Modern West Research Articles

After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West. By Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. Wm. B. Eerdmans

In this inventive new monograph, Rogers attacks the notorious problem of the neglect of the Holy Spirit in historic mainstream Christian theology. Instead of turning to contemporary Pentecostalism for compensation, however, he garners a rich harvest of neglected pneumatological sources from “outside the Modern West” in order to construct a corrective thesis of some ingenuity and power. Drawing on poetic, creedal, and liturgical materials from the Syriac-speaking churches and other non-Chalcedonian churches of the East, on the twentieth-century Russian “sophiologists,” and on unusual artistic representations of the Spirit in both Greek- and Latin-speaking contexts, he seeks to examine afresh how a robustly “orthodox” understanding of the Spirit might arise from reflection on the biblical economy. The constellating theme in the book is supplied by a formula utilized by John of Damascus, that “The Spirit rests on the Son” (61: see de fide orthodoxa, 1.7). To this insight, Rogers adds his own characteristic twist, familiar from his earlier writings on sex and gender: that it is the specific job of the Spirit to “deify” the body—not only to mark that presence of the divine in the human, incarnate Christ, but to offer it thereby (“dilate” it open, as he likes to put it) to all Christian bodies.

The Construction of the Modern West and the Backward Rest: Studying the Discourse of Hofstede's Culture's Consequences

This paper studies the discourse deployed in Hofstede's Culture's Consequences (1980, 2001), the international best-seller that introduces a model classifying national cultures according to four (later five) supposedly universal dimensions. Noting that this management-oriented scholarly discourse has had a huge impact in both the business world and academia, we take a critical stance towards the Western-based, ethnocentric perspective that characterises it. Our aim is not to merely repeat the already formulated objections to the model, concerning its ontology, epistemology and methodology, but rather to focus on the very words of Hofstede himself in his second edition of Culture's Consequences (2001). With a broadly postcolonial sensibility, drawing on authors such as Said and Escobar, we contend that Hofstede discursively constructs a world characterised by a division between a ‘developed and modern’ side (mostly ‘Anglo-Germanic’ countries) and a ‘traditional and backward’ side (the rest) and discuss the cultural consequences of such colonial discourse

The Personal Equation: Political Economy and Social Technology on India's Canals, 1850–1930

This article engages with a long critical tradition, particularly amongst historians of India but also more generally within environmental and economic history, which describes the modern West's hubristic scientific domination of Asian environments. Confidence in the universal applicability of scientific knowledge, such critiques argue, justified one-size-fits-all technical schemes being exported across vastly different climates and societies, and landscape and communities reshaped to fit the rational visions of planners and engineers. The article examines the actual procedures of Indian canal engineering, whose protagonists ostensibly portrayed precisely this scientific hubris. It finds that even the most ‘scientific’ canal construction and management, borrowing ideas and procedures from steam engines and astronomy, involved precisely the sorts of local knowledge and social reliability evident in opposing forms of flexible, administrative irrigation management. While these two types of water management attempted literally to engineer two different political economies into India's agrarian landscape, in practice their management styles differed little. Both enlisted social and racial prejudice, rather than scientific knowledge, to defend the administrative superiority and actions of British officials. Instruments for economic governance and administrative control, it argues, thus derived as much from the colonial limits of ‘universal’ European science as from its global applicability.

After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West – Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.

After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West – Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.

Book Review: After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West

Book Review: <b>After the Spirit:</b> A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West

Caribbean Cricket: The Role of Sport in Emerging Small-nation Politics

Caribbean Cricket: The Role of Sport in Emerging Small-nation Politics

Performing birth in a culture of fear: an embodied crisis of late modernity

Drawing on recent multidisciplinary work, this paper considers the emerging sense of a crisis around childbirth in late or post-modern western culture. Not only are many health professionals and birth activists expressing concern about rising rates of medical intervention in birth but physiological birth is increasingly defined as difficult and even unattainable. A decline in cultural and individual confidence in women’s birthing capacity seems paradoxical in view of women’s increased social power and achievement in the modern west, along with their improved health and living conditions. Many feminist theorists are ambivalent about childbirth developments though, seeing natural birth advocates’ critiques of technological birthing as essentialist, moralising and patronising towards women’s choices. The paper argues for a theoretical framework that overcomes the tensions between these positions, one which focuses on the interplay between the physiological processes and the internalisation of cultural norms. The paper draws on seemingly disparate work from feminist cultural analysis and philosophy, and from physiology and neuropsychology, to argue that childbirth is collectively and individually performed. It is best seen as an active embodied practice, as a ‘biopsychocultural’ activity. The final section of the paper then uses this framework to examine parallels between the challenges of birthgiving and those of intense creative effort in fields such as sport and the arts. It identifies the importance of embodied interactions in managing the crisis of confidence commonly experienced by performers struggling with emotionally challenging tasks. Cultural norms of anxiety and fear of birth can be materialised in the body through social processes that instil or diminish women’s confidence of ‘doing’ childbirth, thus limiting women’s capacity to experience the agency of their lived bodies in the performance of birthing.

China on Our Minds

aspect of a country's greatness, writes a Yale historian of modern China, surely its capacity to attract and retain the attention of others. By this standard must rank among the most important and interesting of contemporary societies, perhaps second only to the United States. Paradoxically, is also among the least well known. And the cultural and geographical region of which formed the historic centre, what we now call east Asia or more broadly the Asia-Pacific, is still largely terra incognita to western students of international affairs. Even foreigners posted in for some considerable period, a category of expert once known collectively in Britain and North America as hands, have been the first to acknowledge how little they know of a country so ancient and vast, so unique and multifaceted. Above all is acknowledged by those who know it best to be utterly unpredictable in its politics. In the words of an old Chinese proverb much quoted by the old hands of an earlier day, The Yellow River may change its course/But its waters will always be muddy.'Today, China's course seems clear enough: to make itself the equal of the modern west through its self-proclaimed peaceful to great power status. By concentrating on economic growth over the past generation, China's leaders have transformed a longtime economic backwater into one of the world's leading trading states. With its system of political economy resolutely dirigiste in the east Asian mould, has amassed enough wealth and raw productive potential to make its clout felt throughout the developing world and among the leading industrial countries.This deliberate buildup of economic strength has been systematically translated over the past several years into far-reaching diplomatic and political influence, so that now increasingly commands the world's political attention. In Canada, the Globe and Mail of 23 October 2004 devoted its entire Saturday edition to the rise of China, with enormous front-page headlines in Mandarin as well as English. One year later, Canada's newspaper of record repeated the exercise in a special issue called, China rising 2. Moreover, Canada's prime minister of the day rarely gives a speech on foreign affairs without invoking the rise of China. In France, Le Monde Diplomatique, in a comprehensive survey of China's vigorous, worldwide diplomatic initiatives, including its oil diplomacy, informed its readership that China upsets the global order. In the US, the Washington power elites debate whether should be viewed as an economic, political, and military threat to American hegemony. On the academic wing of the American establishment, eminent political scientists argue whether the rise of to great power status, with that country's growing military strength, implies that will inevitably follow the imperial German model of military power leading ineluctably to aggression and World War. China, dearly, is on our minds.2Exactly why we should be so obsessed with at this particular moment, when China's power is largely futuristic, and America's power, whether rising or declining, is present for all to see, would make a fascinating study in the psychology of international relations. But it is the welcome burden of contributors to this section of the International Journal to discuss the lessons of history rather than the insights of psychology, and China's international relations abound with lessons from the past.THE STRUCTURE OF POWER IN EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECTTo appreciate those lessons and their bearing on current policy, it is essential to locate in its unique historical and geographical setting. Analogies and parallels drawn from the international relations of the North Atlantic world, or from social science theory, are more often misleading than not. Western-style diplomacy, which was invented in the city-states of the Italian Renaissance, had no parallel in traditional China. …

After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West – Eugene F. Rogers

Book reviewed: After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West, Eugene F. Rogers Jr, Eerdmans Press 2005 (0‐8028‐2891‐4), xi + 251 pp., pb $22.00/£12.99

Torture in the Modern West

This document, which is a draft chapter (completed in December 2005) from an ongoing book project, discusses and analyzes the use of torture by modern democracies. The chapter surveys the conduct primarily of England, France, Israel, and Spain, but also to some degree of Canada, Italy, and Sweden. (I address the conduct of the United States in other parts of the book.) With the exception of a brief discussion of British practices in India, I focus on post-World War II conduct. For example, Kenya and Northern Ireland (England), Vietnam and Algeria (France), the Basque insurgency (Spain), and the treatment of Palestinians (Israel). I discuss specific allegations about the use of torture and related forms of mistreatment, as well as legal and political responses, including recent decisions of the Supreme Courts of Canada and Israel and of Britain's House of Lords. At the end of the chapter, I also discuss the issue of extraordinary rendition. Throughout the chapter, I make three claims. First, torture is not aberrational conduct in modern democratic societies but is instead pervasive. Second, the practice of torture in such societies reflects common ideas of racism, colonialism, emergency, exception, and necessity. Third, torture in modern democracies is almost always hidden and therefore always capable of being denied or explained away as exceptional. My hope is that readers of this draft will provide comments (or corrections) that will strengthen the analysis (or put me on notice of deficiencies). Perhaps, too, this draft will be helpful to the increasing number of people writing on torture.

The Palliation of Dying: A Heideggerian Analysis of the “Technologization” of Death

The modern West has vigorously sought to overcome death, or at the very least minimize the suffering that it entails. Whereas the former has been predominantly pursued through modern scientific medicine, the minimization of the adversity of death and dying has been sought through ‘death technologies’. This technologization of death is analyzed in light of Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological philosophy. The analysis begins with an outline of the fundamental tenets of Heidegger’s ‘philosophy of Being’. In turn, his philosophical framework is utilized to highlight the manner in which the technologization of dying serves to conceal the central existential questions about being and finitude that dying gives rise to. The paper concludes with a discussion of how Heidegger’s work can inspire a more authentic stance toward dying. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych is referred to in order to illustrate Heidegger’s construal of this existential struggle toward dying.

Eliade&apos;s History of Religions and Its Academic Agency : The Modern West and the Quest for the Sacred

Eliade&apos;s History of Religions and Its Academic Agency : The Modern West and the Quest for the Sacred

Making Connections for Future Directions: Taking religion seriously in the sociology of education

This article argues that a problem for the contemporary sociology of education is that it has operated within a 'secularisation of consciousness paradigm'. This has limited both the depth and the scope of its intellectual enquiries. Sociological analysis which elides a religious dimension not only presents an over-simplified view of social relations in 'the Modern West', but it also fails to make an authentic engagement with many socio-cultural and educational situations internationally, where God is far from dead. The article suggests various ways forward for a reorientation of sociological writing and research.

Calcium carbonate corrosiveness in the South Atlantic during the Last Glacial Maximum as inferred from changes in the preservation of Globigerina bulloides: A proxy to determine deep-water circulation patterns?

The modern Atlantic Ocean, dominated by the interactions of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), plays a key role in redistributing heat from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. In order to reconstruct the evolution of the relative importance of these two water masses, the NADW/AABW transition, reflected by the calcite lysocline, was investigated by the Globigerina bulloides dissolution index (BDX′). The depth level of the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) calcite lysocline was elevated by several hundred metres, indicating a more corrosive water mass present at modern NADW level. Overall, the small range of BDX′ data and the gradual decrease in preservation below the calcite lysocline point to a less stratified Atlantic Ocean during the LGM. Similar preservation patterns in the West and East Atlantic demonstrate that the modern west–east asymmetry did not exist due to an expansion of southern deep waters compensating for the decrease in NADW formation.

Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, 1500-1830

Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Maps and Illustrations Introduction: Alcohol as History in Africa 1. Alcohol in Early Modern West Central Africa 2. The Introduction of Bacchus Into West Central Africa 3. The Reign of Bacchus: Portuguese Alcohol at Luanda and its Hinterland During the Early Slave Trade, c. 1550-1649 4. The Downfall of Bacchus: Brazilian Traders, Portuguese Capitalists and the Struggle for the Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1650-1699 5. The Long Century of Gerebita: The Luso-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1700-1830 6. The Profits of Luso-Brazilian Alcohol in Slaving at Luanda and its Hinterland 7. Underpinning the Slave Trade: Other Uses of Luso-Brazilian Alcohol in Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1575-1830 Conclusion: The Impact of Portuguese and Brazilian Intoxicants Appendix: Graphs Bibliography Index

Dangerous Curves: Politics and Poetry in the Work of Blaise Tobia

Much of the art of the modern West has been openly concerned with the political transformation of bourgeois consciousness: Dada, for example, with its shrill attack on bourgeois rationalism and materialism, or Futurism's assault on bourgeois complacency with its blustering nationalism and pro-war rhetoric, or more recently, the predominantly liberal activism of postmodern times that has taken up virtually every social and political concern of the contemporary world (war, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, multiculturalism, ecology, and the relations of capital and power). Frequently, however, the disruption of consciousness sought by modern artists has been more clearly poetical in nature: for instance, the marriage of childlike imagination to the world of adult intelligence by Klee, Picasso, and Chagall, or the anti-gravitational, Mediterranean joy of Matisse. But while it is easy to understand why artists would be inclined to address the urgent social and political issues of their time, it is not so clear why they would elect to set up shop within the cloistered, playful space of the poetical. Is it simply a matter of socially irresponsible escapism? Or is there possibly a deeper purpose to the poetical in a society such as ours? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Any answer to this question will depend upon how the nature of the poetical is understood. One of the clearest and most cogent explanations of the nature of poetry was offered in the early twentieth century by the Russian formalist literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky: he claimed that the purpose of the poetical is to make the world strange, to inculcate a child-like wonder in us by countering the process of habituation by which we become numb to everyday experience. Poetry achieves this goal by playfully reshaping the linguistic structures that lend form and meaning to the world of our experience. (1) This concept is closely related to Heidegger's well-known claim that man dwells because language is the container of being: as the primary instrument of culture, it establishes what things are for us and what they mean to us and thereby places each individual within a historical horizon of experiential and intellectual possibility. (2) Language, in other words, does not simply reflect a world that is already given; the world first comes to stand in its own being in and through our representations of it. This is why there is a real danger in allowing our use of language to become careless and shopworn, for that is precisely how experience blanches and thickens into the tedium and meaninglessness of the commonplace. Both Shklovsky and Heidegger hold that the poetical is the great antidote to this inexorable tendency of all sign systems to sink into a state of unthinking familiarity; its irreplaceable virtue lies in its ability to create new experiential possibilities by frisking open and revealing the intrinsic rearrangibility of the seemingly fixed horizon of significations that envelopes the consciousness of the individual. And this applies as much to habituated modes of visual representation as it does to words. The modernist assumption of an autonomous and therefore endlessly malleable aesthetic form was, in part, the collective expression of a liberated individual consciousness awakened to the possibility of new modes of experience and thereby freed from an implied debt to tradition and the imitation of nature. Blaise Tobia's recent photographic work is concerned with the transformation of the viewer's consciousness in both of the above senses: while many pieces are politically engaged insofar as they represent visible traces of cultural institutions, practices, and values that have a political dimension, they serve in an equally fundamental way to poetically quicken the viewer's insight into the socially constructed meanings embedded in the world. But if Shklovsky and Heidegger are right in their view of what constitutes the poetical, then we must ask how Tobia uses photography to jar our complacent, everyday vision of things. …

Shamanism: a reader

Shamanism has been practised amongst communities all over the world for millennia, and continues to survive today in both modern and ancient forms. Shamanism: A Reader unites perspectives from disciplines including anthropology, psychology, musicology, and botany to provide an unique overview of modern writing on shamanism. Juxtaposing the traditional practices of indigenous peoples with their new and often radically urban reinterpretations, experts including Michael Harner, Milhaly Hoppal, Majorie M Balzer and Piers Vitebsky raise questions about constructions of shamanism, its efficacy, its use and misuse as a cultural symbol, and its real nature. Locating its material in the encounter between traditional and contemporary, and within many forms of response to the image of the shaman, Shamanism: A Reader is an essential tribute to the vitality and breadth of shamanic tradition both among its original practitioners of Europe, tribes of America and Asia, and within seemingly familiar aspects of the modern west. Representing the best of classic and current scholarship, and highlighting the diversity of approaches to shamanism in an accessible and user-friendly way, this clearly introduced and organized collection sets a new standard for shamanic study in terms of the breadth and depth of its coverage.

Holding a wolf by the ears: roman masters enslaved

Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination. By William Fitzgerald (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 129 pp. £12.95/$18.95 cloth; £35.00/$49.95 paper.The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West. By Aldo Schiavone. Translated by Margery J. Schneider (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), viii +278 pp. £30.95/$45.00 cloth.

Rethinking written culture

For most of its history, modern linguistics viewed writing as a poor relation to speech, at best a tool facilitating the study of historical change and documenting contemporary spoken language. Only in the last few decades has written language been accepted as an object of study in its own right, thanks to the efforts of a variety of classicists, anthropologists, historians, and linguists. One of those linguists is Roy Harris, whose book Rethinking Writing chronicles and challenges traditional theories of the relationship between the written and the spoken word. Harris casts his analysis within the framework of integrational linguistics, arguing for the need to go beyond the study of isolated signs (whether spoken or written) to a model that sees meaning as a product of the sign as used in a situationally specific context. Building on the integrational notion that context plays a critical role in establishing meaning, this essay explores the larger issue of the written culture in which a writing system is situationally embedded. Among the questions the essay grapples with are: What is a written culture? In the modern west, what challenges has written culture encountered, especially over the past century? And what prospects does written culture face in the century ahead? While the essay focuses on the United States, its conclusions will resonate in other contemporary societies in which similar technological and social variables are at work.

On the Very Idea of Religions (In the Modern West and in Early Medieval China)

On the Very Idea of Religions (In the Modern West and in Early Medieval China)