This study examines understandings of misfortune among east London Bangladeshis, particularly with respect to the role of jinn spirits. It reports on the findings of ethnographic interviews among 40 members of this community. Appeal to jinn explanations is commonplace at times of psychological disturbance and unexplained physical symptoms. Resort to traditional healers is frequent. These explan...

When PM Howard referred to Australia early in 2002 as a 'truly modern nation', he was alluding to a conflation of culture, technology, economic organisation and social ideology. Yet lying just below the surface were a series of policy and social initiatives that were giving concrete form to this presentation. Modernity has been presented as either a purely western structure of thought and pract...

ion of Knowledge. The tradition of modern scholarship—now some centuries old—has tended to favor the abstraction of knowledge from action in order to develop explicit rather than tacit knowledge. From the Renaissance onwards, knowledge (in books, libraries, and journals, that is, “objective” knowledge in Popper’s sense) was radically separated from knowing subjects. This unleashed the growth of...

In this article, I take issue with the conceptual apparatus and methodological prescriptions of comparative historical sociology. I will suggest that its problematic features are longstanding. In consequence, a dominant tendency of the field – that of returning to the ‘classics’ as a means of overcoming deficiencies found in more recent contributions – has the effect of reinforcing what is prob...

one of the most important stages in the development of nations’ literature and language is the stage of systemization. no nation could step into this stage unless its literature and language has matured. many scholars and literary men with different scientific status have mentioned his fact in their works. one of these scholars is abdullah ibn muttaz. in the introduction to his book named “kita...

Editor’s introduction: This succinct presentation by one of the world’s great scholars of Mongolian Buddhism summarizes the challenges that Buddhism has faced and continues to face in Mongolia. Amid historical reconsideration and revisionism – and continuing propaganda – it is important to acknowledge and understand, as Dr. Wallace conveys, the enormity of repression faced by Buddhism, as Mongo...