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On April 25, 1999, ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside Zhongnanhai, the guarded compound where China's highest leaders live and work, in a day-long peaceful protest of police brutality against fellow practitioners in the neighboring city of Tianjin. Stunned and surprised, China's leaders launched a campaign of brutal suppression against the group which continues to this day. This book, written by a leading scholar of the history of this Chinese popular religion, is the first to offer a full explanation of what Falun Gong is and where it came from, placing the group in the broader context of the modern history of Chinese religion as well as the particular context of post-Ma...
The People's Republic of China has banned Falun Gong, a spiritual practice based on traditional exercises and mediation. What is Falun Gong's appeal and why does China fear it? These and other questions are addressed in this timely, inside look at a bizarre case of political repression.
Contesting Media Power is the most ambitious international collection to date on the worldwide growth of alternative media that are challenging the power concentration in large media corporations. Media scholars and political scientists develop a broad comparative framework for analyzing alternative media in Australia, Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Topics include independent media centers, gay online networks and alternative web discussion forums, feminist film, political journalism and social networks, indigenous communication, and church-sponsored media. This important book will help shape debates on the media's role in current global struggles, such as the anti-globalization movement.
Falun Gong, founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992, attracted international attention in 1999 after staging a demonstration outside government offices in Beijing. It was subsequently banned. Followers then created a number of media outlets outside China focused on protesting the PRC's attack on the 'human rights' of practitioners. This volume focuses on Falun Gong and violence. Though the author notes accusations of how Chinese authorities have abused and tortured practitioners, the volume will focus on Li Hongzhi's teachings about 'spiritual warfare', and how these teachings have motivated practitioners to deliberately seek brutalization and martyrdom.
In July 1999, a mere seven years after the founding of the religious movement known as the Falun Gong, the Chinese government banned it. Falun Gong is still active in other countries, and its suppression has become a primary concern of human rights activists and is regularly discussed in dealings between the Chinese government and its Western counterparts. But while much has been written on Falun Gong’s relation to political issues, no one has analyzed in depth what its practitioners actually believe and do. The Religion of Falun Gong remedies that omission, providing the first serious examination of Falun Gong teachings. Benjamin Penny argues that in order to understand Falun Gong, one mu...
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, has been described in many ways. It has been called qigong, one of many schools of physical exercises that aim at improving health and developing supernatural abilities. Scholars and mainstream media have referred it to as a spiritual movement or religion, although practitioners claim it is not a religion. It has been called a cult, in the pejorative sense rather than in a sociological context, by the Chinese government and by some Western critics. In the writings of Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, it is referred to in different ways, though primarily as a cultivation practice. The question of how to define Falun Gong is not just an academic issue...
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Quoting God charts the many ways in which media reports religion news, how media uses the quoted word to describe lived faith, and how media itself influences--and is influenced by--religion in the public square. The volume intentionally brings together the work of academics, who study religion as a crucial factor in the construction of identity, and the work of professional journalists, who regularly report on religion in an age of instant and competitive news. This book clearly demonstrates that the relationship between media culture and spiritual culture is foundational and multi-directional; that the relationship between news values and religion in political life is influential; and that the relationship amongst modernity, belief, and journalism is pivotal.