The Origins and Religious Practices and Identities of the Honen Dalim Jewish Community in Mozambique

All world religions are trans-local and transcultural and have been long before or after the thalassocracy of colonial empires took shape and moulded ethnic-religious affiliations, and Judaism is no exception. This paper is focused on the religious identities and practices of the Jews in Maputo, their perceptions of belonging and constraints of integration. It relies on an inter-subjective multi-situated ethnography and tries to reason on the ways Judaism, with its unique message, meant to be spread to all peoples and claiming its own truth and forms of allegiance and identification, assumes a new significance in complex contexts like Mozambique demanding negotiations between differently empowered agents in the present in order to achieve a constructive harmonization between the global and the local forms of Judaism.     

Mapping the Terrain of a Foucauldian Ethics: A Response to the Surveillance of Schooling

Educators find themselves in the midst of arising tide of urban school reform marked byevermore centrally designed and monitoredsystems of accountability. In response to thislooming high-stakes gaze of surveillance, thisessay offers an ethics of educationalleadership predicated upon taking up thechallenge of creatively and courageouslyauthoring one's ethical self. It seeks tocontribute to mapping an ethical terrain whichcan support the production of pedagogicalpractices, initiatives, and agendas asdistinctive, bold responses to theproliferation of one-dimensional,technicist-driven efforts which narrowlycalculate and assess student learning, teacherwork, school effectiveness, and which offeranemic, foreclosed readings of a possiblefuture. My claim is that a consideration ofFoucault's ethics draws us closer torecognizing what such a project would mean andask of the educator as leader.     

Rationality,power, disruption: Framing Foucault's geneological agenda

This paper situates and examines the project of genealogy as articulated by the philosopher, Michel Foucault, and draws out from that examination educative implications both in terms of research and school practice. Following Foucault, the genealogist's primary challenge, it would seem, is both to acknowledge and to respond to the entwinement of rationality and power. This paper also considers critiques which have clustered around Foucault's work, and, more specifically, his genealogical work, which argue that Foucault leaves us with no hope for a better, more humane future and no positive agenda for change. Despite this “lack” in Foucault's work, I argue, here, that his genealogical agenda is philosophically, politically, and educatively significant.