Gender, Sexuality, and Religion: A Critical Integrative Review and Agenda for Future Research

This article sets forth a critical integrative review of the study of gender, sexuality, and religion. Treating religion as a cause, an effect, and an intermediary factor in relation to gender and sexuality, it draws on and synthesizes multiple theoretical approaches including gender and queer lenses on religion, cultural analysis, and intersectionality. The article is structured around ten big-picture questions about gender, sexuality, and religion and argues that gender and sexuality are a key symbolic boundary and cultural divide in religious and political life in the United States and around the world. It concludes with an agenda for future research.

Socio-cultural and political sources of ethnocultural split in Ukraine

The article examines the socio-cultural and political sources of the modern ethnocultural division of Ukraine and shows that the historically formed cultural division of Ukrainian society due to geographical and political factors was significantly leveled in the Soviet assimilation policy, but was not completely overcome due to slight industrialization of Ukrainian villages and west. As a result, the Ukrainian population was divided into several separate strips, which contributed to the deepening of the cultural divide with other, industrially developed, but de-ethnicized Ukrainian regions. The lack of ethnic unity of Ukrainians and the active position of national minorities in regions with a large number of ethnically related groups, in the absence of a balanced national policy, have become the main causes of ethnocultural division in Ukraine. Overcoming the latter is possible in the process of gradual introduction of general civilizational principles of civil society and the formation of economic, social and spiritual conditions for the development of both the individual and the community. Only when the permanent economic crisis is overcome and science, education and culture broadcast by the national language are raised to the level of state values, without marginalizing the nation-building significance of the languages of interethnic communication, Ukrainian society will become a nation.

Social and political divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the 1990 elections

Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a very suitable experimental space for the analysis of integrative policy in the conditions, war and long-lasting crisis, of a devastated society which, due to the challenges of history, is deeply divided. In such a space, applying the analytical model designed and used by Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokan, the paper deals with the detection of social divisions that underlie party preferences in the 1990 elections for the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Analyzes of pre-election and post-election activities of political entities show the existence of an important link between ethno-confessional characteristics and attitudes on political issues and party preferences, which in accordance with the used theoretical model creates preconditions for talking about social divisions that have turned into party divisions. It can be determined that they are bh. political parties formed, with all their specifics, on the basic lines of Bosnia and Herzegovina social divisions. In the analysis of the relationship between social and political space and the influence of the structure of society on political relations and divisions, it is possible to determine that party divisions and divisions, their segmentation and polarization are conditioned, above all, by the depth and dynamics of fundamental Bosnia and Herzegovina social divisions. The divisions that emerged in the pre-election period of 1990 (we can conditionally define them as divisions communism vs anti-communism) were pushed into the background in the first post-election year and priority was given to the split that S. Lipset and S. Rokan defined as the center-periphery split. (or the territorial-cultural split as, after adaptation, Professor Nenad Zakošek called it). The second part of the paper presents an overview of the most important political parties in the 1990 elections and continues to examine the applicability of S. Lipset and S. Rokan's theory of turning social divisions into party divisions, this time in the first year of ethno-confessional parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Analyzing the basic lines of historical ethnic and confessional divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina society and in the sphere of political (sub) system through indicators such as: predominant (ethnic, confessional, linguistic, cultural and regional) identifications, the relationship between ethno-confessional and civil, the relationship to the rights and freedoms guaranteed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Constitution, the attitude towards different solutions to the state question (remaining in the common state of Yugoslavia vs. the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina) tested the hypothesis that historical lines of ethno-confessional splits represent the basic determinant of political goals. It can be seen that the territorial-cultural divide (primarily in the form of center-periphery conflict) is actually a kind of complete split, given that it is a split that involves conflict between stable social groups (residents of the center and periphery but also members of different ethnic and confessional communities). In the Bosnia and Herzegovina case, these are (ethnic and confessional) communities that have different views on the most important issues of the social organization of the common state, which results in open conflict on the political scene in the form of voting for different political options, which can be transformed by ethnopolitical elites. (very easily) into various forms of violence against others and different in the territory that is under their political (and police) control.

Bridging the Digital Publishing Divide

An anthropological view of the publishing industry sees it as a culture with its own assumptions and patterns, in which publishing companies are macro-communities associated with micro-communities of readers. Anthropology sees ‘digital culture’ in a comparable way. Awareness of the cultural characteristics of publishing as a culture and of digital culture can turn their differences into synergies that benefit both. Examples from anthropological research and from publishing show that some processes are comparable. One is the process in which material value is transformed into cultural value, with the benefit of increasing the cohesion of a community. Another occurs when communities interlink their cultural processes in cultural–commercial ecosystems, to mutual benefit. Anthropological insights suggest how strategies, at project level and at the level of international cooperation, can bridge the cultural divide between traditional publishing values and digital opportunities and so help businesses survive and succeed in times of change.

Electoral competition in the presence of identity politics

This paper studies the effects of cultural identity on electoral and policy outcomes when voters are “behavioral.” Building on the evidence that voters assess political or economic events through the lens of their partisan identifications, we analyze an election between two office-motivated candidates in which voters over-reward or under-punish the candidate that shares their cultural identity. Focusing on issues with cultural as well as distributional implications for voters such as immigration and the cultural divide based on nativism as the source of identity politics, we find that the candidates’ equilibrium policies are always preferred by the electorally dominant cultural group to the policy that would be optimal if policies only had distributional consequences. We also show that candidates do not necessarily target their own cultural bases in equilibrium. Furthermore, stronger identity politics increases policy polarization. Our findings contribute to the debates on the decoupling of voting behavior from economic interests, and the rise of immigration, trade protectionism, or engagement with global governing institutions as electoral issues that can shift historical voting patterns.

Survival of the Unfittest on the Eastern Front

In 1911, F. T. Marinetti imagined war as “the only hygiene of the world.” Such social Darwinist visions are contested by modernism’s antimilitarist fictions. Focusing on Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk (1921–23), this chapter explores the dynamics of this contestation and its ramifications for understanding modernist epic. The eponymous protagonist of Hašek’s fiction, Švejk, is not a standard hero. Rather, he is imbecilic, alcoholic, lazy, rheumatic, “degenerate,” mongrel-like, and speaks an “impure” colloquial version of the national language. His only positive feature is how, ironically because of his stupidity, Švejk always manages to escape a terrible destiny, delaying his arrival at the Eastern Front. As this chapter describes, the story is a moral of survival of the unfittest, dramatizing how the underdog can succeed in a violent world and how the Czechs emerged from under the Austrian empire. Analyzing this alter-Darwinian nation-building, the chapter places Hašek’s work into relation with the larger genre of modernist epic. It shows that although Hašek was not invested in any modernist movement, and did not read Joyce or Stein, his text was nevertheless shaped in relation to the same underlying historical forces. It reveals, consequently, an encompassing narrative of evolutionary thought that different national modernisms can be coordinated against, which also crosses the cultural divide between high and low.

Bridging the Social, Academic, and Cultural Divide for International Students

International learners face many unique challenges when studying in a U.S. based online program. These challenges include language barriers, social barriers, and psychological barriers. In this chapter, the authors propose the use of peer-to-peer support programs, combined with an increased focus on learning communities, to help these students succeed. The literature shows that isolation is a common experience for online learners, and in particular, international students. Researchers have also found that peer relationships and connections can improve this experience for students, which can lead to student satisfaction, success, and retention. Based in the sociocultural theory of Vygotsky, the purpose of this chapter is to share specific strategies with instructors, course designers, and larger institutions so they can create courses and a larger learning environment that are sensitive to the needs of diverse learners studying online.

Humor competence in English as a second or foreign language

Developing humor competence in a second or foreign language is difficult, but it is very important for successful intercultural communication. The nature of humor and its sociocultural functions make humor competence one of the last hurdles even advanced language learners often struggle to overcome. Since types of humor and attitudes towards joking are different in different cultures and humor comprehension requires a complex combination of linguistic and cultural knowledge, second or foreign language teachers need to help their students with this often-neglected area of pragmatics. In social, academic, and professional settings, humor can relieve tension, exert social control, and enhance social cohesion, delineating who belongs or does not belong in a particular group. As humor can function both as a cultural divide and a unifying factor, the time has come to include some type of humor competency training in second or foreign language education. Based on humor research and research in teaching English as a second or foreign language, more and more educators are beginning to experiment with, document, and evaluate the results of various strategies and approaches to teaching with and about humor in English.