Taking liberties and making liberty: religious bounding and political violence in Sri Lanka

This paper argues that the relationship between religion and violent politics is best understood through a focus on religious practice. The case study of the Tamil Catholic Church within Sri Lanka's civil war is presented against a backdrop of Buddhist monk participation in violent insurgency decades earlier. The discrete cases evidence a common preoccupation with management of physical borders and discursive boundaries as actors seek to reproduce themselves and their work as legitimately ‘religious’. Despite relying on remaining ‘pure’ from the dirty political realm, in practice religion is bound to social action and reproduced through the violent circumstances it engages.     

Protest Against Waste Contamination in the ‘Land of Fires’: Psychological Antecedents for Activists and Non‐activists

The ‘Land of Fires’ is a district in Italy characterized by illegal waste disposal, waste burning, and citizen protests over contamination. This study investigates the relevance of several psycho‐social factors that predict citizens' intention to protest, taking into account different research traditions. In addition, we hypothesize the effect of protest antecedents to be moderated by past participation behaviour (i.e. the level of activism). Hence, our study is a first attempt to explore the effect of protest antecedents as a function of the individual level of activism through a cross‐sectional survey study (N = 306). The results show significant effects of collective identity, sense of injustice, costs of protest, and perceived risk (cognitive dimension) on intention to protest. The effects of collective efficacy and perceived risk (affective dimension) are moderated by participants' level of activism, and these effects are significant only for non‐activists. The relevance of this new approach is discussed, as well as practical implications and possible further developments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The labor of Job: The biblical text as a parable of human labor

This paper addresses how religion is playing an increasingly important role in empowering anti-nuclear protests at Gongliao in Taiwan. It begins by describing how the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan was originally dependant on the opposition political party, and then examines how growing disaffection with party politics at Gongliao has resulted in a local temple dedicated to the goddess Mazu coming to the forefront of the struggle. This paper frames the dispute as a struggle between three different ways of generating power (and implicitly, of losing power): first, the generation of nuclear power by bureaucrats and scientists working through the industrial sector; second, the generation of political power by opposition politicians and elite campaigners; and third, the generation of religious power by people rooted in local communities, creating an alliance between religious power and secular protest.     

The emotions least relevant to politics? Queering autonomous activism

Studies of emotion and activism have often attempted to uncover ‘the emotions most relevant to politics’ (Goodwin et al., 2001). This suggests that only certain feelings are productive for activism, while other emotions have less relevance for activist theory and practice. In this paper I ask if the notion of politically ‘relevant’ emotions helps perpetuate a distinction between what is considered political and what is not. This paper builds upon a case study in which I interviewed self-identified queer-activists about their experiences of autonomous activism. These interviews reveal how the everyday emotions surrounding the ‘personal’ politics of sexuality/intimacy are often seen as either less important, a distraction from, or entirely irrelevant to ‘real’ political issues. Ultimately, I want to challenge attempts to neatly separate our intimate lives from the public sphere of activism. I argue that it can never just be a matter of politics and emotion, but also the politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004). Therefore we should not just assume that emotions matter for resistance - without first realizing the importance of resisting these hierarchies of emotion.     

The curious,context‐dependent case of anger: Explaining voting intentions in three different national elections

Collective action is typically studied in social protest contexts and predicted by different motivations (i.e., ingroup identification and efficacy beliefs, and outgroup‐directed anger). Assuming that voting to some extent reflects a form of collective action, we tested whether these three different motivations predicted voting in Dutch, Israeli, and Italian national election contexts. Based on previous meta‐analyses on voting and collective action, we hypothesized that identification with and efficacy beliefs regarding this party would motivate voting across the different elections (i.e., context‐independent effects). As for anger, we predicted more context‐dependent effects, depending on whether the anger is targeting the previous government or at the political system at large. Results were largely in line with predictions, showing the relatively context‐independent motivational power of party identification and efficacy beliefs, and clearly context‐dependent effects for anger. Specifically, we found little support for a similar motivational power of anger targeting previous government policies, but anger targeting politics in general demotivated Dutch and Israeli participants to vote (interpreted as an expression of political cynicism), while curiously motivating Italian participants to vote (interpreted as a desire for system change from “old” to “new” politics). We discuss these findings in the context of voting in national elections, and recommend further integration of the voting and social protest literatures.     

An Intersectional Analysis of Gender and Race for Sexual Minorities Who Engage in Gay and Lesbian Rights Activism

Social movements aimed at increasing rights for sexual minorities have mobilized in the United States and throughout the world, yet studies on why gays and lesbians from a variety of racial backgrounds join and participate in these collective actions are rare. To address this gap, this study used a survey to identify the key factors that inspired four types of gay and lesbian rights activism: voting, petition signing, protesting, and civil disobedience. After conducting an intersectional analysis on 285 self-identified gays and lesbians from throughout the U.S. of how gender, race, and framing factors impacted these political behaviors, this study concluded that the act of publicly revealing one’s sexual identity and experiencing heterosexist discrimination generally increased activism on the behalf of gay and lesbian rights (regardless of gender or race). However, race and gender differences were noted, as White lesbians were less likely to protest and vote than lesbians of color. For gay men, race was less crucial to activism but experiencing workplace discrimination and embracing an activist identity were especially relevant in predicting activist behaviors.     

An activist religiosity? Exploring Christian support for the Occupy movement

While Christian involvement in progressive social movements and activism is increasingly recognized, this literature has rarely gone beyond conceptualising religion as a resource to consider instead the ways in which individual activists may articulate their religious identity and how this intersects with the political. Based on ten in-depth interviews with Christian supporters of the London Occupy movement, this study offers an opportunity to respond to this gap by exploring the rich meaning-making processes of these activists. The article suggests that the location of the Occupy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral was of central importance in bringing the Christian Occupiers’ religio-political identities to the foreground, their Christianity being defined in opposition to that represented by St Paul’s. The article then explores the religio-political meaning-making of the Christian Occupiers and introduces the term ‘activist religiosity’ as a way of understanding how religion and politics were articulated, and enacted, in similar ways. Indeed, religion and politics became considerably entangled and intertwined, rendering theoretical frameworks that conceptualise religion as a resource increasingly inappropriate. The features of this activist religiosity include post-institutional identities, a dislike of categorisation, and, centrally, the notion of ‘doings’—a predominant focus on engaged, active involvement.     

Reflections on a Crisis: Political Disenchantment,Moral Desolation,and Political Integrity

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: (i) we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and (ii) it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity.     

Apolitical Interpretation of Islam: Said Nursi's Faith-Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and Sufism

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Islam has generally been represented in the media as a political ideology and some academics have over-emphasized this political image of Islam. These are not baseless speculations; there are several political Islamic groups worldwide. However, there are also many apolitical Islamic groups. This article analyzes one of the most influential apolitical Islamic movements in the world, the Nurcus, and its founder, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. Nursi, the author of the Risale-i Nur collection, emphasized the ascetic aspect of Islam: ‘Ninety-nine percent of Islam is about ethics, worship, the hereafter, and virtue. Only one percent is about politics; leave that to the rulers.’ He also added, ‘I seek refuge in God from Satan and [party] politics.’ Through the analysis of Nursi's thought and activism, the article will try to answer the following questions: Was Nursi a Sufi? What are the theological and structural bases of Nursi's apolitical interpretation of Islam? What is the impact of the secular state in Turkey on the development of Nursi's apolitical outlook and activism? What does his apolitical understanding of Islam say to non-Turkish Muslims who do not live in a secular state?     

Technology and the civil epistemology of democracy

In analogy with Rousseau's concept of ‘civil religion’ as a system of ‘positive dogmas’, ‘without which’, as he observed, ‘a man cannot be a good citizen’, this paper advances the concept of ‘civil epistemology’ as the positive dogmas without which the agents of government actions cannot be held accountable by democratic citizens. The civil epistemology of democracy shapes the citizen's views on the nature of political reality, on how the facts of political reality can be known and by whom. Modern liberal democratic politics assumes that the exercise of political power can be manifest in a visible domain of publicly accessible facts. It rests on the Enlightenment faith in the powers of light and visibility to demystify political power, render political actors more exposed and therefore more honestly accountable and enlist the sense of sight as a vehicle of universal political participation. It is, in this context, that technology has come to play such an important symbolic role in the construction of the particular democratic genre of public action as a political spectacle. Democratic civil epistemology, and technology ‐ in the widest sense of the word ‐ as the prototype of action which can be observed in the field of visual perception, uphold the democratic conception of politics as a view. Together they define political actors as visible performers, journalists as observers (who translate actual seeing into virtual seeing) and the citizens as witnesses.     

Personalizing politics: a congruency model of political preference

Modern politics become personalized as individual characteristics of voters and candidates assume greater importance in political discourse. Although personalities of candidates capture center stage and become the focus of voters' preferences, individual characteristics of voters, such as their traits and values, become decisive for political choice. The authors' findings reveal that people vote for candidates whose personality traits are in accordance with the ideology of their preferred political party. They also select politicians whose traits match their own traits. Moreover, voters' traits match their own values. The authors outline a congruency model of political preference that highlights the interacting congruencies among voters' self-reported traits and values, voters' perceptions of leaders' personalities, politicians' self-reported traits, and programs of favored political coalitions.     

Strategically Prophetic Priests: An Analysis of Competing Principal Influence on Clergy Political Action

We assess clergy political activism dynamics using data from a national survey of Roman Catholic priests. Like their elite counterparts in interest groups and other secular political institutions, clergy encounter expectations and demands from competing principals when determining how to publicly act on key political issues. Building on insights from decades of clergy politics scholarship, we leverage new perspectives of principal-based influence by examining how Catholic priest perception of both local parish finances and diocesan bishop expectations affect their reported political actions. Our findings are consistent with the notion that parish and bishop principals condition priest political behavior, controlling for priest ideology. However, priest political action proves more sensitive to parish financial concerns than bishop encouragement.     

On Hannah Arendt: The Worldly In-Between of Human Beings and its Ethical Consequences

Abstract

In this paper, I show how a concept of ethics can be derived from Hannah Arendt’s theory of action in The Human Condition, which contains from her call for action. When she looks at the ‘political actor’, as well as at the concept of ‘political situation’, her ethical claim is first of all the need to take initiative, to act. Hence, ‘political situations’ as she defines them are discussed as common responsibilities. But common responsibility is rooted in the in-between of human beings, rather than in individual human nature and is determined by Arendt’s principle of humanity. Therefore, at the centre of an implicit Arendtian ethics stands the world and the in-between of human beings.     

Perceived Disagreement and Heterogeneity in Social Networks: Distinct Effects on Political Participation

ABSTRACT

Although the coexistence of conflicting opinions in society is the very core of democracy, people’s tendency to avoid conflict could keep them away from political discussion and participation. On the other hand, being exposed to diverse political views could motivate citizens to participate. We conducted secondary analyses on two 2013 ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) probability samples in order to test the hypotheses that perceived network disagreement (between an individual and her/his discussion partners) and heterogeneity (among discussants holding different political opinions) exert independent and opposite effects on political participation through motivation and knowledge. Results converged in showing that disagreement dampened, while heterogeneity encouraged, political participation (voting, propensity to abstain in future, offline and online activism, and timing of vote decision) by decreasing or increasing, respectively, political interest and, in turn, knowledge.     

Why ‘punk’? Religion,anarchism and feminism in Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer

Pussy Riot became world famous after their Punk Prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. This paper looks at the religious and political statements of some Pussy Riot members against the background of their Russian context and explains why the politically radical left-wing, anarchist and feminist group used the form of a punk prayer to express protest. Elaborating the connection of punk, religion and politics, I argue that punk is a sub-culturally established medium to express leftist, anarchist and feminist political convictions and to offend the religious and political hierarchy, especially when performed in the country’s most prominent cathedral; and also that the religiosity of at least some of the Pussy Riot members is not an obstacle to using a punk performance as their form to express protest; by contrast, punk is an adequate medium for ‘liminoid’ anti-authoritarian forms of religion like that of Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. In Russia, a punk prayer is not only a way for young anarchistically orientated feminists to celebrate their lifestyle, but also one of the very few ways to get attention for their concerns.     

Preaching and political debate on refugees

The article investigates how preaching relates to political debate on refugees through a study of sermons in Church of Norway in 2015/2016. The sermons are analysed in the context of the “refugee crisis” as it was mediated by national media and treated in public debate. The debate revolved around refugee politics, but included an exchange over the church’s role in the debate. The article investigates sermons as contributions to political debate on refugees and as negotiating the church’s role in political debate. A distinct finding is that most sermons collapse the historical distance to the biblical texts and employ them directly as instructions for moral and political action. The article identifies three homiletic strategies connected with three different ways of relating to public debate: A sentimental, a moralistic, and a heroic style of preaching.     

Group identification and political protest: farmers' protest in the Netherlands

Social identity theory is employed to conceptualise the role of group identification in the conversion of discontent into participation in political protest. It is assumed that higher levels of group identification stimulate participation in protest on behalf of the group. Perceived characteristics of the intergroup situation such as the permeability of group boundaries, and the stability and legitimacy of intergroup relations are supposed to modify the role of group identification. Group identification is decomposed into an affective and a behavioural component. Furthermore, ingroup identification is distinguished from outgroup differentiation; and groups are defined at different levels of inclusiveness. In a longitudinal study among Dutch farmers (n=168) the relationship between group identification and protest participation is investigated. Group identification, be it affective or behavioural, appears to influence action preparedness. People seem to enter the protest arena with some level of group identification. This level of group identification sets the level of action preparedness. Once set, the level of action preparedness remains fairly stable over time and appears to be a strong predictor of future action preparedness and participation. Action preparedness in its turn together with the behavioural component of group identification influences actual participation in collective action. Outgroup differentiation did not have any impact on protest participation. Identification with farmers in the European Union did not matter, but identification with farmers at the national or regional level did stimulate protest participation. Perceived characteristics of the intergroup situation did not have an impact on group identification, but permeability and stability did affect protest participation. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond ‘voice’, beyond ‘agency’, beyond ‘politics’? Hybrid childhoods and some critical reflections on children's emotional geographies

In this paper I argue that a significant proportion of research on children's emotional geographies has been deployed to reinforce the importance of children's ‘voices’, their (independent) ‘agency’, and the various ways in which voice/agency maybe deemed ‘political’. Without wishing to dismiss or dispense with such approaches, I explore potential ways to go ‘beyond’ concerns with voice/agency/politics. Initially, I review studies of children's participation (and participatory methods), activism and everyday lives that mobilise emotion and affect in productive ways. I contrast such studies with important questions raised by a reinvigoration of interest in the need for children to be able to represent themselves. I then explore the possibilities raised by so-called ‘hybrid’ conceptions of childhood – which go beyond biosocial dualisms – to enable further strides beyond voice/agency. Drawing on examples from alternative education and contemporary attachment theories, I explore some potential implications for children's emotional geographies and relational geographies of age of what I term ‘more-than-social’ emotional relations. Yet I do not offer an unequivocal endorsement of these hybrid emotions. Thus, I end the paper by issuing some words of caution – both in terms of the critical questions raised by more-than-social emotional relations, specifically, and in terms of engendering broader debate about how and why scholars do (children's) emotional geographies.     

Life Satisfaction and Political Participation: Evidence from the United States

Are people who are more satisfied with their lives more likely to participate in politics? Although the literature on political participation in the United States is one of the most theoretically and methodologically developed in political science, little research has sought to incorporate subjective life satisfaction into models of political participation. Instead, life satisfaction has been studied nearly exclusively as a dependent variable. By turning to life satisfaction as an independent variable, we contribute to the literatures on both political participation and life satisfaction. Using survey data, we find that individuals who are more satisfied with their lives are more likely to turn out to vote and participate in the political process through other avenues, and that the magnitude of this relationship rivals that of education. We also find that the relationship between life satisfaction and political participation is confined to “non-conflictual” forms of participation, and exhibits no relationship with the decision to engage in political protest.     

Small acts,kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

In this paper, we suggest that social scientists' accounts of ‘activism’ have too often tended to foreground and romanticise the grandiose, the iconic, and the unquestionably meaning-ful, to the exclusion of different kinds of ‘activism’. Thus, while there is a rich social-scientific literature chronicling a social history of insurrectionary protests and key figures/thinkers, we suggest that there is more to ‘activism’ (and there are more kinds of ‘activism’) than this. In short, we argue that much can be learnt from what we term implicit activisms which – being small-scale, personal, quotidian and proceeding with little fanfare – have typically gone uncharted in social-scientific understanding of ‘activism’. This paper will reflect upon one example of this kind of ‘implicit’ activism, by re-presenting findings from interviews undertaken with 150 parents/carers, during an evaluation of a ‘Sure Start’ Centre in the East Midlands, UK. From these interviews emerged a sense of how the Centre (and the parents/carers, staff and material facilities therein) had come to matter profoundly to these parents/carers. We suggest that these interviews extend and unsettle many social-scientific accounts of ‘activism’ in three key senses. First: in evoking the specific kinds of everyday, personal, affective bonds which lead people to care. Second: in evoking the kinds of small acts, words and gestures which can instigate and reciprocate/reproduce such care. And third: in suggesting how such everyday, affective bonds and acts can ultimately constitute political activism and commitment, albeit of a kind which seeks to proceed with ‘not too much fuss’.