Studies of traditional birth attendants over-emphasise the health dimension. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (utilising participant observation, individual interviews, group discussions, participatory rapid appraisal, and literature review) in The Gambia, this paper discusses the multiplicity of the role(s) of TBAs in their communities. As general healthcare providers, 'mothers of the village',...

Although federal legislative policies greatly impact service delivery in local communities because they dictate which organizations will be allowed to participate in federally funded service provision, there has been little, if any, comparative, quantitative analysis of religious and secular organizations within the same geographic context (Vidal 2001). For example, the 1996 Charitable Choice l...

The dialogue highlighted some important aspects of how parents perceive immunisation, and what problems are involved in getting their children immunised in particular for a religious group, a rural community and aborigines. In order to achieve higher coverage and our objective of universal child immunisation at the local or district levels, we need to recognise the need for special immunisation...

Increasingly, sustainability is conceived as a crisis of the human mind and the key challenge for pro-sustainability education is developing sufficient motivation in learners. The spiritual aspirations of religious communities contain sufficient motivational force, which may be deployed for effective sustainability education. This paper explores the approaches to sustainability and sustainabili...

This paper examines the relationship between witchcraft beliefs, a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon, and various elements of social capital. Using novel survey data from nineteen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa we establish a robust negative association between the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs and multiple measures of trust which holds after accounting for country fixed effects and potential...

The sexual abuse of children by clergy is neither a new phenomenon nor solely confined to one religious faith or denomination. In the past year, however, revelations of numerous incidents of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, of the deliberate obfuscation of this criminal behavior for decades by church leaders, and of the severe misuse of confidence placed in religious institutions ha...

The Islamic world of preand early medieval Spain has elicited the interest of many religious and secular scholars because of the peaceful coexistence by diverse ethnic and religious communities. The Moorish presence in Spain is still a subject of debate. Was Islam beneficial to Spain? What course would history have taken without the Muslim presence? What are the lingering results of Spain’s rel...

This article explores how the internet is being studied and conceived of as a sacramental space. The internet as sacramental space demonstrates how religious users see the internet as a viable place for presenting their beliefs and practices. In order to understand this model, several other dominant conceptions of the internet are offered: information space, a common mental geography, an identi...

Caste and religion are integral components of Indian society since the time immemorial. These two systems create water tight compartment between communities and bring division, hatred and tension among various social groups. Marriages within the same caste and same religion is the norm of the Indian society. To think of marriages between different castes and different religions is a difficult a...