Syncretic Process Research Articles

Syncretic Processes and the Definition of New Religions

This paper presents a model that we suggest makes it possible to identify, bound, and set off new religions. We begin from the perspective of the scholar, which we extend to include the discourses of those written about and the relationship between the two. After setting out some epistemological issues related to the study of science and arguing that in contrast with the natural sciences where a single paradigm tends to dominate thinking and research at any point in time, in the social sciences, multiple partial images of the world tend to prevail simultaneously, some recent contributions in areas as diverse as praxis theory, cognitive anthropology, and postmodernism are reviewed. Praxis approaches are then related to thinking about the relationship between the local and the global in terms of economics, the state, and entrepreneurship. After a brief examination of the diversity of the actors who participate in religious activities, a model of what we call the 'syncretic process' is developed that enables us to propose when a new religion comes into being.

Hlude woeran hy: Syncretic Christianity in the Old English Charm Wio Foerstice

Missionary Christianity absorbed many pre-Christian religious beliefs. Evidence this syncretic process is found the Anglo-Saxon charm Wio Foertice, which co-opted concepts, thereby creating folk-Christianity which was peculiar to England. Similar syncretic processes took place elsewhere with the spread of Christianity, as the case of post-Columbian Catholicism Mexico. Key Words: Christianity, Anglo-Saxon paganism, Aztec/Mayan mythology, religious syncretism, Holda, Valkyrie, Virgin of Guadalupe. While there can be little doubt that the Old English Metrical Charm Wio Foerstice2 is the product of Christian society, at the root and throughout the poem there are allusions to an old culture. These allusions are not simply pagan survivals and the Christian nature of the charm is not simply matter of colouring.3 It is important to always keep before us as caution E. G. Stanley's The Search Anglo-Saxon Paganism, which we are reminded for long time Old English literature was much read the hope ot discovering it lost world of pre-Christian antiquity, the reconstruction of which the Old English writings themselves do not provide sufficient fragments. At another point his study, however, while discussing the use of Lord Wio Foerstice he acknowledges the possibility of Christian interpolation, and so, core, the charm: in the context of the Charm, however, there is perhaps greater justification this view.5 But Wio Foerstice is thoroughly Christian because everything with pagan past6 has been co-opted the world of the charm by its Christianity. Like folk-Christianities throughout the world, Anglo-Saxon Christianity was syncretism of the old religion and the new, producing newer Christianity, a Christianity peculiar to England7 and a syncretic Germanic Christianity.8 Some examples of similar syncretic artifacts are Saint Demetria who was once the Goddess Demeter9 and the distinctive Catholicism of Meso-America, which consists of large measures of Aztec, Maya, and other aboriginal religions along with the elements brought from Spain (these latter elements themselves influenced by the Islam of the Moorish period of Iberian history). Octavio Paz summarizes and analyzes one aspect of Mexican Catholicism as follows: It is no secret to anyone that Mexican Catholicism is centered about the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the first place, she is an Indian Virgin; the second place, the scene of her appearance to the Indian Juan Diego was hill that formerly contained sanctuary dedicated to Tonantzin, Our Mother, the Aztec goddess of fertility. We know that the Conquest coincided with the apogee of the cult of two masculine divinities; Quetzalcoatl, the self-sacrificing god, and Huitzilopochtli, the young warrior-god. …

Aponecrosis: morphological and biochemical exploration of a syncretic process of cell death sharing apoptosis and necrosis.

A rat fibroblastic cell line (rat-1/myc-ERtrade mark) was treated with different concentration of Antimycin A, a metabolic poison that affects mitochondrial respiratory chain complex III. The modes of cell death were analyzed by time-lapse videomicroscopy, in situ end-labeling (ISEL) technique, and ultrastructural analysis. Intracellular ATP levels were also measured in order to detect whether the energetic stores were determinant for the type of cell death. It was found that while apoptosis was the prevalent cell death in the fibroblasts treated with low doses, 100 or 200 microM Antimycin A, a new type of cell demise that shared dynamic, molecular, and morphological features with both apoptosis and necrosis represents the most common cell death when the cells were exposed to high doses, 300 or 400 microM, of the hypoxic stimulus. This new type of cell death has been chimerically termed aponecrosis. The inhibition of caspase 3, an enzyme critical for the apoptotic DNA degradation, caused a clear shift from aponecrosis to necrosis in the cell culture, suggesting that this new type of cell death could account for an incomplete execution of the apoptotic program and the following degeneration in necrosis. After being treated with higher doses, i.e., 1000 microM Antimycin A, almost all of the cells died by true necrosis. The analysis of the cellular energetic stores showed that the levels of ATP were a primary determinant in directing toward active cell death (apoptosis), aponecrosis, or necrosis. We conclude that chemically induced hypoxia produces different types of cell death depending on the intensity of the insult and on the ATP availability of the cell, and that the classic apoptosis and necrosis may represent only two extremes of a continuum of intermediate forms of cell demise.

The therapeutic syncretic process: implications for nursing care delivery.

Understanding fully the care and healing needs of others has always been within the domain of nursing practice. Therapeutic syncretism holds important applications for the provision of nursing care cross-culturally. Therapeutic syncretism is a process that results in the creation of a unique healing system. This process stems from the bridging of two or more ideologically distinct healing systems. Caring strategies are enhanced by understanding the culturally relevant meanings of the concepts of nursing, person, environment, and health for both patient and care-provider.

Therapeutic syncretism: a conceptual framework of persistence and change for international nursing.

International nursing, as well as the entire nursing profession, has committed itself to a change paradigm. An alternative to the change paradigm has been proposed to account for elements of stability and persistence. This alternative, therapeutic syncretism, is defined and described, emphasizing an individual's effect on the syncretic process. Finally, the Kingdom of Swaziland illustrates therapeutic syncretism in action as the nation, nurses, and indigenous healers reflect qualities of persistence and change.

Nurturance and nutrition : Change and continuity in concepts of food and feasting in a Southern Massim community

this period of dramatic dietary changes. New plants have been incorporated into the agricultural and nutritional systems, and the stability of gift exchange institutions, that mediate and accommodate material changes, has facilitated this syncretic process.