Academic literature on the topic 'Sacfem (Firm)'

From ancient times, some spaces have been understood to be more sacred than others. Even though many of these spaces have no specific religious meaning, there have been new religious movements which can easily be seen in daily life. In order to understand the current dynamics of religion, a focus on the material presence of religion (religious buildings, sites and artefacts in urban spaces) is a fruitful starting point. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the potential meanings of the sacred in urban spaces, and the effects of these meanings or characterizations of the sacred have on places. Moreover, the focus is on analysing new manifestations of the religious and the sacred in urban space, as well as the ways in which material traces mediate diverse practices, discourses and effects in the various domains of the sacred. By investigating the alignments of these two fields, the city and the sacred, this study sheds new light on the metropolis of London, which manifests both religious diversity and multiple modernities via traces of the sacred in urban spaces. The results show that sacred traces in urban places have a prominent image that many residents and visitors fail to appreciate in their daily lives. The study concludes with a discussion of findings and implications.

This article explores George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff’s (c.1866-1949) Enneagram Movements. Gurdjieff used the symbol of the enneagram in his teaching to demonstrate the ‘perpetual motion’ of his cosmic Laws of Three and Seven, which govern his cosmological system. The symbol is composed of a circle encompassing a triangle representing the numbers 3, 6, and 9 (the Law of Three), and a six-sided figure representing the numbers 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 (the Law of Seven). This article sets out to investigate the meaning of the enneagram and the significance of the Enneagram Movements, which enact the motion of the symbol. As well as examining primary and secondary sources on Gurdjieff, the author draws from first-hand experience of the Movements, particularly her work studying the Movement ‘Enneagram 5’ in a Movements class in Sydney, Australia.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to analyze the influence of Entrepreneurial Infrastructure (EI) on the profitability of Sachet Water Firms (SWFs) in Minna.
 Design/methodology/approach: This was done through the use of personal interviews for the collection of qualitative data from owners/managers of SWFs. The population of the study included all the 165 SWFs in Minna and the sample size was 10 which was determined by interview saturation point. Thematic analysis was used in analyzing the transcribed audio recordings of the interviews conducted.
 Findings: Findings revealed that there is an EI deficit in Minna, which has led to increased expenses on the provision of alternative EI by SWFs and has increased their operational costs thereby reducing their profitability.
 Research limitations/implications: Firstly, with thirty-six states in Nigeria, the findings of this study, covering the Capital of only one of the States (Niger) cannot be generalized for the entire country, rather it must be taken within the context of the region covered. Secondly, only one industry out of many that make up the Nigerian economy is selected for investigation. Thirdly, the researcher was faced with the negative attitude of some respondents who were not willing to participate in the research or provide the needed data for analysis. Lastly, not all the SWFs in Minna were included in the study, only those that have operated for up to three years were included. Future studies can bridge these research gaps by carrying out research in other parts of Nigeria on the same subject matter.
 Practical implications: Findings of this study would be of help to the existing SMEs in Nigeria, particularly the SWFs in further understanding the complexities of the infrastructural challenges militating against their growth and how to overcome them.
 Originality/value: This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the nexus between EI and the general performance of SMEs.
 Paper type: Research paper.

Attempting to approach the sacred through film as exemplified by the analysis and interpretation of the way of a yurodivy in The Lonely Voice of Man by Alexander SokurovThe author emphasises the relation between content and form in the film The Lonely Voice of Man by Alexander Sokurov, and makes a point to place the film within an interpretation space which takes into account basic anthropological categories, such as those of space, time and the human (the protagonist). The artistic devices applied in the film lead to a degradation of the image, while the symbolism present in this debut work refers to the theme of the journey of the soul. All these elements allow us to see in The Lonely Voice of Man certain aspects shared with the Orthodox icon. In this context, the story of the main character can be perceived as the way of a yurodivy (“fool-for-Christ”), who has to refrain from temptations and practice asceticism in order to attain spiritual perfection and reach the sacred. Próba zbliżenia się do sacrum poprzez kino na przykładzie analizy i interpretacji drogi jurodiwego w filmie Aleksandra Sokurowa Samotny głos człowiekaW artykule szczególną uwagę zwrócono na ukazanie związku między treścią i formą filmu Samotny głos człowieka w reżyserii Aleksandra Sokurowa oraz na umieszczenie go na płaszczyźnie interpretacyjnej uwzględniającej podstawowe kategorie antropologiczne, takie jak: przestrzeń, czas i człowiek (bohater). Stosowane w filmie środki wyrazu powodują, że obraz ulega degradacji. Symbolika obecna w filmie nawiązuje do motywu wędrówki dusz. Wszystkie elementy stanowią podstawę do tego, by odnaleźć w debiucie Sokurowa cechy nawiązujące do prawosławnej ikony. W tym kontekście historia głównego bohatera jawi się jako droga jurodiwego, który musi pokonywać pokusy i zachowywać ascezę, by osiągnąć duchową doskonałość i dotrzeć do sacrum.

Sullivan, B. (ed.) 2015. Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces: Exhibiting Asian Religions in Museums. London: Bloomsbury. vi + 184pp. ISBN: 978-1-4725-9081-7 £65.00 (hbk); ISBN: 978-1-4725- 9083-1 £19.99 (e-book).

Chazan-Gillig, Suzanne and Pavitranand Ramhota. 2023. Hinduism and Popular Cults in Mauritius: Sacred Religion and Plantation Economy. Sriniket Kumar Mishra (trans.). London and New York: Routledge. ix + 233 pp. ISBN 978-1-003-29810-6 (e-book). £26.99.

We study a Bertrand duopoly game in which firms adopt a gradient-based mechanism to update their prices. In this competition, one of the firms knows somehow the price adopted by the other firm next time step. Such asymmetric information of the market price possessed by one firm gives interesting results about its stability in the market. Under such information, we use the bounded rationality mechanism to build the model describing the game at hand. We calculate the equilibrium points of the game and study their stabilities. Using different sets of parameter values, we show that the interior equilibrium point can be destabilized through flip and Neimark–Sacker bifurcations. We compare the region of stability of the proposed model with a classical Bertrand model without asymmetric information. The results show that the proposed game’s map is noninvertible with type Z 0 − Z 2 or Z 1 − Z 3 , while the classical model is of type Z 0 − Z 2 only. This explains the quite complicated basins of attraction given for the proposed map.

Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in Indigenous healing ceremonies in Mesoamerica since at least the sixteenth century. However, the sacramental use of mushrooms was only discovered by Westerners in the early to mid-twentieth century. Most notably, the meeting between amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson and Mazatec curandera María Sabina in 1955 resulted in the widespread popularization of ingesting “magic mushrooms” in the West. To Sabina and the Mazatec people, psilocybin mushrooms were sacred and only to be used for healing. However, Western “hippies” viewed mushrooms as psychedelic drugs which they consumed with little regard for cultural sensitivities, rendering the mushrooms desacralized. This article argues that the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms constitutes a form of spiritual abuse that has had far-reaching and long-lasting consequences at individual, local and global levels. Further, acknowledging and understanding the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms as spiritual abuse has important implications for restorative justice and the understanding of psilocybin as a sacred medicine.

The tree stands as a sacred symbol in many faith traditions. Unsurprisingly, nature-based new religious movements are no exception. This article considers the manifestation of sacred trees in a number of religious traditions, including Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander spirituality, Abrahamic traditions, Ancient Egyptian religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Norse mythology, the Shinto faith, and nature-based new religious movements. After this initial section, I present the findings of a fieldwork project undertaken in 2016. Using the survey as a tool, this project enquired into the use of trees, plants, and private gardens among practitioners from nature-based new religious movements. This survey makes use of both quantitative and qualitative survey methods, having been distributed to various nature-based new religious movements in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Despite extensive tree lore, these survey results present the tree as a peripheral plant in the practitioners' everyday practice, with the garden as a whole being more critical than any single variety of vegetation.