The incompatibility of the United Nations' goals and conventionalist ethical relativism

The Universal Draft Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights seeks to provide moral direction to nations and their citizens on a series of bioethical concerns. In articulating principles, it ranks respect for human rights, human dignity and fundamental freedoms ahead of respect for cultural diversity and pluralism. This ranking is controversial because it entails the rejection of the popular theory, conventionalist ethical relativism. If consistently defended, this theory also undercuts other United Nations activities that assume member states and people around the world can reach trans-cultural judgments having moral authority about health, pollution, aggression, rights, slavery, and so on. To illustrate problems with conventionalist ethical relativism and the importance of rejecting it for reasons of health, human rights, human dignity and fundamental freedoms, the widespread practice of female genital circumcision or cutting is discussed. These surgeries are virtually a test case for conventionalist ethical relativism since they are widely supported within these cultures as religious and health practices and widely condemned outside them, including by the United Nations.     

EMOTIONS IN THE FIELD: WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

In the anthropology of emotion, rival approaches – cultural relativism and a universalism based on common humanity or shared experience – imply different forms of engagement in the field. This article, a sceptical appraisal, suggests that ethnographers commonly fail to build the diversity of emotional practice into their accounts and have therefore provided a flawed basis for theorizing and comparison. With reference to two Indonesian cases – Nias and Java – I suggest that the domain of emotion is diversely bounded cross-culturally and is inconsistently constructed in particular contexts. This has critical implications for fieldwork methodology, cross-cultural comparison, and theories of human development.     

Women, Religion, and Modernization: Tradition and Transformation among Elderly Jews in Israel

Modernization affects the religious lives of women in diverse and dramatic ways. On the one hand, women may find increased arenas for religious involvement, both inside and outside of traditional religious frameworks. Simultaneously, women's rituals and beliefs are often especially vulnerable to attacks from the forces of modernization. This paper focuses on the experience of elderly Jewish women of Asian origin who now live in modern Israel. The author suggests that the very nature of women's religion—domestic, personal, hidden, and flexible—explains its tenacity and creativity in the face of modernization. These findings are examined within a broad, cross-cultural context.     

Facilitating Adolescents' Constructive Use of Time in One-Parent Families

Many adolescents in 1-parent families experience positive conditions for development. In this article, we use experience sampling data from 101 mother-only families to evaluate factors associated with adolescents' devotion of time to constructive activities, such as reading, sports, creative, and religious activities. Findings show that a set of family management variables, including firm discipline, family routines, and mothers' amount of time spent in child-supportive activities, were associated with adolescents' constructive use of free time. Adolescents' constructive time was also correlated with mothers' time spent reading, participating in religious activities, and watching TV; and with mothers' well-being and cooperation with the nonresident father. These results demonstrate how many families adjust positively to the situation of single parenthood.     

Resiliency factors protecting against teenage alcohol use and smoking: influences of religion, religious involvement and values, and ethnicity in the Missouri Adolescent Female Twin Study.

The objective of this study was to investigate the contribution of ethnicity (African American vs European/other ancestry), family religious affiliation, religious involvement, and religious values, to risk of alcohol and cigarette use in adolescent girls; and to estimate genetic and shared environmental effects on religious involvement and values. Telephone interviews were conducted with a sample of female like-sex twin pairs, aged 13-20 (n = 1687 pairs, including 220 minority pairs), as well as with one or both parents of twins aged 11-20 (n = 2111 families). These data, together with one-year follow-up twin questionnaire data, and two-year follow-up parent interview data, were used to compare ethnic differences. Proportional hazards regression models and genetic variance component models were fitted to the data. Despite higher levels of exposure to family, school and neighborhood environmental adversities, African American adolescents were less likely to become teenage drinkers or smokers. They showed greater religious involvement (frequency of attendance at religious services) and stronger religious values (eg belief in relying upon their religious beliefs to guide day-to-day living). Controlling for religious affiliation, involvement and values removed the ethnic difference in alcohol use, but had no effect on the difference in rates of smoking. Religious involvement and values exhibited high heritability in African Americans, but only modest heritability in EOAs. The strong protective effect of adolescent religious involvement and values, and its contribution to lower rates of African American alcohol use, was confirmed. We speculate about the possible association between high heritability of African American religious behavior and an accelerated maturation of religious values during adolescence.     

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.     

Association of Religious Participation With Mortality Among Chinese Old Adults

This research examines the association of religious participation with mortality using a longitudinal data set collected from 9,017 oldest-old aged 85+ and 6,956 younger elders aged 65 to 84 in China in 2002 and 2005 and hazard models. Results show that adjusted for demographics, family/social support, and health practices, risk of dying was 24% (p < 0.001) and 12% (p < 0.01) lower among frequent and infrequent religious participants than among nonparticipants for all elders aged 65+. After baseline health was adjusted, the corresponding risk of dying declined to 21% (p < 0.001) and 6% (not significant), respectively. The authors also conducted hazard models analysis for men versus women and for young-old versus oldest-old, respectively, adjusted for single-year age; the authors found that gender differentials of association of religious participation with mortality among all elderly aged 65+ were not significant; association among young-old men was significantly stronger than among oldest-old men, but no such significant young-old versus oldest-old differentials in women were found.     

The cognitive and cultural foundations of moral behavior

Does moral culture contribute to the evolution of cooperation? Here, we examine individuals' and communities' models of what it means to be good and bad and how they correspond to corollary behavior across a variety of socioecological contexts. Our sample includes over 600 people from eight different field sites that include foragers, horticulturalists, herders, and the fully market-reliant. We first examine the universals and particulars of explicit moral models. We then use these moral models to assess their role in the outcome of an economic experiment designed to detect systematic, dishonest rule-breaking favoritism. We show that individuals are slightly more inclined to play by the rules when their moral models include the task-relevant virtues of “honesty” and “dishonesty.” We also find that religious beliefs are better predictors of honest play than these virtues. The predictive power of these values' and beliefs' local prevalence, however, remains inconclusive. In summary, we find that religious beliefs and moral models may help promote honest behavior that may widen the breadth of human cooperation.     

How Ethical Ideologies Relate to Public Attitudes toward Animals: The Dutch Case

Ethical ideologies, which include dimensions of idealism and relativism, are often involved in the process of decision-making regarding operational and economic research. However, the study of the role of ethical ideologies concerning public attitudes toward animals has been largely neglected. The present study analyzed how ethical ideologies and their interaction with human demographics relate to public attitudes toward animals in the Netherlands. The Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) was used to assess respondents’ ethical ideologies and their relationship with attitudes toward animals, which were measured by the Animal Issue Scale (AIS) and the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS). The results demonstrated that respondents’ gender and age were both significantly associated with attitudes toward animals, although gender showed a stronger correlation than age. Absolutists and situationists tended to show greater concern for animals than did exceptionists and subjectivists. Public attitudes toward animals were found to be significantly related to idealism; this confirms previous findings in the United States and China. Consistent with some previous findings in the United States, no significant correlation between relativism and public attitudes toward animals was found among Dutch respondents. However, this finding is inconsistent with findings in China indicating that relativism was negatively related to people’s attitudes toward animals. Our study indicates that the correlation between idealism and attitudes toward animals is the same in different countries, while the correlation between relativism and attitudes toward animals differs between developed and developing countries.     

Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life

Despite a growing interest in the ways spiritual beliefs and practices are reflected in brain activity, there have been relatively few studies using neuroimaging data to assess potential relationships between religious factors and structural neuroanatomy. This study examined prospective relationships between religious factors and hippocampal volume change using high-resolution MRI data of a sample of 268 older adults. Religious factors assessed included life-changing religious experiences, spiritual practices, and religious group membership. Hippocampal volumes were analyzed using the GRID program, which is based on a manual point-counting method and allows for semi-automated determination of region of interest volumes. Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was observed for participants reporting a life-changing religious experience. Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was also observed from baseline to final assessment among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again. These associations were not explained by psychosocial or demographic factors, or baseline cerebral volume. Hippocampal volume has been linked to clinical outcomes, such as depression, dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease. The findings of this study indicate that hippocampal atrophy in late life may be uniquely influenced by certain types of religious factors.     

The practical modelling of context-dependent causal processes--a recasting of Robert Rosen's thought

This paper is a critical recasting of some of Robert Rosen's thought. It is argued that a lot of the thrust of Rosen's work can be better understood when recast in terms of the context dependency of causal models. When recast in this way, I seek to highlight how his thought does not lead to the abandonment of formal modelling and a descent into relativism, but a more careful and rigours science of complex systems. This also sheds light on several aspects of modelling, including the need for multiple models, the nature of modelling noise, and why adaptive systems cause particular problems to modellers. In this way, I hope to decrease researchers fear that, by taking Rosen's criticisms seriously, they would have to abandon the realm of acceptable science.     

Science,method and critical thinking

Science is founded on a method based on critical thinking. A prerequisite for this is not only a sufficient command of language but also the comprehension of the basic concepts underlying our understanding of reality. This constraint implies an awareness of the fact that the truth of the World is not directly accessible to us, but can only be glimpsed through the construction of models designed to anticipate its behaviour. Because the relationship between models and reality rests on the interpretation of founding postulates and instantiations of their predictions (and is therefore deeply rooted in language and culture), there can be no demarcation between science and non-science. However, critical thinking is essential to ensure that the link between models and reality is gradually made more adequate to reality, based on what has already been established, thus guaranteeing that science progresses on this basis and excluding any form of relativism.     

Strategic ethnicity: The construction of multi-racial/multi-ethnic religious community

This article highlights through one case the ways in which religious organizations provide an exploratory space for maintaining, reclaiming, and altering aspects of racial and ethnic identity within a racially and ethnically integrated community. Utilizing data from in-depth interviews and participant observation in Southern California, I suggest that within the organizational culture of the congregation, church leaders and individual members recursively construct an integrated identity through 1) the public framing and articulation of goals, 2) their religious organizational structure and resources, and, 3) the lived experiences of members. I argue that a perceived reciprocal legitimacy emerges in this process through which religious claims affirm integration goals while, at the same time, observable integration within the congregation strengthens the acceptance of religious doctrine. I offer strategic ethnicity as a useful way of thinking about the transformation of racial experience and ethnicity into collective and individual tools within American Protestant congregations.     

Relativism and the Search for Human Rights

The theory of ethical relativism has been the subject of much misunderstanding. It is argued that the central insight of relativism is enculturation and not tolerance. Relativism is characterized as a metaethical theory about the nature of moral perceptions. As such it is logically consistent, permits moral criticism, and is compatible with cross-cultural universals. The existence of universals may indicate global support for particular human rights.     

Ethnography,Orientalism and the avant‐garde film

Drawing on the work of Edward Said and James Clifford, this article discusses the theoretical and practical possibilities for producing images of “otherness” which do not participate in an Orientalist discourse. Works by two avant‐garde filmmakers, Leslie Thornton and Trinh T. Minh‐ha, are examined in the light of these theoretical discussions. While avant‐garde film practice is no guarantee of escaping the pitfalls of Orientalism or cultural relativism, selective viewing of avant‐garde work may provide useful models for visual production.     

Ethnicity and class identity: The case of French‐ and English‐speaking Canadians*

This study addresses the racial and religious contexts of identity formation among Lebanese immigrants to the United States of America and Somali immigrants to Canada. Each enters with a different racial status: Lebanese as white; Somalis as black/visible minority. Ethnographic interviews explore the strategies of adaptation and identity development within these groups. Specifically, we compare and contrast the Lebanese and Somali experience through an analysis of ethnic relations in the country of origin, the conditions of immigration, and through accounts of their encounters and identity negotiation with the host society. We demonstrate the strategies each group implements to negotiate both race and religion in identity development. Our findings reveal that each group attempts to make their religious identity evident, however, Somali immigrants must negotiate the effects of ‘othering’ processes with both race and religion, while Lebanese immigrants build a religious identity from privileges afforded to them by virtue of their white racial status.     

Converts,Christians and anthropologists: A critique of Mark Mosko’s partible penitent thesis

First advanced in a major essay published in 2010, Mark Mosko's ‘partible penitent’ thesis asserts that Melanesian and Christian cultures are based upon analogous conceptions of dividual personhood. Consequently, conversion in the region has been characterised by continuity rather than rupture, as argued most prominently by Joel Robbins. This essay offers an assessment of Mosko's thesis in terms of his critique of the theoretical and ethnographic literature and his recent application of the model to religious change in the Trobriand Islands. Robbins’ work proves more convincing and provocative on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Yet both approaches, which frame their analysis of Christianity in terms of conversion, appear increasingly out of sync with the experience of the vast majority of Melanesians who are more accurately considered active participants in a diverse global religious tradition rather than recipients of it.     

Is it God Speaking? Agency of Deities in the Western Himalaya

ABSTRACT

In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a resource for individuals. However, believers usually do not doubt the existence of deities and their agency: that is, their ability to act and initiate change. The gap between these points of view narrows in the religious experiences in the Indian Himalayas. There, the local population, who communicate with local deities via mediums, face an epistemological problem: how to be certain that they are, indeed, talking with their gods. Furthermore, the believers are aware that they play a role in the decisions of the gods. These two aspects of the religious experience are expressed in the gradual transition of the gods from a Pahā?ī to a pan-Hindu identity, an indication of the way in which the agency of the gods is being challenged and is subject to negotiation by the locals.     

Faith after an Earthquake: A Longitudinal Study of Religion and Perceived Health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake

On 22 February 2011, Christchurch New Zealand (population 367,700) experienced a devastating earthquake, causing extensive damage and killing one hundred and eighty-five people. The earthquake and aftershocks occurred between the 2009 and 2011 waves of a longitudinal probability sample conducted in New Zealand, enabling us to examine how a natural disaster of this magnitude affected deeply held commitments and global ratings of personal health, depending on earthquake exposure. We first investigated whether the earthquake-affected were more likely to believe in God. Consistent with the Religious Comfort Hypothesis, religious faith increased among the earthquake-affected, despite an overall decline in religious faith elsewhere. This result offers the first population-level demonstration that secular people turn to religion at times of natural crisis. We then examined whether religious affiliation was associated with differences in subjective ratings of personal health. We found no evidence for superior buffering from having religious faith. Among those affected by the earthquake, however, a loss of faith was associated with significant subjective health declines. Those who lost faith elsewhere in the country did not experience similar health declines. Our findings suggest that religious conversion after a natural disaster is unlikely to improve subjective well-being, yet upholding faith might be an important step on the road to recovery.