How many to go?

Happy birthday, Pacifist Posse! Not being much good at singing, I’ll just lend my breath to blowing out the candles.

The first post appeared on PP 30 December 2006, so as of today, PP has made it around old sol twice. Let’s hope that there are many more and, more importantly, that the site affects individuals’ and governments’ perspective on how to treat others.

The stats for PP show that there have been 68 posts (including this one), 5 pages, and 31 comments. We only get visited about once every 7 days. That’s modest….

On to the next year.

The Ning-based site iPeace continues to grow. Thanks to Hannahla for alerting me to it. Have other members of the Posse joined?

Interestingly, it appears to be using Apple’s me.com as host: http://www.ipeace.me/ (the image’s hot, too).

Mubarak Awad, who established the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence, is one of those folks whom I admire for their persistence in promoting non-violence in the face of daunting examples of disappointment. Mr. Awad advocates Gandhian solutions to conflicts in what has to be one of the most difficult regions of the world: The lands along the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Wikipedia entry about Mr. Awad. Here’s a link to a news report about a presentation at a Modesto (CA, US) church, to a blog entry about one of Mr. Awad’s talks, and (of course) to Nonviolence International.

There is a United States Pacifist Party (USPP)! Who knew? Bradford Lyttle was the 2004 candidate for president. It appears to be a bit of smallish operation, but it’s probably bigger than the PP.

There is an extensive list of links for organizations and such. Some of them may be out of date, as the page footer carries a December 2000 update date.

Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence (Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Hinduism) and College of Arts and Letters (Visiting Scholars Program) at James Madison University will host a visit by Barbara A. Holdrege, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Chair of the South Asian Studies Committee, and Director of the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Holdrege will give a public lecture entitled “South Asia and the Middle East: Connecting Cultures Outside of and in Spite of the West” (see abstract below).

The lecture will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 23, 2007 in CI/ISAT 159 at James Madison University.

Admission: Free and open to all

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Lecture Abstract:
South Asia and the Middle East: Connecting Cultures Outside of and in Spite of the West, by Barbara A. Holdrege

Wilhelm Halbfass, in his landmark study India and Europe, explores the history of intellectual encounters between India and Europe from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. He concludes with a discussion of the “global predicament of Westernization” in the contemporary period, reflecting more specifically on the problems that the so called “Europeanization of the earth” presents for both European and Indian partners in the “dialogue.” The lecture will explore the critical necessity of going beyond the European horizon of such dialogue and undertaking an alternative form of cross-cultural encounter that does not privilege Europe as a principal partner but rather investigates instead India’s connections with other cultures whose distinctive histories have unfolded outside of, inside of, and in spite of the West. This type of comparative enterprise shifts the focus from India and Europe to South Asia and the Middle East and explores the ongoing economic, political, social, cultural, and religious connections that linked these two regions long before the “rise of the West.” The lecture will consider the role of comparative study in critically interrogating two related sets of paradigms that have assumed the status of dominant discourses in the human sciences in Europe and North America since the nineteenth century: the Eurocentric paradigms that have dominated scholarship in the social sciences and humanities; and the Protestant Christian paradigms that have dominated scholarship in religious studies more specifically. One of the important tasks of comparative study in this context is to challenge scholars to become more critically self conscious of the legacy of these dominant paradigms that lingers in our categories and taxonomies and to reconfigure our scholarly discourses to include a multiplicity of epistemic perspectives. The lecture will suggest two comparative projects that can contribute to dismantling the dominant paradigms. First, comparative studies of South Asia and the Middle East can provide the basis for developing alternative epistemologies to the Eurocentric paradigms that have dominated scholarship in the human sciences. Second, comparative studies of Hindu and Jewish traditions — religious traditions rooted in South Asia and the Middle East, respectively — can provide the basis for developing alternative epistemologies to the Protestant-based paradigms that have dominated the academic study of religion.