Ist Durkheims Religionsverständnis mit dem Glauben vereinbar?

Does Emile Durkheim’s sociology of religion pose a challenge to the faithful? Durkheim said no in debate with contemporary non-believers and believers, portraying religion not as mere illusion but as consisting in moral forces that command, comfort and strengthen the faithful, forces generated and regenerated within them by the collective effervescence of rituals. Thus empowered, the faithful imagine in symbolic form “the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it”. Durkheim’s answer is shown to have three components: a critique of naturist and animist “error theories” of religion; a method of “deep interpretation”, uncovering the reality beneath the symbolism; and an explanation of why the meaning of religion thus interpreted should have been for so long unacknowledged by the faithful. It is argued that, in principle, they can, on certain assumptions, accommodate his sociology of religion. But this, in turn, makes key assumptions and claims that have been seriously questioned: notably, that “religion” names a unified phenomenon and that Durkheim’s definition captures it. Recent revised “Durkheimian” accounts of religious thought and practice are considered, accounts that abandon these assumptions and also his “social realism”, while seeking to preserve his insights. It is argued that these too need not directly challenge religious belief in the way that the cognitive science of religion does.     

Emile Durkheim zwischen Republikanismus und deliberativer Demokratie

Emile Durkheim has written only a few sociological texts on democracy, but they seem to remain important both for neo-republican theories and for the idea of deliberative democracy. The paper tries to explain this paradox through a reconstruction of Durkheim’s conception of political democracy, which implies three channels of communication: within the state, between the state and civil society and within civil society. The first one is the only one which rests upon deliberation, in the two meanings of this word in French (collective discussion and decision). The paternalist dimension of Durkheim’s conception clearly appears in the way he understands the typical pathologies of democracy. This paternalist dimension is also to be found in neo-republican theories. Conversely, the absence of the notion of public sphere distances Durkheim from the concept of deliberative democracy, even though he develops a non-substantialist notion of democracy and gives an important role to reflection in political communication. However, discussing Durkheim makes it possible to underline some of the problems and challenges which a conception of deliberative democracy has to face.     

Deaf to women: Rhodes’s refusal to hear women or his own feminine voice within – a reading of Schreiner’s Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland

E.D. Morel’s chapter, ‘The story of Southern Rhodesia’, in his signal text The black man’s burden (1920), provides intertextual reference to Olive Schreiner’s work Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897) in discussing libertarian thought and distinguishing aspects of male/female authorship. Schreiner’s feminist perspective affords her a wider purview of colonialist prerogatives than those exhibited by several contemporary male observers or commentators. The figure of Jesus, as pictured in her neglected political/moral parable, far from being ironic, sentimental or evangelical in purpose, embodies her ideal balance of female and male qualities. Schreiner relies on this redemptive icon both in an ethical and gendered sense to project new understanding and enlightenment onto the strife of the day, which allows her, in turn, to expose and critique Rhodes’s male deafness both to women and his own feminine nature. By contrast, Halket’s conversion, his feminisation, holds up the alternative of hope versus Rhodes’s predatory male soul and final moral damnation.     

Nationalism,Domestic Politics,and the Japan Economic Rejuvenation

This article explores the role of nationalism in domestic politics in Japan since 2005 by contrasting the Koizumi and the Abe administration of 2012/2013. It argues that the Koizumi and Abe administrations have exploited nationalism as a means to consolidate political power, move away from faction-based politics toward populism-based politics to weaken factions within the political system with entrenched interests that are counter to or prevent bolder, necessary economic reforms to propel Japan out of 20 years of economic stagnation. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that while each politician has used nationalism to mobilize popular support for their respective administrations, Koizumi’s use of nationalism was to achieve an economic agenda while Abe’s use of nationalism has been used to achieve his political agenda which includes constitutional reform.     

The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chávez

Through the application of an analytical model categorized as “missionary,” this article examines the cultural and political‐religious frames that sustain the leadership of Hugo Chávez. It demonstrates that missionary politics is a forceful presence in today's Venezuela, and should be understood as a form of political religion characterized by a dynamic relationship between a charismatic leader and a moral community that is invested with a mission of salvation against conspiratorial enemies. The leader's verbal and nonverbal discourses play an essential role in the development of such a missionary mode of politics, which seeks to provide the alienated mass of underprivileged citizens with an identity and a sense of active participation in national affairs. This study argues that purely utilitarian and materialistic explanations of Chávez's leadership fail to capture these soteriological dynamics in his movement.     

„Auch in unserer Zeit werden Götter in den Massen geboren“. Emile Durkheims Erklärungsansätze zur Entstehung gesellschaftlicher Ideale in der Moderne

The article focuses on Emile Durkheim’s complex and changing views concerning the evolution of morality and religion under conditions of modernity. While he foresaw a progressive weakening of traditional religions, Durkheim did not believe that modern societies would lose any sense of the sacred. He was convinced that a functioning morality needs a sacred object at its core. In modern times, with the increasing separation of religion and morals, the sacred object of morality is the human person. The article presents and discusses the account given by Durkheim of the emergence of the moral ideal of the person. It shows that Durkheim’s work contains two distinct accounts of this process: according to the course on Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, the modern ideal of the person is to a large extent a product of the state. In later texts, including the Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim increasingly emphasized the role of society itself: he tried to show, using examples from the French Revolution in particular, how ideals are forged in those particular moments of social excitation he used to call “collective effervescence”.     

Piercing the Incumbency Syndrome: Ghana’s Democratic Transition in 2017

Ghana’s political landscape changed dramatically in 2017, with the election of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo as president. Ghana’s political transition in 2017 raises new insights into presidential recruitment and politics in Ghana. The purpose of this article is to examine the 2016 elections within the spectrum of the politics of Ghana’s presidential recruitment. This article discusses the hurdles that were surmounted by the opposition New Patriotic Party party, in unseating the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. The author coins the term ‘the John Syndrome’ to highlight the mythology held by some commentators that Akufo Addo could not be elected president, because his name is not ‘John’. Discussions about intra-party squabbles that resulted in the loss of NDC’s incumbency are provided. The article concludes that Akufo Addo’s presidency symbolises a de-mythologisation of ‘the John Syndrome’. The perception that Akufo Addo saved the nation in 2012 was his major weapon in piercing John Mahama’s incumbency. The demise of the NDC is likely to create an intra-party shift in favour of the party’s founder.     

Two perspectives on Zimbabwe's National Democratic Revolution: Thabo Mbeki and Wilfred Mhanda

The concept of the ‘National Democratic Revolution’ (NDR) is often used by left-leaning scholars and political actors in attempts to explain or justify the lack of socialism in third-world societies governed by rulers who consider themselves ‘scientific socialists’. It has been invoked in analyses of Zimbabwe by both the former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in 2001 as he was embarking on his ‘quiet diplomacy’, and Wilfred Mhanda, a Zimbabwean guerrilla leader imprisoned by the Mozambican government in the late-1970s for posing problems to the leadership aspirations of Robert Mugabe, who later became president of the country posing problems for Thabo Mbeki among others. Analysis of both these political intellectuals’ writing sheds light on the concept of the NDR (evoked often in contemporary South African politics and Zimbabwean discourse about the current crisis) as well as the theoretical and practical aspects of the authors’ careers.     

The Tian Anmen massacre

The aftermath of the 2008 general election saw a series of upheavals occur in the Malaysian political landscape, not least of which was the emergence of a so-called “new politics.” Driven primarily by concerns over issues of public governance, this politics contained a set of interrelated questions involving changing notions of legitimate political authority. Although much has already been written about whether or not the post-2008 changes to Malaysia's socio-political terrain are genuine and enduring, I argue that many such analyses are too narrow in scope and fail to adequately recognise the complexity involved in such social realities. By distinguishing between the images and practices of the Malaysian state, this article aims to highlight the dynamic, contingent and contested nature of processes of legitimation. A detailed investigation of the consensus/dissensus surrounding Prime Minister Najib Razak's concept of 1Malaysia as the basis of a collective national identity reveals a more fundamental contestation occurring within contemporary Malaysian politics and society over the source(s) of political and moral legitimacy. While the opposition's challenge to Najib's administration remains formidable, of more pressing concern to Najib might be the objections arising from within his own party over the direction in which he is taking them. To define the present horizon of socio-political possibilities in Malaysia it is not enough, therefore, to simply explain how legitimation occurs; we must also be able to account for the way(s) in which it can occur.     

I Cry Out So That You Wake Up1: Cegerxwîn's Poetics and Politics of Awakening

This study focuses on the poetry of the well-known Kurdish poet Cegerxwîn (1903–84). Contextualizing Cegerxwîn's life and literary career within his specific social, political and historical circumstances, this article demonstrates the way in which Kurdish classical poetry during his madrasa education shaped Cegerxwîn's poetic creation. Furthermore, the oppression and exploitation of Kurdish peasants at the hands of tribal chiefs, sheikhs and nation-states contributed to Cegerxwîn's adoption of a Marxist and nationalist social and political standpoint. This article, attempting a closer reading of his poetry, suggests that at the essence of his poetry is found the continued use of the metaphor of awakening. Hence Cegerxwîn's poetics and politics can best be depicted as one of awakening the oppressed and subordinate social groups including the Kurds, peasants and workers from their deep sleep of oppression and exploitation. Through his Kurdish poetics and politics of awakening, it is argued, Cegerxwîn participates in the progressive political discourses of his times.     

Rituelle Spiele mit Beziehungen

On the one hand, Erving Goffman’s work has been perceived as an explication of the interaction order indebted to Durkheim. On the other hand however, it is known as an ironist rejection of order. Goffman made use of this ambivalence without ever attempting to resolve it. Instead of looking at Goffman as a cartographer of the order of everyday life’s order, he can be seen as someone who plays with different perspectives about the everyday game with order. Thus, his Durkheimian part is not order, but ritual, which he transforms into ritual play; norms are then ritual games with relationships.     

Letting Go of the Cold Facts

“Letting Go of the Cold Facts” argues that Malik Benjelloul’s award-winning Searching for Sugar Man offers a nostalgic reflection on the intersections between politics and music culture in South Africa during Apartheid. The veracity of the film’s account of the career of Six to Rodriguez is less important to its project than its re-animation of a lost moment in the history of popular music, a moment when music consumption appeared to be endowed with cultural and political significance. At the same time, the film’s nostalgic impulses blind it to the complexities of the racialized histories with which it engages.     

Moralizing metaphors: Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff on parliamentary oratory

SUMMARY

It is commonly assumed that real political eloquence can only exist under a free and popular government. But in monarchies, public oratory has had little effect on decision-making processes and therefore seems to have degenerated into an ideological affirmation of princely rule and is judged a negligible phenomenon. But recent research has shown that political power is much more than the taking of collectively binding decisions. It also has a symbolic dimension that is related to the performative representation of the commonwealth's socio-political order. To assess political eloquence in monarchies, the article focuses on the parliamentary oratory of Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff, the only German-speaking practitioner of political oratory in the seventeenth century to have published some of his orations in book form. Analysing the speeches shows Seckendorff as an erudite and experienced political thinker. A deep understanding of both the reality and theory of the Ständestaat found expression in the most prominent feature of his oratorical practice: his ingenuity to find or create new metaphors depicting the relationship between ruler and subjects. Seckendorff crafted political metaphors to expose the moral foundations of a good commonwealth and to exert moral pressure on his audience. His oratory was about ‘moral education’. Seckendorff himself, however, overlooked the fact that the very ceremoniousness of his speeches carried a performative force that shaped and reshaped the socio-political order of the commonwealth.     

Securitizing “spiritual-moral values” in Russia

This article examines how “spiritual-moral values” (SMV) became securitized, or defined as a matter of national security in Russia. I analyze speech acts to show how moves to securitize SMV spread from the political fringe to the center of power, and from individual sectors to the strategic level. This “moral turn” in Russian politics is not merely a superficial attempt of the elite to distract the masses and rally the conservative electorate. The securitization of SMV has wider implications: It is, in the most direct way, the regime’s way of preventing a “color revolution.” By introducing a “state of siege” to the sphere of fundamental moral values, this securitization aids the construction of a national identity that is incompatible with basic human rights. An existential threat is constructed in order to justify extraordinary measures and establish a new social contract in which modernization is sacrificed at the altar of security.     

Religion und Wirtschaft. Mauss, Simiand und das Durkheim’sche Programm

The text points out that, with regard to the sociology of economy, Emile Durkheim’s work encompasses two research programs. The focus of the first program lies in the critique of economic categories as well as the institutions that function according to the market system. The second program, initially developed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argues that there is a relation between religion and economy. While the former perspective is being developed by the Durkheim-follower François Simiand (and Maurice Halbwachs) the latter is enhanced by his student Marcel Mauss. In the course of the 1930s both perspectives converge in the works on the gift and on money. Finally the text formulates the hypothesis that Durkheim’s perspective can be used in order to update Max Weber’s question concerning the relation between the religious ethic and the modern economic world.     

President Roh Moo-Hyun’s Last Interview and the Roh Moo-Hyun Phenomenon in South Korea

This commentary discusses what is popularly regarded as the “Roh Moo-hyun Phenomenon” in today’s South Korean society, as an attempt to shed some light on an interview which the late President Roh Moo-hyun had with the author in December 2008. This interview is unique not only because it became Roh’s last interview conducted before his suicide on May 23, 2009, but also because it provides Roh’s candid critical self-assessment on his own presidency, especially regarding his role in both domestic politics and the inter-Korean relationship, and the Korea-US relationship during his term in office, as well as commenting on Japan’s approach to Northeast Asian regional politics. Reflecting on Roh’s star-like rise to the presidency and fall from grace, this commentary alerts readers that Roh’s last interview needs to be considered within the context of the Roh Moo-Hyun Phenomenon, especially in regard to the 2017 presidential election, because it will directly affect the fate of not just the “pro-Roh group,” with the largest share of the opposition in today’s Korean society, but the Korean people as a whole at a time when the country’s many leading civic groups are desperately seeking a “Great Transformation.”     

Ethnic Conflict and State Building in Burma

Commentaries on contemporary Bangladesh give increasing attention to the role of religion, particularly its more “fundamentalist” forms, in public politics. Here we offer an alternative analysis that explores the significance of religion in people's everyday lives, concentrating on its articulation in community politics. We draw on an important local distinction between dharma understood as a moral foundation for life and dharma understood more narrowly as “religion.” Our empirical analysis suggests that it is the former sense of dharma which has greater relevance for the moral order of the community, and is used to evaluate and structure its social and political institutions, including those identified as “religious.” This perspective furnishes fresh insights into the dynamic relationship between religion, politics and social change in modern Bangladesh.     

下诺夫哥罗德州政治状况与地区发展前景

下诺夫哥罗德州一度是俄罗斯改革的前沿阵地和代名词,在俄罗斯的政治经济版图中有着特殊的地位。目前,该州是伏尔加河沿岸联邦区的行政中心,其政治经济进程值得关注。从联邦中央与地方的关系来看,莫斯科成功地规范着下诺夫哥罗德州的政治进程,地方政府依赖中央的政治和财政支持。从下诺夫哥罗德州内部的政治发展来看,历任州长面临的都是大致类似的复杂局面:联邦中央、总统派驻伏尔加河沿岸联邦区全权代表、地方政治经济精英、联邦层面的大型企业、地方层面的商业利益,等等诸多方面的相互影响与竞争。由此,州长在联邦层面的工作经历和影响力,在地区层面的协调手段和整合力,即,同时得到中央和地方的支持和认可,并在中央与地方同时具有关键影响力,是地方政治经济良性发展的重要保障。下诺夫哥罗德新任州长格列布·尼基京,年富力强,是俄罗斯新生代州长的代表,也大致具有上述品质,其在下诺夫哥罗德州的执政状况,值得关注。     

A "Civilised Amateur": Edgar Holt and His Life in Letters and Politics

Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists' Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cultural and political views, considering how a literary aesthete and poet came to be at the forefront of the 1944 newspaper strike and then an important player in Australian conservative machine politics and the emerging industry of political public relations.     

Protesting gender discrimination from within: women’s political representation on behalf of Islamic parties

Abstract

In recent decades, Islamic political movements, and their subsequent political parties, have been increasingly recruiting and nominating women to high-level decision-making positions despite the fact that the ideology they espouse often acts to dissuade women from assuming positions of political leadership. My ethnographic research on religious women’s activism in Iran and Turkey helps explain this unexpected trend by shedding light onto the role of Islamic party women in challenging the gender discriminatory attitudes and behaviours of their male party leaders. In particular, I highlight the role that a number of high-ranking Islamic party women with close ties to the ruling elites played in pressuring their male party leaders to address women’s political underrepresentation in formal politics. Women’s close ties to the ruling elites consisted of formal ties with key Islamic leaders that evolved thanks to women’s long-term devotion to the Islamic movement or learning at Islamic seminaries. I demonstrate that such close ties to the leaders, as well as the presence of a public discourse in favour of women’s increased access to politics, enabled influential Islamic women to leverage a form of ‘internal criticism’ as an important strategy to enhance women’s political rights and status from within the Islamic movements.