The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2325548X.2017.1315261

The Past Is a Foreign Country - Revisited

This dissertation examines the marriage alliances of the Riurikids, the Orthodox rulers of Kyivan Rus’, with western-rite (Latin Christian / Catholic) rulers. Using both narrative and legal sources, it considers the process by which the brides in these marriages acculturated to the environment of their husbands’ courts, and the degree to which they were able to maintain ties with the culture of their birth. Through the prism of these women’s lives, the dissertation adds to our understanding of the social history of Orthodox-Catholic interaction among lay elites from the early eleventh century to 1204. While individual clerics such as Metropolitan Ioann of Kyiv disapproved of Orthodox-Catholic marriages in the 1080s, such condemnation was an extreme position for its time, and was rooted in concerns with preserving the ritual purity of Orthodox believers. Beginning in the late twelfth century, some western lay persons and clerics also may have disapproved of ties with Rus’, but their views remained in the minority. The dissertation confirms previous findings that the so-called Church Schism of 1054 was not an essential factor in the formation of these marriages until the thirteenth century. It demonstrates that brides in these inter-rite marriages did not experience a complete conversion to the religious tradition of

/pdf/women-between-west-and-east-the-inter-rite-marriages-of-the-5crz4nvwxj.pdf

Women Between West and East: the Inter-Rite Marriages of the Kyivan Rusâ Dynasty, ca. 1000-1204

This book examines catalysts for Buddhist formation in ancient South Asia and expansion throughout and beyond the northwestern Indian subcontinent to Central Asia by investigating symbiotic relationships between networks of religious mobility and trade.

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia

The rapidity of technological and cultural change in current times is forcing us to confront a myriad of moral dilemmas over issues as wide ranging as the ethics of cloning humans, the ownership of our genetic material, and the rights of animals relative to those of humans. These ethical issues concern the very nature of what it means to be human and our relationships, not only to other people, but also to the plants and animals that sustain us. The enormous strides we have taken toward human equality during this century mean that formerly disenfranchised and enslaved members of minority groups are beginning to gain power and control over their lives. In many countries there has been a decline in the political dominance and moral authority of organized religions. Notions of multiculturalism and a growing acceptance of the moral principle of not discriminating against people based on gender, ethnicity, or religious beliefs mean that there is no longer a shared set of cultural values we can use for guidance in dealing with moral issues (Cottingham, 1994). This increased tolerance of cultural diversity poses ethical dilemmas because, as the

Bioarchaeological Ethics: A Historical Perspective on the Value of Human Remains

In Anarchy Unbound, Peter T. Leeson uses rational choice theory to explore the benefits of self-governance. Relying on experience from the past and present, Professor Leeson provides evidence of anarchy 'working' where it is least expected to do so and explains how this is possible. Provocatively, Leeson argues that in some cases anarchy may even outperform government as a system of social organization, and demonstrates where this may occur. Anarchy Unbound challenges the conventional self-governance wisdom. It showcases the incredible ingenuity of private individuals to secure social cooperation without government and how their surprising means of doing so can be superior to reliance on the state.

Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think

To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra, Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians.

Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages

Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia

Buddhism : The Illustrated Guide

This article examines some of the implications of cross-cultural and cross-tradition comparison in the study of religion as they emerge from an analysis of religious practices associated with relics. It also identifies some key comparative themes highlighted in the articles that comprise this special issue on relic practices.

Pars pro toto: On Comparing Relic Practices

This essay examines the phenomenon of relic theft in the Theravada Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka. Having noted the relative paucity of scholarship on this topic, the essay first examines the canonical warrant for the practice of relic veneration in the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, and identifies a fundamental tension that the cult of veneration poses for the tradition. Relics, as valued material objects subject to human manipulation and possession, would appear to encourage attachment. The canonical passages that deal with the cult of veneration simultaneously affirm the value of the practice, while warning of the danger that attachment to the relics poses. The essay goes on to note evidence, in the form of expanded relic lists in canonical sources, of the expansion of the relic cult and of the need to affirm the authenticity of new centers of sacrality associated with the enshrinement of particular relics. The essay then examines several accounts of relic theft in the Pali chronicle (vamsa) literature, noting that these accounts serve to simultaneously affirm the desirability of relics, and to account for the orderly movement of these valued objects from one location to another. Yet these accounts of relic theft are problematic in that they appear to endorse the practice of stealing, which is a violation of both lay and monastic Buddhist ideals. In response to this problem, the essay identifies two different models of relic theft, noting that one model is religiously affirmed, while the other is condemned. The essay concludes with a brief comparison of relic theft accounts in the Buddhist and Christian traditions.

Kevin Trainor

Papers

Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages

Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia

Buddhism : The Illustrated Guide

Pars pro toto: On Comparing Relic Practices

When Is a Theft Not a Theft? Relic Theft and the Cult of the Buddha's Relics in Sri Lanka