Lighting up cosy atmospheres in Denmark

This article explores the use of light to stage atmospheres in a residential area of Copenhagen, Denmark. Both natural and electrical lights enable visibility but they also impart a certain sense of place that influences the way people behave and feel. The article investigates how light is about more than individual perception and plays a crucial role in orchestrating a sense of community, solitude and ‘secureness’ at home. Such staging of atmospheres, it is argued, importantly relies on cultural premises and notions of intimacy, informality and relaxation, encompassed in the Danish term hygge, or cosiness. Light frames such sense of secureness and cosiness by allowing for visual oscillations between separation and connection of people, places and things. In this way, investigating the use of light in shaping atmosphere offers a lens to explore how connections and networks of people, emotions and things, shape the home and links interior and exterior spaces.     

Souvenirs: Magical objects in everyday life

This article considers the role of souvenirs within domestic spaces. Souvenirs are ambivalent objects; at the same time the very epitome of tourism kitsch and personal objects for which the owner holds significant affection. Rather than pre-framing these objects either as ‘touristic signifiers’ or as personal memory objects, this article reflects on the roles they take as material and embodied co-habitants in domestic space, living - and communicating – with their owners. Hence, this paper departs from ‘humanistic’ accounts of cohabiting people and things and instead attempts to put human and non-human agents on an equal footing. It does so, by discussing the ‘magical capabilities’ of everyday objects that enable these to enchant the lives of their human cohabitants; animating them with affects and emotions, feelings of remembrance, affection, appreciation and loss. By drawing inspiration from autoethnography and in particular its potentials for interrogating objects, the author explores the ‘souvenirish’ qualities of five homely objects; using this exploration to enter into a dialogue with objects as well as theories and studies of objects. Considering the many faces of the souvenir - as utility item, mediator, fetish, tuner and artwork - the article suggests an opening for more imaginative thinking and explorations of how we live with objects in everyday life.     

Patriotism and Pride beyond Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum

Old and new complicities of collective political attachment in violence give patriotism a bad name. Simplistic positions often view collective attachment as either entirely bad or as sanitizable merely by adding to patriotism the adjective ‘critical’. Patriotic affectivity, as illustrated with the political emotion of pride, stands out within philosophical debates. This article argues that, to think about patriotism differently, we need to look more closely at ‘optics’ of patriotism and pride that have escaped debate although they are crucial for avoiding older pitfalls. To this end, I revisit Richard Rorty’s and Martha Nussbaum’s positions on pride by introducing more challenging examples of what being/feeling patriotic should mean. I reframe patriotism so that an ‘outward’ ‘optic’ acts as a strong corrective of the usual inward preoccupation with domestic issues within the polity and the state.     

Atmospheric memories: Affect and minor politics at the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings

This paper addresses how the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings was made present through political affects and atmospheres on 7 July 2015. Although the anniversary of a terrorist event forms an opportune moment for invoking the nation as united in feeling, we are interested in how people attune to political atmospheres of memory and trauma in multiple ways, which do not always cohere to sovereign narratives about unity and certainty. By focusing on these events through an attentiveness to the atmospheric and affective, we examine how these events were recalled, memorialised, felt and sensed in the small-scale ceremonies taking place across London on that morning, by way of a multi-authored sensory auto-ethnography. As such, we are led towards various moments of encounter, which involve ‘minor gestures’ (Manning, 2016), and imply ways of responding to acts of terror that rub against the unifying forces of the state. In contrast to the ‘rolling maelstroms of affect’ (Thrift 2004: 57) pursued by the state and media following a terrorist attack, this project is attentive to multiple, uncertain and ambivalent encounters. These matter because they suggest other ways of being political and of responding to both terrorist and state-led violence.     

South American Evangelicals’ Re-conquest of Europe

This article focuses on networks of South-American preachers, led by charismatic characters such as the Argentinean pastor Carlos Annacondia, who export themselves not only to countries within the Americas but also to Europe. The prevailing justification among Latin-American Evangelicals for undertaking this ‘reverse mission’ (Freston) is in the view that especially the ‘old’ Roman Catholic Europe is spiritually ‘cooled down’ and that the time is ripe for re-evangelizing it. This study analyzes the way in which network-based charismatic entrepreneurship has encouraged transnational imaginaries of re-conquering Europe spiritually, more specifically in terms of the meanings the members of these networks attribute to the ‘spiritual re-conquest’. I conclude by suggesting that, similar to flows from other regions in the global South, such as Africa, the much vaunted ‘reverse mission’ to Europe is vested with meanings that transcend the spiritual re-conquest as such. In the case of Latin America, this article argues, the chief motivation is symbolic: to strengthen the status of local churches and their leaders against the backdrop of a highly competitive religious market on the Latin-American sub-continent.     

Staging atmospheres: Materiality,culture, and the texture of the in-between

The article introduces the special issue on staging atmospheres by surveying the philosophical, political and anthropological literature on atmosphere, and explores the relationship between atmosphere, material culture, subjectivity and affect. Atmosphere seems to occupy one of the classic localities of tensions between matter and the immaterial, the practical and the ideal, and subject and object. In the colloquial language there can, moreover, often seem to be something authentic or genuine about atmosphere, juxtaposing it to staging, which is implied to be something simulated or artificial. Nevertheless, people’s experience of the environment is sought manipulated in a variety of contexts, often without offering a less ‘true’ experience of a situation than if it had not been manipulated by people. In fact, orchestrations of space are often central to sociality, politics and aesthetics. This introduction seeks to outline how a number of scholars have addressed the relationship between staged atmospheres and experience, and thus highlight both the philosophical, social and political aspects of atmospheres.     

Teasing ‘Islam’: ‘Islam’ as the Other Side of ‘Tolerance’ in Contemporary Dutch Politics

This article deals with the role of ‘Islam’ in contemporary Dutch political discourses on tolerance. I will show how Islam is described as an ideology (and not as a religion) competing with liberal values. I argue that political disputes are not at all about Islam as a living religion, but about ‘Islam’ as a culturally presumed menace to, or negative projection of, dominant Dutch imaginaries, such as tolerance and free speech, that are taken as elementary conditions for a liberal democratic state. The first part of this article deals with the staging and development of ‘Islam’ in Dutch politics since the 1970s. Part two develops a theoretical understanding of the framing of ‘Islam’ as the opponent of ‘tolerance’ and argues that this position shows a typical modern stance.     

“Climatic-affective atmospheres”: A conceptual tool for affective scholarship in a changing climate

This paper engages with the concept of affective atmospheres which has gained prominence in affect studies and suggests that in this era of global climate change, we need to ‘acclimatise’ this term. Working with a range of empirical examples, I argue that we can understand the climatic and affective to be entangled processes that co-produce each other. Working with the conceptual affordances of affective atmospheres offers much potential for research investigating the emotional and affective dimensions of climate change, enabling considerations that go beyond the individualism and anthropocentrism of more conventional approaches. Additionally, attuning to the climatic dimensions of affective atmospheres lessens the representational baggage of this term by moving beyond a metaphorical use of ‘atmosphere’. The refined concept I propose, climatic-affective atmospheres, offers promising opportunities for contributing to more effective and ethical social responses to climate change, for example, by enabling attention to how climate change reconfigures, disrupts, shapes and directs humans, and how everyday human affective practices contribute to changing or stabilising climate.     

Islam offline—living ‘The message’ behind the screens

This article is an ethnographic account of the Social Section of Arabic language Islam Online. It focuses on what Krüger has called the ‘hidden knowledge’ of religious websites. Drawing on longitudinal fieldwork in the Islam Online offices in Cairo, Egypt, this article brings forth and analyzes rich data about Islam Online employees’ work practices and meaning-making activities. Drawing on an organizational ethnographic approach, this article highlights new aspects of this influential Islamic website. More specifically, the author employs Linde’s concept of an ‘institutional narrative’ to conceptualize and analyze the strong institutional identity and corporate values that are in play in everyday work practices. Focusing on key tropes such as ‘the message’, ‘professional’, ‘pluralistic’, and ‘pioneers’, the article demonstrates how Islam Online’s Islamist institutional narrative includes a creation story and set of organizational values that play out in the execution of work tasks. Moreover, the author argues that the objective of the emic concept of “the message” is to contribute to both self- and societal-reform in the Arab world, and that Islam Online’s own work environment represents a micro-cosmos of this ideal.     

Being student leaders or ‘ordinary’ students: Children's emotional experiences of relationships with others in a Chinese school

The student leader system is commonly used in Chinese schools. Student leaders are children who are elected by classmates, then assigned by teachers, to be responsible for monitoring classmates' behaviour. Based on the data collected through an intensive ethnographic study in a rural primary boarding school in China in 2016, this article discusses emotional experiences in peer relationships reported by both student leaders and other ‘ordinary’ students, who were not student leaders. The article argues that China's student leader system is likely to create hierarchical relationships between student leaders and ‘ordinary’ students, and exposes ‘ordinary’ students to the potential risk of being exploited by student leaders. The article also argues that because of this student leader system and relevant student evaluation values, student leaders and ‘ordinary’ students all feel stressed when they are building up and maintaining peer relationships, such as friendships, with each other.     

Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization,by Hans G. Kippenberg,trans. Brian McNeil,Stanford University Press: Stanford,CA, 2011, viii + 286 pp. ISBN 978 0 8047 68726, US$70 (cloth); ISBN 978 0 8047 6873 3, US$21.95 (paperback)

The author argues in this paper that the ‘state effects’ generated by religious movements – even those operating at the margins of societies – require us to consider anew the impact of religious movements on state formation. In Sri Lanka, for instance, evangelicals are a minority. Yet their practice of proselytizing to new audiences was considered ‘unethical,’ generating opposition that was directed not only at them, but also at ruling elites for failing to stem what was seen as an intrusion of incompatible ‘Western’ ideals. Instead of considering how such Christian movements seek to ‘take over’ the functions of the ‘state’ as has been the experience in the United States and parts of Latin America, the author illustrates in this article why it makes more theoretical sense to ask how their activities impinge upon the conceptual frameworks through which the ‘state’ is imagined.     

Role Responsibility

This article is about ‘role responsibility’ as understood by H. L. A. Hart in his taxonomy of responsibility concepts in his book, Punishment and Responsibility. More particularly, it focuses on what I call ‘public, institutional role responsibility’. The main arguments are that (1) such role responsibility is based on authority and power rather than physical and mental capacity; and (2) the foundation of role responsibility in authority has significant implications for what Hart referred to as ‘liability–responsibility’, which I unpack in terms of ‘attribution’, ‘accountability’ and ‘liability’. The article addresses possible objections to the authority-based analysis of role responsibility based on the concept of ‘moral’ responsibility, and on understandings of what types of question are ‘philosophical.’     

A Buddhist Take on Gilbert Ryle’s Theory of Mind

Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949/2002. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) is generally considered a landmark in the quest to refute Cartesian dualism. The work contains many inspirational ideas and mainly posits behavioral disposition as the referent of mind in order to refute mind–body dualism. In this article, I show that the Buddhist theory of ‘non-self’ is also at odds with the belief that a substantial soul exists distinct from the physical body and further point out similarities between the Buddhist outlook and Ryle’s ideas in three parts. First, I illustrate that Ryle’s ‘category mistake’ has certain points in common with the Buddhist refutation of ‘self’. Within the Buddhist framework, referents such as ‘mind’ and ‘self’ are merely imputed terms. The presumed existence of an independent substance such as a ‘soul’, when considered in isolation from the expedient usage of the term ‘mind’, can therefore also be viewed as a ‘category mistake’. Second, attempting to solve the questions of ‘what mind is’ and ‘how mind operates’ are two entirely different approaches to the study of mind. I argue that it is necessary to focus on ‘knowing-how’ rather than ‘knowing-that’, if we are to gain a more comprehensive understanding of mind and avoid any kind of category mistake such as those that follow from isolating the physical properties of brain or drawing inferences from a mystical soul. Third, I aim to show why investigating mind from the perspective of ‘dispositions’ of behavior is a valid approach. The Buddhist concept of karma-vāsanā elucidates the habitual tendency to act or not act in various situations. Based on this theory, I argue that the workings of the human mind bears strong links to the formation of karma and as such have important axiological implications that cannot be ignored. I conclude by pointing out that Ryle’s insightful ideas could in certain ways be complemented by the Buddhist theory of mind. In my view, his philosophy is not only a mediator between Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, but could perhaps also be seen as a mediator between traditional Eastern systems of thought and contemporary philosophies of mind.     

The analyst and analysand as citizens in the world

Beginning with Jung's reflections on individuation as a starting point, this article examines the analytic relationship in the context of our current reality. The latter exerts pressures of all sorts that do not favour individuation. Indeed, geopolitical commentators see present‐day society as marked globally by excessive self‐love that seeks to dominate, at the expense of the other. Given that such forms of dominance are now also very prevalent in the workplace, this article examines how to help the increasing number of individuals with highly successful professional careers who suffer from this pressure and who then seek analysis. ‘Progressive movement’, an indicator of and incentive to change, is examined by studying the narrative processes emerging from dream activity ‐ including dreaming with the hands in the sand tray ‐ in the co‐transference. The article highlights how ‘progressive movement’, founded on narrative Competence and on the reflective function, may generate experiences of ‘realistic hope’. The latter signals the start of an individuation process in the analytic couple and, simultaneously, the transformation of both the analyst and the analysand into good enough ‘citizens in the world’.     

Shia as Internal Others: A Salafi Rejection of the ‘Rejecters’

Conflict and polemic between Sunni Muslims and Shiites have a long history. In the contemporary era, this polemic has been accentuated by the conflictual situation in the Middle East, and it is also colouring the minority Muslim situation. This article is concerned with Islamic interpretations related to ‘othering’, taking as its main focus an analysis of publications on a Swedish Sunni website, ‘Maktabah Dâr-ul-Hadîth’, which has clear Salafi leanings. Reports show that Shiites currently feel threatened by Salafis in minority contexts and the material cited in this article ‘others’ Shiite Islam and Shiites (amongst others), creating a stereotypical image that may have the potential to influence sectarian violence in real life. Several of the texts on the website deal with theological issues concerning the alleged false beliefs of Shiites. However, the article does not focus on theological creed but rather on manhaj, the programme for action, that is, the behaviour towards Shiites that is recommended in various situations, such as at work, in greeting Shiites or being invited to a Shiite wedding, thus affecting everyday situations. The analysis looks into what kind of ‘othering’ is promoted and what effect this othering might have if put into practice.     

Pope Francis: a pastor according to the heart of Christ

Catholic Canon Law stipulates that the Pope is ‘the pastor of the universal Church on earth’. Pope Francis took up the challenge which this statement poses to those exercising the Petrine ministry by asking for prayers that he might be ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’. How is a Pope ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’? What particular opportunities does the Petrine ministry offer for this? What are the pastoral aspects of the papacy? What does it seem we can expect from Pope Francis in this regard? As this article shows, the task of ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’ has an impact on several aspects of the implementation of the Petrine ministry, such as using the Pope’s power in the service of unity, encouraging collegiality in communion as the visible centre of the entire Christian Church in dialogue with other religions, that the world may believe.     

Re-enchanting Realism in Debate with Kyle Stanford

In this article, against the background of a notion of ‘assembled’ truth, the evolutionary progressiveness of a theory is suggested as novel and promising explanation for the success of science. A new version of realism in science, referred to as ‘naturalised realism’ is outlined. Naturalised realism is ‘fallibilist’ in the unique sense that it captures and mimics the self-corrective core of scientific knowledge and its progress. It is argued that naturalised realism disarms Kyle Stanford’s anti-realist ‘new induction’ threats by showing that ‘explanationism’ and his ‘epistemic instrumentalism’ are just two positions among many on a constantly evolving continuum of options between instrumentalism and full-blown realism. In particular it is demonstrated that not only can naturalised realism redefine the terms of realist debate in such a way that no talk of miracles need enter the debate, but it also promises interesting defenses against inductive- and under-determination-based anti-realist arguments.     

The Lazy Person's Approach to Depiction

It has been argued (for example, by Nelson Goodman and John Hyman) that ‘depicts’ and similar terms such as ‘is a picture of’ and ‘represents’ are semantically ambiguous: sometimes they are two‐place predicates expressing a relation, and sometimes they are not. This article takes issue with this claim and develops an alternative theory according to which the ambiguity in question is pragmatic rather than semantic.     

Rethinking Early Western Buddhists: Beachcombers, ‘Going Native’ and Dissident Orientalism

Recent research on the life of U Dhammaloka and other early western Buddhists in Asia has interesting implications in relation to class, ethnicity and politics. ‘Beachcomber Buddhists’ highlight the wider situation of ‘poor whites’ in Asia—needed by empire but prone to defect from elite standards of behaviour designed to maintain imperial and racial power. ‘Going native’, exemplified by the European bhikkhu, highlights the difficulties faced by empire in policing these racial boundaries and the role of Asian agency in early ‘western’ Buddhism. Finally, such ‘dissident Orientalism’ has political implications, as with specifically Irish forms of solidarity with Asian anti-colonial movements. Within the limits imposed by the data, this article rethinks ‘early western Buddhism’ in Asia as a creative response to colonialism, shaped by Asian actors, marked by cross-racial solidarity and oriented to alternative possible futures beyond empire.