Dali is a small region on a high plateau in Southeast Asia. Its main deity; Baijie; has assumed several gendered forms throughout the area's history: Buddhist goddess; the mother of Dali's founder; a widowed martyr; and a village divinity. What accounts for so many different incarnations of a local deity? Goddess on the Frontier argues that Dali's encounters with forces beyond region and nation have influenced the goddess's transformations. Dali sits at the cultural crossroads of Southeast Asia; India; and Tibet; it has been claimed by different countries but is currently part of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Megan Bryson incorporates historical-textual studies; art history; and ethnography in her book to argue that Baijie provided a regional identity that enabled Dali to position itself geopolitically and historically. In doing so; Bryson provides a case study of how people craft local identities out of disparate cultural elements and how these local identities transform over time in relation to larger historical changes―including the increasing presence of the Chinese state.
#1960956 in Books Recep Senturk 2005-11-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .90 x 6.00l; 1.35 #File Name: 0804752079331 pagesNarrative Social Structure Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network 610 1505
Review
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. A groundbreaking workBy Hasan GucluStarting from the seventh century; the Muslim scholars invented a new kind of science to protect the narratives about sayings; actions; or silent approvals (altogether hadiths) of the Prophet Muhammad (571-632 CE; peace be upon him) throughout the ages. They utilized and formulated basic rules for the authenticity of the hadiths; foremost by asking the simple question; whom did you hear it? These scholars analyzed not only the text of the narrative but also and even more; the chain of its transmission; i.e. who heard from whom and how reliable and trustworthy they are? Recep Senturk's book; `Narrative Social Structure; anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network; 610-1505; is a groundbreaking work on the subject and a careful of analysis of this discourse network from sociological; linguistic; statistical and humanistic angles. In his analysis; he uses the methods of not only synchronic (cross-sectional) but also diachronic (cross-temporal) social networks analysis and demonstrates that the study of both aspects mutually give rise to each other on this network extending almost a millennium in time and with over thousand scholars and ten-thousands of teacher-pupil connections. Senturk's work is going to be an excellent and yet interesting part of your sociology books collection by authors such as Harrison White; Randall Collins; Jurgen Habermas and Andrew Abbott.
