Realities Of Modern Life Research Articles

Revived Shamanism in the Social Life of Russia

The article reviews various modern practices associated with the concept of revived shamanism. Many of them have an indirect relation to actual shamanism and its revival. However, their adepts can consider themselves followers of traditional shamanism. The author reviews several variants of shamanic activity widely represented in modern Russia, such as: urban shamanism, experiential shamanism, neoshamanism, and also (neo)shamanism or shamanism. They are discussed, taking into account their religious, socio-political, cultural, healing, scientific, ethno-tourist, and economic (business) contexts. The study shows how, depending on various realities of modern life, the activity of specific individuals who identify themselves as shamans, as well as shamanic organisations (legally regarded as religious), changes.

Multimedial Exposures: The Modernist Self-Portrait in Text and Image

In the early twentieth century, many artists began to develop experimental modes of envisioning the self that were inseparable from the new sensory reality of modern life. Textual examples of personal writing in the Modernist era, including poetry and prose by Rainer Maria Rilke and Else Lasker-Schüler, demonstrate an engagement with characteristics of visual media, resulting in a form that is closer to the painterly or photographic self-portrait than to conventional personal narratives such as diary or memoir. Examples from Rilke, Lasker-Schüler, and Paula Modersohn-Becker underscore the role of self-portraiture, in both visual and textual forms, as a means not of summing up a lifetime but of situating identity as ephemeral and highly contextualized. In part because of their own new and uncertain status within artistic and urban communities, women artists in particular tended to embrace this fleeting construction of identity, using the guise of public exposure as a method of presenting an image of the self while also maintaining the possibility of reinvention.

“TECHNOLOGICAL ESCHATOLOGY” IN MODERN TRADITIONS OF POPULAR ORTHODOXY AND AMONG THE OLD BELIEVERS OF SIBERIA

This article deals with the way the traditional Christian denominations of the Siberian region (mainly popular Orthodox and Old Believers) adopt to changes in the surrounding world. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of “technological eschatology” associated with assigning eschatological significance to technology. The spread of technological innovations, such as new means of transportation and communication, new types of household appliances, etc., are considered by the bearers of traditional religious consciousness as a direct sign of the upcoming or already occurring “last times.” The research is based on materials from the long-term field study by the author and on published works of peasant Old Believer writers. In these sources, the new realities of modern life and especially the advances in science and technology of the 20th century are assessed in terms of Orthodox faith.

Street nonsense: Ryūtanji Yū and the fascination with interwar Tokyo absurdity

Interwar Japanese authors who sought to convey the power of the city called for the creation of literary realism based on incongruous images that represented the times. They used the buzzword ‘nansensu’ to describe aspects of Tokyo that epitomized their historical moment and to position themselves against proletarian literature, which they attacked for not presenting the realities of modern life. Although glamorizing poverty, nansensu literature made ordinary occurrences alluring and critiqued social conditions. Ryūtanji Yū (1901–92), then widely read but now rarely studied, exemplified the aspirations of nansensu literature. He was also the spokesperson for the New Art School (Shinkō geijutsu-ha), the coalition to which most authors engaged in this literary trend belonged. A former medical student with a lifelong interest in cacti, Ryūtanji had an eye for urban details. Ryūtanji's ‘street nonsense’, to borrow the title of his 1930 anthology, magnified common Tokyo spectacles to expose how the city shaped human subjectivity and cultural production. I explore how Ryūtanji used nansensu lightheartedly to critique places and practices that were becoming part of daily life, expose paradoxes underlying Japan's capitalist growth and parody the act of writing. Ryūtanji's career provides insights into the publishing industry of the time and his stories reveal the contradictions of urban modernity during a complex historical period.

Like the Mountains of China by Edwina Pendarvis (review)

And somewhere, along in there, it became a matter of pride. In the end, the novel is not about the sex, nor about the bloody violence, nor even about the wild doings of Deputy Polk and preacher Abel Hitch, but rather about another stage inJesse's life quest. The fact that this search is not as splendid as the struggle of the young narrator in Crum is not a failure of Screaming With the Cannibals but rather the memorable success of Crum. Neither novel, of course, would be anywhere near as good as it is without the humor. Lee Maynard's writing is sometimes raw but always dependably hilarious. In Cannibals the Jelly Fish Rodeo alone is worth the price of the book, and the long scene in which Jesse escapes a Kentucky revival meeting with his soul unsaved and his skin intact is vintage Maynard. Jesse doesn't find everything he's looking for in this book, but his adventures are reliably entertaining, and when he has to move on again, forgiven at last by Yvonne, he has come to recognize that his search is not only for new sights but also for an adult self with a place in the world. —Meredith Sue Willis Edwina Pendarvis. Like the Mountains ofChina. Ashland, KY: Blair Mountain Press, 2003. 78 pages. Paperback. $11.95. Edwina Pendarvis's second book-length collection of poems won't disappoint if you admire, as I do, her poetic perceptions, her careful and candid commentary on Appalachian culture, and her choice of occasionally quirky subject matter. In Like the Mountains of China, Pendarvis uses the sensibilities of Chinese poetry to create a kind of "Hillbilly Zen With An Edge." She crafts a meditative natural world while telling the truth about Appalachian life with all its problems, particularly the systematic destruction of natural and human resources by our own hands. The poems in Like the Mountains of China are divided into three sections. The first uses Chinese poetry's alacrity to establish a composed unsteadiness on the subjects of nature, animals, family, and place. The tranquility of the natural world is often undercut by the realities of modern life. In "August Afternoon," the speaker rides recklessly with a friend on a four-wheeler: 66 Bullying our way, flattening saplings, lumbering over fallen logs, ducking low-hanging branches, we tore through the forest, rode the ridges and nosed down ravines. Deep in the middle of a shady, green valley, we spotted a doe, who stopped for a moment to stare straight at us. A few yellow leaves drifted slowly down (11). The violent verbs in the first half of this passage contrast with the still images in the second half. Pendarvis is not just describing and observing in these poems; she's participating and bearing witness. At the same time, she manages to achieve, like the ancient Chinese poets, a "calm transparency," a ponderable silence. The same effect is achieved in "Appalachian Aubade," when the speaker departs for work before dawn "into the fog—a white tent / pitched from the street lamp": until I pull into a SuperAmerica, its garish red and blue muted by the sound of a fiddle from a roof-mounted speaker; the tune cuts across gray dawn like an elusive deer running through a high meadow then gone (20). Nature is often personified ("Now Spring shakes its wild, green mane") and animals—birds, deer, dogs, horses, and goats—are prominent. Family is here in these poems, too; we meet children, aunts, and parents. But the beautiful tension remains. In "In the May Evening," the speaker likens her cancer-stricken aunt to a crane, the Chinese symbol for vigilance and self-knowledge: "She comes to the door in a pink, quilted robe, her / round head covered now with white down, her / brown eyes darker than ever before" (19). In the second section of poems, the poet laments lost history, culture, and nature. Often, these poems are protests against war ("Crèche"), human greed ("Drinks Before Dinner"), and inequitable social and economic infrastructures ("Noon in Pedro, Ohio," and "Hunting, Near Pedro"). This protest, too, is a classic technique in Chinese poetry, where beauty disguises or is...

Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons and the Problems of Contemporary Japan: A Review Note

In his controversial new book Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, Alex Kerr (2001) maintains that modern Japan represents ‘a case of failed modernization’ due to a deep-seated ‘cultural malaise’ that arises ‘because of a severe mismatch between Japan’s bureaucratic systems and the realities of modern life’. Kerr argues this thesis by means of examples drawn from the arts, culture, economics, politics and other aspects of contemporary Japan. This review note attempts to provide a critical examination of Kerr’s economic arguments. We contend that he has radically overstated his case, ignored much existing critical literature on Nippon, and ‘exoticised’ Japanese society unnecessarily.

Die aard en funksie van Zoeloe-folklore in Die ding in die vuur van Riana Scheepers

The nature and function of Zulu folklore in Die ding in die vuur by Riano ScheepersThis article is concerned with how and why Zulu folklore and oral narrative traditions are absorbed in the literature of the writer Riana Scheepers. Scheepers does not use Zulu culture in her work to make it part of the struggle genre. The question therefore arises: Why does Scheepers, a modern, even postmodern writer, make use of the prehistoric, ancient Zulu oral narrative tradition?As starting points for this article the following issues are explored: What is the nature of Zulu folklore and how has it been applied in the texts concerned? What is the function of Zulu folklore in Scheepers’ work?In the oral narrative tradition, the ugogo (grandmother) is the narrator of the story and she tells her stories to the listeners (mostly children) to educate them in a very entertaining way, but also to adjure many social evils, symbolized by a variety of characters, such as animals, monsters and tricksters. Riana Scheepers uses the ugogo to create a story within a story in front of the reader's eyes, in other words, she uses the ugogo to create metatextuality. By writing stories, Scheepers also edifies her readers in an entertaining manner and like the ugogo, she adjures many social evils like violence, poverty, chauvinism and racism. By transforming truth into fiction (fictionalization), she makes the harsh realities of life tolerable and in this way protects herself and her readers against the horrific realities of modern life.

The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 (review)

164 SHOFAR Winter 1997 Vol. 15, No.2 The,Wonders ofAmerica: Reinventing]ewish Culture, 1880-1950, by Jenna WeissmanJoselit. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. 349 pp. $23.00. While cultural studies have for some time now been the vanguard of scholarship in other fields of history, such new and creative explorations of the Jewish past are just emerging in modern Jewish historiography. Jenna Weissman Joselit, who previously reclaimed from the American Jewish past its criminals, Orthodox, camps, and homes-the latter two in landmark museum exhibits-has now written a major book about the shaping of American Jewish bourgeois culture. Reading not only the customary texts of historians-memoirs, sermons, the Anglo-Jewish and Yiddish presses-she has also pored over games, dolls, and toys; clothes, furniture, and kiddush cups; soup cans and soap labels-to produce an innovative construction of the encounter between Judaism and America in the years 1880-1950. In seven tightly organized chapters, she moves from the kissing business of courtship and marriage to the joys of parenting (largely mothering), to b'nai mitzvah and confirmations, the red-letter Jewish days in the lives of these families. Along the way she stops to ponder what made their homes, their stomachs, and their celebrations Jewish, before concluding with how this emerging bourgeoisie bade farewell to those departing this world for the next. The book's strengths lie in its richly nuanced portrait of American Jewish domestic culture, the author's graceful prose, and the evocative photographs and advertisements illustrating her discourse. Surely, this work should resonate among a much broader audience than the academic world if for nothing more than its tracing the cliche of the overbearing Jewish mother to social science literature. Moreover, observers of today's American Jewish life are sure to be struck, as I was, by contemporary counterpoints. In the era Joselit explores, the construction of a sukkah "clashed head-on with the realities of modern life" (p. 243). But readers ofcurrentAmericanJews with their sukkah-building kits and rabbis' railing against children "sukkah-hopping" for candy will appreciate the fluidity of this culture-in-the-making. This same fluidity, however, also makes for the book's flaw, insufficient attention to the chronological shifts in this evolving culture. Joselit's theme and time period are broad. Thus, while we do learn that only after World War I did gift-giving become a major part of Chanukah celebrations, we are also told that a generation ,after the 1920s "vinually all" Jews attending a Sabbath service "were women" (p. 253). Yet the evidence supporting this, a turn-of-the-century report from National Council of Jewish Women President Hannah Solomon, as well as the author's own Book'Reviews 165 work on interwar New York Onhodox Jews, suggests the need for qualification. Future historians can and will surely refine these chronological contours of the parameters of American Jewish culture. Despite this, what remains the wonder of !be Wonders ofAmerica is its path-breaking vision and sweep. Joselit's understanding of American Jews and the panicular expressions of their culture is keen. She observes them buying bar mitzvah suits as well as prayer shawls, making pilgrimages to Jewish museums, and crafting a "new geography of kashruth" (p. 174) that made Chinese restaurants a mainstay of the Jewish diet. And she perceives the dissonance between that which the elite custodians of communal culture, the rabbis, want and what the folk do. In ignoring sermons to come to the synagogue on the Sabbath while buying electric menorahs and pastrami,Jews, awash in the freedom ofAmerica, eloquently proclaimed their cultural priorities. An imaginative and gifted historian, Joselit fathomed this. The result lies here in her eloquent and imaginative ponrait of the invention-although she calls it a reinvention-ofAmerican Jewish culture. Pamela S. Nadell American University A Diving Rock on the Hudson, by Henry Roth. New York: St. Manin's Press, 1995. 416.pp. $23.95. Many readers ofnovels have thought ofwriting them; some have tried. A few have tried for years. But very few have tried for 60 years, and none after having written a great first novel, except Henry Roth, who died in October of last year...

Structure or Sentiment? Habermas, Hegel, and the Conditions of Solidarity

Jurgen Habermas prefaces his recently published philosophy of law, Faktizitat und Geltung,' by announcing that he will make virtually no reference to Hegel. This acknowledgement is curious, for while Habermas in fact makes scarcely any reference to Hegel, his projects reaffirms many components of Hegel's approach to legal and political theory. Like Hegel, Habermas seeks to fashion a philosophy of right, or law, that surmounts the oppositions of empirical and normative considerations-of reason and reality, philosophical right and positive law, facticity and validity. Like Hegel, he presents right as a principle that cuts across spheres of economicadministrative and political-communicative forms of rationality. Like Hegel, he regards law as a principle-indeed the distinctly modern principle-of societal cohesion and institutionalized public rationality. Like Hegel, Habermas advances an account of solidarity that not only does not ignore modern complexity but builds upon it. And like Hegel, he fashions a concept of law that seeks to surmount many of the dichotomies that traditionally have plagued legal and political theory: e.g., private liberty and public autonomy, liberal constitutionalism and civic selforganization, liberalism and communitarianism, formal governmental institutions and informal sphere of political will-formation, representative and popular notions of political participation. For his part, Habermas adduces several reasons for not according Hegel greater attention.2 Most important is his contention that Hegel's Philosophy of Right, like the practical philosophy of his predecessors, rests on the assumptions of a philosophy of consciousness or philosophy of the subject, assumptions that do justice neither to the requirements of a comprehensive theory of law nor the realities of modern social life.3 Commitment to a philosophy of the subject cedes primacy either to the individual legal subject or a state-social macro-subject, a state of affairs which eliminates the possibility of reconciling public and private autonomy, the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the modems. Similarly, a philosophy of the subject entails commitment to a view of public life centered in political-state organization, a state of affairs that cannot accommodate a notion of sovereignty that doesjustice to the diverse forms of social integration characteristic of a differentiated social world. Finally, a philosophy of the subject lays special emphasis on the virtuous sentiment of citizens in accounting for solidarity and social cohesion, a state of affairs that likewise ill accords with the realities of modern life. Thus to accommodate the requirements of a normative legal philosophy under contemporary conditions, Habermas turns to a discoursetheoretic approach to law, one that scrutinizes the phenomenon of law, not from the standpoint of the individual or communal subject, but in terms of the underlying rules and procedures governing communication and public deliberation. This "retreat into the discursive structure of public communication"4 is significant because it furnishes a framework that can accommodate an internal relationship of public and private autonomy. Moreover, it allows for a decentered concept of sovereignty, one that does not require identifying the public will with a collective social subject.5 And by adverting to the integrating power of the "subjectless," "anonymous," or "impersonal" structures that govern the process of deliberation, Habermas' theory accommodates a conception of solidarity and social cohesion that does not overtax the capacity of citizens for public engagement.b All these exemplify Habermas' break with the philosophy of consciousness, a break that has rendered unnecessary elaborate consideration of a theory like Hegel's which, whatever its merits, remains hopelessly ensnared by the philosophy of subjectivity. In what follows I question Habermas' reception (or lack thereof) of Hegel's philosophy of law. …

Toward a transitional society: A situational approach to full employment

In traditional labor-market theory, labor is a commodity and unemployment is the idled state of an inert resource and the choice of the laborer. The reality of modern life is that episodes of voluntary and involuntary unemployment increasingly mark almost everyone's working life. The state of unemployment is wasteful and unproductive for our society and its victims. Until we reframe our conceptualization of what constitutes worthwhile human activity, the public and private policies and practices dealing with so-called unemployment will continue to be inadequate. Rather, we must adopt the notion of the transitional society in which people are valued as precious assets and are constructively aided in their transitions.

The Soviet approach to a settlement in the Middle East

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: One of the most alarming realities of modern life is the way in which we have grown accustomed to protracted conflicts. Among them is the Middle Eastern conflict, which has now smouldered for more than forty years, at times flaring into life, at others dying back. To many people the tragic events there seem to be so remote that they may as well be on a different planet, having little to do with their country's vital interests or with their own personal lives. But what are the true facts of the matter?

Product liability—challenger to quality : N. S. Sreenivasan and V. Narayana. QR J. (India), 65 (May 1982)

This article deals with the way the traditional Christian denominations of the Siberian region (mainly popular Orthodox and Old Believers) adopt to changes in the surrounding world. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of “technological eschatology” associated with assigning eschatological significance to technology. The spread of technological innovations, such as new means of transportation and communication, new types of household appliances, etc., are considered by the bearers of traditional religious consciousness as a direct sign of the upcoming or already occurring “last times.” The research is based on materials from the long-term field study by the author and on published works of peasant Old Believer writers. In these sources, the new realities of modern life and especially the advances in science and technology of the 20th century are assessed in terms of Orthodox faith.