Sexuality and Christianity:understanding the attitudes and negotiations of young adults in the UK

Christianity has historically incorporated numerous strands of thinking on sexuality; in some cases, problematizing sexuality through the endorsement of celibacy and asceticism while at other historical and contextual moments, marriage and procreation become ideals (Price 2006). Contemporary Christians negotiate many sexual scripts (including ‘secular’ ones), but ‘appropriate’ Christian sexuality is still usually defined in terms of monogamy, the containment of sex within marriage, and heterosexuality. This chapter will explore the attitudes, beliefs and practices toward sexuality of young Christian women and men aged between 18 and 25 and living in the UK, based on a qualitative and quantitative research project entitled Religion, Youth and Sexuality: A Multi-faith Exploration, which utilized questionnaires, in-depth interviews and video diaries. The chapter will consider the variations in attitude between young people from different Christian denominations in relation to three themes: sex outside of marriage, celibacy and monogamy.

The 'law of requisite variety' may assist climate change negotiations:a review of the Kyoto and Durban meetings

Ashby wrote about cybernetics, during which discourse he described a Law that attempts to resolve difficulties arising in complex situations – he suggested using variety to combat complexity. In this paper, we note that the delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Kyoto, 1997, were offered a ‘simplifying solution’ to cope with the complexity of discussing multiple pollutants allegedly contributing to ‘climate change’. We assert that the adoption of CO2eq has resulted in imprecise thinking regarding the ‘carbon footprint’ – that is, ‘CO2’ – to the exclusion of other pollutants. We propose, as Ashby might have done, that the CO2eq and other factors within the ‘climate change’ negotiations be disaggregated to allow careful and specific individual solutions to be agreed on each factor. We propose a new permanent and transparent ‘action group’ be in charge of agenda setting and to manage the messy annual meetings. This body would be responsible for achieving accords at these annual meetings, rather than forcing this task on national hosts. We acknowledge the task is daunting and we recommend moving on from Ashby's Law to Beer's Viable Systems approach.

Being Tamil, being Hindu:Tamil migrants’ negotiations of the absence of Tamil Hindu spaces in the West Midlands and South West of England

This paper considers the religious practices of Tamil Hindus who have settled in the West Midlands and South West of England in order to explore how devotees of a specific ethno-regional Hindu tradition with a well-established UK infrastructure in the site of its adherents’ population density adapt their religious practices in settlement areas which lack this infrastructure. Unlike the majority of the UK Tamil population who live in the London area, the participants in this study did not have ready access to an ethno-religious infrastructure of Tamil-orientated temples and public rituals. The paper examines two means by which this absence was addressed as well as the intersections and negotiations of religion and ethnicity these entailed: firstly, Tamil Hindus’ attendance of temples in their local area which are orientated towards a broadly imagined Hindu constituency or which cater to a non-Tamil ethno-linguistic or sectarian community; and, secondly, through the ‘DIY’ performance of ethnicised Hindu ritual in non-institutional settings.