Women’s Islamic activism in Burkina Faso: toward renegotiated social norms?

Abstract

Recent studies have described the active participation of women in local associations as well as in public and national debates about secularism, the Family code, and women’s rights within Islam. In this article, I explore how female preachers have claimed a new role for women within Islam through a better knowledge and understanding of Islamic texts. In doing so, these women drew on modernist speeches made by men, used the media and aligned themselves with international movements with the aim of claiming a new social identity for their sisters in Islam, establishing greater equality between men and women in the religion, and finding a way of being a good mother and woman while maintaining an independent social position. In fact, these female preachers sought to spark a quiet yet real social revolution in religion by casting a critical and modernist eye on local cultural traditions and Islamic identity.     

Positive Action for Women in Employment: Time to Align with Europe?

In recent years positive action to improve women's position in the labour market has risen up the political agenda, with measures ranging from quotas to special training. The legal framework has been slower to change. Initially seeking to eliminate all forms of discrimination, it now reflects a more sophisticated approach, attempting to achieve substantive equality. This may encompass measures which appear to disadvantage men but are aimed at rectifying women's structural, economic or historical disadvantage. We investigate the limits imposed on EU member states' ability to take positive action under Community law, and examine the much narrower provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act. We argue that the time is now ripe, with the ongoing review of equality law, to reappraise domestic law and to use the freedom provided under Community law to expand the scope of positive action under the Sex Discrimination Act.     

Border communities: microstudies on everyday life,politics and memory in European Societies from 1945 to the present

Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism. New York: Paragon House, 1990, bibliography, XXII, 445 pp., $35.00

Pearson, Thomas S., Russian Officialdom in Crisis: Autocracy and Local Self‐Government, 1861–1900. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 284 pp.

Charles A. Ruud, Russian Entrepreneur Publisher Ivan Sytin of Moscow 1851–1934. Montreal &; Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1990.

George Jackson, editor, Dictionary of the Russian Revolution. New York, Westport, and London: Greenwood Press. 1989, xviii, 704 pp., $75.00.

Adam Westoby, The Evolution of Communism. New York: The Free Press, 1989, 318 pp., $22.95

Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990, index, xviii, 367 pp.

Marvin Sicker, The Strategy of Soviet Imperialism: Expansion in Eurasia. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988, viii, pp. 172

Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism. The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy. New York: Verso, 1990, 288 pp.

Neil Fodor, The Warsaw Treaty Organization: A Political and Organizational Analysis. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990; xv, 235 pp., $45.00.

Henry R. Huttenbach, ed., Soviet Nationality Policies: Ruling Ethnic Groups in the USSR. London: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 1990; xvi, 302 pp.

Alexander Shtromas &; Morton A. Kaplan, eds., The Soviet Union &; the Challenge of the Future, Vol. 3, Ideology, Culture &; Nationality. New York: Paragon House, 1989, xxxix, 760 pp., index, $39.95.

Alfred Erich Senn, Lithuania Awakening. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990, illustrations, index, 294 pp.

Robert A. Vitas, The United States and Lithuania: The Stimson Doctrine of Nonrecognition. New York: Praeger, 1990, 176 pp.

Pedro Ramet, ed., Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies: Christianity Under Stress. Volume II. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1990; index, ix, 454 pp.

Martha B. Olcott (ed.), The Soviet Multinational State: Readings and Documents. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990. xii and 605 pp.

Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR. New York: Free Press, 1990, 432 pp. Illustrated, $29.85

Erhard Stölting, Eine Weltmacht zerbricht. Nationalitäten und Religionen in der UdSSR. Frankfurt/Man, Eichborn Verlag, 311 pp., 29,80 DM

Vladimir Tismaneanu, In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace Movements in the Soviet Bloc. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1990, index, x, 184 pp., $35.00

Murray Feshback and Alfred Friendly Jr., Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege. New York: Basic Books, 1992, 376 pages, $24.00.

Philip R. Pryde. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Foreword by Zeev Wolfson. Cambridge, UK &; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991; preface, xx, 314 pp., maps, tables, photos, index and biblio. $49.50 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Ellen Frankel Paul, Ed., Totalitarianism at the ‘Crossroads. New Brunswick (US) &; London: Transition Books, 1990.

Jorgen Kühl, De tyske mindretal i Sovjetunionen ["The German minorities in the Soviet Union"] with a summary in German. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1990; xxxi, 159 pp.

Samvel Shakhmuradian, Sumgaitskaia Tragedia v Svidetel'stvakh Ochevidtzev ("Sumgait Through the Eyes of the Victims"). Erevan: Armianskii Fond Kul'tury, 1989.

Stephen White, John Gardner, George Schopflin and Tony Saich, Communist and Postcommunist Political Systems, An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990, xi, 357 pp.

Karl Kaser, Südosteuropäische Geschichte und Geschichts‐Wissenschafi: Eine Einführung. Wien &; Koln:Bohlau Verlag, 1990, maps, graphs, 308 pp.

Marko Pavlyshyn, Glasnost in Context: On the Recurrence of Liberalizations in Central and East European Literatures and Cultures. Berg European Studies Series. New York, Oxford, Munich: Berg, 1990, bibliography, index, xi, 182 pp, cloth.

Milo Kominek, I Pod Oblohou Je Peklo. Dokumentace. Second Enlarged Edition. Toronto: Moravia Publishing, In., 1991; 318 pp., $23.00.

Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe in a Letter Intended to have been Sent to a Gentleman in Warsaw. New York: Random House, Inc., 1990; 163 pp., $17.95

István Deák, Beyond Nationalism, A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918. Oxford, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990; XII, 273 pp.

Trond Gilberg, Nationalism and Communism in Romania: The Rise and Fall of Ceausescu's Personal Dictatorship, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, x, 289 pp.

Johann Böhm, Das Nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien 1936–1944: Das Verhältnis der Deutschen Volksgruppe zum Dritten Reich und zum rumänischen Stoat sowie der interne Widerstreit zwischen den politischen Gruppen. (Europäische Hochschulschriften: Series 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften, vol. 223) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985. 264 pp. maps.

Gale Stokes, Politics as Development. The Emergence of Political Parties in Nineteenth‐Century Serbia. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990, 1 map, bibliography, index, 400 pp.

William Zimmerman, Open Borders, Nonalignment, and the Political Evolution of Yugoslavia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987

Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, statistical tables, index, ix, 181 pp.,$42.00.

Alfred D. Low, Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, No. 281, 1990, xv, 216 pp., notes, bibliography, index, $32.00

Anthony Polonsky, ed., ’My Brother's Keeper?’ Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust. NY and London: Routledge, 1990, index, 242 pp.

Ronald Sanders, Shores of Refuge: A Hundred Years of Jewish Emigration. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. xiii, 673 pp.

Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990; xviii, 461 pp.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, index, 191 pp.

Stanislaw Baranczak, Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays. Cambridge &; London: Harvard University Press, 1990; notes, index, 245 pp., cloth

Jan Kott, ed., Four Decades of Polish Essays. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press; xi, 396 pp., $49.95 ($15.95, paper).

Aurel Braun, Ed. The Soviet‐East European Relationship in the Gorbachev Era: The Prospects for Adaptation. Boulder, CO, San Francisco, London: Westview Press, 1990. XI, 249 pp., $20.00 (paper).     

Public Service Motivation,Prosocial Motivation and Altruism: Towards Disentanglement and Conceptual Clarity

Research on public service motivation (PSM) has made great strides in terms of study output. Given the enormous scholarly attention on PSM, it is surprising that considerable conceptual ambiguities and overlaps with related concepts such as prosocial motivation, and altruism still remain. This study addresses this issue by systematically carving out the differences and similarities between these concepts. Taking this approach, this study clarifies the conceptual space of both PSM and the other concepts. Using data from semi-structured interviews with police officers, it is illustrated that PSM and prosocial motivation are different types of motivation leading to different types of prosocial behaviour.     

Legal Theory and Sociological Facts

The authors investigate MacCormick and Weinberger's claim that the Institutional Theory of Law provides a conceptual framework for the study of legal phenomena from a socio-legal point of view. They evaluate this claim by confronting both the Institutional Theory of Law and Weinberger's theory of action with two approaches in socio-legal theory, i.e. the instrumentalist and the constitutive approach. The conclusion is that the Institutional Theory of Law lends itself to empirical research from an instrumentalist perspective, for both place the concept institution in the context of law. Weinberger's theory of action may provide a basis for empirical research from a constitutive perspective. The authors make some suggestions for refinement of Weinberger's theory of action in order that the relation between institutions and action can be labeled dynamic.     

Intraindividual Variability in Adolescents’ Perceived Relationship Satisfaction: The Role of Daily Conflict

A daily diary method was used to examine the daily dynamics of adolescent conflict and perceived relationship satisfaction with mothers, fathers, and best friends among a sample of 72 Dutch adolescents (M = 15.59 years). Multilevel analyses revealed that perceived relationship satisfaction with mothers, fathers, and best friends was lower on days on which conflict occurred with mothers, fathers, and best friends than on days on which no conflict occurred. More specifically, perceived relationship satisfaction was highest in a particular relationship on days when no conflict occurred, second highest on days on which constructive conflict occurred, and lowest on days on which unconstructive conflict occurred. Whereas in adolescents’ relationships with their parents, conflict and perceived relationship satisfaction were not found to be related to each other one day later, conflict with their best friends—and especially unconstructive conflict—was found to be related to higher perceived relationship satisfaction one day later.