The Many Voices of Islam

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 331-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suleman Dangor
Keyword(s):  
Political Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
Mystical Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Many

AbstractThis article traces the political, conflict in early Islam that led to the formation of the first theological sects, emergence of philosophical schools resulting from the translation of Greek writings, and development of the mystical tradition in response to the formalism of dogmatic theology. It analyse.s the social and political factors that contributed to the rich diversity of thought that permeated Islamic culture and society. Finally, it attempts to identify the major current debates among Muslim scholars ranging from the ultra-traditional to the ultra-secular.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

scholarly journals Presenting unwieldy pasts

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-252
Author(s):  
Katherine Hite ◽  
Daniela Jara
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Late Phase ◽  
The Political ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
The Rich

In the rich and varied work of memory studies, scholars have turned to exploring the meanings that different communities assign to the past, the social mediations of memories, as well as how the memories of subaltern subjects re-signify the relationship between history and memory. This special issue explores the ever present dynamics of unwieldy pasts through what have been termed “the spectral turn” and “the forensic turn.” We argue that specters (which appear in the literature as ghosts, or as haunting) and exhumations defy notions of temporality or resolution. Both trace the social dynamics that redefine the meanings of the past and that voice suffering, expose institutions’ limits, reveal disputes, explore affect and privilege political resistance. They draw from significant intellectual traditions across disciplinary and thematic boundaries in the natural and social sciences, the humanities, art and fiction. Their intellectual subjects range from work that explores the political struggles of confronting slavery and the possibility of reparations in the Americas long after it was formally abolished, to sensitive treatments of graves of Franco’s Spain. We suggest that both the spectral turn and the forensic turn have provided lenses to conceptualize the social life of unwieldy pasts, by exploring its dynamics, practices, and the cultural transmissions. They have also offered a language to communities that mobilize the political strength of resentment, deepened by the late phase of global capitalism and its consequent, deepening inequalities.

Wanneer politiek onvermijdelijk wordt: Van gemeenschapskunst naar gemene kunst

Forum+ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Hanka Otte ◽  
Pascal Gielen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Art ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Art ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Personal Effect ◽  
The Many

Abstract In dit artikel belichten Hanka Otte en Pascal Gielen het onderscheid tussen gemeenschapskunst en gemene kunst, beter bekend als community art en commoning art. Hun stelling is dat gemeenschapskunst, zoals sociaal-artistieke projecten, deels gesubsidieerd worden omdat ze de maatschappelijke status quo bevestigen. Gemene kunst zet daarentegen niet alleen in op het sociale, maar ook op het politieke, en valt daarom vaak tussen de mazen van het vigerende cultuurbeleid. Dat beleid vermijdt volgens de auteurs het politieke, doordat het kunst enkel van publieke waarde acht wanneer het door zoveel mogelijk individuen wordt geconsumeerd. De persoonlijke smaak of persoonlijke werking van kunst staat voorop in het cultuurbeleid, waardoor er wordt voorbijgegaan aan de mogelijkheden die kunst aan een gemeenschap biedt. De auteurs pleiten daarom voor een gemeen cultuurbeleid dat enkel kaders geeft en artistieke ontwikkelingen autonoom hun gang laat gaan. In this article, Hanka Otte and Pascal Gielen examine the difference between community art and commoning art. They argue that community art, like social art, is subsidised in part because it reinforces the societal status quo. Because commoning art, by contrast, not only commits itself to the social, but to the political as well, it tends to fall between the cracks of the current cultural policy. According to Otte and Gielen, this policy turns a blind eye on politics, presuming that only art that is consumed by as many individuals as possible is of any public value. Our cultural policy puts personal taste or art's personal effect centre stage, thus ignoring the many things art has to offer the community. Hence the author's plea for a commoning cultural policy that provides only a framework and that lets artists develop autonomously.

AFTER THE STORM: In the Wake of Katrina

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dawson ◽  
Lawrence D. Bobo
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
The Political ◽  
Large Share ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

By the time you read this issue of the Du Bois Review, it will be nearly a year after the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina swept the Gulf Coast and roiled the nation. While this issue does not concentrate on the disaster, (the next issue of the DBR will be devoted solely to research on the social, economic, and political ramifications of the Katrina disaster), the editors would be amiss if we did not comment on an event that once again exposed the deadly fault lines of the American racial order. The loss of the lives of nearly 1500 citizens, the many more tens of thousands whose lives were wrecked, and the destruction of a major American city as we know it, all had clear racial overtones as the story unfolded. Indeed, the racial story of the disaster does not end with the tragic loss of life, the disruption of hundred of thousands of lives, nor the physical, social, economic, and political collapse of an American urban jewel. The political map of the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana (and probably Texas), and the region is being rewritten as the large Black and overwhelmingly Democratic population of New Orleans was dispersed out of Louisiana, with states such as Texas becoming the perhaps permanent recipients of a large share of the evacuees.

scholarly journals Before the political cartoonist, there was the Vidusaka

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Snehal P. Sanathanan ◽  
Vinod Balakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Cartooning ◽  
The Many

Political cartooning was one among the many cultural products that colonial rule introduced in India. This British legacy has been used to produce narratives about the nature and history of Indian cartooning. However, these narratives have, invariably, overlooked the distinctly Indian cultural ethos as well as the Indian satirical tradition. The paper proposes an alternative model by positing that in the Indian satirical tradition, the Vidusaka – the comic figure in Sanskrit drama - has been an antecedent to the political cartoonist in terms of the social and political role as well as the nature and purpose of the humour.      The paper also locates the principles of caricaturing in precolonial Indian visual arts, and presents the early vernacular cartoons as the point of convergence between the local satirical tradition and the western format of the political cartoon which laid the foundation for a modern yet specifically Indian sensibility

scholarly journals A Pragmatist's Guide to Prediction in the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Verhagen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Simple Technique ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Many

Making out-of-sample predictions is an under-utilised tool in the social sciences, often for the wrong reasons. Many social scientists confuse prediction with unnecessarily complicated methods, or narrowly predicting the future. This is unfortunate, because prediction understood as the simple process of evaluating a model outside of the sample used for estimation is a much more general, and disarmingly simple technique that brings a host of benefits to our empirical workflow. One needn't use complicated methods or be solely concerned with predicting the future to use prediction, nor is it necessary to resolve the centuries-old philosophical debate between prediction and explanation to appreciate its benefits. Prediction can and should be used as a simple complement to the rich methodological tradition in the social sciences, and is equally applicable across a vast multitude of modelling approaches, owing to its simplicity and intuitive nature. For all its simplicity, the value of prediction should not be underestimated. Prediction can address some of the most enduring sources of criticism plaguing the social sciences, like lack of external validity and the use of overly simplistic models to capture social life. In this paper, I illustrate these benefits with a host of empirical examples that merely skim the surface of the many and varied ways in which prediction can be applied, staking the claim that prediction is one of those illustrious `free lunches' that can greatly benefit the empirical social sciences.

scholarly journals Wellbeing and Worldbuilding: The Science Fiction of Wellbeing Measurement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Walton
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The Political ◽  
Interested Party ◽  
Social Analytics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Infrastructures ◽  
The Many

Wellbeing has evolved into a fragmented, contextual, and multi-dimensional construct, underpinned by numerous measurement methodologies at many different scales. To explore wellbeing through science fiction and fantasy (SFF), we don’t just need SFF about health and happiness. We also need SFF about measurement: SFF that explores surveillance, data infrastructures, the political economy of personal data, ‘the metric gaze,’ social analytics, and the social life of metrics. This chapter explores just a few linkages between wellbeing, measurement, and SFF, mainly emphasising dystopian fiction. Has SFF struggled to imagine wellbeing policy — or any holistic stance on the myriad factors that inform the happiness and flourishing of populations — except where the interested party is some sinister elite? How might SFF's narratives of distant planets and more-than-human intelligences help us to formulate a more inclusive understanding of the wellbeing of the many morally weighty beings and worlds that inhabit this planet?

Nancy Stieber, Housing Design and Society in Amsterdam: Reconfiguring Urban Order and Identity, 1900–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. vii + 268 pp. $45.00 cloth Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. xvii + 509 pp. $60.00 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
Susan R. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Housing Design ◽  
Mass Housing ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

These two books concern major chapters in the history of mass housing: Amsterdam in the first two decades of the century and “Red Vienna.” Both programs were models of state welfare reform, but the political contexts are totally at odds: Amsterdam, with its settlement initiatives achieved through a corporatist compromise among moderate parties, and Vienna, where the Social Democrats attempted literally to build socialism in the midst of “a highly charged, often violent political conflict between left and right” (Blau, 13).

Comment: African Arts and Political Science

1962 ◽  
Vol 5 (02) ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
James S. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Stratification System ◽  
The Impact

The study of Africa has helped to further several healthy trends in the development of the discipline of political science. Confrontation with the rich variety of structural forms and modes of human expression of contemporary Africa has compelled the political analyst to look beyond the narrow “political” realm and conventional “political” structures for a more complete understanding and explanation of political phenomena. This African impact upon the discipline has come at a most propitious time—a time of intensive self-criticism from which at least three new emphases in research are beginning to emerge. One is the holistic approach reflected in efforts to classify and to compare political systems as wholes. A second approach, obviously related to the first but independently pursued by its proponents, is an ever-increasing explicit concern with non-political factors (e. g., the family, voluntary associations, the economic system, the social stratification system, cultural values, and so forth) as they may be related to and effect the political system and political behavior. Here, the impact of other disciplines, and particularly sociology, anthropology and psychology, is clearly manifest not only in the type of data gathered but in such neologisms as “political socialization” and “political acculturation.”

Localised Audiences and Transnational Media: Media Use by Iranian-Australians

2013 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Budarick
Keyword(s):  
Media Use ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Transnational Media ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iranian State ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article investigates the ways in which Iranian-Australians engage with Iranian state and diasporic media. Through a series of in-depth interviews, the article analyses the social, geographical and political factors that influence the use of Iranian media. While media have an important role to play among Iranians in Australia, the diverse nature of the audience, as well as the continuing importance of the political, social and cultural space of media production and consumption, must be taken into account. Participants in this study have an ambivalent relationship with Iranian media, with media produced in Iran, Australia and by the diaspora approached in different ways.

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