The Conflicting Uses of Prison Visitation in Mandate Palestine

The British who ruled Mandate Palestine established a prison visiting system that enabled inspection and oversight of carceral conditions by officials and lay representatives. In often contradictory and variegated ways, both the British and their subjects used this system as a political tool. For the British, lay participation in prison visiting was consistent with colonial pursuits such as advancing penal reform, attempting to “civilize” the local population, preserving the colonial difference, pacifying the locals, and co-opting opposition. The colonized employed prison visits for their own conflicting purposes: to advance both national goals and a universal agenda, to defy the colonial difference and to embrace it at the same time. British repurposing of reformist ideology to advance its civilizing mission was thus vulnerable to the claims of the colonized, who employed prison visiting to advance claims for ethnic and national equality, striking at the core principle of colonial difference. By examining the prison visit policy in Mandate Palestine, this article offers a pioneering approach to the political history of the colonial prison and the tension between penal reform and the larger colonial agenda.

The Mediation Effect of Lay Participation on the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Pastoral Effectiveness: Evidence from Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili

Pastoral effectiveness is an important factor in the success of pastoral activities in Catholic organizations, particularly at the parish level. Pastoral effectiveness can be influenced by transformational leadership and by lay participation. The aims of this research are (1) to examine and analyse the influence of transformational leadership and lay participation on pastoral effectiveness in Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili, (2) examine the influence of transformational leadership on lay participation; and (3) to examine how lay participation mediates the relations between transformational leadership and pastoral effectiveness in this same parish. This research used questionnaires to collect data, with a total of 378 samples, and SMART-PLS 3.1 was used to analyze the data. The results of the research show that transformational leadership and lay participation indeed have a significant and positive influence on pastoral effectiveness. Transformational leadership also has significant impact on lay participation, while lay participation plays a significant role on the relationship between transformational leadership and pastoral effectiveness. This research could enrich the inferential studies on transformational leadership, lay participation and pastoral effectiveness in Catholic Church context which is still lacking. It also contributes to the improvement of pastoral effectiveness, especially within Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili, and in the archdiocese of Dili in general by adopting transformational leadership and lay participation.

THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH: ON THE PROBLEM OF BORDERS AND INTERACTION

В статье анализируется взаимодействие сакрального и мирского элементов в пространстве христианского храма, проблема границы мирского и сакрального и варианты ее решения в истории христианской церкви. Характер взаимодействия сакрального и мирского определяется космическим характером христианства. Христианство стремится к освящению окружающего мира и изменению его на Божественных началах, так как мир сотворен Богом и несет на себе Его образ. Высшей формой преображения мира является таинство Евхаристии. Конечное преображение мира, согласно христианскому учению, возможно после Второго Пришествия Христа. С первых веков существования христианства граница сакрального и мирского пространств в храме была подвижной, а богослужение предполагало активное участие мирян. В первые века христианства алтарь храма выделялся из его пространства, но не отделялся от верующих. Миряне имели возможность видеть происходящее в алтаре и участвовать в таинствах через приношения. Такие черты характерны как для Византии, так и для Руси X–XIII вв. В дальнейшем возникает проблема нарушения баланса мирского и сакрального элементов, которая по-разному решается на Западе и Востоке. Христианский Запад пошел по пути интеграции сакрального пространства в мирскую жизнь. Первоначально это проявилось в совершении молитв и тайнодействий «лицом к народу». Возникло представление, что такое совершение молитв соответствует Тайной Вечере Христа и апостолов. По той же причине место епископа в храме было перенесено ближе к молящимся мирянам. Позже произошел переход к богослужению на национальных языках. Все это привело к прогрессирующей десакрализации богослужения. По-другому развивалось богослужение на Востоке. Здесь приоритетным стало разделение священного и мирского пространств, что проявилось в увеличении высоты алтарной преграды и появлении высокого иконостаса. В дальнейшем снижается активность участия мирян в богослужении, а в XVII столетии происходит окончательное разделение сакрального и мирского пространств. В результате литургической реформы патриарха Никона изменяется положение священника. Священник понимается как носитель благодати, положение которого выше положения мирянина. Из текстов богослужения удаляются слова, имеющие мирское значение. Так возникает сфера мирской жизни, отдельная от церковной жизни. Это ведет к секуляризации культуры. Таким образом, западные и восточные христиане от христианской идеи освящения мира разными путями пришли не к освящению пространства жизни людей, а к секуляризации культуры и богослужения. Но богослужение и устройство храма на христианском Востоке, имея тенденцию к отделению своего пространства от мирского, все же в большей степени, чем Запад, сохраняет сакральное содержание христианства. The article analyzes the interaction of sacred and secular elements in the space of the Christian Church, the problem of the boundary between the secular and the sacred, and options for its solution in the history of the Christian Church. The nature of the interaction between the sacred and the secular is determined by the cosmic character of Christianity. Christianity seeks to sanctify the surrounding world and change it by divine principles, since the world was created by God and has His image. The highest form of transformation of the world is the sacrament of the Eucharist. The final transformation of the world, according to the Christian doctrine, is possible after the Second Coming of Christ. Since the first centuries of Christianity, the border of the sacred and secular spaces in the temple was mobile, and the service involved the active participation of the laity. In the first centuries of Christianity, the altar of the temple stood out from its space, but was not separated from the faithful. Lay people were able to see what was happening in the altar and participate in the sacraments through offerings. Such features are typical for both Byzantium and Russia of the 10th–13th centuries. Later, the problem of disturbing the balance of the secular and sacred elements appears; it is solved differently in the West and East. The Christian West has taken the path of integrating the sacred into its secular life. Initially, this was manifested in the performance of prayers and sacraments “facing people”. There was an idea that such a performance of prayers corresponds to the Last Supper of Christ and the apostles. For the same reason, the bishop’s place in the church was moved closer to the praying lay people. Later, there was a transition to perform liturgy in national languages. All this led to the progressive desacralization of liturgy. In the East, liturgy developed in a different way. The separation of the sacred and secular spaces became a priority, which was manifested in the increase in the height of the altar barrier and in the appearance of a high iconostasis. Then the activity of lay participation in liturgy decreases, and, in the 17th century, the final separation of the sacred and secular spaces takes place. As a result of Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reform, the position of the priest changes. A priest is understood as a bearer of grace, whose position is higher than that of a lay person. Words that have a secular meaning are removed from the texts of the service. The sphere of secular life that is separate from church life appears. This leads to the secularization of culture. Thus, Western and Eastern Christians came from the Christian idea of sanctifying the world in different ways to the secularization of culture and worship rather than to the sanctification of the space of people’s lives. But liturgy and the arrangement of the temple in the Christian East, with its tendency to separate its space from the secular, still preserve the sacred content of Christianity to a greater extent than the West.

In Ambiguous Times and Spaces: The Everyday Assemblage of Lay Participation to Argentine Courthouses

Most sociolegal research on juries and other forms of lay participation in criminal justice has been limited to questions of how lay people make decisions. This article proposes expanding this focus through a conceptually and methodologically novel examination of the recent incorporation of lay decision-makers in Argentina’s criminal justice system. Based on fieldwork conducted in the province of Córdoba, the article follows jurors as they enter the courthouses, unsettle normalized everyday practices and spatiotemporal arrangements, and encounter multiple authorities that define their role and legitimate belonging therein. The work of these multiple entities, the article argues, locates jurors in ambiguous situations between public and private spaces of the courthouses, and ultimately accentuate their alterity vis-à-vis legal professionals. Drawing on an ethnographic approach inspired in actor-network theory and on Mariana Valverde’s sociolegal elaborations of Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope, the article looks at this judicial reform as a site for fruitful examination of law’s multiscalar power dynamics, and it argues that legal institutions be investigated as flexible, fragile, and contingent assemblages of practices beyond their official representations.

FROM BEAR GARDENS TO THE COUNTY COURT: CREATING THE LITIGANT IN PERSON

Negative attitudes towards litigants in person (LiPs) are long-standing. But despite their persistence, no study has ever considered: how did we get here? This is what this article sets out to do, analysing when the term LiP first appears, and the context in which this occurs. I argue this moment is a by-product of broader changes taking place for the legal profession in the nineteenth century. Drawing on Larson's “professional project” I argue the new county courts become a battleground for attorneys to distinguish themselves, and it is the introduction of certain kinds of distinction that undermines the self-represented party. This article ultimately argues that the LiP role is not simply self-representation, but is rather self-representation that can only occur in the latter stages of the professional project. This means, perversely, that the creation of the term LiP does not indicate the facilitation of lay participation in legal forums; it marks instead the moment when they are displaced. As I conclude, this displacement has profound consequences for LiPs to this day.