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Examines past & present religious & political fundamentalism in Japan & assesses its societal impact. Central to the analysis are the institutional (expressed in religious & political structures) & diffuse (general public awareness spread by mass media) aspects of these fundamentalisms. Japanese prewar political fundamentalism is described as expressing both these aspects as a civil religion founded & enforced by the government & spread through official religions, parareligious groups, & the media. The actions & ideologies of contemporary Japanese political fundamentalist groups, expressed in terrorist acts, legal challenges, textbook revision efforts, & nationalist sentiments, are analyzed. The growth & ideologies of Japan's pre-& post-WWII "new religions," which present alternatives to Shintoism & Buddhism, are discussed, arguing that these movements are more opportunistic than fundamentalist. While political fundamentalism has for the moment been limited to select, underground groups, the conditions for its success could arise again. Bibliog. T. Arnold

Uses Dick Armey's 1995 apology for referring to Democratic Representative Barney Frank as "Barney Fag" to explore the symbolic aspects of right-wing discourses that flow from the Religious Right, neoconservatism, & the new racism. The increasing sophistication of all three discourses is emphasized, noting how the American Right has redefined "freedom," "equality," & "democracy" in an exclusionary manner that condemns the "special rights" advocated by proponents of civil rights, black power, welfare rights, feminist, & sexual liberation movements. Attention is called to the contradictory nature of the Religious Right's attitude toward gays/lesbians as evidenced by their simultaneous disavowal of homophobia while pursuing homophobic tactics. Ways in which the Religious Right, neoconservatives, & new racists defend traditional class, race, gender, & sexual inequalities while pretending to advance liberal democratic rights/freedoms are explored. It is argued that Armey's slip of the tongue, & his subsequent apology, must be examined in the broader context of the contemporary Right's efforts to bring Republican extremism into the mainstream by redefining the meaning of the democratic tradition. J. Lindroth

Finding the ''right people'' is a central aspect of social media systems. Twitter has millions of users who have varied interests, professions and personalities. For those in fields such as advertising and marketing, it is important to identify certain characteristics of users to target. However, Twitter users do not generally provide sufficient information about themselves on their profile which makes this task difficult. In response, this work sets out to automatically infer professions (e.g., musicians, health sector workers, technicians) and personality related attributes (e.g., creative, innovative, funny) for Twitter users based on features extracted from their content, their interaction networks, attributes of their friends and their activity patterns. We develop a comprehensive set of latent features that are then employed to perform efficient classification of users along these two dimensions (profession and personality). Our experiments on a large sample of Twitter users demonstrate both a high overall accuracy in detecting profession and personality related attributes as well as highlighting the benefits and pitfalls of various types of features for particular categories of users.

Discusses delegation & accountability relationships in the Netherlands, which has been characterized both as a consociational democracy & a neo-corporatist system, each of which stresses the primacy of elites. Catholic, Protestant, & Socialist groups have established networks of subcultural organizations; this aspect of Dutch political culture is known as pillarization. Although the social pillars have largely declined in influence, their leaders still bear collective responsibility for governance in an environment of compromise & cooperation, working together in particular policy areas such as education & socioeconomic policy, often in tripartite advisory councils. The impact of Dutch consociationalism & neo-corporatism on political parties, legislation, voting, & the delegation process is described, followed by a discussion of external factors affecting delegation & accountability, including referendums, the judiciary, & the Netherlands' EU membership. The conclusion underscores key areas of deviation from the ideal-type chain of delegation & accountability. 1 Table, 34 References. K. Coddon

The two documents which are the subject of the present study, made to share property in the event of divorce, help to form an image on various aspects of daily life, poorly known from other sources: household size, land property, earnings in marriage furniture, tools, animals, prices, food, secular and religious involvement of the private life etc. In addition to legal information, both inventories, which stood at the base of documents on which the property was to be divided, reveal another perspective on social history of Arad in the late eighteenth century.

Compares attitudes toward Caribbean cannibalism & African American slave religions to explore how stereotypical images of culturally legitimate violence continue to influence attitudes toward Caribbean cultural concepts. An overview of the history of Caribbean cannibalism indicates that these acts were considered legitimate because they almost always fulfilled a social function for the community. Concepts of Caribbean cannibalism in colonial discourse led to the negative stereotyping of a culture in which cannibalistic acts were an important facet of religion & a core aspect of the symbolic universe. Colonial stereotypes affected European behavior/attitudes toward African slaves, who were considered dangerous/savage because of their religions, especially Jamaican Obeah & Haitian Vodou, which incorporated violent practices & violent images, respectively. It is argued that European notions of cannibalism not only became a key factor in the encounter between different cultural systems, & a symbol in perceptions of "Others," but generated an atmosphere of violence in colonial discourse that suggested all non-Christian ideas/practices were nonhuman & should be eliminated. 34 References. J. Lindroth

Examines wife abuse in Muslim communities of Toronto, Ontario, as one aspect of the conflict between traditional communities & Canadian norms/laws central to the multiculturalism debate, drawing on 1994 focused interviews with 13 Muslims & 5 non-Muslims. Emphasis is on the provision of culturally sensitive social services by matching Muslim clients with Muslim practitioners. A wide range of Islamic perspectives was explored to highlight the ideological debate in the diverse Muslim community. Nine Muslim respondents identified themselves primarily with religion & indicated that their views on wife abuse were framed by Islamic codes of conduct. The other 4 Muslims identified themselves in terms of their ethnic-cultural community. Significant differences of opinion about the nature/causes of wife abuse were revealed, even among the religious Muslims, who expressed different interpretations of Islamic scripture. All Muslim respondents expressed negative assessments of mainstream counseling services. It is contended that the Islamic pluralism in Toronto precludes simplistic generalizations about "the" Muslim view on spousal abuse. 18 References. J. Lindroth

"The history of relations between the church and political authorities have shaped remarkable differences in the influence of religion on values of population in Poland, Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia. The differences in religious involvement, both on the level of personal beliefs and institutionalized behavior, among the countries in Central-Eastern European region are quite large. In Poland the Value Survey of 1990 revealed a level of religious beliefs and practice as high as in Ireland. An obvious explanation for this similarity is that in both Poland and Ireland 'Catholicism as the dominant religion has come to serve as the symbol and guardian of the nation in times threat or domination from external sources' (Martin 1978: A General Theory of Secularization). In Hungary and the Czech Republik levels of church attendance and personal religiosity are low, rivaling the rates in several West European countries, such as France, Netherlands and Scandinavia. The impact of industrialization and urbanization, combined with the hostility of the communist regimes toward religion, resulted in a high degree of secularization among Hungarians and Czechs. This paper explores several dimensions of religious values, beliefs, attitudes and practice of Poles, Czechs and Slovacs in 1990, based on results of the EVSSG survey. It analyzes the interrelationship between such aspects of religious values and behavior as - on one hand - church attendance, institutional attachment, adherence to traditionel beliefs, confidence in the church, support for a public role of the church, and on the other hand - 'intrinsic' forms of religiosity: identifying oneself as a religious person, the importance of God in one's life, and getting comfort and strength from religion. Hypotheses dealing with the connection between religion and morality, would predict that secularization processes and a diminshing influence of the church would give rise to relativistic moral attitudes, moral permissiveness and tolerance toward different groups. The results suggest that some modification of these hypotheses on the basis of the different historical experience in this region is needed. The relationship between religious and political attitudes and behavior is particulary important in the analyzed countries, taking into account the atheistic policy of the communist regimes and the recent collapse of these regimes. These changes and the impact of socio-demographic factors, such as age, education and place of residence, though also somewhat different, allow us to predict that similar trend toward secularization and individualization will occur as have been observed in Western Europe." (Autorenreferat)

Ernest Gellner discusses some of the major themes raised by the authors of the articles in this special collection (see abstracts of related articles). He argues that those critics who find his account of nationalism too instrumental miss his palpable regard for the emotive aspects of this phenomenon. Gellner defends, on empirical grounds, his use of the theory of segmentation in his ethnographic work on the Berbers. The religious & political organization of Islam is discussed. Gellner defends his macrosociology of the modern world & the theory of historical stages on which it is predicated. Gellner asserts his commitment to scientific method & the open society, while maintaining his criticism of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Marx, & Karl Popper. 13 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Ernest Gellner's cultural criticism, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (1992 [see abstract 93c01704]) contrasts three irreducible positions: religious fundamentalism, romantic relativism, & Enlightenment fundamentalism. The most recent version of the last is postmodernism, which Gellner has long challenged in the name of modern scientific rationality. Gellner's response to the critics of modernity is based on his thesis that the prosperity & technical mastery of rationality inevitably introduce the demand for rational legitimacy into every aspect of society. Gellner's faith in reason mirrors David Hume's (1740) rational fundamentalism, although Gellner's understanding of reason's disenchanting effects is also influenced by Immanuel Kant & Max Weber. Gellner's final embrace of scientific method is predicated on a pragmatic account of the success of rationality that commits him to a cognitivist understanding of the basis of modern social order. 20 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Ernest Gellner's model (1988) of the relation between production, coercion, & cognition is used to compare the social role of encyclopedias in early-modern Europe, China, & the Muslim world. A chronicle of the development of the European encyclopedia shows that the thematic style of the arrangement of knowledge developed prior to the dictionary, or alphabetical, style of arrangement. This diffusion of information was accomplished largely through entrepreneurial publishers responding to public demand. This commercialization of knowledge is an aspect of the commercialization of European society & culture generally. While the encyclopedic tradition in the Arab world encountered considerable religious opposition, Chinese encyclopedias were officially sanctioned, & organized to prepare candidates for the qualifying examinations for the imperial bureaucracy. The European encyclopedia & European cognitive growth were linked to productive development, while Chinese cognitive growth as embodied in the encyclopedia was linked to coercion. 54 References. H. von Rautenfeld

This article proposes to pay attention on the sources of historical demography in the old eparchy of Arad. At the end of XVIIth century, the Ottoman domination in the zone have been filled with the domination of Habsburgs and the Arad city became a significant orthodox Episcopal centre subordinated in religious plan to the metropolitan of Karlovitz. For the reconstitution and the knowledge of the demographical aspects into old counties Arad and Zarand, we can use many documents, which are preserved in the Departmental Direction of National Archive of Arad. Various censuses, tax conscriptions, wills and especially parochial registers of the marital status are sources of first category. With the methods used by Michel Fleury and Louis Henry this sources are essential to know the behaviours demographic for the various ethnos groups, as well majority Rumanian as the population German, Hungarian, Serb or Jewish which have lived in these places 300 years ago.

Discusses the historical & current conflicts & contradictions facing the French penal system. Although prisons of both the Enlightenment & the modern era attempted to move beyond the afflictive philosophy of the previous establishment, certain aspects of this approach still remain, including forced labor, solitary confinement, &, until 1981, the death penalty. This lingering conflict between barbarism & enlightenment is further complicated by the coexistence of secular & religious goals. The modern semiprivatized system simultaneously seeks neutral, utilitarian goals through the utilization of prison labor while pursuing redemption through the increased isolation of prisoners made possible by technological advances. However, these privatized institutions are ultimately business operations reliant on profit, & under these circumstances, security, repression, & productivity are bound to overshadow redemption. The potential drawbacks of these privatized prisons have been highlighted by recent demonstrations & disturbances over food quality, confinement cells, obsessive electronic control, the cost of goods in prison shops, & the absolute isolation from the outside world. 54 References. T. Sevier