“六日战争”对美国犹太人族群认同的影响

20世纪60年代,"大屠杀"话语的传播引发了美国犹太人对族群命运的担忧。在"六日战争"前,面对阿拉伯国家的反犹宣传及其对以色列的重重围困,美国犹太人担心"再次大屠杀"会发生,从而促使美国犹太人对以色列的生存产生深度忧虑。美国犹太社团逐渐把维护以色列的特殊利益和争取美国社会对以色列的同情与支持,作为游说活动的主要目标。美国犹太游说组织通过舆论引导、公开呼吁、经济动员等方式积极进行游说。"六日战争"后,美国与以色列之间的特殊关系迅速发展。美国犹太人的民族自信心和自豪感显著提升,并自觉地将以色列与自身的命运紧密相连。他们在归属意愿、宗教情感、对以色列的文化兴趣、青年群体族群意识等层面表达对以色列的认同,以色列在美国犹太人族群认同中发挥的作用凸显。     

‘God was with me everywhere’: women’s embodied practices and everyday experiences of sacred space in Czechia

In this paper, we approach religion and spirituality through the analytic lens of the everyday and examine how ordinary women make sacred space through their embodied, emotional, and spatially varying practices. Our research is grounded in Czechia where about 80% of inhabitants do not declare any religious affiliation and ‘new’ religions are on the rise. We deploy auto-photography as a method that invites participants’ own visual representations and interpretative narrations of their quotidian experiences. Thirty-eight Christian, Buddhist, and non-religious women participated in this study in 2016. Our analysis of photographs and interviews shows that our participants turn places that are not primarily associated with religion or spirituality (such as a kitchen sink or a bus stop) into sacred or spiritual places while at the same time integrate officially sacred spaces (such as churches and meditation centers) into their daily lives through social activities. Thus, we argue that a mutually transformative process is taking place in contemporary Czechia. In this process, religiously affiliated and non-affiliated women alike transform everyday spaces into sacred sites through their embodied and emotional practices that seek calmness, peace, and transcendence. At the same time, women who participate in organized religions remake the sacrality of officially sacred sites through their emphasis on social connections and feelings of communal belonging and shared identity. Our findings underscore that sacred space is not fixed in any one location and its production involves the continual emotional and material investment by ordinary women.     

City with or without God? Features of post-secularism in religious landscape of post-communist Prague

The religious climate caused significant changes over the last few decades which led to intense debates about post-secularism in Western Europe. However, there is particularly a distinct lack of analyses of the features of post-secularism in post-communist cities. The paper draws on the case study of Prague where the religious landscape is in many ways unique in a European context because of its highly secularized society. Nevertheless, Prague also experienced a revival of religious life, which has found expression in the religious landscape (not only) through the emergence of new sacral structures, pluralization of religion and post-secular rapprochement in religious institutions. The paper examines the convergent and contradictory processes shaping the religious and non-religious landscape in Prague and therefore opens the discussion about post-secularism in post-communist context. The results point to the importance of historical, social, and urban development for the new geographies of religion. New areas of research should also draw attention on the new religious movements and alternative spirituality which helps to explain the relationship between sacred and secular phenomena in current European society and space and the re-definition of the minority role of religion in the secular society.     

Constructing subjective spiritual geographies in everyday mobilities: the practice of prayer and meditation in corporeal travel

This paper contributes to contemporary geographies of religion by exploring how everyday spaces of mobility and flows can be transformed through specific practices such as prayer and meditation that contribute to personal spirituality. The work challenges traditionally held assumptions that sacred space or codified religious spaces requires stillness and calmness by drawing on the New Mobilities Paradigm to explore how spiritual practices are conducted within the flows and movement that characterise contemporary everyday life. Using questionnaires and diary-interview methods, everyday journeys of participants captured how prayer, meditation and encounters with others and the environment facilitated by movement can transform and be transformed by mobility and the mode of travel. Participant’s accounts of their everyday mundane journeys reveal personalised associations of the everyday spaces that they travel through and the different routines they enact on a daily basis that incorporate religious objects, practices or ideas. These journeys and time-spaces form what I term a ‘subjective spiritual geography’, a network of the interrelated time-spaces threaded together by the individual’s schedule and routine that create, maintain and reinforce personal and informal religious meaning in everyday life.     

Blood,honor, reform,and God: anti-dueling associations and moral reform in the Old South

Scholars have written extensively on dueling and honor in the antebellum period, but most have neglected or dismissed the work of anti-dueling associations. Anti-dueling activists staked a claim to public power by challenging duelists’ claims to mastery. The history of the organizations provides evidence that the South was home to many similar societies dedicated to public activism and moral uplift. Their work illustrates the incapacity of the law, in a period of social transformation on the eve of the sectional crisis, to produce social reform without community support and the commitment of authorities to safeguard public order.     

Nationality and religion

Although both of the categories of nationality and religion are difficult to define, it is nonetheless necessary to do so. Having done so, one can proceed with clarifying what is distinctive of each of them, and, thus, be in a position to ascertain their points of convergence and difference. Evaluation of the contribution of Anthony Smith to our understanding of the relation between nationality and religion is the point of departure for a re‐examination of the relation.     

The reasons of Europe: Edmund Husserl,Jan Patočka,and María Zambrano on the spiritual heritage of Europe*

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the genuinely philosophical engagement with the idea of Europe twentieth century philosophy. Here, especially phenomenology has developed a distinct tradition of conceiving Europe not as a geographical and political entity but rather as a ‘spiritual shape.’ Husserl, as the originator of this thought, traces this spiritual Europe back to Ancient Greece of the 7/6 century B.C. in which an unprecedented ‘theoretical attitude’ towards the world originated. Hence, Europe is conceived as a project of reason, of pure rationality while at the same time leaving out the constitutive dimension of religion. Furthermore, this non-historical philosophical genealogy proves itself to be an arbitrary but intentional genealogy whose intentions have to be put into critical reconsideration. In this article, I will introduce Pato?ka and Zambrano as important critiques of Husserl’s genealogy, or even potentially violent mono-genealogy, as Derrida has emphasized. Following Foucault, it is the aim of this article to put into question the myth of a single historical-political origin of Europe’s spiritual heritage and furthermore to pay attention to the transformations and conflictual relations between Europe’s different forms of reason and religion.     

Cultural tourism between local and transnational identities: Jewish heritage in Syracuse,Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on the management of heritage and cultural tourism related to the complex identity of minority groups, where different components tend to produce different visions and practices. It highlights the impacts of globalized transnational networks and influences on political, cultural and religious identities and affiliations over long distances. In fact, diverse views, approaches, perceptions and representations may lead to disagreement and conflicts even within apparently compact ethnic or religious communities. The issues related to dissonant heritage management strategies and the related authorized heritage discourse, in terms of unbalanced power relations and diverging narratives, are considered. The theme of Jewish heritage tourism (J.H.T) is analysed, with a focus on the case of Syracuse, Italy. This historically cosmopolitan and multicultural city specializes in cultural tourism and tends to develop niche products, including J.H.T, in order to strengthen and diversify its international cultural destination status. Different components of the Jewish world, as well as non-Jewish stakeholders, practice different approaches to heritage tourism. Actors, discourses and reasons behind Jewish culture management and promotion will be highlighted and the reactions, perceptions and suggestions by the various stakeholders and groups involved will be portrayed, with the aim of contributing to the discussion about the complexity of niche heritage tourism processes in a multi-ethnic site.