scholarly journals Problematising the Official Athens Mosque: Between Mere Place of Worship and 21st Century ‘Trojan Horse’

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 485
Author(s):  
Christina Verousi ◽  
Chris Allen
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Thematic Structure ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Global Terrorism ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Original Approach

This article investigates the ‘problematisation’ of the recently inaugurated mosque in the city of Athens, the capital’s first ‘official’ mosque since the country was liberated from the Ottoman Empire almost two centuries ago. Building on and developing the existing scholarly literature on the problematisation of mosques in the contemporary European setting, this article generates new knowledge by focusing on the Greco-specific context of that same problematisation: an amalgam of history, geography, religion and culture, that asymmetrically shape and inform how and why the new Athens mosque is—and indeed continues to be—a site of conflict and opposition. Presenting new empirical data, this article uses an innovative and original approach to bring together two separate pieces of fieldwork undertaken first-hand by the authors in 2001/2 and 2019/20. Analysing the two sets of data, a threefold thematic structure is employed that focuses on Greece’s history, Christian Orthodoxy and global terrorism. This article first explores the existing scholarly canon relating to the contemporary problematisation of mosques through a focused overview of Greece’s history, religion and culture appropriate to mosques and in part, Muslims and Islam. From there it sets out the findings from the two periods of fieldwork to illustrate and evidence discourses of opposition towards the mosque and how these serve to function both symbolically and tangibly. Using the thematic analysis, theories relating to the ideological processes of Islamophobia are deployed to elucidate a better understanding of the Athens mosque. In doing so, this article makes a timely contribution.

scholarly journals Re-wilding Parkdale? Environmental gentrification, settler colonialism, and the reconfiguration of nature in 21st century Toronto

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-286
Author(s):  
Jessica Parish
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Park Area ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

In 21st century Toronto, the labour of caring for urban trees is entangled with both gentrification processes and the social reproduction of settler colonial space. This paper contributes to the study of environmental gentrification through a study of the social reproduction of settler colonial relations to land in the Parkdale–High Park area of Toronto. Specifically, I take up the hyper-visibility of some forms of social reproduction, in order to shed light on how the mundane, quotidian ‘non-work’ of living in/with/for capitalism becomes a site of privilege and a luxury pursuit for more affluent residents. The paper highlights the processes and practices whereby settler colonial urban subjects seek out ‘nature’ as a temporary outside where they can escape from widely accepted downsides of capitalist urbanism, including a diverse array of social and physical ills, from stress, to obesity, to ecological degradation. The paper asks: whose social reproduction does the presence of urban trees serve? In the context of 21st century financialized gentrification, cities are increasingly normalized as spaces of wealth and luxury. It is therefore crucial to pay attention to the raced, gendered, and colonial micro-politics through which urban ecologies are transformed in the service of an anti-democratic vision of the city as a space of leisure and luxury.

Thematic structure of the GIS database Khabarovsk city protected areas

2020 ◽  
Vol 961 (7) ◽  
pp. 56-64
Author(s):  
G.Y. Morozova ◽  
I.D. Debelaia
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Ecological Framework ◽  
Thematic Structure ◽  
City Area ◽  
Gis Database ◽  
The City

Protected areas are key elements of the green infrastructure and ecological framework of cities. They have multifunctional significance as centers of investment attractiveness. The percentage of protected zones in the city’s total area is an indicator of its sustainable development. Their total area in Khabarovsk is 567.8 ha (1.5% of the city area)

Global Justice at the Municipal Scale

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fonna Forman ◽  
Teddy Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Global City ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

Cities or municipalities are often the most immediate institutional facilitators of global justice. Thus, it is important for cosmopolitans and other theorists interested in global justice to consider the importance of the correspondence between global theories and local actions. In this chapter, the authors explore the role that municipalities can play in interpreting and executing principles of global justice. They offer a way of thinking about the cosmopolitan or global city not as a gentrified and commodified urban space, but as a site of local governance consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitan moral aims. They work to show some ways in which the city of Medellín, Colombia, has taken significant steps in that direction. The chapter focuses especially on how it did so and how it might serve as a model in some important ways for the transformation of other cities globally in a direction more consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitanism.

scholarly journals Collecting Pandemic Phenomena: Reflections on Rapid Response Collecting and the Art Museum

Collections ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 155019062098084
Author(s):  
Sandro Debono
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Rapid Response ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Development Methodology ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Potential Use

Rapid Response Collecting has been a most apt methodology with which to document the COVID-19 pandemic for an increasing number of museums. As the phenomenon unfolded across the globe, museums searched for and head-hunted the truth-revealing objects that could tell the stories and histories of the present to current and future generations. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic took Rapid Response Collecting to a higher level. A methodology originally conceived for a sporadic phenomenon happening within a specific context during the early years of the 21st century gained much more traction almost overnight. This paper shall make a case for a better understanding of the potential use and application of Rapid Response Collecting by art museums. It shall look into the defining values of this collections development methodology and how these can be applied and adopted when acquiring works of art. In doing so, it shall seek to understand to what extent the mainstream version of Rapid Response Collecting can be adapted for the needs, purposes and requirements of the art museum.

To study or not to study abroad? students’ decision in perspective of motivations, barriers and attachment

Human Affairs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Filip Sulejmanov ◽  
Klára Seitlová ◽  
Martin Seitl ◽  
Barbora Kasalová
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Style ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Secure Attachment ◽  
Thematic Structure ◽  
Exact Test ◽  
Studying Abroad ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Post Hoc ◽  
Attachment Dimensions ◽  
Inductive Thematic Analysis

Abstract The aim of this study is to explore the antecedents of studying abroad. First, we explore motivations for and barriers against studying abroad in two groups of students (who had studied abroad, and who had not studied abroad). Second, differences in attachment dimensions and styles are examined in both groups. A deductive thematic analysis supported the thematic structure identified by Krzaklewska (2008) in regard to motivations. Furthermore, five barriers were identified using inductive thematic analysis. Although the same motivational and barrier themes were found in both groups, there were some notable qualitative differences in meaning attached to them. A one-way MANOVA showed non-significant differences between the two groups of students and attachment dimensions. Finnaly, Fisher’s exact test was conducted, and the post hoc comparison showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of students who had studied abroad and had a secure attachment style compared to students who had not studied abroad.

Connectivity in the Multi-Layered City: Towards the Sustainable City

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Bob Brown
Keyword(s):  
Global City ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Financial Speculation ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Development Practice

A new urban paradigm, the global city, emerged in the late 20th Century finding acceptance in discussions of urban development. Tied into a global network of exchange, it exists principally as a place of financial speculation and transaction. It is marked by a parallel economy of culture, which underpins a re-conceptualisation and spatial re-formation of the city. Despite its widespread currency, criticisms have challenged its economic sustainability. Further questions have contested its tendency to impose a singular, homogenized space prioritizing consumption while marginalising other concerns. Post-independence Riga's recent experience provides a platform from which to critique the global city paradigm, which the city embraced as it sought to embed itself in the West not only politically but culturally and economically as well. In opposition to this model's intrinsic singular emphasis and exclusionary tendencies, this text will explore the concept of palimpsest; this proposition understands the city as a multiplicity of layers, within which convergences and divergences offer a site from which to generate synergies. This will be framed in reference to recent discourse on the sustainable city and development practice. Recent design-led inquiry situated in the context of Riga will then provide a lens on palimpsest as an alternative form of praxis.

The Brain as Treasury and as Aqueduct

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-566
Author(s):  
Jessica Wright
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Motor Nerves ◽  
Architectural Structures ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
The Brain

In late antique theological texts, metaphors of the brain were useful tools for talking about forms of governance: cosmic, political, and domestic; failed and successful; interior discipline and social control. These metaphors were grounded in a common philosophical analogy between the body and the city, and were also supported by the ancient medical concept of the brain as the source of the sensory and motor nerves. Often the brain was imagined as a monarch or civic official, governing the body from the head as from an acropolis or royal house. This article examines two unconventional metaphors of the brain in the work of the fifth-century Greco-Syrian bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus—the brain as a treasure within the acropolis, and the brain as a node in an urban aqueduct—both of which adapt the structural metaphor of governance to reflect the changing political and economic circumstances of imperial Christianity. Drawing upon medical theories of the brain, Theodoret expands upon the conventional governance metaphor of brain function to encompass the economic and the spiritual responsibilities of the bishop-administrator. Just as architectural structures (acropolis, aqueduct) contain and distribute valuable resources (treasure, water) within the city, so the brain accumulates and redistributes nourishing substances (marrow, blood, pneuma) within the body; and just as the brain functions as a site for the transformation of material resources (body) into spiritual goods (mind), so the bishop stands as a point of mediation between earthly wealth and the treasures of heaven.

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