Culture and Modernity

The paper discusses the major characteristics of modernity and post-modernity presented in Passion of the Western Mind by contemporary depth psychologist and philosopher Richard Tarnas. The essay, created for a course taught by Dominican theologian Fr. Edward Krasevac on the nature and history of Western thought, summarizes Tarnas's view of the larger cultural and historical contexts in which the dominant epistemologies and perspectives of modernity and post-modernity evolved and serves as a basic introduction to some of the distinctive features of modern and post-modern philosophical criticism.

Many qiaoxiang in southern Fujian and Guangdong appear derelict, but from documenting the material heritage and interviewing people about its social significance, another image surfaces. The homeland of Overseas Chinese was not only found to be significant to the diaspora, but serve as an enduring reminder of a grassroots-based modernity in rural China. The qiaoxiang effectively became a transnational legacy of migration from southern China that has undergone the following stages of transformation: exodus-led emergence of a remittance landscape, sudden abandonment, and sometimes revival. Today, it has become a “repository” or “living museum” where tourists and scholars alike can visit and ponder about how humans adapted to post-rural life.

Uno sguardo curioso e impegnativo per capire i "percorsi inversi": reazione rabbiosa, adattamento a fattori politici, economici e sociali o che altro? Una riflessione per capire l'evoluzione del pensiero e delle teorie sullo sviluppo a livello globale. Un'agenda intellettuale dentro la crisi pandemica. Ma non solo. Il tempo sociale è sempre una cosa bizzarra, ma oggi ci viene chiesto di imparare a vivere in un tempo ancora più incomprensibile di altri. In questo momento storico i processi nei diversi settori della società moderna hanno assunto direzioni e velocità estremamente diverse: questa disarmonia è caratterizzata da un proprio ordine temporale e da una propria topografia.

El mundo fantástico de la caballería y el del
sentido común no parecían ofrecer significativas
contradicciones para el hidalgo caballero Don Quijote
de La Mancha. El mundo de la caballería se constituía
en un «subuniverso cerrado», al cual este definía como
su realidad. Cuando acontecimientos de su vida
cotidiana parecían trascender el grado de veracidad de
sus experiencias —como puede ser el choque con
posadas, rebaños de ovejas y molinos de viento, y no
con castillos, ejércitos o gigantes, como él suponía—,
los argumentos giraban en torno a explicaciones propias
de su mundo de fantasías.

The origins of modern photojournalism in Germany, during the yeas 1925-1933, is the central object of this dissertation. Checking popular illustrated magazines, such as Berlliner Illustrirte Zeitung, and their contemporary critics, one seeks to know if could understand them with a notion of “aesthetic of transparency”. In order to arrive at the empirical research, some notions about the modern and modernity were delineated, hoping to understand the cultural processes and regimes of visuality of the beginning of 1920s as its unfolding, as well as starting from some reflections of Charles Baudelaire to think the aesthetic experience of modernity and its relation with photography. In addition, it was tried to understand if a dialogue between realism and modernisms could be possible, within the German context. The Weimar Republic was thought of as a democratic space for political, economic and social rearticulation, in which photography would have been articulated by the artistic field such as Neues Sehen (New Vision), by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Neue Sachlichkeit Objectivity), by Albert Renger-Patzsch, exerting on the photographic production in journalism some of its conditions for its modernization. Finally, it was reflected on the modernization of the photojournalism in the Weimar Republic from the illustrated magazines study, based on the use of the photographic series potentially narrating journalistic facts, mainly from some photographs of Erich Salomon and Felix H. Man. This study allowed us to verify that the ripening of photojournalism met a demand of the German reading public for facts, reinforcing a certain professional ideology of objectivity. Having been possible by the coincidence of relations, as photographers willing to produce many images of various aesthetic forms under a diversity of conditions, allied to the freedom of editorial power and its experimentation, besides the rising of photographic agencies that began to order photographic work with the written report.

The hybridity that is seen everywhere in symbolist poetry is not so much evidence of a temporary trend of the era following the interest in the crossing of species in nature as much as it is an attempt to confront the very nature of “art” itself. The time of the “quarrel of monsters” has passed, and the hybrids of contemporary poetry – competing for a place in the mythological scene that is symbolism – roam guiltless. And yet, beyond literary conventions, this mythological bestiary is anything but innocent and outdated; in fact, it embodies a genuine mythopoetic repertoire. For Mallarmé in particular, this hybrid bestiary reflects the illusive “Chimera” of poetry.

It is proposed to develop a critical reading of some of the main writings of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933), seeking to recognize the foundations of his thinking, above all, about man as an architect and his practice. This paper is organized according to three main themes: 1. the identification of Loos with classical culture according to the concepts of beauty, truth and justice; 2. his considerations on the relationship between ornamentation, culture and society; and 3. his proposal for the reframing of architecture and the architect's activity between the arts and crafts through the moral question.

This book examines the post-1960s era of popular music in the Anglo-Black Atlantic through the prism of historical theory and methods. By using a series of case studies, this book mobilizes historical theory and methods to underline different expressions of alternative music functioning within a mainstream musical industry. Each chapter highlights a particular theory or method while simultaneously weaving it through a genre of music expressing a notion of alternativity―an explicit positioning of one’s expression outside and counter to the mainstream. Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music seeks to fill a gap in current scholarship by offering a collection written specifically for the pedagogical and theoretical needs of those interested in the topic.

“This study of ‘insurgent’ modes of popular music in the last third of the 20th century accomplishes quite a feat.  It yokes together a wide swath of sub-genres and styles--including reggae, punk, hip hop, alternative rock and country—through the lens of what the authors are calling “historical theory,” in order to chart a different, more comprehensive pathway through the annals of pop music history.  Shonk and McClure achieve an enviable balance of accessibility and scholarly depth, making this volume ideal for introductory college courses as well as more experienced researchers seeking a quick guide to specialized topics.”

--Pamela Fox, author of Natural Acts: Gender, Race, and Rusticity in Country Music; co-author of Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country Music

This dissertation seeks to provide a solution to the declining Evangelical influence in the United States, particularly among Generation Z. The rise in number of those who do not subscribe to a particular religion (“nones”) has doubled in the last five years even amidst a steady church attendance and participation in religious activities. The popular Evangelical evaluation of this problem includes the idea that the cause is a lack or an insufficient amount of theology taught and learned. The popular response has been to increase theological knowledge churches and other places of learning. I am proposing, however, given the post-modern structures and commitments in our culture, that exclusive cognitivist solutions no longer work and something else must take its place. Research shows that theory and practice are both essential pedagogical tools for learning. This general principle is true and applicable, not only in secular settings, but in sacred settings as well. So, to inculcate a strong, flourishing, and God-honoring faith, Christian leaders must commit to deploying this theory-practice pedagogy aimed at Generation Z who happen to already be predisposed to accepting it.

This link [http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2363_reg.html] leads to my Introduction to the edited collection Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Temple UP, 2015). The collection discusses the emergence of modern sexual science in Europe, Asia, Peru and the Middle East. The introduction locates the book in relation to critical debates about sexology and translation. It argues that the research gathered here complicates the idea that modern sexuality is a 'Western' construct that was transmitted around the world.

Resumen En este trabajo hacemos una interpretación crítica del pensamiento sociológico de Ágnes Heller, especialmente de sus estudios de la «vida cotidiana». En principio, llevamos a cabo un primer acercamiento a sus investigaciones y contextualizamos históricamente sus escritos, delimitamos las obras a estudiar, específicamente los textos que abordan el tema de la cotidianidad, y luego hacemos un recuento de su «trayecto biográfico» y de sus prin-cipales experiencias que impulsan sus estudios. En un segundo momento, presentamos nuestras interpretaciones sobre sus tesis, sus problemáticas y relevancia en su contexto sociohistórico, los principales conceptos, categorías y rasgos que propone para caracterizar lo cotidiano. Concluimos que investigar la importancia de la «vida cotidiana» es una de las preocupaciones centrales de la obra de Heller. También planteamos que profundizar y recontextualizar sus interpretaciones resulta de radical importancia para la comprensión de nuestras sociedades contemporáneas y, en este sentido, mencionamos algunas de las problemáticas que consideramos relevantes y vigentes para nuestra época y que merecen ser recuperadas críticamente, y proponemos unos interrogantes que nos suscita su obra. A lo largo del escrito, vamos observando su reinterpretación del pensamiento de Marx, su distanciamiento del comunismo soviético, del socialismo de su país y del marxismo orto-doxo que dominaba en su época, y además destacamos la relación entre sus experiencias biográficas y sus preocupaciones teóricas.

This paper begins by drawing on accounts of enchantment as
wonder by three authors (Alain-Fournier, Aldous Huxley and J.R.R.
Tolkien) to explore its basic characteristics and dynamics. It then
draws a contrast with the disenchantment attending will and the
will-to-power, noting the internal affinity of the latter with the
project of modernity and its contrast with enchantment as a nonmodern
experience. It then proceeds to a critique of three influential
philosophers’ portrayals of enchantment (Philip Fisher, Jane
Bennett and Akeel Bilgrami, as well as Charles Taylor), which it
faults for not paying closer attention to the implications of the
experience of enchantment. It closes with a plea for philosophy
aligned with the humanities rather than sciences.

This book examines how sexological ideas about desire and the body made their way from German science into British literary culture at the turn of the last century. It shows that fiction not only influenced the vocabulary of European sexology, but that it allowed lay women and men to shape modern ideas about sex, gender and the body.

Main authors discussed include Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Olive Schreiner and Sarah Grand, Edith Ellis, and Radclyffe Hall.

I present here a key to reading the work of Jesuit thinker Francisco Suárez in the context of the plurality and complexity of modernity. I show the main configuration that defines modernity in its hegemonic version, as well as its limitations. From there, I propose how Suárez's work can be understood from the perspective of its own Ignatian and Jesuit spiritual framework and in relation to the development of modernity. Although a dominant version of modernity has historically prevailed, modernity cannot be understood as a uniform process but one that has been articulated and expressed in different civilizing missions since the Renaissance. One modern way of responding to the socio-cultural challenges of the Renaissance was articulated by the Society of Jesus. I believe that in light of what I term an "Ignatian modernity," we can better understand Suárez's intellectual mission, its historical virtuality, and the possibilities marginalized by hegemonic modernity.

"Valuable, wide-ranging collection of essays"-- Ben Clarke, Modernism/Modernity

Rural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of Britain were impacted by modernisation just as much - if not more - than urban and suburban areas. It is the first study of modernity and modernism to focus on rural people and places that experienced economic depression, the expansion of transportation and communication networks, the roll out of electricity, the loss of land, and the erosion of local identities. Who celebrated these changes? Who resisted them? Who documented them? *

Essays in this collection make the case that the rural means more than just the often-studied countryside of southern England, a retreat from the consequences of modernity; rather, the rural emerges as a source for new versions of the modern, with an active role in the formation and development of British experiences and representations of modernity. *

Table of Contents *
List of Illustrations: 46 black and white illustrations, 13 colour plates *
Introduction: Rural Modernity in Britain, Kristin Bluemel and Michael McCluskey *
Part I: Networks *
1. Ringing the Changes: Thomas Hardy's Communication Networks, Edward Allen *
2. Change in the Village: Filming Rural Britain, Michael McCluskey *
3. Electricity Comes to the Countryside: Visual Representations of a Connected
* Countryside in the Early Twentieth Century, Rosemary Shirley
Part II: Landscapes *
4. Weighing Down the Landscape: The Quarry as a Site of Rural Modernity, Samuel Shaw *
5. Windmills and Woodblocks: Agnes Miller Parker, Wood Engraving and the Popular Press in Interwar Britain, Kristin Bluemel *
6. Hiraeth and Ambiguous Pastorals: Wales, England and Rural Modernities between the Wars, Christopher Hopkins *
Part III: Communities *
7. The 'Uncertainty of Our Climate': Mary Kelly and the Rural Theatre, Andrew Walker *
8. The Spinster in Eden: Reclaiming Civilisation in Interwar British Rural Fiction, Stella Deen *
9. Transformative Pastoral: Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Scot's Quair, Nick Hubble *
Part IV: Heritage *
10. Borderlands: Visual and Material Culture in the Interwar Anglo-Scottish Borders, Ysanne Holt *
11. Beyond Portmeirion: The Architecture, Planning and Protests of Clough Williams-Ellis, Nigel Harrison and Iain Robertson *
12. Celebrating England: 'Heritage' Writing and the Rural Novelist, Dominic Head *
Part V: Wars *
13. Altered Countrysides: Paul Nash, David Jones and Eric Ravilious in Wartime, Eluned Summers-Bremner *
14. Eden in Sussex: Atheist Moderns and the Berwick Church Murals, Hana Leaper and Polly Mills *
15. Rural Modernity in a Time of Crisis: Preservation and Reform in the Books of B. T. Batsford , Peter Lowe *

The Chinese Buddhist canon is a systematic collection of all translated Buddhist scriptures and related literatures created in East Asia and has been regarded as one of the “three treasures” in Buddhist communities. Despite its undisputed importance in the history of Buddhism, research on this huge collection has remained largely the province of Buddhologists focusing on textual and bibliographical studies. We thus aim to initiate methodological innovations to study the transformation of the canon by situating it in its modern context, characterized by intricate interactions between East and West as well as among countries in East Asia.
During the modern period the Chinese Buddhist canon has been translated, edited, digitized, and condensed as well as internationalized, contested, and ritualized. The well-known accomplishment of this modern transformation is the compilation of the Taisho Canon during the 1920s. It has become a source of both doctrinal orthodoxy as well as creativity and its significance has greatly increased as Buddhist scholarship and devotionalism has utilized the canon for various ends. However, it is still unclear what led to the creation of the modern editions of the Buddhist canon in East Asia. This volume explores the most significant and interesting developments regarding the Chinese Buddhist canon in modern East Asia including canon formation, textual studies, historical analyses, religious studies, ritual invention, and digital research tools and methods.

''India, Modernity and the Great Divergence is an original and pioneering book about India’s transition towards modernity and the rise of the West. The work examines global entanglements alongside the internal dynamics of 17th to 19th century Mysore and Gujarat in comparison to other regions of Afro-Eurasia. It is an interdisciplinary survey that enriches our historical understanding of South Asia, ranging across the fascinating and intertwined worlds of modernizing rulers, wealthy merchants, curious scholars, utopian poets, industrious peasants and skilled artisans. Bringing together socio-economic and political structures, warfare, techno-scientific innovations, knowledge production and transfer of ideas, this book forces us to rethink the reasons behind the emergence of the modern world.''

This presentation deals with the rising role of victim in  criminal trials with special focus on India. It attempts to explain the factors which trial court judges must consider while passing sentence in criminal cases and awarding compensation to victims of crime.

Le interdipendenze del sistema globale e la Rete come sua espressione e strumento espongono il soggetto a un overload simbolico e informativo che, a fronte della crisi dei legami tradizionali, destabilizza le sicurezze e incrementa la domanda di identità. La capacità del Web di favorire autonarrazioni e autorappresentazioni individuali e collettive orienta la fruizione dei media in questa direzione. Priva del supporto di un’adeguata mediazione sociale e culturale, la costruzione dell’identità alimenta così l’autoreferenzialità di un soggetto che produce, riceve o gestisce informazione senza estendere l’esperienza “al di là del proprio sé”, non riuscendo pertanto a sfruttare il potenziale conoscitivo e relazionale dei nuovi media.
I modelli interpretativi del pensiero critico della società di massa ritornano attuali in questo contesto, indicando la crisi della soggettività nell’età tecnocratica come un problema allo stesso tempo etico e antropologico, che esige il ricorso a operazioni di tipo cognitivo e conoscitivo per riattivare nei soggetti la capacità di elaborare e di gestire l’esperienza condizionata dalla fruizione mediale.
Con questa finalità, le pratiche narrative e l’esperienza artistica sono qui assunte come paradigmi alternativi al paradigma informazionale, in quanto capaci di dar luogo a un distanziamento dal piano della comunicazione tecnologicamente mediata necessario a riaffermare il primato dell’alterità e della relazione nei processi comunicativi e a riabilitare una soggettività morale in grado di comprendere, relazionarsi e agire in una società complessa e altamente informatizzata.

Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1966 as a postmodern rendition of Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark (1603). Through the exploration of postmodern themes like identity crisis, existentialism, absurdism, distortion of space and time, search for meaning and so on and so forth, this paper attempts to problematize the identities of Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. With the world grappling with the repercussions the two world wars had on everything they once strongly believed in, Stoppard's remarkable craftsmanship as a playwright gives a new lease of life to the early seventeenth century Shakespearean drama, while at the same time making it inordinately relevant to the late twentieth century audience. However, the identity crisis experienced by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Stoppard's play, its causes and probable implications remain the primary focus of the paper.

The book examines little known and forgotten writings by Magnus Hirschfeld, the influential sexologist who is best known today for his homosexual activism, transgender work and founding of the world's first Institute of Sexual Science in 1919. It shows how violence impacted on queer lives around 1900, but also reveals that homosexual rights politics were haunted from the beginning by racism, colonial brutality, and gender violence.

Published in 2017 by Temple University Press in its Sexuality Series. Winner of a Knowledge Unlatched award, the book is available Open Access: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=628406;keyword=heike%20bauer

Marriage practices are evolving in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a result of modernity’s impact on its political, economic, and social structures.  Young Iranians are in direct contact with these structures that define them.  Autonomy, rationality, and individualism are notions of modernity that directly affect marriage, therefore, their beliefs and practices concerning marriage expose the extent to which they grasp tradition or embrace modernity.  Through a qualitative study that involves participant observation and collection of in-depth narratives from young, unmarried Iranians living in urban cities in Iran, I examine the unique Iranian encounter with the subjective modern. 
Existing ethnographic studies rarely delve into contemporary narratives about marriage.  This study discovers that young Iranians yearn for an authentic experience of modern life that combines tradition, family, rationality, and individualism.  Rather than viewing this collaboration of values as a bifurcation, young Iranians embrace a unique hybrid reconciling the modern with tradition.

This book is a cultural history of the processes by which Sydney became a modern city between the 1890s and the late 1920s. It details the activities of the entrepreneurs of commercial pleasures - moving pictures, radio, gramophone records, cheap magazines, dance halls and fun fairs - and the opposition they encountered from proponents of  civilization. It tells how the people of Sydney were encouraged both to enjoy and to discipline those pleasures and how in the process they forged an identity as modern Australians and modern citizens of the world.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers.

These early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature.

Children's books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images.

A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form. Spotlighting three thematic threads - communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda - The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.

CONTENTS

Introduction Primers in Soviet Modernity: Depicting Communism for Children in Early Soviet Russia 3
Serguei Alex. Oushakine and Marina Balina

PART I: MEDIATION

Chapter one Three Degrees of Exemplary Boyhood in Boris Kustodiev’s Soviet Paradise
Helena Goscilo

Chapter two How the Revolution Triumphed: Alisa Poret’s Textbook of Cultural Iconography
Yuri Leving

Chapter three “Foto-glaz”: Children as Photo-Correspondents in Early Soviet Pioneer Magazines
Erika Wolf

Chapter four Autonomous Animals Animated: Samozveri as a Constructivist Pedagogical Cine-dispositive
Aleksandar Bošković

Chapter five The Fragile Power of Paper and Projections
Birgitte Beck Pristed

PART II: TECHNOLOGY

Chapter six From Nature to “Second Nature” and Back
Larissa Rudova

Chapter seven Autonomy and the Automaton: The Child as Instrument of Futurity
Sara Pankenier Weld

Chapter eight Spells of Materialist Magic, or Soviet Children and Electric Power
Kirill Chunikhin

Chapter nine “Do It All Yourself!” Teaching Technological Creativity during Soviet Industrialization
Maria Litovskaya

Chapter ten The Camel and the Caboose: Viktor Shklovsky’s Turksib and the Pedagogy of Uneven Development
Michael Kunichika

Chapter eleven Aeroplane, Aeroboat, Aerosleigh: Propelling Everywhere in Soviet Transportation
Kat Hill Reischl

PART III: POWER

Chapter twelve Spatializing Revolutionary Temporality: From Montage and Dynamism to Map and Plan
Kevin M. F. Platt

Chapter thirteen “Poor, Poor Il’ich”: Visualizing Lenin’s Death for Children
Daniil Leiderman and Marina Sokolovskaia

Chapter fourteen Young Soldiers at Play: The Red Army Soldier as Icon
Steve Norris

Chapter fifteen The Working Body and Its Prostheses: Imagining Class for Soviet Children
Alexey Golubev

Chapter sixteen Americanism: The Brave New New World of Soviet Civilization
Thomas Keenan-Dormany

Illustration Credits 525

List of Contributors 529

Index 535

The paper is an attempt to historicise and deconstruct Rabindranath Tagore's famous romantic comedy "Chirakumar Sabha"  vis-a-vis the act of self-fashioning of Bengali bhadraloks and the discursive framework of feminine subject-hood during the British rule.

Creativity and imagination are the most important ingredients for coping with post-normal times, according to Sardar.This paper looks at the way creativity itself is being transformed in the West, from the individualistic/atomistic view of Modernity towards a more contextual, collaborative, complex approach. It explores the potential and possibilities for this more participatory creativity to help go beyond the ‘‘crisis of the
future,’’and argues that the centrality of creativity must go beyond the mythology of genius and inspiration to inform philosophy, ethics, and action. Philosophical reflection and the imagination of desirable futures can emerge from a creative ethic that stresses the value of generative interactions and contexts that support creativity.

Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov developed a Theory of History to explain the invention of science fiction writing. But it may have broader implications for studies of the modern era and human psychology. This paper summarizes Asimov's theory based on his own writings and talks.

What might the contemporary performing body look like when it seeks to communicate and to cultivate the need to live well within the natural environment, whether the context of that living well is framed and set upon either by long-standing cultural traditions or by diverse modernizing forces over time? The Singapore performance and visual artist Tang Da Wu has engaged with a present and a region fractured by the predations of unacceptable cultural norms – the consequences of colonial modernity or the modern nation state taking on imperial pretensions – and the subsumption of Singapore society under capitalist modernization. Tang's performing body both refuses the diminution of time to the present, as is the wont of the forces he engages with, and undertakes interventions by sometimes elusive and ironic means – unlike some overdetermined contemporary performance art – that reject the image of the modernist 'artist as hero'. Part of the cause for this distinctive art committed to historicity and a deliberate ordinariness is that artistic communication to him means provoking self-reflexive thought rather than immediate action. Over the years this has resulted in collaborative artistic workshops, in which he has imaginatively transferred art making from his body to the realm of ordinary people. These workshops become his particular extension of the neo-avant-garde's breaching of art's infrastructures.

The Ifá literary corpus is the associated aesthetic and cultural poetry
chanted by the priests of the deity. Ifá is the central god in the Yorùbá
religious pantheon and the warehouse of indigenous philosophy among
the Yoruba. The process of knowledge production in most societies derives largely from the cultural foundations. However, the centrality of the form of cultural production speaks volumes as to how the Yorùbá generate and diffuse knowledge. There is therefore a dynamic connection between cultural and philosophical provocations in evolving a culturally-bound epistemology. This paper is based on a content analysis of purposively selected portions of Ifá verses sourced from primary and secondary sources. The primary sources emanate from interactions with Ifá scholars and practitioners, while the secondary sources are from related scholarly materials. The analysis benefits first from the researcher’s location as a member of the Yorùbá source culture, and from the postulations of earlier scholars, especially Abimbola (1972, 1979, 2005, 2016). The paper suggests that the continued relevance of the tenets of Ifá corpus attests to the enduring brilliance of indigenous templates. The paper becomes a strategic exploration, especially since the spread of Ifá religious practice transcends Yorùbá land and is actively practiced in the Diaspora. The paper suggests that the continued relevance of the tenets of Ifá corpus attests to the enduring brilliance of indigenous templates. The paper will explicate the significance of Ifá religious poetry and corpus in generating the Yorùbá episteme in the global knowledge economy.
Keywords: Ifá, Yoruba, knowledge production, religious poetry, modernity

Alternative healing, including spiritual healing, unconventional, traditional/folk, and complementary medical treatments, is an increasingly relevant health-care resource in contemporary health-care systems, and a broad, constantly changing, and heterogeneous field of medical pluralism. Some suggestions for classifying spiritual healing as presented in the academic and gray literature are summarized and discussed. The findings are interpreted in terms of the paradigm of alternative modernities. In the direction of, but also in addition to, this paradigm, magic is introduced as a concept to denote certain highly ambiguous occurrences in the alternative modern. Magic is still very much alive and not easy to identify merely as a counterpart of rational, knowledge generating, disembodying modernity. In this setting, spiritual healing might be seen as a form of magical self-care. Magic is neither modern nor traditional nor irrational per se, but has to be contextualized and described in terms of characteristics like holistic diagnosis, interpersonal congruence, the imaginations of agency, and efficacy.