scholarly journals The Impossibility of Queering the Mother: New Sightings of the Virgin Mother in the ‘Secular’ State

Author(s):  
Yvonne Sherwood

In this part autobiographical essay, I explore the social consequences of the rise of the so-called ‘tender years’ doctrine coinciding with the rise in divorce. I argue that this has led to increased gender apartheid around the figures of M-for-Mother and F-for-Father, and a new sanctification of the figure of the holy mother-and-child. I look at the inverse and complementary relations between M-for-Male and F-for Female and M-for-Mother and F-for-Father, and I argue (counterintuitively) that origins, mothers, and fathers are queerer in ancient myths and the Bible than they are in contemporary semantics and law. I use strange old biblical texts (Solomon’s judgment; the trial of Abraham) to create unheimlich echoes for the so-called secular state and its strange constructions of the family; and I show how the Ten Commandments continue to influence family law.

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
J. Wancata ◽  
M. Freidl ◽  
F. Friedrich ◽  
T. Matschnig ◽  
A. Unger ◽  
...  

Aims:The purpose of this study was to investigate disability among patients suffering from schizophrenia and to identify predictors of disability.Methods:101 patients from different types of psychiatric services in Vienna and diagnosed with schizophrenia according to ICD-10 were included. They were investigates by means of 36-Item self-administered version of the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHO-DAS-II) and the PANSS-scale. Patients’ mothers and fathers were asked to fill in the Family Problem Questionnaire.Results:The mean total score of the WHO-DAS-II was 74.1 (SD 21.9). When using weighted sub-scores the highest disability scores were found for social contacts, participation in society and household (means 2.58, 2.57 and 2.51 respectively). Using logistic regression, overall disability was positively associated with patient's age, overall severity of symptoms (PANSS) and number of previous hospital admissions. Overall disability was not associated with duration of illness and or patient's gender. The subjective burden experienced by patients’ fathers and mothers were increased by reduced social contacts and impaired participation in society, while we could not find an association with other domains of patient's disability (understanding, mobility, self-care, household).Conclusions:This study shows that schizophrenia results in disability in several domains. Family caregivers’ burden was predominantly increased by social consequences of schizophrenia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shona Minson

This article draws upon research with children whose mothers were imprisoned in England and Wales, to investigate the impacts of maternal imprisonment on dependent children. The research directly engaged with children, in accordance with Article 12 of the UNCRC 1989, and is set within an examination of the differentiated treatment in the family and criminal courts of England and Wales of children facing state initiated separation from a parent. The article explores children’s ‘confounding grief’ and contends that this grief originates from social processes, experienced as a consequence of maternal imprisonment. ‘Secondary prisonization’ is characterized by changes in home and caregiver and the regulation of the mother and child relationship. ‘Secondary stigmatization’ occurs when children are stigmatized by virtue of their relationship with their mother. These harms to children call into question the state’s fulfilment of its duty to protect children under Article 2 of the UNCRC 1989.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Redding

AbstractProponents of secularism often describe their support for this form of governance in terms of the protections it provides against the excesses, dangers, and coercions of religious governance. In reality, however, the differences between secular and religious systems of governance are often overstated, with secularism’s promises being in conversation with secularism’s failures. This article explores one recent and important instance of such secular failure, namely the high-profile Indian case of Shayara Bano v. Union of India deciding the legal legitimacy of “triple talaq,” a common Indian Muslim divorce practice. During the litigation of this case, a prominent Indian Muslim organization ended up engaging in sectarian modes of argumentation, whereby aspersions were cast on the Muslim bona fides of certain persons and communities. Further, in the course of deciding Shayara Bano, a religiously diverse set of Indian Supreme Court justices found themselves disagreeing along communal lines about either the necessity or ability of the secular state to “reform” Muslim family law. In all this, sectarian and communitarian divisions in India were heightened, and the social peace and religious freedom promised by secularism were severely undermined.


Author(s):  
Joanna L. Grossman ◽  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This chapter describes what might be the last battleground over “traditional” marriage—same-sex marriage, and the social and legal revolution that brought us from an era in which it was never contemplated to one in which, depending on the state, it is either expressly authorized or expressly prohibited. Same-sex marriage has posed—and continues to pose—a challenge to traditional definitions of marriage and family. But, more importantly, the issue implies broader changes in family law—the increasing role of constitutional analysis; limits on the right of government to regulate the family; and the clash between the traditional family form and a new and wider menu of intimate and household arrangements, and all this against the background of the rise of a stronger form of individualism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Siegbert Riecker

Summary It would be too simple to attribute the current crisis in research on the Pentateuch to the demise of the Wellhausen paradigm (the documentary hypothesis) and the resulting diversity of methods. Rather, these are merely symptoms of a fundamental crisis in the source critical paradigm as a whole. The difficulties with the nature of sources, their literary scope and the criteria for their division are only part of the wider problem. The introduction of non-verifiable ‘redactors’ and ‘Fortschreibung’ (updating) to cope with anomalies of a hypothesis seems methodologically just as questionable as the reconstruction of the social-historical background of individual literary strata (‘pseudo historicism’). The increasingly complex diachronic overall models are lacking plausibility and credibility, especially since the reconstruction of several stages in the development of the text is practically impossible from an empirical perspective. The alternative to the classic paradigm of source criticism is a literary paradigm that returns to the starting point of the testimony of the biblical texts themselves. Of course, literary tensions and sources must not be ignored. However, systems of interpretation to explain inconsistencies should not be based on methods developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but on the ancient literary conventions of the Bible and its environment.


Author(s):  
Scott M. Langston

Understanding the relationship between the Bible and popular culture requires a multidimensional approach that recognizes and integrates the various factors involved in particular uses of the Bible. Rather than studying these features in isolation from each other, focusing on their dynamic interplay demonstrates how biblical texts function as but one of many components in larger cultural productions. Furthermore, it shows how popular culture can act as a filter that selects and excludes elements of a biblical text for its own purposes, while transforming the text’s meanings. Popular uses of the Bible frequently reflect keen insight into biblical texts and often create innovative readings that go beyond academic methodologies, purposes, and abilities. Scholars therefore can learn much about the Bible from popular culture. Gilded Age and Progressive Era picture postcards of the Ten Commandments reflect this interplay, illustrating how factors such as capitalism, Victorian gender norms, American Protestant Christianity, and American exceptionalism combined to shape biblical expressions and uses.


Author(s):  
Joanna L. Grossman ◽  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This introductory chapter takes a brief look at family law in the United States as it changed over twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. “Family law” refers to a particular branch of the law—mostly about marriage, divorce, child custody, family property, adoption, and some related matters. However, this chapter also briefly considers other parts of the law that touch on the family in an important way, such as inheritance or the intersection between criminal law and family affairs. The chapter then considers the changes to family law in this expanded sense. In part, the changes were continuations of trends that started in the nineteenth century; but in part they were completely new. Perhaps the single most important trend was the decline of the traditional family, the family as it was understood in the nineteenth century, the family of the Bible and conventional morality.


Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-116
Author(s):  
Peter Gent

Biblical texts hold social power, acting in and through the religious traditions that hold the Bible authoritative, with far-reaching impact on culture and politics. Work by Bruno Latour and others on the agency and action of artefacts provides a set of concepts that make possible analysis of how social power is delegated to the Bible and how the Bible in turn holds power over its readers and broader society. Tracing the action of the Bible in this way enables reflection on the performative impact of how the Bible is read and interpreted.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Greenebaum

AbstractNonhuman animals always have played a significant role in people's lives. Lately, the technological and market economy has anthropomorphized dogs to human-like behavior, particularly to status of family member or child. This qualitative study expands upon the current studies on consumption and animals and society by exploring how human-canine relationships are anthropomorphized at the family excursion to "Yappy Hour" at Fido's Barkery. The type of person who attends Yappy Hour on a weekly basis has a unique and special type of connection with their dog that goes beyond most people's relationships with dogs. Most of the dog lovers interviewed do not perceive their dogs as dogs; they are family members, best friends, and "fur babies." These dog lovers also do not perceive themselves as dog owners; they see themselves as mothers and fathers. The social and market environment of Fido's Barkery not only reinforces their relationship with their dog, it shapes community, friendships, and personal identity.


Ijlil ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-215
Author(s):  
Syamsul Arifin

Sociological studies in Islamic family law are an alternative to legal research, which is a legal research not only in the forms of existing rules, but also examines the law in the legal reality that occurs in society. Sociological studies become a different point of view, where Islamic family law research is very close to syara 'law, determining whether or not it is permissible according to syara'. Sociological research Sociological research can be a research explaining the phenomenon of Islamic family law studied with social theories. Moreover, the family is the smallest social structure in the social world. The study of legal practices in matters related to the Islamic family becomes legal studies not only in the form of normative doctrinal, but empirical non-doctrinal.


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