En tant que mineures juridiques, les femmes romaines sont normalement exclues des privilèges politiques tel que le droit de vote, tout comme elles sont exemptes des devoirs des citoyens (armée ou charges fiscales). Les femmes bénéficiaient cependant pleinement des privilèges garantis par le droit civil. Et bien que leur prise de parole dans des contextes politiques relève de l’exceptionnel, les lieux d’exercice de la citoyenneté leur étaient accessibles. C’est dans la religion publique que le terme civis Romana apparaît (...) finalement. De cette étude, il résulte que la citoyenne romaine existait bel et bien, et que cette citoyenneté se rapprochait de la civitas sine suffragio. La société romaine reposait avant tout sur des inégalités et une hiérarchie omniprésentes : entre les hommes citoyens de plein droit, entre eux et les citoyens sans suffrage, et entre citoyens et femmes citoyennes. Cependant, tous pouvaient expérimenter une forme de citoyenneté à travers des actes civiques. (shrink)

Calls to ?build civil society?, ?create active citizenship?, ?empower communities?, or ?widen political participation? are growing by the day. They are heard in academia, the private sector, among NGOs and increasingly in government. In short, the rhetoric of self?government, that ideal dear to republicans, is back on the political agenda. This time, however, it is increasingly tied to the category of civil society. Yet can the programme of ?more power to civil society? really achieve democratic autonomy in (...) the way that many neo?republicans want it to? This article pursues this question, first, by reconstructing an ideal?type model of republican civil society from the writings of Hannah Arendt and Vaclav Havel ? two influential theorists of self?organisation in civil society. Second, it asks, sceptically, where such a civil society will come from, whether it can be fully reconciled with modernity and how ? if at all ? it can meet the charge of voluntarism. These critical interrogations are followed by a further three, focusing on the problematic absence of the market in the republican account of civil society, its under?theorised ? even Utopian ? notion of power and, finally, its likely complicity in the ongoing exclusion of women from the public sphere. The article concludes by calling for a more ambitious, wide?ranging vision of republican autonomy than the narrow emphasis on civil society will allow. (shrink)

Women’s bodies, states Benhabib (Dignity in adversity: human rights in troubled times, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011: 168), have become the site of symbolic confrontations between a re-essentialized understanding of religious and cultural differences and the forces of state power, whether in their civic-republican, liberal-democratic or multicultural form. One of the main reasons for the emergence of these confrontations or public debates, says Benhabib (2011: 169), is because of the actual location of ‘political theology’. She asserts that within (...) the context of globalization, the concept of ‘political theology’ is complicated by its unstable location between religion and the public square; between the private and official; and between individual rights to freedom of religion versus state security and public well-being. Ultimately, therefore, the nature of the tension between religion as a political theology and the forces of state power can at best be described as a clash between identities of a collective nature (as envisaged by the nation-state) and identities of an individual nature (as manifested in different religions and cultures). Ongoing attempts to counter the ascendancy of religion, and as will be discussed in this article, specifically the ascendancy and visibility of Islamic identity as practiced by Muslim women, has brought into serious debate the notion of a (post) secular society and its implications for religious rights. What emerges from the state’s insistence that individuals not be allowed to enter the public discourse as religious beings, are, on the one hand, the constraints imposed on Muslim women by liberal democracies, and on the other hand, that Islam, as represented by Muslim women, is not constitutive of democratic citizenship. Will the inclusion and recognition of Muslim women, therefore, necessarily augment a democratic citizenship agenda, and will it lead to an alleviation of the conflict? Then, in exploring a re-articulation of an inclusive citizenship—one which is held accountable by its minimization of social inequality—what ought to be the parameters of inclusion and how should it unfold differently to what is already happening in liberal democracies? (shrink)

The article discusses some of the major issues which need to be examined in a gendered reading of citizenship. However, its basic claim is that a comparative study of citizenship should consider the issue of women's citizenship not only by contrast to that of men, but also in relation to women's affiliation to dominant or subordinate groups, their ethnicity, origin and urban or rural residence. It should also take into consideration global and transnational positionings of these citizenships. The article challenges (...) the gender-blind and Westocentric character of many of the most hegemonic theorizations of citizenship, focusing in particular on the questions of membership in ‘the community’, group rights and social difference and the ways binaries of public/private and active/passive have been constructed to differentiate between different kinds of citizenships. The article argues that in order to be able to analyse adequately people's citizenship, especially in this era of ethnicization on the one hand and globalization on the other hand, and with the rapid pace at which relationships between states and their civil societies are changing, citizenship should best be analysed as a multi-tiered construct which applies, at the same time to people's membership in sub-, cross- and supra-national collectivities as well as in states. (shrink)

This book is an in-depth interpretation of Max Weber as a political theorist of civil society. On the one hand, it reads Weber's ideas from the perspective of modern political thought, rather than the modern social sciences; on the other, it offers a liberal assessment of this complex political thinker without attempting to apologize for his shortcomings. Through an alternative reading of Weber's religious, epistemological and political writings, the book shows Weber's concern with public citizenship in a modern (...) mass democracy and civil society as its cultivating ground. Kim argues Weber's political thought, thus recast, was deeply informed by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and other German political thinkers and also reveals an affinity to the liberal-republican tradition best represented by Mill and Tocqueville. Kim has effectively resuscitated Weber as a political thinker for our time in which civic virtues and civil society have once again become one of the dominant issues. (shrink)

This illuminating book is a republican critique of the current system of global governance and its failure to address key global problems. With a republican account of international political theory which transcends prevailing forms of global governance, it develops republican forms of leadership and citizenship to inform the creation of a stronger system of formal international organisations. Republican Global Constitutionalism focuses on the current challenges facing formal international organisations such as the UN, the growing reliance on (...) opaque informal international organisations like the G20, and the inconsistent nature of transnational civil society. As a unique contribution to the field of global constitutionalism, the book provides an account of republican international political theory that emphasises the importance of extending the activity of citizens and constitutionalism beyond the state, in order to support the operation of transnational civil society and create a formal system of international organisations. Providing a concise intervention into the field of global governance, this book will appeal to scholars and students in the disciplines of international relations, political theory, transnational activism studies, international law, and public policy. It will also benefit policymakers and activists looking for alternative forms of global cooperation. (shrink)

The present argument focuses on part of Augustine’s defense of Christianity in The City of God. There Augustine argues that the Christian religion did not cause the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 CE. Augustine revised the definitions of a ‘people’ and ‘republic’ found in Cicero’s De Republica in light of the impossibility of true justice in a world corrupted by sin. If one returns these definitions to their original context, and accounts for Cicero’s own political teachings, (...) one finds that Augustine follows Cicero’s republicanism on several key points. First, civil rule differs from mastery over slaves. Second, political life is indeterminate, so a republic could be any regime suitable for governing free human beings. Third, the prudent man may not abstain from public service. For Augustine the duty to public service is connected to his tragic portrayal of life and suffering in society after ‘the fall’. Augustine’s contribution to the republican tradition is not to be found in the concept of a natural order, but in an explanation of why that order fails. (shrink)

The present work approaches a series of wide exploratory investigations in the Romanian rural area, most recently in Livezile-Rimetea micro-region (Apuseni Mountains). Within the civil society and public participation debate context, the study focuses on the variable of religious affiliation (orthodox, non-orthodox), which differentiates the real potential public participation at the population level in the studied area. The immediate conclusion to be drawn is that in the differences in religious affiliation induce variations in expressing the civic activism (...) and in the real or the potential public participation. At the end of our study, the paradox of public participation as diminishing factor of the civil society role is taken into account and this concerns new reflections and investigations on the subject. (shrink)

This article surveys recent work on the idea of "citizenship", not as a legal category, but as a normative ideal of membership and participation. We focus on two emerging issues. First, whereas traditional notions of citizenship assume that membership and participation are promoted by the possession of rights, many theorists now emphasize civic responsibilities. Second, whereas traditional theories assume that citizenship provides a common status and identity, some theorists now argue that the distinctive needs and identities of certain groups -such (...) as women, ethnic minorities, the disabled - can only be accommodated through "group-differentiated citizenship". The writings of neo-conservatives, participatory democrats, civic republicans, feminists, civil society theorists, virtue theorists and cultural pluralists are surveyed. (shrink)

Introduction : Dewey's lifelong crusade for participatory democracy -- Michigan beginnings, 1884-1894 -- Dewey at the University of Chicago, 1894-1904 -- Dewey leaves the University of Chicago for Columbia University -- Elsie Clapp's contributions to community schools -- Penn and the third revolution in American higher education -- The Center for Community Partnerships -- The university civic responsibility idea becomes an international movement -- John Dewey, the Coalition for Community Schools, and developing a participatory democratic American society.

The English translation of Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere converges with the revival of the "political culture concept" in the social sciences. Surprisingly, Habermas's account of the Western bourgeois public sphere has much in common with the original political culture concept associated with Parsonian modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s. In both cases, the concept of political culture is used in a way that is neither political nor cultural. Explaining this peculiarity is the central (...) problem addressed in this article and its companion piece, which appeared in Sociological Theory, volume 3, number 2 (1995). I hypothesize that this is the case because the concept itself is embedded in an historically constituted political culture (here called a conceptual network)-a structured web of conceptual relationships that combine into Anglo-American citizenship theory. The method of an historical sociology of concept formation is used to analyze historically and empirically the internal constraints and dynamics of this conceptual network. The method draws from new work in cultural history and sociology, social studies, and network, narrative, and institutional analysis. This research yields three empirical findings: this conceptual network has a narrative structure, here called the Anglo-American citizenship story; this narrative is grafted onto an epistemology of social naturalism; and these elements combine in a metanarrative that continues to constrain empirical research in political sociology. (shrink)

This paper aims at understanding why Rousseau excluded women from citizenship. Citizenship, for Rousseau, is not a matter of right, not even a matter of behaviour (of how to behave individually to be a good citizen). It is a matter of social condition. How should society be constituted so that there can be citizens? The answer to this question is that there must be women in the private sphere so that there can be citizen in the public sphere. The (...) paper begins with Montesquieu's model of the republican condition of women, considers the way Rousseau updated this model, and concludes with the idea, that much more than the male figure of citizenship (which remains a stereotype), the woman, in Rousseau, is the true figure of modernity. (shrink)

Traditional conceptions of citizenship have privileged individuals' relationships to the state. However, recent emphasis on civil society as a terrain of democratic empowerment suggests a shift in our ideas about what citizens properly do and the arenas in which they do it. I argue that it would be a mistake to privilege activism in civil society over traditional state-centered political activity and I contend that democratic citizenship may – and must – be performed in multiple arenas. Feminists need (...) enriched understandings of citizenship that recognize the indispensability of both national and transnational civil society but still maintain a strong focus on the state. (shrink)

The Enlightenment can usefully be conceived as a confrontation with eroding Christian and classical republican ethics. It was permeated with assumptions about women and the gendered dichotomy between public and private spheres. While William Robertson and Edmund Burke, along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based conceptions of virtue, they were working within a new Enlightenment paradigm. Its political agenda has to be understood by way of its configurations of beauty, taste, and morality (...) as these relate to the imperatives and needs of modern societies of a high level of sophistication and differentiation. An examination of two themes in the work of Robertson and Burkesavagecivilizedbeauty in distressreveals how long-held convictions about the character of women, especially with regard to their capacity and right to appear in the public domain, were modified and adjusted to the idea of progress, and became central to an enlightened affirmation of modern European civilization. The result had its ironies. On the one hand, a positive public and indeed political role was invented for women that is central to understanding the overall thrust of a political discourse based on politeness, civility, refinement and similar values specifically associated with modern commercial societies. On the other hand, though the complexity of this model of society gave ample scope to informal and spontaneous vehicles of social disciplining, whatever room was left for the more traditional ways of governing polities through the direct exertion of political power remained closed to women: the very features that opened for them the opportunity to play political roles through sociability in the public sphere also circumscribed them. (shrink)

Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women's rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have co-evolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging. Following 32 years of authoritarian rule, in 1998 this sprawling Southeast Asian country returned to electoral democracy. The achievement brought with it, however, an upsurge in both (...) the numbers and assertiveness of Islamist militias, as well as a sharp increase in violence against religious minorities. The resulting mobilizations have pitted the Muslim supporters of an Indonesian variety of inclusive citizenship against populist proponents of Islamist majoritarianism. Seen from this historical example, the book demonstrates that Muslim actors come to know and practice Islam in a manner, not determined in an unchanging way by scriptural commands, but in co-evolution with broader currents in politics, society, and citizen belonging. By exploring these questions in both an Indonesian and comparative context, this book offers important lessons on the challenge of democracy and inclusive citizenship in the Muslim-majority world. Well written and informative, this book will be suitable for adoption in university courses on Islam, Southeast Asian Politics, Indonesian and Asian Studies, as well as courses dealing with religion, democracy, and citizen belonging in multicultural societies around the world. The book will be of interest to the general reader with an interest in Islam, citizenship, and democracy. (shrink)

The ethical features of citizenship in democratic societies have been explored from several perspectives. This account is based on the analysis of our condition as co-practitioners in civil society and aims to address the public role of religions and to include multiple forms of citizenship. Under conditions of pluralism, one’s involvement in cooperative practices is shaped and unsettled by the presence of co-practitioners who carry different self-understandings about the relationship between their beliefs and their social agency. Social cooperation (...) is threatened when these self-understandings come into conflict. The notion of postsecularism provides a valuable clue for better understanding this kind of conflict, thanks to its focus on how the self-understanding of religious and secular actors is affected by their co-implication in the same public space. Within this framework, I suggest that a reflective consideration of the practical cooperative relationships that ordinarily characterize our agency as actors of civil society may adequately ground a normative ethics of citizenship. This reflective awareness affects the self-understanding of both religious and secular citizens, and normatively points towards a disposition to cooperatively re-arrange and re-formulate one’s own beliefs and arguments in the light of the structural co-implication of one’s own belief with the beliefs of others. The basic duties of citizenship emerge from the implications of participating in a body of social practices that extends to different communities of practice at a local, national and global level. This ethics of citizenship is therefore not bound to membership in a specific political entity. (shrink)

This article examines the development, activities and effectiveness of women’s NGOs in 10 Central and Eastern European countries. It begins by examining the establishment of women’s organizations post-1989, identifying their structure, funding difficulties and the issues on which they focus. It also addresses the tension between the work of NGOs and the wider development of civil society. The article goes on to explore how negative perceptions of feminism have hindered efforts to develop a unified and coherent agenda among women’s (...) NGOs. Finally, it analyses how public attitudes have affected relations between women’s organizations and women politicians as well as how competition and fragmentation have complicated relationships between NGOs. (shrink)

One need not look far beyond the titles and distinctive phrases to find a deep and abiding concern for civic virtue in John Rawls’ writings. This chapter provides the necessary account of civic virtue and Rawls's conception of it. For this, it relies most heavily on Rawls's last book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. The importance of concepts of citizenship and civility is more evident in Justice as Fairness, than in Rawls's other books. According to Rawls, the most‐advantaged members of (...) a just society would demonstrate their commitment to public culture by inhibiting the wastes of endless self‐ and group‐interested bargaining and offering some hope of realizing social concord and civic friendship. Beyond encouraging civic engagement, Rawls's “political liberalism” has many points of contact with the republican tradition. One such point of contact arises when he indicates the importance to a well‐ordered society of civic education. (shrink)

The first comprehensive analysis of the philosophical issues raised by the hijab controversy in France, this book also conducts a dialogue between contemporary Anglo-American and French political theory and defends a progressive republican solution to so-called multicultural conflicts in contemporary societies. It critically assesses the official republican philosophy of laïcité which purported to justify the 2004 ban on religious signs in schools. Laïcité is shown to encompass a comprehensive theory of republican citizenship, centered on three ideals: equality (...) (secular neutrality of the public sphere), liberty (individual autonomy and emancipation) and fraternity (civic loyalty to the community of citizens). Challenging official interpretations of laïcité, the book then puts forward a critical republicanism which does not support the hijab ban, yet upholds a revised interpretation of three central republican commitments: secularism, non-domination and civic solidarity. Thus, it articulates a version of secularism which squarely addresses the problem of status quo bias - the fact that Western societies are historically not neutral towards all religions. It also defends a vision of female emancipation which rejects the coercive paternalism inherent in the regulation of religious dress, yet does not leave individuals unaided in the face of religious and secular, patriarchal and ethnocentric domination. Finally, the book outlines a theory of immigrant integration which places the burden of civic integration on basic socio-political institutions, rather than on citizens themselves. Critical republicanism proposes an entirely new approach to the management of religious and cultural pluralism, centred on the pursuit of the progressive ideal of non-domination in existing, non-ideal societies. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Must Liberty and Equality Come Apart? Freedom of Conscience Self‐Ownership and Universal Suffrage Slavery Women's Rights The Cold War Thurgood Marshall Discussion Acknowledgments.

Summary As opposed to the traditional view of the prodigium as a part of a divination that augurs divine wrath, in this article we regard episodes of prodigies as ancient societies’ expression of their connection with their gods. Prodigious episodes are the evidence of divine presence or absence within a community.

Various approaches to civil society research are considered. Two key problems caused by impact of post-modernism are discussed, that are: crises of identification with the society and problems of personal identity. A particular personality crisis that is specific for contemporary Russia is noticed. The crisis is caused by the combination of two factors. They are: social abandonment, atomization and loneliness and total relativism produced by expansion of post-modernism. The second factor influences the Western citizenship as well. That’s why “re-emergence” (...) of civil society is discussed in the Western world, though civil society institute has never died in the Western countries. Personality-oriented civil society is considered to be a prologue for re-emergence of the wholeness that seems to fall apart because of the loss of all universalistic values. The alliance between the heritage of the Russian thinker V. Rozanov and philosophical discourse by M. Foucault is tracked, the latter being a champion of personality-oriented civil society as opposed to “gregarious” politicallystructured one. Rozanov demonstrates his life to us as a process of a personality’s creative work which makes life experience a basis for the creation of universal values. Post-modernism represented by Fucault makes this experience as a basis in the process of the reflexive discourse-analysis this demonstrating his moving away from it. Both authors removed “interdict” from a number of so called "private themes" that had had ambiguous marginalized/sacral status in public discourse. The two thinkers transformed the problem of the “private discourse” into meta-language fit to conceive and describe the essence of the societal life and epoch as a whole. They drew attention to personality-oriented social communications and emergence of new types of societal communities. Both figures are ofa great importance for now-a-days discussions on civil society development in the epoch of a post-modernism. The fact that comparison of their views will contribute to better understanding of the controversies which are inherent in civil society is demonstrated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Women on the Global Market: Irigaray and the Democratic StateNicole Fermon (bio)Best known for her subtle interrogation of philosophy and psychoanalysis, Luce Irigaray clearly also conducts a dialogue with the political, proposing that women’s erasure from culture and society invalidates all economies, sexual or political. Because woman has disappeared both figuratively and literally from society [see Sen, “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing”], Irigaray conceives the contemporary ethical (...) project as a recall to difference rather than equality, to difference between women and men—that is, sexual difference. She characterizes relations between men and women as market relations in which women are commodities, objects, but never subjects of exchange, objects to men but not to themselves: women do not belong to themselves but exist “to keep relationships among men running smoothly” [TS 192]. Women under these conditions require imaginative ways to reconfigure the self, to subvert the melancholy and regression of masculinist economies and envisage a future in which women would not be ashamed of the feminine, would experience it as a positivity worth emulating.Irigaray contends that after the gains of egalitarian politics are carefully examined, the inclusion of women in the political arena has failed to take into account women’s distinct and different position from men, and from each other, as well as perpetuating the fiction of the “neutral” citizen, the ahistorical individual citizen of the nation-state. It is that fiction Irigaray dispels in her critique of liberal democratic politics and its creation, “citizens who are neuter in regard to familial singularity, its laws, and necessary sexual difference” [SG 112] in order to benefit the State and its laws. The subject is male; the citizen is neuter. Who is the female citizen in contemporary society? What is the ethical elaboration of the contractual relations between women and men, and between sexed individuals and the community? How do women imagine a distinct set of rights and responsibilities based on self-definition and autonomy, given the particular strictures of contemporary politics—that is, the market-driven, antidemocratic nature of the current economic national and global forces? Irigaray suggests that “the return of women to collective work, to public places, to social relations, demands linguistic mutations” and profound transformations, an embodied imagination with force and agency in civil life [TD 65].Irigaray warns that if civil and political participation is construed in overly narrow terms, if focus is on economic or judicial “circuits” alone, we overlook the symbolic organization of power—women risk losing “everything without even being acknowledged” [TD 56]. Instead an interval of recognition can expand the political to include the concerns and activities of real women, lest silence imply consent to sexual neutrality, or more likely, to women’s obliteration under men’s interests and concerns. Women’s insistence on self-definition and wage labor, on love and justly remunerated work, [End Page 120] testifies to the obduracy of women’s difference, one that is not likely to disappear. The patriarchal family is still the legal norm, even when certain exceptions are made, while enduring questions regarding women’s health and children’s physical welfare as priorities beyond market considerations are consigned to legislative obfuscation, still a political afterthought. Instead, in the US the liberal state removes the slender welfare net specific to women and children, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and fails to provide medical coverage to those who are among the most vulnerable of its citizens. Women without access to the legal protection of sex-neutral citizenship, poor working women without language (the money for an effective “mouthpiece” to represent their distress in a court of law), are further disempowered by liberal politics’ insistence on sexual neutrality—that is, on repression or amnesia regarding the lived experiences of women.Sexual difference is key to any project of self-definition by women. Irigaray insists on the sexual nature of this self-definition, not solely for its obvious procreative necessity, but because the natural world is a source of renewal and fecundity which requires attentive interrogation and respect [SG 15]. This rebirth seems alien to the structure of male politics, which instead seem to provoke disasters (Bhopal, Chernobyl, or the current runaway... (shrink)

Although modern Republicanism, which highly values the right of freedom of speech, finds its inspiration in the historical reality of the Roman Republic, it seems that in the course of the Republican period citizens shared a recognised ability to speak freely in public, but did not enjoy equal status with one another in the domain of speech as protected by law. Of course, Republican Rome knew laws regulating free speech and perhaps even later provisions had been passed (...) concerning iniuria. However, in these cases, as later on under Augustus, these measures acted as means of restraint and inhibition and did not directly address the right of the individual to speak freely. The fundamental question this paper addresses is why, in the course of the Republic, the right to speak freely was not protected by law and never came to be recognised as a formalised subjective right in Republican Rome. The answer, I argue, lies in the fact that in Rome speaking freely was conceived as the positive moral quality that characterised a natural ability of human beings, and thereby it could not have provided a field of legislation. It follows that the Roman Republic would not have passed the ‘straight talk test’ that modern Republicanism requires for the establishment of a free and just society. However, Republican Rome invites us to think about liberty of speech as belonging to the realm of ethics: as a moral quality sustained by contemporary social norms, not subject to legislation, which inevitably ends up protecting the interests of a group or groups and their specific speech regimes. (shrink)

Scholars have established that cultural codes and styles of expression in civil society must be recognized as informal mechanisms of exclusion, calling into question the possibility of the Habermasian normative ideal of the public sphere. This article joins theoretical discussions of how to remedy this problem. Going beyond Alexander's model of "multicultural incorporation" and borrowing from Sewell's theory of the duality of structure, we develop a theoretical framework of code hybridization to conceptualize how civil society participants achieve (...) civil solidarity amid multiple, potentially contradictory cultural legacies. Code hybridization is a process whereby social actors not only incorporate the cultural codes of subordinate groups into the public sphere, but in doing so also potentially transform dominant codes. We conceptualize code hybridization in terms of three analytic steps: enlargement of the terrains of signification; reinterpretation of codes; and mixing of schemas. The resulting hybridized schemas and frameworks are particularly useful cultural tools for developing visions of civil inclusiveness for young, unstable civil societies. Using a brief comparative study of the representation of women in political cartoons in Hong Kong and Taiwan, we offer a concrete example of code hybridization—a process linking the codes of liberty and caring while producing alternative and more inclusive narratives during moments of political agitation. (shrink)

Tronto explores the “care crisis” that now pervades advanced industrial societies, in which women are doing more paid work and, consequently, less of the care work of civil society. Tronto urges advanced industrial societies to rethink who is responsible for care and recognize the role that government should play in ensuring that care is provided for those who need it. Unfortunately, citizenship has traditionally been defined in ways that make no provision for responsibilities to care for others. Tronto observes (...) that “privatizing” care by relegating it to the marketplace does not provide a solution to the care crisis, since paid care work is subject to exploitation, partly because it is often done by illegal immigrants from Third World countries. Despite expecting privatization to be the likely solution to the problem, Tronto nevertheless recommends that care work be regarded as a governmental responsibility in order to make it more valued publicly. (shrink)

The modern world space, which is affected by the post-pandemic consequences, is noted by the globalization of society, the increasing role of citizenship in making important state and international decisions has become possible in the context of the information revolution and has its own characteristics of communication in information and communication networks. The importance and need for a thorough study of the chosen topic is that the widespread use of various forms and methods of civil communication, free access of (...) citizens to information at all stages of decision-making and the functioning of central and local governments, the participation of civil society institutions in the work of expert, consultative, and advisory public councils on the expression and protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, public control, direct electronic receipt of public services, etc. are important factors in the democratization of government in post-pandemic modern times. After all, we are talking about a deliberate orientation to new values - the person and the collective, their direct participation in the democratic organization of life of the state and society. The main thing in this context is that the rational consensus of civil society and the state is a factor in universal social discourse and a strategic resource for democratic development in the context of post-pandemic modernity. The aim of the article is to consider the epistemological and sociocultural aspects of the functioning of the communication capabilities of civil society institutions in the context of revealing the possibility and significance of their involvement in the processes of implementing state security policy. (shrink)

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or (...) a radically solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)

What this paper proposes is a reflexion on the role religious institutions play in nowadays societies come out from religion. A society that maintains a place for religion where churches are dismissed aside onto the civil society. What we verify is that the social forces conserve a certain vocation to allow for the credo to make it through modern times and to coexist with an exit from religion. The paper is divided in five different parts. The (...) first one sets about conceiving the correlation between the public and the private, distinguishing the stance of religion in these two spheres. The second part displays the permanence of religious institutions as the result of some paradoxal re-legitimation which emerges as a religion of the individual. Part three discusses the liberal idea of a republican religiosity in which the democratic liberty takes the form of a spiritual historic of metaphysical outreach. Part four deals with historic identity and its transmission, as well as with the de-traditionalization of churches and of their role amidst the loss of their very sense. The fifth and last part shows the role that religious institutions can still exert face to a contemporary background, witness to an insidious process of dehumanisation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michelet and Social Romanticism: Religion, Revolution, NatureArthur MitzmanIn 1851, shortly before his second and definitive suspension from his teaching at the Collège de France, Jules Michelet told a young friend of his dissatisfaction with the meager political impact of the Republican professors of the time: “Our present propaganda... has resembled strongly that which might be made by a man enclosed in a crystal glass. He finds his (...) voice to be resounding and very strong: that’s because it breaks against the inner surface. But those who are outside, the men of the people, hear nothing.” 1Michelet had become painfully aware of how little his voice had been heard outside the crystal in June 1848, when barricade-builders outside his house on the Rue des Postes responded to his son-in-law’s appeal not to expose the dwelling of the great historian to artillery fire by asking, “Who is Michelet?” 2 This occurred two years after the publication of Le Peuple and only months after the appearance of his celebration of the commoners’ festivals of federation in 1790, both texts being landmarks in the social romantic anticipation of 1848. In fact it was the 1848 Revolution itself that had diminished the resonance of Michelet’s ideas, by polarizing the country in a way that made it impervious to his message of social harmony.Before 1848, Michelet was a central figure in the intellectual disaffection that delegitimized the July Monarchy. His work in the 1840s had shifted from the historical erudition of his many-volumed Histoire de France to contemporary polemics against the clergy and the government: attacks on the Jesuits and the Church 3 swiftly broadened to a conflict with the intellectual and political establishment of the period. In Le Peuple (1846), Michelet combined an analysis of the profound social divisions within the French nation with a remarkable sketch of the relation between civilization and nature, a Rousseauian appeal to the natural qualities of the common people and an [End Page 659] invocation of the genius of the future, who would be gifted with “the two sexes of the spirit.”Le Peuple was the first of a series of works on nature, women, and the common people, those three “others” of nineteenth-century high culture, that have throughout this century fascinated cultural historians. In the historiographical tradition, its author has been celebrated by those who viewed him as their predecessor in the broadening of history-writing to include culture and mentalities, such as Lucien Febvre and Jacques Le Goff, and denigrated by those, like Pieter Geyl, who have been outraged by his nationalistic pathos and his blatant subjectivity. 4 I shall suggest in this essay that all of these aspects of Michelet’s work are rooted in his significance in the 1840s as a social romantic, the contemporary and friend of George Sand, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, and others.For apart from what Michelet has come to mean, as totem or as scarecrow, to the scholarship of the twentieth century, he was enmeshed in the ideological conflicts of his own time. Without an understanding of those conflicts, an important perspective on his place in the history of ideas will be missing, a perspective which, moreover, may shed some light on the broader historical significance of the social romanticism he represented. For example, the “ideological” Michelet was best known in his own time as an anti-clerical. 5 Indeed, his version of the Romantic évangile éternel, which he developed in the 1840s, takes a privileged place among the efforts of intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century to work out new religious conceptions to replace a moribund Catholicism. 6 Yet the principal framework of his polemical activity was not the Church but the liberal academic establishment, with which he was at war from his 1843 lectures on the Jesuits to his dismissal from his official functions at the beginning of the Second Empire.Michelet and the July Monarchy: From Liberalism to Social RomanticismSeen from the standpoint of the early years of his career, roughly 1825 to 1835, Michelet would seem an improbable candidate for any kind of romanticism. Given his impoverished, artisan background as well... (shrink)

The political liberalism of Rawls and Larmore is presented as uniquely able to solve the problems of modern political theory. In the face of a plurality of reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good, a legitimate liberal state can legislate solely on the basis of a modular conception of justice affirmed from within each reasonable conception. However, it is argued that this view, while restrictive, has to permit the promotion of its own pre-conditions. This demanding duty of civic restraint requires citizens (...) who have been educated for citizen virtue in the context of associational life in civil society. This challenge to expand liberalism to cover its own preconditions at the level of a moral background culture, has usually been levelled by one kind of republican/communitarian (Charles Taylor) or so-called "ethical liberals". It can be met by the adoption of a liberal republicanism that operates within the constraints of Rawls' political liberalism but nevertheless explains and justifies why such a view must treat traditional republican themes such as active citizenship and the importance of associational life. The solution lies in treating these values as option values, in a sense that is explained. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology ed. by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and Paul Louis Metzger, and: Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse ed. by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott PaethJonathan RothchildA World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology Edited by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and (...) Paul Louis Metzger Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 346 pp. $35.00Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse Edited by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott Paeth Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 264 pp. $45.00The intersections of globalization, civil society, and public theological reflection remain fluid, contested, and complicated. Two edited volumes that have shared connections to Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry celebrate the contributions of Max Stackhouse (Public Theology for Global Society as a festschrift and A World for All? as a dedication) toward these intersections. Public Theology for a Global Society attends to neo-Calvinist debates about public theology and its applicability to family, finance, and technology, while A World For All? explores religious beliefs and practices in their contexts, the meanings of the Trinity, and the prospects for cultural, political, and religious dialogue within civil society.In Public Theology for a Global Society, the contributors engage Stackhouse’s work in terms of its “global reach and its ecclesial concern” (ix). The essays consider five overarching themes: covenant, natural law, and human rights; social pluralism and social justice; Christian responsibility for society; economic and political realism; and Christian ethics in a global era. One of the book’s strengths is that it ambitiously probes—as Stackhouse’s own work does—the substantive interrelationships of these themes. Harold Breitenberg’s opening essay clarifies the meanings of public theology, but it does not account for recent developments, including comparative interventions that reconstruct modes of public theology.In the second section on key issues in public theology, John Witte speculates on whether Stackhouse would accept sixteenth-century Calvinist thinker Johannes Althusius’s “‘different and ‘even dangerous’” (36) theory of natural law. [End Page 205] Witte’s query, which begs comparisons vis-à-vis Catholic models of public theology frequently neglected in the book, is critically addressed by Don Browning’s essay. Browning’s theology of covenant includes a subordinate theory of natural law because “the concept of covenant cannot stand alone” (49). Other essays include reflections on covenant by Hak Joon Lee (which reconstructs Abraham Kuyper’s theory of sphere sovereignty) and Richard Mouw (which analyzes neo-Calvinist conceptions of law, covenant, and common morality). Similar to Browning’s caution to Stackhouse, Mouw censures a complete rejection of natural law (104); pace Browning’s critique, Mouw applauds Stackhouse’s insistence on the prominence of covenant in neo-Calvinist ethical and social theory. Interrogation of these disagreements by either the editors or the contributors would have strengthened the book.The book’s third section examines public theology in a global context. Differing from Stackhouse, William Schweiker charts the basic anthropological and existential components of a cosmopolitan conscience to overcome the universalist and particularist difficulties within public theology (134–38). Other thinkers appropriate interreligious dialogue as constructive models. Mark Heim contends that, in the face of massive global suffering, interreligious dialogue must promote human flourishing. Scott Paeth similarly sees dialogue as a mechanism for overcoming religiously motivated violence (166). Peter Paris, Shirley Roels, and Deirdre King Hainsworth all point to various features of technology as pathways to new articulations of public theology. In the concluding section, the contributors fittingly focus on the legacy of Stackhouse, namely, his long-standing interests in justification, justice, congregational life, and a “sobered version of Reformed theology vis-à-vis institutional responsibility and the retrieval of its theological substance” (Gabriel Fackre, 247).A World for All?, borne out of a 2005 conference in Edinburgh, approaches globalization within the modern ecumenical movement as illustrated by the affiliations of its three editors: William Storrar (ecumenical Protestant), Peter Casarella (Catholic), and Paul Metzger (Evangelical). The book examines the broader trajectories of globalization in conversation with “examples of churches around the world... playing a vital part... (shrink)

Americans have reason to be concerned about the condition of American democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Surveys show that civic participation has declined, cynicism about government has increased, and young people have a weak grasp of the principles that underlie our constitutional system. Crucial questions must be answered: How serious is the situation? What role do schools play in shaping civic behavior? Are current education reform initiatives—such as multiculturalism and school choice—counterproductive? How can schools contribute toward reversing (...) the trend? This volume brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to probe the relation between a healthy democracy and education. Their original and provocative discussions cut across a range of important topics: the cultivation of democratic values, the formation of social capital in schools and communities, political conflict in a pluralist society, the place of religion in public life, the enduring problems of racial inequality. Gathering together the most current research and thinking on education and civil society, this is a book that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the quality and future of American democracy. (shrink)

The Vestal Virgins are one of the most famous elements of Roman religion, yet despite their perennial appeal and the importance of some smaller scale studies of the priesthood, the priestesses have not received a monograph-length study since F. Giuzzi, Aspetti giuridici del sacerdozio romano. II sacerdozio di Vesta (Naples, 1968). Now we have books by R.L. Wildfang and M.C. Martini that could not be more different. The former offers a thorough survey of what the sources can tell us (...) about the priesthood in the period from the end of the Second Carthaginian War to the first century C.E. The latter is an analysis of early Roman historiography and the role the Vestals, in particular their periodic unchastity, played in the creation of the traditional account of the development of Rome. W's book puts forward two main arguments: (1) the Vestals were charged with the ritual purification of the city and with the storage and preparation of ritual materials, and (2) many aspects of the priesthood that have long puzzled scholars are tied to the Vestals' status as Roman citizens, but citizens who existed outside the traditional family structure. The book will be accessible to those new to the topic, but the notes will repay specialists. Ancient sources are quoted in translation, with original texts provided in an appendix. A second appendix provides a list of known Vestals. This slender volume could have been even thinner if the frequent repetitions were cut down. W's work might have been better as a hefty article, so little is there to know about the Vestals. The Classical Review vol. 58 no. 1 C The Classical Association 2008; all rights reserved This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 213 In the Introduction, W makes a welcome distinction among types of rituals often lumped together in discussions of 'fertility' rituals, with which the Vestals are often associated (p. 4). W reserves 'fertility' to describe only those rites that deal with the reproduction of people, livestock and the growth of crops. Harvest rituals are linked to the harvesting of crops, while another set of rites, 'storage rites', are tied to the preservation of the harvest. The final group, purification rituals, aim at the cleansing of an individual, place or object of 'all forms of pollution that would render it or them unfit to come into contact with the religious sphere'. The book is arranged thematically. The first two chapters lay out all we can know about the priestesses' ritual obligations performed in the seclusion of the temple and out amongst the people. While a reader may not find W's interpretation of each of the Vestals' actions equally persuasive, the overall argument that the priestesses' activities were, by and large, purificatory is convincing. Two of the more interesting aspects of W.'s discussion are her considerations of Vesta's fire and of the water required for some of her rituals (pp. 8-11). Fire was seen by the Romans as both a fertile and a sterile force, and scholars have emphasised one or the other, or the contrast between them, in their interpretation of the Vestals. W points out that fertile fire is always described in masculine terms and is associated with Vulcan. Vesta's fire, however, is always associated with sterility and purity, and so should be understood as having a purificatory significance. W points out that Vesta's fire was used only in the manufacture of ritually necessary items: roasting spelt for mola salsa, baking brine for muries and burning ashes from the fetal cow from the Fordicidia and the tail of the October horse, both of which were used at the Parilia. For other rituals, the Vestals were required to use water, the purificatory substance par excellence, drawn only from the spring of Juturna and carried only in vessels that could not be set down. These restrictions ensured that the water was always fresh, running water that never touched profane earth. Chapters 3-5 trace out the unique position the Vestals occupied in Roman society, arguing that they existed outside the standard Roman familial and other social structures, yet remained fully part of the Roman state. W suggests that the initiation rite of captio removed the new priestess not only from her family but, more importantly, from her family cult, thus avoiding any potential contamination of familial and public cult. Virginity was required for multiple reasons, the most significant being that such a status allowed the priestess to remain a full member of the Roman state, but prevented her from being a member of a traditional family structure. Throughout the book, W makes much of the idea of Vestals as represen tatives of Roman citizen women without ever really dealing with the question to what extent any Roman woman, priestess or not, was a ciuis. Though W is probably correct, it is not entirely certain to what extent women were citizens in the Republic, and at least a reference to some key ancient sources and to recent scholarship on this question should be made (e.g. L. Peppe, Posizione giuridica e ruolo sociale della donna romana in eta repubblicana [Milan, 1984]). The sixth chapter, 'The Vestals in the Romans' History', looks at the appearance of Vestals in the early history of Rome, refining the common assumption that accusations of, and convictions for, incestum arose only in periods of great stress and danger. W adds that a priestess's involvement, or her family's involvement, in one of the groups taking part in the conflict or struggle of the moment also played a role. This chapter traces changes over the course of 300 years in the attitudes of the priestesses and the Romans more generally toward the priesthood, its role in society This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 214 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW and its requirement of 30 years of chastity. The argument hangs on even less evidence than other sections of the work. In contrast to their central place in W's book, the Vestals play only a small (though crucial, in her interpretation) role in M.'s work. The basic argument of the book is that episodes of Vestal incestum are linked in the historiographic tradition to key moments in the development of the Roman state: the separation of augurium from regnum, the development of a mixed patrician-plebeian aristocracy, the creation of a monetary system and the expansion of the colonial system outside Italy. The history of Rome can be seen as alternating phases of stasis and transformation; instances of Vestal incestum mark the transitions (p. 95). The work falls into two parts that are not well integrated. The first is a useful discussion of the historiography of the Roman Republic, taking in turn each element of the story of the founding of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas to the death of Remus. M. traces how early Roman writers, especially Fabius Pictor, reshaped the tradition already present in some Greek authors, distancing Rome from the Greek world and adding an Italic element to the tale. This detailed analysis is well worth consulting and will be of interest to those working on many aspects of cultural life in the Republic. The second, larger, section of the book comprises a series of studies of the Vestals known to have been convicted of incestum during the Republic. After dealing with issues of dating and sources, M. links each case of incestum to a major event in Roman history. Not all the events are equally important for the creation of the Rome of the middle and late Republic. One wonders why M. chose to tie the conviction of Minucia, somewhere between 339 and 332, to the admission of plebeians to the praetorship in 337 rather than to the conclusion of the Latin War in 338. Some explanation is warranted. The connection M. draws is often very vague, as in the case of Sextilia (pp. 144-54), convicted and interred alive in either 275 or 274. M. sees this as marking the end of any meaningful distinction between patricians and plebeians, following as it does the first time a plebeian censor completed a lustrum. The gap of five or six years between Sextilia's conviction and Cn. Domitius Calvinus Maximus' censorship in 280 passes unremarked. Similarly, in discussing the three Vestals accused of incestum in 114-113 (pp. 188-210), M. steps away from the commonly accepted interpretation of the event as part of the continuing struggle between Gracchan and senatorial forces, arguing instead that it is tied to the establishment in 118 of the colony of Narbo Martius, Rome's first colony in Gaul. Here, as elsewhere, there is no evidence that any ancient author linked the founding of the colony and Vestal unchastity; the temporal gap makes an association even more unlikely. Ultimately, it is not possible to accept M.'s argument that Vestal incestum punctuated key stages in the development of the 'cosmo Romano' in the way she imagines. Even so, M.'s effort to reintegrate the Vestals into the larger narrative of Rome's history is thought-provoking, and it is to be hoped that it will spark further work in the same vein. The field is perhaps in a better position to undertake work on this scale now that we have W's careful and comprehensive collection and interpre tation of what there is to know about the Vestals. Yale University CELIA E. SCHULTZ celia.schultz(yale.edu This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions. (shrink)

This paper argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. I consider the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified, while also considering what general attitude towards "marriage" and legal recognition of the right to marry are most consistent with political liberalism. I argue that a liberal (...) state should get out of the "marriage business" by leveling down to a universal status of "civil union" neutral as to the gender and affective purpose of domestic partnerships. I then refute what I regard as the four most plausible rational objections to offering this civil union status to multi-member domestic partnerships. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifically, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (by whatever name it goes in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable. Arguments from the welfare of children, fairness in the spousal market, and the abuse of family subsidies are also considered and found insufficient for excluding polygamy. (shrink)

This article examines the role of mainstream political participation in the quest for gender equitable citizenship as a measure of the attainment of democracy. Citizenship stands here as the appropriate measure for the implementation of women's rights as human rights. The article examines citizenship status through the prism of representation in mainstream politics in the context of democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to European Union accession negotiations, gender was marginal on the political agenda in most countries in the (...) region. Indeed, what counts as 'political' had been narrowed to denote formal party and legislative politics alone. The contradiction between this definition and the discursive validation of civil society involvement is explored, both within the region and by international donor agencies and supranational governments such as the European Union. Some empirical evidence of the barriers hindering women's access to the public sphere of the polity is presented. Finally, strategies such as the introduction of quotas that are designed to overcome the factors curtailing women's capacity to become active citizens in the public sphere of politics are discussed. (shrink)

Americans have reason to be concerned about the condition of American democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Surveys show that civic participation has declined, cynicism about government has increased, and young people have a weak grasp of the principles that underlie our constitutional system. Crucial questions must be answered: How serious is the situation? What role do schools play in shaping civic behavior? Are current education reform initiatives—such as multiculturalism and school choice—counterproductive? How can schools contribute toward reversing (...) the trend? This volume brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to probe the relation between a healthy democracy and education. Their original and provocative discussions cut across a range of important topics: the cultivation of democratic values, the formation of social capital in schools and communities, political conflict in a pluralist society, the place of religion in public life, the enduring problems of racial inequality. Gathering together the most current research and thinking on education and civil society, this is a book that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the quality and future of American democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Girardian Theory and Feminism: Critique and Appropriation Susan Nowak Syracuse University The construction of theories of relationality, society, and religion supportive of women and women's experience is one of the major concerns of feminist scholarship today.1 This study examines the arguments put forth by feminist scholars who contend that the Girardian theory offers important contributions to their work.2 These scholars use the insights of the Girardian theory (...) into the intrinsic connection between ritual and violence, religion and modes ofrelationality, myth and societal formation, and victimage and social cohesion to critique the androcentric-patriarchal worldview that has shaped western civilization.3 Part One of this study will identify the elements of the 1 It is important to state the well known fact that there is no such thing as the feminist position, theory, or scholarship. It is of the very nature of feminist projects to be diverse, to acknowledge and honor the existence of difference and particularity. In the realms of religion and literature, projects by white Christian and Neo-pagan feminists have been criticized by both womanist and Jewish feminist scholars for their failure to uphold, in practice, this commitment to difference and particularity. 2 1 confine my attention to the ways in which the Girardian understanding of religion, societal formation, and modes of relationality informs the relation of violence and victimage to women. In order to explore the basic issues involved, I examine various writings of Martha Reineke, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Halford, Rebecca Adams, Carole Deering Paul, Cynthia Chase, Ann Demaitre, and Linda Alcoff. 3 It is important to clarify for this study the terms "androcentrism" and "patriarchy." "Androcentrism" refers to patterns of thinking that posit the humanity of dominant male human beings as normative for all human beings; all non-normative human beings are viewed, accordingly, as derivative of, and dependent upon, the normative male. "Patriarchy" is the structural expression of an androcentric worldview. "Patriarchy" as one identified reality does not exist; rather it is a diversified reality whose expressions are influenced by the sociopolitical, historico-religious context. Its structure is so shaped that the multiple forms ofpower within a society are possessed by the dominant males. Women and non-normative men do not 20Susan Nowak Girardian theory that feminist scholars judge to be most useful to their projects, elements that serve as vital theoretical underpinnings for feminist critiques of conceptual frameworks, modes of relationality, and social structures which perpetuate the victimage of women. Part Two examines elements within the Girardian theory which feminist scholars judge to be informed by an androcentric-patriarchal worldview. According to feminist theoreticians, those elements reinforce the oppressive dimensions of human relationships, of social institutions, and of religion. Because of this influence it is claimed that aspects of the Girardian theory cannot promote an authentic sense of selfhood and agency for women. It is, however, also the position of feminist scholars that a revisionary process could strip the theory of its androcentric elements and retool it in a manner supportive of women and women's experiences.4 In this section I will highlight their recommendations for such a revision. Part Three is my critique of the feminist critique. I will indicate what I find to be the major weakness in feminist projects to-date and discuss the ways in which the Girardian concept of difference may offer a possible corrective. Part One Methodologically, a hermeneutic of suspicion is central to feminist projects. Its usage supports two main tasks of feminist scholarship: the retrieval of women's experiences and history from the oppression of silence, as Martha Reineke observes ("Body" 246), and the exposure of androcentric thought frames and patriarchal structures which have relegated women's history and experiences to the crippling domain of silence. René Girard's employment of a hermeneutic of suspicion for the analysis of the myths and have access to power by their own right. Women have access to power only through the men to whom they belong. The "androcentric-patriarchal worldview" can be summarized, then, in terms of an ethos which functions to exclude, to marginalize, and to render invisible in language and public life all who are defined as non-normative human beings. The... (shrink)

Currently, religion and globalization seem to be working towards opposite ends. As Mark Juergensmeyer has noted, while religiously invoked terrorism fragments society, the Internet, cell phones and the media industry foster the formation of an increasingly global social fabric. But religion is not a single faceted phenomenon. As much as there are prophets of violence such as Osama bin Laden, there are prophets of peace and reconciliation such as Bishop Desmond Tutu. How a civil society might be (...) configured in relation to the inherent ambiguity surrounding religious traditions remains difficult to discern. How might Christian traditions make a positive contribution to this context? To answer this question I will articulate a dialogue between Jürgen Habermas's theory of civil society and the political theology of Karl Barth. (shrink)

This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women'ss activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more (...) space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur'an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and citi- zenship of women depends on the willingness of men to include them. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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This compelling new book engages leading theorists to consider how cultivating emotions can impact on social justice. Although the presence of political emotions can appear counterproductive to stability and peace, there is an increasing recognition that emotions can be harnessed to empower community cohesion and social justice. Covering such key issues as adaptive preferences, capabilities, civil religion, compassion, conscience, dignity, feminism, imagination, multicultural citizenship, perfectionism, political liberalism, public sentiments, sympathy, Political Emotions challenges readers to explore the role (...) emotions can and should play in our modern society – and at a time when new ideas about how to foster a decent public sphere and overcome intolerance are urgently needed. Drawing particularly on the work of Martha C. Nussbaum, and including a chapter giving her personal response to the issues raised in the individual essays, this is a fascinating read for all of those interested in social and political philosophy today. (shrink)

This text examines the tensions and the dissonances in the relation between religion and public sphere in contemporary Brazil. Based on a Sociology and on an Anthropology of the phenomena of secularization and secularity, the purpose is to demonstrate the “porosity” of the Brazilian public/political system with the religious milieu. By applying a socio-historical perspective, the work attempts to understand how the boundaries between religion and politics were precariously constructed throughout the constitution of our State in (...) Brazil, without ever having been institutionally well-delimited. This vacuum, which generated concessions on the part of the State to major Christian religions, guaranteed public legitimacy to their religious symbols in official state spaces, which are, in principle, neutral and secular. However, the 1988 Constitution represented the influx of modern and secular legislation that legitimized subjects of rights such as women, black people, indigenous peoples, LGBTs, environmentalists, etc. Given that background, this reflection aims at contributing to the interpretation of the complexity involved in the multiple and contradictory presence – in the public sphere – of both major Christian religions – which are based on an agenda of conservative religious values – and liberal and libertarian projects organized by segments of civil society and public agents, which generate tensions and dissonances. To understand this reality – as a mosaic of interactions and antagonisms –, we work with the notion of “pluri-confessionality” of Mexican sociologist Roberto Blancarte and also with the notions of secularity of “recognition” and of “integration” of French political scientist Philippe Portier. Hence, we attempt to reach theoretically and empirically a broader and nuanced understanding of our public-political system in the relation with the religious dimension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Romanian Cultural and Political IdentityDonald R. KelleyThe Journal of the History of Ideas, in collaboration with other institutions, including the Universities of Bucharest and Budapest and the Soros Foundation, recently sponsored the second in a series of international conferences being planned on topics in current intellectual history. (The first, “Interrogating Tradition,” was held at Rutgers University, 13–16 November 1997.) The Romanian conference, which was held in the Elisabeta Palace (...) in Bucharest (27–31 May 1998), was devoted to “Culture and the Politics of National Identity in Modern Romania.” Over forty scholars, mainly from Romania but some also from the U.S., France, Germany, and Hungary, gathered to discuss a variety of questions about Romanian society, past, present, and speculative future; and they were joined by at least as many visitors, especially students, from the local area and beyond.Topics discussed included politics, language, economics, historiography, religion, education, philosophy, ideologies, intelligentsia, particular intellectuals, minorities, and women (though not Gypsies or gays). Under this riot of rubrics a wide range of questions were posed in interdisciplinary fashion, with frequent, sometimes impassioned interventions. What is—was, might have been, can be—Romania? Who is a Romanian (and who not)? What is Romania’s relation to the West and the East? (And what are the “West” and the “East”?) To modernity, to modernism, to modernization? What is—has been, should be—the function of intellectuals, of political and cultural elites, in understanding the Romanian past and in setting a course for the future? What, more generally, is the role of history in answering such questions? Or is history perhaps (as Karl Krause remarked of psychoanalysis) the disease for which it claims to be the cure?Keith Hitchens’s keynote address suggested that rehashing old essentialist debates might not be productive at millennium’s end, but the conference itself could not avoid some excursions down the paths of memory and myth. For historians, Western historians anyway, Romania seems to have too many pasts. Located at the juncture of four previous empires, Romania is a mosaic, or perhaps a pandemonium, of ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological groups that can only imagine, or invent, a nationality. Geographically (and in many ways culturally) remote from the West, Romania for a long time (as Sorin Antohi remarked) lacked both a public sphere and a civil society; and suffering “a Counter-Reformation without a Reformation” (Alexandru Dutu’s phrase), it has not enjoyed a tradition of religious or ethnic toleration. Nor have either the Germans or the Jews (as Glass said) found their own unity within the changing borders of the modern Romanian state. Not until the nineteenth century did Romania develop, out of its Boyar background (as Siupiur argued), an intellectual elite that could create a modern national history and help turn “peasants into Romanians” (Antohi’s phrase); and even then this elite seemed more attracted to conservative [End Page 735] (Herder, Savigny, Burke) than to liberal views of autochthonism. Many features of Western modernity, such as Newtonian science, reached Romania late, and indeed there was a retrograde movement against liberalism under the aegis by orthodox religion. In any case this intelligentsia has been as fragmented and multiform as the Romanian past itself. True, some Romanian scholars like to posit a mainstream tradition, “excesses aside,” as one speaker put it—but how, asked another, can historians put “excesses” aside from the devastating perspective of this century?Political and cultural self-examination was the dominant theme of this conference. Nationality, said Pippidi, depends on three factors, viz., name, language, religion, and territory. The Romanian name dates from the tenth century, indicating a separation of the Roman from the Greek tradition in Wallachia; and from the seventeenth century the idea of a mainly Roman provenance was given privilege. As a language, “Romanian” was spoken in the late Middle Ages, but the first written document is dated 1521. The principal religion in Romania was and is Greek orthodox, although there are also Roman Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, and German Protestant communities, as well as the Uniate church created in the eighteenth century. As for the territory, this has been a matter of change, conflict, and confusion throughout the tragic course... (shrink)

This highly interdisciplinary volume explores the political and cultural dimensions of citizenship and their relevance to women and gender. Containing essays by leading scholars such as Iris Marion Young, Alison Jaggar, Martha Nussbaum, and Sandra Bartky, it examines the conceptual issues and strategies at play in the feminist quest to give women full citizenship status. The contributors take a fresh look at issues, going beyond conventional critiques, and examining problems in the political and social arrangements, practices, and conditions that diminish (...) women's citizenship in various parts of the world including both Western and undeveloped nations. (shrink)

Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism portrays the high tide of nineteenth-century imperialism as the defining moment in the establishment of a global discursive hegemony, in which European attitudes and concepts gained a universal validity. The idea of “religion” was central to the civilizing mission of imperialism, and was shaped by the interests of a number of colonial actors in a way that remains visibly relevant today. In East and Southeast Asia, however, many of the concerns that statecraft, law, scholarship, (...) and conversion had for religion transcended the European impact. Both before and after the period of European imperialism, states used religion to engineer social ethics and legitimate rule, scholars elaborated and enforced state theologies, and the missionary faithful voiced the need for and nature of religious conversion. The real impact of this period was to integrate pre-existing concerns into larger discourses, transforming them in the process. The ideals of national citizenship and of legal and scholarly impartiality recast the state and its institutions with a modernist sacrality, which had the effect of banishing the religious from the public space. At the same time, the missionary discourse of transformative conversion located it in the very personal realm of sincerity and belief. The evolution of colonial-era discourses of religion and society in Asia since the departure of European imperial power demonstrates both their lasting power and the degree of agency that remains implicit in the idea of hegemony. (shrink)

The author intends to look at Romanian cultural transition as an ongoing process which since 1989 has known an accelerated pace according to the fall of communism and the real perspectives of integration in the European Union. Seen within the cultural constraints of globalization, the impact of social and cultural change in Romanian society affected considerably the cultural behavior of the individual as well as the setting of new institutions, their functioning and implicitly the rhythm of democratization. Remarking on modernization (...) in Eastern Europe, the author consid- ers that unless civil society asserts its presence, reconstructing the Romanian public sphere, transition may be a reversible process. (shrink)

Is religion becoming ‘deregulated’ in secular, pluralist societies? In the public sphere in which freedom of opinion laid the foundations of democracy, no single comprehensive worldview could be allowed to dominate. The warring Christian confessions of Europe discredited the public role of religion, which gave way to Enlightenment rationalism as the regulative norm of society and the newly emerging sciences. But religion is now assuming a new status as the public sphere becomes global. The (...) religions themselves are part of the new global dynamic and the search for a global ethic. Human dignity, on which human rights must be based in global civil society, is nurtured by the narrative traditions of the religions. The God of the monotheistic faiths is thus regaining a public and political role, but there is a danger that this will turn out to be that of a legitimator of violence and a guarantor of exclusive truth claims. The mystics of these traditions teach us that God’s absence can be a mode of God’s presence. If God’s presence in the public sphere does not take the form of dominance, it could also provide a basis for dialogue with non-theistic traditions. Neither the neutral public rationality of the Enlightenment nor a universal theology is an adequate response to the need for shared values in the emerging global public sphere. We must learn to negotiate meanings and values in an ongoing process of communicative interaction and intersubjective universality. (shrink)

Analysts of political culture within the "civil religion" tradition have generally assumed that discourse in civil society is structured by a single set of enduring codes based on liberal traditions that actors draw upon to resolve crises. Based on two case studies of national crises and debate in Brazil during its transition to democracy, I challenge this assumption by demonstrating that not only do actors draw upon two distinct but interrelated codes, they actively seek to impose one (...) or another as dominant. In Brazil this is manifest in actors who defend elements from the code of liberty and its valuation of the freestanding citizen, and those who defend the corporate code and its valuation of the collectivity over the individual. In an earlier debate on crime the corporate code was dominant, but in a later debate surrounding presidential improprieties, the liberal code became dominant. This analysis makes two contributions to the literature: it highlights the importance of nonindividualist cultural codes, such as the corporate code, in animating discourse in the public sphere in democratizing societies, raising attention to the importance of the symbolic contestation between actors seeking to establish one or another code during political transitions. Second, it offers a subtle commentary on the literature on democratization: changes in collective representations in the public sphere may not proceed apace of institutional changes and may be contingent on the kinds of crisis events and actors willing to contest previously dominant codes. (shrink)