Negotiating local tradition with Taoism: Female ritual specialists in the Zhuang religion

The introduction of Taoism to many local religions in Southwest China was instrumental to the southern expansion of imperial China. Pivotal to the hierarchy of both the Taoist celestial imperium and traditional Han Chinese society, the ideology of male dominance has likewise prevailed over a large area of this region, although in varying forms and degrees. Meanwhile, indigenous people of the region have continually and creatively negotiated their own respective worldviews with Taoism, importantly including distinct gender ideals and practices. Using religious texts and ethnographic material, this article focuses on the ritual negotiation between opposing concepts of gender: one from the Chinese imperium, the male-privileging Chinese Taoist religion introduced from the north, the other locally situated in the women-empowering religion of the Zhuang people and of many other religions across Southwest China and Southeast Asia. This article focuses on the interactions between local ideals and world religions.     

Conclusion: Construction sites at the juncture of religion and gender

The articles in this special issue offer fresh definitions of ‘new’ and ‘old’, of ‘local’ and ‘world’ religions. The themes of purity, danger and fundamentalism; female leadership, mediumship, self-sexism; and natalism and nationalism are discussed. This conclusion stresses the ‘folk’ sources of ‘mainstream’ religions, and focuses on the way the articles show women to be at the juncture of changing values concerning religion and gender, reform and fundamentalism.     

Becoming a nun, becoming a man: Taiwanese Buddhist nuns' gender transformation

This article explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women's spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means of accommodating textual contradictions, without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men, without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women, and that they are therefore threatening to men, the nuns primarily identify themselves with the male gender. Compartmentalising and contextualising gender symbols allow the nuns to see themselves both as men and as women without contradiction.     

Subjective relational experiences and employee innovative behaviors in the workplace

This paper presents two studies that explore the implications of subjective relational experiences (positive regard, mutuality and vitality) on employee engagement in innovative behaviors at work. Data collected at two points in time were used to test two mediation models that link subjective relational experiences and innovative behaviors. The results of Study 1 indicate that subjective relational experiences directly and indirectly, through affective commitment, are associated with employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The results of Study 2 indicate that subjective relational experiences are positively related to psychological availability, creative self-efficacy, and engagement in innovative behaviors. In addition, the findings of Study 2 indicate that creative self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between psychological availability and engagement in innovative behaviors, and partially mediates the link between subjective relational experiences and employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The findings of both studies provide further support to the theoretical distinction between psychological state engagement and behavioral engagement at work.     

Fondness makes the distance grow shorter: Desired locations seem closer because they seem more vivid

Do appealing locations seem nearer than unappealing locations merely because they are more desirable? We examine the possibility that people represent desirable locations as nearer than equidistant undesirable locations. In three studies, participants represented a variety of locations on a university campus (Study 1) and in the greater New York City area (Studies 2 and 3) as nearer the more positive they felt about those locations. The relationship between positivity and closeness was mediated by the tendency for participants to generate particularly vivid representations of the locations when they evaluated them more positively (Studies 2 and 3). We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for mental construal, motivated perception, and metacognition.     

Clinical Decision-Making Following Disasters: Efficient Identification of PTSD Risk in Adolescents

The present study aimed to utilize a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) approach in order to improve clinical decision-making for adolescents at risk for the development of psychopathology in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Specifically we assessed theoretically-driven individual, interpersonal, and event-related vulnerability factors to determine which indices were most accurate in forecasting PTSD. Furthermore, we aimed to translate these etiological findings by identifying clinical cut-off recommendations for relevant vulnerability factors. Our study consisted of structured phone-based clinical interviews with 2000 adolescent-parent dyads living within a 5-mile radius of tornados that devastated Joplin, MO, and northern Alabama in Spring 2011. Demographics, tornado incident characteristics, prior trauma, mental health, and family support and conflict were assessed. A subset of youth completed two behavioral assessment tasks online to assess distress tolerance and risk-taking behavior. ROC analyses indicated four variables that significantly improved PTSD diagnostic efficiency: Lifetime depression (AUC = .90), trauma history (AUC = .76), social support (AUC = .70), and family conflict (AUC = .72). Youth were 2–3 times more likely to have PTSD if they had elevated scores on any of these variables. Of note, event-related characteristics (e.g., property damage) were not related to PTSD diagnostic status. The present study adds to the literature by making specific recommendations for empirically-based, efficient disaster-related PTSD assessment for adolescents following a natural disaster. Implications for practice and future trauma-related developmental psychopathology research are discussed.     

The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and sacredness in Sápmi and northern Norway

A case study of sacred landscapes in the contemporary era, the article deals with a particular mountain and its rise to sacredness. Fuelled by plans of ski-slope development, the fate of Tromsdalstind caused a lively debate in local newspapers, as well as a report issued by the Sami Parliament. The report connected sacredness to Sami traditions in the past and to current laws on the protection of Sami cultural memories. This, then, was a case of sacredness constructed outside the context of organized religions and ongoing religious traditions, as well as a case of using secular laws as the primary basis for definitions of sacredness.Through this process, love for the mountain appears to have grown deeper and more religious, both for the Sami as well as for other northern Norwegians. Neither more nor less authentic than those of the past, these concepts of sacredness belong to the late modern world of law culture, nature romanticism, and to pan-indigenous spirituality as a “religion” in the making.     

Context-bound Islamic theodicies: The tsunami as supernatural retribution vs. natural catastrophe in Southern Thailand

After the tsunami of 26 December 2004, local discourses in the prevalently Muslim Satun province in Southern Thailand were characterized by religious interpretations of the disaster. The range of Islamic interpretations varied, and was far from homogeneous. Statements are framed in plural theodicies and ultimately impute disasters to human responsibility, in apparent contrast to both scientific explanations and other Islamic tenets. The aim of this article is to present the range of theodicies associated with the event and to analyze their use in relation to the specific socio-historical and ethno-political context, in the words of people belonging to the Islamic and Buddhist religious élites. In these examples religious discourses leave behind the theological universalistic explanations of the existence of suffering and evil to become context-bound commentaries on the state of morality of local communities, with the aim of defining social boundaries.