Social Cultural Economic Religious Life Of A Transformed Community

Survey of the pre and post Christian culture of the Paite people of Manipur, India.

This book considers ethical culture in East Asia, examines the impact it has had on economic and social transformation, and explores what effect it might have on solving current problems. It views the ethical culture of East Asia, that is, the beliefs, values, and practices that define East Asian societies’ conceptions of ethics in everyday life, as different from what pertains in the West, with more emphasis in East Asia on respect for ancestors, concern about propriety of behaviour, and notions of community. The book discusses how these particular East Asian values are being applied, for example, in family businesses, and how they might further be applied to solve current crucial challenges for humanity, such as climate change, ageing, and persistent inequality, challenges that are not being solved by an exclusive focus on economic growth alone. The book includes a consideration of ethical innovation, for example, distinct forms of ecological ethics enshrined in newly emerging economic organizations, such as social entrepreneurship.

Articles with reference to Paite (Asian people) of Manipur, India.

Ever since Max Weber started an argument about the role of Protestantism in jump-starting northern Europe's economic development, scholars have clashed over the influence of religion and culture on a society's (or an individual's) economic prospects. Today, many wonder whether the "explosion" of Protestantism in Latin America will effect a similar wave of growth and democratization. In this book, Sherman compiles the results of her field study and national survey of 1000 rural Guatemalan households. She offers persuasive evidence that, in Guatemala and throughout the region, religious world-views significantly influence economic life. Sherman explains how the change in attitude and behavior that accompanies conversion from animism to a Biblically orthodox world-view has improved the domestic welfare and economic status of many families. Further, she asserts that this new attitude, sympathetic to democratic-capitalism, has created a "moral cultural soil" in which freedom, personal empowerment, an enhanced status for women, and a desire to get ahead can be nurtured.

Chingboi Guite Phaipi examines how biblical texts reinforced female subjugation in Northeast Indian tribal societies after tribes had accepted Christianity in the early 20th century. Phaipi shows how most tribal groups reinforced women's subordinate status by invoking newly authoritative biblical texts such as the creation stories in Genesis 1, 2 and 3. Phaipi studies the creation stories in Genesis to offer broader readings for Christian tribal communities that are communal, traditional, and struggling to retain their women and girls, particularly those who are educated. This volume recognizes and respects tradition, traditional communities, and the enduring witness of faithful lives in tribal communities at the same time as offering ways forward with respect to unworthy cultural practices and preferences that have been legitimised by the Bible. This book offers a contextually sensitive and scholarly reading of the Bible, with particular attention to the ways patriarchal norms in biblical narratives are perpetuated, rather than considered and reformed.

"The poverty of people living in urban slums in Kenya and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa is one of the greatest scandals of our time. Much has been written about the causes of poverty, yet there seems to be little improvement. One reason for this failure is that many programmes are focused on "doing something for the poor but not with the poor." Through a two-year process of social analysis and theological reflection, the parishioners of Christ the King Catholic Church in Kibera slum examined the many injustices facing them in their daily lives. The aim of the parish was to better understand the reality of life in Kibera so that it could people improve their lives in a more responsive and holistic way. This book is a summary of the parish's findings. In their own words, parishioners describe their history, living conditions, socio-economic problems, parish life and African culture that are particular to Kibera. It is a unique perspective because parishioners evaluated these problems in the light of their faith. As a Christian community, parishioners made a plan and have begun their own initiatives to resolve the most serious injustices facing them. This is an important resource for people working in slums."--p. 4 of cover.

This book examines Jewish communities in Britain in an era of immense social, economic and religious change: from the acceleration of industrialisation to the end of the first phase of large-scale Jewish immigration from Europe. Using the 1851 census alongside extensive charity and community records, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Britain tests the impact of migration, new types of working and changes in patterns of worship on the family and community life of seven of the fastest-growing industrial towns in Britain. Communal life for the Jews living there (over a third of whom had been born overseas) was a constantly shifting balance between the generation of wealth and respectability, and the risks of inundation by poor newcomers. But while earlier studies have used this balance as a backdrop for the story of individual Jewish communities, this book highlights the interactions between the people who made them up. At the core of the book is the question of what membership of the 'imagined community' of global Jewry meant: how it helped those who belonged to it, how it affected where they lived and who they lived with, the jobs that they did and the wealth or charity that they had access to. By stitching together patterns of residence, charity and worship, Alysa Levene is here able to reveal that religious and cultural bonds had vital functions both for making ends meet and for the formation of identity in a period of rapid demographic, religious and cultural change.