Eritrean Asylum Seekers’ Lament Ceremonies in Israel as Contested Sites of Identity Formation

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galia Sabar ◽  
Adam Rotbard
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Shed Light

Based on extensive qualitative research, this paper focuses on lament ceremonies Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel performed in public parks in 2008–2014.1 Specifically, we expose social and political structures of this diaspora, including mechanisms of survival in a context of harsh living conditions, a fragile legal status and a hostile environment. Following Werbner’s analysis of diasporas as chaordic entities, having no single representation and fostering multiple identities, we show how chaordicness underlies this diaspora’s ability to survive and thrive in Israel, and to embrace the unique Eritrean trans-local nationalism. We highlight how these public religious rituals were transformed into contested sites of identity formation following Israeli struggles against them. Finally, we shed light on the role that such ceremonies play in shaping transnational identities, as well as how disenfranchised communities of asylum seekers aim for visibility and recognition in the public sphere.

A Genealogy of Muslims Dying in France

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Nur Yasemin Ural
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Public ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Funerary Rites ◽  
Real Challenge ◽  
Space Recognition ◽  
Shed Light

The question of the death of a Muslim in France engenders a discussion on the forms and limits of secularisation in the public sphere. Contrary to other public institutions like schools, hospitals and prisons, the particularity of mortuary spaces lies in their nearly uncontested religious character, also recognised by the French state. Despite the fact that repatriation remains to be the dominant practice among French Muslims, the descending generations, who overtly declare their identities as Muslim and European at the same time, seek to obtain their place within the European public sphere. Yet accommodating deceased bodies of Muslims within the so-called secular cemeteries represents a real challenge in terms of space, recognition of religious identities and application of Islamic funerary rites. The regulations imposed by the French authorities seem to pose serious problems to Muslims, who desire to be buried in accordance with the requirements of their religion. In this respect the cemetery becomes a realm of spatio-temporal struggle, where subjectivities are formed via negotiations between the subjects—dead or alive—and state apparatuses. This article aims to reflect on the power struggles in the development of the mortuary space from a historical perspective. It will then attempt to shed light on the legal possibility of the construction of the only French Muslim cemetery inaugurated in Strasbourg in 2012.

Locals

2017 ◽  
pp. 256-279
Author(s):  
Will Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Employment ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Political Membership

The public sphere of the bourgeois effendiya, reflected in the sources that dominate the historiography Egypt before World War One, engaged only a narrow set of ideas about political membership. But police and legal records show that many residents of Egypt relied on a more generic and flexible label—“local”—which they refined in contradistinction to foreign nationalities. The term had a clear social meaning, particularly in imperial context, where it was a polite synonym of “native.” Localness began to gather a legal garb, particularly in the sphere of social rights such as education and government employment, until it began to resemble a nationality. This chapter argues that one key to explaining Egypt’s political quiescence between 1882 and 1919 is recognizing identity formation taking place under the banner of “local” status, rather than the more familiar category of Egyptian national citizen, which emerged only in the decades that followed.

Question Bridge: Black Males: Socially Engaged Art and the Politics of Dialogue

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fruchtman
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Black Males ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Media Narratives

Question Bridge: Black Males is a 'trans-media' art project created by Hank Willis Thomas and Chris Johnson in collaboration with Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair. The artists travelled throughout the United States for four years to engage more than 150 Black men in an intercultural dialogue about identity and representation. These exchanges are part of socially engaged art practices that Grant H. Kester calls "dialogical aesthetics," in which artists adopt a collaborative, process-based approach to facilitate a dialogue within communities. As an artwork that is based on conversation, collaboration and community engagement, Question Bridge offers an opportunity to explore the potential for creative expression to engage social issues and stimulate change. This article uses Kester‘s dialogical aesthetics to examine the relationship between dialogue and identity formation. Drawing on postcolonial theorists Frantz Fanon and bell hooks, as well as Jürgen Habermas‘ conception of the public sphere, I argue that Question Bridge creates an opportunity for transformational dialogues that challenge and ultimately deconstruct dominant stereotypes and popular media narratives.

Iranian Women from Private Sphere to Public Sphere, With Focus on Parliament

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-414
Author(s):  
Elaheh Koolaee
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Iranian Women ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractWomen in Iran have gained unprecedented experiences in the course of their fight for democracy and human rights. In the Pahlavi era, the modernisation model was based on Western patterns. With the Islamic Revolution, a new generation of Iranian women emerged in social arenas. Ayatollah Khomeini always emphasised women's prominent and important role in social life. His views shed light on potentials for women's rights, but the obstacle of old cultural and historical attitudes have made these ideas difficult to actualise. The weakness of civil organisations, including women's political and non-political organisations, has seriously affected the outcomes. Although a reformist government and the reinforcement of governmental institutions concerned with women's affairs can play a part in improving the situation of women, women's civil society organisations can assume responsibilities at social levels in order to complement the role of the representatives. The author discusses the process of women's entrance in the public sphere and efforts by the 6th parliament to protect their rights.

scholarly journals Whitewashing Narratives: Israeli Media and the Framing of the Kidnapped Yemenite Babies Affair

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Society Today ◽  
Full Cooperation

This essay offers a review of ongoing media analysis of the kidnapped Yemenite Babies Affair in light of recent changes in public awareness since the emergence of social media and the more recent formal governmental recognition. It argues that the government’s efforts to silence this affair over decades would not have been possible without the media’s full cooperation. Moreover, the public denial of this affair contributes to the ongoing intra-Jewish rift and racism in Israeli society today. Questions regarding the reconciliation and remembrance of this affair in the public sphere will strongly influence the identity formation of Yemenite and Mizrahi children of future generations.  

scholarly journals Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Asen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Responsibility Attribution ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Argument teachers and scholars have frequently invoked external justification-impressing one's viewpoint upon another-as the primary social function of argument. Pluralism and fundamental disagreement in contemporary democratic societies raise questions regarding the status of argument, including the functions argument should serve. In this essay, I suggest alternatives of agenda expansion, responsibility attribution, and identity formation as important functions of argument in diverse societies. These alternative functions are especially important under conditions of social inequality, since they allow less powerful individuals and groups to confront more powerful actors in situations where decision making is not open to all.

Challenging Corporate Personhood Theory: Reclaiming the Public

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-88
Author(s):  
Ronit Donyets-Kedar
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Corporate Personhood ◽  
The Public ◽  
Corporate Rights ◽  
Real Entity ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract The article aims is to show that the jurisprudence of corporate law, and specifically the theory of corporate personhood, lacks almost any explanatory power for legal doctrines and rules it is thought to inform. The article argues, first, as a matter of theory, that the different models of corporate personhood (the concession model, the aggregate theory and the real entity theory) do not carry normative weight to inform significant, concrete legal conclusions; and second, as a practical matter of legal doctrine, that the Supreme Court’s rulings on corporate rights deploy the theoretical models of corporate personhood interchangeably and inconsistently, to the effect that the same theoretical models are being used to suit contradictory purposes. As corporations are increasingly dominant in all aspects of social, political, and economic life, the article argues that reformulating the theoretical foundations that underlie corporate legal status has become especially urgent. The article therefore calls to develop a new discourse for corporate jurisprudence, and suggests that the central axis for this new discourse should be the substantive influence of corporate power on shaping the public sphere.

Rethinking Arendt’s Theory of Necessity: Humanness as ‘Way of Life’, or: the Ordinary as Extraordinary

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lechte
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees ◽  
People Today

If genuine political activity can only be undertaken by citizens in the public sphere in a nation-state, what of stateless people today – asylum seekers and refugees cut adrift on the high seas? This is what is at stake in Hannah Arendt’s political theory of necessity. This article reconsiders Arendt’s notion of the Greek oikos (household) as the sphere of necessity with the aim of challenging the idea that there is a condition of necessity or mere subsistence, where life is reduced to satisfying basic biological needs. For Arendt, the Greek oikos is the model that provides the inspiration for her theory because necessity activities were kept quite separate from action in the polis. The ordinary and the undistinguished happen in the oikos and its equivalent, with the polis being reserved for extraordinary acts done for glory without any regard for life. The exclusionary nature of this theory of the polis as action has, at best, been treated with kid gloves by Arendt’s commentators. With reference to Heidegger on the polis and Agamben’s notion of oikonomia, I endeavour to show that the so-called ordinary is embedded in a way of life that is extraordinary and the key to grasping humanness.

scholarly journals Winter Solstice Celebrations in Denmark: A Growing Non-Religious Ritualisation

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Astrid Krabbe Trolle
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Winter Solstice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Local Newspaper ◽  
Level I ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Over Time

During the last decade, local celebrations of winter solstice on the 21st of December have increased all over Denmark. These events refer to the Old Norse ritual of celebrating the return of the light, and their appeal is very broad on a local community level. By presenting two cases of Danish winter solstice celebrations, I aim to unfold how we can understand these new ritualisations as non-religious rituals simultaneously contesting and supplementing the overarching seasonal celebration of Christmas. My material for this study is local newspaper sources that convey the public sphere on a municipality level. I analyse the development in solstice ritualisations over time from 1990 to 2020. Although different in location and content, similarities unite the new solstice celebrations: they emphasise the local community and the natural surroundings. My argument is that the winter solstice celebrations have grown out of a religiously diversified public sphere and should be understood as non-religious rituals in a secular context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document