A Constitution for Israel According to the Torah

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-98
Author(s):  
Alexander Kaye
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Legal Centralism ◽  
Religious Zionism

This chapter describes the new legal centralism that Herzog brought to religious Zionism in Palestine and Israel. He composed the draft of a constitution for Israel that was based on traditional Jewish law (halakha). To allow halakha to be more suited to the needs of a modern democracy, he used inventive interpretations of precedent to make halakha more egalitarian and more acceptable to people who were not Orthodox Jews. He also created a vision of halakha that conformed to the theoretical framework of modern European legal centralism. These changes are understood against the backdrop of European colonialism. Herzog’s adoption of European jurisprudence was similar to the intellectual strategies of many nationalist leaders, who resorted to European modes of thought in their struggle against European colonial rule.

Anxiety and the Antisocial

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Recent Theoretical Work ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Psychological Disposition

This chapter elaborates a novel theoretical framework that draws from the antisocial thesis in queer theory, particularly as formulated by Leo Bersani, as well as recent theoretical work on affect and emotion by Sianne Ngai and Sara Ahmed. Weaving these theoretical strands together, the chapter proposes that anxiety is not simply an individual psychological disposition, but can also be ascribed to modes of thought. The chapter then argues that anxiety, as a discursive affect, functions as a “straightening device,” policing antisocial subjects (or non-subjects) and calling them back to valued forms of sociality. This argument provides a foundation for interpreting the anxieties about playbor, automation, and the sharing economy discussed in the chapters that follow.

Conclusion: The Crisis Image – Mumblecore and Beyond

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Backman Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Specific Effect ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Independent Cinema ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Transition Mutation ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Further Development

By way of conclusion and further development of the notion of a cinema of crisis, I will extend briefly this study’s theoretical framework to the work of Harmony Korine, Kelly Reichardt and the ‘Mumblecore’ movement – or, more specifically, the work of Lena Dunham. However, in order to outline these further facets of a cinema of crisis, it is necessary at this juncture to summarise what its salient features are. I argued at the beginning of this book that the dominant and established approach to American independent cinema in critical and scholarly studies is to categorise it in terms of economic, production and distribution strategies.1 While this is important and useful, this focus on the meaning and context of the very term ‘independent’ has resulted in a paucity of material on the aesthetics and poetics of this kind of cinema and its specific effect or affects. By focusing on the themes of crisis, liminality, transition, mutation and transformation, I have tried to emphasise the ways in which American independent cinema appropriates and transfigures the tropes of European ‘Art’ cinema (as set forth in Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2) for its own particular purposes in order to challenge entrenched modes of thought.

The Spread of Modern Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 256-295
Author(s):  
David Stasavage
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Global Spread ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter reviews modern democracy that spread first to other lands inhabited by Europeans then into further areas as people freed themselves from European colonial rule. It focuses on the global spread of democracy. It also analyzes modern democracy that has been more likely to take root in places where there is a legacy of state weakness and where rulers need their people. The chapter clarifies the broader definition of democracy, which concludes that the initial share of people living under some form of democracy actually started out quite high. It recounts how democracy fell subsequently as a result of colonization, only to rise again as colonies became independent.

scholarly journals Self-Help Criminality as Resistance?: Currency Counterfeiting in Colonial Nigeria

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-407
Author(s):  
AYODEJI OLUKOJU
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Poor ◽  
British Rule ◽  
European Colonialism

This essay examines the counterfeiting and uttering of British Imperial coinage in interwar Nigeria, and the response of the colonial state. In particular, it establishes a connection between criminality and resistance to European colonialism in Africa. In this regard, it contextualizes the preponderant involvement in the counterfeiting saga of the Ijebu, a subgroup of the Yoruba nationality in southwestern Nigeria. Though other considerations were involved, the preponderance of the Ijebu in making what was called “Ijebu money” illustrates how self-help criminality was both a means of accumulation and a veritable form of resistance to colonial rule. Following their military defeat in 1892 and their subsequent alienation from British rule, this criminal activity represented resistance by other means. The point must be stressed, however, that not all Ijebu were counterfeiters, and all counterfeiters were not Ijebu, and that the counterfeiters were no “heroic criminals”, who shared their loot with the poor.

Genocide and Mass Violence in the ‘Heart of Darkness’

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik J. Schaller
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Colonialism

This article discusses genocide and mass violence in Africa during the colonial period. While European colonial rule lasted only several decades, it had a profound impact on Africa. The history of European colonialism in Africa is of unprecedented socio-economic, political, and cultural change, mass violence, and exploitation. Until recently, the historiography of colonialism and genocide has portrayed the Africans as passive and apathetic victims of European power and violence. But Africa did not degenerate into a graveyard because of the Europeans' attempt to transform the continent and its inhabitants according to their ideas. European colonialism did not succeed in completely destroying African cultures and identities. Africans always found ways to preserve their cultures and to reconstitute their social organizations, however totalitarian and coercive the colonizers' policies and fantasies about absolute power were confirmed.

‘Humanity in the chrysalis stage’: indigenous Australians in the anthropological imagination, 1899–1926

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRIKA Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Total Production ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen's Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899) is now remembered as an approximation of the anthropological method that would soon be conventional: a comprehensive study of a delimited area, based on sustained fieldwork, portraying a population's distinctive character. In 1913, however, Bronislaw Malinowski said of Spencer and Gillen's studies that ‘half the total production in anthropological theory ha[d] been based upon their work, and nine-tenths affected or modified by it’. Native Tribes inspired an intense international debate, orchestrated by J. G. Frazer, broker of the book's publication, predicated on the assumption that indigenous Australians were the most primitive of living peoples, whose totemism was somehow at the base of civilization's highest achievements – monogamous marriage and truly spiritual religion. But the debate proved irresolvable in Frazer's terms. Pondering conflicting interpretations of totemism, anthropologists rejected unilinear models of social evolution like Frazer's. Nationally differentiated populations of professional anthropologists emerged in the early twentieth century, developing distinctive theoretical schemes. Nevertheless, some issues central to the debate remained vital. For example, how were magical, scientific and religious modes of thought and action to be distinguished? And in Australia, analyses of indigenes were distinctively construed. White settlers, concerned to legitimate colonial rule, asked specific questions: did Aborigines have established ties to specific lands? Were Aborigines capable of civilization? Biogeographical theory underpinned Spencer's relatively liberal conclusions, which had precursors and successors in Australian anthropology: Aborigines had defined criteria of land ownership, their habits were suitable adaptations to their circumstances, and observed cultural diversity among Aborigines denoted their ‘nascent possibilities of development along many varied lines’.

Legal Syncretism as a Theoretical Framework for African Constitutionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-34
Author(s):  
Berihun Adugna Gebeye
Keyword(s):  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Legal Centralism

This chapter presents legal syncretism as a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism. After providing reasons for needing a new theoretical framework the chapter proceeds to explore the existing theoretical frameworks of law in general—legal centralism and legal pluralism—and examines their relevance to African constitutionalism. After demonstrating both the potential and limits of these frameworks, the chapter then proposes legal syncretism as a new and better theoretical framework with which to capture and explain the transformation of African constitutionalism from precolonial times to the present, as well as all the attendant constitutional designs and practices.

The Characterization of Miṣwot and Conception of Halakhah in Rabbinic Non-Halakhic Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Binyamin Katzoff
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Law ◽  
Linguistic Style ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Modes Of Thought

Abstract Scholarly discussion concerning rabbinic conceptions of the nature of halakhah—realist vs. nominalist—has for the most part focused on halakhic content and discourse. However, as Schremer has shown, non-halakhic passages may present conceptions that differ from those found in halakhic sources. Following Schremer’s suggested distinction, in this study I examine non-halakhic texts which use various metaphors or linguistic styles to characterize the miṣwot. In the cases I examine, I will demonstrate that the authors could have formulated their content in more than one way, and thus their choice of a particular linguistic style reflects their particular conception of the nature of the miṣwot. My suggestion is that non-halakhic sources that display both modes of thought, realist and nominalist views of Jewish law, offer more accurate reflections of the multifaceted conceptual world of the rabbis than do halakhic texts.

German Colonial Rule in Present-day Namibia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-71
Author(s):  
Patrick Mielke
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
German History ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
History Textbook ◽  
European Colonialism

This article traces discursive shifts in the ways in which imperialism and European colonialism have been dealt with in the classroom in relation to the German history textbook Time for History (Zeit für Geschichte), which was published in 2010. It explores how the textbook’s representation of German colonial rule in present-day Namibia both raises awareness of and reproduces common colonialist-racist images of the “other” by demonstrating how its content is negotiated in year-nine history lessons, as observed over the course of an ethnographic study carried out in a German secondary school. The author assesses the complex interplay between discursive practices of negotiation, everyday educational practices and deeply rooted, colonialist-racist images of the “other” and, on the basis of this interplay, analyses how difficult it is to bring about content-based and discursive shifts in the classroom.

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