bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The sacrifice and the reciprocity-programme in religious rituals and in man's everyday interactions
Authors: Høgh-Olesen Henrik 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe sacrifice is a ritualized central structure in religious practice worldwide, but from a psychological point of view it may be much more than that. On the basis of cross-cultural, comparative, and experimental data, where 162 strangers are arranged to meet in twos without knowing that their interaction is being observed, it is argued that the sacrifice is not first and foremost a religious concept, let alone a behavioural structure primarily related to the man-god relation, but rather a key factor in man's sociality and a general evolutionary interaction unit based on a cognitive reciprocity-programme well known in animal life, from sperm whales and vampire bats to higher primates and ourselves. Furthermore, it is suggested that in our species the religious sacrifice becomes a ritualized sacred action, because this act symbolically highlights the natural reciprocity relations that have to prevail among men, if a society is to exist at all.
The making of peculiar artifacts: Living kind, artifact and social order in the Turkana sacrifice
Authors: Liénard Pierre 
Published: October 2006

AbstractUsing data collected among the Turkana of Kenya, I investigate specific configurations of actions found in sacrifices.I argue that Turkana sacrifice has specific cognitive effects and that those can be explained in terms of the activation of specific cognitive mechanisms. Turkana sacrifice elicits assumptions about living things and artifacts. It does that in a particular way: Living kinds are used as tools and artifacts, as if endowed with an essence. The systematic combination of such manipulations with ordinary action scripts, reoriented to build ritual sequences, and the display of social orders has important effects for participants' cognition.
Role of Context in the Recall of Counterintuitive Concepts
Authors: Gonce Lauren , Upal M. Afzal , Slone D. Jason , Tweney D. Ryan 
Published: October 2006

Abstract
Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have been used to explain the retention and transmission of such beliefs. To resolve some inconsistencies in the literature concerning counterintuitiveness, we conducted three experiments to study the effect of context on recall. Five types of items were used: intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, maximally counterintuitive, minimally counterintuitive with contradictory context, and intuitive with contradictory context. Items were presented with context or without context and participants were asked to recall them. Maximally counterintuitive concepts were found to have the poorest recall in both immediate and delayed recall conditions and regardless of the presence or absence of context. No significant differences were found in the recall rates of minimally counterintuitive concepts and intuitive concepts, although delayed recall affected minimally counterintuitive concepts less than intuitive concepts, suggesting the possibility of differential "fitness." Presence of contradictory context was found to be able to change minimally counterintuitive items into the functional equivalents of intuitive items (and vice versa). When relevant context was present, minimally counterintuitive concepts were recalled significantly better than intuitive concepts, which is consistent with the findings of Barrett & Nyhof (2001). For items presented as lists, intuitive items were recalled better, consistent with the findings of Norenzayan & Atran (2004b). Thus, context was the key element affecting recall and the discrepancy among prior studies (and the much earlier studies of Bartlett, 1932) was resolved. The results imply that no "item-centered" explanation of the formation and transmission of religious concepts can be adequate in itself. Instead, the nature of the surrounding context must be included in any such account.
Culture, Brain Transplants and Implicit Theories of Identity
Authors: Mahalingam Ramaswami , Rodriguez Joel 
Published: October 2006

AbstractUsing a brain transplant paradigm (BT), we examined the role of culture and status (privileged group membership) on beliefs about social and personal identity among Indians (Brahmins and Dalits, N = 202) and American participants (N = 114). Participants were presented a vignette about a hypothetical BT between members of two different ethnic groups and asked the following two questions: (a) whether a BT would change how the recipient would act; (b) whether the BT would change the social identity of the recipient. Americans believed that the BT recipient would act as the ethnicity of the donor. By contrast, Brahmin participants believed that a Brahmin recipient of a Dalit (formerly treated as "untouchables") brain would act like a Dalit but a Dalit who received a BT from a Brahmin would not act like a Brahmin. Both Americans and Indians believed that the social identity (the caste, race or ethnic identity) of a person would not be changed by a brain transplant. The role of culture and social status in affecting various implicit theories of identities are discussed.
Agent and Instrument in Judgements of Ritual Efficacy
Authors: Sørensen Jesper , Liénard Pierre , Feeny Chelsea 
Published: October 2006

Abstract
Justin Barrett and E. Thomas Lawson (2001) were among the first to operationalize experimentally a traditional topic of anthropology: 'ritual'. Using a similar experimental protocol, the authors further investigate the cognitive underpinning of representations of ritual actions. Participants were asked to judge the likelihood of success of variants of a series of prototypical ritual actions. In line with Barrett and Lawson's findings, it was expected that specific intuitions would guide participants' judgements about the well-formedness of ritual actions; that representation of superhuman agency would be pivotal in those judgements; and that the role of the ritual agent would be conceived as fundamental. The present study was particularly focused on the effect of changing Agent or Instruments in descriptions of a set of prototypical ritual actions. Following a second line of inquiry, contexts in which the prototypical actions were set were systematically manipulated. It was expected that this would affect patterns of answers. No such contextual effect was found, but the study revealed significant differences in how participants appraised different changes affecting Agent and Instrument. The authors finally speculate that specific systems dedicated to the processing of information about Agent and Instrument might explain these findings.
A Burning Desire: Steps Toward an Evolutionary Psychology of Fire Learning
Authors: Fessler Daniel 
Published: October 2006

AbstractAlthough fire is inherently dangerous, leading many animals to avoid it, for most of human history, mastery of fire has been critical to survival. Humans can therefore be expected to possess evolved psychological mechanisms dedicated to controlling fire. Because techniques for starting, maintaining, and using fire differ across ecosystems, the postulated adaptations can be expected to take the form of domain-specific learning mechanisms rather than fixed behavioral templates. After outlining features that such mechanisms are predicted to possess, I review the literature on fire play in western children, finding that attraction to and interest in fire is widespread, experimentation with fire often begins in early childhood, and fire play typically peaks in late childhood or early adolescence. The latter aspect stands in contrast to results from a survey of ethnographers which reveals that, in societies in which fire is routinely used as a tool, children typically master control of fire by middle childhood, at which point interest in fire is already declining. This suggests that fire learning is retarded in western children, arguably due to patterns of fire use in modern societies that are atypical when viewed from a broader cross-cultural perspective. Together with the fact that western entertainment media provide a distorted portrait of the properties of fire, this pattern, while limiting the value of naturalistic observations of fire learning in the West, nevertheless has the benefit of providing a strong testing ground for future experiments exploring the universality of the psychology underlying the control of fire.
Cultural Understandings of “Religion”: The Hermeneutical Context of Teaching Religious Studies in North America
Authors: Murphy Tim 
Published: October 2006

AbstractWhen students come into the classroom, they have a prefigured, albeit deeply implicit, notion of what “religion” is and what it is not. They see religion as private, inner, and personal, as distinct from “politics” and “economics.” This prefigured conception of religion is, in this author's view, one of the principle obstacles to teaching Religious Studies in an empirical, cross-cultural, comparative manner. Given the overall structure of the cultural configuration within which students think about and live out “religion,” i.e., that it is private, utilitarian, and simply an obvious given to them, how can we introduce theory into the Religious Studies classroom? The answer given here is that if we use language-based theoretical models of culture such as structuralism and hermeneutics, we do better, in the main, in applying that theory to the communicative context of the classroom than trying to teach theory directly to our undergraduate students. This paper offers an analysis, using such language-based theories, of those cultural conditions which our students bring into the classroom and which shape their “native” understanding of the category “religion,” as well as some suggestions as to how to cope with it in order to teach Religious Studies more effectively.
The Study of Religion as Theorienschmiede for Cultural Studies: A Test of Cognitive Science and Religious-Economic Modes of Access
Authors: Koch Anne 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article proposes understanding an important task of the Study of Religion as a monitoring system in the neuroscience sense, i.e. a higher-order-level of evaluation and reflexivity. The Study of Religion in the context of several specialized cultural studies approaches reflects on these approaches and on how they frame a discourse. These scientific and popular discourses as well form our contemporary world view. By its self-critical dissolution from theology and its intercultural focus the Study of Religion is specialized in differentiality in cultural systems as holistic entities and on how they generate normative attitudes. The fruits of this suggested self-understanding as monitoring are demonstrated in discussing three perspectives from the anthropology of religion, cognitive or aesthetic ritual theory (McCauley & Lawson), and the economics of religion (Alles)—all dealing with the same piece of fieldwork from Harvey Whitehouse.
Scientific Revolution and Religious Conversion: A Closer Look at Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Paradigm-Shift
Authors: Drønen Tomas Sundnes 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article seeks to show that Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm-shift can be used as a methodological tool in the study of religious conversion. The same way that the scientist is limited to work within a scientific paradigm, the believer can be said to exercise religion within a theological paradigm. And as anomaly can lead to science crises and a change of worldview, anomaly within the horizon of the believer can lead to existential crisis and religious reorientation. A reservation towards the application of Kuhn's theory on religious conversion is, however, proposed by the author who does not see that different worldviews necessarily are incommensurable. Religious conversion is more often than not a reorientation that combines (what Kuhn's theory would consider as) incompatible differences.
Die Gegenkraft und ihre Geschichte: Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck und der Bürgerkrieg
Authors: Missfelder Jan-Friedrich 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe article explores the relationship between the German historian Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006) and the Germanjurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). It focuses especially on how Koselleck's doctoral thesis ,,Kritik und Krise" (1959) approaches Schmitt's 1938 study on Thomas Hobbes (1938). Both scholars are contextualized in the intellectual and academic milieu of Heidelberg in the early 1950s.
Dr. Eduard Lasker – sein Stammbaum und Familienumfeld: Ein genealogischer Beitrag zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte
Authors: Dill Richard W. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractOn the basis of recently (re)discovered documents, the paper discusses the family tree of the Jewish Lasker dynasty, originating from Lask in Poland, formerly Prussia. The common forefather of all Laskers was Rabbi Meier Hindels, who lived around 1700. In Germany, the most successful of his descendants was Dr. Eduard Lasker (1829-1884). He was a lawyer, co-founder of the National Liberal party, and in his lifetime the most conspicuous parliamentary opponent to Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Germany owes him a considerable part of its present day legal structures in criminal, civil and public law. His younger brother Moritz/Morris (1840-1916) settled in Texas and became a prominent figure both in business and society. The Lasker family branch that he established in the United States is still flourishing today and has produced a number of personalities of public renown. While visiting his brother, Eduard Lasker died in New York in January 1884. Edward Lasker (1885-1981), a prominent US-based chess champion, descended from another family branch. One of his nieces, Anita Wallfisch-Lasker, wrote an autobiography that describes her ordeal as a member of the camp orchestra at Auschwitz.
,,Der Dichter versteht sehr gut das symbolische Idiom der Religion": Über Heines kritisch-produktives Verhältnis zu religiösen Traditionen
Authors: Kruse Joseph A. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractHeine is one of Germany's most renowned poets. His Jewish heritage and his Christian baptism have informed both his life's work as well as its reception. He was an expert and a passionate reader of the Bible. Despite his criticism of the official system of churches and religious communities, he greatly appreciated religion and its symbolic language, which speaks especially to the poet – even in its silences.
A Lifeline in Time – Non-retroactivity and Continuing Violations under the ECHR
Authors: Buyse Antoine 
Published: September 2006

AbstractThe protective shield of a human rights treaty in principle only works once it has entered into force. But what about the frequent problem of human rights violations that occurred or started before that time; can one complain about those on the international level? In other words, what are the limitations of the ratione temporis jurisdiction of supervisory human rights mechanisms? This article explores this question in the context of general public international law through a case study of the European Convention on Human Rights. It argues that the European case law's variations on principles of international law can be explained by the special nature of human rights treaties.
Modernizing the Nationality Exception: Is the Non-extradition of Residents a Better Rule?
Authors: Deen-Racsmány Zsuzsanna 
Published: September 2006

AbstractThe equation of residents with nationals as recently envisaged under the European Arrest Warrant is – at least on paper – no novelty in international extradition. In addition, its predicted positive influence on the chances of rehabilitation of offenders provides strong moral-theoretical support for further modernizing the nonextradition of nationals in this manner. Yet, before this solution can be followed – explicitly or by implication – in other contexts, it must be considered whether international law permits states to expand the nationality exception commonly provided for in extradition treaties in this manner.The author assumes this task. She first reviews international precedents in search of a rule of customary international law on the extension of this exemption to residents. Subsequently, she identifies the norms of international law against which the limits of such a new rule must be set. She concludes with suggestions for appropriate ways to modernize the nationality exception along the lines of the rehabilitation argument.
International Human Rights and National Legislatures – Conflict or Balance?
Authors: Vedsted-Hansen Jens , Koch Ida Elisabeth 
Published: September 2006

AbstractThe complex and often sensitive interrelationship between international human rights obligations and national governments and legislatures is the subject of debate in the Nordic countries. Criticism has been voiced against the dynamic interpretation of human rights norms and the limitations on legislatures resulting from the judicial activities at the international level, in particular the European Court of Human Rights. Against this background, this article discusses the interdependence between democratic legitimacy and the protection of fundamental rights, as illustrated by recent ECtHR case law. While the need for democracy to be capable of defending itself has been recognised, the ECtHR has emphasised the impact of the rule of law in the context of restrictions of rights as well as the responsibility of domestic authorities to exercise their legislative and other competences as a precondition for being granted the margin of appreciation. The distinction between civil and political rights and socio-economic rights has had significant influence on the discussion of human rights, democracy and the division of powers, and the animosity against entrusting power to settle legal disputes to judicial bodies is particularly strong with regard to socio-economic rights. Therefore, this traditional perception of the normative character of the two sets of human rights is being questioned, and the indispensable role of social, economic and cultural rights in developing stable and sustainable democracies is illustrated by reference to theory and practice applying an integrated approach to the various types of rights. The article concludes with some reflections on the impact of the criticism of dynamic human rights on the future protection of socio-economic rights, and the dilemmas inherent in domestic implementation of evolving international norms.
The Power to Prosecute: the Special Court for Sierra Leone from a Defence Perspective
Authors: Knowles Phoebe 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is a unique attempt by the international community to respond to conflict via a hybrid, in situ tribunal. In the Court's creation and operation key policy, judicial and institutional decisions- innovative elements of the SCSL structure, have impacted adversely on the rights of the accused and the broader social and justice-oriented obligations towards Sierra Leone and the international community. This paper considers the Court's hybridity, and questions the resulting opportunity afforded for participation by Sierra Leone in the post-conflict process; the Court's in situ nature and witness protection measures that may act to unnecessarily restrict the accused's right to a fair and public trial; the Court's interpretation of its jurisdiction over "those bearing greatest responsibility"; the noveland perhaps premature inclusion of the crime of child combatants; and finally, institutional decisions over the Defence Office and the capacity for equality of arms.
The International Criminal Court and Universal Jurisdiction
Authors: Abass Ademola 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article examines whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) can exercise universal jurisdiction. In particular, the author responds to the argument that the ICC can exercise universal jurisdiction on the basis of delegated criminal jurisdiction and the aut dedere aut judicare principle, and challenges the view that the trial of nationals of non-parties by the ICC neither creates obligations for such states nor contravenes the Monetary Gold principle. The author argues that although some Rome Statute crimes have universal character, this does not automatically entitle the ICC to exercise jurisdiction over non-party nationals outside such limited universal jurisdiction as may be conferred on the Court through the Security Council referral.
Drawing the Boundaries of Mens Rea in the Jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Authors: Badar Mohamed Elewa 
Published: October 2006

AbstractEven though more than a decade has passed since the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the law of the most fundamental concept in international criminal law – mens rea – remains unsettled. Through its jurisprudence, the Yugoslavia Tribunal has made enormous efforts to assign different degrees of mens rea for different categories of crimes under its Statute. The present study is an attempt to clarify several issues with regard to the law of mens rea as developed in the case law of the Yugoslavia Tribunal. Among these issues are the following: what precisely is to be understood by the terms "specific intent", "special intent", "dolus specialis", or "surplus intent"? Similarly, what are the precise meanings of the terms "deliberately", "intention", "intent", "intentionally", "wilful or wilfully", "knowledge", and "wanton" as provided for in the ICTY Statute or as employed by the Chambers within its judgments.
Resolving Financial Distress: Informal Reorganization in The Netherlands as a Beacon for Policy Makers in the CIS and CEE/SEE Regions?
Authors: Kuijl Hans , Adriaanse Jan 
Published: October 2006

AbstractIn times of economic decline, increased attention is devoted to companies in financial difficulties. Partly as a result of this basic fact, many countries are currently working (under pressure) to improve existing insolvency legislation. This seems to be largely fuelled—as is the case in The Netherlands—by a strong desire to prevent bankruptcies as much as possible.Statutory legislation aimed at the deferment (or remission) of debt payments is introduced or relaxed in order to provide a fresh start for insolvent companies. An alternative possibility—in the form of informal reorganization—seems often to have been overlooked by legislators. This type of reorganization, therefore, is the focal point in this article.As far as the stimulation of rescue operations is concerned, the authors conclude that legislators must particularly focus their attention on informal reorganization. The thought is that such a policy focus for (member states in) the EU may also be of relevance (in whole or in part) for countries in the CIS/CEE/SEE regions.