Charismatic women in religion. Power,media and social change

ABSTRACT

‘Charisma’ can be a catch-all term that obfuscates more than it reveals. What it does reveal often says more about the historical and cultural context in which ‘charisma’ was deployed than about its subject. In this introduction we trace the concept’s contextual shifts across its intersections with gender, religion and power. We explore the different ways in which women in the religious sphere have been considered charismatic, thereby addressing Max Weber’s definition of ‘charisma’ as well as its subsequent reinventions in the social sciences and the humanities. Particular focus goes to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the mediatization of ‘charisma’ created new opportunities and risks for women in religion.     

Interest groups on social media: Four forms of networked advocacy

The affordances of social media both constrain and enable new forms of political advocacy. The present study identifies four forms of networked advocacy and analyses these with emphasis on constituencies, platforms, activities, and aims. Based on over 40 semistructured elite interviews with interest group leaders and heads of communication, it first finds that interviewees distinguish between social media platforms, tailoring content and genre, to target intended audiences. Second, it finds that social media affordances make awareness‐raising and community‐building more efficient and purposeful for all groups. At the same time, only large organizations with bigger budgets, credibility, technical knowhow, and political relations, systematically engage in networked mobilization and lobbying. Third, interviewees representing these resourceful organizations underline that Twitter represents a new efficient form of middle‐stage lobbying. The study contributes empirical insights into the aims and strategies behind networked advocacy among different groups within one policy field in a local, non‐American context. Theoretically, it combines insights from networked media logics, social affordances, and interest group advocacy to conceptualize how networked media can afford a new form of lobbying conducted as real‐time, semi‐private direct communication with decision makers.     

Industrial conflict as a source of technical innovation: three cases

This article is concerned with the history and theory of technical change. The central problems in this area involve explaining not simply the general propensity of the capitalist economy to technical development, but also the impulses to specific lines of technical advance: why, for example, are some production processes subject to innovation while others are not? Why does the urgency with which possible innovations are examined differ between processes? There are a wide range of possible explanations here. This article explores one of them: it argues that industrial conflict can generate or focus technical change in production processes which are prone to such conflict. This relationship is demonstrated concretely by reference to three textile process innovations in the nineteenth-century British economy.     

Influence of Velocity on Variability in Gait Kinematics: Implications for Recognition in Forensic Science

Closed circuit television (CCTV) footage is often available from crime scenes and may be used to compare perpetrators with suspects. Usually, the footage comprises incomplete gait cycles at different velocities, making gait pattern identification from crimes difficult. This study investigated the concurrence of joint angles throughout a gait cycle at three different velocities (3.0, 4.5, 6.0 km/h). Six datasets at each velocity were collected from 16 men. A variability range VR throughout the gait cycle at each velocity for each joint angle for each person was calculated. The joint angles at each velocity were compared pairwise, and whenever this showed values within the VR of this velocity, the case was positive. By adding the positives throughout the gait cycle, phases with high and low concurrences were located; peak concurrence was observed at mid‐stance phase. Striving for the same velocity for the suspect and perpetrator is recommended.     

Between spin doctor and information provider: Conceptualizing communication professionals in government ministries

Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization and personalization, this article develops two ideal types: the government information provider and government spin doctor. These ideals are constituted by six dimensions: recruitment criteria, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communication professionals in Norwegian ministries is used to illustrate the empirical relevance of the ideal types. The analysis shows that for loyalties and reputational concerns, Norwegian communication professionals resemble the government information provider. Regarding interactions and tasks, they resemble the government spin doctor. For recruitment criteria and values, the picture is mixed. The empirical application thereby illustrates a fruitful aspect of the framework as certain configurations will bring forth inbuilt tension in communication professionals' role. The framework allows a fine-grained approach to extend ongoing debates of appropriate and inappropriate practices of communication professionals in ministries.     

The public valuation of religion in global health governance: spiritual health and the faith factor

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the role of religion is evaluated in global health institutions, focusing on policy debates in the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank. Drawing on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s pragmatist approach to justification, I suggest that religious values are creative and worldly performances. The public value of religion is established through a two-pronged justification process, combining generalizing arguments with particularizing empirical tests. To substantiate the claim that abstraction alone does not suffice to create religious values in global public health, I compare the futile attempts of the 1980s to add ‘spiritual health’ to the WHO’s mandate with the more recent creation of a ‘faith factor’ in public health. While the vague reference to some ‘Factor X’ inhibited the acceptance of spiritual health in the first case, in the second case, ‘compassion’ became a measurable and recognized religious value.     

Besprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Does IPSAS Meet Heritage Assets’ User Needs?

Public organizations need to custody and protect heritage assets. This article questions the appropriateness and quality of the unique International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in delivering financial reports that meet the user needs in regard to heritage assets. By refining the earlier findings in Italian local governments with data from a completely different region being Flanders, the results highlight that the IPSASs are lacking an important area of expectations from a relevant user need perspective, being the local ruling politicians. Finally, current article improves previous publication by examining the different kinds of responses in the light of certain municipal characteristics.

List of abbreviations

IFRS: International Financial Reporting Standards IPSASs: International Public Sector Accounting Standards IPSASB: International Public Sector Accounting Standards Boards UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization     

Mediated Agency,Blame Avoidance and Institutional Responsibility: Government Communication in a Personalised Media Landscape

This article explores how personalisation, blame avoidance and institutional constraints collide in contemporary government communication practices. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Norwegian ministry, it analyses how a central government agency manages the media during critical news campaigns featuring individuals suffering from inadequate public health services. To provide a comprehensive analysis of the particular limits and aims of government communication, the article combines perspectives from public agency studies with media research on personalisation. It finds that the need to be visible and demonstrate agency in the media drive personalisation strategies towards a strong focus on government leaders, while simplifying the representation of complex government organisation and processes. At the same time, institutional constraints and the formal delegation of responsibility limit the communication repertoire available for public agencies when critical human interest stories dominate in the media. This results in a standard type of unconvincing media performance, where incumbents appear to evade direct personal responsibility. The case study provides new knowledge on dilemmas, negotiations and strategies behind government communication, illuminating how competing interests play out in a rapidly changing media landscape.