Creative thinking and collective mobilisation in the Muslim world

ABSTRACT

To what extent does openness to new ideas and creativity (ONIC) help explain the elite-challenging collective mobilisation in the Muslim world? Are religious Muslims who are open to creative and innovative thinking more or less likely to engage in pro-democratic collective action? Analysing 16 Muslim-majority countries, this study advances the debate of Muslim contentious politics by systematically examining the extent to which ONIC explains the variation in high-risk, pro-democratic collective mobilisation. A quad-dimensional analysis of creativity indicates that ONIC is an empirically distinctive measure to capture openness and creative thinking. The evidence further suggests that, ceteris paribus, Islamic religiosity and ONIC are not mutually exclusive and that both are positively associated with collective protests. Notably, ONIC does appear to intervene to mediate the positive relationship between Islam and engagement in high-risk collective action, implying that the effects of religiosity may not be independent from how Muslims position themselves towards being open to novel ideas or creativity. The findings also demonstrate that an individual-level ONIC may be boosting the likelihood of protest engagement among more devout individuals in Islamic societies.     

From Mecca with tolerance: religion,social recategorisation and social capital

Does participation in mass religious rituals promote intergroup conflict or does it promote intergroup tolerance? We assess these claims by examining the effects of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) on sociopolitical views of Muslims in Russia’s North Caucasus. Participant observation during the hajj and a quasi-experimental focus group study of pilgrims and non-pilgrims produced paradoxical findings. While the hajj strengthened their ingroup pride as Muslims, the pilgrims came through as more outgroup-tolerant and prosocial than the non-pilgrims. We develop a synthetic theoretical solution: in high-identity-value, high-diversity common group settings social recategorisation and social capital become transitive – that is, inclusive views and social capital effects within an ingroup extend to outgroups. This means that intergroup conflict could be reduced by not only maximising contact across conflicting groups, but also by bringing together as many subgroups as possible within each conflicting group in settings where their common identity is positively affirmed in a non-discriminatory fashion.     

Fracturing Over Creation Care? Shifting Environmental Beliefs Among Evangelicals, 1984–2010

While evangelicals have been popularly portrayed as caring primarily about social issues including abortion and homosexuality, there have been more reports in recent years of evangelical leaders, congregations, and institutions shifting focus to environmental issues. Are evangelicals shifting attention to and becoming more progressive in their views on the environment? Moreover, are evangelicals fracturing over the issue of environmentalism, as some have suggested? Using content analysis of three evangelical periodicals (Christianity Today, Sojourners, and World) from 1984 to 2010, I find not only that attention to environmental issues has increased over time, but also that the discussion has grown increasingly polarized and politicized. This change represents a potentially important break with the Republican Party and the Christian Right, as moderate evangelicals have moved to the left on environmental issues. Even among highly religious, self‐identified evangelical political elites, there is more diversity in views and political leanings than is commonly assumed. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of a lack of alignment between evangelical elites, traditional Christian Right leaders, and the Republican Party.     

Executive Function in Young Children and Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence From a Nonverbal Dimensional Change Card Sort Task

In this article the authors compared chimpanzees’ executive function with that of children. They developed a nonverbal dimensional change card sorting task, which indexed the development of executive function. Three pairs of mother and offspring chimpanzees and 30 typically developed 5-year-old children were presented with 2 target stimuli and a test stimulus comprising 2 dimensions (size and shape) on a display; they were required to sort the test stimulus according to 1 dimension (e.g., shape). After 5 consecutive correct trials, the participants had to sort the test stimulus according to the other dimension (e.g., size). The results showed that the chimpanzees often failed to sort the test stimuli according to the first and reversed dimensions. On the other hand, the children were correctly able to use both dimensions. These results indicate that chimpanzees may have less developed executive skills than children.     

Invited Essay: A New System Of Politics: Government,Governance, And Political Decision Making In The Twenty-First Century

The present system of politics is based on the centrality of economics. This system is not capable of coming to grips with the problems confronting humanity. A culture-based system of politics is required to do this and prevent ecological disaster. This system would make it possible to reduce the demands human beings are making on the natural environment and situate human welfare, environmental well-being, and the public interest at the core of the political process. The risks of such a system could be reduced through cultural education and improved cultural understanding.     

Social trauma: The pathogenic effects of untoward social conditions

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution. The third is when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity on the part of the authorities. One recent example of this is the impeachment process against the Chief of Government of Mexico City. The author approaches this problem by exploring the consequences of such experiences for the development and functioning of personality structure and personal relations, as well as their repercussions for individuals living together in the community and for the necessary relation between them and the authorities.     

Tasting the divine: the aesthetics of religious emotion in Indian Christianity

The category of rasa (emotional ‘tastes’) in Indian Christian theology and art offers a useful theoretical lens for the academic study of religious emotion. In this article, two Bharata Nā?yam dance ministries provide a case study in the practical applicability of a rasa theology that is emerging within contemporary Indian Christianity. The Christian choreographers have significantly altered the emotions of love and peace in comparison with classical rasa theory and its traditional use in Hindu devotion. Indian Christian artists and theologians have also begun to explore and invent additional aesthetic emotions, giving unique shape to their ‘emotional community.’ Important challenges attend the dance ministries as they are currently configured, yet rasa is a capacious analytical category that can shed new light on Indian Christianity and the study of emotion in religion.     

How does knowledge bring one to the state of immortality in early Upaniṣadic philosophy? A new perspective on the ‘Magical’ way of cognition

ABSTRACT

The Upani?adic philosophers believed that acquiring certain knowledge would lead them toward a state of immortality. Merely by obtaining that knowledge, they thought people could surmount the various causes of death of the natural body. How and why did they develop and maintain this belief? To understand this, this article analyzes the difference between our views as modern humans and those of early Upani?adic philosophers, regarding the concepts of knowledge and death. They seem to have believed that knowing a concept meant actualizing that concept in the real world. Therefore, possessing the concept or knowledge of death guaranteed the actualized occurrence of death. This article argues that early Upani?adic philosophers must have thought that replacing the knowledge of death with the true knowledge of immortality would really make people immortal. In other words, to know that one is immortal truly makes one immortal. I also propose a new method of analyzing ancient thoughts.     

Changing Parties,Changing Partisans: The Personalization of Partisan Attachments in Western Europe

This article investigates the effects of the deep transformations in the relationship between West European class‐mass parties and their electorates. Particular attention is paid to the changing nature of individuals' partisan attachments, which are hypothesized to be less rooted in social and ideological identities and more in individual attitudes towards increasingly visible partisan objects. The main objective of this article is to examine the influence of voters' attitudes towards one of these “objects”—the party leaders—in determining psychological attachments with the parties. The analysis concentrates on the two main cleavage‐based parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The empirical findings highlight the declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters' attitudes towards party leaders. The concluding section points to the crucial role that political psychology can play in our understanding of democratic elections' outcomes.     

When the risks are low: the impact of absolute and comparative information on disturbance and understanding in US and UK samples

When Klein, W. M. gave participants absolute and comparative risk information (crossed experimentally) they were more disturbed by being above than below average, but not by being at higher rather than lower risk. The current experiment tests whether Klein's findings extend to situations involving lower risk figures more typical of genuine health risks, assesses participants’ understanding of the information, and directly compares responses of US and UK samples. Participants were presented with hypothetical information about comparative and absolute risks of deep vein thrombosis. There was a main effect of absolute risk information on disturbance and precaution intentions in the US sample, but no effects of comparative information on these measures in either sample. Understanding was poor among participants receiving both pieces of risk information. Future studies should include measures of understanding to establish whether people are failing to understand what they are told or failing to respond systematically to what they understand. Practically, the findings caution against providing comparative risk information when communicating low risk figures.