Chastity or procreation? Models of sanctity for Byzantine laymen during the Iconoclastic and Post-Iconoclastic period

This article presents evidence for married saints, which can be dated to the early ninth century, and compares such material with hagiographical data about chaste laymen from the tenth century. This approach makes it possible to define more clearly the different concepts of sanctity that were current at these times and thus to gauge the changes that occurred during the intervening years. The article concludes with a brief discussion of possible reasons for the changes in the discourse about sainthood that set the eighth and early ninth centuries apart from both the preceding and the following periods

Environmental governance in the EU

The goal-directed interventions typical of EU environmental management strategies are increasingly taking place alongside a new network governance approach. While much of what is called ‘new governance’ is little more than old wine being poured into new bottles, nevertheless there is some evidence of change, even if it is difficult to pin down in concrete cases. The new approach involves making use of the principle of partnership and shared responsibility and of new instruments for environmental policy (NIEP). The promotion of sustainable development provides the organising framework within which this new approach is situated. The development of a new mode of governance at the EU level is leading to a new process of governing. This throws up the problem of relating new models of governance to methods and practices of traditional government. Even if this problem could be solved, the fact remains that the environment is also a normative political issue, that it, it is a ‘wicked’ problem. As such, the EU will continue to find that, despite its new approach, environmental governability will remain difficult

Risk management and managerial efficiency in Chinese banks: a network DEA framework

Risk Management in Chinese banks has traditionally been the Cinderella of its internal functions. Political stricture and developmental imperative have often overridden standard practice of risk management resulting in large non-performing loan (NPL) ratios. One of the stated aims of opening up the Chinese banks to foreign strategic investment is the development of risk management functions. In recent years NPL ratios have declined through a mixture of recovery, asset management operation and expanded balance sheets. However, the training and practice of risk managers remain second class compared with foreign banks operating in China. This paper evaluates bank performance using a Network DEA approach where an index of risk management practice and an index of risk management organisation are used as intermediate inputs in the production process. The two indices are constructed from a survey of risk managers in domestic banks and foreign banks operating in China. The use of network DEA can aid the manager in identifying the stages of production that need attention

Arbitrage bounds and the time series properties of the discount on UK closed-end mutual funds

In a dataset of weekly observations over the period since 1990, the discount on UK closed-end mutual funds is shown to be nonstationary, but reverting to a nonzero long run mean. Although the long run discount could be explained by factors like management expenses etc., its short run �uctuations are harder to reconcile with an arbitrage-free equilibrium. In time series terms, there is evidence of long memory in discounts consistent with a bounded random walk. This conclusion is supported by explicit nonlinearity tests, and by results which suggest the behaviour of the discount is perhaps best represented by one of the class of Smooth-Transition Autoregressive (STAR) models

The Big Society: a socio-theological perspective

The response of the Churches to the Government’s espousal of The Big Society has been somewhat guarded. The fear is that it may simply be an attempt to shift responsibility for social care from government to civil society. While the Churches (and the Abrahamic faiths generally) set great store by community and mutual obligation, there remains an unresolved tension between social action and the need to act in accordance with theological principle – as the Catholic Care case demonstrates. The problem is ultimately one of clashing rights

The rhetoric of antiquity: politico-religious propaganda in the Nestorian stele of Chang'an

This article proposes a new reading of the Nestorian stele of Chang’an, a Christian monument from the ancient Chinese capital dating from the eighth century AD, which covers the history of Nestorianism in China from its introduction in 635 to the date of its erection. Since its (re-) discovery by western missionaries in the 17th century this document has been repeatedly translated and studied as a witness for an early Christian presence in China, also with a view to legitimise Christian missionary activity in China. In turn its authenticity was called in question by enlightenment critics like Voltaire. This article acknowledges the authenticity of the document but points out that the content of the stele cannot be understood narrowly from a western ‘History of Christianity’ angle. Rather, it must be seen as a Chinese religious document with its own specific rhetoric using official terminology and concepts recognisable in the context of mainstream imperial religious policy. A significant insight in this context is that many of the Chinese concepts used in the stele to explain Christian teaching are not originally Christian, but were previously related to other religions, including Buddhism and Zoroastrianism

A discovery of meaning: the case of C. G. Jung’s house dream

Jung’s work is a serious attempt to engage psychology with ‘meaning’, comparable with narrative psychology, though the two emerged in different cultural and historical settings. Whereas narrative psychologists typically study autobiographical stories, Jung studied images such as appearing in dreams and myths. This study turns the question on Jung, examining a dream that Jung had regarded as the birth moment of his ‘collective unconscious’ theory. The dream’s contents vary when retold after many years in ways that mirror the interim development of his theory. Representations of the dream as a biographical event in others’ writings reflect contrasting attitudes towards him. His use of the dream’s image as heuristic in the dissemination of his theory is counterweighted by the dream’s effect on him as a poetic image. The psychological function of the image for Jung is considered

Human souls as consubstantial sons of God: the Heterodox anthropology of Leontius of Jerusalem

In his treatise Contra Nestorianos Leontius of Jerusalem refers to the human soul as “divine inbreathing”, which he understands as a consubstantial emanation from God. This paper argues that Leontius was confronted with the Nestorian claim that a composition between an uncreated and a created entity is impossible and that he refuted this claim by arguing that the soul is divine and that the composition of a human soul with a human body is therefore a strict parallel for the incarnation. One of Leontius’ starting points was the traditional view that Adam’s soul was endowed with the Holy Spirit and not merely with a derivative grace. This model had the advantage that it located “God” in the human being but the disadvantage that this presence remained extrinsic to the human compound. To make it function as a precedent for the Incarnation Leontius substituted the Son for the Spirit and reduced the human nature to the body thereby indicating that the soul must be equated with the divine Son. In order to distinguish the case of Christ from that of Adam and other human beings he employed the Biblical motif of the “pledge”, which was traditionally used to contrast the partial spiritual endowment of the believers in this world with their complete spiritual endowment in the world to come but which he now applied to Adam and Christ. This permitted him to claim that in Adam the Son was only partially present while in Christ he was present completely. Thus he conceptualised the Incarnation not as the composition of the divine Word with a human nature consisting of body and soul but as a composition of the divine Word as soul and a human body. Consequently the divine component of traditional Christology could no longer be given a satisfactory role in the salvation of humankind. One reason for this shift, it is argued in this paper, was a too great dependence on the conceptual framework of his Nestorian opponent whose focus had been on the endowment of the human being Jesus with the Holy Spirit, who thus assumed a crucial role in the incarnation. Leontius accepted this framework as well as the Nestorian custom to see the difference between the Spirit in Jesus and the Spirit in other human beings in quantitative terms, and merely modified it by identifying the Holy Spirit with the Son on the one hand and with the soul on the other. However, it is suggested in this paper, Leontius may have believed in the divinity and timelessness of the soul independently of his Nestorian opponent. His interpretation of Philippians 2:6-7 suggests that he was a latter-day Origenist who could express his ideas more freely than his forebears because the political circumstances of the early seventh century made enforcement of orthodoxy impossible in the Eastern provinces

Artists, art worlds and studios: a research note from Wales

This research note draws from ethnographic research on artistic practice in postdevolution Wales. More specifically it draws from observations, interviews and field notes gathered during encounters with artists ‘in-studio’. The research note explores the complex engagement between social researcher, biography and charismatic artist as a dialogic enterprise. This is then discussed in relation to the notions of art-worlds, the creative self and charisma as an accomplished and embodied social fact

Identity commitments in personal stories of mental illness on the Internet

The Internet augments the informational flows that organize biographies in late modernity. Sufferers of bipolar disorder (manic depression) may turn to the Internet for accessible information, to learn about others’ experiences and impart their own knowledge. Personal accounts posted in the public domain become themselves part of those informational flows, and thus acquire a dual life at a boundary between private and public domains. This poses certain challenges for the investigation of computer-mediated autobiographical telling, which are identified in this paper and negotiated in an analysis of downloaded personal accounts of bipolar disorder. Two of the stories are selected for a close look. Story 1 tells about achieving long-term remission through personal resolve and psychological alternatives to medication. Story 2 tells about becoming able to talk about the illness through the achievement of a social identity as ‘manic depressive’. The stories’ similarities, differences, and comparability with the other texts are discussed with a view to theorizing how such texts position their implied author in the illness experience. Building upon Bakhtin’s idea of a text’s plan and its realization, a concept of ‘identity commitments’ as textual properties is proposed