Are There Rules in War?

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-28
Author(s):  
Benjámin Borbás
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
New Research ◽  
Teutonic Knights

This article summarizes new research on the custom of distributing the spoils of war amongst active military participants in the Holy Land. A letter of guarantee records an agreement between John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and the Teutonic Knights right after the capture of Damietta (1219) during the Fifth Crusade. This document is compared with contemporary sources reporting on military actions of the Teutonic Order. The article argues that the strength of a military order and power relations between parties participating in military campaigns can be studied through their sharing of the spoils of war.

Legitimacy and Legitimization in Low Turnout Ballots

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kirkland ◽  
Matthew Wood
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Uk ◽  
New Research ◽  
Western Democracies

Declining voter turnout has been highlighted as problematic for a number of western democracies. However, in this article we argue that whether an election is seen as ‘legitimate’ or not depends crucially upon interpretations of the levels of turnout by elite actors. Through comparing two recent democratic ballots in the UK we demonstrate how elections with lower turnouts can come to be seen as holding more legitimacy than those with higher turnouts. The cases demonstrate, we argue, a distinction between actual legitimacy, defined as a binary concept, and the process of legitimization – a process through which the authority of an institution is discursively constructed and conferred. This suggests a new research agenda which extends beyond the current literature to focus upon how the legitimacy of a ballot is socially constructed in a broader context of unequal socioeconomic power relations.

scholarly journals New Research in the Military History of the Late Rome and early Byzantium. A review of : Mekhamadiev, E. A. (2019). A Military Organization of the Later Roman Empire in 253–353 AD: From Emperor Gallienus’ Reforms to the Age of the Tetrarchy (253–305). St. Petersburg: Peterburgskoe Vostokovedenie Publishers. 406 p.

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 408-421
Author(s):  
Arsen K. Shahinyan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Military History ◽  
Fundamental Study ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Units

This paper states that the monograph published E. A. Mekhamadiev, a researcher from St. Petersburg, is a fundamental study of the Later Roman military organization, with especial attention to the epigraphic and papyrological accounts. The use of these sources allows the author to reconstruct the history of specific military units, their spatial movements, participation in various military campaigns and wars, and changes in their ranks. Important is that Mekhamadiev examined the internal (organizational) structure of all regional armies of the Roman empire from 253 to 305 and not restricted himself to specific and narrow aspects of history of a particular province or country. The author of the book under present review has analysed the data related to both the eastern and the western imperial provinces, discovered close interrelations of the western and eastern provinces, and indicated permanent movements of the military units from the west to east and in the opposite direction depending on the geopolitical and home political situation.

Landscape

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Nurit Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Local Power

This chapter focuses on female rituals and how are they materialized and encrypted in the Holy Land landscape. The author shows that the debate on ownership of territories is not only integrated with the discourse of motherhood, fertility, maternal feelings, and intimacy but is also associated with local power relations and demands. All the same, human ritualistic performances, whether they are encrypted in sacred caves, holy mountains, enchanted forests, rivers, or trees, mark all their symbolic and physical traces on the landscape. These ritualistic sacred traces create human sacred maps that are alternatives to all other human maps, such as route maps, urban maps, maps of state borders, transportation maps, and other official maps. The power of rituals to create alternative maps, more specifically alternative female sacred maps, and their construction in the landscape is at the heart of this chapter.

The New Animism and Its Challenges to the Study of Religion

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-147
Author(s):  
Isabel Laack
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
New Research ◽  
Immense Potential

Abstract In the last decades, the worldview(s) of so-called Indigenous religions have regained academic interest. Scholars of religion, anthropologists, and Indigenous writers engage in a new research field called new animism characterized by a diversity of insider and outsider positions. The field contains immense potential for inspiring general debates in the study of religion because it touches on fundamental questions about hermeneutics, epistemology, epistemic goals, disciplinary identities, and the influence of Western ontology on scientific and academic research. This article aims to draw the attention of scholars of religion to the new animism by contextualizing the field within disciplinary and cultural history, presenting its core theories, analyzing its methodological and epistemological positions, and identifying the central players ands its politically highly charged social contexts with asymmetrical power relations. Finally, it discusses how the new animism challenges general debates within the study of religion and may provocatively stimulate them.

scholarly journals How Can You Know the Bible and Not Believe in Our Lord? Guiding Pilgrims across the Jewish–Christian Divide

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Jackie Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Others ◽  
Guided Tour

Drawing on auto-ethnographic descriptions from four decades of my own work as a Jewish guide for Christian Holy Land pilgrims, I examine how overlapping faiths are expressed in guide–group exchanges at Biblical sites on Evangelical pilgrimages. I outline several faith interactions: Between reading the Bible as an affirmation of Christian faith or as a legitimation of Israeli heritage, between commitments to missionary Evangelical Christianity and to Judaism, between Evangelical practice and those of other Christian groups at holy sites, and between faith-based certainties and scientific skepticism. These encounters are both limited and enabled by the frames of the pilgrimage: The environmental bubble of the guided tour, the Christian orientations and activities in the itinerary, and the power relations of hosts and guests. Yet, unplanned encounters with religious others in the charged Biblical landscape offer new opportunities for reflection on previously held truths and commitments. I conclude by suggesting that Holy Land guided pilgrimages may broaden religious horizons by offering an interreligious model of faith experience based on encounters with the other.

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