Language,religion and the politics of difference

Language and religion are arguably the two most socially and politically consequential domains of cultural difference in the modern world. Yet there have been very few efforts to compare the two in any sustained way. I begin by aligning language and religion, provisionally, with ethnicity and nationhood, and by sketching five ways in which language and religion are both similar to and similarly intertwined with ethnicity and nationhood. I then identify a series of key differences between language and religion and draw out their implications for the political accommodation of cultural heterogeneity. I show that religious pluralism tends to be more intergenerationally robust and more deeply institutionalised than linguistic pluralism in western liberal democracies, and I argue that religious pluralism entails deeper and more divisive forms of diversity. The upshot is that religion has tended to displace language as the cutting edge of contestation over the political accommodation of cultural difference – a striking reversal of the longer‐term historical process through which language had previously displaced religion as the primary focus of contention.     

Review article: Louis becke: The traders' historian

Louis Becke. By a. grove day. Twayne's World Author Series 9, New York, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966. 192 pp., bibliog. $U.S.3.95.     

Geography,religion and the state: A comment on an article by Michael Pacione

Professor Pacione's call for geographers to consider the role that ‘responsible theology’ might play in assisting the development of ‘relevant’ human geography is examined. Issue is taken with his presentation of religion. Alternative geographical approaches to religion are outlined, and the relationship of the academic to both religion and government is explored.     

Review article: David and goliath on the fly

The Ok Tedi Settlement — issues, outcomes and implications. Edited by Glenn Banks and Chris Ballard. Canberra, NCDS/Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1997. xii, 279pp, apps, bibliog. ISBN 0731523628.     

Review article: Parents and Children in the Early Middle Ages

Books reviewed in this article:
Katrien Heene, The Legacy of Paradise. Marriage, Motherhood and Women in Carolingian Edifying Literature
Marcelle Thiébaux (ed), Dhuoda, Handbook for her Warrior Son. Liber Manualis
Sally Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England     

The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in Nineteenth-Century Norway

Cunning-folk offering a wide range of mostly supernatural services were a common part of European popular culture until at least the early twentieth century. Still, insight into how they established themselves as people with extraordinary abilities is limited. In this article I approach two of the best-documented cases of nineteenth-century Norwegian cunning-folk. The preacher-prophet, healer, and clairvoyant Knut Rasmussen (‘Vis-Knut’, 1792–1876) and the diviner and sorcerer Eilev Olsen (‘Spå-Eilev’, 1814–91) were ‘living legends’ who attracted clients from all over the country for more than fifty years. A wealth of historical and folkloristic sources allows us a rare glimpse into their early career stages and the dynamics by which two uneducated day labourers managed to become central actors in a local power play. An analysis of the local ‘folk religious fields’ details strategies, practices, and narratives used to cater to different factions, to convey claims of supernatural efficacy, and to create a regional market.     

Review article: Religion,modernization and Zionism

Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882–1904), Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1988 (Originally published in Hebrew — Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1985), xix + 365 pp.

Yosef Salmon, Religion and Zionism — First Encounters: Essays (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Hassifriya Hazionit, 1990, 366 pp.     

Review article: Early Medieval Hungary in English

Books reviewed in this article:
Bak, J.M., Bónis, G., and Sweeney, J.R., (eds.) Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae
Veszprémy, L. and Schaer, F., (eds.) Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum
Csernus, S. and Korompay, K., (eds) Les Hongrois et l'Europe: Conquête et Intégration
Kristó, Gyula, Hungarian History in the Ninth Century
Róna-Tas, András, The Hungarians and Early Medieval Europe. An Introduction to Early Medieval Hungarian History.