Georgia in-between: religion in public schools

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for politics, religion, and everyday life of Georgians.     

Caveat: addressing public justification as an empirical phenomenon

ABSTRACT

Instead of a conclusion, this special issue ends with a discussion between Liah Greenfeld, on the one hand, and Uriel Abulof and Markus Kornprobst, on the other hand, about the merits of studying public justification and how best to do so. Greenfeld suggests that public justification is predicated on the autonomy of the political sphere, the importance ascribed to public views, and to the prevalence of justification. Seeing public justification as ultimately a cultural phenomenon, this caveat urges scholars to study it in only specific historical contexts, which are, for now, limited to predominantly ‘Western liberal democracies’.     

The Totemic Authority of the Court

This article examines the place of the court within civil religion. It is argued that every civil religion is rooted in a magical anchor that in contemporary democratic civil religions is provided by the court. While in most institutions of civil religion totemic authority is represented, in court it is present. Therefore, court proceedings are occurrences of magic: they are performances (rituals and ceremonies) during which the sacred Thing is present. In court, the law itself and the clerical community to which it was entrusted assume the characteristics of the sacred Thing. The law appears under two facets: on the one hand, it is a norm and a word while, on the other hand, it is a Thing devoid of meaning and reason. Formalism is a magical mode of thinking that treats law as a timeless and meaningless Thing. In the course of the argument, the distinctions between ceremony and ritual, between social structure and communitas, and between religion and magic are reformulated, and the concepts of zone of familiarity and clerical community are laid out in a nutshell. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

Criminologists are increasingly interested in how a variety of justice-adjacent institutions scaffold surveillance and punishment in the U.S. criminal justice system. A relevant but understudied institution within the carceral state is that of religion. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women's prison, I interrogate how religion—predominately conservative and evangelical Protestantism—served dual purposes in light of carceral control. Religion offered redemptive narratives to counter punitive carceral narratives promulgated by the state. At the same time, this narrative shift from “flawed” to “faithful” prescribed particular forms of embodiment: avoiding fights and rejecting sexual relationships with women. These forms of Protestant embodiment aligned with carceral purposes, such that women who reprimanded others for breaching religious norms were simultaneously enforcing prison rules. Although rhetorically challenging official prison narratives on the meaning of incarceration, Protestant narratives in practice regulated women's emotional and sexual behaviors and fostered a system of informal surveillance among incarcerated women. These findings illuminate how organizational narratives are linked to individual action. More broadly, they suggest how an institution such as religion can undergird state authority within an intractable context of carceral control.     

试论宗教与构建社会主义和谐社会的关系

在我国和谐社会建设进程中,宗教的功能和作用主要表现为社会控制、心理调节、道德规范、沟通交流等诸多方面,当然这种功能和作用既有积极的一面,也有消极的一面。我们必须正确处理宗教与构建社会主义和谐社会的关系,全面贯彻党的宗教信仰自由政策,依法管理宗教事务,坚持独立自主、自办的原则,积极引导宗教与社会主义社会相适应。     

法律与宗教关系的多向度追问

作为共同调整人类社会的规范,法律与宗教存在着千丝万缕、多个向度的联系。从目的指向来看,法律与宗教都关心人类生存的方式与意义;从思想和制度角度来看,法律中的许多思想和制度都发源于宗教和宗教规范;从西方法治建设的演进历程来看,西方法治的形成得益于人们从内心真正信仰宗教权威与规范的传统;从功能上来看,法律和宗教都有凝聚和调试社会等功能,共同成为维系社会的纽带。当下中国,深刻认识宗教与法律的多向度关系之于落实依法治国以及正确应对宗教社会问题都具有重大的意义。     

A LIFE‐COURSE PERSPECTIVE ON SPIRITUALITY AND DESISTANCE FROM CRIME*

Spirituality is a component of many drug and alcohol treatment strategies, and faith‐based programming is also common within prison settings. Yet research on religiosity—crime linkages has often relied on general youth or adult samples or has included a short time line for gauging positive effects. Life‐course researchers focused on serious delinquents, in turn, have often emphasized other factors associated with long‐term crime patterns, such as marital attachment and job stability, or the criminality of the individual's social ties. This study draws on quantitative and qualitative data derived from a long‐term follow‐up of a sample of serious adolescent male and female offenders to explore the role of spirituality and religious participation as influences on adult patterns of criminal involvement (N= 152). The respondents were first interviewed as adolescents, in 1982, and again as adults in 1995 and 2003. Results of longitudinal analyses that take into account self‐report and incarceration histories at both time periods do not reveal a significant association between these indices of religiosity and the likelihood of evidencing a pattern of sustained desistance. Our analysis of indepth life‐history interviews conducted with most respondents over these two time periods and 41 additional interviews focused specifically on spirituality and religion are used to explore in more detail the promise and challenges associated with relying on religiosity as a catalyst for sustained behavior change.     

UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN'S RIGHTS: THEORY AND PRACTICE

This article discusses the meaning of children's rights in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Both place primary responsibility for the upbringing and education of children on their parents and families. The freedom of parents to bring up their children in their own way is an important component of a liberal democracy founded on respect for individual differences. So if parents believe in moderate corporal punishment as a means of educating their children in their own religious beliefs, is the state justified in banning such punishment either in school or in the home in order to protect the children's rights? This article discusses the children's rights which are protected by doing so.     

Religious policies in post-totalitarian China: Maintaining political monopoly over a reviving society

In the post-Mao era China’s society and religion are both becoming increasingly pluralistic. State policies toward religion are also evolving. Views of state-society relations as “totalitarian” exaggerate the state’s control; the civil-society approach overestimates society’s autonomy. This paper explains the state’s religious policies in terms of a “post-totalitarian” frame of reference. Religious organizations and the Communist Party share a reliance on ideology and organization to operate and survive, making them potential rivals. As a shrewd monopolist of organizational and ideological instruments, the state seeks to reduce the threat posed by religion, adopting differentiated strategies toward them as they revive. The state co-opts, tolerates, deters, restricts, or suppresses different religions or sects, according to each specific religion’s organizational strength, doctrine, and compliance with state authority. The state is thus able to prevent the rise of large, independent, and organized religious groups while leaving considerable space for religious activity. Dr. H. H. Lai is a faculty member the National University of Singapore who has researched on China’s state-society relations. The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments and Mr. Kelly for his thorough and helpful copy editing.     

"成长为宗教徒"——论藏族儿童宗教信仰社会化的模式与机制

藏族儿童是在其所属家庭——社区(特指小社区)——村落(或城镇)这三重同质性较强的环境中"成长为宗教徒"的。这三重环境中的宗教性环境与非宗教性环境及因素的博弈结果,是藏族儿童成长为宗教徒的关键。