The Return Of The Religious

Recents discussions of expansion in the European Union and the possibility of envisioning a Muslim country in it has exacerbated the deep-seated anxiety about Islam among the liberal and extreme right in Europe. This paper suggests that there are recurring elements in the discourse of European cultural identity and one of these elements is the representation of Islam in its alterity to European identity and civilization. Questioning the thesis of a radical break with the Christian past, this paper questions whether the European cultural identity which is being formed today signifies a break with a religious form of identification. The liberal and extreme right opposes Turkish membership on the grounds that the differences between ‘European values’ and ‘European culture and lifestyle’ and Turkey's culture are what makes the latter essentially and fundamentally external to the essence of Europe. Tracing the remnants of Christian discourse in the contemporary fashioning of European identity, this paper discusses how Christianity, with its secularized versions, which are now displaced to culture and lifestyle, still holds a privileged position as a unifying theme in Europe. It suggests that one of the tests that awaits Europe is whether it will be capable of articulating a new but democratic identity for Europe, one that is responsive to the differences of the other or whether it wants to continue to be European by way of its old methods of exclusion.     

The French New Right: multiculturalism of the right and the recognition/exclusionism syndrome

This article studies a seeming paradox – the adoption of multi-culturalist strategies and arguments by the neo-fascist European New Right. Why would neo-fascists adopt such a theoretical framework, and why has multiculturalism failed in Europe? In this article, I argue that the European New Right employs a multiculturalism framework, which I define as a recognition/exclusionist one, in order to create a new discourse of ‘legitimate exclusionism’ of non-authentic European immigrants. In short, multiculturalism, by celebrating differences between ethnic and cultural groups, inherently admits that there exist such differences between individuals. This allows neo-fascists to distinguish between themselves and ‘others’, immigrants not sharing their cultural heritage, and to claim the need for protecting such a cultural heritage through exclusion of others. As this article attempts to claim, immigrants will not benefit from multiculturalism, but the right of the radical integralist in its different versions.     

Values,identities and social constructions of the European Union among Turkish university youth

The present study aimed to investigate Turkish university youth's constructions concerning the European Union (EU) and their reactions to the EU's December 2002 Copenhagen summit decision to delay discussion of Turkey's entry to the EU. Specifically it aimed to show that socio‐political identities among Turkish youth were related to historical developments in Turkey's past and that these identities had associations with values of ethnocentricism, patriotism, and secularism. Furthermore it was predicted that constructions of the EU reactions to the decision would be related. Students (400) from five universities at the three largest cities of Turkey participated in the study. Three identities, Nationalist‐Islam, Kemalist, and Western; three constructions of the EU, Europe as Different, Impermeable Boundaries, and Different but Advantageous, and two perceived causes for the decision, Differences‐Conflict and Justification emerged from factor analyses. Second order factor analysis revealed that Nationalist‐Islam identity and authoritarian, ethnocentric and antisecular values formed a cluster whereas Kemalist and Western identities were grouped with low levels of patriotism. Positive and negative constructions of the EU and reactions to the Copenhagen decision were also grouped under two separate factors. Further analyses revealed that an index of urbanization composed of parental education and rural‐urban origin predicted the Authoritarian‐Nationalistic cluster and that this value‐identity cluster predicted positive and negative views of the EU. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating Turkish university students’ preferences for mental health therapists: A conjoint analysis approach

Due to fast-paced cultural and societal changes in Turkey, Turkish students now accrue both eastern and western cultural motives, which place Turkish students under stress. However, Turkish students have a stigma toward seeking mental health services. The current study aimed to use conjoint analysis to examine Turkish students’ preferences for mental health therapist variables regarding seeking help for adjustment problems to life in college. Students from two universities in Turkey were recruited on a volunteer basis to participate in this study (N = 235). The results indicated that the training institution, age, professional background, geographical region and gender significantly influence students’ formation of preferences for mental health therapists. The training institution had the most predominant effect on preferences. Implications for promoting help-seeking and mental health service utilization in Turkey are discussed.     

Nature,culture and social psychology

It is proposed that ideas about ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, key concepts in structural anthropology, have an important bearing on assumptions underlying rival theoretical approaches in social psychology. Experimental social psychologists tend to make the tacit assumption that they are dealing only with nature, while ethogenists like Harré explicitly concentrate on culture and treat nature as irrelevant. Others like Tajfel and Moscovici occupy a middle ground, being concerned with both aspects. Perhaps the most radical critic is Gergen, whose rejection of nature and culture is discussed in detail and shown to be largely based on western cultural beliefs. It is further suggested that mainstream experimental social psychology, epitomized by Aronson's The Social Animal, is equally culture-bound, although masquerading as the study of nature. This contention is supported by an account of predominant failure of replication in a not greatly dissimilar culture. It is concluded, with Doise and Berry, that we need ‘multiple social psychologies’, and with Tajfel and Pepitone that social psychological research must consider the wider system within which social behaviour takes place.     

Social representation of events in world history: Crosscultural consensus or Western discourse? How Turkish students view events in world history

The perceptions of historical events are considered to be an important cultural, political, and social psychological variable. Earlier studies have shown a crosscultural consensus on historical events that are considered to be important. It has been indicated that a strong Western–Christian European template dominates the view of which events are considered to be important events in history, by many samples across the world. It was the aim of this study to test this finding with a Turkish sample, which would represent some unique characteristics in that it is Muslim, comes from an Empire background, and has undergone a recent nation‐building process. College students (n = 372) responded to a questionnaire that was utilized in seven other countries. It was shown that Turkish students were not Eurocentric as expected by the literature: They were highly sociocentric; they gave importance to events related to Turkish history. They were similar to their European counterparts in that war and violence were given primary importance when selecting events as important in history. However, they did not behave as predicted by earlier literature: They did not see Western European events as having a primary importance in history but gave at least equal importance to events that originated from Ottoman Empire roots. The results were discussed in terms of the unique cultural and historical variables that contribute to the identity and social psychological attributions of Turkish students. Further research should focus on not only which events are considered as important historical events but also the reasons behind these.     

Innovation in therapeutic practice with ‘violent youth’: A discourse analysis of the non‐violent resistance approach

Introduction: The introduction of the innovative non‐violent resistance approach (NVR) at a multi‐agency service in east Kent, UK, has presented challenges in terms of the recruitment of the necessary wider professional support for the family, with some professionals seeing the approach as not child‐focused. Aims and objectives: To identify child‐focused themes among professionals, and to compare these with discourses used in NVR and, for comparison, in the Webster‐Stratton approach, to elucidate possible obstacles to the acceptance by professionals of NVR. Methods and analysis: A focus group of experienced professionals was convened to discuss what it means to be child‐focused, and a thematic analysis was conducted. Key texts from NVR and the Webster‐Stratton approach were selected and analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Results: Being child‐focused was considered to require the child's voice being heard, at least by the parents. Power differentials and developmental issues were also highlighted in the discussion. The key text analyses suggests that the Webster‐Stratton approach is communicated through familiar ‘biomedical’ and ‘missionary’ discourses, while surprisingly NVR is communicated through a discourse of ‘war’ as well as the more familiar and child‐focused ‘family values’ discourse. Implications: The ‘war’ discourse used by NVR, in which violent young people are seen as aggressors and oppressors, challenges the traditional discourses of childhood formed around notions of innocence. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to furthering the adoption of NVR as an effective way of working to help violent children of all ages.     

New democrats: religious actors, social change and democratic consolidation in Turkey

I analyze the positive and leading role religious actors play in democratic consolidation in Turkey in recent years. I argue that major social changes might lead to such outcomes. Empirically, I show that two major religious actors in Turkey—the Gulen Movement and the Justice and Development Party (AKP)—have adopted favorable positions on EU membership, ethnic and religious minorities, and pluralism in the last decade. This remarkable transformation owes its existence to the economic liberalization reforms initiated in the early 1980s, and the “post-modern coup” of 1997. This transformation reflects the need of both religious actors for greater democracy from a purely self-interested perspective. The Gulen Movement prefers an open and democratic system to sustain its organizational existence. The AKP responds to the preferences of its own constituency. These unique conditions have made two religious actors catalysts of democratization along with some liberal democrats in Turkey. Empirically, I rely on European Union’s Turkey progress reports and a recent analysis of religious Turkish media to support the argument.     

Fake religions,politics and ironic fandom: the Church of the SubGenius,Zontar and American televangelism

This paper challenges recent arguments that the Church of the SubGenius (COSG) is a ‘real’ religious organization, in that it purportedly provides a path to spiritual enlightenment. Besides downplaying the COSG’s comedic aspects, these essentialist approaches have largely ignored its historical development within the American ‘alternative’ underground of the 1980s and early-1990s. Drawing on interviews and the analysis of participatory media, this paper examines the COSG alongside Zontar, a stridently political zine named in honour of a B-movie monster that its founders claimed to worship. It is demonstrated that these interrelated, intentionally ‘fake’ religions emerged in the context of a turbulent American culture war, and confronted a conservative evangelicalism perceived to be a political threat. While the founders of the COSG and Zontar accordingly attacked and satirised politically engaged television preachers such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, their approaches to certain less explicitly political televangelists can be considered examples of ironic fandom, shot through with flashes of genuine admiration. In all of these activities, the founders of these fake faiths participated in a cultural discussion about authentic Christianity in America – playful religious work more indicative of the COSG’s cultural significance than its alleged status as an ‘authentic’ religion.     

Jungian socioanalysis,social dreaming and the emerging complexity of Europe1

This paper presents central elements of what we have termed Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psychoanalysis, social dreaming, group analysis and affect theories consisting of five assumptions (see also Odde & Vestergaard 2021). Jungian socioanalysis develops a process approach, as opposed to a systems approach, to sociality. In this paper we focus mostly on one of the five assumptions, namely that Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields ‘from within’ through smaller groups, treating group processes as a vehicle to gain a psychosocial and cultural understanding of larger social entities. We give an example of this approach with a presentation of two local social dreaming experiences in Denmark, focusing on Europe in transition. We show that the most significant outcome doesn't rely on the specific content of the dreams, but rather on the engagement in the social dreaming process itself, resulting in transformative image-affects. The paper ends with reflections on how these social dreaming experiences inform a Jungian socioanalysis, pointing to enabling intersubjective meetings, or present moments, opening for a deeper understanding from within the group as opposed to a systems approach. The paper is a revised version of a presentation at the 2018 European Congress in Avignon.     

The neglected non-citizen: statelessness and liberal political theory

The non-citizen is the new ‘other’. From popular discourse to political pronouncements and academic research, the non-citizen has become one of the subjects du jour. Among the ranks of the non-citizen, one finds a lesser-known category of people which has yet to be considered seriously by liberal political theory – the stateless. Thus far, liberal political theory has either ignored this category of persons or subsumed them under the subjects of immigration or refugeehood. The present article challenges this theoretical exclusion in two ways. First, it analyses the treatment of statelessness within the works of three prominent theorists on just membership – Michael Walzer, Seyla Benhabib and William Barbieri, Jr – and contends that these authors ignore the stateless as a unique category of non-citizen. Secondly, it explains why statelessness demands a distinct theoretical framework than is currently provided for within liberal political theory. The article contends that just membership questions necessitate not simply looking at who is let in and what naturalization procedures should be extended to them, but also entails examining who has always been on the inside and to whom we need to justify their continued exclusion.     

Counselling the (self?) diagnosed client: generative and reflective conversations

In this paper, we address the phenomenon of clients who present their concerns in the medicalised discourse of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fifth Edition (DSM-5). We contextualise this phenomenon, highlighting how a ‘diagnose-and-treat’ logic increasingly pervades everyday understandings and informs people's efforts to make sense of their concerns. We relate these cultural ways of sense-making to discursive counselling practice, noting possibilities for circumventing ‘discursive capture’ through reflective and generative dialogues. We then turn to two common ways in which clients present their concerns in counselling: (1) arriving self-diagnosed or diagnosed by another professional and (2) as a family in which parents present a child as having a mental disorder. We suggest ways of moving beyond medicalised discourse via resourceful and critically reflective conversations with clients.     

Andrew Shanks,German Idealism,and the Speculative Redemption of Theodicy

In this review essay I discuss and critically evaluate the neo-Hegelian theologian Andrew Shanks’ Theodicy Beyond the Death of ‘God’ with regard to its central argument of the theological adequacy of the composite theodicy funded by Hegel, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) and F. W. J. Schelling and also its highly individual theological style. While I commend Shanks’ impulses to enlarge the Hegelian discourse by speculative discourses that are more mythopoetic, especially given Shanks’ long-standing interest in the critical and constructive power of poetry, I consider it to be an open question not only as to whether Shanks has sustained his case for the theological adequacy of the composite theodicy, but whether this composite speculative matrix has the capacity to enlist the prophetic discourses of both the Bible and modern poetry that Shanks thinks it has. In addition, while Shanks’ theological style is a unique blend of disciplined analysis with a more hortatory rhetoric, as rendered in this his latest book, the generally polemical tone and the tendency to dismissive judgments not only regarding particular philosophers and theologians, but also particular forms of historical Christianity such as Roman Catholicism, compromise – if not entirely invalidate – its repeated message of inclusion.     

Stoicism unbound: Cicero’s Academica in Toland’s Pantheisticon

This article shows how and why John Toland’s Pantheisticon (1720) presents a version of Stoicism that locates Stoic ethics in terms of its ‘original’, naturalistic, foundation and devoid of any reconciliation with Christianity. As the article demonstrates, Toland’s account – based on Cicero’s Academica – stands opposed to the Christianized version of Stoicism that had dominated so much seventeenth-century discourse: in effect, Toland restores the materialism that was incompatible with neo-Stoicism. Furthermore, the article also suggests that this ‘restoration’ can be taken as a Spinozistic statement: Toland’s ‘application’ of Cicero celebrates what the first critics of neo-Stoicism had deemed dangerously close to Spinozism and so a threat to established piety.     

The lay of the land: European career research and its future

Over the past two decades, career research in Europe has developed into a dynamic discourse of its own. However, few if any considerations deal with its future development. Against the backdrop of the unique European context consisting of specific European macro‐themes, its methodological heritage and the current research landscape, this conceptual paper outlines core dimensions of a future agenda for European career research. They include units of analysis with varying degree of social complexity, the underlying scientific concern, thematic foci stemming from the European situation, and the role of time. This devises a ‘research space’ providing orientation for future career research in Europe. Concluding, the article touches on contributions of the European career discourse to its global counterpart.     

Editorial: Culture and religion

Based on theories of category formation (Baird) and genealogy (Foucault and Asad), and writing myself reflexively into the field, I question the consensus view that there is (or ever was) a viable social or religious ‘movement’ called ‘New Age’. Through a brief review of secondary sources, I disaggregate and historicise the field, drawing attention to signs of incompleteness, heterogeneity and cultural diffusion in preference to the dominant argument for a sui generis phenomenon. Within the field, I trace connections between Alice Bailey's discourse and Findhorn colony practice to illustrate one particular ‘New Age’ genealogy. I argue that ‘New Age’ is better represented as an expression of contemporary Anglo-American ‘popular religion’, a (re)conceptualisation that encourages more fruitful comparative historical and ethnographical analyses. Finally, I identify an emergent ‘second wave’ of ‘New Age’ studies, characterised by a concern for localised and contextualised representations.     

THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM: AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL MEANING IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

The rapid rise of varieties of historicism in Germany, during the mid‐ to late‐nineteenth century, and subsequently in England and America, resulted in a radical transformation of the principles of coherence and methods of analysis within biblical studies. 1 This paper will argue that the foundational ‘subject/object’ metaphysics of historicism has been subverted over the past century. For this reason, historical positivism should no longer be accorded the status of ‘normative paradigm’ and ‘gatekeeper’ over and against other interpretive approaches. This paper next lays out five principles for a renewed practice of historical inquiry. It argues, first, that historical inquiry continues to serve a vital function within biblical studies in its ability to call attention to historical difference, and, thereby, to contribute to a strategy of resistance to ideology and to totalizing theories; second, that the traditional appeal to historical ‘context’ and ‘author’ in the interpretation of texts continues to be a useful practice – despite the provisional and constructed nature of both – as a way of taking into account extra‐lingual reference and of avoiding presentism; third, that the substitution of new ‘grand narratives’ of Christian origins in place of the (quasi‐theological) ‘historical’ narrative of traditional Christianity – under the claim of historical objectivity – should be abandoned because the very concept of ‘origins’ is the result of a literalizing of a metaphor. Such totalizing narratives always reduce history's inherent polycentricism. Fourth, I will argue that the continued use of historicism in the antiquarian attempt to reconstruct the past, disconnected from both a quest for social justice and a desire for personal self‐creation, represents a form of thought that alienates scholars from themselves and from their real material contexts. Finally, and following on the previous point, this paper submits that the practice of historical analysis has an ethical dimension by virtue of the fact that the personhood of the biblical historian is indissolubly linked to other dimensions of life including the social and ethical aspects of life. These added dimensions complicate the making of choices, which is implicit within all practices of interpretation. These five principles are here suggested as points of departure for the reconceptualization of the scope and function of historical inquiry within the discipline of New Testament studies.     

‘Strong European emotions’: The politics of culture in the EU

In 2007 four video clips released by the European Union Media Programme achieved overnight popularity in their ability to present and capture the emotional core of being European (the clips can be seen on EUtube). The clips were designed to promote the Media Programme (2007–2013) and to encourage European citizens to identify with something that all of them have in common: ‘Love’, ‘Romanticism’, ‘Joy’ and ‘Sadness’. The clips have gained considerable interest. The video clip titled ‘Love’ has become the most watched European Union video clip ever. It shows eighteen couples having sex.In this paper I analyse the way in which such images mobilize the pleasures of fantasmic identification with the embodied agents of love and sex – images that viewers enjoy as consumers of popular culture – and how these pleasures are linked to the processes of supranational (European) identity building. In doing so, inspired by Sara Ahmed's work on the cultural politics of emotions and Ernesto Laclau's work on populism, I open a set of questions about the libidinal character or the affective dimensions of identification which images employ in order to construct identity formations. I argue that these clips are mechanisms that attempt to contribute to the construction of European supranational identity. They are part of the big network of projects established by European public policy makers that strive to produce ‘European culture’. They are designed not so much to give information about so-called ‘European emotions’ but to construct a European public. Each clip represents ambiguities which surround concepts of European culture and identity.     

Reassessing women,religion and the Turkish secular state in the light of the professionalisation of female preachers (vaizeler) in Istanbul

Since 2003 the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has increased the number of female preachers (vaizeler). These state appointed professional female preachers are engaged in illuminating women and providing them with an appropriate religious education. Within the frame of Turkish state’s regulation of religious affairs, this phenomenon is important since it calls into question both the state’s monopoly over religious officers and women’s access to the religious public realm. The article casts light on these issues by addressing the following questions: what does the Diyanet’s increase in female preachers reveal about the intertwined relationship between women, religion and the state in contemporary Turkey? Or, in other words, what does it reveal about the transformation of Turkey’s assertive secularism? Following year-long ethnographic observations of the vaizeler’s daily activities in three Istanbul districts (Bahçelievler, Üsküdar and Be?ikta?), this paper analyses the evolution of female religious engagement in Turkey. The concluding remarks highlight the trend of professionalisation and standardisation in the traditional activity of female preaching. The vaizeler’s sessions are also extremely telling of a broader and complex redefinition of Turkish secularism.