This thesis engages with the biblical archive and its animals, asking what it means to read the Bible after Jacques Derrida’s “question of the animal”, that is, critical questions directed at the characterisations, representations and utilisations of animals past and present which deem animals distinctly different to humans in order to demarcate their inferiority. At the same time, it is a critical response to Derrida’s Bible. Derrida – arguably one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century – provides a significant philosophical contribution to the question of the animal. In animal studies, the Bible is treated as a foundational legacy for concepts of the “human” and is frequently held up to blame for a misplaced human hubris. Derrida too draws on the Bible in implicit and explicit ways to underpin his critique of human/animal distinctions. Building on Derrida’s work on animality, I provide close and critical interpretations of four crucial texts of the biblical archive. I argue that these biblical texts are caught up in irreducible tensions: on the one hand, these texts depict and describe how humans and animals alike abide as finite, fellow creatures under God as a justice to come which calls for a radical similitude and solidarity; on the other hand, animals are portrayed as objects that are mastered by humans to demonstrate God’s power over the living. God’s power thus resides in a double bind – it both displaces power from humans to show them as animals, and it simultaneously provides a model for human power over animal others. In the first chapter I explore the significance of Derrida’s motifs of nakedness and shame over nakedness for his critique of human/animal distinctions, arising from his reading of Genesis. Critically continuing Derrida’s play on myths of origin, I tackle the question of the first carnivorous man, Noah, in Genesis 9 in order to show how this text can both be read as a license to enact the sovereignty of man over animals, and, how this text radically resists such a reading in God’s covenant with all life, human and non-human. Following my exploration of myths of origin, the second chapter grapples with Derrida’s notion of a deconstructed subject through his emphasis on response and responsibility. Derrida puts forward the biblical response “here I am”, as the mark of vulnerability in every relation with the other. I explore what this responsible response might mean in the context of the Book of Daniel that portrays encounters between human, nonhuman animals and God. Developing Derrida’s injunction to follow the nonhuman other, I argue that the double context of Daniel conveys two distinct visions of the concept of the political as animal: one, in which a fantasy for a harmonious domestication and cohabitation amongst rulers and their human and animal subjects is fostered under the only true ruler, a benign God; and, a collapse of such a fantasy, where rulers – human and divine – are portrayed as carnivorous, ferocious creatures who turn their subjects from pets to prey. The third chapter follows this collapse to Derrida’s critique of the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as a commandment relating only to humans and thus a detrimental Judeo-Christian legacy. Derrida draws on the story of Cain and Abel to discuss the way the killing of an animal leads to the killing of a brother. To explore questions of killability I, however, turn to the negotiations of such issues in Acts 10. In the animal vision of Acts 10, questions of clean/unclean animals are suspended and hospitality is apparently opened up between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians. I demonstrate that the universalism associated with this text refers to an exclusive human fellowship which evades the actual implications of the animal vision. Yet, I posit that there are again two ways of reading the animal vision. In the first reading the analogical resemblance set up between animals and Gentiles implies that Gentiles too become killable as “clean” and thus the animal vision allows for indiscriminate killability amongst the living in general. In the second reading the cleanness of all animals is in fact a radical redemption of animal life for fellowship, in the same way that Peter accepts the fellowship and hospitality of Gentiles. Ultimately, the category of the living and the dead draws humans and non-humans together into what I call “mortability”; that is, the capacity for death shared amongst the living in the suspension of judgement until Jesus returns. In the fourth chapter, I follow up on the suspension of judgement by analysing Derrida’s thinking of sovereignty and animality in relation to Revelation 17. Crucially, Derrida’s logic of sovereignty includes Christ as lamb, in his logos or reason of the strongest, despite its ostensible weakness as a diminutive animal. I explore this further by turning to the scene of Revelation 17 in which the Lamb is at war with the Beast and the woman riding it. Developing Derrida’s allusions to sexual difference as it relates to the question of the animal, I explore how Revelation 17 denigrates both animals and women by characterising them as the figure of evil: Rome. The logic of the animal representations sets up the divine as the good on the side of the weak in the figure of the suffering Lamb. But as the Lamb becomes a beast-like indivisible sovereignty that asserts its reason of the strongest, the figures of “evil” become the vulnerable weak victims – the animal others. Another image of Rome emerges, then, as a deconstructed sovereignty in the subjects that stand as powerless figures in the political order, namely the animals of the Roman arenas and the prostitutes of the Roman Empire. The four texts I examine abide in the ambiguous tensions of an archive that can in the end neither be presented as animal-friendly nor as straightforwardly anthropocentric. The biblical archive is a complex compendium fraught with tensions that can, with its animals, only be held in abeyance. There can be no final “ownership” proclaimed of this archive and its animals, nor can any interpretive act dis-suspend them from such an ambivalent state. These very different texts do, however, provide the material and momentum to show central and crucial instances of how the biblical archive characterises its humans, animals and gods. My analysis reveals that the very same spaces in which these characterisations might be fixed as detrimental to animal life, are where the possibilities of seeing animals radically otherwise lie.

This thesis investigates the civic life of a Balinese community in the context of ritual activities and traditions taking place in a coastal village, tracing relationships between ritual itinerary and topography, and highlighting the tensions and conflicts that have emerged between these ritual practices and recent developments in tourism. In the context of the littoral regions of Bali, the concept of the civic realm serves as a broad framework of the research which focuses on the village of Kuta. The choice of Kuta Village for this investigation was based on the following criteria: 1. the historical importance of the village, 2. its significance as a known tourist destination, and 3. its urban/coastal complexity. In order to address the relationships between these three criteria, the research adopted a mixed method approach, incorporating a range of quantitative and qualitative material. Participants in the research project are all, in various ways, stakeholders in the future of Kuta Village who are involved in the usage, monitoring and management of the beaches, including environmentalists. From the perspective of an outsider visiting Kuta Village, there seems to be little evidence of conflict between the local community’s ritual traditions and tourist activities in both the village and on the beaches. However, underlying this apparent tranquillity a rather different situation emerges, which concerns the sometimes conflicting interests of three parties; hotel companies, the community of environmental supporters, and the government. This conflict, which is manifested in disputes over claims of territorial ownership and control, is in danger of leading to long term negative impacts on the social life and beach environment. Furthermore, initial investigations of the key issues, arising from this conflict, suggests that a significant part of the problem is due to a combination of unplanned tourist development, weak management, ineffective law enforcement and the effect of beach erosion. Due to these negative impacts, and their implications on the civic life of the community, this thesis aims to initiate discussions for a revised planning and design strategy for Kuta Village in order to achieve a more balanced relationship among ecological needs, custody of the civic realm and a sustained development in tourism. Such a strategy aims, ultimately, to improve understanding of the key challenges facing the town for benefit of practitioners, planners, government bodies and academia.

This thesis argues that in order to understand more fully the engagement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the United Nations-specifically NGOs that express a religious or faith-based commitment-we must consider both their actions and the rationale behind them, the what as well as the why. To study the underlying rationale, the thesis introduces the concept of the organizational substrate, which offers a new analytical tool to draw out this undertheorized dimension of religious NGOs (Chapter 2). The substrate complements the analytical tools currently deployed by social scientists and goes beyond descriptions of organizational behavior to examine the internal rationale underpinning the behavior. The internal rationale is explored through a focused analysis of the Bahá'í International Community's United Nations Office (BIC). This organization is selected because of its reputation as a valued and effective contributor in UN fora; its seventy-year history of engagement (1945-2015); and its scriptural engagement with questions of politics and world order. The thesis also contributes to the nascent scholarship about UN-accredited religious NGOs outside of the Christian tradition. Having identified the constitutive elements of the BIC's organizational substrate, using a hermeneutic and historical approach, the thesis develops a distinct periodization of the BIC's engagement from 1945-2015. The periodization provides a historical framework (though not a historical analysis) for examining the manner in which the substrate shapes action across different historical circumstances. Each of the four historical periods offers evidence of the salience of the organizational substrate for understanding the operation of the NGO. The first period, 1945-1970 (Chapter 3) enables us to see the manner in which the substrate frames the BIC's rationale for engagement with the UN and its understanding of the UN in the context of the broader processes of civilizational, social and political evolution. In the second period, 1970-1986 (Chapter 4), the thesis demonstrates the pivotal role of Bahá'í authoritative structures in articulating, elucidating, and socializing the substrate of the organization. Between 1986 and 2008 (Chapter 5), the substrate-based analysis reveals a distinct epistemology and methodology-associated with the conception and pursuit of peace. During the final period, 2008-2015 (Chapter 6), the substrate undergirds the shift to an explicitly discursive, organic approach to engagement in UN processes, and a reconceptualization of the terms of engagement with the UN. This thesis goes beyond social scientific approaches to the study of religious actors at the UN, to demonstrate that knowledge and action require understanding of the distinct rationality of each NGO. It is by identifying and observing the operation of the organizational substrate that this pivotal and foundational element of NGO engagement at the UN comes to light.

This thesis concerns religion as a peacemaking tool in Sierra Leone. The vast majority of people in Sierra Leone consider themselves to be Christians, Muslims and / or adherents of African Traditional Religion (ATR). This thesis examines the role of religious leaders and religious communities in the peacemaking process during and after the Sierra Leone Civil War from 1991 - 2002. In previous studies about violence and religion, the role of religion in the peacemaking process has often been neglected, particularly in studies about the African continent. This study aims to fill this gap. The research is based on theoretical approaches in the field of religion and violence and religion and peace, as well as a qualitative and an empirical study in Sierra Leone comprising participant observation, interviews and data collected from archives. The thesis develops the praxis of peace based on the Sierra Leone context. It argues that since independence from Britain in 1961, subsequent governments have woefully marginalised religion. The thesis demonstrates that Christian leaders, churches, and ecumenical organisations were resources that contributed to peacemaking in Sierra Leone. Christians and their leaders influenced by ATR also led and supported the works of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Sierra Leone (TRCSL) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Christians provided leadership for truth-telling and reconciliation, relief, advocacy for peace, and confidence-building as peacemakers in action. By combining a theoretical discussion of Girard, Juergensmeyer, Schmidt, Huntington, Bowie, Johnston and others with the qualitative and empirical case study of Sierra Leone, the research adds new dimensions to the general academic debate on religion and violence, as well as religion and peacemaking, with respect to the clash of civilisations, faith-based diplomacy and other theories on religion and violence, and religion and peacemaking, in Sierra Leone.

The research is a hermeneutic-cum-semiotic approach to the study of the translatability of religious language in a secular play, using The Merchant of Venice in China as a reference. Under the ”power turn” or “political turn” in translation studies, omissions and untranslatability of religious material are often seen as the product of censorship or self-censorship in the prevalent socio-political context. But the theology of each individual translating agent is often neglected as an important contributing factor to such untranslatability. This thesis offers a comprehensive approach in tracing the hermeneutical process of the translators/directors as a reader and the situational process and semiotics of theatre translation, which altogether gives rise to the image of translated literature which in turn influences audience reception. This interdisciplinary study thus traverses the disciplines of translation studies, hermeneutics, theatre studies, and sociology. In this thesis I argue that while translation theorists under the current “sociological turn” view social factors as the overarching factors in determining translation activities and strategies, I will show how the interaction between the translator’s or the dramatist’s theology and religious values interact with the socio-cultural milieu to carve out a unique drama production. Often, as one can see from my case studies, it is the religious values of the translating agents that become the overarching factor in determining the translation product, rather than social factors. This thesis further argues that the translatability of religious discourse should be understood in a broader sense according to the seven dimensions proposed by Ninian Smart, rather than merely focusing on untranslatability as a result of semantic and linguistic differences.

No description available.

This thesis is focused on verifying in vitro cultivation techniques in micropropagation of tropical terrestrial orchid Macodes petola (Bl.) Lindl. The aim of the studies was to verify the responsiveness of the node explants of Macodes petola (Bl.) Lindl to different surface-sterilization methods and duration of sterilization time, as well as the transport of the node explants to agar medium. Node explants of Macodes petola (Bl.) Lindl were surface-sterilized with different disinfectants for different sterilization time and cultivated in primordial culture. The best results were observed by using sequential surface sterilization in ethyl alcohol (70%) and disinfectant Savo (2.5%) - ethyl alcohol being used for 15 seconds and Savo for 20 minutes.

No description available.

Most recent studies of religion and society have focussed on the period from c. 1880 to 1914, basing their investigations upon late-Victorian newspaper censuses of churchgoing. This thesis aims to study the development of religion in its economic and social context in a large northern industrial parish over a longer period of time from c. 1740 to 1914. In religious terms this period extends from the mid-eighteenth century Evangelical Revival to the decline of organised religion in the early twentieth century. In economic and social terms the period is characterised by the transformation of the parish from a semi-rural, proto-industrial society dominated by a relatively small but expanding market town, into a predominantly urban advanced industrial society dominated by a medium-sized textile manufacturing town and several smaller urban centres of textile production; supporting a wide diversity of associated industries and trades, but still containing within its boundaries sharply contrasting urban and semi-rural environments. The thesis aims to assess how religious expression within the parish of Halifax was affected by the changing economic and social environment, in particular the urban-industrial experience, and how religion helped shape the new urbanindustrial society during the period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that whilst the pessimistic view of a moribund Georgian Church of England can no longer be sustained by the Halifax evidence, the Established Church nevertheless lacked the logistical resources to respond effectively to the new urbanindustrial society as it emerged within the parish in the lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, providing an opportunity for the growth of Evangelical Nonconformity, especially Methodism. It maintains that Evangelical Nonconformity and an Anglican Church renewed by Evangelical incumbencies during the period 1790-1827 and reformed as a consequence of national legislation in the 1840s played a vital role within the expanding urban-industrial society, surviving the experience of industrialisation and urbanisation and displaying a remarkable vibrancy, despite underlying downward trends in churchgoing in the late-Victorian era. It suggests that the causes of the decline of organised religion during this period were complex, but related more to the onset of industrial-urban stagnation and decline than to the experience of industrial-urban expansion.

This study looks at the responses of the Yorkshire Catholic gentry to the immense changes to their religious landscape in the early modem period, between 1536 and 1642. It examines how they continued to adhere to the Catholic religion, despite all attempts first to induce and then compel conformity and highlights the ways in which they managed to survive and prosper throughout the period, demonstrating that previously neglected groups such as women and younger sons had a crucial role to play in this process. The overwhelming theme to their actions was one of pragmatism, rather than the heroic and self-destructive behaviour that was much admired by earlier historians who wanted to identify martyrs to the Catholic cause. The areas that are to be examined reflect both public and private gentry activities. In the public sphere the Yorkshire gentry's part in the rebellions of the Tudor and Stuart eras are studied along with their rejection of plots. The importance of marriage as an early modem tool for building alliances and social advancement is acknowledged and the impact that a continuing adherence to Catholicism had on this is considered. The gentry and the church are examined through a study of the Catholic gentry's involvement with their local parishes, their reaction to the dissolution and their continuing adherence to monasticism, as shown through their devotion to English orders on the continent. To reflect the changes that were occurring in this period Catholic involvement in education, the law and medicine are also explored showing that the Catholic community was not isolated from the wider society. Lastly the role of Catholic women is given specific consideration in order both to redress the imbalance in previous studies and due to the crucial role that women played in the continuation of the Catholic community within Yorkshire.