Liberté, Laïcité, Pluralité: Towards a Theology of Principled Pluralism

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Chaplin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
The State ◽  
National Debate ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Charlie Hebdo

While the Charlie Hebdo attacks unleashed a highly distinctive national debate within France, that debate also serves to throw into sharp relief the deepening tensions generated by increasingly complex relationships between the state and religion across much of Europe, not least due to the arrival of immigrant minority faiths wishing to advance claims in what is widely assumed to be ‘secular’ public space. After reviewing these tensions, the article distinguishes five current European responses to them and proposes a model of ‘principled pluralism’ as a theologically defensible option. The original theological roots of such a model are outlined and six indicative contemporary practical implications proposed.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

The community strike: From precarity to militant organizing

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 159-177
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
The State ◽  
A Site ◽  
Collective Actor

How do insecure layers of the working class resist when they lack access to power and organization at the workplace? The community strike represents one possible approach. Whereas traditional workplace strikes target employers and exercise power by withholding labor, community strikes focus on the sphere of reproduction, target the state, and build power through moral appeals and disruptions of public space. Drawing on ethnography and interviews in the impoverished Black townships and informal settlements around Johannesburg, I illustrate this approach by examining widespread local protests in South Africa. Insecurely employed and unemployed residents implemented community strikes by demanding public services, barricading roads and destroying property, and boycotting activities such as work and school. Within these local revolts, community represented both a site of struggle and a collective actor. While community strikes enabled economically insecure groups to mobilize and make demands, they also confronted significant limits, including tensions between protesters and workers.

The Return of Advertising in China: A Survey of the Ideological Reversal

1990 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 485-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Stross
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
The Third ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Advanced Capitalist ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the 1980s, bracketed by the Third Plenum in 1978 and the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, China edged, step by step, away from the orthodoxies of the Cultural Revolution, and each reversal excited a certain amount of commentary both within and without China. As time passed, and the list of reintroduced institutions and practices grew ever longer, habituation reduced the surprise of succeeding announcements. But the reintroduction of advertising, a cental totem of advanced capitalist culture, occupied a particularly significant place on the list because its reappearance in China forced the Chinese to reconsider distinctions that had formerly been drawn between capitalist and socialist societies. For most of its history, the People's Republic had castigated advertising as the apotheosis of the capitalist religion of consumption. This was especially so in the late 1960s during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards few commercial billboards or newspaper advertisements interrupted the skein of relentlessly political messages that crossed public space. When advertising was officially reintroduced in 1979, and its sanctioned scope expanded beyond industrial goods, the state faced a daunting ideological task: rebuilding a case for advertising in a socialist system that had long defined itself as one that did not need commercial exhortation. In essence, it had to sell the legitimacy of selling.

scholarly journals Long-term Prescription? Digital Surveillance is Here to Stay

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Žilvinas Švedkauskas ◽  
Ahmed Maati
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The State ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Digital Surveillance ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Everyday Communication

An emerging literature has shown concerns about the impact of the pandemic on the proliferation of digital surveillance. Contributing to these debates, in this paper we demonstrate how the pandemic facilitates digital surveillance in three ways: (1) By shifting everyday communication to digital means it contributes to the generation of extensive amounts of data susceptible to surveillance. (2) It motivates the development of new digital surveillance tools. (3) The pandemic serves as a perfect justification for governments to prolong digital surveillance. We provide empirical anecdotes for these three effects by examining reports by the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. Building on our argument, we conclude that we might be on the verge of a dangerous normalization of digital surveillance. Thus, we call on scholars to consider the full effects of public health crises on politics and suggest scrutinizing sources of digital data and the complex relationships between the state, corporate actors, and the sub-contractors behind digital surveillance.

scholarly journals INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF DECLARING PROPERTY, ASSETS AND PRIVATE INTERESTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 214
Author(s):  
Anna Tytko ◽  
Hanna Stepanova
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
Financial Control ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Private Interest ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Practical Implications

The aim of the article. To analyse the specificities of asset and private interest declaration by public officials and representatives of political power, as well as to suggest the author’s original differentiation of declarations of assets, income, private interests, and gifts. The subject of the study is the procedure for submitting declarations by persons entrusted with functions of the state and local self-government bodies in some countries of Western Europe. Methodology. In the article, the method of deduction and induction enabled to study the features of violating the requirements of financial control through the procedure for submitting a declaration by persons entrusted with functions of the state and local authorities. The methods of deduction and synthesis enabled to define the concept of “asset and interest declaration”, practiced in some countries of Western Europe. A comparative legal analysis enabled to study the procedure for submitting an income and expenditure declaration in some Western European countries, identifying the main types of conflict of interest and income declarations, as well as differentiating persons obliged to submit declarations. The results of the study revealed that the foreign experience of asset declaration is closely intertwined with the private interest declaration. Practical implications. In the study: first, the specificities of foreign declaration practice, according to the subjects of such declaration submission, are outlined; second, the procedures for submitting declarations of income and expenditures, as well as interests, are analysed and compared; third, the author’s perspective on the differentiation of declarations and declarants is substantiated. Relevance/originality. The comparative legal analysis enabled to study the procedure for submitting a declaration of public officials in some countries of Western Europe, empowering to form perspective areas of legislation development in this sphere.

scholarly journals TEOLOGIA PÚBLICA NO BRASIL: UM PRIMEIRO BALANÇO

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (122) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Rudolf Von Sinner
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
South African ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Rio Grande Do Sul ◽  
The South ◽  
The World ◽  
Uniform Definition ◽  
Different Parts

À luz de desafios atuais presentes no espaço público brasileiro, a discussão sobre a presença de crucifixos em tribunais gaúchos e a atuação de políticos evangélicos no Congresso, o artigo propõe-se fazer um primeiro balanço da reflexão sobre uma teologia pública no Brasil. Assim, procura responder à pergunta “o que é teologia pública?” não de forma definitória, inequívoca, uniformizante. Antes, mostra uma variedade de origens do termo e de oportunidades, bem como de perigos contidos neste conceito. Num primeiro passo, o artigo apresenta quatro linhas de abordagem presentes na emergente discussão brasileira. Em seguida, recorrendo ao sul-africano Dirk Smit, mostra a diversidade de origens e usos do conceito em várias partes do mundo. Por fim, procura evidenciar a pertinência e o potencial de uma teologia pública no Brasil – com ousadia e humildade.ABSTRACT: In view of actual challenges present in the Brazilian public space, the discussion on the presence of crosses in courthouses in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as on the activities of evangelical Congressmen, this article ventures into a first balance of reflection on a public theology in Brazil. It seeks to respond to the question “what is public theology?” not with a clear and uniform definition. Rather, it shows a variety of origins and opportunities, as well as dangers contained in the concept. In a first step, the article presents four lines of thought present in the emerging Brazilian discussion. Then, with reference to the South African theologian Dirk Smit, it shows the diversity of origins and uses of the concept in different parts of the world. Finally, it seeks to show the pertinence and the potential of a public theology in Brazil – both with boldness and humility. 

scholarly journals Raumaneignungen, Regeln und Profite in Dhakas Feld des Straßenhandels – Sozialgeographische Erklärungsversuche auf Grundlage von Bourdieus Theorie der Praxis

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Etzold
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
The State ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Street Vending ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Urban South ◽  
Spatial Appropriation

Abstract. The paper discusses street vendors' spatial appropriations and the governance of public space in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The much debated question in social geography how people's position in social space relates to their position in physical space (and vice versa) stands at the centre of the analysis. I use Bourdieu's Theory of Practice to discuss this dialectic relation at two analytical levels. On a micro-political level it is shown that the street vendors' social positions and the informal rules of the street structure their access to public space and thus determine their "spatial profits". At a macro-political level, it is not only the conditions inside the "field of street vending" that matter for the hawkers, but also their relation to the state-controlled "field of power". The paper demonstrates that Bourdieu's key ideas can be linked to current debates about spatial appropriation and informality. Moreover, I argue that Bourdieu's theory builds an appropriate basis for a relational, critical, and reflexive social geography in the Urban South.

scholarly journals Recreation and work in an emerging country: a combination of regulatory and motivational influences

2021 ◽  
Vol 343 ◽  
pp. 10018
Author(s):  
Hanna Shevchenko ◽  
Borys Burkynskyi ◽  
Mykola Petrushenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
The State ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Effective Work ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Motivational Influences ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Vital Forces

The work can not be considered in isolation from the recreation as a process of an individual’s vital forces restoration. In emerging economies, recreational management needs an actualization at both the macro and micro levels. The purpose of the study is an analysis of the possibilities of combining the functions of regulation and motivation in the direction of increasing productivity and employment due to improved recreation. The research methodology is the Breton-Brennan-Buchanan model, within which homo economicus feels the influence from the government and adjusts the ratio of “work – leisure”. A modified view on this model is that the state is seen not only in terms of income maximization. If the collected taxes are returned to the individual, in particular in the form of qualitative recreation, then in this case the demotivation in the form of non-effective work is reduced. The paper substantiates the directions of recreational sphere activation in Ukraine, namely in relation to: increasing the motivational role of the state, along with its exclusively regulatory function; participation of enterprises in the processes of discussion and implementation of measures relevant to improving the quality of the recreational environment and infrastructure within the framework of public space renovation.

Refugees and Changing State-Citizen Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-148
Author(s):  
Anne Marie Baylouny
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Differential Outcomes ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Practical Implications

This chapter summarizes the argument and the practical implications of the findings on Jordan, Lebanon, and Syrian refugees for future movements toward good governance. It details the types of protest that occurred in Jordan and Lebanon and examines the differential outcomes in aid effectiveness and movements in Jordan and Lebanon, and the dynamics of humanitarian aid on state sovereignty. It also points out how the state has become more central in Lebanon and Jordan, while specific services are subcontracted. The chapter talks about the massive aid and loans that are intended to alleviate pressure on refugee-hosting states which triggered more protests while also not helping the refugees. It analyzes refugees through lenses of xenophobia, militarization, and humanitarianism that conceals refugees' and forced migrants' wider roles in catalyzing changes in state-society relations.

The value of accounting discourse in conditions of accelerating change

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Heli Hookana
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Strategic Change ◽  
Development Work ◽  
Service Network ◽  
Value Based Management ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Voluntary Exchange ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Discursive Power ◽  
Practical Implications

This study investigates the complex relationships between organisational strategic change, developing accountabilities, and materialised values in the emerging public-service network. The study highlights the importance of bilateral governance, relational forms of behaviour, and the voluntary exchange of information that is based upon shared values and that regulates networked behaviour in a much less overt way than formal attempts at control. In these circumstances accountancy basically serves as an assistant, helping to mediate, shape and construct inter-organisational relations through various socio-economic and discursive power-based mechanisms. The results indicate that for some organisations value-based management may still have elements of value-adding contributions of a more non-financial and social nature despite the veneer of the rhetoric. In combining participation in development work, work in practice, and theoretical analysis, the study carries both theoretical and practical implications.

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