The rise of religious fundamentalism in different parts of the world in recent years and its association with terrorism has led to renewed interest in the nature of religion and its compatibility with Western institutions. Much of the focus of this new interest has contrasted religion and science as systems of knowledge. This book also emphasizes the difference between religion and science as means for understanding causal relationships; but it focuses much more heavily on the challenge religious extremism poses for liberal democratic institutions. The treatment contains a discussion of human psychology; describes the salient characteristics of all religions; and contrasts religion and science as systems of thought. Historical sketches are used to establish a link between modernity and the use of the human capacity for reasoning to advance human welfare. The book describes the conditions under which democratic institutions can advance human welfare; and the nature of constitutional rights as protectors of individual freedoms. Extremist religions are shown to pose a threat to liberal democracy; a threat that has implications for immigration and education policies and the definition of citizenship.
#1749362 in Books imusti 2015-09-15Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x 1.60 x 6.00l; .0 #File Name: 0520287037499 pagesUniversity of California Press
Review
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Great social historyBy E. N. AndersonThis major work opens up a whole world of illegal and semi-legal practices in Qing China: wife-selling; polyandry; prostitution; and various intermediate situations. Dr. Sommer shows that a combination of desperate poverty and a very skewed sex ratio (due to selective infanticide or neglect) led to many arrangements to share women or to move women from men unable to support them to men who could. Life was horribly difficult for anyone less than affluent; and sickness or accident could submerge a person rapidly. Many men became "bare sticks;" unable to find or keep any woman at all. Many who did have wives were reduced to selling them because of misfortune. However; there were interesting con games attending this--men who tricked husbands into selling their wives; and then prostituted them; men who sold their wives and then brought them right back; to cheat the buyer out of the sale price--a practice known as "flying a falcon" (because the falcon returns to the falconer). Women had a surprising amount of agency in all this. They could refuse to be sold; cause endless trouble; go home to their parents; or go to law (at least if their natal families were supportive). Sometimes; a woman flown as a falcon decided she liked the intended victim better than her husband; and refused to return. All these not-very-legal procedures often led to fights that ended in murders--producing the most dramatic of the case files that Dr. Sommer draws on. He has gone through hundreds of complicated and difficult files to write this book.Dr. Sommer stresses the poverty and desperation of the people in question; but some of the characters involved were less charitable. A magistrate referred to wife-sellers and other marginal characters as "useless wastrels"--"useless" is a seriously insulting word in Chinese. Wives tended to refer to husbands that sold them as "liking to eat; but too lazy to work;" also a forceful phrase in Chinese. The world of the poor merged with the underworld; as so often happens globally.Dr. Sommer concludes that the situation was not so much one of exploiting and oppressing women as of a system that was ferociously hard on anyone unfortunate. This will be debated....What I can say is that this book is an instant classic; and a huge contribution to social history. It is also a delight to an anthropologist (like me); because of the enormous ethnographic detail in the stories and because of the light it throws on kinship and marriage; always the favorite anthropological field of enquiry.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant scholarshipBy pokeyThis is a stunning exploration of the ways marriage arrangements varied in traditional China--including the selling of one's husband for sexual or labor services -- Sommer is a brilliant scholar and his use of marriage contracts ; local histories and anecdote create a very surprising picture of the varieties of marriage in China; especially the ways the individual and marriage practices were manipulated to assist in the preservation of the family and the lineage.
