scholarly journals From Multiculturalism to Humanistic Secularism: Harnessing Nigeria's Cultural Diversity

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
AlubaBari Desmond Nbete
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Religious Accommodation ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
The Rich

The Nigerian state is deeply polarised along ethnic and religious contours, with a widening gulf between the poor masses and the rich few, which reflects the culpability of the ruling elite. However, the actual character of the class struggle is often blurred by the politicization of ethno-cultural and religious differences in a manner that undermines political order and national unity. Ethnicity and religion are thus usedby the political class to manipulate the citizens' consciousness of their ethno-cultural and religious identities to serve the masked parochial class interests. This has made the political arena very volatile and conflict-laden. Stemming the tide of this incessant clash of values and violent ethno-religious conflicts requires a creative adaptation of multiculturalism and secularism. This paper defended a sophisticated understanding of state in the globalization era, which includes citizens' appreciation of their cultural differences, mediated by consciousness of their shared humanity and a strong commitment to the ideals of a civilized community. It argued for a genuinely humanistic secularization of state affairs, harnessing of the country's diverse cultural heritage, and promotion of religious accommodation rather than cultural assimilation and the interference of religion in state affairs, or vice versa.Key Words: multiculturalism, humanistic secularism, cultural diversity, cultural integration, national unity

scholarly journals Diversity and citizenship in the curriculum

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
Definition Of

This article comments on keynote speeches given by Keith Ajegbo and Audrey Osler. The programme of study for citizenship derived from the Crick report and did not emphasise race equality and national unity for security. Osler argues that the Ajegbo review addressed teaching of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity but did not confront the inadequacies of British democracy or reassert social justice, a sense of shared humanity and a commitment to human rights. Proposing, let alone imposing, a definition of Britishness is futile, but it is possible to promote cosmopolitan patriotism supported by explicit principles, concepts and values.

scholarly journals Universal War Strategy Supported Political Integration Reviewed from The Third Sila Pancasila; The Unity of Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-234
Author(s):  
Agus Setyo Hartono
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Third ◽  
Government Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

The understanding of uniting the nation's cultural diversity requires a strategy in handling it so that it does not become a breaker of Indonesian unity, in the political integration of diversity in party groups and their partisanship with government power, it becomes less and less pro to certain communities in society that are represented in dealing with various problems. Cultural diversity that characterizes the Indonesian nation is a nation's wealth or asset that must be preserved and it is hoped that it will lead to potential excellence in the world. Conflicts that are oriented towards division, disintegration of the nation, and want to liberate from the unitary republic of Indonesia require concrete efforts to be overcome for the sake of realizing national unity in the Universal War Strategy. Therefore, the researcher wants to examine how the implementation of a sense of unity and political integration as an element that plays a very important role in the universal war strategy, because the understanding of universal war in the face of non-military threats is needed from government agencies outside of defense, especially in the political dimension, so civic, universality and populist is a feature of the settlement with a universal war strategy.

scholarly journals Cultural Mechanisms of Integrating the Ukrainian Cossaсk Elite into the Imperial Nobility

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yakov Lazarev
Keyword(s):  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Integration Mechanisms ◽  
Professional Self ◽  
Sociocultural Processes

In this article, the author explores the degree of effectiveness of cultural mechanisms implemented in the integration of the Ukrainian Cossack elite into the all-imperial nobility. According to the author, the mid-eighteenth century became a milestone in updating cultural integration mechanisms. Using multiple examples, the author demonstrates how the Cossack elite actively broke away from their cultural provincialism, sending their children to educational institutions of the imperial capitals, and subsequently replenished and formed the imperial noble intellectual elite. The author explains such changes by the influence of European ideological transfer, which led to the transformation of the worldview of the Russian ruling elite, and then, during the reign of Peter I, to the transformation of the Russian imperial court into one of the leading courts of Europe. The result of the said sociocultural processes was the transformation of the capital’s cultural and educational institutions into new centres for attracting leading Western professors and Ukrainian youth, who were looking for opportunities for creative and professional self-realisation. According to the author, another important incentive for the Cossack elite was the political ascent of two ordinary Ukrainian Cossacks, the brothers Alexei and Cyril Razumovsky. The Razumovsky brothers became a part of the new nobility, who ascended to power during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna. For this reason, they became a key cultural channel of the new European worldview for the Cossack elite of Little Russia and an important resource for entering imperial educational institutions and forming the imperial nobility from the Cossack elite. Further, a debatable opinion is expressed in the text of the article, according to which the “Enlightenment discourse” characteristic of Russia and Europe of the time became the main cultural mechanism for the integration of the Cossack elite. According to this “Enlightenment Discourse”, at the top of the hierarchy of rationality, there was an enlightened cosmopolitan, an imperial nobleman, a member of a supranational community. The author maintains that the existence of such cultural mechanisms allowed the Cossack elite to break away relatively easily from their former Cossack identity.

scholarly journals Profile and Major Trends of Japanese Political Identity: Evidence from 1989–2018 Sociological Surveys

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Chugrov ◽  
Liubov B. Karelova
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Public Data ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The 19Th Century

The difference between non-Western and Western matrices of political identity has been attracting the attention of researchers since the end of the 19th century. This issue is located at the intersection of sociology and political science. The purpose of this article is to identify the specifics of political identity in Japan based on public data from the past 20 years, which is analyzed while taking into account the characteristics of the national political system and the political culture of this country. The authors focus on the idea of Japan’s self-image, the most important tasks and preferred forms of governance, attitudes towards government institutions, as well as certain qualities of citizens in terms of their self-assessment as subjects. The article combines sociological methods for analyzing opinion polls with a historical and cultural approach, as well as the method of “deconstruction”, which involves defining the basic concepts, narratives, myths and other forms of discourse that have been transformed into elements of political identity or which influence its formation. Opinion surveys show that traditional mental patterns continue to play a significant role in shaping the configuration of the political identity of the Japanese, identifying such features as a trust in the patronizing representatives of the political class, an urge for social protection from the authorities, a high degree of national unity, support from the state as the main political entity, and a low level of individual participation. In the context of nonlinear dynamics of socio-political transformations, such unique features derive from the desire to rely on patrimonialism and other traditions.

Eenpartijstaten in Zwart Afrika : Evolutie, recente ontwikkelingen, perspectieven

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-179
Author(s):  
Filip Reyntjens
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Party System ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
Coups D'etat ◽  
Party State

Together with the emergence of strong executive presidencies and the frequency of coups d'Etat, the single party is one of the striking features of the political development in Africa South of the Sahara since 1960.More than half the countries of the continent are presently under one-party rule. This article attempts to analyse the origins, recent developments, and perspectives in the field of African single-party states. Sameelements favourable to the emergence of this phenomenon were the colonial heritage, the precolonial tradition, and the aura of legitimacy of the national liberation movements. Several techniques were usedby African leaders to impose rule by one party; distinction is made between political, legal and institutional, and authoritarian means. African leaders have relied on several justifications to rationalise the introduction of such regimes : economie development, national unity and nation-building, the absence of class-differentiation, the unanimitarian tradition, and the need to give constitutional recognition to a de facto situation. A critical  analysis shows that these arguments do not, in general, withstand closer examination. The conclusion is that the single-party «ideology» serves mainly to protect the hegemony of a small and privileged political class of rulers against challenge of its position. As far as perspectives are concerned, three possibilities seem to be developing simultaneously : the Party-State, the no-party state, and the multi-party state. It is argued in a conclusion that the single-party state need not be undemocratic ; some conditions for a democratic one-party system are set forth.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

Gods Save the King

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Fear Of God ◽  
Moral Superiority

In Alexander Ross’s Mel Heliconium (1642) and Pansebeia (1653), the ancient gods and the stories surrounding them are the product of the greatly successful civil theology of the Roman Empire. Ross’s first mythography was written to intervene, on the royalist and Laudian side, in the political and religious conflicts of the Civil Wars. In such times, the virtuous Romans and their use of religion could provide a positive example for governing England. Ross’s portrayal of Roman religion dissociates it from the disreputable beginnings of paganism and emphasizes its monotheism, rationality, moral superiority, and charity. In their undisputed political wisdom, ideal princes of the Roman Empire championed religion because they knew that this would stabilize their reign and keep people in order through the fear of God. Ross’s mythographical work attempts to re-create the ancient function of the fables, by using them to restore the people’s fear of God and king.

scholarly journals THE PROTECTION OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR: THE POLITICS OF ADAM SMITH’S POLITICAL ECONOMY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
James A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractMy point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day.

Board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Zybała
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Employee Representation ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Labour Participation ◽  
Board Level ◽  
Practical Agenda ◽  
Visegrád Countries

This article addresses the complexity of trade-union approaches to board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries, and the barriers it faces in particular national settings. Trade unionists in these countries accept the relevance of such employee representation in theory, but their practical agenda covers other issues which they perceive as more important as they struggle to survive at many levels of activity, and face growing existential uncertainty and risk. Unions also lack capacity to overcome obstacles such as reluctance on the part of the political class and managerial hostility to board-level representation; they cannot exert influence on major policy decisions at national level. They are operating in a more and more difficult environment, reflecting not merely a declining membership base, but also the recent economic crisis that failed to change the economic policy paradigm in the Visegrád countries: policies there still rely on a neoliberal approach and hence are not conducive to labour participation. What can still be seen as the predominant model is the traditional one of the market economy in which rights of ownership reign supreme.

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