scholarly journals Religious Establishment According to a Substantive Ethics of Political Justice

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Tarcisio Amorim Carvalho

Contemporary political theorists often disagree on whether or not religious establishment is justified in liberal states, even when its existence does not constitute a hindrance to the basic rights of citizens. In this article, I contend that religious established does not raise issues of democratic legitimacy, by showing that political frameworks of justice are entangled with substantive conceptions of the good and ethical forms of life. Then, drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s latest works on the relationship between religion and the public sphere, and Maeve Cooke’s readings thereof, I argue that religious symbols can contribute to the creation of meaningful imaginaries that inform moral norms and principles of justice. After this, I recall Axel Honneth’s conception of “struggles for recognition”, demonstrating that the recognition of specific collective traits, including religious, is necessary to provide citizens with a sense of worth and esteem.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Mai Mogib Mosad

This paper maps the basic opposition groups that influenced the Egyptian political system in the last years of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. It approaches the nature of the relationship between the system and the opposition through use of the concept of “semi-opposition.” An examination and evaluation of the opposition groups shows the extent to which the regime—in order to appear that it was opening the public sphere to the opposition—had channels of communication with the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper also shows the system’s relations with other groups, such as “Kifaya” and “April 6”; it then explains the reasons behind the success of the Muslim Brotherhood at seizing power after the ousting of President Mubarak.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Titus Stahl

AbstractTraditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can undermine the capacity of citizens to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Mary Varghese ◽  
Kamila Ghazali

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge about the relationship between political discourse and national identity. 1Malaysia, introduced in 2009 by Malaysia’s then newly appointed 6th Prime Minister Najib Razak, was greeted with expectation and concern by various segments of the Malaysian population. For some, it signalled a new inclusiveness that was to change the discourse on belonging. For others, it raised concerns about changes to the status quo of ethnic issues. Given the varying responses of society to the concept of 1Malaysia, an examination of different texts through the critical paradigm of CDA provide useful insights into how the public sphere has attempted to construct this notion. Therefore, this paper critically examines the Prime Minister’s early speeches as well as relevant chapters of the socioeconomic agenda, the 10th Malaysia Plan, to identify the referential and predicational strategies employed in characterising 1Malaysia. The findings suggest a notion of unity that appears to address varying issues.


Author(s):  
Verioni Ribeiro Bastos

Diante da estrutura do sistema de ensino brasileiro no qual encontramos a disciplina, Ensino Religioso, constitucionalmente obrigatória no ensino fundamental das escolas públicas até as Ciências das Religiões nas Universidades Federais brasileiras, busco realizar um diálogo com outras trabalhos usando estes como interrogações para questionar o comum tido como natural, ou seja, a presença do religioso na esfera pública. Somado a isto o debate com autores que discutem a realidade francesa e a narração de dois casos extraídos da  observação participante completam a intenção de apresentar um ângulo mais agudo de refletir sobre a realidade brasileira no que concerne a religião, política e educação, como também, como o público e o privado caminham juntos na mentalidade da população do país. A secularização à brasileira anda a passos lentos e o quadro político-social e educacional do Brasil precisa de menos análises do que está posto e questionar por que o que está posto parece normal e se perpetua por gerações e gerações.Palavras-chave: Laicidade: ensino religioso. Política. Brasil. França.AbstractTaking the ideias of some authors we will try to understand the interconnections between religions and public sphere in Brazil and France. In Brazil we get two exemples of the relationship between public sphere and the religion: the presence of Religious Education and the Science Religions in the brazilian federal universities. In other hand we try to understand how in France we can see the relation between the religions and the public sphere thourgh the eyes of some authors who speak about it using two exemples we will show in this text. Completing the intention to present a more acute angle to reflect on the Brazilian reality with regard to religion, politics and education, as well as public and private walk together in the mindset of the country's population. Secularization Brazilian's slow steps and the socio-political framework and Brazil's educational needs less analysis than is post and question why what's post looks normal and perpetuates for generations and generations.Keywords: Secularism: religious education. Politics. Brazil. France.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.


Author(s):  
Alexey Salikov

The question of how the digital transformation of the public sphere affects political processes has been of interest to researchers since the spread of the Internet in the early 1990s. However, today there is no clear or unambiguous answer to this question; expert estimates differ radically, from extremely positive to extremely negative. This article attempts to take a comprehensive approach to this issue, conceptualizing the transformations taking place in the public sphere under the influence of Internet communication technologies, taking their political context into account, and identifying the relationship between these changes and possible transformations of political regimes. In order to achieve these goals, several tasks are tackled during this research. The first section examines the issue as to whether the concept of the public sphere can be used in a non-democratic context. It also delineates two main types of the public sphere, the “democratic public sphere” and the “authoritarian public sphere,” in order to take into account the features of public discourse in the context of various political regimes. The second section discusses the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a democratic context. The third section considers the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a non-democratic context. The concluding section summarizes the results of the study, states the existing gaps and difficulties, outlines the ways for their possible extension, and raises questions requiring attention from other researchers.


Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Hacker ◽  
Eric L. Morgan

Emerging media technologies are increasingly reconfiguring the public sphere by creating new spaces for political dialogue. E-democracy (digital democracy) and e-government can be usefully served by these emerging technologies; however, their existence does not automatically equate to increased political participation. There is still a need to develop specific and theoretically-oriented approaches to a newly reconfigured public sphere. Employing a structurational perspective, this essay addresses the relationship between political participation, emerging media, new media networking, and e-democracy. While new media networking increases the potential for political participation, depending on various factors such as access, usage and skills, the potential exists for increasing disempowerment as well. The chapter concludes with recommendations for the use of new media networking in ways that enhance e-democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Biesta ◽  
Patricia Hannam

AbstractIn this paper we explore the relationship between religious education and the public sphere, suggesting that religious education, if it takes its educational remit seriously, has to be orientated towards the public sphere where human beings exist together in and with the world. Rather than seeing religion as propositional belief, we argue for an existential approach that focuses on the question as to what it means to exist religiously. We offer educational and theological arguments for our position and, along both lines, seek to (re)connect religion and religious education to the idea of democracy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Siavash Saffari

This article examines the relationship between religion and sociopolitical development in the context of the re-emergence of popular social movements in Muslim societies in the Middle East and North Africa. It makes a case that despite the decline of Islamism as a mode of social mobilization, religion maintains an active presence within the public sphere. Focusing on the religious-political discourses of Abdolkarim Soroush and neo-Shariatis, as the representatives of two distinct post-Islamist currents in post-revolutionary Iran, the article identifies some of the capacities and limitations of their particular conceptions of democratic public religiosity for contributing to the ongoing processes of change in Iran and other contemporary Muslim societies.


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