Between Sacred And Secular Knowledge

This book examines how different social forces, including state ideology and policies, religious culture and ethnic identities, and economic market forces, affect Muslim parents’ perceptions and attitudes toward public and religious education. Combining ethnographic fieldwork and a cognitive rationality framework, this book investigates ethnic minorities’ educational attainment and its shaping mechanisms. Instead of attributing the undereducation of ethnic minorities solely to structural factors such as economic constraints, cultural conflicts and state policies, this study focuses on the critical role of perceptions and expectations through which many structural factors function. The fieldwork in a predominantly Muslim village in northwest China reveals that public education and religious education are complementary in the daily pursuit of well-being. And the study further argues that the practical oriented logic of rural Muslims sheds light on the research of inequality in educational attainment. The book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students studying ethnic minority education in China. Those who are researching on Islam and Muslims’ identity, especially in a multiethnic society, may also find this research insightful and helpful.

Introduction : Muslim education in a non-Muslim society -- Ethnic minority education in rural China : the cognitive rationality framework and research methods -- The land, the life, and local education -- The localized state, education, and local responses -- The binary world and identity : education and naming -- Secular in sacred : the market impacts on religious education -- Muslim girls' marriage and education : looking for well-being -- Conclusion and discussion.

This dissertation, "Between Sacred and Secular Knowledge: Rationalities in Education of a Muslim Village in Northwest China" by Yanbi, Hong, 洪岩璧, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. DOI: 10.5353/th_b5053380 Subjects: Islamic education - China, Northwest

A quick glance at this book will indicate that it deals with many areas of knowledge. There are thirty in all and they are presented in the first chapter in a purely secular form with which most potential readers will be familiar. There is no need for such people to go any further; they may well be content with a standard presentation of the respective subjects. But it is possible for inquiring minds to go further and seek the way in which those subjects are presented in sacred contexts. No doubt many people read the Bible but they may well be surprised when they look into Chapter 2 and see how many of these secular subjects emerge in the text of the Bible. Then there is a further way of perceiving the sacred connections of many of these subjects by looking back into their history and origins, as in Chapter 3. The obvious examples are those of astronomy and Galileo's conflict with the church; in the life sciences, Charles Darwin's evolution was in antagonism with traditional Christian beliefs about creation. Readers are advised to pick and choose whatever topics attract their interest and trace them through the first three chapters. The remainder of the book is an attempt to rethink and rephrase in modern terms the principle of St Thomas Aquinas that "theology is the queen of the sciences."

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

This book offers Hugh of Saint Victor’s early scholastic thoughts on sacrament in order to re-discover the pre-modern theological understanding of ontological signification. The Christian understanding of sacrament through the category of ‘signs’ results in a theology that inherently shares in the philosophical notion of semiotics. Yet, through the advent of post-structuralism, current sign-theory is effectively shaped by post-Kantian, ontological foundations. This can lead to misinterpretations of the sacramental theology that predates this intellectual turn. The book works within a context of Christological, realist mysticism. Such an approach allows mutually informing debates in semiotic development and studies on sacramental theology to sit side-by-side. In addition, as a work of ressourcement, influenced by the methodology and concerns of the historical, French Ressourcement, this study seeks to continue an engagement with some of the most promising sacramental positions that have emerged throughout twentieth-century theology, particularly with the revival of interest in Victorine theology. By providing an examination of sacramentality and theories of signification in the early scholastic theology of Hugh of Saint Victor, this book gives fresh impetus to the theology surrounding sacrament. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of mysticism, theologians of sacrament, philosophical theologians, and philosophers of religion.

This secularization has long been recognized as a decisive turning point in the history of American education. John Roberts and James Turner identify the forces and explain the events that reformed the college curriculum during this era.".