The localised madrasas of Afghanistan: their political and governance entanglements

This paper focuses on the operation of madrasas in Afghanistan. While numerous projects, initiatives and studies have focused on education generally in Afghanistan, considerably less attention has been directed towards madrasas specifically. Part of the reason can be attributed to the unclear role they play in the wider efforts to provide education across the country and the difficulty of formally including them within the nation-building project. The claim of this paper is that madrasas in Afghanistan are by and large localised and community-driven. The localised nature of Afghan madrasas can be understood as the product of the political tensions throughout the country’s history between a state marked by tenuous authority and dispersed communities closely observant of unwelcome state interference. Moreover, the government lacks the resources and reach to provide educational services in many rural areas, thereby tacitly relying on localised madrasa to provide a base level of education to much of the population. Understanding the entanglements between education, politics and authority is crucial for appreciating the unique space that madrasas inhabit within the country.     

Notes for a cultural history of family therapy

The official history of family therapy describes its beginnings as a daring technical and philosophical departure from traditional individual treatment in the 1960s, inspired especially by the "system thinking" of Gregory Bateson. This celebrated origin story needs to be supplemented with a longer and larger history of both practice and thought about the family, and that is the subject of this article. The longer history goes back to the founding of social work by Mary Richmond, of pragmatism by William James, and of the organic view of social systems intervention by John Dewey. Seen against this background, family therapy is, among other things, a consequence of the development of persistent elements of American professional culture, experience, and philosophy. The taking of this historical-anthropological view discloses also the origins of two other histories that have made their contribution to the development of family therapy: a science of observing communication processes that starts with Edward Sapir and leads to contemporary conversation analysis, and a history of mesmerism in the United States that culminates in Milton Erickson and his followers.     

Intersubjective cultural representations predicting behaviour: The case of political culture and voting

Research has shown that cultural identification is influenced by the congruence between people's personal values and intersubjectively represented cultural values. The current research extended this finding to voter choice and behaviour. We hypothesized that people whose values and attitudes are similar to the collective representations of the political party that an election candidate belongs to would be more likely to vote for that candidate. Also, this relationship would be mediated by party identification. We found support for our hypotheses in two studies, one on the Legislative Council election in Hong Kong and the other on the 2004 US presidential election.     

Between Islam and anti-globalization: cultural, political and religious debates in the German Muslim newspaper Islamische Zeitung

This paper examines the Islamische Zeitung (IZ), a newspaper made by German Muslims for German Muslims that informs about political, cultural, and theological topics. I argue that beyond providing information, the paper aims to create a platform of debate for a growing group of, in particular, younger pious educated Muslims who examine current politics by way of an Islamic and also an anti-globalization perspective. Of relevance for this audience are Islamic knowledge, local and global politics, everyday religious concerns and practices, and cultural affairs. I illustrate how by discussing certain topics on its pages, the makers of the IZ support specific issues of debates among some pious individuals, such as for example the participation of pious Muslims (men and women) in the democratic process by way of running in elections. Finally I argue that the IZ seeks to link the German Muslim community to the context of the global ummah and here in particular the globalized ummah as a new community marked by a shared popular culture universe. I illustrate that contrary to the claims of some of its opponents, the IZ is a platform for German Muslim affairs that participates in the broader public sphere as much as it helps to mediate a variety of possibilities for the participation of individuals and communities.     

The social and cultural roots of political violence in Central America

The paper suggests that there are specific features of violence, both personal and organized that have roots in the cultural formation of the Central American peoples. Its focus is on the three neighboring countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and on the ideological violence of the twentieth century. The paper considers various aspects of the social character of the Spanish Americans of this area, their concepts of manliness, and their religion, as these affect both rich and poor, and contrasts these features with the attitudes of the indigenous Indian community. Having established that political violence is endemic in the region, the paper considers the role of Hispanic culture in shaping this violence. Emphasis is placed on the notion of machismo, which is identified not with pleasure seeking but with defiance of death. The attitudes of the people of this area toward death shape their attitudes toward violence. They are shown to have a fascination with the instruments of death, especially the machete among the lower classes and the gun among the university students. These attitudes are contrasted with the relatively non-violent attitudes of the Indians. The studies cited in this paper show the Indians as less interested in competition and aggression that the Hispanic population. In the last analysis, the violence of the Central American is intensely personal and can be shown to derive from the basic social and cultural fabric of the society.     

Thomas Cromwell: a life

Abstract

This study shows how the rise of the English separatist movement in the latesixteenth century was characterized by a polemical struggle over the applicability of the epithet of ‘Donatism.’ A pejorative slur, the Donatist label was often utilized during the early-modern period against dissident movements which refused to recognize the legitimacy of the established church. It was a perfect polemical weapon, serving to connect such rogue congregations with all the dangerous implications, both theological and political, of the ancient schism. But what was ‘Donatism’ in the context of Elizabethan England? What were its characteristics and subversive doctrines? In this article, I will examine the portrait of the ancient sect as painted by both the opponents of separatism and the early separatist leaders themselves in order to assess what aspects of the Donatist label resonated with the polemical presuppositions of each side.     

Thomas M. Magoon: Innovation,Renewal, Making a Difference

Thomas M. Magoon's 30 years of service and professional values are discussed in this interview from three overlapping perspectives: personal, professional, and familial. Magoon is a pioneer in that he has demonstrated professional innovation, mentoring, and service with conviction, action, and special caring.     

Social representations of history,cultural values,and willingness to fight in a war: A collective‐level analysis in 40 nations

This study explores at the national level beliefs about world history and their relationship with cultural values and attitudes towards a national war. A country‐level analysis of university samples from 40 nations involving 7279 students showed that beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and lawful processes were positively associated with lower human development, and materialistic and power distance values, as well as with willingness to fight in a future national war. Further, beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and as lawful process were positively related with a stronger disposition to fight, even after controlling for cultural values and human development. Results are discussed in the framework of conceptualizing social representations of history as part of national political cultures.     

Inferiority and bereavement: Implicit psychological commitments in the cultural history of Scottish psychotherapy

Abstract

The author has argued that psychoanalytic psychotherapy was seen in Scotland as a way to purify Christianity of supernaturalism and moralism, and to propel the faith in a scientifically rational and socially progressive direction. In making this historiographic claim, certain disciplinary protocols are followed, such as the symmetry postulate and a deprecation of reductive psychohistorical explanation. Nonetheless, the contemporary historian of psychotherapy is a psychologized subject whose historical practice rests upon a complex, prereflective background of psychological presuppositions.     

Continuity and innovation in the history of political science: The case of Charles Merriam

Charles Merriam has been characteristically treated, in historical accounts of American political science, as effecting a radical break with the nineteenth-century tradition and with the historicism that characterized the Columbia school from which he emerged. Although it would be a mistake to depreciate his contribution to subsequent political science, we misunderstand both Merriam and the contemporary discipline if we project images of the present on his work and fail to see the degree to which he embraced both the form and content of the study of politics initiated by his teachers William Dunning and John Burgess.