The Future

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Paul Gifford
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The West ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Human Situation ◽  
History Of

This chapter addresses the limits of religious change. It argues that invoking the notion of change is sometimes less helpful than admitting that something has been discarded or hollowed out or evacuated. A new mentality has arisen in the West, which has marginalized the awareness of the otherworldly that is indispensable to ‘religion’ as substantively understood. Moving to this new cognitive style has constituted a definitive break (the ‘Great Ditch’) in the history of humankind. This new cognitive style is the essential plank of modernity. Modernity can be manifested in a variety of cultural expressions but the concept of ‘multiple modernities’ is misleading if it suggests that modernity is possible without it. Religious institutions persist in the West, in many cases with considerable power and influence, but they have been largely NGO-ized or reduced to the role of pressure groups or agencies within civil society. Their role today is as promoters of human values; it is hardly the role traditionally claimed, which was relating the human to the otherworldly. It is not that religion ‘poisons everything’, as some New Atheists say; it is that a new cognitive style has changed the human situation irrevocably.

scholarly journals INTRIGUES BEHIND THE HAREM WALL: SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF LIFE BEHIND THE HAREM OF SULTAN SULAIMAN I

Al-Albab ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eka Hendry Ar.
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
Academic Review

The urgency of exploring the history of the harem is important, not only because of being a rare phenomenon today or no longer in existence but perhaps this work is like opening the pandora’s box, a nightmare for women. This paper is presented as an academic review to portrait the fact that power is always in contact with wealth and attractive women, especially during a period when patriarchy was dominant. Sultan Sulaiman I was in power between 1520 to 1566 AD, in the 16th century AD. In western literature, Sultan Sulaiman was known as Suleyman the Magnificent. The work concludes, first, that the harem to the people of the Middle East in the medieval times was considered respectable for the family, especially for women both in the context of the imperial and domestic harem, where it was constructed in the name of honor, comfort and safety for women. Second, the construction of social, cultural and religious institutions of harem is the integration between the will to protect and maintain the honor of women, the concept of marriage in Islam and the patriarchal system hegemony in the Islamic world particularly in the context of the imperial harem. Third, the role of Sulaiman I who was “brave” to go against the tradition that had been practiced for many years in the Ottoman Empire, a milestone was important for the emancipation of women of the harem. Finally, to respond to the harem tradition, we must be in an impartial position, between the construction of the West and East.

Magistri Legis. Eine Studie zur dogmatischen Funktion im industriellen System

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-112
Author(s):  
Pierre Legendre
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Reproduction ◽  
Industrial System ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
New Look

"Der Beitrag reevaluiert die «dogmatische Funktion», eine soziale Funktion, die mit biologischer und kultureller Reproduktion und folglich der Reproduktion des industriellen Systems zusammenhängt. Indem sie sich auf der Grenze zwischen Anthropologie und Rechtsgeschichte des Westens situiert, nimmt die Studie die psychoanalytische Frage nach der Rolle des Rechts im Verhalten des modernen Menschen erneut in den Blick. </br></br>This article reappraises the dogmatic function, a social function related to biological and cultural reproduction and consequently to the reproduction of the industrial system itself. On the borderline of anthropology and of the history of law – applied to the West – this study takes a new look at the question raised by psychoanalysis concerning the role of law in modern human behaviour. "

Paradox and Possibility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Poyntz
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
The West ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
Youth Media ◽  
Mass Reproduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Texts

The history of youth and media culture can be examined by tracing the relationships between the production, representation, circulation, and consumption of media, technology, and cultural texts aimed at youth markets and audiences. The historical development of youth relates to larger socioeconomic, cultural, and political conditions, including the role of mass reproduction and changes in the conditions of distance that shape youth lives. Youth and mass media first melded together in the West, owing to developments in the United States and the United Kingdom. The histories of media and youth culture in other countries, however, capture differences in youth media relationships. In the contemporary period, the use of YouTube in the West and WeChat in China illuminates the globalization of youth cultures and the ongoing role of a central paradox integral to young people’s entanglements with media around the world: the key media structures that shape and contour youth lives are also the very sites where youth continue to navigate authentic meaning and experience and imagine their own futures.

Immigration, Jesuit Higher Education, and the Undocumented

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Schlichting
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Jesuit Education ◽  
Jesuit Higher Education ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
History Of Migration

This chapter traces the history of migration to the United States starting in the 1500s, and discusses the role of religious institutions, including Jesuit colleges starting in the early 1800s, in providing for the needs of recent immigrants. Throughout American history, immigrants have arrived in “waves,” leaving their homelands and undertaking the arduous journey to the promised land. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the journey involved a long voyage across the oceans in frail wooden ships, navigated by the sun and stars. Today the voyage may be by foot through the Americas or on a crowded jet airplane, but the challenge remains: to venture and then adjust to a new life in a new world. At Jesuit campuses, the undocumented immigrants follow in the footsteps of generations of immigrants and their children from various European countries. These new immigrants believe that a Jesuit education is the key to achieving their American dream and the dreams of their parents.

Indigenous African Religions

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Baum
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
African Religions ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Indigenous Religions

This chapter focuses on the history of religions created by African communities and which have relied primarily on the inspiration of prophets, mediums, and elders, rather than on sacred texts. Anthropologists, colonial administrators, and missionaries dominated the study of indigenous African religions until the 1970s and relatively few studies emphasized historical approaches. This reflects long-standing Western assumptions about Africa as a place without history or religions, as well as the paucity of written documents about African religious history. The chapter begins with E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s historical analysis of Nuer prophetism, and examines the role of the Atlantic slave trade as a catalyst for religious change, the role of indigenous religions in resistance to colonial conquest, and the ways in which they changed in response to colonial occupation. It examines forms of witchcraft, constructions of gender, and new challenges to indigenous African religions during the postcolonial era.

scholarly journals The Social Construction of Historical Traumas: The Polish Experience of the Uses of History in an Intelligentsia-dominated Polity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 911-931
Author(s):  
Tomasz Zarycki ◽  
Tomasz Warczok
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The West ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Identity ◽  
And Control

The article argues that Poland’s mainstream national historical narrative, at least as far as the last two centuries of history of the country is concerned, is full of ‘traumatic’ motives which are regularly used and developed in diverse current political and intellectual contexts. Polish history is imagined to a large extent as an endless chain of 200 years of suffering, caused, among other things, by occupations, wars and exploitation, which are usually seen as not fully recognized in other countries, in particular in the West. The article attempts first of all to explain this specific nature of Poland’s historical identity by the privileged role of the intelligentsia, understood as a specific type of elite based on possession and control of cultural capital. It reconstructs the historical rise of the intelligentsia and its impact on the mainstream narrative in question, pointing to a selective choice of potential ‘traumas’ which are assigned a national status. They may be seen as tools to build positions in what can be called the Polish ‘field of power’, to use the notion coined by Pierre Bourdieu. The particular configuration and recent history of the field of power in Poland is reconstructed in order to explain different strategies of what can be called the social and political construction of historical traumas in Poland.

Mosques, Muslims, Methods: the Role of Mosques in Research about Muslims in Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torkel Brekke ◽  
Lene Kühle ◽  
Göran Larsson ◽  
Tuomas Martikainen
Keyword(s):  
Lived Religion ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The West ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Muslims In The West ◽  
Muslims In Europe

Abstract Previous research has questioned the use of mosques as points of entry for research about Muslims in Europe. Part of the background has been a new emphasis on lived religion and a critique of a one-sided focus on religious institutions. We argue that some of this criticism is theoretically ill-founded and we also point out that some trends may make mosques more important in research about Muslims. In section 1, we go through the most important literature addressing the methodological problems posed by using mosques in research about Muslims in the West. In section 2, we look at some of the fundamental problems of definitions in some of this critical methodological literature. In section 3, we discuss how the choice of methods, not least sampling modes, will be of significance for meaningful discussion about the appropriateness of using mosques in research, and in section 4, we present what we see as important advantages of using mosques as a point of entry to study Muslims. In section 5, we conclude with a brief summary and discussion.

Wanted: A Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Edmund Burke
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Third World ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Third World

There is something seriously flawed about models of social change that posit the dominant role of in-built civilizational motors. While “the rise of the West” makes great ideology, it is poor history. Like Jared Diamond, I believe that we need to situate the fate of nations in a long-term ecohistorical context. Unlike Diamond, I believe that the ways (and the sequences) in which things happened mattered deeply to what came next. The Mediterranean is a particularly useful case in this light. No longer a center of progress after the sixteenth century, the decline of the Mediterranean is usually ascribed to its inherent cultural deficiencies. While the specific cultural infirmity varies with the historian (amoral familism, patron/clientalism, and religion are some of the favorites) its civilizationalist presuppositions are clear. In this respect the search for “what went wrong” typifies national histories across the region and prefigures the fate of the Third World.

scholarly journals Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S Landes
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Technological Advance ◽  
The West ◽  
European Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In the history of technological development, why didn't other regions keep up with Europe? This is an important question, as one learns almost as much from failure as from success. The one civilization that was in a position to match and even anticipate the European achievement was China. China had two chances: first, to generate a continuing, self-sustaining process of scientific and technological advance on the basis of its indigenous traditions and achievements; and second, to learn from European science and technology once the foreign “barbarians” entered the Chinese domain in the sixteenth century. China failed both times. What explains the first failure? I stress the role of the market: the fact that enterprise was free in Europe while China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights; that in Europe innovation worked and paid, while the Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise. As for the second failure, China's cultural triumphalism combined with petty downward tyranny made it a singularly bad learner.

scholarly journals Presidential Term Limits and the International Community

2019 ◽  
pp. 557-584
Author(s):  
Christina Murray ◽  
Eric Alston ◽  
Micha Wiebusch
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
West African ◽  
Central Question ◽  
The West ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Venice Commission ◽  
External Actors

Proposed changes to presidential term limits are almost always highly contested and have attracted international and regional attention. A central question that faces the external actors is the extent to which it is legitimate to take a position in presidential term limit debates. This chapter considers the policy concerning presidential term limits of three major IGOs, the UN, the AU, and the OAS. It further discusses the way in which IDEA, an IGO with a softer mandate, has responded to the debate on term limits, as well as the role of the Venice Commission, ECOWAS, DRI, the Carter Center, and the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF). This review suggests an increasing international consensus that, in countries with a history of authoritarianism and weak democratic institutions, presidential term limits can play an important role in strengthening democratic processes and reducing the likelihood of conflict.

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