Rancière,religion and the political

In the past few decades, the ‘return of the religious’ has been a recurrent theme in popular and academic discourse. From debates regarding the permissibility of religious dress and symbols in the public sphere, to questions of the integration of Muslim immigrants, concerns about the rise of the Christian Right in American politics and the role of Islam in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, a great deal of attention has been accorded to the presence of religion and religious subjects in the public sphere. Such has been the importance attached to accounting for, categorizing and contending with this phenomenon that it has attracted the attention of many of the major figures in contemporary social and political thought. However, the ideas of Jacques Rancière, one of the foremost figures in contemporary political philosophy, are noticeably absent in these discussions. In this article, I take up the task of investigating how Rancière's political philosophy can be brought to bear on debates surrounding the relationship between citizenship, religion and the political. I argue that his reconceptualization of politics, democracy and political subjectivity makes apparent the limitations, and even futility of current debates between advocates of secular universalism and those of religious pluralism, and, through assisting in the critical analysis of the public presence of religion, provide an opening for the potential emergence of alternative forms of community and political subjectivity.     

The social construction of the legitimacy of Christian healing in Abidjan

ABSTRACT

Based on ethnographic work conducted recently in the city of Abidjan where religious pluralism and medical pluralism intersect, this paper lays out the foundations of Christian healing legitimacy as perceived by some key stakeholders. Against the background of the legal recognition of biomedicine and traditional medicine which with religious healing constitute the three major healing systems in Abidjan, the paper explores the anchorages of the legitimacy of Christian healing which lacks such explicit legal backing. Data are collected through semi-structured interviews of about 240 religious practitioners, medical professionals and beneficiaries of Christian therapies in the city of Abidjan. The major theoretical framework of this paper is the Weberian theory of the triple sources of legitimation complemented with historical and political economy approaches which attempt to link the development and functioning of therapeutic systems in Côte d’Ivoire with broader political, economic and historical processes. The main argument is that Ivoirians construct the legitimacy of alternative therapies in general, and religious therapies in particular, by building on the perceived limits of biomedicine, and its inability to respond to all their therapeutic needs. From a medical pluralism perspective, the pluralisation of offers signals the plurality of needs which has determined in our Ivoirian ethnographic context the appropriation of biomedicine, the resilience of traditional medicine and the current rise of Christian healing.     

Between Reality and Illusion: Re-Examining the Diversity of Media and Online Professional Journalism in the Baltic States

This article addresses the relationship between the size of media markets and content diversity online. In the Baltic countries, the Internet offers new channels with a greater diversity of information; at the same time, the increasing presence of hybrid discourses (PR-based news, promotional writing) on online media channels is creating an illusory impression of news diversity: the same sources and the same story frames are dominating online. The authors argue that new concepts (quality of information processing, media literacy) need to be taken into account to adequately assess online journalism professionalization (the changing identities and functions of journalists) in a small country.     

A Framework for Visualizing the Process of Immigrant Absorption

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a schematic framework to assist in the visualization of the goals and processes involved in the absorption of immigrants. It is intended to help those engaged in working with immigrants to individualize persons and groups of immigrants in terms of various attitudes, values and behaviors, and to determine the goals, models and time-frames suitable for strengthening, and/or supporting and/or changing these aspects. The inter-relationship among some of the aspects is examined, and the paper includes examples of absorption, melting-pot and cultural-pluralism in various countries.     

Peace beyond compromise

Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing a moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose a moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace.     

Predicting School Sense of Community: Students’ Perceptions at Two Catholic Universities

Understanding the factors that predict sense of community (SOC) among college students has important implications for higher education policy and practice. The present study determined whether perceptions of inclusion and religious pluralism across 2,199 university students' (1,442 women, 757 men; M age = 23.42, SD =7.84) at two Catholic universities predicted levels of school sense of community (SSOC). As expected, results indicated that perceptions of both inclusion and religious pluralism significantly predicted SSOC. However, mixed results were found regarding the interaction of university setting with inclusion and religious pluralism. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed.     

Catholicism(s), State Terrorism and Secularisation in Argentina

The aims of this article are to explore the diversity of Catholic reactions facing state terror in Córdoba, Argentina, during the 1970s and to analyse how different Catholic groups redefined their relations with the State in the public sphere. To do that, I will use case study methodology applied to the kidnapping of an American priest and five seminarians. I will show how religious beliefs shape to some extent how Catholic social actors respond to political events. Different understandings of Catholicism produced different responses to state terror.     

全球化时代的文化多元化问题探析

文化是一个民族的“生活样式”，文化多元化是人类世界存在的一个基本的文化事实，文化多元化主要是以民族为主体的文化的差异性和自主性。全球化并不必然导致文化的“同质化”，相反，全球化扩辰着不同文化间交流、对话的机会，增强着民族文化的自我认同，从而促进了当今世界的文化多元化趋势。只有以开放自信的心态和平等宽容的精神对待全球化时代多元化的文化形态，才能有助于人类文化的全球性发展和民族文化的弘扬和创新。     

The Idea of Constitutional Pluralism

Constitutional discourse has perhaps never been more popular, nor more comprehensively challenged than it is today. The development of new constitutional settlements and languages at state and post-state level has to be balanced against the deepening of a formidable range of sceptical attitudes. These include the claim that constitutionalism remains too state-centered, overstates its capacity to shape political community, exhibits an inherent normative bias against social developments associated with the politics of difference, provides a language easily susceptible to ideological manipulation and, that, consequent upon these challenges, it increasingly represents a fractured and debased conceptual currency. A rehabilitated language of constitutionalism would meet these challenges through a version of constitutional pluralism. Constitutional pluralism recognises that in the post-Westphalian world there exists a range of different constitutional sites and processes configured in a heterarchical rather than a hierarchical pattern, and seeks to develop a number of empirical indices and normative criteria which allow us to understand this emerging configuration and assess the legitimacy of its development.     

论民族法律文化视角下“法律多元”的含义与现状

在民族法律文化及少数民族习惯法研究者的学术话语当中,“法律多元”是一个常用的词汇,它通常被用以描述各族习惯法与国家法多元并存的法律现实状况。值得注意的是,“法律多元”本身并不是一个具有统一和明确含义的概念,在当代中国国家法制统一的背景之下,对“法律多元”的使用尤需慎重。当借助“法律多元”的理论对多重法律体系的状况进行描述时,应当根据特定的语境和视角,对“多元”的含义加以必要的说明。立足于少数民族法律文化研究的视角,语境化地对我国“法律多元”的含义以及现实状况进行描述和分析时,亦应如此。