From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self- expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.

So you've made it to Manager...and mastered the technical skills of your business. Great So what's the next level that you need to know, so you can Inspire your Team to Greatness? Learn the Eight Core Competencies that transform Good Managers into Inspiring Leaders. Get your hands on great strategies for making your message loud and clear. Discover the tools to create a compelling Big Picture and turn it into reality, fast. See what's driving your Team and learn to harness their energy for great results In this first book of the The New Inspired Leader series, you will find out how great Leaders light the way for those around them. These tools will help you perform at your peak and get the best out of your Team, even in the trickiest of times. Filled with real life examples and personal experience, this easy read will change your thinking about what it takes to be successful in business. Each Chapter contains Inspired Actions and Quality Questions to help you apply your new skills at work and turn your Team around. With a combined 30 years of International Leadership experience, Catherine & Hayden Bell have lead thousands of professionals on their path to success. In this book, they share the strategies and approaches they have applied - and taught others to apply - with great results. If you want to gain valuable insight into your own Leadership style and learn what works, this book is an essential addition to your professional development.

In the last twenty years, there has been a growing interest in alternative dispute resolution (ADR), as scholars and practitioners seek more effective, context-sensitive approaches to conflict. Where formerly conflict was tackled and "resolved" in formal legal settings and with an adversarial spirit, more conciliatory approaches - negotiation, mediation, problem-solving, and arbitration - are now gaining favour. These new methods are proving especially appropriate in intercultural contexts, particularly for Aboriginal land claims, self-government, and community-based disputes. The essays collected here by Catherine Bell and David Kahane provide a balanced view of ADR, exploring its opportunities and effectiveness alongside its challenges and limits. The essays are international in scope, with examples of efforts at dispute resolution involving Inuit and Arctic peoples, Dene, Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en, Tsuu T'ina, Cree, Metis, Navajo, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and Torres Strait Islanders. With contributions from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal theorists and practitioners, Intercultural Dispute Resolution in Aboriginal Contexts presents an array of insightful perspectives. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Aboriginal law and alternative dispute resolution; legal and political theorists; dispute resolution practitioners; and anyone involved in struggles around land claims, treaty, and self-government agreements in Canada or abroad.

The "hypochondriac" is a complicated figure, often treated with scorn and derision, resented for making excessive demands on attention and health care resources. Lacking credibility but needing to be taken seriously, the hypochondriac is most doctors' least favorite patient. Yet people who suffer from hypochondria endure the anxiety of suspecting they are seriously ill, or are about to be, and having their suspicions and their suffering dismissed as baseless.
A Condition of Doubt seeks to change the way we think about hypochondria, and to use hypochondria to sharpen our thinking about health care. It claims that contemporary hypochondria should be understood less as mental illness in particular patients than as a rational if maladaptive condition emerging from gaps between doctors' and patients' expectations of contemporary Western medicine.
Medicine relies on objective evidence to verify the absence or presence of disease. The hypochondriac struggles to accept reassurance that no disease can be found. Examining the tension between these two positions reveals insights into clinical reasoning and practice, into patients' (not just hypochondriacs') clinical experiences, and into our medicalizing culture's troubled understandings of health, illness, risk, and uncertainty.
The book's four parts examine hypochondria as a condition of biology; of medicine; of culture; and of narrative. Using a wealth of texts from the medical literature, published illness narratives, psychiatric diagnostics, online discussions, and popular culture, A Condition of Doubt is both an example of, and a case for, the place of serious humanities scholarship in understanding medicine and in understanding how medicine thinks about itself and trains its practitioners.
This book argues that over the last half-century, patients have become postmodern but medicine has not, and claims that hypochondria-as a shared cultural condition-can be addressed by rethinking both patients' expectations of medical omniscience and physicians' need to meet such expectations. This means reconceptualizing hypochondria and, more broadly, reconceptualizing medicine's orientation toward the unknown

There is a great deal of interest in bringing a better appreciation of ritual into religious studies classes, but many teachers are uncertain how to go about doing this. Religious studies faculty know how to teach texts, but they are often unprepared to teach something for which the meaning lies in the doing. How much doing should a class do? How does the teacher talk about religious concepts that exist in practical relationships, not textual descriptions? These practical issues also give rise to theoretical questions. Giving more attention to ritual effectively suggests a reinterpretation of religion itselfless focused on what people have thought and written, and more focused on how they order their universe. Much of the useful analysis of ritual derives from anthropological and sociological premises, which are often foreign to religious studies faculty and are seen by some as theologically problematic. This is the first resource to address the issues specific to teaching this subject. A stellar cast of contributors, who teach ritual in a wide variety of courses and settings, explain what has worked for them in the classroom, what hasn't, and what they've learned from experience. Their voices range from personal to formal, and their topics from Japanese theatre to using field trips. The result is a thoughtful guide for teachers who are new to the subject as well as experienced ones looking for fresh angles and approaches.

One hundred years after the birth of Karl Rahner, the contributors to this book ask whether and how RahnerOs theology can address new religious and cultural realities in the twenty-first century, particularly those realities found on what has come to be called Othe Pacific Rim.O Stretching from California and Latin America, and across the Pacific Ocean to Asia, this geographic region manifests an incredible cultural and religious diversity, but also many points of intersection and interpenetration, resulting in new forms of religion and spirituality. The theological categories generated by Rahner, such as the anonymous Christian and even the notion of a world church, meet steep challenges when read in contexts very different from that of Germany and the theological currents of the OAtlantic.O At the same time, the encounter between Rahner and the Pacific Rim results in fresh readings of Rahner not previously imagined, not only in places like China and Mexico, but even Los Angeles. Anchored by a seminal essay by Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (Harvard), contributors, include Thomas Sheehan (Stanford), Catherine Bell (Santa Clara), and George Griener, S.J. (Berkeley). Each essay examines the possibilities and limitations of RahnerOs theology in this newly configured Pacific world.

One hundred years after the birth of Karl Rahner, the contributors to this book ask whether and how Rahner's theology can address new religious and cultural realities in the twenty-first century, particularly those realities found on what has come to be called "the Pacific Rim." Stretching from California and Latin America, and across the Pacific Ocean to Asia, this geographic region manifests an incredible cultural and religious diversity, but also many points of intersection and interpenetration, resulting in new forms of religion and spirituality. The theological categories generated by Rahner, such as the anonymous Christian and even the notion of a world church, meet steep challenges when read in contexts very different from that of Germany and the theological currents of the "Atlantic." At the same time, the encounter between Rahner and the Pacific Rim results in fresh readings of Rahner not previously imagined, not only in places like China and Mexico, but even Los Angeles. Anchored by a seminal essay by Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (Harvard), contributors, include Thomas Sheehan (Stanford), Catherine Bell (Santa Clara), and George Griener, S.J. (Berkeley). Each essay examines the possibilities and limitations of Rahner's theology in this newly configured Pacific world.

Rituals may be one of the most obvious aspects of social and religious life, but it is certainly not the most accessible. As a subject of systematic historical and comparative study ritual has proved to be a particularly complicated phenomenon to analyse, because of the variety of activities that may be considered ritual and the multiplicity of perspectives from which they may legitimately be interpreted.

In this book Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual and its study, presenting comprehensive overviews of the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our interest in ritual. Instead of approaching ritual as a clear-cut and timeless object of scrutiny, Bell focuses on how a variety of definitions and constructed understandings of ritual have emerged and changed. She organizes the issues and data within three distinct frameworks: the first addreses theories of ritual; the second explores the range of activities understood as ritual; and the third analyses the contexts and conditions in which ritual activitiis take place. Throughout, Bell develops the position that ritual activity appears to us today as a complex social medium, a cultural construction of playing a wide variety of roles and communication a rich density of meanings.

From fundraisers to irate parents and from meeting other teachers to measuring for new marching band uniforms, stories from a music teacher's first year on the job are shared in this light-hearted book. Centred on diary entries written during her first year as director of bands, choirs, and ensembles at a parochial high school, this book captures the surprises, joys, and woes of her hectic year. As a survivor and now veteran teacher, she also looks back on this challenging time and offers insightful reflections.