The Advent and Schisms of Sufi Orders in Mozambique, 1896–1964

Sufi identity and rituals became widespread among local Muslims during the colonial era due to the expansion of the Shadhuliyya and the Qadiriyya orders. But the history of Sufism in Mozambique has been little explored. Portuguese colonial officials began paying closer attention to Islam in general and Sufism in particular only toward the end of the colonial period, especially in the late 1960s. This sudden interest was prompted by the independence war that took place mostly in northern Mozambique, where significant numbers of Muslims lived. The colonial Secret Service was mandated to find out how and why Muslims were involved in the independence struggle and in which ways they could be subverted. Otherwise there has been very limited research on Sufism, especially since Mozambique achieved independence. This article examines the historical context into which the orders arrived, and what prompted their significant expansion, as well as the reasons why they subsequently split up into eight autonomous branches. It is based on archival research in Mozambique and Portugal and fieldwork conducted at Mozambique Island, and in Angoche, Nampula, Pemba and Maputo cities.     

Religious Communities and Their Mission

In the past thirty years, religious orders of men and women within the Roman Catholic Church have witnessed both the graying of its members and a decrease in the number of new vocations. Research has shown that only those communities with a clear focus in terms of charism and mission will survive. The present study reports the results of survey research conducted with 484 Roman Catholic religious which investigated three research questions: the uniqueness of the stated mission of seven religious communities, the awareness and experience of each community's unique charism, and an understanding of those lived experiences within community life which contribute to and predict a community's charism. The findings indicate that, while each of the religious communities surveyed can both identify and experience their community's stated charism, their mission statements poorly reflect the charism which is unique to each community. The data also indicates that time spent in prayer, both personal and communal, as well as the level of one's formal education, contribute to and predict and community's charism.     

Introduction: Attaining a New Stage

The current issue of The Journal of Adult Development addresses one of the threads of adult development, namely stage and stage change. There are four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified: positive adult development, directionless change, stasis, and decline. The first of the four forms, positive adult developmental processes, is divided into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (orders, stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality. The topic of this special issue, stage and stage change, is therefore part of the study of positive adult developmental processes. Finally, the manner in which these topics are studied both in this special issue and elsewhere can be characterized in terms of three broad classifications (Commons & Bresette, 2000, Commons & Miller, 1998) for the acquisition of knowledge and the verification of truth in general. These classifications include analytic, experiential, and empirical means to reach truth.     

A Mixed λ-calculus

The aim of this paper is to define a λ-calculus typed in aMixed (commutative and non-commutative) Intuitionistic Linear Logic. The terms of such a calculus are the labelling of proofs of a linear intuitionistic mixed natural deduction NILL, which is based on the non-commutative linear multiplicative sequent calculus MNL [RuetAbrusci 99]. This linear λ-calculus involves three linear arrows: two directional arrows and a nondirectional one (the usual linear arrow). Moreover, the -terms are provided with seriesparallel orders on free variables. We prove a normalization theorem which explicitly gives the behaviour of the order during the normalization procedure. Special Issue Categorial Grammars and Pregroups Edited by Wojciech Buszkowski and Anne Preller     

Continuous representability of interval orders and biorders

We furnish a characterization of the representability of an interval order through a pair of continuous real-valued functions which in addition represent two total preorders associated to the given interval order. Our techniques lean on the key concept of a biorder. We introduce the concept of a natural topology for an interval order, and through such concept we extend the classical biorder approach to the continuous case.     

Semantics for Dual Preferential Entailment

We introduce and explore the notion of duality for entailment relations induced by preference orderings on states. We discuss the relationship between these preferential entailment relations from the perspectives of Boolean algebra, inference rules, and modal axiomatisation. Interpreting the preference relations as accessibility relations establishes modular Gödel-Löb logic as a suitable modal framework for rational preferential reasoning.     

RITUAL, TIME, AND ENTERNITY

Abstract. It is argued here that the construction of time and eternity are among ritual's entailments. In dividing continuous duration into distinct periods ritual distinguishes two temporal conditions: (1) that prevailing in mundane periods and (2) that prevailing during the intervals between them. Differences in the frequency, length, and relationship among the rituals constituting different liturgical orders are considered, as are differences between mundane periods and ritual's intervals with respect to social relations, cognitive modes, meaningfulness, and typical interactive frequencies. Periods, it is observed, relate to intervals as everchanging to never-changing, and close relationships of never changing to eternity, eternity to sanctity, and sanctity to truth are proposed. In the argument that ritual's "times out of time" really are outside mundane time, similarities to the operations of digital computers and Herbert Simon's discussion of interaction frequencies in the organization of matter are noted.     

Nonmetric maximum likelihood multidimensional scaling from directional rankings of similarities

A maximum likelihood estimation procedure is developed for multidimensional scaling when (dis)similarity measures are taken by ranking procedures such as the method of conditional rank orders or the method of triadic combinations. The central feature of these procedures may be termed directionality of ranking processes. That is, rank orderings are performed in a prescribed order by successive first choices. Those data have conventionally been analyzed by Shepard-Kruskal type of nonmetric multidimensional scaling procedures. We propose, as a more appropriate alternative, a maximum likelihood method specifically designed for this type of data. A broader perspective on the present approach is given, which encompasses a wide variety of experimental methods for collecting dissimilarity data including pair comparison methods (such as the method of tetrads) and the pick-M method of similarities. An example is given to illustrate various advantages of nonmetric maximum likelihood multidimensional scaling as a statistical method. At the moment the approach is limited to the case of one-mode two-way proximity data, but could be extended in a relatively straightforward way to two-mode two-way, two-mode three-way or even three-mode three-way data, under the assumption of such models as INDSCAL or the two or three-way unfolding models.The first author's work was supported partly by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, grant number A6394. Portions of this research were done while the first author was at Bell Laboratories. MAXSCAL-4.1, a program to perform the computations described in this paper can be obtained by writing to: Computing Information Service, Attention: Ms. Carole Scheiderman, Bell Laboratories, 600 Mountain Ave., Murray Hill, N.J. 07974. Thanks are due to Yukio Inukai, who generously let us use his stimuli in our experiment, and to Jim Ramsay for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Confidence regions in Figures 2 and 3 were drawn by the program written by Jim Ramsay. We are also indebted to anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.     

A parametric procedure for ultrametric tree estimation from conditional rank order proximity data

The psychometric and classification literatures have illustrated the fact that a wide class of discrete or network models (e.g., hierarchical or ultrametric trees) for the analysis of ordinal proximity data are plagued by potential degenerate solutions if estimated using traditional nonmetric procedures (i.e., procedures which optimize a STRESS-based criteria of fit and whose solutions are invariant under a monotone transformation of the input data). This paper proposes a new parametric, maximum likelihood based procedure for estimating ultrametric trees for the analysis of conditional rank order proximity data. We present the technical aspects of the model and the estimation algorithm. Some preliminary Monte Carlo results are discussed. A consumer psychology application is provided examining the similarity of fifteen types of snack/breakfast items. Finally, some directions for future research are provided.