Democracy and the Politics of Dress, Color and, Symbols: An Anthropological Study of Kerala Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-272
Author(s):  
Nisar Kannangara ◽  
Jesurathnam Devarapalli
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Religious Symbol ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Political Differences

Dhoti colors have apparent political meaning in contemporary Kerala. Communists have started wearing red dhoti in private and public life recently, to counter the rampant visibility of saffron dhoti, which signifies Hindu religious identity in a shared meaning that exist in villages across north Kerala, and the same dhoti has also turned as the symbol of right-wing Hindu political parties, the political rival of the Communist party in the state. Earlier, the saffron dhoti was very popular among Hindus in Kerala, without any political differences—liberal Hindus, right-wing political Hindus, secular Hindus, and communist Hindus used to wear the saffron dhoti in public life, and to an extent, the saffron dhoti had become a crucial part of the religious piety of Hindu men and a religious symbol of mobility among Hindus. Through understanding the process of making meaning and other apparatus for political mobilization, this article argues that the ideological differences between right-wing Hindu nationalist organizations and Communist party does not exist at microlevel village politics, where there is a crucial similarity between political parties in mobilizing people and other activities of politics in a social democratic system.

La réforme régionale italienne : Un bilan à l'occasion des élections régionales des 8 et 9 juin 1980

Res Publica ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-562
Author(s):  
Catherine Guillermet ◽  
Johan Ryngaert
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
Geographical Differences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Bargaining ◽  
Italian Regions ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Political Differences

Ten years after they were set up, the Italian regions have fallen into general discredit. They are discredited by the central government who regards them as a source of support for the opposing Communist Party and has sought to undermine this reform by depriving the regions of all true autonomy. The regions are discredited by the public opinion by not fulfilling the expectations placed in them. Such an assessment does not stand up to a close examination of regional practices : some geographical differences rapidly become obvious, but especially evident are the political differences. In fact, the regions are the product of an apparent agreement between the political parties and have always suffered from political bargaining which explains the national scale of the issues raised at the last elections. Strengthened by the favorable results obtained in certain regions, the Communist Party was quick to turn this statement of the electoral opinion into a « referendum » about the newly formed Cossiga government.

دور علماء الإسلام في مواجهة التحديات بين المسلمين في الصين (The Role of The Islamic Scholars In Encountering The Challenges Among The Muslims In China)

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
يونس عبد الله ما تشنغ بين الصيني
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Islamic Faith

الملخّص إن بقاء الإسلام، ورغبة المسلمين في الحفاظ على عقيدة الإسلام، وشريعته السمحاء في الصين راجعة إلى جهود علمائنا الأجلاء الذين نَهَلُوا العلم الصافي من مَعِينِ القرآن والسنة. وخدمتهم من خلال ترجمة معاني القرآن الكريم، وتبسيط العقيدة والشريعة باللغة الصينية خير دليل على ذلك. ويحاول الباحث تسليط الضوء من خلال هذا البحث على طبيعة الإسلام في أرض الصين، كاشفا أمر وضع الإسلام وطبيعة حال المسلمين، وتحدياتهم قديما وحديثا، مبينا محاولتهم على حفاظ دين الإسلام، وأداء شعائره. ويؤمن الباحث من خلال توصيف حالة الإسلام والمسلمين، أن صلاح المسلمين، وبقاءهم كأمة مسالمة لا رغبة لها؛ إلا في الإصلاح، والتعمير في الأرض، فهو لا يتحقق إلا بإصلاح النفس، وعودتها إلى طاعة الله سرا وعلانية دون الإنغماس في تحقيق الرغبات المادية، وإشباع المطامع الشهوانية من خلال جمع حطام الدنيا دون الالتفات إلى حلال وحرام، وطاعة ومعصية.    الكلمات المفتاحيّة: جهود العلماء، ثقافة الإسلام، مصادر الإسلام الأصلية، التحديات، الصين، الدعوة.                                                                                             Abstract The continuation of Islam in China and the aspiration of the Muslims to maintain Islamic faith and its true tolerant legal system retract to the struggles of our respected scholars who learnt the knowledge of the Qurʼan and the Prophetic traditions (al-Sunnah). The services they rendered in translating the meaning of the Qurʼan, simplifying the creed and the legal system of Islam into Chinese language are good indications in that context. In this paper, the researcher is trying to highlight the normal nature of Islam in China by exploring the position and nature of the Muslims, their contemporary and past challenges, and revealing their attempts to preserve the religion of Islam in discharging the religious rites. Through the depiction of Islam and the Muslims, the researcher believes that the wellbeing of Muslims and their continuous survival to be a peace-loving nation could not be achieved without the reform and proper development through self-reformation and its return to full submission to Allah both in private and public life, and without indulging in attainment of material desires and satiating the lust of accumulating ephemeral materials of this world without paying any heed to lawfulness or unlawfulness, or to being obedient or disobedient. Keywords: Effort of the Scholars, Islamic Culture, Noble Origin of Islam, Challenges, Propagation of the Religion.

دور علماء الإسلام في مواجهة التحديات بين المسلمين في الصين The Role of The Islamic Scholars In Encountering The Challenges Among The Muslims In China

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
يونس عبد الله ما تشنغ بين الصيني
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Islamic Faith

الملخّصإن بقاء الإسلام، ورغبة المسلمين في الحفاظ على عقيدة الإسلام، وشريعته السمحاء في الصين راجعة إلى جهود علمائنا الأجلاء الذين نَهَلُوا العلم الصافي من مَعِينِ القرآن والسنة. وخدمتهم من خلال ترجمة معاني القرآن الكريم، وتبسيط العقيدة والشريعة باللغة الصينية خير دليل على ذلك. ويحاول الباحث تسليط الضوء من خلال هذا البحث على طبيعة الإسلام في أرض الصين، كاشفا أمر وضع الإسلام وطبيعة حال المسلمين، وتحدياتهم قديما وحديثا، مبينا محاولتهم على حفاظ دين الإسلام، وأداء شعائره. ويؤمن الباحث من خلال توصيف حالة الإسلام والمسلمين، أن صلاح المسلمين، وبقاءهم كأمة مسالمة لا رغبة لها؛ إلا في الإصلاح، والتعمير في الأرض، فهو لا يتحقق إلا بإصلاح النفس، وعودتها إلى طاعة الله سرا وعلانية دون الإنغماس في تحقيق الرغبات المادية، وإشباع المطامع الشهوانية من خلال جمع حطام الدنيا دون الالتفات إلى حلال وحرام، وطاعة ومعصية.   الكلمات المفتاحيّة: جهود العلماء، ثقافة الإسلام، مصادر الإسلام الأصلية، التحديات، الصين، الدعوة.                                                                                   AbstractThe continuation of Islam in China and the aspiration of the Muslims to maintain Islamic faith and its true tolerant legal system retract to the struggles of our respected scholars who learnt the knowledge of the Qurʼan and the Prophetic traditions (al-Sunnah). The services they rendered in translating the meaning of the Qurʼan, simplifying the creed and the legal system of Islam into Chinese language are good indications in that context. In this paper, the researcher is trying to highlight the normal nature of Islam in China by exploring the position and nature of the Muslims, their contemporary and past challenges, and revealing their attempts to preserve the religion of Islam in discharging the religious rites. Through the depiction of Islam and the Muslims, the researcher believes that the wellbeing of Muslims and their continuous survival to be a peace-loving nation could not be achieved without the reform and proper development through self-reformation and its return to full submission to Allah both in private and public life, and without indulging in attainment of material desires and satiating the lust of accumulating ephemeral materials of this world without paying any heed to lawfulness or unlawfulness, or to being obedient or disobedient.Keywords: Effort of the Scholars, Islamic Culture, Noble Origin of Islam, Challenges, Propagation of the Religion.

Activity of modern right-wing radical parties in the Czech Republic

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-173
Author(s):  
Tetiana Fedorchak
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Political Radicalism

The author investigates political radicalism in the Czech Republic, a rather heterogeneous current considering the structure of participants: from political parties to the extremist organizations. The peculiarity of the Czech party system is the existence, along with typical radical parties, of other non-radical parties whose representatives support xenophobic, nationalist and anti-Islamic statements. This is primarily the Civil Democratic Party, known for its critical attitude towards European integration, and the Communist party of the Czech Republic and Moravia, which opposes Czech membership in NATO and the EU. Among the Czech politicians, who are close to radical views, analysts include the well-known for its anti-Islamic position of the Czech President M. Zeman and the leader of the movement ANO, billionaire A. Babich. Voters vote for them not because their economic or social programs are particularly attractive to the electorate, but because of dissatisfaction with the economic situation in the state. Almost all right populist parties oppose European integration, interpreting it as an anti-national project run by an elite distorted by a deficit of democracy and corruption. Keywords: Czech Republic, right-wing radical political parties, European integration, nationalism.

Millennial Missionaries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Dugan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Gender Essentialism ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Religious Landscape

This book is an ethnography of millennial-generation Catholic missionaries. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) began hiring young adults to evangelize students on college campuses in 1998. Since then, FOCUS missionaries have developed a style of Catholic evangelization that navigates between strict and savvy interpretations of Catholic teaching in contemporary US youth culture. The Catholicism that FOCUS missionaries embrace and promote grew up with them and amid their middle-class American norms—missionaries own iPhones, drink craft beer, and create March Madness brackets. Born in the 1990s, millennial missionaries in their skinny jeans and devotional tattoos, large-framed glasses and scapulars embody an attractive style of Catholicism. They love saints and have memorized the “Tantum Ergo,” are fluent in college-student slang, but reject hook-up culture in favor of gender essentialism dictated by papal teachings. Missionaries rely on their social capital to make Catholicism cool. Many of their peers have been characterized as defectors from religious institutions. Yet, underneath the rise of “nones” is a story of increased religious piety. This book studies religion in the United States from the perspective of proud Catholic millennials. As they navigate their Catholic and US identities, these missionaries propose Catholicism as uniquely able to overcome perceived threats of secularism, relativism, and modernity. How, why, and with what implications is this Catholicism enacted? These questions, which point to power struggles between US culture and religious identity, drive this book. Through their prayers and evangelization efforts, missionaries are reshaping Catholic identity and shifting the religious landscape of the United States.

How and Why the Populist Radical Right Persuades Citizens

2019 ◽  
pp. 813-837
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ivarsflaten ◽  
Scott Blinder ◽  
Lise Bjånesøy
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Large Share ◽  
The Past ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Party Family ◽  
Established Democracies

The “populist radical right” is a contested concept in scholarly work for good reason. This chapter begins by explaining that the political parties usually grouped together under this label are not a party family in a conventional sense and do not self-identify with this category. It goes on to show how political science scholarship has established that in Europe during the past thirty or so years we have seen the rise of a set of parties that share a common ideological feature—nativism. The nativist political parties experiencing most electoral support have combined their nativist agenda with some other legitimate ideological companion, which provides deniability—a shield against charges that the nativist agenda makes the parties and their supporters right-wing extremist and undemocratic. The chapter goes on to explain that in order to make progress on our understanding of how and why the populist radical right persuades citizens, we need to recognize: first, that nativism is the only necessary ingredient without which the populist radical right loses its force; and second, that nativism in contemporary established democracies has tended not to persuade a large share of voters without an ideological companion.

scholarly journals “His Soul Is Weeping inside That He Cannot Bury the Dead as before.” Plague and Rebellion in Debrecen (Hungary), 1739–1742

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 687
Author(s):  
Ildikó Sz. Kristóf
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
The City

This is a historical anthropological study of a period of social and religious tensions in a Calvinist city in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first half of the 18th century. The last and greatest plague epidemic to devastate Hungary and Transylvania between cca. 1738 and 1743 led to a clash of different opinions and beliefs on the origin of the plague and ways of fighting it. Situated on the Great Hungarian Plain, the city of Debrecen saw not only frequent violations of the imposed lockdown measures among its inhabitants but also a major uprising in 1739. The author examines the historical sources (handwritten city records, written and printed regulations, criminal proceedings, and other documents) to be found in the Debrecen city archives, as well as the writings of the local Calvinist pastors published in the same town. The purpose of the study is to outline the main directions of interpretation concerning the plague and manifest in the urban uprising. According to the findings of the author, there was a stricter and chronologically earlier direction, more in keeping with local Puritanism in the second half of the 17th century, and there was also a more moderate and later one, more in line with the assumptions and expectations of late 18th-century medical science. While the former set of interpretations seems to have been founded especially on a so-called “internal” cure (i.e., religious piety and repentance), the latter proposed mostly “external” means (i.e., quarantine measures and herbal medicine) to avoid the plague and be rid of it. There seems to have existed, however, a third set of interpretations: that of folk beliefs and practices, i.e., sorcery and magic. According to the files, a number of so-called “wise women” also attempted to cure the plague-stricken by magical means. The third set of interpretations and their implied practices were not tolerated by either of the other two. The author provides a detailed micro-historical analysis of local events and the social and religious discourses into which they were embedded.

Baptising Pandita Ramabai: Faith and religiosity in the nineteenth-century social reform movements of colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110203
Author(s):  
Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati ◽  
Prithvi Sinha ◽  
Sneha Garg
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Pandita Ramabai ◽  
Role Of Religion

This essay aims to understand the role of religion in the social work of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). By focusing on a twenty-five-year period commencing with her conversion to Christianity in 1883, we argue that religion constructed a political framework for her work in Sharada Sadan and Mukti Mission. There is a lacuna in the conventional scholarship that underplays the nuances of religion in Ramabai’s reform efforts, which we try to fill by conceptualising faith and religiosity as two distinct signifiers of her private and public religious presentations respectively. Drawing on her published letters, the annual reports of the Ramabai Association in America, and a number of evangelical periodicals published during her lifetime, we analyse how she explored Christianity not just as a personal faith but also as a conduit for funds. The conversion enabled her access to American supporters, concomitantly consolidating their claim over her social work. Her peculiar religious identity—a conflation of Hinduism and Christianity—provoked strong protests from the Hindu orthodoxy while leading to a fall-out with the evangelists at the same time. Ramabai shaped the public portrayal of her religiosity to maximise support from American patrons, the colonial state, and liberal Indians, resisting the orthodoxy’s oppositions with these material exploits. Rather than surrendering to patriarchal cynicism, she capitalised on the socio-political volatilities of colonial India to further the nascent women’s movement.

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