scholarly journals Socio-Political Conditions for Christians in Egypt

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (20) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Shaul M. Gabbay

For those who have studied the history of religious tensions in Egypt, the current rising tide of violence against Christians in the country should come as no surprise. Persecution of Christians in Egypt dates back for centuries. In recent years—particularly during the past decade—we have witnessed a greater interest in understanding the violence, not only in academia, but among the interested general population as well. This has led to an upsurge in academic writings and in media articles discussing the issue. After a thorough literature review, I have discovered that many of the pieces focus on the empirical, while often neglecting the normative. While empiricism is important for any research endeavor, this paper seeks to focus more on the narratives on the ground. As a sociologist for three decades, I have worked closely with the Egyptian Christian immigrant community in the U.S. and have regularly been called to testify in asylum courts across the U.S. regarding the issues of religious intolerance in Egypt. Over the years, I have conducted countless interviews with these individuals. As such, I have used their personal stories as a starting point for my academic inquiries. As a case study, I have selected three personal narratives to include in this analysis. All of the individuals' names have been changed in order to safeguard their identity. For this paper, I have specifically chosen individuals from different backgrounds, genders, education levels, social standings, and geographical location. In doing so, I was able to piece together a larger narrative that demonstrates how the persecution of Christians in Egypt is not limited to one group or another—it is widespread throughout Egyptian society. In the end, I was able to discover that each of the individuals suffered in different ways. However, they all suffered given one basic commonality—being Christian in Egypt.

2012 ◽  
pp. 1824-1837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Sadeghi ◽  
Steve Ressler ◽  
Andrew Krzmarzick

This chapter examines the growing literature on e-government and Web 2.0 with particular attention to online collaborative platforms, such as GovLoop, that complement government. The authors present a thorough background to the topic of Web 2.0 in e-government and present numerous examples of how these technologies are used across government both in the U.S. and globally. This chapter explores two main areas: first, how Web 2.0 and social media are being used as a vehicle to enhance e-government, and second, to present a case study of GovLoop, which is a collaborative social media platform designed to complement the work of government. GovLoop provides those working within and external to government—citizens, government employees, academics, non-profit professionals and contractors—with the ability to share information and collaborate on issues of public benefit. The chapter presents a starting point for future research on how Web 2.0 is changing the very nature of e-government and service delivery, and how governments are in a unique position to utilize these tools to expand collaboration and openness with their communities.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Novak

James Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America” takes up one of the most interesting and important interpretive questions in the history of American political economy. What explains the dramatic transformation in liberal ideology and governance between 1877 and 1937 that carried the United States from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism? That question has preoccupied legions of historians, political-economists, and legal scholars (as well as politicians and ideologues) at least since Hughes himself opened the October 1935 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court in a brand new building and amid a rising chorus of constitutional criticism. Henretta, wisely in my opinion, looks to law, particularly public law, for new insights into that great transformation. But, of course, the challenge in using legal history to answer such a question is the enormous increase in the actual policy output of courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in this period. Trying to synthesize the complex changes in “law-in-action” in the fiercely contested forums of turn-of-the-century America sometimes seems the historical-sociological equivalent of attempting to empty the sea with a slotted spoon. Like any good social scientist, Henretta responds to the impossibility of surveying the whole by taking a sample. Through a case-study of the ideas, political reforms, and legal opinions of Charles Evans Hughes, particularly as governor of New York and associate and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Henretta offers us in microcosm the story of the revolution (or rather several revolutions) in modern American governance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-67
Author(s):  
Markéta Křížová

Abstract The present article represents a partial outcome of a larger project that focuses on the history of the beginnings of anthropology as an organized science at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in the broader socio-political context of Central Europe. Attention is focused especially on the nationalist and social competitions that had an important impact upon intellectual developments, but in turn were influenced by the activities of scholars and their public activities. The case study of Vojtěch (Alberto) Frič, traveler and amateur anthropologist, who in the first two decades of the twentieth century presented to European scientific circles and the general public in the Czech Lands his magnanimous vision of the comparative study of religions, serves as a starting point for considerations concerning the general debates on the purpose, methods, and ethical dimensions of ethnology as these were resonating in Central European academia of the period under study.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shairatul Akma Roslan ◽  
Norzailawati Mohd Noor ◽  
Alias Abdullah ◽  
Zuraini Md Ali

The heritage of Lembah Bujang, Kedah is important as a starting point to understand the origins and history of civilization in Malaysia. This research is to analyze the spectral reflectance of shrines properties in an identified area by using remote sensing techniques in conserving this cultural heritage site. The remote sensing device (Spectroradiometer) was used to measure the spectral reflectance of the source of shrines in the study area. This tool was applied for reflectance’s test over properties such as ancient brick, granite, literates and iron in a different two study areas consist of Lembah Bujang and Kompleks Sungai Batu. Remote sensing test properties demonstrate that discrimination of properties types of each civilization is possible through reflection measurement, but that discrimination is complicated by surface conditions, such as weathering and lichen growth. Comparison between clays, granite and iron show that clays to be more reflective than granite and iron. This result will help more in our further study on detecting these properties direct through remote sensing imagery and will be helpful in developing new indexes and selection of threshold value on shrines material in the case study of Lembah Bujang.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
Kibigo Mary Lukamika

The study explores how poetry as a dual genre draws its themes from the origin, history and setting or environs of the author in the society. Basically, literature like any other art has its own way of expressing its aesthetic value. This is done through the channel of language. On the other hand, literature has many genres. Despite that, poetry is considered to be the most ancient genre in many communities universally. Poetry, therefore, is a genre that has a dual nature, which implies that it is a genre of both oral and written literature. Kiswahili poetry encompasses itself fully with the society in question, its ideologies, philosophies, traditions, culture, and the general life of the Swahili people without taking into consideration the language in which it was constructed. Therefore, it is not possible to disassociate the Kiswahili poetry from their culture as it is fully drawn from their way of life. Since a people’s culture is enclosed in their language, this study selected two Kiswahili Poetry books through purposive sampling to show how poetry draws its themes from the author’s origin, history, setting, and culture. The selected books were: Sikate Tamaa (Said A. Mohamed) and Dhifa (Euphrase Kezilahabi) The study employed the Hermeneutics theory as interpreted by (Newmark and Michael Forster, 2007) . This theory was very vital to this study as it puts into consideration the words used, the history and culture of the author, context, and specific analysis of the text to come up with the objective of the general text. The study also used textual analysis as well as an observation checklist to analyse data. The study discovered that poetry is rich and has a lot to be desired as far as teaching and depicting the author’s origin, history, and setting in the society is concerned hence drawing the themes from that. This study aimed at highlighting the need for more in-depth research as this can reduce the negative notion that poetry is a hard and complicated genre to some learners and scholars. There is also a need for the poetry learners to identify the history of the author in order to provide a starting point for the analysis in question. Therefore, the study proposes that poems be taught at all levels of learning and their various elements in order to enlighten the Kiswahili and English students, scholars, and researchers.


Author(s):  
James David Nichols

Scholars have long suggested that nineteenth-century runaway slaves turned the U.S.-Mexico border into a line of freedom. However, as this chapter argues, such an interpretation of the border is somewhat problematic. A closer examination of the history of northern Tamaulipas explains why. From 1820 onward, African Americans began to arrive to that region in search of freedom and a changed racial milieu, but this process was deeply fraught. U.S. American jurisprudence could continue to affect Mexican space formally and informally from the outside, greatly troubling Mexican sovereignty and its foreign relations in the process. Hence, the freedom found by African Americans in Mexico—guaranteed by Mexican law—was never particularly secure in practice. This chapter builds upon the previous chapter and provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case study of fugitive slaves’ struggles for freedom in the Texas-Mexico borderlands.


Author(s):  
Leila Sadeghi ◽  
Steve Ressler ◽  
Andrew Krzmarzick

This chapter examines the growing literature on e-government and Web 2.0 with particular attention to online collaborative platforms, such as GovLoop, that complement government. The authors present a thorough background to the topic of Web 2.0 in e-government and present numerous examples of how these technologies are used across government both in the U.S. and globally. This chapter explores two main areas: first, how Web 2.0 and social media are being used as a vehicle to enhance e-government, and second, to present a case study of GovLoop, which is a collaborative social media platform designed to complement the work of government. GovLoop provides those working within and external to government—citizens, government employees, academics, non-profit professionals and contractors—with the ability to share information and collaborate on issues of public benefit. The chapter presents a starting point for future research on how Web 2.0 is changing the very nature of e-government and service delivery, and how governments are in a unique position to utilize these tools to expand collaboration and openness with their communities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-226
Author(s):  
Tom Gerald Daly

AbstractOn 28 October 2018 the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential elections in Brazil with 55% of the vote. This result has been viewed by many as yet another instance of the global rise of authoritarian populist leaders, grouping Bolsonaro alongside the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, India’s Narendra Modi, or Donald Trump in the USA – indeed, Bolsonaro has been dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics.” The focus on Bolsonaro himself reflects the strong emphasis on executives in a rapidly expanding literature suggesting the emergence of a new form of would-be autocrat who is democratically elected but who hollows out democratic rule over time. However, this Article argues that, far beyond Bolsonaro, the Brazilian experience is an important case-study as it prompts reflection on three fundamental propositions. First, any analysis of liberal democracy as the perceived object of attack must be highly cognizant of the democratic “starting point” and history of a given state. Second, an excessive focus on executive-led assaults on democratic rule can impede fuller analysis of a broader suite of actors and factors relevant to the (declining) health of the democratic system. Third, authoritarianism is a more appropriate analytical lens than populism for identifying potential democratic threats, especially in the Brazilian context.


2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Oana Birlea

Having as a starting point one of the stereotypes of Japanese women considered a purveyor of kawaii this paper aims to explore a counterexample to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty mania offered by Shiseidō cosmetics through its overseas advertisements created during a long history on the European market. Even though the image of Japan is based mainly on the concept of kawaii Shiseidō tried at first on the local market to make a turn from that fragile, helpless and naïve perception of women to a more sophisticated one. Successful advertisements are made to answer a specific target audience’s needs, thus in order to go global there was a need to adapt typical Asian beauty standards to European ones. Shiseidō’s mission is to keep up with the times without forgetting the roots, the source of power, thus it has constantly worked in developing new strategies in order to thrive on the Western beauty market without setting aside Japanese tradition. Shiseidō corporate through its smaller brands like Majolica Majorca, Pure & Mild, Haku (meaning “white”) etc. still promote whitest white skin, a beauty ideal which prevails since the Heian period (794-1185). Considering that Shiseidō has a history of more than 50 years on the European market we propose an analysis on three beauty print advertisements elaborated during 1980-2000 in order to observe the constructed image of Japan through the imaginary of the French artist, Serge Lutens, responsible for the visual identity of the brand in Europe since 1980. The question is if it is a matter of “selling” the exotic to an unfamiliar receiver or a naive reflection of Japaneseness from a European’s perspective? Through this case study on beauty print advertisements created for the European market after 1990 we want to mirror the image of Japan in Europe as depicted through the specter of the biggest Japanese beauty conglomerate in the world, Shiseidō.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW GODLEY ◽  
MARRISA JOSEPH ◽  
DAVID LESLIE-HUGHES

This is a case study of the U.S. pharmaceutical producer, Merck & Co. By 1940 this was one of the leading pharmaceutical producers in the United States, and the company went on to become one of the global industry leaders after World War II. It was founded in 1891 as the U.S. subsidiary of a much larger German pharmaceutical company, E. Merck of Darmstadt. The existing understanding of Merck & Co.’s history emphasizes how it was reacquired by the American branch of the Merck family after wartime sequestration, and from then onward it pursued a path of development separate from its former parent. This article revisits that history of the company and shows how the two Mercks began to cooperate and share technology and manufacturing know-how during the 1930s, something that was particularly to the advantage of Merck & Co.


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