{"title":"Maitreya, Kaeby?k, Yonaoshi: the Crisis and World-subverting Perception in East Asian History of Religion","authors":"SeungYong Han","doi":"10.46263/rc.40.2.","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46263/rc.40.2.","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89789523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparison between Ellen G. White’s Idea of Vital Force and Ge Hong’s Idea of Haijingbunao","authors":"Soon-gi Baek","doi":"10.46263/rc.40.4.","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46263/rc.40.4.","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78456484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Shaman’s Praying Practices on Public Sites: Modernity and Resistance","authors":"Dong-kyu Kim","doi":"10.46263/rc.40.1.","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46263/rc.40.1.","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84625595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abrahamic Religions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Comparative Analysis on the Idea of Human Rights","authors":"Changrok Soh, J. Choi","doi":"10.46263/rc.40.5.","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46263/rc.40.5.","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83650115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The article examines player narratives on meaningful encounters with video games by using an argumentative qualitative interview method. Data gathered among Finnish adult video game players represents narratives of important connections in personal lives, affinities that the article analyzes as further producing three distinctive themes on meaningful encounters. Utilizing a study-of-religion framework, the article discusses meaning making and emerging ways of meaningfulness connected to the larger discussion on the “big questions” that are asked, explored, and answered in popular culture today. Nonreligious players talk about intricate and profound contemplations in relation to game memories, highlighting how accidental self-reflections in mundane game worlds frame a continuing search for self.
{"title":"Non-religious Players Asking Big Questions: Video Game Worlds Affording Affinities of Meaningful Encounters","authors":"H. Rautalahti","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2020-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2020-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The article examines player narratives on meaningful encounters with video games by using an argumentative qualitative interview method. Data gathered among Finnish adult video game players represents narratives of important connections in personal lives, affinities that the article analyzes as further producing three distinctive themes on meaningful encounters. Utilizing a study-of-religion framework, the article discusses meaning making and emerging ways of meaningfulness connected to the larger discussion on the “big questions” that are asked, explored, and answered in popular culture today. Nonreligious players talk about intricate and profound contemplations in relation to game memories, highlighting how accidental self-reflections in mundane game worlds frame a continuing search for self.","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49397676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article considers the role of belief in Max Gladstone's Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, a six-volume fantasy series that imagines a world in which humanity's gods have either expired or been resurrected in a zombie-like state so that their divine power can be siphoned and used to fuel the social, economic, and technological superstructure of everyday modern life. The article draws on the work of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan, and Alain Badiou to show how Gladstone portrays the return of belief as an effective vehicle for social change that counters a model of atheism in which the individual's supposed liberation from God entails the repression of its continued commitment to what Lacan calls the big "Other," which is to say, the symbolic order itself.
{"title":"Unconscious Gods and the Return of Belief in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence","authors":"Peter Melville","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2018-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2018-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article considers the role of belief in Max Gladstone's Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, a six-volume fantasy series that imagines a world in which humanity's gods have either expired or been resurrected in a zombie-like state so that their divine power can be siphoned and used to fuel the social, economic, and technological superstructure of everyday modern life. The article draws on the work of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan, and Alain Badiou to show how Gladstone portrays the return of belief as an effective vehicle for social change that counters a model of atheism in which the individual's supposed liberation from God entails the repression of its continued commitment to what Lacan calls the big \"Other,\" which is to say, the symbolic order itself.","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41740520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article offers an analysis of Prairie consumer culture and its development in the region, arguing for the utility of regional analysis in understanding how popular culture and consumerism have influenced religious history, and neoliberal social history more broadly, over time. Unlike some other regions of North America, the Canadian Prairies were once characterized by the widespread influence of Protestant social gospel thought, which was, if not outright anti-capitalist, amenable to socialism and rooted in cooperative ethics. This has changed in the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, where the region is now well known for being a bastion of Canadian conservatism. It has also seen a sharp increase in people stating that they have no religion. Foregrounding this transformation in the context of the significant socio-economic change of the Prairies, this article analyzes the increasing social valuation of individualism, the connotations that "religion" has for historical actors, and the growing influence of consumerism. A case study of the West Edmonton Mall illustrates how vital consumerism and the segregation of social desire is to the Prairie region and the importance of the myths, symbols, and rituals that are cultivated within such spaces. As such, the dreams offered by contemporary popular culture and individualist spiritualities have—over the course of the twentieth century—replaced those offered by the social gospel and farmer's political parties. This article concludes by suggesting that comparison of the different regions of North America can aid in more deeply understanding how popular culture and consumerism have influenced their religious history.
{"title":"To Dream Differently: Consumerism and Social Transformations in Canadian Prairie History","authors":"Connor J. Thompson","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2019-0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2019-0039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article offers an analysis of Prairie consumer culture and its development in the region, arguing for the utility of regional analysis in understanding how popular culture and consumerism have influenced religious history, and neoliberal social history more broadly, over time. Unlike some other regions of North America, the Canadian Prairies were once characterized by the widespread influence of Protestant social gospel thought, which was, if not outright anti-capitalist, amenable to socialism and rooted in cooperative ethics. This has changed in the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, where the region is now well known for being a bastion of Canadian conservatism. It has also seen a sharp increase in people stating that they have no religion. Foregrounding this transformation in the context of the significant socio-economic change of the Prairies, this article analyzes the increasing social valuation of individualism, the connotations that \"religion\" has for historical actors, and the growing influence of consumerism. A case study of the West Edmonton Mall illustrates how vital consumerism and the segregation of social desire is to the Prairie region and the importance of the myths, symbols, and rituals that are cultivated within such spaces. As such, the dreams offered by contemporary popular culture and individualist spiritualities have—over the course of the twentieth century—replaced those offered by the social gospel and farmer's political parties. This article concludes by suggesting that comparison of the different regions of North America can aid in more deeply understanding how popular culture and consumerism have influenced their religious history.","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46359565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:At first glance, David Yates's 2016 fantasy film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them appears to exemplify the nostalgic cinema that Fredric Jameson dismisses as postmodern pastiche that merely imitates the past through superficial details such as setting and costumes. Set in New York in 1926, Fantastic Beasts evokes the elegance and allure of the Roaring Twenties. The film invokes an idealized past, re-presented through the lens of "magic" as a place where all social, racial, and gendered differences have been erased. Fantastic Beasts articulates a powerful cultural yearning for an idealized bygone era while superimposing contemporary concerns about liberty, equality, preservation, and ecology on the past. I argue, however, that Fantastic Beasts does not merely use nostalgia as a surface strategy to create cinematic allure. Embedded in the film's self-reflexive structure is a deeper analysis of nostalgia itself, both in its reflective postmodern mode and in the form of a politically and religiously charged restorative nostalgia.
{"title":"Fantastic Beasts and the Dangers of American Nostalgia","authors":"Signe Cohen","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2019-0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2019-0037","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:At first glance, David Yates's 2016 fantasy film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them appears to exemplify the nostalgic cinema that Fredric Jameson dismisses as postmodern pastiche that merely imitates the past through superficial details such as setting and costumes. Set in New York in 1926, Fantastic Beasts evokes the elegance and allure of the Roaring Twenties. The film invokes an idealized past, re-presented through the lens of \"magic\" as a place where all social, racial, and gendered differences have been erased. Fantastic Beasts articulates a powerful cultural yearning for an idealized bygone era while superimposing contemporary concerns about liberty, equality, preservation, and ecology on the past. I argue, however, that Fantastic Beasts does not merely use nostalgia as a surface strategy to create cinematic allure. Embedded in the film's self-reflexive structure is a deeper analysis of nostalgia itself, both in its reflective postmodern mode and in the form of a politically and religiously charged restorative nostalgia.","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43384435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In 2010, the publication of "Heart Sutra Pop," an online animated video featuring the cyber-idol Hatsune Miku singing the Heart Sutra, launched a viral enthusiasm for the text that is unmatched throughout its more than twelve-hundred-year history in Japan. This article explores the digital rebirth of the sutra and the rise of an unlikely virtual spiritual leader. I argue that this cyber-idol-driven sutra boom is both doctrinally justifiable and consistent with a wave of new media initiatives by Japanese Buddhists.
{"title":"\"Heart Sutra Pop\": Religious Textual Democratization by a Sexy Vocal Android","authors":"John A. Shultz","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2019-0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2019-0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 2010, the publication of \"Heart Sutra Pop,\" an online animated video featuring the cyber-idol Hatsune Miku singing the Heart Sutra, launched a viral enthusiasm for the text that is unmatched throughout its more than twelve-hundred-year history in Japan. This article explores the digital rebirth of the sutra and the rise of an unlikely virtual spiritual leader. I argue that this cyber-idol-driven sutra boom is both doctrinally justifiable and consistent with a wave of new media initiatives by Japanese Buddhists.","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46409181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era by Lisa Vox","authors":"R. Seesengood","doi":"10.3138/JRPC.2019-0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/JRPC.2019-0053","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38290,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion and Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46151080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}