Challenging the popular belief that people who join new religious movements (NRMs) become “entrapped,” this study describes the way in which 23 former members of 11 different “cults” personally ...negotiated disaffiliation. The current findings support previous studies that posit exit as a resolution to unresolved doubts and dissonances, and contribute to this literature by suggesting that the nature of these dissonances, and the way in which exit constitutes a “solution” to these dissonances may vary. It is suggested that for approximately half of the participants in this study, the dissonances that precipitated exit, were relatively minor, primarily caused by organizational changes and inconsistencies in the teachings. While generally doubts were resolved privately and commitment sustained, exit occurred when alternate discourses or other identity resources became available through which doubts could become resolved. The remaining participants describe the conflicts that precipitated disaffiliation as pertaining to tensions between the groups' expectation of conformity and their sense of autonomy. These participants describe exit as a solution to the stress and emotional exhaustion of membership. To make sense of these different disaffiliation narratives, symbolic interactionist notions of the self as constructed in both the realm of “Self” and “Others” are applied.
The present study treats a very little researched subject in the specialized literature, respectively the censorship of the orthodox press in communism. We turned our attention to the periodical ...publication “Glasul Bisericii”, the official magazine of the Metropolitan Church of Ungrovlahia. During the communist regime, the religious press was doubly censored. This was exercised by two institutions, namely: the Department of Cults and the General Directorate of Press and Printing. The censors of the Department of Cults who dealt with the journals of religious cults did not necessarily have theological studies, for which reason they could not understand certain specialized terms or phrases. This thing can be seen into the report signed by the censor Ecaterina Durosov Macheev, from 1971. Another example would be the typing mystakes that escaped from the watchful eye of censorship, and that could have affected the relations between Romanian Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church and, implicitly, with the Soviet Union.
Dervish lodges and cults were among the important elements of the Ottoman social life and in those times, they had spread to nearly all city centers, towns and villages. Dervish lodges served as ...non-formal educational institutions for people from all ages and all segments of the society. In addition to education, these structures also played important roles in political, economic, social and military life of the Ottoman Empire. In general, wise people and scholars contributed to the development and dissemination of Islamic sciences in general, and specifically, mystic thought. As a matter of fact, it was determined that there were a great number of Dervish lodges that were founded or supported by shaykh al-Islam (the chief justice), kādī (judge), scholars and mudarrisīn (teachers) in the history of sufism. One of them was Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which was founded in the 16th Century by Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who belonged to the Ilmiya class (d. 998/1590). Until today no detailed studies have been conducted on lodges, which continued their existence until 1925. For this reason, this article will be the first study that deals with the dervish lodges in the light of archive sources. In this article, which was written to shed light on the course of our sufi cultural history, the prominent names, shaykhs and physical status of the Dervish lodges, especially Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who was the founder of these lodges, will be dealt with.
The antisocial and violent behaviors of cult‐like religious groups (CRGs) and the maladaptive social consequences of their activities suggest clinical or character pathology and invite diagnostic and ...dynamic formulations of their members' personalities. The current study utilized secondary reports in the commercial media about CRG members, combined with the lived experience method of two of the authors. The resulting core characteristics of CRG members were then classified following the alternative DSM‐5 alternative model for personality disorders. The overall clinical picture is then discussed in terms of the shared psychodynamic sources that undergird the behaviors of the antisocial‐obsessive‐compulsive personality disorders. By tracing the personality characteristics into their unconscious sadomasochistic conflicts, these insights shed light on the paradoxical frequent co‐occurrence of antisocial and obsessive‐compulsive characteristics among extremists, in contrast to the patient population at large.
Building blocks Dawson, Thomas
2015., 2015, 2015-07-23
eBook
Building Blocks is a fascinating tale of the family behind Buckeye CableSystem and their progression into the fourth generation This book shows some of the trials and tribulations faced by the family ...as it continues to use a nimble strategy to compete with the behemoths of the industry.
► A territorial approach elucidates mortuary practices within Holocene herders. ► Strontium isotope analysis unveils the existence of persistent deathplaces among the earliest pastoralists. ► ...Mortuary practices together with C and N data disclose differences between earliest and later pastoralists. ► In the Acacus Early and Middle Pastoral women and children had exclusive access to the rock shelters as a burial ground. ► Late and Final Pastoral stone tumuli mark the separation between space of the living and deathplace.
Recently, a new program of territorial study was launched in the area of Wadi Takarkori (Wadi Takarkori Project, hereafter WTP), located in south-western Libya at the border with Algeria in a strategic position between the Tassili and Acacus Mountains. The core of this program was the excavation of a rock shelter together with the systematic mapping and selected excavations of stone structures in the wadi area, mainly tumuli, a typical Saharan feature.
The excavations from the rock shelter provide fresh information on Holocene groups in the central Sahara and give deep insight into their funerary practices. Fifteen burials of women, juveniles and children (no adult males were found) were unearthed from a restricted part of the site. The burials belonged to different cultural phases, from sporadic evidence of Late Acacus hunter–gatherers (ca. 8000BP) throughout the Pastoral sequence (ca. 7300–4200BP).
A survey in the area of Wadi Takarkori revealed the presence of several stone structures; 7 have been excavated, and 5 of them hosted human burials of adult males and juveniles of Late and Final Pastoral phases (ca. 4500–3100BP), which suggest a diversified and more articulated picture of land use during the late Holocene.
The integration of archaeological and isotopic data reveals the social and ideological changes that took place in the region across the millennia. Particularly, during the Early and Middle Pastoral, herders concentrated their burials inside shelters to mark a relation between the lived-in environment and a burial space that is repeatedly used by a section of the group. This pattern reflects the idea of a persistent deathplace. During the Late Pastoral, mobile groups transferred their funerary fixtures – now stone tumuli – along the open spaces of the wadi, marking a separation between world of the living and world of the dead.
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