Traditional beliefs,culture, and local biodiversity protection: An ethnographic study in the Shaluli Mountains Region,Sichuan Province,China

沙鲁里山系地区位于青藏高原东南部,横断山脉的腹心地区,也是中国“横断山南段生物多样性保护优先区域”的重要组成部分,该地区生态环境类型复杂多样、生物多样性丰富且独特。从古至今,沙鲁里山系地区的藏族多信奉藏传佛教,其教义中的基本理论”戒杀生“、“因果轮回”、“众生平等”和“万物有灵”深刻地影响当地信教藏族群众的生活方式、风俗习惯和行为规范。为了解这些信仰和习俗如何影响沙鲁里山系地区的生态环境和生物多样性,以及现代化对当地传统信仰和文化的影响,我们在七个沙鲁里山系所辖县域和邻近城市进行了为期三年的民族生物学实地调查。在这个相对偏远的地区,传统的世界观深刻地塑造了当地虔诚守信的藏族人的生活方式、习俗和行为规范。这些信仰影响了他们对自然世界的看法,总体对当地生态环境和生物多样性的长期保护具有积极作用。尽管沙鲁里山系周边地区的快速发展和现代化进程对这个生物多样性热点地区造成了一些威胁,但该地区的藏传佛教寺庙和僧侣在促进环境保护、森林资源管理和野生动物保护方面发挥着积极对作用。此外,我们发现,现代化压力和不断变化的社会经济条件对这些传统产生了一些负面影响,导致生物入侵和污染当地土壤和水源的可能性更大。     

A complex interplay between religion,gender and marginalization: Pakistani schoolgirls in Hong Kong

This article investigates the complex interplay between religion, gender and marginalization among a group of Pakistani schoolgirls in Hong Kong. It is found that the participants experience multiple marginalization and develop various strategies against disadvantageous positions. It is also found that, while the Pakistani girls attempt to extricate themselves from the gendered practices in their heritage culture and its customs that marginalize and confine women, they simultaneously seek to establish an Islamic or Muslim identity that differentiates them from local girls. It argues that, while mainstream culture has, to a certain extent, released Pakistani girls from the oppression and pressure of religion and customs, they have not been provided sufficient guidance to realize their dreams, making the release temporary and uncertain. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

‘Us’ and ‘Them’: The role of religion in mediating and challenging the ‘model minority’ and other civic boundaries

This article examines how Korean Americans use the cultural resources of religious communities to mediate race, ethnic, and socio-economic boundaries that have consequences for civic life. Specifically, I compare involvement of Korean Americans in second-generation Korean congregations to those in multiethnic churches. I find Korean Americans who participate in second-generation Korean churches use religion to largely reproduce images of Korean Americans as model minorities, and implicitly distance themselves from those whom they perceive as less financially successful. In contrast, Korean Americans in multiethnic congregations use religion to emphasize the commonality Korean Americans have with other minorities. By using a cultural framework that allows for the agency of individuals in identity and group boundary construction, this work more generally shows the potential for new Americans to use the cultural resources of local organizations to change existing ethnic and racial boundaries in the United States.     

John Woolman's Light in the Night: An Analysis

This is an analysis of a religious experience in the night recorded in the journal of John Woolman, a colonial Quaker. As a basis for analysis, I try to clarify the data of Woolman's experience without presuppositions about causes, states of consciousness, three-dimensional space, or meaning. I then study the phenomena in the light of what we know about perception, dreaming, hallucinatory geometric forms, light, and other people's comparable experiences. Because different modalities of his experience appear to be in different states at the same time, I examine each part of his experience separately. There is discussion of the relationship of dreams to visions and hallucinations, the concept of discrete states of consciousness, and the distinction between simulation and authentic experience while dreaming. The article is both an analysis of a religious experience recorded in 1757 and a discussion of methods of analysis.     

Ethnic minority status and attitudes towards police powers: A comparative study of Great Britain,Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

It is one of the axioms of police research that the relationship between the police and ethnic minorities is, to say the least, problematic. There is now a growing body of empirical research which shows that the relationship is characterized by mutual antipathy. Using recent comparable data from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, such conventional wisdom is tested in this article by means of ethnic responses to the power of the police in dealing with known criminals. Using multivariate regression analysis, the results suggest that not only is the relationship between ethnic minority status and attitudes towards the power of the police clearly different across these three countries, it also operated in unexpected ways which run directly counter to well‐accepted beliefs about the problematic relationship between the police and members of ethnic minority groups. In other words, for these three societies at least, occupying an ethnic minority group status does not automatically lead to a negative view of the powers that the police should be accorded in the pursuit of known criminals.     

How neoteny shapes human society: Can we escape our formative years,and fight the wrong kind of populism?

This article describes aspects of our biological nature that have contributed to the dangerous current state of societal, ecological and climatological affairs. Next, it deals with stratagems to take these aspects into account, so as to allow us better choices. I will concentrate on the concepts of evolved group mechanisms and “neoteny” and explain why they direct our responses throughout our lives. The connection between our biological make-up and our vulnerability to the current rise of certain kinds of irrational, undemocratic, populism is also laid bare. I will end by listing some simple, but possibly controversial, proposals that might have value in combating these societal tendencies and help decision making in a reality-based, more scientific, manner.     

The conceptualization of an Albanian nation

The communist era of the mid‐twentieth century was a pivotal period for the coalescence of many national identities. Often Communism provided the first modern, stable, state governments and infrastructures upon which overarching ideas of identity, such as nationalism, could readily grow. The communist era was certainly a crucial one for Albanian national ideology and thus it is important to reevaluate Albanian nationalism in the light of the recent ebb of communist hegemony in Eastern Europe. Placing the current issues confronting Albanian ideas of self in perspective by tracing their historical background, we find that the situation of Albanian‐identifying communities, divided among three or more states and caught between Eastern and Western influences, is forcing upon Albanian ideas of self an extreme change from a decidedly introverted to an extroverted ideal. Such forces are counterpoised by prior ideology regarding Albanian nationalism and the history of the Albanian people, as well as by the perennial Albanian insecurity over issues of religion. It is from this interplay that the Albanian character will evolve and endure.     

The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity

ABSTRACT  In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called "absorption," which may be involved in contemporary Christian evangelical prayer practice (and in the practices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for "absorption." Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture-and-cognition school.     

佛教、道教文化中生态意识及环保实践的比较研究

佛教和道教作为中国历史上源远流长的两个宗教体系,其宗教文化中蕴含着丰富的生态智慧.剖析其基本教义中的朴素自然观与环保实践方面的异同,从生物学的角度挖掘其中蕴含的生态意识,用现代生态学原理加以解释,得出其中科学的、合理的成分,一方面为我国当前的全民素质教育与可持续发展教育提供生动、科学的教育素材;另一方面为国家制定相关的宗教、环保政策与措施提供理论依据,尤其能够在宗教地区的自然保护区建设及环保工作与宗教活动之间起到桥梁和纽带作用.