Is terrorism still a useful analytical term, or should it be abandoned?

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Richard Jackson ◽  
Daniela Pisoiu
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Term

Daoing Medicine: Practice Theory for Considering Religion and Medicine in Early Imperial China

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-66
Author(s):  
Michael Stanley-Baker
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religion And Medicine ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Scholarly Discourse

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine.

scholarly journals The performative effects of diagnosis

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Sebastian Mohr
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Medical Diagnoses ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Trans Studies

In this article, I suggest the performative effects of diagnosis as an analytical tool to explore the transformations in people’s intimate lives that being diagnosed brings with it. As an analytical term, I understand the performative effects of diagnosis to describe trajectories in people’s intimate lives that emerge in the interplay between a person’s intimate sense of self, that is, their gendered and sexualed self-perceptions, and the logics and norms contained in medical diagnoses. I develop this term in the context of ethnographic research on Danish war veterans’ understandings of and experiences with intimacy and extrapolate it conceptually in this article through scholarship in feminist theory, trans studies, STS, and medical anthropology and sociology. The argument that I make throughout is that the performative effects of diagnosis allows scholars to explore transformations in people’s intimate lives without a foreclosure about the normative dimensions of these transformations. In that sense, rather than only asking how biopolitical and cis- and heteronormative normalcy constitutes itself, the performative effects of diagnosis provide the opportunity to explore how these dimensions are (re)configured and (un)done in and through medicalized intimacies.

scholarly journals Resisting the ‘populist hype’: a feminist critique of a globalising concept

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 768-785 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bice Maiguashca
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Distinct Mode ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Political Concept

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to offer a feminist critique of populism, not as a distinct mode of politics, but as an analytical and political concept. As such, it seeks to redirect our attention away from populism, understood as a politics ‘out there’, towards the academic theoretical debates that have given this analytical term a new lease of life and propelled it beyond academic circles into the wider public discourse. In this context, the article develops two broad arguments. The first is that the two prevailing conceptions of populism are marred by anaemic conceptions of power, collective agency and subjectivity and, as such, are unable to present us with a convincing account of why this form of radical politics emerges in the first place, who its protagonists are, and how they come together in collective struggle. The second is that our current frenetic deployment of the term as a blanket descriptor for radical politics of all persuasions does not bode well for feminism politically. For both reasons, I conclude that feminists need to resist the current ‘populist hype’.

Indigenous Intellectuals in Contemporary Ecuador: Encounters with “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America”

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Soledad Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Indigenous Movement ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Siglo Xx

The indigenous intellectuals who were part of the foundation of the Ecuadorean indigenous movement of the 1980s contributed to the theoretical and political grounding of the concept of the plurinational state that is now recognized in the country’s new constitution. This concept constitutes a critique of the idea of nationhood that developed in Latin America throughout the twentieth century. A comparative reading of these intellectuals’ work on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America” reveals two themes: colonial continuity and historical continuity. Both can be seen as a “settling of scores” with colonialism understood both as a historical period and as an analytical term for understanding the social reality of Latin America. Los intelectuales indígenas que formaron parte de la fundación del movimiento indígena ecuatoriano hacia la década de 1980 contribuyeron a la fundamentación teórica y política de la noción de Estado plurinacional, hoy reconocida por la nueva constitución del Ecuador. Sus principales antecedentes se encuentran en la elaboración de una crítica a la idea de nación tributaria de la corriente de pensamiento que se forjó en Nuestramérica a lo largo del siglo XX. Una lectura comparada de las obras escritas por estos intelectuales indígenas ecuatorianos en el marco de la conmemoración de los cincuenta años de la publicación de las “Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina,” de Rodolfo Stavenhagen, revela dos elementos que aparecen reiteradamente a lo largo de su producción escritural: la idea de “continuidad colonial” y la idea de “continuidad histórica.” Ambas nociones remiten a un tema específico que se relaciona con cierto “ajuste de cuentas” con el colonialismo en tanto hecho histórico y en tanto categoría para el análisis de la realidad social en América Latina.

Conclusion

Enthusiasm ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 201-220
Author(s):  
Monique Scheer
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Religious Enthusiasm

The concluding chapter makes that case that the concept of “enthusiasm” presented in this study might be useful as an analytical term, to be applied in further study beyond the confines of the religious context. Conviction about something always enlists the body and emotions for its maintenance and reinvigoration, which is to say that it is always also enthusiastic—but this enthusiasm takes on different styles due to a combination of ideology (what emotions are and how they work) and taste or preference, which is linked to social context. Observing that a reactivated reticence toward political emotion in Germany in response to the rise in right-wing populism reprises many of the patterns from debates over religious enthusiasm from previous centuries, the chapter reflects on the relations between a number of terms which, in binary constellations, find themselves on the other side of “rationality,” which has led us to think of them as naturally grouped together: emotion, belief, religion, and—recalling Weber—charisma, enchantment, presence. The chapter suggests that enthusiasm is one of these terms, one that captures how conviction enchants people.

Can ‘Non-territorial Autonomy’ Serve as an Analytical Term? Between ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’ Approaches

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-646
Author(s):  
Alexander Osipov
Keyword(s):  
Structural Feature ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Diversity Issues ◽  
Almost All

Non-territorial autonomy (NTA) has acquired a variety of meanings ranging from a vague principle (a ‘thin’ approach) to a distinct structural feature of an organization (a ‘thick’ approach). Almost all these interpretations rest on an uncritical reification of such notions as ‘group’ and ‘community’. It leads to an uncritical categorization as NTA of numerous different arrangements and practices, that duplicates the existing terminology and brings no added value to the study of these phenomena. Attempts to outline institutional settings for communal self-organization based on the same premises involve negligence of potential scenarios and outcomes. The author concludes that the interpretations of NTA based on groupist assumptions significantly limit analytic perspectives. Interpretations resting on a non-groupist approach can serve analytical purposes, but their application is optional and barely instrumental. Beyond this, NTA shall be regarded and studied as a category of practice and a matrix for framing diversity issues among policy-makers.

Pop-up Mosques, Social Media Adhan, and the Making of Female and LGBTQ-Inclusive Imams

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-196
Author(s):  
Jesper Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Analytical Term ◽  
Friday Prayer ◽  
Islamic Rituals

Abstract The last few decades have seen the appearance of a number of mosques that do not constitute buildings; they are mosques without bricks. This article therefore defines a new concept, the pop-up mosque, as an analytical term for the temporary conversion of an other-purposed space into a mosque, which is used for Islamic rituals such as Friday prayer and marriages. The pop-up mosque can produce religious leaders such as female imams and it thereby becomes the stage on which nonconformist discourses such as Islamic feminism are embodied and enacted. The article also investigates the relation between social media and the pop-up mosque and defines the concept of ‘social media adhan’ as a prayer call that goes out through various channels on the internet. The article is based on field work and interviews conducted primarily in Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

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