Can the criminalization of reproductive rights be a nationalist project?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a federal bill pending analysis in the Brazilian Federal Congress – the 5069/2013 bill – which seeks to criminalize further women’s capacity to control issues relating to their sexual health in the country. By analyzing this bill, as well as the political discourses surrounding its proposal and the current arguments for its approval, I seek to highlight the social and political roles attributed by it to Brazilian women, focusing on the implications of the adoption of the nationalist discourse of the bill in official state discourse, should it become law, especially with regards to what the nationalism literature refers to as the “biological and cultural reproduction of the nation,” as well as the impact that these new definitions have on Brazilian women’s citizenship.

Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas

The liturgical chant that was sung in the churches of southern Italy between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of a territory in which Roman, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans, Jews, and Muslims were present at various times and with different political roles. This book examines a specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and expand preexisting liturgical chants of the liturgy of mass. Widespread in medieval Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy, especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics in the city of Benevento. They shed light on the creativity of local cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with contemporary waves of religious spirituality and to experiment with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their representing an epistemological “beyond” and because of their interconnectedness with the parent chant, they can be likened to modern hypertexts. The emphasis on universal saints of ancient lineage stressed the perceived links with the cradles of Christianity, Africa and West Asia, and the center of the papal power, Rome, while the high number of Christological prosulas in manuscripts used in nunneries might be tied to the devotion to Jesus as “spiritual spouse” that was typical of female religiosity. Full editions of texts, melodies, and manuscript facsimiles in the companion website enrich the study of the stylistic features and the cultural components of this fascinating genre.

For Girls Only

The schools for girls at Hubertendorf-Türnitz, Heythuysen, Colmar-Berg, and Achern are the least well-known and well-understood component of the Napola system. This chapter begins by giving an account of how the girls’ schools came into being, their aims, and the heated ministerial debates which dogged their foundation. It then describes everyday life at the girls’ schools, and the similarities and differences between their curriculum and that of the boys’ schools. Finally, it sites the aims and practice of the so-called Mädchen-Napolas within recent historiography on women and gender in Nazi Germany. The political infighting which the girls’ schools provoked, the lack of clarity surrounding their programme, and the piecemeal and contested nature of their development, reflect the fundamental flexibility (or incoherence) of the Nazi state’s attitude towards the ‘women question’ more generally. On the one hand, the girls who attended the Mädchen-Napolas were educated to believe that growing up female in Nazi Germany need be no bar to experiencing comradeship, leadership, and a successful career, and they were given an education broadly analogous to that of their male counterparts. On the other hand, the girls were still trained to see taking care of a husband and family as an ultimate good; their later public or political roles would have been largely limited to the state-sanctioned female spheres of the Nazi womens’ and girls’ organizations, and the caring professions. Ultimately, the Mädchen-Napolas demonstrate, in microcosm, both the scope and the totalitarian restrictions inherent in Nazi attitudes towards young women.

The Bugis-Makassar Seafarers

The essay focuses on Bugis and Makassar seafarers of South Sulawesi through two cases. The first is Lombok and Sumbawa in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where landless Makassarese aristocrats fought or allied with various groups to create a political platform. The second case is the seascape around Timor, further to the east, where a socially different type of maritime enterprise evolved, entailing both commercial activities and raiding of vulnerable small-scale island societies. While Dutch writers termed all these seafarers “pirates,” this fails to capture the range of their socio-political roles. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the Dutch East India Company contributed to the rise of piratical activity through colonial advances on Sulawesi in the 1660s.

Nigerian Pentacostalism may see more fragmentation

Significance A September court decision allowed Joshua’s widow, Evelyn, finally to succeed him as senior pastor. SCOAN and other mega-churches play key political roles in Nigeria and their pastors are important powerbrokers. Their influence also extends over much of the continent. Impacts Evelyn Joshua will become an influential political figure, even if initially less prominent than her husband. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo will look to use his Pentecostal roots to boost his chances for the presidency in 2023. Government authorities and politicians may look to interfere more directly with Pentecostal church governance.

Violence against Journalists

News has always been a sphere of conflict, and one finds violence at every point in the history of news. Although violence in general has been omnipresent, the forms that violence takes come and go, corresponding to rising and falling levels of general violence within and between societies (with war being the classic example), as well as changes in the social and political roles of the news media and developing norms for journalism. In periods of partisan journalism, for instance, attacks intensify with political conflict and aim to silence opinion writers; in periods of professionalized journalism supported by strong news organizations, attacks are often attempts to “hack” the news system so that it includes non-mainstream positions. In other words, violence is always meaningful, and usually strategic, even though it might seem like random irrational noise. Sometimes violence has been an extension of state media control; this is particularly the case in authoritarian systems, where violence supplements other forms of censorship. On the other hand, often it’s a way of contesting state authority, and it can be especially pronounced in post-authoritarian systems with a limited capacity for state protection of independent journalism. In other cases it involves conflicts that are not political in nature: in every period, violence has been a way of reacting to perceived slights on honor or reputation. Because it is such a diverse and shifting set of phenomena, it is useful to distinguish various common forms of violence against journalists.

Human responses to the Ilopango Tierra Blanca Joven eruption: excavations at San Andrés, El Salvador

Human responses to catastrophic natural events form an important research theme in archaeology. Using excavation and radiocarbon data, this article investigates the socio-cultural impact of the mid-first-millennium AD Tierra Blanca Joven eruption at San Andrés, El Salvador. The data, along with an architectural energetic analysis of the Campana structure at San Andrés, indicate that survivors and/or re-settlers made considerable efforts to construct monumental public buildings immediately following the eruption, using large quantities of volcanic tephra as construction material. Such re-building played important religious, social and political roles in human responses to the eruption. The study contributes to discussions about human creativity, adaptation and resilience in the face of abrupt environmental change.

Collaboration and Its Political Functions

What functions does “collaboration” play in our moral and political practices and how did it come to play those roles? We use the term “collaboration” to identify a valued partnership, but it also names a morally compromised association and functions as a reason for blaming and punishing complicitous behavior. However, it has also played nefarious political roles: shoring up patriarchy, legitimizing ethnic cleansing, and bolstering a myth of national unity. “Collaboration” plays various roles because it is both ambiguous and vague. It is ambiguous in that there are multiple conceptions of collaboration, and it is vague because it contains borderline cases that are difficult, even impossible, to resolve. An exploration of “collaboration” combined with the history of its coming of age shows why its study is so vexing and how it functions in unexpected and disturbing ways.

Turkey’s Sub-imperialism in Sub-Saharan Africa

The growing economic and political roles of the so-called emerging powers in sub-Saharan Africa have attracted particular attention following the apparent decline of Western powers in the face of the global economic crisis of 2007–2008. The AKP’s “proactive” foreign policy has manifested Turkey’s burgeoning role in the region. This paper draws upon Marxism to explore the diffusion of Turkish capital and the enhancement of military relations in the region in harmony and in contradistinction with Western and Gulf countries. It discusses the AKP’s proactive foreign policy vis-à-vis sub-Saharan Africa as a particular sociohistorical form of sub-imperialism that is characterized by and reproduces economic and geopolitical rivalries and alliances among Turkey and Western and Gulf countries. JEL Classification: F5, P1, O1

The types and functions of humor in the work of a United States Senator

This study investigates the role interactional competence plays in the performance of political roles by examining the use of humor in events such as speeches, election campaign rallies, press briefings and televised news interviews. In this case study of a prominent United States Senator (the late Senator Edward Kennedy), twenty publically available video recordings from the C-SPAN online archives are analyzed using a conversation analytic approach. Two main types of humor were found in these data, self-deprecatory humor and humor that criticizes others. Three main functions of humor were identified (subtle self-promotion, managing challenging political and interactional situations, and creating solidarity with an audience). The results of this study contribute to our understanding of how humor can play a role in doing the work of a Senator.