Belief, Bounty, and Beauty, Rituals around Sacred Trees in India.
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This study is focused on the interaction of material and symbolic values in the domain of sacred trees in India. By presenting samples from 3,000 years of Indian ritual practice, it is shown that in many sacred geographies trees continue to connect the present with the past, the material with the symbolic, and the contemporary ecological with the traditionally sacred. Although in India religion may have become very much a temple cult, its embeddedness in the natural world enhances today's 'green' interpretation of religious traditions. That in environmental matters such religious inspiration may be both successful and highly ambivalent at the same time is the thought-provoking position taken in the final chapters.
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1 online resource. :
9789047415619
Annual review of the sociology of religion.
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Over the past thirty years, religion has increasingly played a relevant role, both on a national level and in international affairs. The attempt made by politicians to reframe the policy of social cohesion in a neo-nationalist light (one land, one language, one religion = one political community), demising any kind of multiculturalism, facilitating instead a return to assimilation shaped by fear of the other (culture, religion, language, and so on), is very often associated with a restoration of the primacy of religious discourse in the public sphere. It is not just a return of religion in the public sphere, but the exploitation of religion by politics to reconstruct a social cohesion in the absence of ideological resources.
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1 online resource. :
9789004216419 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious transformation in modern Asia : a transnational movement /
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This volume explores the religious transformation of each nation in modern Asia. When the Asian people, who were not only diverse in culture and history, but also active in performing local traditions and religions, experienced a socio-political change under the wave of Western colonialism, the religious climate was also altered from a transnational perspective. Part One explores the nationals of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, focusing on the manifestations of Japanese religion, Chinese foreign policy, the British educational system in Hong Kong in relation to Tibetan Buddhism, the Korean women of Catholicism, and the Scottish impact in late nineteenth century Korea. Part Two approaches South Asia through the topics of astrology, the works of a Gujarātī saint, and Himalayan Buddhism. The third part is focused on the conflicts between 'indigenous religions and colonialism,' 'Buddhism and Christianity,' 'Islam and imperialism,' and 'Hinduism and Christianity' in Southeast Asia.
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1 online resource (xxxiii, 304 pages) : color illustrations, color map. :
Includes bibliographical referenced and index. :
9789004289710 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.