Feeding and Fasting Bodies

2019 ◽  
pp. 255-272
Author(s):  
Jaita Talukdar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Feeding And Fasting ◽  
Religious Fasting

Treating women as helpless victims of social conventions or as neoliberal, postmodern subjects to understand “food femininities” obscures the fact that bodies are situated in social hierarchies. Social functions and roles tied to the female body bring about difference in eating and dieting practices. This chapter applies Bourdeusian analysis to the dieting and religious fasting practices of forty-eight women in the rapidly neoliberalizing city of Kolkata, India, to show how structurally rooted dispositions inform rules of engagement surrounding eating. Dieting and religious fasting, though simultaneously self-gratifying and strenuous, took on very different meanings depending on how they enabled women to seek recognition and meaning in their daily lives. The women who dieted projected their bodies onto the public sphere to secure the benefits that the new economic order could bestow, while familial fasts were an embodiment of the collective, material struggles less privileged women encountered on a daily basis.

Ossetian Ritual Feasts and Transpersonal Experience: Re-Description of a Religion as a Religious Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Sergei Shtyrkov
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Science ◽  
The North ◽  
Transpersonal Experience ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Systems

Abstract The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.

Religion in Latin America’s Public Sphere

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Gustavo S.J. Morello
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Role Of Religion

This chapter investigates the role of religion in Latin America’s public sphere. For respondents, religion and politics share the space where power is traded. The privileged position is to challenge the economic order and to generate peaceful relations among the peoples and defend human dignity. Respondents dislike the use of that power to pursue a partisan agenda and to have a privileged voice over other persons. At odds with the laïcité project, respondents welcome religion in the public sphere when it challenges modernity to include the poor, and advocates for human dignity. Religion is cheered as a countercultural force. However, this acceptance of religion’s presence in the public sphere does not mean a resacralization of it. Respondents prefer to keep the differentiation of social functions.

METODE KRITIK MATAN HADIS MISOGINIS MENURUT FATIMAH MERNISSI

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Dadah Dadah
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Gain Access

Discourse on gender has never been quietly discussed both among academics, politicians, and in people's daily lives. In the development of the current discussion about gender has involved Islamic thinkers to explore the repertoire of Islamic thought to see the existence of gender discourse in Islam. This condition is inseparable from claims that Islamic teachings are not gender sensitive, and even tend to reduce women, especially when a handful of people talk about the existence of women in the public sphere which is constrained by restrictions on women's movement to gain access in education, social and political fields. Fatimah Mernissi, when analyzing the religious texts already in the yellow book, especially the hadiths of the Prophet. and the narrators who later came up with a new term, namely "Misogynist Hadith" or hadith which hated women. Fatimah Mernissi had been critical, even to the figure of Imam Bukhari's caliber who was highly recognized for his credibility and authority, as well as for several friends of the Messenger of Allah. therefore, this critical attitude should not stop here, and not even bring taqlid attitude. This paper will show the method of criticizing misogynist hadith according to Mernissi.

Hoe verlicht waren de genootschappen? - De achttiende-eeuwse sociabiliteit in recent historisch onderzoek

2014 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-209
Author(s):  
Jordy Geerlings
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Important Object ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Traditional Understanding

The many forms of sociability that flourished during the eighteenth century have long been viewed as vehicles of the Enlightenment. Not only were societies, clubs, and lodges permeated by a spirit of egalitarianism, secularism, and religious tolerance, they were also essential factors in the dissemination of knowledge and new ideas. Additionally, sociability has been associated with the rise of the public sphere and civil society, as various societies provided important platforms for the new bourgeois public to discuss and address the issues of the day. However, recent research has challenged these views. Historians are increasingly finding that many societies were permeable to a variety of worldviews and practices, not all of which can be meaningfully associated with the Enlightenment. New insights also suggest the importance of local restrictions and social conventions influencing many societies, further complicating the traditional understanding of the progressive, enlightened nature of sociability during this period. At the same time, sociability remains an important object of research in its own right, as well as an indispensible window onto an ever increasing variety of historical phenomena. This article explores the ways in which recent research has transformed our understanding of sociability and its place in the Enlightenment.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

The Dynamics of Egypt’s “Semi-opposition,” 2004–11

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Mai Mogib Mosad
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political System ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

This paper maps the basic opposition groups that influenced the Egyptian political system in the last years of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. It approaches the nature of the relationship between the system and the opposition through use of the concept of “semi-opposition.” An examination and evaluation of the opposition groups shows the extent to which the regime—in order to appear that it was opening the public sphere to the opposition—had channels of communication with the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper also shows the system’s relations with other groups, such as “Kifaya” and “April 6”; it then explains the reasons behind the success of the Muslim Brotherhood at seizing power after the ousting of President Mubarak.

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