Form, space and spiritual enrichment : a Chinese Community Center in Des Moines

The purpose of this project is to express how architectural space can enrich people\u27s lives and lift their spirits. More and more Chinese students study in the United States. In some cases, they feel lonely and isolated in such an unfamiliar situation. Psychological problems often develop when people are working under extreme pressure and experiencing spiritual loneliness. These problems are more serious in small towns in the Midwestern region of the United States. To accommodate the social and psychological needs of the Chinese community in Iowa, a Chinese Community Center was designed in Des Moines. The author study the psychological problems of Chinese students and scholars in the United States and then design traditional Chinese spaces to provide comfort and to help them enrich their spirits. The design is based on traditional Chinese architectural concepts and modern form. The center creates harmony between architecture and the environment; it will also be an interesting building to compare to and incorporate with the Des Moines Art Center

To know or not to know? Practices of knowledge and ignorance among Bidayuhs in an “impurely” Christian world

© Royal Anthropological Institute 2009. This is the accepted version of the following article: Chua, L. (2009), To know or not to know? Practices of knowledge and ignorance among Bidayuhs in an ‘impurely’ Christian world. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15: 332–348, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01556.x/abstract.This article seeks to render ignorance analytically and ethnographically productive by exploring practices and tropes of knowing and not-knowing among young Christian Bidayuhs in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. It argues that these Bidayuhs' professed ignorance of the old ‘religion’, adat gawai, cannot be dismissed as a simple lack of knowledge or reflection of sheer indifference. Instead, their invocations of ignorance could be understood as a productive, empowering device for dealing with the dangers of living in a world in which religious conversion remains an ongoing, incomplete process. Through this ethnographic analysis, the article also offers a reflexive critique of the knowledge-centred impulses that often shape anthropology's epistemological and methodological projects

In Animate Praise: The Heavenly Temple Liturgy of the Apocalypse and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice

This article engages with contemporary research by drawing out evocative lines of continuity between the description of angelic praise in the heavenly realm in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, and scenes of worship in the celestial temple in the Apocalypse (especially Rev 4-5). Three aspects will be picked-out for detailed scrutiny in this comparative analysis: ● The architecture and plan of the celestial temple ● The animate praise of the celestial architecture and furnishings ● The prominence of 'seven' as a structural principle The article concludes that the celestial temple liturgy of the Apocalypse shares a wealth of conceptual parallels with the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice as both texts visualise the heavenly realm as the interior of a celestial temple re-imagined as a living, animate structure of praise. The 'rhapsodic' meditation on the number seven in both texts suggests that the potential liturgical context of the Apocalypse's reception (Rev 1:10, Lord's Day), analogous to the Sabbath setting of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, may merit renewed investigation

Brazil’s Broken Cross

When Dr. Ayres was in Brazil in 2002 on a Fulbright, she learned a lot about the religions in Brazil. This article is about that educational experience

The Role of Ecotourism in the Sustainable Development of Qinkou village, Yunnan, China, 2001 to 2013

This study captures evidence of the changes to Qinkou village during the period it was developed as an example of ecotourism in Yunnan province, Southwest China; a process which began in 2001. By examining the aims of the development projects and changes which happened in the village in 2001, 2006 and 2013 respectively, the paper aims to explore how traditions have been understood and deployed with regard to the built environment in Qinkou. It also investigates the shift in focus of academic research into traditional and sustainable development of rural villages over different periods. In 2001, a development project was implemented in Qinkou to demonstrate how tourism could be used as a way to modernise the village. The local government of the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, where the village is located, worked with academics in the fields of architecture, planning and anthropology to develop the plan and to obtain funding to transform Qinkou into an ecotourism village. By 2006, the infrastructure of the village had been significantly improved. However, many originally planned activities could not be carried out due to the lack of ongoing funding support and effective management. Tourism alone was unable to bring fundamental changes in Qinkou. Instead, many villagers who worked in the cities returned with savings from the higher incomes enjoyed in the cities and also brought back changed lifestyles that contributed further major transformation. At the same time, the village remained a coherent settlement. The head of the village and management group organised many village co-operative activities. Academic research at the time, on the other hand, focused more on the examination of the cultural symbols of the local families and built environment than providing advice to help the village improve living conditions. In 2013, an application for the spectacular stepped paddy fields in the Prefecture to be listed as a World Heritage Site attracted significant funding from the local government. Qinkou was included in the development master plan; however, the development project for the village focused primarily on the preservation of the traditional forms as cultural symbols. Academic research and local policies discussed needs for sustainable development in order to comply with the requirements of the UNSCO process for World Heritage Site listing. Yet, details of how to achieve social and cultural cohesion remained missing. This paper argues that tourism development in the market-oriented economy now operating in China has worked as the catalyst for the transformation of the village and improvement of living conditions. However, social-cultural sustainable regeneration of rural settlements must create places for the needs of different groups in the local community. The academic research also needs to reinterpret the traditions that were formed and changed by the local communities in a way that is perhaps more diverse and flexible than the previous academic research defined

The Climb to the Top

Religion has been woven into the fabric of societies past and present, and the human desire to reach out to the divine is a very important component of society. The preserved art and architecture from around the world bestows a comprehensive conceptual understanding of the human yearning to connect to the sky with religious intent

Kandan, a traditional oral genre of the Uut Danum of West Kalimantan

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