Iranian Philosophy of Religion and the History of Political Thought

The subject of this dissertation is the relationship between Iranian philosophy of religion and the history of political thought. Major turning points in this history can be attributed to the ideas of the ancient Iranian poet, Zoroaster. He preached against raiding nomads who would steal animals for sacrificial purposes. His moral and ethical philosophy is known as Zoroastrianism.As the first monotheist philosophy, Zoroastrianism inspired a unique form of religious toleration. The ancient Zoroastrians opposed the political rivalries attributed to belligerent city-state gods. This played a vital role in the rise of the Persian Empire. During the height of the Empire, Zoroastrianism was the largest religion in the world. The belief in a single Creator also changed the idea of history itself. By rejecting the existence of conflicting spirits, some human beings no longer perceived themselves as the irrelevant victims of a cosmological struggle. Although Zoroastrianism endured a sharp and dramatic decline after the Muslim conquest of Iran, its legacy lives on. This legacy has been unjustly ignored by historians of political ideas. It played a major role in the development of numerous cultural philosophies, and it had more influence on the history of human religion than any other faith. In this study, I will argue that Zoroastrianism is relevant to virtually every philosophy of history. I will also demonstrate how the study of Zoroastrianism by European travelers and philosophers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries influenced the history of German nationalism and helped set into motion the unfortunate events that culminated in the Aryan Supremacy movement. The rise of the Nazi party disgraced the Aryan identity and stigmatized many Oriental traditions, but the remnants of ancient Iranian culture are still admired by the Iranians of today. In the concluding section of this study, I will argue that Zoroastrianism still plays an important role in Iranian political affairs. While Zoroastrians are a recognized minority in Iran, all Iranians, including Muslims and Jews, celebrate Zoroastrian traditions and holidays. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran these traditions have been used to defy the Islamic policies of the state

Beyond Just Money Transactions: Redesigning Digital Peer-to-Peer Payments for Social Connections

Financial activities, such as the exchange of money between individuals, have long been considered a crucial aspect of how people build and maintain their interpersonal relationships (i.e., a strong, deep, or close association/acquaintance between two or more people) with individuals they know because money is a sensitive social construct. In particular, over the past decade, how to conduct, manage, and experience money exchanges and processes between individuals has been dramatically transformed due to the increasing popularity of digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services (i.e., performing one to one online money transactions via a digital device). In this sense, digital P2P payments have shown the potential to affect how people pay and interact with each other regarding money, an important impact factor on various forms of interpersonal relationships, by facilitating direct money transactions between individuals through computer-mediated channels. Therefore, this dissertation research is motivated to leverage a sociotechnical approach to conduct an in-depth investigation of the nuanced human experiences of personal money exchanges mediated by digital P2P payments between people who know each other and the unique role of digital P2P payments in shaping these individuals\u27 social connections with each other online and offline. In doing so, this dissertation research aims to (i) reveal and elaborate the multidimensional influences of digital P2P payments on interpersonal relationships between people who already know each other in terms of both experiences of money exchanges and everyday social interactions; ii) advance our knowledge and understanding of how digital P2P payments systems can be redesigned to better support people\u27s social connections with individuals they know; and iii) envision the future landscape of digital P2P payments in our increasingly networked digital society. This dissertation research involves four studies. Grounded in 158 social media posts and 8 interviews, Study 1 explores how people perceive the increasing trend of integrating digital P2P payments with social media services (e.g., Facebook Messenger payment) and why they decide not to use this service in their daily lives. Study 2 reports findings of a qualitative study of 31 in-depth semi-structured interviews to investigate the influences of using digital P2P payments on people\u27s offline interpersonal relationships. Study 3 reports results of a large-scale anonymous online survey with 218 valid responses to measure the specific immediate social consequences and lasting impacts of using digital P2P payments on people\u27s interpersonal relationships. Study 4 adopts the research through design (RtD) approach with a specific emphasis on participatory design activities to both elicit and qualitatively investigate user needs and user-generated design solutions for digital P2P payment services that can better support people\u27s social connections. This dissertation research thus contributes to innovating financial technologies in the perspective of Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Centered Computing by better understanding new and more complicated social phenomena and dynamics emerging in today\u27s digital economy. First, this dissertation research offers one of the first empirical evidence to unpack and explicate the multidimensional influences of digital P2P payments on both financial experiences/processes and everyday social connections between known contacts, which is understudied in prior scholarship. In doing so, we provide new perspectives on today\u27s technology-mediated financial life and shed light on the intertwining financial and social relationships through technology. These insights also help re-conceptualize computer-mediated interpersonal relationships in today\u27s networked society. Second, we identify and further reflect on user-generated design recommendations and develop prototypes that highlight the importance of taking the interplay of financial and social engagement, in addition to security and privacy, into consideration when redesigning digital P2P payments platforms. Through this RtD approach, we thus rethink and envision the future landscape of digital P2P payments where such technologies can be designed, developed, and used in a more comfortable, innovative, and emotionally satisfactory way. As we are entering a post COVID-19 pandemic age, there is an increasing interest to make digital financial technologies not only secure but also more human-centered, interaction-centric, and culturally sensitive, which can be used to better support and maintain human connections through daily financial activities with or without face-to-face interaction. Therefore, in a broader sense, this dissertation research on the social values of digital P2P payments also contributes to building a more robust and inclusive digital economy in today\u27s changing society

Transplanting Buddhism : an investigation into the spread of Buddhism, with reference to Buddhism in South Africa

While it is an undeniable historical fact that Buddhism has spread far beyond India, adapting to local circumstances and spawning new variations in the process, the process by means of which it did so is obscure. Recent scholarship has shown that to impute a sense of"mission" to Buddhism is to employ a specifically Christian category which does not fit in well with Buddhism as it was understood by the originators of the Buddhist tradition. For this and related reasons, contemporary scholars of religion prefer to speak of the "transplantation" of Buddhism rather than of "mission''. This work builds on the theories of religious transplantation advanced by Michael Pye, Frank Whaling, Martin Baumann and others. It presents a theoretical perspective on the transplantation of Buddhism that is based on an understanding of Buddhism as consisting of three interrelated "traditions" ranging from the direct perception of reality as Buddhism understands and defines it, to participation in popular Buddhist ritual. The interaction between these three traditions gives rise to four chronologically distinct, but always interacting phases in the transplantation process. The theoretical perspective is demonstrated with reference to Buddhist history in general and South African Buddhist history in particular, and by applying it to various problematic situations in contemporary Buddhism, such as the relation between Buddhism and "other" religions and the predominance of middle-class members (which in South Africa equates to white members) in contemporary western Buddhism.Religious Studies and ArabicD.Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies

Dynamics of Religion

RGVV(History of Religion: Essays and Preliminary Studies) brings together the mutually constitutive aspects of the study of religion(s)—contextualized data, theory, and disciplinary positioning—and engages them from a critical historical perspective. The series publishes monographs and thematically focused edited volumes on specific topics and cases as well as comparative work across historical periods from the ancient world to the modern era

Textile Society of America- Seventh Biennial Symposium 2000 WHOLE ISSUE

Approaching Textiles, Varying Viewpoints Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America Santa Fe, New Mexico 2000 The papers are unedited and reproduced as submitted. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. Students and researchers wishing to cite specific authors are encouraged to contact those individuals, as many of these papers represent work in progress, or work which has been committed for publication elsewhere. Contents Prefac

An evaluation of the modern church in light of the early church : the case of Seventh Day Adventist Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo

One of the concerns of the modern Christian church and dissident groups is to ensure that the Church's fundamental doctrines, leadership, women's ministries and religious practices conform with the early apostolic church teachings. In this study the writer offers a comprehensive and detailed evaluation of the modern church in the light of the early church. The case of the modern Seventhday Adventist (SDA) Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and worldwide is examined and compared, basing its survey on numerous published and unpublished documents from a combined use of primary, secondary materials and individual statements. Setting the early history of the SDA Church within the religious context of nineteenth-century America, the writer describes how SDA doctrines, leadership, women's ministries and religious practices link with those beliefs and practices in the early apostolic church, showing whether the SDA Church has departed from the early apostolic church’s Biblical, timeless principles or not. Several pertinent issues however have stirred up as much controversy in recent years within the Adventist dissident groups as that of the women’s ministries in the church, the righteousness by faith doctrine, the monarchical leadership, and various religious practices. Nevertheless, in the light of the early apostolic teaching, some enlightenment has been achieved, and several critical accusations from dissident groups were illuminated and confirmed.The accusation regarding the deterioration of Biblical doctrines appears not to have been confirmed by the Biblical evaluation and the lifestyle of the SDA believers. Rather, concerning this issue, it is confirmed that in the DRC and worldwide, the SDA Church has not departed from the fundamental doctrines of the early Apostolic church.Thesis (D. TH. (Church History)