This paper analyses a tension between traditional leaders and the post-apartheid government in South Africa, concerning the crisis in ritual male circumcision. Over the last two decades, following ritual male circumcision, thousands of youth have been admitted to hospitals, hundreds have undergone penile amputations and hundreds have died. Following the government's intervention through legisla...

Data collected from aerial lidar scanning provides new opportunities for archaeological survey. It is now possible, in a short period of time, to collect vast amounts of geographic data that would have taken years of pedestrian survey to acquire. This enhances and extends landscape studies by reducing time-frames and cost, encouraging analyses based on real-world data collection on a regional s...

This article describes and analyzes a highly significant archaeological context discovered in a late Paracas (400-200 BCE) sunken patio in the monumental platform mound of Cerro Gentil, located in the Chincha Valley, Peru. This patio area was used for several centuries for ritual activities, including large-scale feasting and other public gatherings. At one point late in this historical sequenc...

BACKGROUND Many cases of Cutaneous Larva Migrans (CLM) have been observed among devotees, during and immediately after the annual festival at the Nallur Hindu temple in Jaffna. OBJECTIVE To ascertain the risk factors associated with infestation and devotees' knowledge and practices regarding the condition. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A cross-sectional study using an interviewer-administe...

OBJECTIVE To provide an overview of the current global status of female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision practised in various countries. DATA SOURCE Major published series of peer reviewed journals writing about female genital mutilation (FGM) over the last two decades were reviewed using the index medicus and medline search. A few earlier publications related to the FGM ritual...

Extreme rituals (body-piercing, fire-walking, etc.) are anecdotally associated with altered states of consciousness-subjective alterations of ordinary mental functioning (Ward, 1984)-but empirical evidence of altered states using both direct and indirect measures during extreme rituals in naturalistic settings is limited. Participants in the "Dance of Souls", a 3.5-hour event during which parti...

INTRODUCTION Waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) is an increasingly prevalent form of tobacco use in the United States. Its appeal may stem from its social, ritualistic, and aesthetic nature. Our aim in this study was to understand WTS as a social ritual with the goal of informing prevention efforts. METHODS We conducted a covert observational study consisting of 38 observation sessions in 11 WTS...

Sacred or protected values have important influences on decision making, particularly in the context of intergroup disputes. Thus far, we know little about the process of a value becoming sacred or why one person may be more likely than another to hold a sacred value. We present evidence that participation in religious ritual and perceived threat to the group lead people to be more likely to co...

Palms (Arecaceae) are prominent elements in African traditional medicines. It is, however, a challenge to find detailed information on the ritual use of palms, which are an inextricable part of African medicinal and spiritual systems. This work reviews ritual uses of palms within African ethnomedicine. We studied over 200 publications on uses of African palms and found information about ritual ...

one of the greatest preoccupations in the field of sociology of religion is a practical (pragmatic) definition of religion and religiosity which is mostly studied in social psychology and can be divided into sociological tradition or collective-social tradition and psychological or subjective-individual tradition. prior to glock and stark, scholars considered different aspects and principles fo...