Studying Dream Interpretation from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Early Christian and early Islamic texts on dreams and dream interpretation have come under increased scrutiny in recent decades. Dream literature from pagan and Jewish antiquity to the early medieval period demonstrates that dreams, especially prophetic dreams, were used to establish spiritual authority, enforce compliance, and justify violence in a religious context. The common cultural roots of Christianity and Islam emerge when we recognise the crucial role played by dreams and prophecy in the two traditions. The various methodologies used in recent scholarship on dreams and their interpretation are surveyed with a view to identifying those most relevant to the analysis of first‐millennium CE literary sources in Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The key texts from the three major religious traditions in this period (Western Christian, Eastern Christian, and Islamic) are then analysed with a view to assessing whether early Christians and Muslims understood and taxonomised dreams differently. Literary genre and audience (lay, clerical, or monastic) are revealed as the key determinants of difference, rather than religious origins.     

Pathways to Homelessness: a Comparison of Gender and Schizophrenia in Inner-Sydney

The study compares residential ‘pathways’ into homelessness of a sample of 50 homeless people in inner city Sydney, in an attempt to see whether gender difference or schizophrenia is more important in the determination of mobility patterns leading in and out of homelessness. Three structural processes contributing to the present pattern of homelessness in inner Sydney are identified, providing the context for observed differences in residential histories leading to inner city homelessness. A hypothesis of the study is that women would be likely to experience different factors in the pathway to homelessness such as child raising or partnerships that may influence their residential history. However, after the breakdown of marriage, partnerships appear to play a minor role in the residential mobility of both schizophrenic women and men.     

Reviews

EUROPEAN UNIFICATION IN THE SIXTIES. FROM THE VETO TO THE CRISIS. Miriam Camps. London, Oxford University Press, 1965. Pp. 257. $5.80.

CONTEMPORARY SOVIET GOVERNMENT. L. G. Churchward. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. xix + 366. $2.50.

SOUTH WEST AFRICA AND ITS HUMAN ISSUES. J. H. Wellington. Oxford University Press, 1967. Pp. xriv + 461. $13.10.

ASIAN BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEMS EMERGENT FROM THE BRITISH IMPERIAL TRADITION. Ralph Braibanti (ed.). Duke University Press, 1966. Pp. xx + 733. U.S.$17.50.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN NEWER NATIONS. Harold F. Alderfer. Praeger, 1967. Pp. xii + 206. U.S.$12.50.

ISSUES OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. Charles W. Anderson, Fred R. von der Mehden, Crawford Young. Prentice‐Hall, 1967. Pp. viii ‐f 248. £Stg.1.12.0.

COMMUNISM IN MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE. A CONTEMPORARY SURVEY. Justus M. van der Kroef. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1967. Pp. viii + 268. Guilders 40.60.

INDIA'S QUEST FOR SECURITY: DEFENCE POLICIES, 1947–1965 Lorne J. Kavic. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967. Pp. 263 + maps. $7.95 (U.S.).

DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC CHANGE IN INDIA. George Rosen. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, Revised Edition 1967. Pp. xviii + 340. $2.25 (U.S.).

INDIA'S POLITICAL SYSTEM. Richard L. Park. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice‐Hall, Inc., Revised Edition 1967. Pp. ix + 116. $2.55.

CAN WE WIN IN VIETNAM? Frank E. Armbruster, Raymond D. Gastil, Herman Kahn, William Pfaff, Edmund Stillman. Pall Mall, 1968. Pp. xiv + 427. $10.10.

VIET‐NAM AND THE WEST. Ralph Smith. Heinemann Educational Books, 1968. Pp. ix + 206. $4.80.

THE CHINESE IN AUSTRALIA. Arthur Huck. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1968. Pp. x + 117. $4.50.

FROM ASSIMILATION TO GROUP SURVIVAL. A POLITICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF AN AUSTRALIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. P. Y. Medding. Melbourne, F. W. Cheshire, 1968. Pp. xxii + 300. $6.00.

ISAAC ISAACS. Zelman Cowen. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1967. Pp. 280. $6.00.

CONTEMPORARY CANADA. Richard H. Leach (ed.) Duke University, Commonwealth Studies Center. Pp. xii + 328. $10.00 (US).

AUSTRALIAN TRADE POLICY 1942–1966. A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. J. G. Crawford, assisted by Nancy Anderson and Margery G. N. Morris. Canberra, A.N.U. Press, 1968. Pp. xxvii + 641. $10.50.     

Cargo Cults and Discursive Madness

Understood as mimetic portrayals of the image of unlimited good projected by European colonial culture, Melanesian ‘cargo cults’ are therefore viewed as ‘irrational’ within indigenous understandings. Consequently, Western anthropological discourse has sought to functionally normalize and nativize ‘cargo cult’ behaviors at the expense of denying their non‐rational character. The result has been a lexical and semantic uncertainty and explanatory instability in ‘cargo cult’ discourse that can be analyzed as a type of discursive ‘madness.’ A strategy of reading the ‘madness’ of ‘cargo cult’ discourse is outlined and applied to key anthropological texts, in particular Peter Worsley's The Trumpet Shall Sound.     

Personal lives: narrative accounts of Irish women in the diaspora

The burst of writing about Irish women in the diaspora after the 1980s, led by Mary Lennon, Marie McAdam and Joanne O'Brien's Across the Water: Irish Women's Lives in Britain, coincided with the ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences and literary representation. This paper uses Carol Smart's concepts of Personal Life (2007) – memory, biography, embeddedness, relationality and the imaginary – to examine a range of ways in which personal narratives have become central to our understandings of Irish women and their descendants in both written and visual representations. It interweaves disciplines, bringing together a wide range of sources including academic and public accounts in which Irish women appear both as main characters and in walk-on parts. It explores constructions of these ‘fictions’ and their connections with the biographies of authors.     

Christianity,Tradition, and Everyday Modernity: Towards an Anatomy of Women's Groupings in Melanesia

This paper approaches its central theme of women's groupings in Melanesia via critique of several longstanding shibboleths, including examples of their strategic appropriation by indigenous people. These stereotypes include the romantic image of rural dwellers as pre‐modern traditionalists on whom Christianity is an imposed foreign veneer; the hoary rhetorical opposition of ‘West’ and ‘non‐West’/modernity and tradition/individual and community; and the pervasive essentialization of Melanesian women as ‘naturally’ family‐oriented, communitarian, and less individualistic and competitive than men. Seeking patterns in regional diversity and fragmentation, the paper examines cultural, historical, and structural correlates of a wide range of women's groupings, including National Councils of Women, church women's organizations, and the largely self‐financed local church fellowship groups which are growing steadily in number and significance in the virtual absence of effective state institutions. Increasingly, women's groupings are complementing their traditional Christian spiritual, domestic, and welfare concerns with attention to global feminist, human rights, and ecological issues which are often reworked locally into scarcely recognizable shapes. Eschewing romanticization, the paper considers the potential and the problems of women's groupings in male‐dominated Melanesia, including women's own divisions and their typical aversion to assuming public responsibilities.