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Shin has long been one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan. As a devotional tradition that emphasizes gratitude and trust in Amida Buddha, it is thought to have little to do with secrecy. Yet for centuries, Shin Buddhists met on secluded mountains, in homes, and in the backrooms of stores to teach their hidden doctrines and hold clandestine rites. Among their adherents was D. T. Suzuki’s mother, who took her son to covert Shin meetings when he was a boy. Even among Shin experts, covert followers were relatively unknown; historians who studied them claimed they had disappeared more than a century ago. A serendipitous encounter, however, led to author Clark Chilson’s introductio...
This wide-ranging book explores the origins, development, and character of Afro-Caribbean cultures from the slave period to the present day. Richard D. E. Burton focuses on ways in which African traditions—including those in religion, music, food, dress, and family structure—were transformed by interaction with European and indigenous forces to create the particular cultures of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Haiti. He demonstrates how the resulting Afro-Creole cultures have both challenged and reinforced the social, political, and economic status quo in these countries.Jamaican slaves opposed slavery in many ways and one of the most important, Burton suggests, was the development of Afro-Christi...
This book retraces the African origins of African-American forms of worship. During a five-year period in the field, Pitts played the piano at and recorded numerous worship services in black Baptist churches throughout rural Texas. His historical comparisons and linguistic analyses of this material uncover striking parallels between "Afro-Baptist" services and the religious rituals of Western and Central Africa, as well as other African-derived rituals in the United States Sea Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Pitts demonstrates that African and African-American worship share an underlying binary ritual frame: the somber melancholy of the first frame and the high emotion of the second frame. Pitts's revealing perspective on this often misunderstood aspect of African-American religion provides an investigative model for the study of diaspora cultural practices and the residual influence of their African sources.
This volume deals with secrecy and concealment in the history of mediterranean religions as pattern of social interaction. Secrecy is a powerful means in establishing identity and interaction as G. Simmel has demonstrated. Using his approach the scholars of this volume describe and explain the practical meaning of concealment in two different religious systems: in Egyptian and Greek polytheism and in Jewish, Christian, Gnostic and Shi'i monotheisms. This point of view reveals that all these religions shaped social norms concerning public and private aspects of the human self.
In this interdisciplinary study of gender, cross-cultural encounters, and federal Indian policy, Margaret D. Jacobs explores the changing relationship between Anglo-American women and Pueblo Indians before and after the turn of the century. During the late nineteenth century, the Pueblos were often characterized by women reformers as barbaric and needing to be "uplifted" into civilization. By the 1920s, however, the Pueblos were widely admired by activist Anglo-American women, who challenged assimilation policies and worked hard to protect the Pueblos? "traditional" way of life. ø Deftly weaving together an analysis of changes in gender roles, attitudes toward sexuality, public conceptions of Native peoples, and federal Indian policy, Jacobs argues that the impetus for this transformation in perception rests less with a progressively tolerant view of Native peoples and more with fundamental shifts in the ways Anglo-American women saw their own sexuality and social responsibilities.
The Secrets of Law explores the ways law both traffics in and regulates secrecy. Taking a close look at the opacity built into legal and governance processes, it explores the ways law produces zones of secrecy, the relation between secrecy and justice, and how we understand the inscrutability of law's processes. The first half of the work examines the role of secrecy in contemporary political and legal practices—including the question of transparency in democratic processes during the Bush Administration, the principle of public justice in England's response to the war on terror, and the evidentiary law of spousal privilege. The second half of the book explores legal, literary, and filmic representations of secrets in law, focusing on how knowledge about particular cases and crimes is often rendered opaque to those attempting to access and decode the information. Those invested in transparency must ultimately cultivate a capacity to read between the lines, decode the illegible, and acknowledge both the virtues and dangers of the unknowable.
First published in 1987, Anomie examines essential moments of Western thought, tracing the complex concept of anomie. The Greek origin of the term (a-nomia, absence of joy) relates it to the notions of disorder, inequity and anarchy. 20th century sociology has long called into question an over simple dichotomy between law and the absence of law. The book shows that this questioning is not new. It has its roots in Ancient Greek thought and in the founding texts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It appears in the legal and religious states of the English Renaissance, and in the emerging sociology of 19th century French, where Orrù opposes the collectivism of Durkheim to the individualism of Jean-Marie Guyau. The latter’s thought, little recognized at that time, finds an echo in contemporary sociology, notably in American sociologist R. K. Merton. To write the history of the concept, to account for the fluctuations in meaning that it undergoes in the changing prism of diverse societies, to uncover the subterranean continuities between yesterday and today: this is the aim of the book. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, literature and philosophy.
In this book, Rodriguez explores the colorful, complex, and often enigmatic Matachines dance as it is performed today. In the Upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, the Matachines is the only ritual dance performed in both Indian Pueblos and Hispano communities.
This monograph offers a uniquely comprehensive and in-depth legal account of official secrets in the European Union. It critically analyses their implications for oversight and fundamental rights. Based on forty interviews with practitioners and other stakeholders, it offers an understanding of the practices of official secrets and provides a critical and much-needed perspective on how parliamentary, judicial and administrative oversight institutions deal with access to classified material and the dilemma of oversight to concurrently ensure secrecy necessary for EU security policies and openness needed for democratic processes and fundamental rights. The book discerns shifts in institutional...