Taking over Skanda (c. 6th to 7th Century)

Author(s):  
Bihani Sarkar

This chapter assesses how Durgā replaced Skanda as a symbol of imperialism as she began to represent local goddesses thought to control land, something Skanda could not. Śaiva mythology employed narrative devices and concepts used to integrate Skanda into its fold to incorporate Durgā and to grant her a critical place within the Śaiva pantheon. This period coincided with the end of the Gupta empire, during which other lineages asserted themselves on the political map. The goddess, now a cohesive deity, began to appear as a political metaphor in their propaganda, replacing Skanda. The Cālukya emperors, for example, begin to prioritize her over their other favoured lineage god, Skanda. Assessing Cālukya era inscriptions, early Śaiva and epic sources, and later liturgies and mythologies of Durgā, this chapter shows how Skanda's decline provided a cultural vacuum after the end of the Gupta period that was filled by Durgā. Symbols of imperialism, such as the restoration of Dharma from the destabilizing effects of adharma, once formerly associated with Skanda in his imperial, demon-slaying form, began to be transplanted to the goddess. Among these symbols, her increased association with the protective goddesses called the Mātṛs, who are portrayed in early literature and material remains as Skanda's family members, had a political effect in increasing the relevance of her autumnal worship in combating communal crises. Safeguarding a community from death-giving dangers such as drought, cataclysms, earthquakes and the onslaught of harmful demons involved worshipping Durgā in the centre of the Mātṛs whose apotropaic function was well established in the religious literature of the day. The ritual sequence of the festival of Navarātra began to be dominated by the worship of these goddesses during the sacred days of Mahāṣṭamī and Mahānavamī. The result is that while Durgā's power in her earlier Gupta conception as Nidrā was connected with nature, particularly the sky, rainfall, stars and clouds, it is gradually represented through a more official array of symbols connected with military kingship, many initially imagined with Skanda, when the transition into Śaivism occurs. While under the Guptas she had been a liminal symbol, her entrance into Śaivism marked her gradual elevation into the centre, a transition that was firmly cemented when this transplantation onto the bedrock of Skanda's cultural conception occurred.

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Whalen

Philo-Semitism is America's enduring contribution to the long, troubled, often murderous dealings of Christians with Jews. Its origins are English, and it drew continuously on two centuries of British research into biblical prophecy from the seventeenth Century onward. Philo-Semitism was, however, soon “domesticated” and adapted to the political and theological climate of America after independence. As a result, it changed as America changed. In the early national period, religious literature abounded that foresaw the conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel as the ordained task of the millennial nation—the United States. This scenario was, allowing for exceptions, socially and theologically optimistic and politically liberal, as befit the ethos of a revolutionary era. By the eve of Civil War, however, countless evangelicals cleaved to a darker vision of Christ's return in blood and upheaval. They disparaged liberal social views and remained loyal to an Augustinian theology that others modified or abandoned.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 731-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekrem Karakoç ◽  
Talha Köse ◽  
Mesut Özcan

This study investigates the impact of emigration on the political behavior of citizens in Egypt. In particular, it argues that emigrants’ family members are more likely to vote for Salafi parties for several reasons, including the transfer of religious remittances by Egyptian emigrants to the Gulf and the influence of transnational Salafi networks. In order to test our argument, we conducted an original public opinion survey with around 1100 individuals between January 12, 2012 and January 25, 2012, just after the Egyptian parliamentary election. We find that individuals with family members who had emigrated to the Gulf voted heavily for Islamist parties, particularly the Freedom and Justice Party and the Nour Party. Further analysis shows that there is no statistical difference between individuals with and without emigrant family members in voting for the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Nour’s popularity among voters with emigrant family members is substantial and statistically significant. In particular, we find that the strongest support for the Nour came from individuals whose family members had immigrated to Saudi Arabia, whereas those whose family members had immigrated to other countries, including other Gulf countries, do not differ significantly from non-emigrant family members in their party preferences.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 358-389
Author(s):  
Anna Maria Mayda ◽  
Giovanni Peri ◽  
Walter Steingress

This paper studies the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote share for the Republican Party using county-level data from 1990 to 2016. Our main contribution is to show that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it. These effects are mainly due to the indirect impact on existing citizens’ votes, and this is independent of the origin country and race of immigrants. We find that the political effect of immigration is heterogeneous across counties and depends on their skill level, public spending, and noneconomic characteristics. (JEL D72, J15, J24, J61, R23)


Author(s):  
Natalie Booth

This chapter critiques the ways in which penal arrangements remain prisoner-centric and fail to acknowledge a women's maternal status and familial responsibilities. Viewing these women in isolation from their maternal status fails to recognise how they are embedded in social and familial networks, relationships, and responsibilities, and generally perform a primary caregiving role to their dependent children. Not only does this have implications for female prisoners as they attempt to remain connected to motherhood, but it also has a substantial effect on the large number of innocent children and family members left behind during maternal imprisonment. Prisoners' children have been called the ‘hidden victims of imprisonment’ and the ‘orphans of justice’ because they, and their family members, are continually disregarded within the political and policy sphere, academic studies, and society more generally.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hogue

Despite the disciplinary power of surveillance, I argue artistic performances may also provide a space of resistance and self-fashioning. Discussions on artistic performance emphasize the ambivalence and uncertainty of art to resist existing power structures and create alternative meaning. However, how concretely, and when, do artistic performances challenge these structures often remains uncertain. Their popularity does not guarantee the depth of their engagement with surveillance practices, and apparent resistance may hide unconscious cooptation and blatant reproduction of existing inequalities and power structures. To understand the political effect of artistic performances, I argue one needs to look at how they participate to the redefinition of individual and collective selves. This must include attention to spectatorship as a different category from state and corporate surveillance. Spectators engage with performers, reinforce or deny their claim to self-fashioning. By looking at spectators one can better understand how a performance can be (or fail to be) self-fashioning not only for the performer but also collectively for the spectators.


2012 ◽  
Vol 524-527 ◽  
pp. 2977-2981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shao Jun Xu

In this study we use system GMM estimation techniques to examine the dynamic effect of financial development on energy consumption with a panel data set on 29 provinces during the period 1999-2009 in China. The empirical results show a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption when financial development is measured by the ratio of loans in financial institution to GDP and by the ratio of FDI to GDP. These results have critical implications for energy policy where the impact of financial development on energy consumption, especially, the short effect from the development of bank loan scale and the long effect from the development of FDI, is important to improve the political effect.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 83-85
Author(s):  
Judith A. Baer

A while ago we lost Peter Bachrach, one of the pre-eminent academic figures of the twentieth century. After he died on December 14, 2007, a group of his former students and colleagues gathered at the APSA annual meeting in Boston to celebrate his life and career. The audience included family members, “academic grandchildren,” and admirers of his work. The speakers' themes included power, poverty, activism, legal theory, and equality, and this symposium grew out of the panel. This range and variety of topics indicate the scope and depth of his impact. His 1962APSRarticle, “Two Faces of Power,” co-authored with Morton Baratz, is the most frequently cited article in the history of the political science profession. Although I suspect this distinction would have amused Peter, terms likefaces of power,nondecision, anddeciding not to decideare familiar even to those who don't know Bachrach and Baratz's work on power (Bachrach and Baratz 1962, 1963). These writings taught scholars to listen for what is not said and look for what is not shown. That was a crucial lesson for feminist legal scholars like my classmate and fellow panelist, Elizabeth Schneider, and me.


Subject The private pensions system. Significance Chile’s private pension system, once regarded internationally as a model to be imitated, has become a cause of widespread dissatisfaction at home. One important social movement is calling for a return to a state-managed pay-as-you-go system. There is consensus across the political spectrum that changes are required but intense disagreement as to the form they should take. Impacts Low pensions are increasingly affecting the active population through the economic difficulties of older family members. Without reform, the popular call of 'no more money for the AFPs' will continue to find an echo. The AFP-friendly attitude of the likely next centre-right government would increase demand for a return to a state system.


Author(s):  
Aleksandar Takovski

AbstractIn 2010, the Macedonian government commissioned a controversial urban project titled Skopje 2014, designed to aesthetically revamp the look of the capital’s center. The announcement gave rise to conflicting views, both supportive and critical of the idea. Part of the criticism leveled at the project was expressed through on-line humor which produced no major sociopolitical effect, public debate or counter-humor production. Yet its production and reception may be taken as emblematic of the societal tensions underlying the contradiction between its effects and its evaluations.By outlining the political context of the humor’s emergence, analyzing the examples produced, and voicing humor creators’ and citizens’ understanding of its political role, the study reflects upon humor’s specifics and limitations in order to argue that the humor produced and its understanding reflect the political impulses, tensions, and ambiguities of a hybrid society such as Macedonia. Using input from the discussions on the role of humor across political systems, and especially relying on studies of political on-line humor in democracies and audience research, the study intends to determine the political effect of the humor produced so as to argue that faced with many challenges, the humor failed to become a democratic means of political engagement, remaining largely a tool for the expression of personal dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, there is an existing paradox in the face of citizens’ beliefs in the potential of this humor. This study tries to explain this paradox.


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