scholarly journals The Threat of Western Universalism

Author(s):  
Chad Tallman

This article examines the concept of world unity from the time of enlightenment to the present age. It asserts that the enlightenment conception is responsible for the perversion of human nature since it elevates human reason over human emotion which has resulted into a narrow understanding of the world and the belief that science could guarantee peace. The paper debates the concepts of space and place in relation to westernization as a form of universalism. It shows how universalism is linked to space with no respect for diverse cultures according to geographical origins as the case is for localism which is rooted in place. It analyses the United States’ pursuit for market unity, a strategy which is propagated but with the ill intentions of maintaining her international superiority. The market unity project is indeed, an enemy of democracy and a threat to not only cultural diversity, but also to all life on earth. In this paper I therefore suggest that, contrary to the critics, difference and the horizontal structure of the Occupy Wall Street movement is advantageous. The fact that people are organizing in protests in spite of their diverse cultures is, of course, an act of solidarity and unity. By this they demonstrate their belief that a better world is possible and that valuing cultural diversity and difference is a prerequisite for coexistence and peace. Therefore, the main focus of this paper is to defend difference and diversity against world unity or totality or sameness.

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Seth Kershner

Occupy Wall Street. Black Lives Matter. The #MeToo movement. Over the past decade, the United States has seen a surge in activism around civil rights, broadly defined as the right to be free from discrimination and unequal treatment in arenas such as housing, the workplace, and the criminal justice system. At times, as when activists are arrested at a protest, calls for civil rights can also be the occasion for violations of civil liberties—certain basic freedoms (e.g., freedom of speech) that are either enshrined in the Constitution or established through legal rulings. While civil rights are distinct from civil liberties, students often struggle to articulate these differences and appreciate the links between the two concepts. Complicating this distinction is the fact that historically reference materials have tended to cover either one or the other but not the two in combination. Combining these two concepts in one work is what makes a revised edition of the Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties so timely and valuable.


2013 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Entin ◽  
Richard Ohmann ◽  
Susan O'Malley

We were inspired by Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the rapid spread of Occupy across the United States and beyond. The commune-like camp sites, the general assemblies and use of the people’s mic, the marches and demonstrations, the provocative refusal to issue demands, the proliferation of working groups and spokes councils, the creative explosion of revolutionary slogans and art, the direct condemnation of corporate finance and of the massive inequalities that structure our society, the “free university” teach-ins, the campaigns against foreclosure and debt—all these elements of Occupy gave us new hope that radical change might happen in our time.


Horizons ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (02) ◽  
pp. 368-370
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Miller

Words matter, and they matter most of all in the context in which they are to be read and understood. On July 7, 2005, the New York Times published an opinion piece, “Finding Design in Nature,” purporting to offer “The official Catholic stance on evolution.” The author of that piece, my fellow Catholic Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, got the theology exactly right, but erred dramatically in his take on the science and the politics of the “design” movement as it exists in the United States. Knowing how the Cardinal's words will be misused by the enemies of science in our country, it is important to set the record straight.As Cardinal Schönborn quite properly points out, the Catholic Church is staunchly opposed to any view of life that would exclude the notion of divine purpose and meaning. In the new century, as he puts it, the church will “defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real.” In response I would echo the words of the Catechism that scientific studies of “the age and development of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man … invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator.” Indeed they do.But the Cardinal is wrong in asserting that the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is inherently atheistic. Neo-Darwinism, he tells us, is an ideology proposing that an “unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection” gave rise to all life on earth, including our own species. To be sure, many evolutionists have made such assertions in their popular writings on the “meaning” of evolutionary theory. But are such assertions truly part of evolution as it is understood by the “mainstream biologists” of which the Cardinal speaks?


2013 ◽  
pp. 54-58
Author(s):  
Ira Shor

2011 was an historic year of global protests. Here in New York, the Capitol of Capital, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) sustained a rebel encampment for 59 days at now-famous Zuccotti Park in the financial district. Hundreds of other occupations erupted around the United States and abroad. Occupy activists declared “Another world is possible!” and set out to build it in a small concrete park.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ion Bogdan Vasi ◽  
Chan S. Suh

We advance social movement and diffusion theories by exploring the role of online activities in the spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The results from event history analyses suggest that, after controlling for community characteristics, online activities on Facebook and Twitter are associated with the spread of protests. The association is stronger for Facebook than other Internet-enabled technologies. The importance of Facebook activities increases over time, but the importance of community characteristics such as population size decreases over time. While intermunicipal contagion does not affect the diffusion process directly, it affects the diffusion in combination with online activities: the effect of spatial proximity to prior sites of contention increases in cities where Facebook activities preexist. The results provide a better understanding of how the Internet and social media activity create new communication channels among potential sites of contention and facilitate the rapid diffusion of contentious collective actions across wide areas.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Krista Craven ◽  
Torin Monahan ◽  
Priscilla Regan

State surveillance programs often operate in direct tension with ideals of democratic governance and accountability. The fraught history of surveillance programs in the United States, for instance, illustrates that government agencies mobilize discourses of exceptional circumstances to engage in domestic and foreign spying operations without public awareness or oversight. While many scholars, civil society groups, and media pundits have drawn attention to the propensity of state surveillance programs to violate civil liberties, less attention has been given to the complex trust dynamics of state surveillance. On one hand, in justifying state surveillance, government representatives claim that the public should trust police and intelligence communities not to violate their rights; on the other hand, the very act of engaging in secretive surveillance operations erodes public trust in government, especially when revelations about such programs come to light without any advance notice or consent. In order to better understand such trust dynamics, this paper will analyze some of the competing trust relationships of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ‘fusion centers,’ with a focus on the role of these organizations in policing the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 and 2012.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Gregory P. Van Buskirk

The church needs to challenge itself about its identity, constitution, and mission, because out of necessity this involves the world and the events that unfold in it. Thus, sociological, political, and economic issues have ecclesiological components and consequences that are practically tautological, including the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. The question thus moves from whether the Church is called to critical reflection on OWS to how that critical reflection should occur. The purpose of this article is to point out the specific practice of the OWS movement – ​​the “sign” – to be considered through an ecclesiological lens. The method used is from an ecclesiological lens with a new monastic. The results of this research are firstly, the church must actively and responsibly inculcate non-violent practices, communitarian economy, and embody space and place, while at the same time joining forces with non-ecclesiastical organizations that support these practices. similar. Second, by whom - and by whom - the Church (as a very different polis) must always point beyond itself to what is its foundation and fulfillment. As long as the Church faithfully responds to this call, the Kingdom will be in our midst.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel E. Thompson

This study has a two-fold purpose. First, it seeks to determine the importance of financial accounting information to railroad investors (and speculators) in 1880s America. Second, a further goal is to ascertain what financial accounting information was readily available for use by these investors. Based on a comprehensive search of books of the era, the 1880s were a time of expanding advice for railroad securities holders that required the use of financial accounting information. Furthermore, new information sources arose to help service investors' needs. Statistics by Goodsell and The Wall Street Journal were two such sources. This article reviews these publications along with the ongoing Commercial and Financial Chronicle and Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States. Each of these sources helped railroad investors to follow contemporary advice of gathering financial accounting and other information when investing.


Author(s):  
Rainer Forst

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?


Author(s):  
Mark Byers

This concluding chapter charts the continuing significance of the early postwar moment in Olson’s later work, particularly The Maximus Poems. The philosophical and political concerns of the American avant-garde between 1946 and 1951 play out across The Maximus Poems just as they inform later American art practices. The search of the early postwar American independent left for a source of political action rooted in the embodied individual is seen, on the one hand, to have been personified in the figure of Maximus. At the same time, Maximus’s radical ‘practice of the self’ charts a sophisticated alternative to the Enlightenment humanist subject widely critiqued in the United States in the immediate postwar period.


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