scholarly journals Religion as a Pillar for Establishing a Civilization: Al-Māwardī’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 240-257
Author(s):  
Fadi Zatari
Keyword(s):  
Individual Behaviors ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Social Affinity

This study examines religion in terms of establishing and maintaining a civilization based on Abū al-Ḥasan al-Māwardī’s (d. 1058) contribution, “Kitāb adab al-dunyā wa-al-dīn.” In this paper, the central argument is that religion is a pillar for establishing and maintaining civilization. There are no possibilities for a civilization to be constituted and maintained without a central role for religion. I will elaborate on the meaning of religion from al-Māwardī’s perspective and its role in constructing a civilization. This paper considers several religious notions and concepts proposed by al-Māwardī for this purpose. For instance, ‘al-Targhīb wa al-Tarhīb’ (persuasion and intimidation) and al-ulfah (social affinity) indicate how religion can affect individual behaviors and actions and helps create and maintain civilization. As a methodology, this paper analyses al-Māwardī’s contribution and compares it with significant contributions to civilization Studies. It concludes that a profound understanding of religion's role in any civilization gives a proper direction for understanding civilization and how religion can enhance and improve people's behavior and manners, which reflects positively on religion’s role in establishing and preserving a civilization.  

First as Sociology, Then as Geography

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Justin Tse
Keyword(s):  
Social Geography ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Ideological Work ◽  
The Way

This essay reviews Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus's New Age Spiritualities: Rethinking Religion. It shows that their attempt to redefine religion through new age spiritualities is actually an attempt to impose an economically elite social geography onto religious studies as a social fact. My central argument is that this effort in turn reveals that religious studies serves as a sociological factory for liberal economic ideologies. It suggests that to mitigate this ideological work, a shift toward critical geography in religious studies is the way forward.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Farfan
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Sexual Norms ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

This introduction sets forth the book’s central argument and establishes the historical, theoretical, and critical context for its case studies. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern sexual identities emerged into view while at the same time being rendered invisible, as in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 trial on charges of gross indecency and the 1928 obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Early stage representations of homosexuality were typically coded or censored, yet the majority of the works considered in this book were highly visible in their subversions of conventional gender and sexual norms. Queer readings of these plays and performances establish connections across high and popular cultural domains, demonstrating that some of traditional modernism’s perceived failures, rejects, and outliers were modernist through their sexual dissidence. These insights in turn contribute to a more precise understanding of how modernity was mediated and how such mediations enacted change.

‘She Sleeps Well and Eats an Egg’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Newton
Keyword(s):  
Life Style ◽  
The Body ◽  
Serious Illness ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Full Strength ◽  
Central Argument

Serious illness often left the body weak and lean, full of the ‘footsteps of disease’; it wasn’t until full strength and flesh had returned that the patient was pronounced back to health. This chapter explores the second stage of recovery in contemporary perceptions, the restoration of strength, or ‘convalescence’. It asks how the patient’s growing strength was measured and promoted, and unveils a concept of convalescent care, ‘analeptics’. The central argument is that both the mechanisms and the measures for the restoration of strength were intimately connected to the ‘non-natural things’, six dietary and life-style factors. The opening sections explain why the body was weak after illness, and categorize the convalescent within contemporary schemes of health. The rest of the chapter is structured around the signs of increasing strength, each of which was associated with a particular non-natural: ‘the final purge’, ‘sleeping through the night’, ‘feeling hungry’, ‘growing cheerful’, and ‘sitting up to going abroad’.

The Acceptance of Party Unity in Parliamentary Democracies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Willumsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Survey Questions ◽  
Ideal Policy ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Policy Incentives

The central argument of this book is that voting unity in European legislatures is not primarily the result of the ‘disciplining’ power of the leadership of parliamentary parties, but rather the result of a combination of ideological homogeneity through self-selection into political parties and the calculations of individual legislators about their own long-term benefits. Despite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The book measures these using an until now under-utilized resource: parliamentary surveys. Building on these, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and show that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet alone cannot explain all of it. Analysing the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity, and what drives these attitudes, the book argues that what explains the observed unity (beyond what preference similarity would explain) is the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs, and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their ideal policy outcome. The book buttresses this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature.

Investment Management and the Investment Chain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane-Laure Arjaliès ◽  
Philip Grant ◽  
Iain Hardie ◽  
Donald MacKenzie ◽  
Ekaterina Svetlova
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Asset Management ◽  
Investment Decisions ◽  
Investment Management ◽  
Money Flows ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Asset Managers

Chapter 1 introduces the idea of the chain as related to investment management. It highlights the increasing importance and influence of the asset management industry and argues that, despite this fact, the behaviour and decision-making of asset managers has been little studied. The chapter suggests that investment decisions today cannot be understood by focusing on isolated investors. Rather, most of their money flows through a chain: a sequence of intermediaries that ‘sit between’ savers and companies/governments. The chapter introduces the central argument of the book that investment management is shaped profoundly by the opportunities and constraints that this chain creates.

Making Things Up

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Good Sense ◽  
Individual Behaviors ◽  
Subatomic Particles ◽  
The Family ◽  
Composition Property ◽  
The Individual ◽  
In Virtue Of

We frequently speak of certain things or phenomena being built out of or based in others. This soda can is made of molecules, which are in turn made of atoms, which are in turn made of subatomic particles. The behavior of a crowd is based in the behaviors of and interactions between individual people—it behaves as it does in virtue of the individual behaviors and interactions. Making Things Up concerns the family of relations that such talk appeals to, which Karen Bennett calls “building relations.” Grounding is one currently popular such relation; so too are composition, property realization, and—controversially—causation. Building relations connect more fundamental things (like atoms) to less fundamental things (like soda cans). But what are we even talking about when we say that something is more fundamental than something else? This book illuminates the ideas of building and fundamentality, as they are deployed in metaphysics and elsewhere in philosophy. Bennett paints a picture of a hierarchically structured world, and makes good sense of otherwise somewhat cryptic talk of “in virtue of” and fundamentality.

scholarly journals Seigneurial governance and the state in late medieval Guelders (14th–16th century)

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Jim van der Meulen
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Central Argument

AbstractThis article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.

Motherhood on display: The child welfare exhibition in colonial Calcutta, 1920

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-277
Author(s):  
Ranjana Saha
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
National Health ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Infant Deaths ◽  
Infant Welfare ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Ideal

This article focuses on the Health and Child Welfare Exhibition held in colonial Calcutta in 1920. Despite a few scholarly references, however, there has been no detailed study till date. The vicereines of India launched child welfare exhibitions motivated by the transnational exhibitory baby health week propaganda initiative to curb infant mortality. These exhibitions were also locally organised and collaborative in nature with an urgent nationalist appeal. The study critically engages with select Exhibition lectures about so-called ‘clean’ midwifery and ‘scientific’ motherhood given by famous Bengali medical practitioners and other prominent professionals, predominantly men and a few women. These drew intimate sociobiological connections between the problems of ‘dirty’ midwifery, ritual pollution, improper confinement, insanitary childbirth, insufficient lactation and the excessive maternal and infant deaths in Calcutta. The central argument is that these public lectures primarily focused on the very making of the ‘ideal’ Indian nursing mother, often imagined as the traditional yet modern bhadramahila mother figure, for rejuvenating community and national health and vigour. Correspondingly, it highlights the transnational resonance of famous Frederic Truby King’s ‘mothercraft’ popularised as childcare by the clock. The paper is, therefore, guided by the twin purposes of filling the gap in our knowledge about child welfare exhibitions in colonial India and illuminating extant scholarship on the global infant welfare movement.

Universal Grammar and the critical age

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-612
Author(s):  
Julia Herschensohn
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Critical Age

Differences of opinion between Epstein, Flynn & Martohardjono (1996) and some commentators can be traced to different interpretations of Universal Grammar (UG) form or strategy. Potential full access to the form of linguistic universals in second language acquisition may be distinguished from access to UG strategy, but Epstein et al.'s dismissal of the Critical Age Hypothesis clouds their central argument.

scholarly journals A sociology for other animals: analysis, advocacy, intervention

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 242-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Cudworth
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to map the field of sociological animal studies through some examples of critical and mainstream approaches and considers their relation to advocacy. It makes the argument that while all these initiatives have made important contributions to the project of “animalising sociology” and suggest a need for change in species relations, the link between analysis and political strategy is uncertain. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops its argument by using secondary sources, reviewing sociological positions and offering illustrations of possible interventions. Findings – Sociological interventions in the field of animal studies have been informed by critical perspectives, such as feminism and Marxism, or taken less critical routes deploying actor-network theory and symbolic interactionism. Whilst those working in critical traditions may appear to have a more certain political agenda, an analysis of “how things are” does not always lead to a clear position on “what is to be done” in terms of social movement agendas or policy intervention. In addition, concepts deployed in advocacy such as “liberation”, “quality of life” or “care” are problematic when applied beyond the human. Despite this, there are possibilities for coalition and solidarity around certain claims for change. Research limitations/implications – If the central argument of the paper were taken seriously by general sociologists, then sociology may be more open to “animal studies”. In implications for exisitng sociological animal studies scholarship is to trouble some of the certainties around advocacy. Practical implications – If the central argument of the paper were taken seriously by advocacy groups, then the hiatus between “welfarism” and “liberation” might be overcome. Originality/value – There have been recent attempts to map the field of scholarship in animal studies, but surprisingly little consideration of how different emergent positions inform questions of advocacy and the possibilities for political intervention.

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