‘Calling’ and ‘Training’: Role Innovation and Religious De-differentiation in Commercialised Indonesian Islam

Abstract

This article explores parallels between emergent Islamic popular culture in the commercial arena in Indonesia and popular religion propagated through the mass media in Europe and North America. Focusing on two emergent types of emicly distinguished but eticly overlapping lay religious roles, that of the da’i (lay preacher) and the ‘trainer’, it shows how borrowing from globally disseminated genres of secular culture by Islamic lay leaders in the commercial arena in Indonesia partially blurs the boundaries between religiously marked and unmarked communications, despite the popularity there of Islamicly marked dress styles and consumables. This is suggestive of a similar, if partial, de-differentiation of the religious and other communication spheres in Indonesia such as Hubert Knoblauch found in Europe. However, as in his reading of European popular religion, it does not further imply Weberian ‘disenchantment’, since leading exemplars of Indonesian Islamic commercialised ‘preaching’ and ‘training’, such as those examined in case material presented here, still focus consumers on the transcendent, while those proselytisers yet work to overcome the compartmentalisation of Indonesian selves in their differentiated modern society.     

A review of the literature on Pacific Island youth offending in New Zealand

This review examines the current literature on Pacific youth offending in New Zealand. Pacific Island youth offenders are over-represented in the rates of violent offenses, despite not being overly represented in youth offending statistics. A major concern is that the Pacific population has the largest percentage of children and young people under 15 years old in New Zealand. Therefore, this is an issue to be faced by Pacific and wider communities in New Zealand. We focus on risk factors of offending, and its current impacts on Pacific Island youth in New Zealand. A literature review was conducted to explore some of the risk factors for offending looking at New Zealand studies and government reports. This was followed by a review of overseas literature regarding Pacific youths and their offending behavior. Following this, ethnic minorities were included in the literature review from New Zealand and international perspectives. Expectedly, results in this area are sparse. However, a number of efforts have been made to address this gap in the literature which this review included. The findings in this review make future recommendations for Pacific youth with offending behavior. These include that ethnicity should be taken into account when addressing research on youth offenders; data relating to the youth offender such as social and demographic history should also be considered for a more collaborative approach to researching and understanding this population; and more targeted studies towards this population are needed to improve the overall health of the Pacific Island population in New Zealand and overseas. Finally, existing programs and interventions currently in place for our Pacific youths with offending behavior needs to be evaluated to ensure it continues to meet the dynamic needs of our Pacific youth population.     

Religious Orders Study: Overview and Change in Cognitive and Motor Speed

The Religious Orders Study is a longitudinal, clinical-pathologic study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease in older Catholic nuns, priests, and brothers. In the first section of the paper, we describe the overall design and methods of the Religious Orders Study and summarize published findings. In the second section, we present new longitudinal analyses of change in summary measures of motor, perceptual, and verbal speed in 800 Religious Orders Study participants examined annually for a mean of approximately 5 years. In each domain, speed declined about 2% per year. There were wide individual differences, however, and rates of slowing in each domain were only moderately intercorrelated and were predicted by different factors. The results suggest age-related slowing is more person-specific and domain-specific than previously supposed.     

Monkeys perform as well as apes and humans in a size discrimination task

Whether the cognitive competences of monkeys and apes are rather similar or whether the larger-brained apes outperform monkeys in cognitive experiments is a highly debated topic. Direct comparative analyses are therefore essential to examine similarities and differences among species. We here compared six primate species, including humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas (great apes), olive baboons, and long-tailed macaques (Old World monkeys) in a task on fine-grained size discrimination. Except for gorillas, subjects of all taxa (i.e. humans, apes, and monkeys) were able to discriminate three-dimensional cubes with a volume difference of only 10 % (i.e. cubes of 50 and 48 mm side length) and performed only slightly worse when the cubes were presented successively. The minimal size discriminated declined further with increasing time delay between presentations of the cubes, highlighting the difficulty to memorize exact size differences. The results suggest that differences in brain size, as a proxy for general cognitive abilities, did not account for variation in performance, but that differential socio-ecological pressures may better explain species differences. Our study highlights the fact that differences in cognitive abilities do not always map neatly onto phylogenetic relationships and that in a number of cognitive experiments monkeys do not fare significantly worse than apes, casting doubt on the assumption that larger brains per se confer an advantage in such kinds of tests.     

RABBI YITZCHAK GINSBURGH AND HIS FEMININE VISION OF THE MESSIANIC AGE

Since ancient times, the collective “People of Israel” has been depicted as God's female consort. This mystical, female image of the People of Israel has been challenged by the masculine discourse of religious Zionism. Spurred by post-modern tendencies and ideological disillusionment, the redemptive theology of religious Zionism has suffered a process of de-legitimization accompanied by the reactivation of the “feminine” messianic narrative. This paper focuses on an example of such redemptive feminine theology, one whose creator explicitly promotes it as an alternative to the male narrative of religious Zionism. The theology in question belongs to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, one of the most controversial figures on the Israeli religious scene. Ginsburgh's messianic narrative is overwhelmingly feminine and is sceptical about rationalism. It offers an unusual synthesis of New Age spirituality, nationalistic rhetoric, and extreme political nihilism.     

The Role of Typical and Atypical Events in Story Memory

To understand how viewers or readers process and remember media narratives such as entertainment, news, and information is critical to our understanding of the mental processing of television and other media. Media stories contain both typical and atypical events and people, but little is known about how readers or viewers process and remember these two types of information. Participants in 2 experiments remembered atypical story items much better even a week later. However, the conservative way they treated atypical memories could give the illusion that typical items are better remembered than they really are. The results have implications for both mass media theory and theories of memory.     

Erratum to: The organization of room geometry and object layout geometry in human memory

Research with humans and with nonhuman species has suggested a special role of room geometry in spatial memory functioning. In two experiments, participants learned the configuration of a room with four corners, along with the configuration of four objects within the room, while standing in a fixed position at the room’s periphery. The configurations were either rectangular (Experiment 1) or irregular (Experiment 2). Room geometry was not recalled better than object layout geometry, and memories for both configurations were orientation dependent. These results suggest that room geometry and object layout geometry are represented similarly in human memory, at least in situations that promote long-term learning of object locations. There were also some differences between corners and objects in orientation dependence, suggesting that the two sources of information are represented in similar but separate spatial reference systems.     

Holistic reasoning on the other side of the world: validation of the analysis-holism scale in Mexicans

The universality of cognitive processes has been called into question. Research suggests that individuals from Eastern cultures (e.g., China, Korea) when compared to individuals from Western cultures (e.g., the United States) prefer to reason holistically. This line of research has not been extended to cultural groups far removed from cultures traditionally surveyed in cross-cultural research such as Hispanics. We conducted two studies to understand: 1) the generalizability of the construct of holistic reasoning in Mexicans, and 2) the preferred reasoning style of Mexicans when compared to U.S. Americans. Results support the generalization of the factor structure of holistic reasoning as originally hypothesized by Choi, Koo, and Choi (2007). The results of Study 2 suggest that Mexicans scored higher than U.S. Americans on certain aspects of holistic reasoning.     

Distraction while driving: The case of older drivers

As the impairment of older drivers is especially found in perception and attention, one could assume that they are especially prone to distraction effects of secondary tasks performed while driving. The aim of the study was to examine the effect of age on driving performance as well as the compensation strategies of older drivers under distraction. 10 middle-aged and 10 older drivers drove in a simulator with and without a secondary task. To assess driving performance the Lane Change Task (Mattes, 2003) was used. This method aims at estimating driver demand while a secondary task is being performed, by measuring performance degradation on a primary driving-like task in a standardized manner. The secondary task – a self-developed computer-based version of “d2 Test of Attention” was presented both with and without time pressure. The results show that older participants’ overall driving performance (mean deviation from an ideal path) was worse in all conditions as compared to the younger ones. With regard to lane change reaction time both age groups were influenced by distraction in a comparable manner. However, when the lane keeping performance (standard deviation of the lateral position) was examined, the older participants were more affected than the younger ones. This pattern could be explained by compensation strategies of the older drivers. They focused on the most relevant part of the driving task, the lane change manoeuvres and were able to maintain their performance level in a similar way as did younger drivers. The driving performance of the older participants was not additionally impaired when the secondary task imposed time pressure. Overall, subjective rating of driving performance, perceived workload and perceived distraction was found to be similar for both age groups. The observed trends and patterns associated with distraction while driving should contribute to the further research or practical work regarding in-vehicle technologies and older drivers.