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Secularisation, Disenchantment, and the ‘Pluralisation of Religiosity’

Sekularizace, odkouzlení světa a „pluralizace náboženskosti“

Author(s): Miloš Havelka / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2013

Keywords: sociology of religion; secularisation; Entzauberung; Max Weber

This article applies the perspective of historical-sociological semantics to examine the changing meanings of secularisation and pluralisation in relation to changing realities. This approach here makes it possible to analyse and distinguish several other concepts of the sociology of religion that can be used to take a more differentiated look to the often all-encompassing application of the concept of secularisation, which both embraces and diminishes Weber’s multidimensional concept of ‘disenchantment’ (Entzauberung). Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s concepts of ‘segmentary differentiation’ and the ‘surplus effect’, the author attempts to formulate a radically different sociological concept of religion based not on a substantive definition of its sacred content but on the historical sociology of action, whereby religion can be interpreted through its specific focus on ‘meaning’ as a particular type of social relationship and its corresponding ‘chance’ (Weber) of understanding. Other cultural (and political) phenomena of modern society (confessionalism, political theology) whose applicability and effect are not explained away or exhausted/voided by the secularisation theory can also be analysed as ‘religious’. To provide these phenomena with a context the author uses the term ‘religious culture’ to aggregate of everything people of a particular period know and think about their religion, how they evaluate it, and to what degree they identify with it. The pluralisation of religion can then be demonstrated not just on a surface level (for instance, in term of the rise of new sects, client cults, and cult movements, participation in various spiritual and esoteric activities), but more generally as the potential or real presence of specifically religious phenomena in the public space and as a particular type of social relationship: both between actors reciprocally, and between actors on the one hand and institutions on the other, and finally also between institutions.

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The Demise of Tradition and Its Salvation through Sex: The Discursive Strategies of Opponents of Sex Education

Tradice, její rozpad a záchrana skrze sex: Diskurzivní strategie odpůrců sexuální výchovy

Author(s): Lucie Jarkovská,Kateřina Lišková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2013

Keywords: sex education; discursive strategies; gender; conservatism; Czech Republic

In 2010 sex education became a surprising target of criticism in the secular Czech Republic. The voices of social conservatives were raised and were answered by the Minister of Education, who launched a reform of educational curricula to exclude sex education. This article analyses the discursive strategies employed by conservative opponents of sex education and highlights the interpretive repertoires of sexuality and gender. The authors argue that Czech conservatives deploy both a moral panic strategy and a discursive strategy of empowerment that uses positive sanctions to support ‘good sex’, defined exclusively as marital, procreative heterosex. This interpretive repertoire of ‘good and healthy sexuality’ is universally intelligible and thus has the potential to resonate not only with social conservatives but throughout society. When combined with other socially conservative agendas it has the capacity to regiment the public space and diminish the role of public institutions.

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Two Different Cultures, Two Different Approaches on Death-Space Relationship : Death Cult and Cemeteries in Vienna and Istanbul in the 18th and 19th C

Two Different Cultures, Two Different Approaches on Death-Space Relationship : Death Cult and Cemeteries in Vienna and Istanbul in the 18th and 19th C

Author(s): Gevher Gökçe Acar / Language(s): English / Issue: Special/2010

Keywords: death cult; cemetery; Christianity; Islam; Vienna; Istanbul; Habsburg; Ottoman

The reflection of death concept in the creation of culture and art is various due to factors of religion, culture and period, just like the consciousness of death. This whole consisting of pieces different form each other, but also similar in some aspects is either the most important criterion in the determination of cultural differences, or the most outstanding and undeniable evidence on intercultural relations and interaction. The aim of this paper is to read this difference through the comparative sampling of two great empires that may be named as the representatives of Western and Eastern cultures and also Christianity and Islam during contemporary periods and to look for the traces of a probable interaction between them. In this aspect, besides the graves of two powerful dynasties of the Christian West and the Muslim East – the Habsburgs and the Ottomans – in Vienna and Istanbul during the 18th and 19th centuries, cemeteries of that period belonging to common people and also mausoleums and funeral traditions shall be examined in comparison and the religious, and social idea system that has formed these traditions shall be discussed on these examples.

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Notions of Male/Boy Appearance in School Classrooms

Představy O Mužském/Chlapeckém Vzhledu Ve Školních Třídách

Author(s): Karolína Klasová,Barbora Slavíčková,Irena Smetáčková,Helena Čechová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 01/2013

Keywords: ideal of beauty; adolescence; gender; peer group

The article is focuses on the adolescent concept of male/boy appearance and its impact on the social position of boys in a classroom structure. Boys can reach a better social position if their appearance corresponds to group norms. Based on three qualitative studies it is proven that group norms consist of a set of requirements toward male appearance which differ from requirements toward female appearance both in content and strength. The results of partial surveys are discussed in the context of present international theoretical approaches and empirical evidences about the ideal of beauty in a gender perspective.

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Historicising Metahistory – The Dialectical Criticism of Fredric Jameson

Historizovat metahistorii – dialektický kriticismus Fredrica Jamesona

Author(s): Daniel Just / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 01-02/2004

Keywords: Fredric Jameson;

Addressing various aspects of the work of Fredric Jameson, this article is an inquiry into the methodology that sustains Jameson’s Marxist approach. Neither nomadically eclectic about his methods or objects of study, nor an orthodox Marxist, Jameson calls for the kind of historicising stance that would relate cultural phenomena to the socio-economic realm and yet avoid metahistorical tendencies. Applying his method perhaps most notably to the phenomenon of postmodernism, Jameson unmasks the logic which governs this seemingly unrestrained cultural trend. As Jameson tries to show in his analyses of contemporary culture, dialectical criticism is particularly indispensable to understanding the logic of late capitalism that determines our society.

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Gendered Biographies: The Czech State-Socialist Gender Order in Oral History Interviews

Gendered Biographies: The Czech State-Socialist Gender Order in Oral History Interviews

Author(s): Martin Hájek,Barbara H. Vann / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 06/2015

Keywords: life-course narratives; oral history; gender order; Czech Republic; qualitative analysis; quantitative analysis; socio-political groups

A large collection of autobiographical life story material available in oral-history data is used to examine how women and men of different socio-political groups (workers, intelligentsia, dissidents, and communist functionaries) narrate their lives in the time of state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Of particular interest is what these narratives imply for an understanding of the state-socialist gender order. The analysis combines quantitative (the frequency of word co-occurrences) and qualitative (a hermeneutic reading of text fragments) approaches. The results provide evidence that empirically supports what has previously been suggested in the literature: there was an interdependence of private and public spheres, with the family sphere differing in importance for women and men. Additionally, the discursive density and arrangement of these spheres in the life stories differs according to sociopolitical groups, and a third sphere, which we have labelled ‘politics’, emerges for some groups. The findings reveal insights into the relationship between the gender order and the life course through a narrative articulation of life stories of different social groups in Czech state-socialist society.

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Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique

Transnacionální feministické přechody: O neoliberalismu a radikální kritice

Author(s): Chandra Talpade Mohanty / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2015

Keywords: C. T. Mohanty; transnational feminist theory; neoliberalism

The article is a reflection on the neoliberal knowledge economy, the traffic in antiracist feminist theory, and the way my work has been read (lost or found in translation) and has crossed geopolitical and racial/cultural borders. It comments as well on the development of my intellectual project in relation to my location in the US academy and the intellectual and political communities that have made the work possible. The larger frame I seek to examine using responses to my work in three sites – Sweden, Mexico, and Palestine – is the way feminist, postcolonial, and antiracist theory emerges from a particular geopolitical, intellectual space; the way it enacts crossings; and the way it is trafficked, consumed, and understood in different geographies. Given the global and domestic shifts in social movements and transnational feminist scholarly projects over the past three decades, my major concern pertains to the depoliticization of antiracist feminist/women-of-color/transnational feminist intellectual projects in neoliberal, national-security-driven geopolitical landscapes.

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Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society

Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society

Author(s): Martin Hájek,Tomáš Hoření Samec / Language(s): English / Issue: 06/2017

Keywords: thrift; saving; discourse analysis; socialism; consumers; consumer responsibilisation

The article examines how notions of thrift, saving, and frugality were present and active in the state-socialist discourses of economic behaviour and what meaning these notions carried. The research is based on three kinds of data: the official state-socialist public discourse of economic behaviour as presented in transcripts of parliamentary speeches, household guides and manuals, and eyewitness accounts of the state-socialist era recollected in oral history interviews. Such a multi-faceted corpus of discourse data made it possible to examine factual and normative aspects of thrift in state-socialist discourses and compare them with the accounts of everyday practices and tactics that may well contradict the official discourse. The analysis reveals that (a) notions of thrift and saving were strongly present throughout the period in all discourses examined, (b) both terms underwent a semantic shift from a productive to a restrictive meaning over time, and (c) both notions were eventually publicly sidelined by the emphasis on raising revenue. Despite fading from public discourse in the late 1980s, the notion of thrift had by then become instilled in the subjective understanding of the ‘reasonable consumer’, a concept that can therefore be considered a precursor of the contemporary concept of consumer responsibilisation.

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Post-Stalinism as a (non)Stalinist project of modernity?

Poststalinismus jako (ne)stalinský projekt modernity?

Author(s): Jan Růžička / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1+2/2018

Keywords: Post-Stalinism;Stalinism;Communism;Marxist ideology;modernizationeology;

The author deals with potential approaches to the conceptualization of post-Stalinism as a specific mental formation gradually born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960sas a result of the crisis of Stalinism. In doing so, he is in opposition to approaches perceiving the period after Stalin’s death as a mere de-Stalinization, or as a transition period between Stalinism and the so-called normalization in Czechoslovakia. He chose the modernity, or modernization, theory concept of German sociologist Peter Wagner and a reinterpretation of the work of Marx (or Marxism as such) by American philosopher Moishe Postone as his methodological starting points, and he introduces both of them in detail in his study. It is through this optics and dissociating himself from the theory of totalitarianism that he interprets Stalinism as a project of accelerated modernization the efficiency of which was ensured bya centralist bureaucratic system, including its authoritarian features, better than a market economy would have done. He also attempts to infer that Stalinism was a specific evolution of thoughts of Marx and Lenin in given historical circumstances. After the 2nd World War, it was paradigmatically applied in other countries with outtaking into account their regional specifics, or the previous history and existinglevel of modernization; during the 1950s, its potential was ultimately spent. In the end, the author tries to view intellectual reform discourses in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s as a distinctive attempt to restart a specific version of socialist modernity. In doing so, he focuses on issues related to the notions of revolution, history, and market, and formulates some hypotheses and topics for discussion.

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Youtubing as the Construction, Destruction and Restoration of Privacy

Youtuberství jako konstrukce, destrukce a reparace soukromí

Author(s): Lukáš Slavík,Pavel Pospěch / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 2/2019

Keywords: privacy; social networks; youth; breach of privacy; youtubers

The study focuses on privacy in online social networks. It presents an empirical analysis of youtubers, a group that has not yet been studied in the Czech social sciences. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis and in-depth interviews, we show that there is a typical ‘career’ trajectory that youtubers proceed along, whose structure is determined by experiences of breach of privacy and by mechanisms of reparation. These mechanisms and practices must be employed in order to resolve a fundamental tension between the demand for self-disclosure, arising out of confessional culture and the ideology of authenticity, and the parallel demand for retaining privacy. Breach of privacy is conceptualised as a violation of the equilibrium of its three constitutive elements: content, border, and context. Such situations are experienced as threats to the identity of the youtubers, who seek to avoid these threats by means of reparation practices, changes in how they perform privacy, and the use of what we call tools of controlled (in)accessibility. Unlike normative critiques that lament the loss of privacy on social networks, this article concludes that youtubers are highly competent guardians of their own performed privacy.

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Romania – layers of collective identity in the 19th and the 20th centuries – an outline. Second part

Romania – layers of collective identity in the 19th and the 20th centuries – an outline. Second part

Author(s): Radu Baltasiu,Boatcă Manuela,Șerban Adela,Ovidiana Bulumac / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2010

Keywords: Romania; collective identity; 19th century; 20th century;

The Second Renaissance took place in two stages, that could be called „heroic“ and „critical“ (Bădescu, 2003). At a certain moment both were coming to exist in parallel and to become two major organizing paradigms: the synchronist and the critical or conservative thought. The „heroic culture” is the answer of Romanian society to the urgency/provocation of “reentering” its history: recovering the social space, the national territory, the right to engage in trade, to have a state - as well as to its own European identity. The effort was started by the Revolution of Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 in Wallachia, to be continued by the Transylvanian School and at its peak by the 1848 revolutionaries. The ideal type of the “heroic” intellectual is Ion Heliade Rădulescu.

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Visions of cities’ futures: A comparative analysis of strategic urban planning in Slovenian and Croatian cities

Vizije prihodnosti mest: Primerjalna analiza strateškega urbanističnega načrtovanja v slovenskih in hrvaških mestih

Author(s): Saša Poljak Istenič,Valentina Gulin Zrnić / Language(s): Slovenian / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: anthropology of the future; urban planning; visions of cities; Slovenia; Croatia;

Mesta se zaradi prenaseljenosti, onesnaževanja, hrupa ter drugih ekoloških in družbenih problemov spoprijemajo s čedalje slabšo kakovostjo urbanega življenja, kar zahteva učinkovito načrtovanje njihove prihodnosti. Urbane vizije kot vidik strateškega načrtovanja so lahko izhodišče za radikalno preobrazbo načina, na katerega se kraji razvijajo v mesta prihodnosti, ki uspešno rešujejo trenutne izzive. Članek, ki izhaja iz antropologije prihodnosti in načrtovanja, analizira, kako si mesta zamišljajo svojo prihodnost in kako jo upovedujejo

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THE RECEPTION OF JOHN IN EARLY BAROQUE PAINTING CARAVAGGIO’S "RAISING OF LAZARUS" (1609)

JOHANNES-REZEPTION IN DER FRÜHBAROCKEN MALEREI CARAVAGGIOS "AUFERWECKUNG DES LAZARUS" (1609)

Author(s): Stephanie Hallinger / Language(s): German / Issue: 2/2020

Keywords: Iconography; Painting; early baroque; Lazarus; Gospel of John; Legenda aurea; Gospel of Nicodemus; apocryphon;

Caravaggios Auferweckung des Lazarus kombiniert bekannte Erzählelemente auf neuartige Weise. Als Zeugnis der „lived religion“ im Frühbarock ist das Altarbild des italienischen Malers somit ein Apokryphon, das die Lazarusgeschichte im Raum zwischen Johannesevangelium und extrakanonischen Schriften neu inszeniert.

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Urbicius’s Epitedeuma

«Изыскание» Урбикия

Author(s): Alexander K. Nefedkin / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: Urbicius; Anastasius I; “Spanish rider”; cavalry; infantry; invention; warfare; ballista;

The article is the first Russian translation of a short treatise “Epitedeuma” by Urbicius, a Greek author. In this treatise, in a rhetorical form, Urbicius recommends to the Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius (AD 491—518) to use special military devices, conventionally called “Spanish rider”, to protect the Roman infantry formation. The devices had to neutralize the horses of enemy cavalrymen and thereby disable the enemy’s powerful cavalry. This translation is supplied with an introductory article and comments explaining the historical realities.

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Narratives in the American Parliamentary Discourse on Drug Policy

Narracje na temat polityki narkotykowej w amerykańskim dyskursie parlamentarnym

Author(s): Maria Plucińska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: drug policy; narrative analysis; psychoactive substances; parliamentary discourse

The United States plays an important role in determining international drug policy. It is also one of the first countries which made legal regulations on psychoactive substances. For more than hundred years, the USA had believed that prohibition was the best solution for the drug problem. However, at the end of 2020, the American policy on drugs changed and became more liberal, especially in relation to marijuana. On December 4th, 2020, the House of Representatives voted in favor of marijuana decriminalization on federal level and now it is proceeding in Senate. On December 3rd, the status of marijuana in the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was changed and it was erased from the list of dangerous substances without medical use. In this article, I will show the changes of narratives on drugs presented in Congress. I am interested in how various perspectives affect choosing solutions. Therefore, I will use the narrative method to analyze transcripts from the proceedings of two laws: Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was a result of Ronald Reagan’s “zero tolerance” policy, as well as the 2020 marijuana decriminalization amendment. I will show main narratives presented by members of the Democratic party and the Republican party, as well as how they were changing with the passage of time. I will also present which of the existing hypotheses on the issue are supported by the narrative analysis of parliamentary discourse.

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The COVID-19 Pandemic as an Opportunity for a Permanent Reduction in Civil Rights

The COVID-19 Pandemic as an Opportunity for a Permanent Reduction in Civil Rights

Author(s): Paweł Chmielnicki,Dobrochna Minich,Radosław Rybkowski,Konrad Szocik,Michał Stachura / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2021

Keywords: the COVID-19 pandemic; fundamental rights; civil liberties; civil rights; US legislation; Polish legislation;

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects, which are primarily being felt in the functioning of the health service, the organization of social life, and the state of the national economy. It is also worth paying attention to the legal and political consequences which are less obvious and noticeable for average citizens. One of the most important is the change in legislation which entails limiting civil liberties and rights. This article is on empirical proof of how Polish legislation is reducing fundamental rights. The authorities in combatting the pandemic are not using the solutions that appear in the Polish Constitution, but use the non-constitutional form of special laws. The authors, therefore, when discussing the problem refer to US legislation and policy which has the notable example of the Patriot Act which can be interpreted as being a pretext for limiting civil liberties in the name of combating terrorism. As stated, such emergencies as the current pandemic or the threat of terrorism, are used to permanently and significantly reduce civil rights.

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Violence in the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Socio-Cultural Analysis

Przemoc w konsekwencjach pandemii COVID-19: analiza społeczno-kulturowa

Author(s): Małgorzata Gruchoła / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: COVID-19; Eurobarometer; scapegoat mechanism; violence; René Girard’s theories; Worldometer’s COVID-19 data

At a time of crisis, which may be caused by a natural disaster (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), each social group looks for a ‘scapegoat’ (René Girard's theory). This mechanism is illustrated in the article by the number of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 treated as a collective victim. The aim of the article was a study of the sources and forms of violence and to identify a scapegoat in the perception of the COVID-19 pandemic based on 24 research of the Eurobarometer: Public opinion monitoring in the time of COVID-19, covering the period from the 20th of March 2020 to the 30th of June 2021. The respondents' opinions on the consequences of a pandemic treated as a manifestation of violence were analyzed in three areas: economic, social and health. Applied were a quantitative analysis of the content of reports, a qualitative analysis of the contents, comparative and analytical descriptive methods.Six detailed research hypotheses were adopted, 3 of which were confirmed. The main hypothesis was also confirmed, but only for the first surge assuming that the number of deaths in individual EU countries, recorded in subsequent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, treated as a collective victim, is proportional to the total number of recorded cases of economic, social and health violence in a given country. The increase in deaths implies an increase in the identified violent acts.

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Scattered heritage

Rasuta bašćina

Author(s): Vladimir Biti / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 01+02/2004

Keywords: Dubravka Ugrešić; Croatian writer; Croatian literature;

U nekim traumatičnim okolnostima pisanje se počinje doživljavati kao način za oslobađanje od okrilja vlastite zajednice pronalaženjem udaljenih, raspršenih, u svakom pogledu diskontinuiranih srodnika. »Ja zasigurno nisam jedini«, tumači taj osjećaj Michel Foucault, »koji piše zato da ne bi imao lica.« Slova priskrbljuju medij »u kojemu se mogu izgubiti te se makar pojaviti pred očima koje više nikad neću morati sresti.« Nije li slično odricanje od vlastite definiranosti predmnijevao i Paul de Man kad je autobiografiju, s karakterističnom sklonosti paradoksima, proglasio žanrom obezličavanja? Ulazak u mnogoglasni anonimni prostor grafije označava trenutak »pokopavanja« osobnog glasa pa je autobiografija, umjesto autentična svjedočanstva, zapravo »epitafni diskurz«, »fikcija apostrofe odsutnom, preminulom ili bezglasnom entitetu koja postulira mogućnost odgovara toga entiteta i pridaje mu moć govora«. Ona, dakle, ne govori toliko o nečijem životu, naprotiv baš o smrti kao o onome iznenada »zastrtom velu« koji je tom životu oduzeo neposrednost i time stvorio potrebu za njegovim prepoznavanjem.

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Cartographies of Loss. Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry in Translations and Works by Andrzej Sosnowski

Kartografie utraty. Poezja Elizabeth Bishop w przekładach i twórczości Andrzeja Sosnowskiego

Author(s): Grzegorz Czemiel / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 50/2021

Keywords: contemporary poetry; literary translation; comparative studies; reading strategies;

Little attention has been devoted so far to the relation between the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and works by Andrzej Sosnowski, which include translations of Bishop’s poems. This is despite many similarities the two poets share: a peculiar position within the literary tradition, a specific sensibility, an interest in sophisticated forms, or various affinities in terms of subject matter, especially nautical topics. More resemblances can be also identified at a deeper level, where they manifest in subtle ways: both poets are inclined to reflect on loss and the limits of poetic expression, ultimately scrutinizing (albeit indirectly) the relationship between death and literature. Exploring the connection between the two writers also makes it possible to highlight the role played by translation in poetry. As shown, the boundary between original works and translations can be blurred, offering a new model for reading and interpreting poetry – one based not on hierarchies but a community of thought.

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Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture

Poučavanje renesanse: poetika i politika kulture

Author(s): Louis A. Montrose / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 03+04/2005

Keywords: Louis A. Montrose; Renaissance; poetics; Politics of Culture;

U proučavanju renesanse, kao i uopće u proučavanju književnosti u angloameričkim sredinama, primjetno je u posljednje vrijeme obnovljeno zanimanje za povijesne, društvene i političke uvjete i konzekvencije književne produkcije i reprodukcije: pisanje i čitanje tekstova, kao i procesi njihova optjecaja, kategoriziranja, analiziranja i poučavanja, rekonstruirani su kao povijesno determinirani i determinirajući modusi kulturnoga rada; naizgled autonomna estetska i akademska pitanja preispituju se kao nerazmrsivo, premda kompleksno, povezana s drugim diskursima i praksama - a takve veze tvore društvene mreže kojima se uzajamno i neprekidno oblikuju pojedinačne subjektivnosti i kolektivne strukture. Ta opća reorijentacija gorka je tema predsjedničkog govora J. Hillisa Millera 1986. u Modern Language Association. U tom je govoru Miller primijetio, s podosta zgroženosti i pretjeranosti, da se »proučavanje književnosti u posljednjih nekoliko godina gotovo u potpunosti odvratilo od teorije kao orijentacije prema jeziku kao takvom, okrenuvši se, shodno tome, povijesti, kulturi, društvu, politici, institucijama, klasnoj i rodnoj uvjetovanosti, društvenom kontekstu, materijalnoj bazi«. Takvom formulacijom, Miller polarizira jezično i društveno. Međutim, kulturalni studiji naglašavaju važnost njihove recipročnosti i uzajamnog oblikovanja: u jednu se ruku društveno shvaća kao diskurzivno konstruirano; a u drugu, uporaba jezika shvaća se kao nužno dijaloška, kao društveno i materijalno determinirana i ograničena.

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