Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Oracle in the City: BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHIES

The Oracle in the City: BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHIES Along with the process of cultural globalization, there have emerged various tribalisms, through which many social actors are rediscovering their sense of life and activating mechanisms of identity and memory. At the moment when the idea of the national is diminishing because of the new political and economic order of the free market, violent manifestations of racism have increased, and so has the defense of the “proper.” Advances in technology are making unsuspected things possible: time and space—long thought to be irreducible—are bending to human understanding through virtual universes. A world in which there is already secular competence in defi ning the social meanings of life is seeing offers of salvation, healing, and happiness arising from all sides. Old and new magico-religious practices are setting themselves in opposition to Western rationalism, presently in crisis. Today, at the end of the millennium, belief is being established as something more than a crutch to help people bear uncertainty. The necessary discussion of the aspects, beyond the economic, that are rapidly reconfiguring societies in a globalized and fragmented world demands an analysis that does not rely on apocalyptic images or succumb to domesticating promises of development at the cost of social http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Social Text Duke University Press

The Oracle in the City: BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHIES

Reguillo, Rossana
Social Text , Volume 22 (4 81) – Dec 1, 2004
Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/the-oracle-in-the-city-beliefs-practices-and-symbolic-geographies-snXrcxe8Y8

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2004 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0164-2472
eISSN
1527-1951
DOI
10.1215/01642472-22-4_81-35
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Along with the process of cultural globalization, there have emerged various tribalisms, through which many social actors are rediscovering their sense of life and activating mechanisms of identity and memory. At the moment when the idea of the national is diminishing because of the new political and economic order of the free market, violent manifestations of racism have increased, and so has the defense of the “proper.” Advances in technology are making unsuspected things possible: time and space—long thought to be irreducible—are bending to human understanding through virtual universes. A world in which there is already secular competence in defi ning the social meanings of life is seeing offers of salvation, healing, and happiness arising from all sides. Old and new magico-religious practices are setting themselves in opposition to Western rationalism, presently in crisis. Today, at the end of the millennium, belief is being established as something more than a crutch to help people bear uncertainty. The necessary discussion of the aspects, beyond the economic, that are rapidly reconfiguring societies in a globalized and fragmented world demands an analysis that does not rely on apocalyptic images or succumb to domesticating promises of development at the cost of social

Journal

Social Text – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2004

There are no references for this article.