scholarly journals Incivility and danger: theorizing a Muslim undercaste in Europe

Author(s):  
Elisabeth Becker

AbstractPositing Muslim positionality in Europe as an undercaste helps to make sense of how cultural stratification, rooted in associations with incivility, has resulted in deep and unrelenting inequalities experienced by diverse Muslims. Based on two years of ethnographic research with a Muslim community in Berlin as well as a survey of secondary research, this paper both theorizes and empirically showcases the process by which Muslims have become synonymous with incivility, and how this affects opportunities and inclusion across the educational, economic, residential, and private spheres. By drawing parallels with other instances of caste-based status differentiation in the West, specifically the Jewish experience in Europe and Black experience in the USA, it further illuminates how cultural stratification through associations with incivility (as a modern secular coding of impurity) that endures for generations functions in the contemporary world. Employing the concept of caste deepens the cultural turn that has replaced economic or legal explanations of Muslim marginality in Europe. And it awakens a dormant sociological vocabulary that allows for a more precise theoretical understanding of this empirical social phenomenon and thereby the possibilities—and limits—of pluralism in modernity.

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Sean Foley

For decades, many scholars have contended that Saudi Arabia is a fixed political system, where a conservative monarchy uses advanced technology, oil revenues, and religion to dominate the people. Such a system is often portrayed as inherently unstable, a seemingly never-ending series of collisions between an unchanging traditional political structure seeking to hold on to power at any cost and a dynamic modernity—a view encapsulated in a phrase expressed at virtually every public discussion of the Kingdom in the West: ‘you must admit that Saudi Arabia must change’. Ironically this phrase confirms what this article argues is a secret to the success of Saudi Arabia in the contemporary era: the ability to legitimize transformation without calling it change. No society is static, including Saudi Arabia. Throughout the Kingdom’s history, the defining social institutions have repeatedly utilized Tajdīd (Revival) and Iṣlāḥ (Reform) to respond to new technologies and the changing expectations of a diverse society. While Muslim scholars are most often entrusted to arbitrate this process, ordinary Saudis use this process to guide their actions in the various social spaces they encounter both at home and abroad. Critically, this process reflects the response of King Abdulaziz and the founders of the third Saudi state in the early twentieth century to the factors that had brought down previous Saudi states in the nineteenth century.


2021 ◽  
pp. 932-950
Author(s):  
Vladislav Vyacheslavovich Emelyanov

Every few decades, the world order changes due to various geopolitical, economic and other circumstances. For example, as a result of globalization, the world order has undergone significant changes in the last forty years. Globalization has led to the destruction of the postwar world order, as well as to world leadership by the United States and the West. However, in recent decades, as a result of globalization, the U.S. and the West began to cede their leadership to developing countries, so there is now a change in the economic structure of relations in the world system. Today the center of economic growth is in the East, namely in Asia. There are no new superpowers in the world at the moment, but the unipolar world will cease to exist due to the weakening of the U. S. leadership, which will lead to a change in the world order. A new leader, which may replace the U. S., will not have as wide range of advantages as the USA has. Most likely, the essence of the new order will be to unite the largest countries and alliances into blocks, for example, the USA together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the EU, etc. The article outlines forecasts of GDP growth rates as well as the global energy outlook; analyzes the LNG market as well as the impact of the pandemic on the global oil and gas market; and lists the characteristics of U. S. geopolitics.


Author(s):  
Sami Hoshi ◽  

A 58-year-old man presented with 4-day history of multiple, erythematous, non-itchy, painless, patchy spots, along with fatigue and jaw pain. This rash started around the periumbilical area and then spread over his chest and right upper back (Figure 1,2). There was no involvement of face, mucous membranes, and extremities. He denied any sore throat, cough, or other symptoms. Besides the skin rash, his physical examination was unremarkable. There was no temporomandibular joint swelling, or joint tenderness. A month ago, he travelled along with the west coast of Michigan – a Lyme-endemic region of the USA and noted his exposure to mosquitoes. Shortly after his visit, he recalled having fever, chills, myalgia and a similar patchy groin rash which resolved in a few days. At that time, blood work by his family physician revealed mild transaminitis. At the current visit, repeat blood work and electrocardiogram were normal. A clinical diagnosis of early disseminated Lyme disease was made. Lyme Ab IgM and IgG were both elevated, as was his Western blot test. He was given a 10-day course of doxycycline. He reported complete resolution of his symptoms at follow up.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Majed Al-Shaibani

The current study aims to tackle the theoretical understanding of intention as between Sharia and law. It addresses the similarities and differences in the analysis of interpretation of intention across sharia law and law. The paper contrasts between the two ways of dealing with the concept of intention that is both technical and intuitive, across law and religion. Starting from the hypothesis that the concept of intention in sharia law originated in classical contextual realities different from the contemporary realities of Saudi Arabia and become outdated, the study attempts to answer the following questions: How can the concept of intention be adapted to the new socio-economic realities of Saudi Arabia with its new vision toward the world? How can the concept of intentionality adopt by sharia benefits from the analysis of law theory relating to intention? In order to answer the questions of the study, the study adopts the comparative law methodology through which concept of intention is comparatively examined in both sharia and law. The research investigates the historical and cultural context that gives rise to the concept of intentionality in both sharia law and law, as it helps reflect on aspects of similarity and differences and how gap between the sharia law and law can be bridged. The collected data is obtained through comparing sharia law in Saudi Arabia to the law applied in the West. The study has reached a conclusion that the sound methodological application of the concept of intention in sharia law requires the integration of elements and concepts from the Western law concept of intention.


2019 ◽  
pp. 355-363
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Golubkova ◽  
Elena Grunt

This paper explores the reasons for emergence and the features of ambient media in an urban socio-cultural space. Global socio-cultural changes in the contemporary world lead to informational oversaturation, trauma-generating factors and, as a consequence, search for new adaptive mechanisms for an individual to accept the social reality. Ambient media become an unobtrusive advertising communication built into the environment and people’s daily practices in the contemporary society. To analyze ambient media as a new form of communication, the authors applied the method of structural and functional analysis and a systemic approach. The paper argues that ambient media are a breakthrough, new and comparatively young advertising communication disproving traditional views of advertisement types, methods and forms. This is a communication offering innovative patterns of interaction with the consumer and the environment and changing individuals’ notions of a socio-cultural space where they exist. The authors identified the main features of ambient media, as well as the human trauma symptoms that can be caused by communication processes in the contemporary society: It is demonstrated that ambient media as a new type of communication are in all respects integrated into the urban space of European countries and the USA. For contemporary Russia, however, ambient media as a type of communication are a new trend in the socio-cultural space of Russian cities.


Napredak ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Vladislav Jovanović

The paper recapitulates the process of the destruction of the Yugoslav state (SFRY and FRY). Special attention is given to the key factor in that process, the will of the West, embodied in the USA and the EC (EU), for whom the continued existence of Yugoslavia was no longer of geopolitical interest. The conferences on Yugoslavia, organized in Brussels and The Hague, were supposed to serve to legitimize this goal: the disappearance of Yugoslavia. The author points out that when the West did not manage to achieve its goal with political solutions, it involved NATO, through the aggression in 1999. Previously, Serbia's legitimate opposition to terrorist acts by the KLA on its territory, as an internal issue par excellence, was declared a threat to "peace and security in the world", and the UN Security Council took it as a permanent topic of its sessions. There had been secessionist uprisings and armed conflicts in UN member states before, as there are today, but the Security Council never before dared to violate the article of the UN Charter that states that these questions are the exclusive competence of the member state concerned. An exception was made only in the case of Serbia, although the defense against KLA terrorism was legal and limited to the territory of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, i.e., the Yugoslav state border was never crossed. The false claim of William Walker, the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo and Metohija, concerning the massacre in Racak, was the cause of the war of aggression against the FRY. By illegally naming the protectorate of Kosovo as the so-called state of the Albanian national minority, the West took this as the final stroke in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and Serbia, thus ignoring the story of the phoenix rising from its ashes.


Author(s):  
Serhiy Blavatskyy

It has been attempted to make an empirical study of the framing of the Jewish pogroms upon the Ukrainian terrains in 1919 in the Ukrainian press in the West European languages in Europe (1919―1920s). For the first time, in the communication and media studies discourses, there have been elicited new, previously unknown, findings of specificity of the framing of the Jewish pogroms in the Ukrainian foreignlanguage periodicals. Those were: «Bulletiner fra det Ukrainske Pressburo» (Copenhagen, 1919—1920s), «La Voce dell “Ucraina”» (Roma, 1919—1920s), «The Ukraine» (London, 1919—1920s), «Bureau Ukrai nien de Presse: Bulletin d’Informations» (Paris, 1919—1920s), «France et Ukraine» (Paris, 1920), «L’Europe Orientale» (Paris, 1919—1920s), «Die Ukraine» (Berlin, 1918—1926s). First, it has been elucidated that the «attribution of responsibility» frame was dominant in the content of the Ukrainian foreign-language press in Western Europe. Second, the conclusion about dialectic of the frames of «attribution of responsibility» and «morality» in the coverage of the Jewish pogroms upon the Ukrainian terrains has been made. In this regard, we conclude that the «morality» frame was connected with the internationalization of this problematic in the geopolitical discourse of international relations of the postwar period. On the contrary, the frame of «attribution of responsibility» was linked to localization of the Jewish question in the multilateral conflict on the Ukrainian territories in 1919. The main conclusion of this paper is that the coverage of the Jewish pogroms in the Ukrainian foreign-language press in Europe was made primarily in counterpropaganda purposes. The follow-up studies are to make a comparative study of the stereotypes about Jews’ perception in the Ukrainian-language press both in Ukraine and abroad (in Europe or the USA), as well as in the West European and American press of the Ukrainian Revolution period (1917―1921s). Thus, these future studies will either refute or confirm the validity of the findings and conclusions of this research. Keywords: framing, the Jewish pogroms, the Ukrainian terrains, the foreign-language press, Europe.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwen Walter

The ‘new mobilities paradigm’ set out by Sheller and Urry (2006) and others urges social scientists to centre many interlocking mobilities in their analyses of contemporary social change, challenging taken-for-granted sedentarism. Drawing on the example of Irish women's chain migration from small farms in the West of Ireland to the East coast of the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this paper explores a longer history of high levels of mobility. Whilst migration lay at the heart of the movement, it encompassed a much wider range of movements of people, information and material goods. The ‘moorings’ of women in the their workplace-homes on rural farms and in urban domestic service constituted a gendered immobility, but migration also opened up new opportunities for intra-urban moves, circulatory Transatlantic journeys and upward social mobility. The materiality of such ‘old’ mobility provides an early baseline against which to assess the huge scale of rapidly-changing hyper-mobility and instantaneous communication in the twenty-first century.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Dobson

In recent years historians have paid growing attention to the religious dimensions of the Cold War. These studies have largely focused, however, on the capitalist world, particularly the rise of evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the USA. This article turns the spotlight on the communist adversary, asking whether the USSR also participated in a ‘religious Cold War'. Given the atheist convictions on which the Soviet state was founded, this might appear counter-intuitive, but religious dynamics were of growing importance in the USSR too. Soviet officials sought to create what was called an ‘ecumenical movement', inviting religious actors to become advocates for the Soviet peace message. Protestants, in particular, were important figures on the international stage because of the large communities of co-believers in the West. At the same time, however, the authorities were alarmed about various grass-roots phenomena at home which seemed to be on the rise as the Cold War escalated, such as pacifism and apocalyptic prediction. Faced with such threats, state tactics included the arrest of believers and hostile press campaigns. Even though the inconsistencies were readily visible to all, this dualistic approach was not abandoned and the ultimately self-defeating engagement with the ‘religious Cold War' continued.


Author(s):  
Neziha Musaoğlu

Many important changes occurred in the Russian Federation's foreign policy since 2000s with Putin's coming to power. Although the foreign policy is defined as pragmatic during this period, it is in fact ideologically constructed on the basis of the concept of “sovereign democracy.” The concept constitutes in the same time the source of loyalty of the Russian reelpolitik towards the West, especially the USA and of the Russian anti-globalist policies. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the intellectual, normative, and conceptual dimensions of the “sovereign democracy” concept that could serve to conceive the foreign policy practice of the Russian Federation, on the one hand, and on the other hand its dialectical relationships with the West in the era of globalization.


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