Modern Traditionalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-92
Author(s):  
Geoff Harkness

This chapter examines Qatar’s development in the context of the Arabian Gulf, the site of enormous human activity, trade, and commerce from ancient times until today. It considers how tribes influenced social and political systems in the Gulf, including the Al Thanis, the dynastic family that has ruled Qatar for more than 150 years. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Gulf was known for its pearling and fishing industries. The contemporary Gulf is characterized by modern petrocities whose enormous wealth services their nation-building aspirations. Doha vies directly with Dubai to see which metropolis can outdo the other, be it through sports, education, shopping malls, mosques, or broken world records. To compete, Qatar brands itself using a narrative of modern traditionalism, drawing from a constellation of classic and contemporary traits. The chapter explores the contours of modern traditionalism, unpacking its multiple meanings and characteristics, including generic but esteemed concepts such as freedom, authenticity, family values, and women’s empowerment. It also reveals how the government deliberately deemphasizes tribes and Islam in the narrative in order to curtail tribal power and replace it with a bureaucratic government structured to grant supremacy to the Al Thani dynasty.

1996 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Cotton

The Analysis of Opposition in Asian Political Systems raises acute problems of definition. At one end of a continuum lie those polities in which an ‘opposition’ is either inconceivable (North Korea is perhaps the best example) or inevitably in a state of war or confrontation with the regime (as is the case in Burma/Myanmar). In cases at this end of the continuum opposition cannot be democratic in the systemic sense, unless the opposition realizes its programme and becomes a democratic government. At the other end of the continuum, however, the character, standing and potential of ‘opposition’ is very much a matter of debate. In these systems a multiplicity of non-governing political parties exist, and these parties contest elections and send members to legislatures, though they often operate under rules (informal as well as formal) and conditions which tend to prevent them from gaining power. The focus of this article will be upon these systems, which are here labelled – whether parliamentary or presidential – ‘constitutional’. ‘Constitutional’ is understood as entailing the existence of an embedded and more or less regularly operating set of electoral mechanisms which plays an essential part in the selection of the government.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Geoff Harkness

Qatar’s ambitions are grand—it aspires to become a global superpower. To achieve this, Qatar has embarked on one of the most extensive nation-building projects the world has ever seen. To do so, the tiny Arabian Gulf nation has imported millions of low-wage workers, who have increased Qatar’s population by more than 600 percent since 1990. Today, Qataris make up about 10 percent of the population, and there are deep concerns among conservatives that Qatar’s culture is evaporating. To counter these concerns, the government has promised a deep commitment to cultural preservation alongside surging development.


2020 ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Geoff Harkness

Mega sporting events, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup, align perfectly with Qatar’s economic agenda, which uses athletics as part of its nation-building ambitions. This chapter journeys through several sports worlds in Doha, where low-wage migrant workers are bused to soccer stadiums for televised games, so that it appears that the stands are filled with ardent fans, and where Kenyan runners are granted temporary Qatari citizenship in order to compete as natives. The government has spent a fortune to erect state-of-the-art facilities, host international sporting events, and send athletes to compete globally. Sports are also a primary platform for modern traditionalism’s motif of female empowerment. Despite these efforts, however, rates of women’s athletic participation remain in the single digits. Interviews with players, coaches, and spectators reveal the social processes underlying these dynamics. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how sportswomen overcome barriers to athletic participation by dynamically engaging with modern traditionalism, aligning their sports-related activities with empowerment, Islam, and family values.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Yanano Mangani ◽  
Richard Rachidi Molapo

The crisis in South Sudan that broke out on the 15th of December 2013 has been the gravest political debacle in the five years of the country’s independence. This crisis typifies the general political and social patterns of post-independence politics of nation-states that are borne out of armed struggles in Africa. Not only does the crisis expose a reluctance by the nationalist leaders to continue with nation-building initiatives, the situation suggests the struggle for political control at the echelons of power within the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement.  This struggle has been marred by the manufacturing of political identity and political demonization that seem to illuminate the current political landscape in South Sudan. Be that as it may, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) hurriedly intervened to find a lasting solution however supportive of the government of President Salva Kirr and this has suggested interest based motives on the part of the regional body and has since exacerbated an already fragile situation. As such, this article uses the Fanonian discourse of post-independence politics in Africa to expose the fact that the SPLM has degenerated into lethargy and this is at the heart of the crisis.


Edupedia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
Agus Supriyadi

Character education is a vital instrument in determining the progress of a nation. Therefore the government needs to build educational institutions in order to produce good human resources that are ready to oversee and deliver the nation at a progressive level. It’s just that in reality, national education is not in line with the ideals of national education because the output is not in tune with moral values on the one hand and the potential for individuals to compete in world intellectual order on the other hand. Therefore, as a solution to these problems is the need for the applicationof character education from an early age.


Author(s):  
Roger W. Shuy

Much is written about how criminal suspects, defendants, and undercover targets use ambiguous language in their interactions with police, prosecutors, and undercover agents. This book examines the other side of the coin, describing fifteen criminal investigations demonstrating how police, prosecutors, undercover agents, and complainants use deceptive ambiguity with their subjects, which leads to misrepresentations of the speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, lexicon, and grammar. These misrepresentations affect the perceptions of judges and juries about the subjects’ motives, predispositions, intentions, and voluntariness. Deception is commonly considered intentional while ambiguity is often excused as unintentional performance errors. Although perhaps overreliance on Grice’s maxim of sincerity leads some to believe this, interactions of suspects, defendants, and targets with representatives of law are adversarial, non-cooperative events that enable participants to ignore or violate the cooperative principle. One effective way the government does this is to use ambiguity deceptively. Later listeners to the recordings of such conversations may not recognize this ambiguity and react in ways that the subjects may not have intended. Deceptive ambiguity is clearly intentional in undercover operations and the case examples illustrate that the practice also is alive and well in police interviews and prosecutorial questioning. The book concludes with a summary of how the deceptive ambiguity used by representatives of the government affected the perception of the subjects’ predisposition, intentionality and voluntariness, followed by a comparison of the relative frequency of deceptive ambiguity used by the government in its representations of speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, lexicon, and grammar.


Author(s):  
Christine Cheng

During the civil war, Liberia’s forestry sector rose to prominence as Charles Taylor traded timber for arms. When the war ended, the UN’s timber sanctions remained in effect, reinforced by the Forestry Development Authority’s (FDA) domestic ban on logging. As Liberians waited for UN timber sanctions to be lifted, a burgeoning domestic timber market developed. This demand was met by artisanal loggers, more commonly referred to as pit sawyers. Out of this illicit economy emerged the Nezoun Group to provide local dispute resolution between the FDA’s tax collectors and ex-combatant pit sawyers. The Nezoun Group posed a dilemma for the government. On the one hand, the regulatory efforts of the Nezoun Group helped the FDA to tax an activity that it had banned. On the other hand, the state’s inability to contain the operations of the Nezoun Group—in open contravention of Liberian laws—highlighted the government’s capacity problems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199484
Author(s):  
Finn Diderichsen

Sweden has since the start of the pandemic a COVID-19 mortality rate that is 4 to 10 times higher than in the other Nordic countries. Also, measured as age-standardized all-cause excess mortality in the first half of 2020 compared to previous years Sweden failed in comparison with the other Nordic countries, but only among the elderly. Sweden has large socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 mortality. Geographical, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities in mortality can be due to differential exposure to the virus, differential immunity, and differential survival. Most of the country differences are due to differential exposure, but the socioeconomic disparities are mainly driven by differential survival due to an unequal burden of comorbidity. Sweden suffered from an unfortunate timing of tourists returning from virus hotspots in the Alps and Sweden's government response came later and was much more limited than elsewhere. The government had an explicit priority to protect the elderly in nursing and care homes but failed to do so. The staff in elderly care are less qualified and have harder working conditions in Sweden, and they lacked adequate care for the clients. Sweden has in recent years diverged from the Scandinavian welfare model by strong commercialization of primary care and elderly care.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212098228
Author(s):  
Stephen Riley

Drawing upon Kant’s analysis of the role of intuitions in our orientation towards knowledge, this paper analyses four points of departure in thinking about dignity: self, other, time and space. Each reveals a core area of normative discourse – authenticity in the self, respect for the other, progress through time and authority as the government of space – along with related grounds of resistance to dignity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the methodological challenge presented by our different dignitarian intuitions, in particular the role of universality in testing and cohering our intuitions.


Author(s):  
Trang H.D. Nguyen

ABSTRACT While many nations are struggling to slow the transmission rate of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Vietnam has seen no new locally acquired cases since April 16. After implementing 22 d of nationwide social distancing, on April 23, the government of Vietnam announced the easing of social distancing measures. This allows the country to restart its socio-economic activities in a gradual, prudent manner. Domestic tourism and exports of agricultural and anti-COVID-19 medical products take priority over the other sectors in this postpandemic economic recovery. Importantly, the country needs to stay vigilant on the fight against the disease to prevent a possibility of another outbreak.


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