Intimate Transgressions and Communalist Narratives: Inter-religious romance in a divided Gujarat

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1277-1297 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLYN HEITMEYER
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Arranged Marriage ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Media Reports

AbstractIn this article, I examine the seeming paradox of Hindu–Muslim romantic affairs in the wider context of communalism in Gujarat in the wake of the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. At the outset, such affairs appear to embody the most extreme form of taboo, both in their defiance of conventional arranged marriage systems (where caste endogamy and shared religious affiliation play a paramount role) as well as in the wider socio-political context in which Hindus and Muslims are viewed as irreconcilable enemies, or at least oppositional in lifestyle, beliefs, and values. Yet, while media reports in recent years have highlighted similar cases of transgressive liaisons elsewhere in India which have been met with extreme violence, the couplings which I describe in this article, are in practice tolerated by kin and neighbours as an ‘open secret’ which, while public knowledge, has not incurred strong retribution. While love has often been presented as a force for emancipation from the constraints of social conventions and norms in the popular media, I argue that this ‘toleration’ of inter-religious liaisons in the cases I describe suggests the very opposite: namely, that they do not present a significant challenge to entrenched social divisions at the local level.

Architecture and the Culture-Ideology of Consumerism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Sklair
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Ecological Stress ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

This chapter sets out to explore the theoretical and substantive connections between iconicity and consumerism in the field of contemporary architecture and urban design. The culture-ideology of consumerism refers to a set of beliefs and values, integral to the system of global capitalism, intended to make people believe that human worth is best created and hap­piness best achieved in terms of consumption and possessions. Although she uses different terms, Juliet Schor (1993) expresses very well the view of consumerism on which my argument rests. While I share her emphasis on producerism, I would explain it as a direct consequence of how the major transnational corporations operate. My argument in what follows assumes that capitalist globalization and consumerism are unsustainable in the long run, due to the crises of class polarization and ecological stress they engender (Sklair 2002: 48–57). Not all culture is ideological, even in capitalist societies. Consumerism in the capitalist global system can only be fully understood as culture-ideology, where cultural practices (embedded in socio-economic institutions) reinforce the ideology of capitalist consumerism and the ideology (embedded in common sense beliefs) reinforces the cultural practices. The brand-stretching campaign of the locally iconic Boston Public Library in 2004 (figure 7.1) embellished by the slogan ‘Books Are Just the Beginning’ is a telling example of the links between architecture and consumerism in practice. Libraries are not exempt. This is a first indication of how the Icon Project in architecture operates at the local level. More or less all space is potentially consumerist space, but there is certainly a continuum from maximally consumerist space, in which users are provided with many opportunities to spend money and few opportunities not to (e.g., shopping malls) to minimally consumerist space, in which there are very few if any opportunities to spend money (e.g., cemeteries; the families have already spent the money and for others this may only be a matter of time).

scholarly journals Practice and Innovations of Inclusive Education at School

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Larysa V. Kozibroda ◽  
Oksana P. Kruhlyk ◽  
Larysa S. Zhuravlova ◽  
Svitlana V. Chupakhina ◽  
Оlena M. Verzhihovska
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Parental Support ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Severity Of Disability ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

The article has carried out a meta-analysis of the research concerning practice and innovations of inclusive education at school. Investigation of the practice of inclusive education at schools has been intensified since the 1990s, after identifying the need to implement inclusion strategies and concepts at the international level. The first studies of inclusive education (until the 2000s) concerned beliefs and values as a factor, influencing the effectiveness of inclusion, strategies of inclusive education. Investigations after the 2000s have been aimed at more focused subject matter of the research at the local level in different countries: principals’ beliefs, teachers’ self-efficacy, the role of parental support, school ideology, models of inclusion at private schools, the severity of disability as a factor determining teachers’ beliefs concerning inclusion. Various inclusive models have been formed as a practice result of implementing inclusion. Two key effective approaches to integration of inclusion have been highlighted: integrated and differentiated. An integrated approach involves the introduction of innovations in inclusive education in the following elements of the educational system, namely: the concept (strategy) that defines the model, external preconditions and stages of inclusion; a school that defines the internal prerequisites for inclusion; a community. A differentiated approach is used in combination with theintegrated one in order to identify the internal prerequisites for inclusion: values, beliefs and attitudes of teachers, the competence of educators.

The ‘elected’ and the ‘excluded’: sociological perspectives on the experience of place and community in old age

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS PHILLIPSON
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Community Change ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Community Attachments

This article explores various issues concerned with belonging and identity in the context of community change and residential location. It examines the changing nature of community attachments in later life, and their impacts on the quality of old age lives. It also notes the increased importance of environmental perspectives within gerontology, not least because environments are being transformed through the diverse social, cultural and economic changes associated with globalisation. The argument is developed that globalisation offers a new approach to thinking about community and environmental relationships in later life, and that the impact of global change at a local level has become an important dimension of sociological aspects of community change. It is argued that it is especially important to apply these perspectives to older people, given that many have resided in the same locality for long periods. At the same time, globalisation also gives rise to new types of movement in old age, and is constructing an expanding mix of spaces, communities and lifestyle settings. A key argument of the article, however, is that global processes are generating new social divisions, as between those able to choose residential locations consistent with their biographies and life histories, and those who experience rejection or marginalisation from their locality.

scholarly journals Borderless Heat Stress

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Brimicombe ◽  
Claudia Di Napoli ◽  
Rosalind Cornforth ◽  
Florian Pappenberger ◽  
Celia Petty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Stress ◽  
Thermal Stress ◽  
News Media ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Climate Index ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Radiant Temperature ◽  
The Impact

<p>Heatwaves have been increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity. They have been the deadliest hydro-meteorology hazard globally for the last 5 years according to the world meteorological organisation. In addition, they are not constrained by geography in the same sense as many other hazards and as such they are borderless. They however receive less attention, research, and funding internationally than other hazards such as floods and storms, effecting how we perceive their risk and their reporting. Here we consider the impact of heatwaves by making use of the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) for indicating heat stress. The UTCI is a biometeorological index that computes thermal stress using the parameters of 2m temperature, wind speed, mean radiant temperature and relative humidity and a body model, making it a human-centric approach to assessing thermal stress and is skilful for both indicating and forecasting heat hazards. Further a comparison to how heat impacts are reported in EM-DAT (an international disasters database) and international meteorological organisation reports, supplemented by English news media reports is made to assess whether heat impacts are sufficiently reported. In addition, we refer to specific case studies of the United Kingdom, Ghana, and Uganda to further explore impacts, risk perception and policy at a country level, because although heat is borderless impacts occur on a local scale. All this together, will provide the evidence for the development a potentially global early warning system and the implementation of climate change adaptation on a local level to build adaptive capacity and resilience to the growing risk of heat stress internationally. </p>

scholarly journals Holdninger til de fremmede - forestillingen om bosniske flygtninge i den danske offentlighed

1998 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Aggergaard Larsen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
World War ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Ethnic Persecution

The image of Bosnian war refugees in the Danish public This article discusses sociological inve¬stigations of attitudes towards immi¬grants and refugees in Denmark. In¬stead of viewing attitudes as an attribu¬te of individual psychology or as deter¬mined by social class, the article sug¬gests examining the context of varying understandings and imaginations which set the frame for the meaningful presentation of a concrete event. This approach is exemplified by a study of the reception of refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Denmark ba¬sed on articles from the Danish press from May 1992 to January 1995. These articles indicate that different attitudes towards refugees can be connected to representations based on different nar¬rative imaginations and collective me¬mories as well as other themes of cur¬rent interest in the public. These con¬texts have set different meaningful fra¬mes for understanding refugees and thereby influenced attitudes towards this group in the Danish public. In summer 1992, before the arrival of larger groups of refugees, there was a positive attitude towards them in the press. There was general indignation to¬wards the war in Europe and a wide¬spread willingness to help the people suffering from ethnic persecution and cleansing. There were explicit referen¬ces to World War II which were unambi¬guously supportive of a positive attitu¬de toward these refugees. By the autumn of the same year the¬re was a drift towards a more negative attitude. Episodes of thefts in the regi¬ons where refugee centres were located resulted in demands that criminal refu¬gees from the former Eastern Europe (the Baltic and exYugoslavia) be expel¬led. There were also reports from Ger¬many that neoNazis set fire to refugee camps, and this produced concern that the many foreigners in Denmark would provoke „German conditions“ with eth¬nic and racist problems. Many Danish neighbours to these refugee centres we¬re surprised to see refugees from war torn Yugoslavia arriving wellfed and in new clothing. These refugees didn’t fit the image of suffering which had been the basis for the unambiguous support the preceding summer. These people didn’t appear to be „real“ refugees. The many media reports about the war in Bosnia helped create an understanding that refugees have a reason for being Denmark and that Denmark has an obligation to help. The referen¬ces to ethnic persecution during World War II have been superseded by an un¬der¬standing that the new refugees have es¬caped from a life that was similar to the Danish. „They are like us“ is a sen¬tence that becomes more common in the media, and an understanding that the Bos¬nian war refugees have been forced to leave a life style similar to the Danish one emerge „it could have been us“. This is the basis for development of a public understanding of the Bosnian re¬fugees as a new type of „real“ refugees. The positive attitudes that have de¬veloped towards the predominantly Muslim refugees from Bosnia point to the possibility that the widespread anta¬gonism in the Danish public towards immigrants with a Muslim background is not due to the religion itself, but rather the traditionalistic and nonmodern way of life that this religious affiliation symbolizes for many Danes.

The Religion-Environment (Climate Change) Connection

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
George C. Nche
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Change Perceptions ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
Theological Fatalism ◽  
The Church

Abstract Following Lynn White’s thesis of 1967 which indicted some Christian values for the current ecological crisis, many studies have been conducted on the connection between religion and environment/ecological crisis. These studies have sought to know whether religious beliefs and values influence environmental/climate change perceptions of people. However, while these studies have been geographically biased, their results have remained inconclusive. This study therefore examined this age-long debate with evidence from Nigeria. The study involved 30 church leaders drawn from Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal churches in five geographical zones in Nigeria. The data was analyzed using descriptive analytical method. Findings show that religious values/schemas in forms of Eschatological/End-Time beliefs, Dominion beliefs, Theological fatalism, Pessimism etc. influenced climate change perceptions among the church leaders. The study also found that religious affiliation and theology mattered with respect to the influence of some religious beliefs. The implications of findings for the research on religion-environmental/climate change connection are discussed.

Spatial Expansion of Islamic Extremism in the Lake Chad Basin: Current Situation and Prospective Directions

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Ruslan V. Dmitriev ◽  
Stanislav A. Gorokhov ◽  
Ivan A. Zakharov
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Hierarchical Cluster ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Chad Basin ◽  
Lake Chad Basin ◽  
Extremist Groups ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Islamic Extremism

The article discusses the expansion of the Islamic extremist groups (especially Boko Haram) in the Lake Chad basin countries. The geopolitical zones and states of Nigeria, regions of Niger and Cameroon, macro-regions of Chad were selected as the territorial range. The religious affiliation data has been compiled from the DHS-database. Income levels and literacy rates were evaluated indirectly using body mass index and the degree of age-heaping (modified Whipple's index), respectively. A hierarchical cluster analysis, has allowed us to categorize the territorial-administrative units into four groups by the probability of new Islamic extremist groups appearing there. The article clearly shows that Boko Haram may expand in the Western and North-Western directions. Meanwhile, the new cells are more likely to form inside Nigeria than outside it. Thus, in the near future, theexpansion of Islamic extremist organizations in the Lake Chad basin countries will occur at the local level. Keywords: Lake Chad basin countries, Islamic Extremism, Boko Haram, expansion.

Knowledge infrastructure and research agendas for quotidian Anthropocenes: Critical localism with planetary scope

2021 ◽  
pp. 205301962110319
Author(s):  
Kim Fortun ◽  
James Adams ◽  
Tim Schütz ◽  
Scott Gabriel Knowles
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Term Field

The Anthropocene requires the development of new forms of knowledge and supporting sociotechnical infrastructure. While there have been calls for both interdisciplinary and community-engaged approaches, there remains a need to develop, test, and sustain modes of Anthropocene knowledge production that effectively link people working at different scales, in different sites, with many different types of expertise. In this Perspectives piece, we describe one such approach to Anthropocene knowledge production, centered in short-term Field Campuses that bring together community actors in cultural institutions, media, and government agencies with external academic researchers, bringing cultural analysis into the work of characterizing and responding to the Anthropocene. We argue that it is important to build public knowledge infrastructure that allows people to visualize and address many intersecting scales and systems (ecological, atmospheric, economic, technological, social, cultural, etc.) that shape the Anthropocene at the local level.

Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish Community: A Literature Review

2020 ◽  
pp. 152483802090654
Author(s):  
Efrat Lusky-Weisrose ◽  
Amitai Marmor ◽  
Dafna Tener
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
The North ◽  
Cultural Conservatism ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Meta Analyses

Sexual abuse is a cross-cultural phenomenon related to multiple cultural contexts including religious affiliation. The Haredi, or Orthodox Jewish community (OJC), constitutes a significant minority group of the worldwide Jewish population, characterized by cultural conservatism, steadfast loyalty to the community, and strict religious behavioral codes. To date, only few empirical studies (as opposed to multiple media reports) have dealt with the issue of sexual abuse within the OJC. Using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on sexual abuse within the OJC and its subgroups that addresses experiences and reports of victims, perpetrators, the Jewish and general community, and professionals in the North America, Israel, and Australia. Articles were collected from peer-reviewed databases and bibliographies; 13 quantitative and qualitative articles were included in the final sample. Three themes emerged: disclosure of sexual abuse, perceptions and attitudes toward the abuse, and its implications. Results indicated that alongside several findings that were specifically grounded in the context of closed collective or religious societies and the OJC in particular, most essentially reflected universal aspects of sexual abuse. The results suggest promoting context-informed interventions based on community knowledge and resilience, together with appropriate training in order to better understand the needs of the OJC and of closed communities in general.

Violence and the Production of Borders in Western Slavonia

Slavic Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 422-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mila Dragojević
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
History Of ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Social Level ◽  
Dividing Line

AbstractThis article examines how the production of a dividing line, through violence, the accompanying narratives, and the policing of a physical border from 1991 to 1995, shaped and influenced the lives of ordinary people, all residents of Western Slavonia. How was it possible for people to be divided so abruptly and effectively in a community with a history of multiethnic solidarity? How were these new social divisions produced and reproduced over the course of warfare on a social level? By considering new archival sources, in-depth interviews, and recent scholarly publications, this study argues that such dividing line made the process of ethnicization, or of polarization, possible. Thus, by representing the space where the top-level political cleavages, local-level cleavages, and individuals’ beliefs and momentary choices meet, the wartime dividing line effectively transformed former neighbors into political enemies who were no longer familiar, visible, or accessible on a human level.

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