Modernity And The Millennium

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This two-volume collection is international and interdisciplinary in scope drawing on a large range of theoretical perspectives ranging from archival scholarship to cultural geography and film studies. There are four sections: Modernism and Modernity; Postmodernism: Intertextuality; Postmodernism: Gaze, Vision and Voice; and Postcolonialism.

As the world becomes increasingly globalised Islam faces some important choices. Does it seek to "modernise" in line with the cultures in which it is practised, or does it retain its traditions even if they are at odds with the surrounding society? This book utilizes a critical rationalist viewpoint to illuminate many of the hotly contended issues in modern Islam, and to offer a fresh analysis. A variety of issues within Islam are discussed in this book including, Muslims and modernity; Islam, Christianity and Judaism; approaches to the understanding of the Quran; Muslim identity and civil society; doctrinal certainty and violent radicalism. In each case, the author makes use of Karl Popper’s theory of critical rationalism to uncover new aspects of these issues and to challenge post-modern, relativist, literalist and justificationist readings of Islam. This is a unique perspective on contemporary Islam and as such will be of significant interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Islamic Studies and the Philosophy of Religion.

This book presents critical studies of modern reconfigurations of conceptions of the past, of the 'classical', and of national heritage. Its scope is global (China, India, Egypt, Iran, Judaism, the Greco-Roman world) and inter-disciplinary (textual philology, history of art and architecture, philosophy, gardening). Its emphasis is on the complexity of the modernization process and of reactions to it: ideas and technologies travelled from India to Iran and from Japan to China, while reactions show tensions between museumization and the recreation of 'presence'. It challenges readers to rethink the assumptions of the disciplines in which they were trained

This book summarizes archaeological approaches to the contemporary past, and suggests a new agenda for the archaeology of late modern societies. The principal focus is the archaeology of developed, de-industrialized societies during the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. This period encompasses the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the 'internet age', a period which sits firmly within what we would recognize to be a period of 'lived and living memory'. Rodney Harrison and John Schofield explore how archaeology can inform the study of this time period and the study of our own society through detailed case studies and an in-depth summary of the existing literature. Their book draws together cross-disciplinary perspectives on contemporary material culture studies, and develops a new agenda for the study of the materiality of late modern societies.

This in-depth collection of essays traces the changing reception of Shakespeare over the past four hundred years, during which time Shakespeare has variously been seen as the last great exponent of pre-modern Western culture, a crucial inaugurator of modernity, and a prophet of postmodernity. This fresh look at Shakespeare's plays is an important contribution to the revival of the idea of 'modernity' and how we periodise ourselves, and Shakespeare, at the beginning of a new millennium.

One million Baha'is live in africa. This is the first academic volume to explore the history of this movement on the continent. The book discusses the diverse and contractivory American, Iranian, British, and African contributions to this new religious movement.

This general monograph on the Baha’is and their religion places new emphasis on the sociology of contemporary Baha’i, including a thorough case study of a European Baha’i community and of the life at the Baha’i World Centre.