study used the Actiheart accelerometer device that measures continuous ambulatory activity and heart rate to calculate ‘free-living’ energy expenditure in third trimester pregnant women in rural Nepal. Methods Three-week time limited study. Sixteen third trimester rural women from Jumla district Nepal were selected to wear the Actiheart device for 24 h. Participants were recruited by moving house to house in small village communities. All participants were agricultural labourers responsible for small marginal farms and household chores. A Nepali nurse gathered informed verbal consent from the women, measured BMI and assessed their trimester by questioning. The Actiheart device has been validated against the doubly labelled water method as the gold standard of energy expenditure measurement. Participants were excluded from the study if the Actiheart device was worn for Results 16 participants were measured during the three-week period and five were excluded from the sample due to insufficient heart rate trace or time wearing the Actiheart. Physical activity level (PAL) category boundaries stated by the WHO, showed 4/11 women had a ‘light’ PAL (1.40–1.69), 3/11 ‘moderate’ PAL (1.70–1.99) and 4/11 ‘vigorous’ activity level (>2). The sample average PAL was 1.85, significantly higher than that reported in studies of pregnant women in developed countries such as the UK (1.62) and Sweden (1.65). 8/11 participants were estimated to be in negative energy balance when using the total daily energy intake of 2140kcal reported in pregnant women in the nearby area of Tamang. Conclusion Pregnant women in rural Nepal have heavy workloads and high physical activity levels in the third trimester. High maternal energy expenditure and poor nutrition may result in a negative energy balance leading to weight loss, low birth weight and poor maternal and neonatal outcomes.

Morbidity in plague epidemics is an almost totally neglected field of research. In the present paper the evidence is presented and related to problems currently debated. The evidence clearly indicates that plague has a strong capacity for diffusion, leading to average morbidity rates in Tuscany 1630–2 (seven communities) and southern France 1720–2 (33 communities) of 44 and 55 per cent respectively. Combined with a lethality rate of close to eight per cent as in France, an epidemic pattern emerges which may serve to explain the reduction of the population during the late middle ages. Morbidity rates did not increase with increasing population densities, but were highest in small village communities, lowest in (small) towns and at an intermediate level in cities. This pattern has previously been observed in India, but no explanation was found. It is shown that the rat-based epidemiological model could serve to explain this peculiar pattern. This conclusion is supported by the few studies in which the spread of plague throughout local communities has been analysed.