Conflict,Order, Harmony: The Modern Meaning of the Confucian Tradition

An examination of how a focus on the reading of traditional Confucian texts as a spiritual exercise can enable us to deal productively with modern understandings of the divergences among different ideals of human excellence.An investigation of such ideals has often focused on virtue discourse,but that discourse generates understandable suspicions in many people.A productive approach to these suspicions is to examine both the idea that new virtues (such as spiritual regret) are needed,and the notion that three distinctive modern emphases must play a central role in any contemporary consideration of the relationships among diverse ideals.After considering two kinds of principled opposition to this approach,we turn to Walter Benjamin's exemplary account of the huge gulf between modern and traditional understandings,and the possible aid some texts may offer in bridging it.Focusing on the distinctive operation of specific forms of presentation in the Confucian tradition,we conclude by investigating the idea that reading Confucian texts can be seen even today as an illuminating kind of spiritual exercise.     

Intimate Indulgences: Salvation and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala

Most studies of pious foundations in colonial Spanish America examine an elite spiritual economy that was headed primarily by noble patriarchs whose substantial endowments sponsored the ecclesiastical careers of descendants and reinforced ties between elite families and the clergy. This analysis takes a different approach and examines modest perpetual mass foundations funded by a broader array of benefactors. These perpetual mass foundations illuminate an alternative spiritual economy in eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala marked by the active participation of sacred images and spaces, priests and monastic communities, and single and widowed laywomen. This analysis offers a new lens onto local religion in a colonial Spanish American urban center and reveals the complex web of relationships that framed death and salvation.     

Tourism and sacred landscape in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park,Nepal

Abstract

While tensions between the sacred and the profane in tourism have been of long standing interest to tourism scholars, there is a dearth of literature on the growing influence of tourism on local residents’ spirituality and religious practices in sacred landscapes. This paper examines how local residents’ interpretations of sacred landscapes are influenced by tourism development, and whether tourism plays a role in influencing and reproducing sacred landscape and place-based spiritual values. This exploratory study is based on four months of fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015 in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park in Nepal’s Khumbu Region. Results of the 33 interviews conducted with ethnic Sherpa community indicate the Sherpa consider their homeland as a beyul (sacred, hidden valley), and its landscapes (i.e. mountains, forests and lakes) as the abode of local deities. Tourism’s influence on local spiritual values is evident and reflected in changes in mountain deity worship, shift in human-environment relationship, and alterations in religious routines and practices. Although Sherpa still regard Khumbu as a sacred place and are actively involved in maintaining their spiritual values and cultural identity, the religious influence of beyul is slowly diminishing as reliance on tourism grows.     

Geographies of religion and spirituality: pilgrimage beyond the ‘officially’ sacred

Abstract

The papers in this special issue, Geographies of Religion and Spirituality: Pilgrimage beyond the ‘Officially Sacred,’ are placed in the context of a comprehensive theoretical overview of the role that the sacred plays in shaping, conducting, controlling, and contesting pilgrimage. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of travelers has demonstrated, pilgrimages need not necessarily be religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned. Rather, if pilgrimages are perceived as ‘hyper-meaningful’ by the practitioner, the authors in this special issue argue that a common denominator of all of these journeys is the perception of sacredness—a quality that is opposed to profane, everyday life. Separating the social category of ‘religion’ from the ‘sacred,’ these articles employ an interdisciplinary approach to theorize sacredness, its variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or condemned. Thus, the authors pay particular attention to the authorizing processes that religious and temporal power centers employ to either promote, co-opt, or stave off, such popular manifestations of devotion, focusing on three ways: through tradition, text or institutionalized norms. Referencing examples from across the globe, and linking them to the varied contributions in this special issue, this introduction complexifies the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, locals and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate, negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the sacred. Delving ‘beyond the officially sacred,’ this collective examination of pilgrimages, both well-established and new; religious and secular; authorized and not; the contributions to this special issue, as well as this Introduction, examines the interplay of a transcendent sacred for pilgrims and tourists so as to provide a blueprint for how work in the geography of religion and the fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism may move forward.     

Solidarity as Spiritual Exercise: Accompanying Migrants at the US/Mexico Border

Abstract

This essay seeks to articulate a practical understanding of Christian solidarity as spiritual exercise that is based on Jon Sobrino's theological insights, uniquely grounded in his formation in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his particular witness to the martyrs of El Salvador. We then turn to an exploration of the Kino Border Initiative, a binational ministry of sociopastoral accompaniment, educational outreach, research and advocacy as an institutional attempt to pursue a praxis of solidarity.     

论加强党的执政资源建设--兼论党的精神资源建设

执政资源是政党执政的必备条件,其形态主要有物质、政治、精神三大类,其中精神资源是执政党生存和发展的重要思想保证。批判地继承和吸收中华民族的传统优秀思想化,大胆借鉴和汲取人类社会的一切明成果,努力实现古今中外各种先进精神资源的对接与融合,进一步巩固马克思主义在精神资源领域的主导地位,自觉捍卫民族优秀思想化在精神资源领域的主体地位,始终代表中国先进化的前进方向,是新时期加强党的精神资源建设的重要任务和必由之路。     

论南京国民政府抗战的思想文化准备

南京国民政府抗战的思想文化准备,始于“济南惨案”,“九一八事变”至“华北事变”期间逐步具体化,之后全面展开。这既包括在教育、宣传、文学艺术等方面的努力,也包括新生活运动、国民精神动员的进行,还包括为避免战争损失而实施的文物南迁及学校内迁等。其具有韬光养晦、隐秘进行,“安内攘外”、矛盾交织,由虚到实、由部分到整体等特点。这对激扬民族主义,增强精神国防和保证抗战胜利具有重要作用,但也不乏政治思想局限性。     

黔中屯堡人祖籍“南京应天府石灰巷”考辨——兼与云南“南京柳树湾高石坎”比较

黔中屯堡人多指认自己的祖籍是“南京应天府石灰巷”,家谱族谱中可看到各省都出现“石灰巷”的地名。在对南京自明代以来地名考察后发现,这是清代以后才出现的地名,兼与云南移民指认家乡为“南京柳树湾高石坎”相比较,我们认为屯堡后裔通过对祖先“调北征南”光荣使命的颂扬,下意识地将调北填南、充军放逐等“次等来源”进行改造,“征南将士”被看成这一族群的“共同血统”,这种身份意识强化了屯堡人的祖宗崇拜。帝辇之下的“南京应天府石灰巷”,就成为屯堡人的“共同家乡”,它更象是一个由话语构建的“精神故乡”。     

尹湾汉简《神乌赋》“勒靳”试释

尹湾汉简《神乌赋》结尾所引《传》文中,涉及“勒靳”的一段不易理解,研究者的看法也不一致。本文通过对《传》文内容进行仔细分析,并援用传世文献与之比较,提出了读“勒靳”为“麒麟”的新说。     

Neglected dimensions of child well-being

Academic researchers on children should not ignore criteria for children's well-being. Starting from the observation that attempts at protection from harmful work has often damaged children's opportunities, the article argues that protection must be broader than simply protection from particular risks, and take in protection of opportunities. Moreover, researchers need to find ways to look beyond material and cognitive development to neglected areas of well-being sometimes referred to as ‘spiritual’.