Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies toward Religion

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmet T. Kuru
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Control ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The U.S

Why do secular states pursue substantially different policies toward religion? The United States, France, and Turkey are secular states that lack any official religion and have legal systems free from religious control. The French and Turkish states have banned students' headscarves in public schools, whereas the U.S. has allowed students to wear religious symbols and attire. Using the method of process tracing, the author argues that state policies toward religion are the result of ideological struggles. In France and Turkey the dominant ideology is “assertive secularism,” which aims to exclude religion from the public sphere, while in the U.S., it is “passive secularism,” which tolerates public visibility of religion. Whether assertive or passive secularism became dominant in a particular case was the result of the particular historical conditions during the secular state-building period, especially the presence or absence of an ancien regime based on a marriage of monarchy and hegemonic religion.

PERMISSION TO CONDUCT THE FIRST STUDY OF THE HEIGHTS AND WEIGHTS OF CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-311
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Medical School ◽  
Harvard Medical School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Boston Public Schools ◽  
School Committee ◽  
Boston School

The beginning of all growth studies in this country occurred less than a century ago when the Boston School Committee approved the following order permitting Henry Pickering Bowditch, Professor of Physiology at the Harvard Medical School, to measure and weigh children in the Boston public schools. This document is one of the great, and I believe little known, landmarks in modern pediatrics.1 In School Committee, March 9, 1875 Ordered, That permission be given to Prof. Henry P. Bowditch, of Harvard University, to ascertain the height and weight of the pupils attending the public school, through such an arrangement as the respective chairman and the headmaster, or masters, may deem most convenient.

scholarly journals Latinas for Trump Analysis of Processes of Identification and the Use of Narratives to Construct Subject-Positions

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Mayela Zambrano
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Latino Community ◽  
The U.S

AbstractThe public and commercial spheres constantly address the largest ethnic minority in the United States, people with ancestry or from a Latin American country, as a homogenous group under the ethnopolitical terms “Latinos,” “Hispanics,” and even “Mexicans.” This panethnic view, and the negative stereotypes associated with it, was especially visible during the 2016 presidential election. While the majority of Latinos found Donald Trump’s remarks on “Mexicans” offensive to the Latin community as a whole, a large number of people still supported his opinions, even those belonging to the “Latino” community. Even more so, women of Latino heritage still supported a nominee that went against their own advance in society given his constant misogynistic comments. In this essay, I analyze the groundings for this apparent contradiction in the preference for said candidate. I argue that these women’s political preference is a tool with which they build their identity in the U.S. Besides, I explore the ways in which individuals linguistically construct their own identity in three ways (i) by actively doing the identification instead of merely receiving it by an unknown agent; (ii) by choosing the self-representation of their preference, and (iii) by finding commonalities and bonding with other individuals they deem part of their group. Through this approach, I analyze semiotic processes, such as intertextuality, use of pronouns, and discourse alignment, that are used to construct identifications of the self that go beyond imposed categories, such as gender and ethnicity.

Shaping Digital Democracy in the United States

2014 ◽  
pp. 213-231
Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Networking Site ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Public Sphere

Ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society are a core focus within the field of technoethics. Over the last few years, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama's campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website uses or misuses digital technology to create a healthy participatory democracy. For an analysis of ethical and non-ethical ways to promote participatory democracy online, the study included theoretical perspectives such as the role of the public sphere in a participatory democracy and the effects of political marketing on the public sphere. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study's results are explored in this chapter.

Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Crawford Gribben
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Day Schools ◽  
Government Schools ◽  
Home Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
American Children ◽  
The 1960S

Since the 1960s, a growing number of American evangelicals have withdrawn their children from “government schools,” seeking alternative provision either in private Christian day schools or in parentally provided education within the home. Over two million American children are being home educated, and in the last few years, the number of children involved in home education has grown at a rate around twelve times that of the number of students entering public schools. Across the United States, but especially in north Idaho, an increasing number of believers are turning to several varieties of Christian education to dispute the minoritarian and subcultural assumptions of those believers who have conceded to liberal expectations, and to educate a generation of the faithful that will work to reclaim and eventually control the cultural mainstream. The influence of conservative religion on the public school system has never been greater, but in home schools, private schools, and liberal arts colleges, education has become a vital weapon in strategies of survival and resistance in evangelical America.

scholarly journals Post-Truth: Hegemony on Social Media and Implications for Sustainability Communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Jaques ◽  
Mine Islar ◽  
Gavin Lord
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marxian Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Science In Society

Contrary to what practice suggests, social media platforms may not be an appropriate forum for communicating with civil society about sustainability issues such as climate change. Misinformation campaigns are distorting the line between fact and falsity on social media platforms, and there has been a profound shift in the way that social media users consume and interact with information. These conditions have been popularly labeled as the post-truth era. Drawing from Neo-Marxian theory, we argue that post-truth can be explained as a new iteration of ideological struggle under capitalist hegemony. We substantiate this claim through a mixed methods investigation synthesizing corpus-assisted lexical analysis and critical discourse analysis to evaluate 900 user-generated comments taken from three articles on socioenvironmental topics published on Facebook by news organizations in the United States. The results showed that the nature of this struggle is tied explicitly to the role of science in society, where the legitimacy of science is caught in a tug-of-war of values between elitism on the one hand and a rejection of the establishment on the other. It follows that presenting truthful information in place of false information is an insufficient means of coping with post-truth. We conclude by problematizing the notion that Facebook is an adequate forum for public dialogue and advocate for a change in strategy from those wishing to communicate scientific information in the public sphere.

scholarly journals 2018: A watershed year for psychedelic science

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 205032451987228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob S Aday ◽  
Christopher C Davoli ◽  
Emily K Bloesch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ballot Initiatives ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychedelic Drugs ◽  
The Status ◽  
Regulatory Bodies ◽  
The Public Sphere

While interest in the study of psychedelic drugs has increased over much of the last decade, in this article, we argue that 2018 marked the true turning point for the field. Substantive advances in the scientific, public, and regulatory communities in 2018 significantly elevated the status and long-term outlook of psychedelic science, particularly in the United States. Advances in the scientific community can be attributed to impactful research applications of psychedelics as well as acknowledgement in preeminent journals. In the public sphere, Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind was a commercial hit and spurred thought-provoking, positive media coverage on psychedelics. Unprecedented psychedelic ballot initiatives in the United States were representative of changes in public interest. Finally, regulatory bodies began to acknowledge psychedelic science in earnest in 2018, as evidenced by the designation of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to “breakthrough therapy” status for treatment-resistant depression by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In short, 2018 was a seminal year for psychedelic science.

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