Rethinking Affective Experience and Popular Emotion: World War I and the Construction of Group Emotion in International Relations

Research in International Relations (IR) frequently confronts claims about the emotions shared by members of a group. While much attention has been devoted to the potential for affective and emotional experience beyond the individual level, IR scholars have said less about the politics of invoking popular emotion. This article addresses that gap. Specifically, we argue that between individual—and even shared—affective experience on the one hand and group‐based “popular emotion” on the other exists not mechanisms of aggregation but rather processes of framing, projection, and propagation that are deeply political. We distinguish between two tropes that commonly structure references to popular emotion: communal emotion, the idealized attribution of an authentic, unifying emotional response of “the people,” and mass emotion, a volatile and potentially dangerous mob‐like reaction, but one also susceptible to manipulation. Using the outbreak of World War I as a showcase, we demonstrate the political significance of popular emotion, including its enduring relevance for understanding contemporary populism.     

Perspectives of Homeschoolers Motivated by Religious and Moral Reasons

This study sought to highlight the association between motivation to homeschool and public school enrollment. Homeschooling parents (n?=?1052) across the United States responded to questions from a survey administered online. Logistic regression analysis and the chi-square test showed that homeschooling parents who chose the religious/moral answer option on the survey as the reason to homeschool, were less likely to choose to enroll into a public school program. Qualitatively, the narrative data of religious/moral homeschoolers and their reasons not to enroll in public education provided a number of themes, including quality of the environment (n?=?22) and reasons based on religion and faith (n?=?18). These findings may prove useful for public school officials who desire to know more about how some families make educational decisions.     

An exploration of afterlife beliefs in religiously-and secularly-oriented adults

One of the ways that religion helps individuals to find meaning and purpose in life is through the enrichment of the concept of an afterlife. Afterlife beliefs are more likely to be held by religious than non-religious individuals. However, research findings also suggest that even individuals that are self-characterised as non-religious, also endorse the continuation of several psychological states in the afterlife. The present study aimed to investigate whether secularly- and religiously-oriented individuals hold one, common representation about the afterlife or if more than one concepts of afterlife exist. One-hundred and seventy-five adults participated in the study (97 females). Participants were interviewed individually with a vignette and a questionnaire that explored the endorsement of perceptual, psychobiological and emotional capacities, desires, and communication aspects of a dead agent and to provide justification for their answers. Their level of religiosity was also assessed. All participants were Greeks and members of the Greek Orthodox Church. By applying a Two-Step Cluster Analysis, we identified four clusters/representations of the afterlife that range from the conception of death as the end of human existence to the conception of an afterlife where numerous human capacities continue to exist. Religious orientation related to the four conceptions in different ways.     

Repentance and seeking forgiveness: the effects of spiritual therapy based on Islamic tenets to improve mental health

For years, spirituality has been utilised by many as an asset to improve mental and physical health. This study creates a valid argument that Islamic teachings specifically can have a notable effect on students’ overall health. This particular therapy originates from the Islamic concept of soul purification/cleansing (otherwise known as: tazkiyah al-nafs). The reason behind this was to evaluate the impact of tawba (meaning repentance) and istighfar (forgiveness) therapy for improving mental health in a selected group of Muslim college students. Participants were expected to attend eight consecutive sessions exploring both tawba and istighfar therapy. Both before they trialled the treatment and once they had completed it, all participants were also required to complete the ‘Social Emotional Health Survey-Higher Education’ (SEHS-HE). We concluded that in general this programme was in fact successful in improving the overall mental and even physical health in our select group of Islam practising students.     

Towards an anthropology of doubt: the case of religious reproduction in Orthodox Judaism

As Israel’s Orthodox Jews struggle to live up to high fertility norms rooted in religious and Zionist ideals, an obscured model of stratified critique has emerged. Based on an ethnography of Israel’s reproductive landscape, I demonstrate how critique of high fertility standards is based on particular social and cultural capital only available to the religious elite. While well-established, knowledgeable and assertive religious members find private ways to bypass the almost unachievable levels of fertility, a veil of secrecy leaves less privileged groups, particularly ba`aley teshuva (returnees) to carry most of the fertility load. Whereas scholars of religious transformation have demonstrated how religious elites act as actors and leaders of resistance, my findings illustrate an opposite pattern. Instead of disseminating this critique publicly, religious elites engage in private strategies of secrecy and creative performances of failure that enable these individuals to diverge from norms without publicly contesting them. I argue that not only is stratified critique based on social and cultural capital, it also reproduces social inequalities. By focusing on doubt, struggles, and failures engendered in “everyday Judaism,” these findings require us to refocus our inquiry on power structures within different sub-groups of Israel’s Orthodox Jews. Further, this unique case study highlights how stratified reproduction takes new shape as social and religious convictions gain and lose their force at a particular moment in history.     

The Human Species Origin: Views of Biology Teachers from Three Latin American Countries

This paper intends to investigate whether the differences in country religiosity can influence biology teachers’ views about biological evolution, especially the human origin. Since Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have differences in religiosity, teachers from these countries were asked to answer to the question of the European questionnaire BIOHEAD-CITIZEN: “The emergence of the human species (Homo sapiens) was just as improbable as the emergence of any other species.” From their answers, it was possible to estimate how biology teachers conceive the origin of the humankind, whether they perceive it as a natural phenomenon or a special event. The four Barbour’s categories concerning the relationship between science and religion (Conflict, Independence, Dialogue and Integration) were used to analyze the results in these three countries. Results showed that, in general, teachers of Uruguay (a secular country) and Argentina (a constitutional Catholic country) had a clearer position of separation between science and religion whereas the teachers of Brazil (with a relative secularism), tended to do not make a separation between science and religion. It could be concluded that the type of the teachers’ religion rather than the secularism of state is more influencial on building teachers’ views about human origin.     

GEORGE MURPHY'S CHIASMIC COSMOLOGY: AS IF GOD WERE NOT GIVEN

Abstract. In his work The Cosmos in Light of the Cross physicist and Lutheran pastor George L. Murphy extends the religious rationales of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Jüngel to argue specifically for a nonreligious, scientific study of and appreciation for the world. In doing so, Murphy offers a clear and coherent theology of the cosmos within the bounds of piety alone. Like Calvin and Schleiermacher before him who strove to stay within these bounds, Murphy shares their endpoint of a practical theology—that is, faithful reflections that will encourage wise and faithful existence. In doing so, Murphy has written a brilliant and extraordinarily readable account of a chiasmic cosmos. He also quite practically and indeed pastorally offers suggestions for how the God of that cosmos may be not only understood but also worshiped and adored.     

ATHENS,JERUSALEM, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TECHNO‐SECULARISM

Abstract. Western civilization historically has tried to balance secular knowledge with revealed religion. Science is the modern world's version of secular knowledge and resists the kind of integration achieved by Augustine and Aquinas. Managing the conflict between religion and evolution by containing them in separate “frames,” as Stephen J. Gould suggested, does not resolve the issue. Science may have displaced religion from the public square, but the traditional science‐religion conflict has become threadbare in intellectual terms. Scientific theories have become increasingly abstract, and science has been attacked from the left as a source of objective knowledge. However, technology, not science, has displaced religious belief, a phenomenon I call techno‐secularism. Robert Coles's suggestion that secularism is a form of doubt inevitably attached to religious belief, and William James's reduction of religious experiences to psychological states, evaluating them according to their “cash value,” are unhelpful. Technology enables us to remake our environment according to our wishes and has become a kind of magic that replaces not just revealed religion but also theoretical science. Techno‐secularism has an ethical vision that focuses on healthful living, self‐fulfillment, and avoiding the struggles of human life and the inevitability of death.     

THE RELIGION‐SCIENCE DISCUSSION AT FORTY YEARS: “REPORTS OF MYDEATH ARE PREMATURE”

Abstract. The startling success of the religion‐science discussion in recent years calls for reflection. Have old walls been broken down, old antagonisms overcome? Have science and religion finally been reconciled? Or is all the activity just so much sound and fury signifying nothing? Postmodern equations of scientific and religious beliefs disregard a number of enduring differences that help make sense of the continuing tensions. Yet the skepticism of authors such as John Caiazza is also ungrounded. I describe five major types of approaches that are being employed in the recent literature. These methods have led to a deeper understanding of the commonalities between science and religion and have produced new productive partnerships between them.     

WHOM TO BLAME FOR THE CHARGE OF SECULARIZATION?

Abstract. In the last century science and technology have been viewed as guilty of contributing to the modern secularization process and also to a crisis in religion. The extent of this influence is less clear today: while technology is stronger, and an easy target for any kind of social and cultural criticism, science seems weaker than it used to. The aim of this commentary is to examine in a critical way the arguments for and against scientific and technological involvement in the crisis religion faces today. In the end, a revision of the future of religion is called into question, especially in the light of a more “technological theology.”