Halina Grzymała-Moszczyńska

The Anguish of Repatriation Immigration to Poland and Integration of Polish Descendants from Kazakhstan

Repatriation remains an unsolved problem of Polish migration policy. To date, it has taken place on a small scale, mostly outside of the state’s repatriation system. Thousands of people with a promised repatriation visa are still waiting to be repatriated. The majority of the repatriates come from Kazakhstan, home to the largest population of descendants of Poles in the Asian part of the former USSR. They come to Poland not only for sentimental reasons, but also in search of better living conditions. However, repatriates—in particular older ones—experience a number of problems with adaptation in Poland, dominated by financial and housing-related issues. A further source of difficulties for repatriates, alongside their spatial dispersion, insufficient linguistic and cultural competencies, and identity problems, is finding a place on and adapting to the Polish labor market. Despite their difficult situation and special needs, the repatriates in Poland are not sufficiently supported due to the inefficiency of administration and non-governmental institutions dealing with the task of repatriates’ integration. This results in the anguish of repatriation.

The Chinese perspective of intercultural competence models revisited

Abstract Most intercultural competence models have been developed by Western experts based on Western theory and Western cultural values, and they are not culturally specific models. The lack of non-Chinese researchers to study and contribute to the construction of intercultural competence from a Chinese-perspective is a serious shortcoming, and most of the models developed by Chinese scholars are a replica of the Western models. A Chinese-perspective of intercultural competence model is indeed needed to reinterpret concepts and theories that are coined in the West, which are then widely used and generalized without any concrete-solid bases of their universality. This paper deployed empirical study methods to analyze the content of the literature to understand the construct of Chinese-perspective intercultural competence models. Eight Chinese-perspectives of intercultural competence models formulated by Chinese scholars between 1998 and 2013 have been identified, two of them are researched in English, while six others are in Chinese. As a result, there are no significant differences in the components of those eight models, as most Chinese scholars agree that cognitive ability, emotional management and communication skills are three of the major components which constitute the Chinese version of intercultural competence models. This research is timely, and is worth conducting, due to increased Chinese investments throughout the world, and the power and influence of China as the world’s largest economy. The results could be used as a guiding operational scheme to prepare business partners from both sides for successful cooperation. However, one should recommend, in future research, that there be a comparison of Chinese-perspective models with Western-perspective models in order to delve deeper into the construct of the models to examine the degree to which the Chinese and Western-perspective of intercultural competence are complementary and compatible with each other.

Book Review: Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion: Principles, Approaches, Applications. By J. A. Belzen

In his long-term engagement with the psychology of religion, Jacob Belzen has concentrated mainly on the history of the discipline and on analysis of personal documents, both historical and contemporary, as sources for understanding the meanings of religious activities. These studies have deepened his appreciation for the complex influence of particular cultural contexts on the field as a whole and on the documents he analyzes. Belzen’s dedication to contextualizing religious activities in both social and individual history is fully evident in this collection of essays. The book consists of 12 chapters, all but one of which were previously published in one form or another between 1997 and 2009, either in academic journals devoted to the study of religion or in edited volumes. The collection has been supplemented by a newly written introductory chapter, which provides an analysis of the state of affairs in the psychology of religion and, more specifically, the cultural psychology of religion. Belzen provides an overview of how research on religion is conducted from a psychological perspective and especially of how religion becomes operationalized in such research. According to Belzen, there is a marked discrepancy between the broad range of topics that would ideally be studied by the psychology of religion—rituals, prayers, martyrdom, miracles, worship, priests, saints—and what psychologists of religion are actually focused on, the study of religiosity, the “individual, personal counterpart of some type of religion” (p. 9). The author’s dismay stems from the fact that research methods in psychology of religion, like those in other branches of psychology, are geared toward producing universally valid results, which by their nature are decontextualized and desubjectivized. Belzen stipulates that religious activities should be studied as culturally structured phenomena produced by individuals who belong to specific cultures located in specifiable times and places. Thus he emphasizes the need for research that recognizes religious phenomena as timeand placebound. Such research would require surrendering the goal of a psychology of religion that is

The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion, edited by Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler, Routledge: London and New York, 2011, 543pp. ISBN 978 0 415 55920 1, US

ritual practices within the broader cultural and historical context. In doing so, he asserts, ‘Sufism becomes an arena in which complex social and spiritual relationships play out on a variety of interconnected levels’ (p. 20). Practicing what he preaches, Seesemann’s monograph offers a nuanced social history that draws on multiple literary sources to document the construction of sacred biography and the emergence of the cult of saints in West Africa. The book’s detailed bibliography, comprehensive index, and expansive endnotes add vital depth and details. For the novice, uninformed reader, however, the myriad names and locations of cities and regions may at times prove confusing. In the interest of clarity, the book would certainly have benefitted from the addition of more detailed maps, aswell as fromphotographs and images of the persons (includingNiasse)mentioned in the text. Expanding the ethnography and personal interviews would have provided a more complete and nuanced picture of the contemporary Tijani community aswell. These shortcomings aside, Seesemann’smonograph is a thoroughly engaging and insightful read. For educators, the book offers a unique and multifaceted resource that canbe effectively integrated into advancedundergraduate andgraduate courses in cultural anthropology, African history and religion, and Islamic studies. Outside the university classroom, the book will also appeal to a broad and diverse audience interested in the diversity and dynamism of Islamic faith and practice – and modern Sufism in particular – in West Africa and beyond.

220(hardcover)

The second volume of this massive project is, to state the primary conclusion first, a strong success, even if it must be regarded as a qualified success. Among the problems remaining from the first volume, which this reviewer addressed earlier, are that, as a massive project, it is massively expensive, and for a reference work whose presence will, apparently, be limited to reference rooms of university libraries this is not a good omen. It would not have been a problem even a decade ago, but library reference rooms today are nearly empty because of the easy access to Internet sites, the quality of which remains spotty in spite of undeniable advances. I was unable to locate any indication that either of these volumes (or the three remaining volumes projected in this series) will be released in CD-Rom or any other electronic format for use in university communities. These volumes deserve a much wider audience than the few who trickle into increasingly sleepy library reserve rooms or who manage to procure copies by writing reviews. The most prominent section of the first volume was an attempted decoding of Hinduism according its manifestations in modern Indian states. This questionable criterion was addressed by this reviewer earlier, as was that volume’s selection of deities to be profiled beyond the major Sanskritically articulated ones such as Śiva, Viṣṇu, Hanumān, Rāma, and Kṛṣṇa. Many of these allegedly minor deities seem to have been selected randomly, with uneven geographical and sectarian representation. This randomness may be seen in certain places in this volume as well. All the articles strive to achieve depth, and largely succeed, but in spite of its size and overall excellence, the encyclopedia lacks the breadth of coverage that is usually found in such projects, in which a large number of brief items complement major entries. I expected to find brief entries dedicated to specific texts and regional religious formations and much more expression within the articles in which text and ethnography were brought into greater dialogue. An example of the unevenness comes in the very beginning, which features two major entries, ‘Sanskrit Texts and Language’ (Anne Kessler-Persaud) and ‘Tamil Texts and Language’ (Archana Venkatesan). These are the only two languages to merit their own entries. The probable reason for this is because they are the two major literary languages of classical, pre-second millennium CE, India. Two entries further down in the first section address North Indian languages and religious literature (Heidi Pauwels) and South Indian languages and literatures (Archana Venkatesan). The first of these two articles is among the best in the encyclopedia, discussing thematic issues such as the construction of bhakti in different Religion Vol. 42, No. 1, January 2012, 163–190

Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle's Life and Thought, by Colleen Shantz, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2009, viii+267pp. ISBN 978 0 521 86610 1, US

This article presents the cultural factors which contribute to understanding psychological health and pathology. The definitions of understanding psychological health and ways of approaching treatment were analysed, with particular emphasis on the role of religion.

80 (hbk)

An analysis of the development of the science of religion in Poland distinguishes between two different periods in its history. The first covers the years 1873 to 1973, while the second began in 1974 and continues until today. Each of these dates, 1873 (see also Ponistoeski, 1979) and 1974, are significant in the history of the development of the discipline. The year 1873 is recognized as a starting point for the Polish science of religion because of the appearance of two important pub lications: Adolf Dygasinski ( 1839-1902) translated into Polish F. Max Miillers Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873) and the journal Wedrowiec [The Wanderer] published Dygasinskis translation of Mullers The Philosophy of Mythology in three consecutive issues. Be cause of these translations, Mullers methodological approach to the study of religion was made available to the academic community. It should be recognized, however, that there had been in Poland, prior to 1873, a broad, if somewhat dispersed, historical and philosophical inquiry into religion. (The significant publications in religion of the period prior to 1873 have been analyzed by P. O. Szolc [1971].) The next essential stage for the study of religion occurred in 1974. Jagiellonian University established the Institute for the Study of Reli gion. It was the first academic, interdisciplinary, non-confessional institute in the country which focused upon the research and teach ing of a variety of religious traditions. In an attempt to understand contemporary religions scientifically, the Institute for the Study of Religion established research programs directed toward empirically analyzing trends in the development of contemporary religiosity. The first teaching program offered at the Institute was a three year doc toral program. Participants in the program were required to have a Masters degree. Their degrees were often achieved in other disci plines such as philosophy, history, or languages. Beginning in the