Justifying My Position in Your Terms: Cross-cultural Argumentation in a Globalized World

A community of minds has long been presumed to be a condition of possibility for genuine argumentative interactions. In part because of this disciplinary presupposition, argumentation scholars tend to exclude from their scope of inquiry conflict resolution among culturally heterogeneous and ideologically incompatible formations. Such a stance needs to be reexamined in view of recent developments in the on-going process of globalization. The unprecedented worldwide economic and financial integration has created for the first time a generalized interest across national and continental boundaries. The need to countercheck global market forces has given rise to calls for a global legal/ethical system or even a transnational public sphere. Non-Western interlocutors in general are willing to debate cross-cultural issues in Western terms. Increasingly, Western interlocutors are also seeking to justify Western positions in non-Western terms. This emerging situation renders it both necessary and possible to argue across the boundaries of communities that do not share the same cultural or rhetorical tradition. It also poses a host of theoretical and practical issues whose exploration and analysis should become a new focus of argumentation studies.     

Dynamic Biculturalism: Socially Connected and Individuated Unique Selves in a Globalized World

In an increasingly connected world brought about by globalization, opportunities abound for countries and individuals to become bicultural or multicultural. This paper reviewed experimental studies that were designed to test bicultural Chinese individuals' responsiveness to Chinese and Western culture primes with regard to autobiographical memory, the inclusion of significant others in the self-concept, and how such self-inclusiveness can be revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging of the bicultural brain. Results showed that across all three areas, bicultural individuals resonated to the specific cultural context by displaying their socially connected or individuated unique self in support the 'alternation' model of biculturalism ( LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993 ) and its underlying dynamism.     

Religion in the Twenty-First-Century World Society

This article presents the main theoretical approaches to the religious phenomenon: functionalism, constructivism, civil religion, invisible religion, diffused religion, rational choice, vicarious religion, and so on. It is difficult to accumulate empirical data that in general are considered too weak. The state of the art of sociology of religion seems promising because of the presence of new generations of sociologists who are deeply involved in their work. For the future a specific theory on migration mobility is necessary. Another necessity is a wider development of qualitative analysis for a better knowledge of religious dynamics.     

Anchoring Religion in the World: A Southern African History of Comparative Religion

This essay focuses upon a single object, a shipwrecked anchor that was washed ashore on the eastern Cape coast of southern Africa. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, European travellers, missionaries, and magistrates cited this anchor as evidence of religion among indigenous people in the region. By the end of the century, however, this same anchor was being used by metropolitan theorists as a classic piece of evidence for the origin of religion. By recounting the strange story of this anchor, I hope to recover a history (or prehistory) of the study of religion in three phases—frontier, imperial and apartheid—that have defined the practice of comparative religion from a southern African perspective.     

Noreen Herzfeld Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-created World

ABSTRACT

Astrotheology, not simply a theology of space sciences, is necessary because astrobiology effects a conceptual shift in how we ask the question “Why do we exist?” Here I suggest characterizing that shift in terms of the intra-action of living systems and habitable environments, which has serious implications for approaches to doctrinal theology. I consider this in terms of the imago Dei and what implications a transdisciplinary approach to astrotheology might in turn have for reframing SETI and METI endeavors as a quest for an Extraterrestrial imago Dei (SETiD or METiD).     

Citizens of the World and their Religion

Abstract

The notion of a ‘cosmopolites’ has diverged quite far from its philosophical origins, but may eventually serve a similar function. The hope of a global peace or any sort of global management is probably better fulfilled in a federation or complex network of self-governing communities than in a global empire. With or without such an empire though we need some widely shared ‘morale’ or ‘religion’ that will sustain cooperation and obedience to the common good. There are many such competing ‘religions’ and utopian ideals, such that an ongoing global war between superficially distinct but also alarmingly similar power blocks (as described by Orwell) may seem inevitable. A more hopeful future would be one where bourgeois values, a new respect for other terrestrial life, and an awareness of the vastness and strangeness of the cosmos provide a backdrop for such cooperation, on Earth or out among the stars, as we can manage. The rules of trade and transport in such a future may be in the hands of something like Kipling’s Aerial Board of Control, staffed by a new sort of cosmopolitan, subject to occasional popular rebuke. Whether such an order would avoid division must be doubtful still.     

当代世界中的宗教与政治

一 本文将首先描述马克思的宗教理论,然后以此探究宗教在当代政治中所起的作用。近来,这种作用已达到空前的水平。马克思的著作如何才能帮助我们理解这点并对此作出回应呢？     

Global Hindu Communities: Constructing a World Religion in the South Asian Diaspora

International Journal of Hindu Studies -     

“天下”思维与全球化时代人类的世界责任观

“天下”思维是超越民族／国家思维的新思维范式。以此出发对全球化时代的世界理念和世界制度进行创造性建构。“天下”思维在当今全球化时代的价值意义,主要在于拓展与刷新了人们认识和把握世界的思维视域,从思维范式革命的意义上启发人类创建新的世界观。“天下;’思雏蕴含着全球化时代人类对建构“和谐世界”与“世界责任”的创想：需要超越个体本位思维与民彬国家思维,实现“从世界去思考”真正达到“以天下观天下”。从“天下”思维出发,就要求人类建构保证世界和谐发展和能够对世界负责的世界责任观。     

经济主义批判

经济主义认为人的一切行为都是经济行为 ,个人幸福和社会福利绝对依赖于经济增长 ,科技进步可保证经济无限增长。但人的许多行为都不是经济行为 ,人们的基本需要得到满足之后 ,生活幸福就不再依赖于经济增长 ,科技也不能保证经济的无限增长。科技不是万能的 ,科技进步不能使人类随心所欲地改造环境 ,也不能把人类带入只有幸福没有痛苦的天堂。人类对自然环境干预得越强烈 ,受到的惩罚就越严厉。经济主义的可行性 (现实性 )不是与自然规律相符合的可行性 ,而是顺从贪欲的可行性。生态学和现实的生态危机都表明经济主义所指导的生产、生活方式是不可持续的。经济主义在中国也产生了较大影响 ,但中国不能允许经济主义泛滥 ,不能走先污染后治理的道路。     

Beyond the Crisis of the Globalized “World System”: the Need For a New Civil Society

In my view, we need a sociological analysis to show how the crisis stemmed from a certain set-up of the so-called global society. Such a set-up is the product of a long historical development, which goes beyond the financial crisis’ outbreak in 2008. The question I ask is the following: from a sociological standpoint, why did this crisis break out? And what remedies can be put in place? The measures adopted these days cannot solve the crisis, but, for a number of reasons, they can at most provide temporary stoppers and remedies.