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The 5th International Symposium on Cultic Studies to be held in Bangkok

2011-12-05 Source:Kaiwind Author:By Li Jie
Kaiwind - The fifth session of International Symposium on Cultic Studies will be held in Bangkok from December 15 to 17, 2011. This symposium is jointly sponsored by the Institute of Religious Studies of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the Assumption University of Thailand. More than 20 experts and scholars from the U.S., Canada, France, Russia, New Zealand, Thailand and China’s Taiwan as well as the colleges and universities, scientific research institutions, religious groups and non-governmental organizations of mainland China will attend this symposium.

The theme of this symposium is “the globalization and the destructive cults”, and the participants will thoroughly discuss the definition of the cult, the case study of interdisciplinary cults, the new trend and problems of cults in modern countries and the prevention and handling of destructive cults.

Falun Gong issue will be one of the main contents of this symposium, including the damages caused by Falun Gong on mind control, religious belief right as well as the public order and fine morality, the common ground between Falun Gong and other cults in Chinese history in terms of fraudulence and harmfulness; besides, how the civil society organizations and the social workers supervise and bind Falun Gong and other evil cults and their activities legally, and how to carry out the social readaptation and psychological intervention for the ex-members of Falun Gong and other cults will also be discussed.

Since 2006, four sessions of the symposium have been held by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, having discussed topics of the harm of evil cults and the social governance, the transitional society and the destructive cults, and so on.

This is the first time that a Chinese research institution jointly runs the International Symposium on Cultic Studies with overseas university. Now the symposium has become one of the most authoritative platforms and has aroused great attention among international academy fields.

It is reported that many cult study experts, such as Guy Allito, professor in history and east Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, Bao Jiemin, associate professor of anthropology and ethnic studies at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, Rick Alan Ross, executive director of the Rick A. Ross Institute (RI) in New Jersey, Udo Schuklenk, a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University in Canada, Pierre Picquart, Doctor in geopolitical speciality of the University of Paris-VIII, Alexander Dvorkin, president of the Russian Association of Religious and Cultic Studies Centers etc., will be present at the symposium and make speeches at the scheduled time.
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