scholarly journals The Constitutionalization of the Civil State: The Self-Definition of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen Following the Arab Uprisings

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 269
Author(s):  
Limor Lavie

This paper offers a contextualized analysis of the way in which three Islamic constitutions—in Egypt (2014/2019), Tunisia (2014), and Yemen (2015)—came to a similar self-declaration of a “civil state” (dawla madaniyya), following the Arab uprisings. This self-expressive proclamation, which did not exist in their former constitutions, nor in any other constitution worldwide, is the product of the ongoing internal struggles of Muslim societies over the definition of their collectivity between conservatism and modernity, religiosity and secularism. In Egypt, the self-definition of a civil state enshrines the one-sided narrative of the June 2013 coup regime and the Armed Forces’ intrusive move into the field of state–religion relations; in Tunisia, the constitutionalization of the civil state reflects a settlement between Islamists and non-Islamists regarding the role of Islam in politics and legislation; in Yemen, it expresses an aspiration of detribalization and modernization within an Islamic model of statehood. The paper further seeks to trace the path of migration of this idea from one country to another, and the interconnectedness between the three cases, while pointing out possible implications on future constitution making in other Muslim countries.

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
A. Gaye Cummins

Historically, theoretical and popular conceptions about power have not included or addressed women's experiences. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about women by examining women's perceptions of and relationship to power. One hundred twenty-five women, ranging in age from 21 to 63, were asked to define and explore power through a variety of structured and open-ended questions. The results showed that women's definition of power differed significantly from their perception of society's definition of power, as well as from the way power has traditionally been conceptualized. More theoretical and empirical attention should be given to understanding the role of personal authority in both women's and men's experience of power.


Author(s):  
Feng Zhu

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabi Reinmann

Bardone and Bauters suggest a re-conceptualization of design-based research using the classical term "phronesis" and question some methodological developments referring to the role of intervention and theory in design-based research. This discussion article is a comment on the text of Bardone and Bauters and pursues two aims: On the one hand the term “phronesis” is connected to the traditional concept of “pädagogischer Takt” (literally: “pedagogical tact”) to stimulate a joint discourse of both traditions. On the other hand, two main suggestions of Bardone und Bauters are critically examined, namely their proposal to conceptualize intervention in design-based research exclusively as an action, and their call for deriving generalizations via experiences instead of theories. The discussion article finally argues for maintaining the integrative power of design-based research by avoiding one-sided interpretations.  


2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Hockey ◽  
Rachel Dilley ◽  
Victoria Robinson ◽  
Alexandra Sherlock

This article raises questions about the role of footwear within contemporary processes of identity formation and presents ongoing research into perceptions, experiences and memories of shoes among men and women in the North of England. In a series of linked theoretical discussions it argues that a focus on women, fashion and shoe consumption as a feature of a modern, western ‘project of the self’ obscures a more revealing line of inquiry where footwear can be used to explore the way men and women live out their identities as fluid, embodied processes. In a bid to deepen theoretical understanding of such processes, it takes account of historical and contemporary representations of shoes as a symbolically efficacious vehicle for personal transformation, asking how the idea and experience of transformation informs everyday and life course experiences of transition, as individuals put on and take off particular pairs of shoes. In so doing, the article addresses the methodological and analytic challenges of accessing experience that is both fluid and embodied.


Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard

The article explores the central role of the entrepreneur in neoliberalism. It demonstrates how a displacement and a broadening of the concept of the entrepreneur occur in the neoliberal interpretation of the entrepreneur compared to Schumpeter’s economic innovation theory. From being a specific economic figure with a particular delimited function the entrepreneur is reinterpreted as, on the one hand, a particular type of subject, the entrepreneur of the self, and on the other, an ism, entrepreneurialism, which permeates individuals, society, and institutions. Entrepreneurialism is discussed as a movement of the economic into previously non-economic domains, such as the welfare state and society. Social entrepreneurship is an example of this in relation to solutions to social welfare problems. This can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of the neoliberal understanding of the entrepreneur, but it also, in certain interpretations, resists the neoliberal understanding of economy and society.


Author(s):  
Jaime Rodríguez Matos

This chapter examines the role of Christianity in the work of José Lezama Lima as it relates to his engagement with Revolutionary politics. The chapter shows the multiple temporalities that the State wields, and contrasts this thinking on temporality with the Christian apocalyptic vision held by Lezama. The chapter is concerned with highlighting the manner in which Lezama unworks Christianity from within. Yet its aim is not to prove yet again that there is a Christian matrix at the heart of modern revolutionary politics. Rather, it shows the way in which the mixed temporalities of the Revolution, already a deconstruction of the idea of the One, still poses a challenge for contemporary radical thought: how to think through the idea that political change is possible precisely because no politics is absolutely grounded. That Lezama illuminates the difficult question of the lack of political foundations from within the Christian matrix indicates that the problem at hand cannot be reduced to an ever more elusive and radical purge of the theological from the political.


2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292096710
Author(s):  
Tereza Jermanová

In 2014, Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly (NCA) almost unanimously approved the country’s first democratic constitution despite significant identity-based divisions. Drawing on the Tunisian case, the article explores the role of an inclusive constitution-making process in fostering constitutional agreement during democratization. Emerging studies that link different process modalities to democracy have so far brought only limited illumination to how inclusive processes matter, nor were these propositions systematically tested. Using process tracing, and building on original interviews gathered in Tunisia between 2014 and 2020, this article traces a causal mechanism whereby an inclusive constitution-making process allowed for a transformation of interpersonal relationships between political rivals. It demonstrates that more than two years of regular interactions allowed NCA deputies to shatter some of the prejudices that initially separated especially Islamist and non-Islamist partisans and develop cross-partisan ties, thus facilitating constitutional negotiations. However, I argue that the way these transformations contributed to constitutional settlement is more subtle than existing theories envisaged, and suggest alternative explanations. The article contributes to the debate about constitution-making processes by unpacking the understudied concept of partisan inclusion and applying it empirically to trace its effects on constitutional agreement, bringing precision and nuance to current assumptions about its benefits.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Tozzo ◽  
Salvatore Scrivano ◽  
Matteo Sanavio ◽  
Luciana Caenazzo

The determination of the post-mortal interval (PMI) is an extremely discussed topic in the literature and of deep forensic interest, for which various types of methods have been proposed. The aim of the manuscript is to provide a review of the studies on the post-mortem DNA degradation used for estimating PMI. This review has been performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and the PRISMA Guidelines. Several analytical techniques have been proposed to analyse the post-mortem DNA degradation in order to use it to estimate the PMI. Studies focused mainly on animal models and on particular tissues. The results have been mixed: while on the one hand literature data in this field have confirmed that in the post-mortem several degradation processes involve nucleic acids, on the other hand some fundamental aspects are still little explored: the influence of ante and post-mortem factors on DNA degradation, the feasibility and applicability of a multiparametric mathematical model that takes into account DNA degradation and the definition of one or more target organs in order to standardize the results on human cases under standard conditions.


Author(s):  
Pau Conde Arroyo

Este artículo trata de problematizar la definición taxonómica de Testo yonqui desde una óptica literaria que atiende a su faceta narrativa para dilucidar los cauces por los que se manifiesta en tanto que ensayo queer. Dicha problematización es abordada desde dos lugares: por un lado, desde la propia obra, atendiendo a las autodefiniciones presentes en el texto, que son examinadas a partir del marco teórico de la autobiografía; y, por otro lado, desde la recepción crítica de Testo yonqui. En último lugar, a la luz de lo anterior, se exponen una serie de tensiones relativas a la relación entre narración, referente y representación en la propuesta experimental del principio autocobaya.   This article aims to question the taxonomical definition of Testo Junkie from a literary perspective that considers its narrative aspect in order to elucidate the ways in which it can be regarded as a queer essay. Such questioning is approached from two angles: on the one hand, from the work itself, examining the self-definitions found in the text, which are studied on the basis of the theoretical framework of autobiography; and, on the other hand, from Testo Junkie’s critic reception. Lastly, the principle of the auto-guinea pig is also explored, in reference to the series of tensions arising from the relationship between narration, referent and representation.


2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.


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