Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Joyce Dalsheim
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

This chapter introduces the book, beginning with its theoretical foundations in the study of nationalism and colonialism. It opens with the work of Lord Acton on how “the passengers exist for the sake of the ship,” in which the passengers are sovereign citizens in the nation-state. It considers the work of Eugen Weber on processes of cultural change that are fundamental to both colonization and nationalist projects. Introducing the modern state of Israel, it puts forth a thesis on how nationalism might be better understood as a form of self-colonizing, in which people must assimilate to the nation. In the case of Israel where “religion” and “nation” are conflated in the figure of the Jew, sovereign citizens must be Jewish in particular ways that limit Jewishness and freedom of religion. The chapter also explains why the book is framed with Kafka’s writing.

Judy Jaffe-Schagen, Having and Belonging: Homes and Museums in Israel. New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. x + 221 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Ethiopian Jews ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter reviews the book Having and Belonging: Homes and Museums in Israel (2016), by Judy Jaffe-Schagen. In Having and Belonging, Jaffe-Schagen explores the connection between identity, material culture, and location. Focusing on eight cases involving Chabad, religious Zionists, Moroccan Jews, Iraqi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, Christian Arabs, and Muslim Arabs, the book shows how various minority groups in Israel are represented through objects and material culture in homes and museums. According to Jaffe-Schagen, in the politicized cultural landscape of borderless Israel, location not only affects the interplay between objects and people but can also provide important insights about citizenship. Her main argument is that the nation-state of Israel is not a multicultural society because it has failed to serve as a cultural “melting pot” for the various immigration groups.

Antisemitism in Doubt. Historical and Methodological Reflections on Contemporary Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-216
Author(s):  
Amos Morris Reich
Keyword(s):  
Normal State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
State Of Israel

Abstract In the attempt to find an Israeli approach to understanding the current European ambivalence towards Jews, this study focuses on the question of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism. It analyzes a specifically Israeli structure of experience of “schizophrenia” resulting from its decoupling of antisemitism from the Holocaust. It is shown that the justification of anti-Semitism has changed after the Holocaust. Thus, anti-Semitism has developed from a “cultural code” to a “semiotic problem”. The article concludes that the two main forms of Israel’s response to European anti-Semitism are inseparably linked to the question of whether Zionism ended with the establishment of the modern state of Israel and whether Israel is a “normal” state.

Digital Surveillance/Militant Resistance: Categorizing the “Proto-state Hacker”

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 670-685
Author(s):  
Erik Skare
Keyword(s):  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Electronic Unit ◽  
Gray Area ◽  
Digital Infrastructure ◽  
Digital Surveillance ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Spaces Of Resistance ◽  
New Phenomena

Rapid developments in digital infrastructure have made all-encompassing surveillance all too possible. However, the same infrastructure has simultaneously enabled the use of new possibility spaces that react to, shape, and resist these structures of control and surveillance. The Israel/Palestine conflict is no different, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has created an electronic unit with hackers to circumvent and resist the Israeli matrix of control and its surveillance. I argue that out of this dialectical relationship in Palestine, between new possibility spaces of resistance and structures of control, new phenomena arise in the gray area between the nation state hacker and the hacktivist as PIJ emulates the features of a modern state army. To understand the nature of its electronic unit, one must take this dialectic into account by introducing the category, “proto-state hacker.”

New Legal Pluralism and Transnational Private Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-47
Author(s):  
Vanessa Mak
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
The Eu

This chapter makes an analysis of the theoretical foundations of lawmaking in European private law. It shows that they can be traced to transnational and constitutional pluralist theories. The main question is in which respects legal pluralism should replace the monist, state-centred perspective on lawmaking that prevailed in Western Europe since the creation of the Westphalian nation state. It is argued that, even though the state remains the primary locus for lawmaking in private law in the EU, the rise of private regulation and the interaction between courts through judicial dialogues plead in favour of adopting a strong legal pluralist perspective. ‘Strong’ or ‘radical’ legal pluralism, other than monism or ‘ordered’ legal pluralism, holds that norms can co-exist without a formal hierarchy. Both a descriptive and a normative case are put forward in support of adopting this perspective.

Divine Action in History

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter probes the relationship of divine action to historical processes by looking at the creation of the modern state of Israel and its relationship to the Jewish people. The establishment of Israel has been described by many writers as a miracle of God. It argues particularistic claims like these should be taken seriously. It also suggests that these kinds of public claims about divine action are not going away, and we ought to reckon with them; if we do not, it is to our detriment for public understanding. It suggests the crucial link between history and theology is the nature of causation—it draws on Ernst Troeltsch’s work to bring out this point.

2. States, Nations, and Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global Order ◽  
European State

This chapter discusses what is often regarded as the central institution, not only of domestic or national political order but also of current international or global order—the state. Alongside the state, we must also consider the idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism—perhaps the most powerful political ideology to emerge in the modern world. There is, however, another form of international political order that has actually been far more common throughout history, and that is empire. With the rise of modernity from around the beginning of the seventeenth century, we also encounter the rise of the modern state and state system in Europe along with ideas about sovereignty, citizenship, the nation-state, and democracy. The chapter then looks at the effective globalization of the European state system through modern imperialism and colonialism and the extent to which these have been productive of contemporary global order.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-316
Author(s):  
Rabab El-Mahdi ◽  
Ellen Lust
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Procedural Outcomes

The nation-state is in crisis. The increasing mobility of capital and information, unprecedented waves of people moving across borders, and rise of actors, such as ISIS, unwilling to abide by the rules of the Westphalian system, challenge the very notion of territoriality, citizenship, sovereignty, and the state's monopoly over the legitimate use of force. Studies on the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab uprisings took the region by storm, upending “conventional wisdom” held by many political scientists and scholars, have focused largely on the causes, genealogy, and procedural outcomes of the events. These are important, but as we shall see, the uprisings also highlighted the need to think carefully about how the modern state has changed, is being adapted, or has been superseded. How is the “state,” a foundational conceptual construct in the social sciences, to be located in light of these events? And to what extent do the concepts we employ and the language we use accurately reflect and allow us to interrogate realities, or do they obscure them? This roundtable aims to spark this much-needed discussion.

Borders and Insecurities in Western Flores

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 122-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maribeth Erb
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Eastern Boundary ◽  
The People

Creating and guarding boundaries is one of the pervasive features of modern states. Many boundaries have been contested in the Southeast Asian region between states, and boundaries are always locations of great insecurity for states, and for the people who live on them. The case to be explored in this paper is about boundaries that are not international, but local boundaries between districts within the nation state of Indonesia, in the eastern region of western Flores. The years of political change in Indonesia have created considerable attention to the creation of new boundaries, with the “pemekaran”, or “flowering” of new districts. This has caused the revival of concern over the actual boundaries of western Flores districts, resulting in various extreme instances of boundary contestation and protection. One contestation revived a much older dispute of the eastern boundary of the western Flores district of Manggarai, which dates from the time of the beginning of the Indonesian modern state. In this paper it will be queried what makes internal, domestic boundaries important, including how they are complicated by issues of ethnicity, foreign investment in natural resources, and religion, all of which can create considerable insecurity for the local communities who live near and on these contested borders.

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