Mutually Adapting: Christianity and Chinese CultureblahAboutZhuo XinpingShinjie zongjiao wenhua (Global Religious Culture), Vol.2, 1997, pp 8-12Ideally, Chinese Christianity should be the organic fusion produced by the mutual adaptation of Christianity to Chinese culture and vice versa. This contributes not only to the religious spirit and values of Chinese culture, but also to Christian philosophy and culture.Mutual adaptation between Christianity and Chinese culture not only involves findingcommon ground, but also exchanging and incorporating new ideas. As these two traditions have grown and matured throughout history, a struggle to dominate has led them to oppose and exclude one another. In the modern era, they have learned to adapt to tradition andmodernisation. Christianity is currently being assimilated and culturally reconstituted into Chinese culture. Christianity has inspired Chinese culture and provided it with opportunities and an impetus for reform and renovation. At the same time, this exchange and fusion has not prevented Chinese and Christian cultures from maintaining their own traditions. It is in this context that they have become modern and dynamic.This rapprochement is in its early stages; healthy exchange and objective, fair dialogue is key to its continued success. Additionally, all forms of dogmatism and xenophobia must beeliminated in religious practice. Because it is universal, Christianity can accept and assimilate Chinese cultural traditions; its openness can also help China face up to a globalised world and become more modern. And because Chinese culture promotes tolerance, it can also recognise the existence and value of Christianity. Theclear way of thinking inherent to Chinese culture also makes it easier for the Chinese to understand and accept the cultural significance and contribution of Christianity.∙基督教与中国文化的双向契合∙Le processus d’adaptation bidirectionnelle entre le christianisme et la culture chinoiseA Market Theory of ReligionAnthony J. BlasiTennessee State University, P.O. Box 110282, Nashville, TN 37222-0282, United States of America, anthonyblasi@References to market phenomena are common enough in the sociology of religion, but despite the proliferation of systems of concatenate propositions that have been tested with survey and churchmembership data, little has been done to develop the conceptualization of how a religious market works.Consequently there is a significant lack of correspondence in the literature between the rolemarket phenomena play in economics and the role of market-like counterparts in the religious field.While there may be some point to offering a correction to allegedly market-centered research in the sociology of religion, the intent here instead is to take what insights are to be had from the study of economic phenomena and draw out their implications for inquiry into religion.Key Words:market theory • religion and economic phenomenaColumbans’ Administration Moves To Hong KongThe Central Administration of the Missionary Society of St. Columban has relocated its offices from Dublin, Ireland, to Hong Kong and will be open officially on May 1.The administration, known within the Society as the General Council, consists offour Columban priests elected to six-year terms to administer theworldwide Columban organization.The General Council has had its offices in Ireland since the Society’s founding in 1918, so the decision to move to Hong Kong was not made lightly, says Columban Father Tommy Murphy, the Society’s superior general. The move reflects the Society’s 90-yearcommitment to cross-cultural Catholic mission work.In recent years, Fr. Murphy said, the Columbans’ priestly ordinations and currentseminarians, plus 90 percent of all Columban lay missionaries, have come from Pacific Rim nations in Asia and South America.“This indicates that the future shape of the Society will be more multicultural than it is now,”Fr. Murphy said. “We think the location of the General Council should reflect this reality.”The General Council’s offices and living quarters are in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong.GlocalisationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGlocalisation (or glocalization) is a portmanteau word of globalization and localization. Bydefinition, the term “glocal” refers to the individual, group, division, unit, organisation, andcommunity which is willing and able to “think globally and act locally.” The term has been used toshow the human capacity to bridge scales (local and global) and to help overcome meso-scale,bounded, "little-box" thinking. 'Glocals' is a term often used to describe a new social class: expatmanagers who travel often and switch homes often, and are therefore both global and local.∙∙∙∙∙∙[edit]A variety of usagesIn various uses, glocalisation has entailed elements of the following:▪Including and combining local, regional, and global, or micro-meso-macro, as one dimension, the magnitudes or scale dimension. Manfred Lange [1] used the term "glocal" inlate 1989 during preparations for the Global Change exhibition, and presented a poster onlocal and global change. [2]. [more below and external links]▪Using electronic communications technologies, such as the Internet, to provide local services on a global or transregional basis. Craigslist and Meetup are examples of webapplications that have glocalised their approach.▪Individuals, households and organisations maintaining interpersonal social networks that combine extensive local and long-distance interactions.[1]▪The establishment of local organisation structures, working with local cultures and needs, by businesses as they progress from national to multinational, or global businesses. As hasbeen done by many organisations such as IBM.▪The creation or distribution of products or services intended for a global or transregional market, but customised to suit local laws or culture.▪The declaration of specified locality - a town, city, or state - as world territory, with responsibilities and rights on a world scale: a process that started in France in 1949 andoriginally called Mundialisation.▪Thinking and being glocal, Carlos A. Gonzalez-Carrasco 2009 on Complexity in International Leadership and Management, delivered at York University, United Kingdom [edit]Development of the conceptThe term glocalization originated from within Japanese business practices. It comes from theJapanese word dochakuka, which simply means global localization. Originally referring to a way of adapting farming techniques to local conditions, dochakuka evolved into a marketing strategy when Japanese businessmen adopted it in the 1980s.[3] It was also used in the Global Change Exhibition (opened May 30, 1990) in the German Chancellery in Bonn by Manfred Lange, the director of the touring exhibit development team at that time. [4]. He described the interplay of local-regional-global interactions as "glocal", showing the depth of the space presented and drawn.The System Earth poster of Spatial and Temporal Scales presented the scales involved. [5].Although the "glocalisation" term was not printed on the original exhibit's poster itself, [6], as this was considered "newspeak", it was used often when presenting the exhibition and ensuing the Local and Global Change Exhibition, "Geotechnica", Cologne 1991 [7]Glocalization was popularized in the English-speaking world by the British sociologist Roland Robertson in the 1990s, the Canadian sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in the late 1990s,[2] and Zygmunt Bauman. Hampton and Wellman have frequently used the term to refer to people who are actively involved in both local and wider-ranging activities of friendship, kinship and commerce. [3]Very often localisation is a neglected process because globalization presents an omnipresent veneer. Yet, in many cases, local forces work to attenuate the impact of global processes. These forces are recognisable in efforts to prevent or modify the plans for the local construction of buildings for global corporate enterprises. For example,Thomas L. Friedman in The World isFlat talks about how the Internet encourages glocalisation, such as encouraging people to make websites in their native languages.Several NGOs are working to develop glocalisation, including the Glocal Forum (active since 2001) and the nascent Glocal University.The glocalization approach suggests that reconsidering frames of references and order schemas is useful for both global and local research and management. Indeed, global and local are really two sides of the same coin as a place may be better understood by recognising the continuum nature of glocalisation.In 2008, The Glocal Project [8] was created at the Surrey Art Gallery. This massive, contributive digital art project created a visual archive of images contributed by people from around the world, connecting them with local contributors from the Surrey community. The project looked at the effect that photo-sharing systems have on the ability to work collaboratively and creatively in both the global and the local context.[edit]See also▪Internationalization and localization▪Globalocal▪International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics [9] and [10]▪GeoJournal, Access and Assimilation - Springerlink & [11][edit]Notes1. ^Barry Wellman, “Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism.” Pp. 11-25 inDigital Cities II, edited by Makoto Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar, and Toru Ishida.Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2002.2. ^Barry Wellman and Keith Hampton, “Living Networked On and Offline”ContemporarySociology 28, 6 (Nov, 1999): 648-543. ^ Hampton, Keith and B Wellman. 2002. "The Not So Global Village of Netville." Pp. 345-371 in The Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and CarolineHaythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell.[edit]Further reading▪Sarroub, Loukia K. (2008) "Living 'Glocally' With Literacy Success in the Midwest." Theory Into Practice, Vol. 47 Issue 1, p59-66.[edit]External links▪"InterNations - the Community for Expatriates and Global Minds"▪Global Change exhibition (May, 1990), and the poster on local and global change [12] which a year later was the title for the "Local and Global Change" exhibition(1991) [13]▪the GLOCAL initiative: think global. act local.Jacqueline Shawhan▪Glocalisation of Bulgarian fashion in 2005 by Lubomir Stoykov▪Article on OECD report▪Wal-Mart: a Glocalized company▪Globus et LocusThe Revival of the Social Scientific Study of Religion in ChinaJohn BerthrongOctober 27, 2008Ever since the beginning of the communist era in China in 1949, an d especially during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, it has been trying times for China’s great universities. Theology, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, among others, fell on hard times and were basically banned from serious and critical study until the 1980s. However, like the popular revival of religion in China today, the social sciences have dynamically re-emerged in the intellectual life of modern China. There was no more dramatic illustration of this revival than the recent Beijing Summit on Chinese Spirituality and Society: A Symposium on the Social Scientific Study of Religion held recently (October8-10 2008) on the campus of Peking University (better know as Beida 北大 in Chinese). This fascinating conference was co-sponsored by a consortium of Chinese and American universities and foundations and demonstrated the growing cooperation on both sides of the Pacific when it comes to the critical social scientificstudy of religion in modern China. Boston University was extremely well represented by Profs. Robert Neville,Robert Weller (Anthropology), and John Berthrong.Religion is flourishing again across China in a diversity of formsthat will keep social scientists, historians, theologians, and religious studies professors busy for generations.Whether it is elite government, business and academic professionals worrying about the role of Kongzi 孔子 (Confucius) in modern China or pondering the humble yet thoroughly entrancing practices and sacrifices atlocal temples, or the growth of the Christian Churches and the revitalization of Buddhism, China is alivereligiously as well as commercially. There were over thirty-five formal symposium participants and the Englishcollected essays runs to almost five hundred pages.As someone in the humanities and theology I have watched the Chinese academic world flower over the last threedecades. The one area that seemed to lag a bit was the social sciences and I think the reason for this is that, if youare an empirically minded social scientist, you need to collect data about the religious life of the Chinese peopleand I suspect that this was viewed as somewhat politically delicate even in the more open atmosphere of modernChina. The papers at this conference demonstrate that Chinese social scientists have now begun the carefulempirical study of Chinese religions and spirituality. Paper after paper, both by Chinese and Western colleagues,confirmed a sure grasp of current research methodologies. Moreover, close to seven hundred undergraduate andgraduate students, faculty and interested members of the public completely packed a large hall to hear Prof. TuWeiming’s plenary presentation about the future of Confucianism in China. The conference likewise receivedpositive attention by the Chinese media. Everyone it seems is fascinated to learn about religion in China today.I personally have had the privilege of knowing and working with many members of what is called the NewConfucian movement. This includes philosophers and historians of religion who consider themselves Confuciansas well as those who are simply fascinated by the revival of this great Chinese intellectual, social, philosophical,cultural, and religious tradition. But now sociologists and anthropologists, among others, have also begun to studywhat kinds of impact this Confucian intellectual or academic revival is having on all sorts of Chinese social strata.As my Chinese colleagues would say, it is about time to let a hundred flowers bloom again, and this now includest he social scientific study of China’s ebullient and diverse religious revival.The Social Scientific Study of Religion “China is a country without religion and the Chinese are a people who are not bound by r(1891-1962, philosopher)“There was not one corner in the vast land of China where one did not find temples, shrinworship. . . [which] were a visible indication of the strong and pervasive influence of religYang (1910-1995, sociologist)Is China the least religious society in the world? Whereas armchair philosophers like to believe so, religion in China. Until recently, however, few social scientists, both inside and outside China, havsociety. We strive to advance the social scientific study of religion in China. With grants from the Templeton Foundation, and other sources, we have been organizing Summer Institutes, Symposia, also offer research grants and fellowships to Chinese scholars for conducting empirical research on intended to foster a new generation of Chinese scholars of religious research equipped with social s produce scholarly publications about religions in contemporary China.。