RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND VALUE PLURALISM: RITUAL AND THE ANEGEMENT OF INTERCULTURAL DIVERSITY

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND VALUE PLURALISM: RITUAL AND THE ANEGEMENT OF INTERCULTURAL DIVERSIT

Ritual Pluralism and Value Pluralism: On why one ritual is never enough

It appears that every religious tradition contains within its repertoire of enjoined or encouraged actions more than one ritual. This article pursues the question of why this should be so. It develops an answer by making two basic claims. The first is that all societies are marked by the presence of more than one value. The second is that one thing rituals do is allow people to realize one value at a time in fairly full form—something people rarely accomplish in daily life, but that is important for them if they are to come to understand and develop a genuine attraction to these values. If both of these claims hold, then one reason religions need to offer more than one ritual is that people hold more than one value and they need separate rituals to be able to learn about and to experience what it is like to realize each of them in full form. The article concludes with a brief reflection of the importance of its analysis of value and ritual for the study of situations of religious pluralism

RESPONSE TO COMMENTATORS

RESPONSE TO COMMENTATOR

Response

I am grateful to the editors of Suomen antropologi for inviting two such engaged and stimulating responses to Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life, and to Minna Opas and Mika Vähäkangas for writing them. For a work that has been interdisciplinary from its inception—initially written by an anthropologist as a set of lectures to be delivered to an audience of academic theologians—it is hard to imagine a better pair of respondents. Both Opas and Vähäkangas are gifted ethnographers who know anthropology well, but at the same time they come to the book, respectively, from the study of religion and from theology. This gives these comments a welcome parallax view on the anthropology/theology relationship. As Opas and Vähäkangas both note, the dialogue between these two disciplines has been quite active lately, and their insightful responses raise important issues for that discussion

Jean-Philippe Deranty. Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy

JEAN-PHILIPPE DERANTY. Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. 500. ISBN: 978-90-04-17577-8

Equality, Inequality, and Exchange: Comments on "A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossell Island"

Comments on: JOHN LIEP. A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009. Pp. 376. ISBN: 978-87-7934-446-4 I mention that good ethnographies appear after the fact to be based on good fortune because John Liep looks for all the  world like one of those lucky types for whom this generalization holds true. Interested in economy and exchange, he found his way to Rossel Island, where people happen to operate what from some angles has to be seen as the most complex currency system in the world, one that turns on 34 different, ranked kinds of currency tokens, not counting state money,  and that features a welter of more or less unusual ways of moving those currencies around between people in transactions that shape marriages, funerals, and almost all of the other most important social institutions of Rossel Island life. As Liep  (p. xviii)1 puts matters, the complexity of the Rossel Island currency system makes it “an anthropological freak”—the kind of one-off limit case in the range of global variation that so often provides the materials for ethnographic success stories.  What better basis than fieldwork among the Rossel Islanders could there be, then, for making pointed interventions into disciplinary debates about the nature of exchange

The role of sand lances (Ammodytes sp.) in the Northwest Atlantic ecosystem: a synthesis of current knowledge with implications for conservation and management

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Staudinger, M. D., Goyert, H., Suca, J. J., Coleman, K., Welch, L., Llopiz, J. K., Wiley, D., Altman, I., Applegate, A., Auster, P., Baumann, H., Beaty, J., Boelke, D., Kaufman, L., Loring, P., Moxley, J., Paton, S., Powers, K., Richardson, D., Robbins, J., Runge, J., Smith, B., Spiegel, C., & Steinmetz, H. The role of sand lances (Ammodytes sp.) in the Northwest Atlantic ecosystem: a synthesis of current knowledge with implications for conservation and management. Fish and Fisheries, 00, (2020): 1-34, doi:10.1111/faf.12445.The American sand lance (Ammodytes americanus, Ammodytidae) and the Northern sand lance (A. dubius, Ammodytidae) are small forage fishes that play an important functional role in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA). The NWA is a highly dynamic ecosystem currently facing increased risks from climate change, fishing and energy development. We need a better understanding of the biology, population dynamics and ecosystem role of Ammodytes to inform relevant management, climate adaptation and conservation efforts. To meet this need, we synthesized available data on the (a) life history, behaviour and distribution; (b) trophic ecology; (c) threats and vulnerabilities; and (d) ecosystem services role of Ammodytes in the NWA. Overall, 72 regional predators including 45 species of fishes, two squids, 16 seabirds and nine marine mammals were found to consume Ammodytes. Priority research needs identified during this effort include basic information on the patterns and drivers in abundance and distribution of Ammodytes, improved assessments of reproductive biology schedules and investigations of regional sensitivity and resilience to climate change, fishing and habitat disturbance. Food web studies are also needed to evaluate trophic linkages and to assess the consequences of inconsistent zooplankton prey and predator fields on energy flow within the NWA ecosystem. Synthesis results represent the first comprehensive assessment of Ammodytes in the NWA and are intended to inform new research and support regional ecosystem‐based management approaches.This manuscript is the result of follow‐up work stemming from a working group formed at a two‐day multidisciplinary and international workshop held at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, Massachusetts in May 2017, which convened 55 experts scientists, natural resource managers and conservation practitioners from 15 state, federal, academic and non‐governmental organizations with interest and expertise in Ammodytes ecology. Support for this effort was provided by USFWS, NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center (Award # G16AC00237), an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to J.J.S., a CINAR Fellow Award to J.K.L. under Cooperative Agreement NA14OAR4320158, NSF award OCE‐1325451 to J.K.L., NSF award OCE‐1459087 to J.A.R, a Regional Sea Grant award to H.B. (RNE16‐CTHCE‐l), a National Marine Sanctuary Foundation award to P.J.A. (18‐08‐B‐196) and grants from the Mudge Foundation. The contents of this paper are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, New England Fishery Management Council and Mid‐Atlantic Fishery Management Council. This manuscript is submitted for publication with the understanding that the United States Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government

Universal behavior in fragmenting brittle, isotropic solids across material properties

A bonded particle model is used to explore how variations in the material properties of brittle, isotropic solids affect critical behavior in fragmentation. To control material properties, a new model is proposed which includes breakable two- and three-body particle interactions to calibrate elastic moduli and mode I and II fracture toughnesses. In the quasistatic limit, fragmentation leads to a power-law distribution of grain sizes which is truncated at a maximum grain mass that grows as a non-trivial power of system size. In the high-rate limit, truncation occurs at a mass that decreases as a power of increasing rate. A scaling description is used to characterize this behavior by collapsing the mean squared grain mass across rates and system sizes. Consistent scaling persists across all material properties studied although there are differences in the evolution of grain size distributions with strain as the initial number of grains at fracture and their subsequent rate of production depend on Poisson's ratio. This evolving granular structure is found to induce a unique rheology where the ratio of the shear stress to pressure, an internal friction coefficient, decays approximately as the logarithm of increasing strain rate. The stress ratio also decreases at all rates with increasing strain as fragmentation progresses.Comment: 19 pages, 22 figure

ANTHROPOLOGY BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE PACIFIC: VALUES AND THE PROSPECTS FOR A RELATIONSHIP BEYOND RELATIVISM

Joel Robbins expresses the relationship between Europe and Pacific peoples by analyzing the nature of anthropology in both areas of the world