Secularism and Silent Films Siegler, Elijah
The journal of religion and film,
10/2023, Letnik:
27, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This is a review of two books: Phillip Maciak, The Disappearing Christ: Secularism in the Silent Era (Columbia University Press, 2019), and Terry Lindvall, Souls for Sale: Rupert Hughes and the Novel ...Hollywood Religion (Cascade Books, 2021)
The Modern Spirit of Asiachallenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in ...unique and distinctive ways. Peter van der Veer begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. He traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled.
The Modern Spirit of Asiamoves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang. Van der Veer, an outspoken proponent of the importance of comparative studies of religion and society, eloquently makes his case in this groundbreaking examination of the spiritual and the secular in China and India.
For the first time since Independence, India is at a crossroads of secular and Hindu Rashtra (nation) ideologies. The Constitution of India is ambivalent about secularism, pandering to the demands of ...both the majority and minority communities. The founding fathers could not even agree on calling the Constitution ';secular'. The word ';secular' became a part of the Preamble only during the ';Emergency'. There is no consensus yet on its definition. In the process, secularism, though declared by the Supreme Court as part of the ';basic structure' of the Constitution, has lost all credibility.This book, based on extensive and in-depth research, is an objective and penetrating analysis of India's secularism. Godbole asserts that India's very survival will depend on the success of its secularism.Secularism is a must read for the youth of this country, political parties, legislators, professionals, academia, media, social thinkers and opinion-makers. No other issue will decide the future of India as decisively.
The French government's 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious ...freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an answer to a surprisingly wide range of social ills, from violence against females in poor suburbs to anti-Semitism.Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesexplains why headscarves on schoolgirls caused such a furor, and why the furor yielded this law. Making sense of the dramatic debate from his perspective as an American anthropologist in France at the time, John Bowen writes about everyday life and public events while also presenting interviews with officials and intellectuals, and analyzing French television programs and other media.
Bowen argues that the focus on headscarves came from a century-old sensitivity to the public presence of religion in schools, feared links between public expressions of Islamic identity and radical Islam, and a media-driven frenzy that built support for a headscarf ban during 2003-2004. Although the defense oflaïcité(secularity) was cited as the law's major justification, politicians, intellectuals, and the media linked the scarves to more concrete social anxieties--about "communalism," political Islam, and violence toward women.
Written in engaging, jargon-free prose,Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesis the first comprehensive and objective analysis of this subject, in any language, and it speaks to tensions between assimilation and diversity that extend well beyond France's borders.
Sonja Luehrmann explores the Soviet atheist effort to build a society without gods or spirits and its afterlife in post-Soviet religious revival. Combining archival research on atheist propaganda of ...the 1960s and 1970s with ethnographic fieldwork in the autonomous republic of Marij El in Russia's Volga region, Luehrmann examines how secularist culture-building reshaped religious practice and interreligious relations. One of the most palpable legacies of atheist propaganda is a widespread didactic orientation among the population and a faith in standardized programs of personal transformation as solutions to wider social problems. This didactic trend has parallels in globalized forms of Protestantism and Islam but differs from older uses of religious knowledge in rural Russia. At a time when the secularist modernization projects of the 20th century are widely perceived to have failed, Secularism Soviet Style emphasizes the affinities and shared histories of religious and atheist mobilizations.
This title reveals the historical dynamics propelling two centuries of Ottoman and Turkish history. Findley's reassessment of political, economic and cultural history highlights the dialectical ...interaction between radical and conservative currents of change.
PDF
