In the late 1990s and early 2000s a wave of Ponzi schemes swept through Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. The most notorious scheme, U-Vistract, attracted many thousands of investors, enticing them with promises of 100 percent interest to be paid monthly. Its founder, Noah Musingku, was a charismatic leader who promoted the scheme as a form of Christian mission and as the basis for establishing an independent kingdom. Fast Money Schemes uses in-depth interviews with investors, newspaper accounts, and participant observation to understand the scheme's appeal from the point of view of those who invested and lost, showing that organizers and investors alike understood the scheme as a way of accessing and participating in a global economy. John Cox delivers a "post-village" ethnography that gives insight into the lives of urban, middle-class Papua New Guineans, a group that is not familiar to US readers and that has seldom been a focus of anthropological interest. The book's concern with understanding the interweaving of morality, finance, and aspirations shared by a global cosmopolitan middle class has wide resonance beyond studies of Papua New Guinea and anthropology.

In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the relief of social suffering, the interpretation of history, the construction and reconstruction of traditions, individual and social health, and business practices. The influence of religion is also apparent in the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly acts as the moral voice of the government. The wide-ranging topics in this ethnographically based volume show the broad religious influence on both discursive and everyday moralities. The contributorsa reveal that although religion is a significant aspect of the various assemblages of morality, much like in other parts of the world, religion in postsocialist Russia cannot be separated from the political or economic or transnational institutional aspects of morality."

This volume explores key issues in the modern tensions between state and religions by exploring a number of case studies from around the world.

Ten Outstanding Books in Mission Studies, World Christianity and Intercultural Theology for 2019 - International Bulletin of Mission Research (IBMR) Noted theologian Samuel Escobar offers a magisterial survey and study of Christology in Latin America. Starting with the first Spanish influence and moving through popular religiosity and liberationist themes in Catholic and Protestant thought of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, In Search of Christ in Latin America culminates in an important description of the work of the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL). Escobar chronologically traces the journey of Latin American Christology and describes the milestones along the way toward a rich understanding of the spiritual reality and powerful message of Jesus. IVP Academic is pleased to release this important work, originally published in Spanish as En busca de Cristo en America Latina, for the first time in English. Offers theological, historical, and cultural analysis of Latin American understandings of Christ Discusses the sixteenth-century Spanish Christ, popular religiosity, and developed theological reflection Covers the full spectrum of theological traditions in Latin America Examines the figure of Jesus Christ in the context of Latin American culture of the twentieth century Places liberation theology within its social and revolutionary context

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of prominent Muslim theologians began to critically examine classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence and devised a new approach to Islamic theology. This new approach was nothing short of an outright rebellion against Islamic orthodoxy, displaying an astonishing compatibility with nineteenth century Enlightenment-era thought. In the 20th century this modernist movement declined, to be replaced by another cultural episode, characterized by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume looks at these two very different approaches to Islam. The editors have selected the most prominent Islamic thinkers of modernist and fundamentalist viewpoints, diverse nationalities, and from both the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the 20th century. The writers discuss their own views with regard to such issues as philosophical and political perceptions of democracy, the state, the history of Islam, women’s rights, personal lifestyle, education, and the West.

The Sikh community is one of the largest groups of Indians abroad and many studies of these migrants have been conducted. The Sikh temples which are called gurdwaras are seen at all the places where Sikh migrants have settled. As other Indian migrants, Sikhs too have struggled to maintain their social and cultural customs in the societies they have moved to. Inspite of facing difficulties, Sikh migrants have created a synthesis of their own culture with the culture of their place of emigration. This hybridity in migrants' culture brings us an understanding of the migrants as Diaspora who are in a in-between world among their place of origin and their present residence. This book focuses on the social and cultural practices of Sikh Diaspora in Japan which is not large when compared to other places. The gurdwaras located in different cities like Kobe and Tokyo, are described in this volume as not only religious places but also socializing spaces where the Sikh culture thrives. The two gurdwaras represent diverse social contexts of Sikh migrants in Japan showing myriad features. The volume shows how the Sikh Diaspora in Japan have struggled in their new world and created their own thriving culture through global and local networks. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Villagers in Indonesia hear a steady stream of stories about the injuries, abuses, and even deaths suffered by those who migrate in search of work. So why do hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers continue to migrate every year? Carol Chan explores this question from the perspective of the origin community and provides a fascinating look at how gender, faith, and shame shape these decisions to migrate. Villagers evaluate men's and women's migrations differently, leading to different ideas about which kinds of human or financial flows should be encouraged and which should be discouraged or even criminalized. Despite routine and well-documented instances of exploitation of Indonesian migrant workers, some villagers still emphasize that a migrant's success or failure ultimately depends on that individual's morality, fate, and destiny. Indonesian villagers construct strategies for avoiding migration-related risks that are closely linked to faith and belief in supernatural agency. These strategies shape the flow of migration from the country and help to ensure the continued confidence Indonesian people have in migration as an act of promise and hope.

Centering on public discourse and its fundamental lapses, this book takes a unique look at key barriers to social and political advancement in the information age. Public discourse is replete with confident, easy to manage claims, intuitions, and other shortcuts; outstanding of these is trivialization, the trend to distill multifaceted dilemmas to binary choices, neglect the big picture, gloss over alternatives, or filter reality through a lens of convenience-leaving little room for nuance and hence debate. Far from superficial, such lapses are symptoms of deeper, intrinsically connected shortcomings inviting further attention. Focusing primarily on industrialized democracies, the authors take their readers on a transdisciplinary journey into the world of trivialization, engaging as they do so the intricate issues borne of a modern environment both enabled and constrained by technology. Ultimately, the authors elaborate upon the emerging counterweights to conventional worldviews and the paradigmatic alternatives that promise to help open new avenues for progress.

This innovative edited collection brings together leading international academics to explore the use of various non-prescription and prescription substances for the purpose of perceived body image enhancement. While studies on drug misuse to date have examined drug use in the context of sporting performance, addiction, and body image for particular groups such as bodybuilders, there has been little research that explores the wider use (and misuse) of legal and illegal drugs for body image development and weight loss. With medical sociology and social psychology at its core, this important volume shows the complex reasons behind the misuse of various medications, how these are connected to contemporary body image and appearance concerns, and why the known health risks and possibly harmful side effects do not act as deterrents.

Catholicism has had an important place in Macau since the earliest days of Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century. This book, based on extensive original research including in-depth interviews, examines in detail the everyday life of Catholics in Macau at present. It outlines the tremendous societal pressures which Macau is currently undergoing - sovereignty handover and its consequences, the growth of casinos and tourism and the transformation of a serene and somewhat obscure colony into a vibrantly developing city. It shows how, although the formal structures of Catholicism no longer share in rule by the colonial power, and although formal religious observance is declining, nevertheless the personal piety and ethical religious outlook of individual Catholics continue to be strong, and have a huge, and possibly increasing, impact on public life through the application of personal religious ethics to issues of human rights and social justice and in the fields of education and social services.

Based on primary research, this book explores the controversies, policies and practices of 'public faith', questioning perceptions of a fixed divide between religious and secular participants in public life and challenging prevailing concepts of a monolithic 'neutral' public realm. It takes an in-depth look at the distinctiveness of faith groups' contribution, but also probes the conflicts and dilemmas that arise, assessing the role and capacity of faith groups within specific public policy contexts, including education, regeneration, housing and community cohesion. 'Faith in the public realm' will be of interest to students, academics, policy-makers and practitioners in the public and voluntary sectors, and in faith communities themselves.

It is communion Sunday at a mixed-race church. A black pastor and white head elder stand before the sanctuary as lay leaders pass out the host. An African-American woman sings a gospel song as a woman of Asian descent plays the piano. Then a black woman in the congregation throws her hands up and yells, over and over, "Thank you Lawd!" A few other African-Americans in the pews say "Amen," while white parishioners sit stone-faced. The befuddled white head elder reads aloud from the Bible, his soft voice drowned out by the shouts of praise. Even in this proudly interracial church, America's racial divide is a constant presence. In The Elusive Dream, Korie L. Edwards presents the surprising results of an in-depth study of interracial churches: they help perpetuate the very racial inequality they aim to abolish. To arrive at this conclusion, she combines a nuanced analysis of national survey data with an in-depth examination of one particular church. She shows that mixed-race churches adhere strongly to white norms. African Americans in multiracial settings adapt their behavior to make white congregants comfortable. Behavior that white worshipers perceive as out of bounds is felt by blacks as too limiting. Yet to make interracial churches work, blacks must adjust their behavior to accommodate the predilections of whites. They conform to white expectations in church just as they do elsewhere. Thorough, incisive, and surprising, The Elusive Dream raises provocative questions about the ongoing problem of race in the national culture.

There is a growing interest in studies that document the relationship between science and medicine - as ideas, practices, technologies and outcomes - across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource across many Asian nations - from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia - as well as in Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds - i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine - and the ways that local practices change how such "science" gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical knowledge and practice.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays provides a critical and comprehensive understanding of how knowledge has been made, moved and used, by whom and for what purpose. To explain how new knowledge emerges, this volume offers a two-fold conceptual move: challenging both the premise of insurmountable differences between confined, autarkic cultures and the linear, nation-centered approach to the spread of immutable stocks of knowledge. Rather, the conceptual focus of the book is on the circulation, amalgamation and reconfiguration of locally shaped bodies of knowledge on a broader, global scale. The authors emphasize that the histories of interaction have been made less transparent through the study of cultural representations thus distorting the view of how knowledge is actually produced. Leading scholars from a range of fields, including history, philosophy, social anthropology and comparative culture research, have contributed chapters which cover the period from the early modern age to the present day and investigate settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their particular focus is on areas that have largely been neglected until now. In this work, readers from many disciplines will find new approaches to writing the global history of knowledge-making, especially historians, scholars of the history and philosophy of science, and those in culture studies.

Based on primary research, this book explores the controversies, policies and practices of 'public faith', questioning perceptions of a fixed divide between religious and secular participants in public life and challenging prevailing concepts of a monolithic 'neutral' public realm. It takes an in-depth look at the distinctiveness of faith groups' contribution, but also probes the conflicts and dilemmas that arise, assessing the role and capacity of faith groups within specific public policy contexts, including education, regeneration, housing and community cohesion. 'Faith in the public realm' will be of interest to students, academics, policy-makers and practitioners in the public and voluntary sectors, and in faith communities themselves.

Around 1800 roughly three per cent of the human population lived in urban areas; by 2030 this number is expected to have gone up to some seventy per cent. This poses problems for traditional religions that are all rooted in rural, small-scale societies. The authors in this volume question what the possible appeal of these old religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam could be in the new urban environment and, conversely, what impact global urbanization will have on learning and on the performance and nature of ritual. Anthropologists, historians and political scientists have come together in this volume to analyse attempts made by churches and informal groups to adapt to these changes and, at the same time, to explore new ways to study religions in a largely urbanized environment.

Rik Pinxten is Professor and Senior Researcher in Anthropology and Head of Department of Comparative Sciences of Culture at Ghent University, Belgium. His current research focus is on identity as a central mechanism in cultural and religious learning processes. He has published widely on the anthropology of knowledge and the comparative study of religion.

Lisa Dikomitis is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Hull York Medical School where she works on a project researching social responses to health inequalities. She has published widely about Greek and Turkish Cypriot refugees and is the author of Cyprus and Its Places of Desire. Cultures of Displacement Among Greek and Turkish Cypriot Refugees (IB Tauris, 2012).

Yes, White people can be saved. In God's redemptive plan, that goes without saying. But what about the reality of white normativity? This idea and way of being in the world has been parasitically joined to Christianity, and this is the ground of many of our problems today. It is time to redouble the efforts of the church and its institutions to muster well-informed, gospel-based initiatives to fight racialized injustice and overcome the heresy of whiteness. Written by a world-class roster of scholars, Can "White" People Be Saved? develops language to describe the current realities of race and racism. It challenges evangelical Christianity in particular to think more critically and constructively about race, ethnicity, migration, and mission in relation to white supremacy. Historical and contemporary perspectives from Africa and the African diaspora prompt fresh theological and missiological questions about place and identity. Native American and Latinx experiences of colonialism, migration, and hybridity inspire theologies and practices of shalom. And Asian and Asian American experiences of ethnicity and class generate transnational resources for responding to the challenge of systemic injustice. With their call for practical resistance to the Western whiteness project, the perspectives in this volume can revitalize a vision of racial justice and peace in the body of Christ. Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

'Nagaland for Christ' and 'Jesus Saves' are familiar slogans prominently displayed on public transport and celebratory banners in Nagaland, north-east India. They express an idealization of Christian homogeneity that belies the underlying tensions and negotiations between Christian and non-Christian Naga. This religious division is intertwined with that of healing beliefs and practices, both animistic and biomedical. This study focuses on the particular experiences of the Angami Naga, one of the many Naga peoples. Like other Naga, they are citizens of the state of India but extend ethnolinguistically into Tibeto-Burman south-east Asia. This ambiguity and how it affects their Christianity, global involvement, indigenous cultural assertiveness and nationalist struggle is explored. Not simply describing continuity through change, this study reveals the alternating Christian and non-Christian streams of discourse, one masking the other but at different times and in different guises.

Religious groups constitute a large part of America's voluntary sector, yet relatively few works have investigated them broadly. This collection of essays investigates the public roles of religious congregations and associations. With contributions by premier social scientists, the work gets to the bottom of how effective--or ineffective--religious groups are in offering social services, fostering community life, and creating discussion of social issues such as homosexuality and welfare reform.
Arguing that religious groups experience many of the same constraints and opportunities as nonreligious associations, the book's new assessment of religious groups' public roles goes beyond pessimists' fears that these groups promote culture wars, as well as optimists' expectations that religious groups are always good for society. Touching on themes as old as the American republic, this work brings into focus an urgent, current discussion that will be of great interest to students of religion and society, public religion, civil society, or religion and politics, as well as to religious leaders and policymakers.

This book analyses the diverse ways in which women have been represented in the Puranic traditions in ancient India - the virtuous wife, mother, daughter, widow, and prostitute - against the socio-religious milieu around CE 300-1000. Puranas (lit. ancient narratives) are brahmanical texts that largely fall under the category of socio-religious literature which were more broad-based and inclusive, unlike the Smrtis, which were accessible mainly to the upper sections of society. In locating, identifying, and commenting on the multiplicity of the images and depictions of women's roles in Puranic traditions, the author highlights their lives and experiences over time, both within and outside the traditional confines of the domestic sphere. With a focus on five Mahapuranas that deal extensively with the social matrix Visnu, Markandeya Matsya, Agni, and Bhagavata Puranas, the book explores the question of gender and agency in early India and shows how such identities were recast, invented, shaped, constructed, replicated, stereotyped, and sometimes reversed through narratives. Further, it traces social consequences and contemporary relevance of such representations in marriage, adultery, ritual, devotion, worship, fasts, and pilgrimage. This volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars in women and gender studies, ancient Indian history, religion, sociology, literature, and South Asian studies, as also the informed general reader.

Winner of the 2020 British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Prize Providing a theory of moral practice for a contemporary sociological audience, Owen Abbott shows that morality is a relational practice achieved by people in their everyday lives. He moves beyond old dualisms-society versus the individual, social structure versus agency, body versus mind-to offer a sociologically rigorous and coherent theory of the relational constitution of the self and moral practice, which is both shared and yet enacted from an individualized perspective. In so doing, The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice not only offers an urgently needed account of moral practice and its integral role in the emergence of the self, but also examines morality itself within and through social relations and practices. Abbott's conclusions will be of interest to social scientists and philosophers of morality, those working with pragmatic and interactionist approaches, and those involved with relational sociology and social theory.

Baptizing Business sifts through popular perceptions regarding the relationship between business and religion and the agenda of conservative Christian business leaders, drawing on personal interviews with the most diverse group of evangelical executives yet studied. While stereotypes and previous research both emphasize the perceived incompatibility of religious mandates and business objectives, Bradley C. Smith argues that evangelical executives experience tension not because business and religion are inherently opposed, but because they are made to feel like second-class citizens by members of their own faith communities. Indeed, in cases of apparent conflict between faith and business, evangelical executives insist that it is faith, not business, that must be reconceived. Smith reveals that evangelical business leaders are as inclined to export business concepts into other domains as to import religious objectives into business contexts, prompting us to reconsider the direction of influence between religious and economic life. Baptizing Business is filled with compelling stories that paint a nuanced, unbiased picture of the increasing influence of intensely religious business leaders. The "spirit of capitalism," defined by Max Weber as a positive attitude toward work and wealth, finds ongoing embrace and new expression in evangelical executives and their accounts, with implications for our understanding of the faith at work movement, evangelicalism, and the role of religion among elites.

This book explores how young children and new families are located in the consumer world of affluent societies. The author assesses the way in which the value of infants and monetary value in markets are realized together, and examines how the meanings of childhood are enacted in the practices, narratives and materialities of contemporary markets. These meanings formulate what is important in the care of young children, creating moralities that impact not only on new parents, but also circumscribe the possibilities for monetary value creation. Three main understandings of early childhood - those of love, protection and purification - and their interrelationships are covered, and illustrated with examples including food, feeding tools, nappies, travel systems and toys. The book concludes by re-examining the relationship between adulthood and the cultural value of young children, and by discussing the implications of the ways markets address young children, also examines the realities of older children in consumer culture. Childhood and Markets will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, business studies and marketing.

The imperialist ambitions of China - which invaded Tibet in the late 1940s - have sparked the spectacular spread of Tibetan Buddhism worldwide, and especially in western countries. This work is a study on the malleability of a particular Buddhist tradition; on its adaptability in new contexts. The book analyses the nature of the Tibetan Buddhism in the Diaspora. It examines how the re-signification of Tibetan Buddhist practices and organizational structures in the present refers back to the dismantlement of the Tibetan state headed by the Dalai Lama and the fragmentation of Tibetan Buddhist religious organizations in general. It includes extensive multi-sited fieldwork conducted in the United States, Brazil, Europe, and Asia and a detailed analysis of contemporary documents relating to the global spread of Tibetan Buddhism. The author demonstrates that there is a "de-institutionalized" and "de-territorialized" project of political power and religious organization, which, among several other consequences, engenders the gradual "autonomization" of lamas and lineages inside the religious field of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, a spectre of these previous institutions continues to exist outside their original contexts, and they are continually activated in ever-new settings. Using a combination of two different academic traditions - namely, the Brazilian anthropological tradition and the American Buddhist studies tradition - it investigates the "process of cultural re-signification" of Tibetan Buddhism in the context of its Diaspora. Thus, it will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Asian Studies and Buddhism.

Looking beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, this book explores ways of fostering respectful, non-violent and welcoming social relations among religious communities. It examines the question of how to balance religious diversity, individual rights and freedoms with a common national identity and moral consensus. The essays discuss the interface between state and civil society in 'secular' countries and look at case studies from the the West and India. They study themes such as religious education, religious diversity, pluralism, inter-religious relations and exchanges, dalits and religion, and issues arising from the lived experience of religious diversity in various countries. The volume asserts that if religious violence crosses borders, so do ideas about how to live together peacefully, theological reflection on pluralism, and lived practices of friendship across the boundaries of religious identity-groupings. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship from across the world, the book will interest scholars and students of philosophy, religious studies, political science, sociology and history.