Outlook: Research on Religion and Development

Studying the intersectionality of religion and social welfare in Richmond, Virginia requires going back to the beginning of the Virginia colony. In the crucible of the colony, the religious and social welfare functions of a parish community were one and the same. However, after the Revolutionary War it was just a matter of time before the entire system was disassembled. The process of disentanglement of church and state created an identity crisis in Virginia. In the late 1700s, the emergence of charitable efforts began with leading men of Richmond who tried to address the temporary needs of travelers, followed by groups of women who discovered new roles they could play through charitable works. The new “system” became a potpourri of societies, congregations, associations, and county units attempting to provide for the social welfare of the populous. The intersectionality of religion and social welfare continued as a diverse landscape of small and large organizations and congregations performing the social welfare functions in Richmond and throughout the Commonwealth emerged. Today, to attempt to separate the church from the state in this conglomerate of agencies is neither possible nor desirable. However, understanding its’ historical complexity is essential if one is to engage in contemporary practice within Richmond’s health and human service system.

This article explores the early history of the Group of Thirty (G30, 1978), which is an economic policy body committed to the analysis and spread of policy prescriptions as regards the evolution of the international economic and monetary system after the end of Bretton Woods. In so doing, this work represents the first critical recounting of the G30ʹs early experience from a historiographic perspective. The article frames the organizational roots and the early history of the G30 within the wider economic and political context that marked the transformations of the international system between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Moreover, this article deals with one of the most challenging policy issues that characterized the international economic policymaking at that time: the spread of high inflation rates. The emergence of sustained inflation trends in Western Europe will receive specific attention. Finally, the article discusses the relevance that social and political concerns acquired in the very conceptualization of anti-inflationary and market-oriented measures, as these were promoted by the G30ʹs affiliates between the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

Why Employment During and After COVID-19 Is a Critical Women's Health Issue.

Even though women in Pakistan have attracted some interest among researchers and policymakers, they are often represented as oppressed and victimised members of a highly patriarchal society. What is lacking are nuanced approaches that recognise Pakistani women as active and diverse agents without neglecting the societal structures that limit their agency. This research thus aims to provide more detailed representations of Pakistani women. The study argues that a research perspective based on poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial concepts of power, knowledge and subjects is helpful for analysing links between Pakistani women’s individual experiences and their implication in diverse social relations of power. Against this background, this study adopts just this kind of research perspective to explore how Pakistani female development practitioners working in Government of Pakistan projects in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province experience and negotiate their work environment, particularly in respect to gendered relations of power. 
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\nThe four research papers present insights into this research problem. Each of the four papers discusses a specific aspect: the relations between women and non domestic work as constituted through state discourses (Paper I); the complex field realities in which Pakistani development practitioners work (Paper II); the labour market for social organisers – a type of development practitioner – in northwest Pakistan and its gendered nature (Paper III); and the challenges female development practitioners face in their work environment and the coping strategies they develop (Paper IV). Each of the papers is based on an individual set of primary and/or secondary data such as job announcements, observations and people’s narratives. Primary data was generated through qualitative methodologies between 2006 and 2008 during several periods of fieldwork in Pakistan. 
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\nThe research identifies the development sector as a complex and often contested work environment. Many local residents perceive ‘development’ as an instrument of the ‘West’ for pursuing its interests, and they are thus generally wary of development practitioners and organisations. A rising number of verbal and physical attacks in the late 2000s have affected the work of many development practitioners. Besides the resistance to development as a ‘Western’ ideology, there is also a widespread need for and interest in material benefits, which complicates development practitioners’ work further. When social organisers go to communities, they are supposed to select and support villages, communities and individuals that need developing. In a village, however, there are usually different voices that claim the right to development. The findings of the present study show that villagers variably draw on social categories such as development status, clan membership or gender to convince (potential) development practitioners of their eligibility for material benefits. Furthermore, an analysis of job announcement for social organisers shows that job qualifications are high (e.g. for language skills and willingness to work in a mixed-gender working environment) and the rewards (e.g. wages and social recognition) are low. For women in particular, it is difficult to present the requisite skills, since social values and norms regarding gender discriminate against women in areas such as access to information, ability to travel, and eligibility for employment in general. 
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\nThe study further elaborates on the fact that the development sector has become a growing work opportunity for (mainly middle class) Pakistani women. This is because of a growing demand for well-educated female employees in this sector, but also because of a growing dependency of many middle-class families on women’s income. While the female participation rate in the Pakistani labour force is generally low (21.7% in 2010/11), there have always been women in formal employment, although this has often been in traditional female occupations such as teaching and nursing. The study’s findings suggest that Pakistani women have been kept out of non-domestic work through social norms and values that were, for example, established in laws, directives and speeches by state representatives such as Zia ul-Haq. Even today, women who take up a job as development practitioners need to position themselves in relation to these norms and values. The study shows that female development practitioners therefore develop strategies to establish themselves as good Muslim women and good development workers. For example they establish fictive kinship relations with their male team colleagues in order to make the latter responsible for their well-being and modesty. Another strategy is to locate women’s room in the back part of the office in order to shield female employees from men’s gazes. 
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\nA conclusion based on this study’s empirical findings is that, in the work environments of development practitioners, competing discourses on gender relations and development complicate working women’s everyday lives, but also provide them with an opportunity to reconcile specific gender norms with their labour market engagements. Pakistani women’s lives are made harder by the fact that prevalent gender relations generally restrict their participation in formal labour markets (even though formal structural constraints on women’s employment have been substantially reduced). However, women have to negotiate gender relations to participate in formal employment relations, such as in the development sector. Since engaging in the labour market is per se highly unusual behaviour for many Pakistani women, Pakistani women’s involvement in the market economy often increases both men’s and women’s options to negotiate gender relations, either consciously or unconsciously. 
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\nThe study contributes to research in three ways. First, it makes a conceptual contribution to debates on gender, work and development by applying poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial methodologies to data analysis and representation, and this is fairly rare for empirical research in Pakistan and in this research field. Second, it contributes empirically to academic debates about gender and work by rendering professional Pakistani women visible, especially the complexities, ambivalences and multilayered nature of their working lives in the development sector. Third, the study makes an empirical contribution to debates on development interventions and how they operate on the ground in the context of Pakistan by discussing the impact of (women’s) work environments on development interventions.

The first issue of IJURR was published more than 30 years ago, in 1977. It opened with a brief editorial statement in which the journal’s founders defined their project. IJURR would be interdisciplinary. It would be open to diverse theoretical approaches and methodologies, whilst seeking to understand urban and regional development in terms of the ‘fundamental economic, social and political processes which operate at local, national and international levels’. Such an understanding should inform ‘social action’ and not be confined to intellectual debate. The tone for the new journal was set by the inaugural issue, which opened with four articles (by Ray Pahl, Jean Lojkine, Enzo Mingione and Richard Child Hill) on ‘urbanism and the state’. Other contributors to the first volume of IJURR included Manuel Castells, Edmond Preteceille, Chris Pickvance, Patrick Dunleavy, Doreen Massey, Martin Ravallion, Roger Friedland, Frances Fox Piven, Robert Alford, Josef Gugler and William Flanagan. Pahl, Mingione, Preteceille, Pickvance, Piven and Castells were all founding members of IJURR’s editorial board, together with Michael Harloe (the editor) and S.M. Miller. The founders of and initial contributors to IJURR comprised a remarkable generation of scholars concerned with the development of a radical or critical approach to urban and regional issues that would be relevant to political and social change. Indeed, IJURR included a section on ‘Praxis’. In the first issue, this section comprised articles on social or popular movements in the USA, Mexico and Spain, and on the civil war in Beirut. The impetus behind IJURR came mostly from sociologists, and there was a considerable overlap between IJURR and Research Committee 21 of the International Sociological Association, but IJURR also drew on the efforts of political scientists, planners and geographers. Change was central to IJURR’s identity. Drawing on egalitarian conceptions of social justice, IJURR’s founders sought to show that cities and regions could change in a variety of directions. Marxist theory was especially appealing to scholars who combined activist and scholarly missions, although Marxist theory certainly did not go unchallenged (not least by Ray Pahl and Patrick Dunleavy) and was never a precondition for publication. The scholarly practice of the journal was unambiguously embedded in an overall surge of radical and even revolutionary politics across the world. The 1970s were the morning after the 1960s explosion of critical theory and revolutionary practice. Student rebellion and scholarly debate fed and radicalized each other. IJURR was both a product of and protagonist in this important shift, and was seen by its editors, authors, reviewers and readers as such.

What does it mean to be both Maya and Protestant in Guatemala? Burgeoning religious pluralism in Mesoamerica and throughout Latin America is evident as Protestantism permeates a region that had been overwhelmingly Catholic for nearly five centuries. In considering the interplay between contemporary Protestant practice and native cultural traditions among Maya evangelicals, Samson documents the processes whereby some Maya have converted to new forms of Christianity and the ways in which the Maya are incorporating Christianity for their own purposes. At the intersection of religion and cultural pluralism, contemporary evangelicals focus on easing the tension between Maya identity and the Protestant insistence that old ways must be left behind in the conversion process. Against the backdrop of the 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and the rise of the indigenous Maya Movement in the late 1980s, this work provides a unique portrait of social movements, cultural and human rights, and the role that religion plays in relation to the nation-state in post-conflict political processes. Re-enchanting the World fills a niche within the anthropological literature on evangelicals in Latin America during a time of significant social change.

Beyond Four Walls: Rethinking Religion in the Study of Sports Lori Latrice Martin Religion and sports are among the most important areas of American social life. Religion and sports are also among the most misunderstood and misrepresented areas of social life in America. It is no wonder then that scholarly research and public discourse at the intersection of religion and sports contains so many myths and so much misinformation. The way that scholars and others think about religion must change for research on religion and sports to advance. Work on religion and sports must center race beyond periods of heightened racial tension. Race is so connected to both religion and sports that one cannot adequately address one without addressing one or more of the others. Scholars who study religion and sports should move beyond the canons of their respective disciplines to embrace underutilized perspectives such as American Civil Religion, the politics of respectability, and racial realism. Understanding religion as an orientation as opposed to a social institution through one or more of the lenses mentioned above, will aid in our understanding of past, present, and future issues in the study of sports that will have theoretical, methodological, and public policy implications. These issues will likely include, at the very least, attention to the career and overall legacy of elite athletes like Serena Williams; developments in name, image, and likeness (NIL); attention to social justice; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The future of the study of religion and sports will depend upon deepening our understanding of both religion and sports. For many people who study religion and sports, and for many in the general public, religion is a social institution. In other words, religion constitutes a set of social positions that are connected to social relations that perform the social role [End Page 9] of answering important questions about our existence, the meaning of life and death, among other matters. Symbols, rituals, and a belief system are also associated with religion when we think about it as a social institution. Consequently, research about religion and sports may examine the religious affiliation of athletes. The research in this area may explore the participation of certain denominations, especially in the Christian tradition, in sports and their respective motivations. Debates about whether or not athletic teams may be led in religious rituals by their coaches on the playing field might also be an area of inquiry. If we really wish to understand religion and sports we must think about religion more broadly. Many people who study religion and sports may not know the works of Charles Long. Dr. Charles Long was a religious studies scholar and cultural historian. He published the book Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion in the late 1980s. In it he provides a more expansive definition of religion than most scholars outside of religious studies, and perhaps inside of religious studies, are accustomed to using in their respective works. Long understands religion as an orientation. Religion is a way of viewing the world and an individual’s or group’s place in it. This is a powerful way of understanding religion because it frees scholars from simply focusing on things like signs, symbols, and images in order to take a deeper dive and explore more of the complexities and nuances associated with understanding one’s place in the world and how that might influence other areas of social life, including sports. Scholars who study sports have yet to agree on a definition of sports. Some might argue that sports involve some form of physical competition that is well organized, well established, officially governed, and results in material and nonmaterial rewards. Others might contend that there is far too much overlap between sport, play, and spectacle to truly define sports. The definition given here may exclude emerging sports and popular activities lacking a formalized recognized governing structure. Scholars interested in the study of sports should consider expanding their understanding of what constitutes a sport and move beyond simply reifying existing definitions by limiting oneself to such sports organizations as AAU, Pop Warner, Little League, NCAA, and the Olympics, for examples of what is a sport. We must...

This study explores the phenomenon of digital activism within the context of contemporary Islamic politics in Indonesia, focusing on the influence of social media on the dynamics of Islamic movements. Social media has emerged as a new space for political mobilization and religious discourse, enabling Islamic groups to expand their reach, enhance participation, and consolidate support. The study employs a qualitative approach with a critical analysis of the content, strategies, and impacts of social media use by various Islamic movements, ranging from moderate to conservative. The findings reveal that social media serves as a communication tool and a discursive space for shaping identities, conveying political narratives, and mobilizing collective action. On the other hand, the use of social media by Islamic movements also presents challenges, including polarization, misinformation, and the potential for radicalization. The research highlights that digital activism has reshaped the landscape of Islamic politics in Indonesia, with social media as a key catalyst for this transformation. However, its impact must be critically understood within broader social, political, and cultural contexts. These findings significantly contribute to studying Islamic politics and digital transformation in the modern era. The research expands academic literature on contemporary Islamic politics by analyzing the role of social media as a tool for political transformation within Islamic movements in Indonesia. This study offers a fresh perspective on the intersection of religion and digital technology, emphasizing how social media shapes political identity, mobilizes support, and influences public discourse and policy. Academically, this research contributes by providing a nuanced understanding of the digitalization of religious, political movements in a non-Western democratic context, enriching comparative studies on digital activism and political Islam.

The permanent shift of modernity, the epistemological crisis, and the politicization of all social spheres determine an atmosphere of global political anxiety. The ever-expanding security deficit becomes an attribute of modernity, as a fragmentation as a response to globality and the emergence of alternative ways of political genesis reflects new socio-cultural semantic nodes. Existential threats raise a persistent appeal to religion. The loss of epistemological certainty in political constructions contributes to the theoretical confusion about the future. The diffusion of political and value contexts forces people to turn to religion while developing projects and setting the goals of modernity. This creates cognitive and political- instrumental difficulties in using legitimizing and, at the same time, mutually exclusive religious meanings. The simultaneous truth in different types of discourses and in theory makes it impossible to find a common denominator. We argue that the projects and goal settings of modernity, claiming to be universal, but not achieving it, are structured primarily based on the logic of alarmism and eschatology. A positive project, trying to overcome the limitations of politicization, moves to the value plane. We consider three perspectives of the teleology of modernity, including religious meanings: theoretical, metaphysical, and instrumental. The research methodology is based on the problems of political goal setting in the logic of, traditional/ modern, explaining the religious coloring of political strategies and the splitting of future visions. The othering based on religious differences as a tool of political goal setting, the political instrumentalization of religious identities, simultaneously with religious creation of the world, puts two possible projects of modernity at opposite poles - the World of Religions and the World of Faith. Among the possible projects arising at the intersection of religion and politics, the author suggests three large clusters: alarmism, political expediency, and utopia.

Reviewed by: Remi de Reims: Mémoire d'un saint, histoire d'une Église Damien Kempf Remi de Reims: Mémoire d'un saint, histoire d'une Église. By Marie-Céline Isaïa. [Histoire religieuse de la France, 35.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.2010. Pp. 919. €67,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-08745-2.) This book originated as a French doctoral thesis submitted in 2004. Like most French theses turned into books, it is a weighty tome. In more than 900 dense, although elegantly written, pages, Marie-Céline Isaïa documents the history of St. Remi of Reims and his construction as a holy figure from his lifetime up to the reign of the Capetian King Philip I (1060-1108), thereby covering seven centuries and three dynasties (the Merovingian, the Carolingian, and the Capetian) in Francia. Rather than presenting an overarching argument, the book simply follows a chronological structure. Chapter 1 retraces the life of Remi, emphasizing the senatorial Gallo-Roman nobility to which he was born and his long-time partnership with Clovis, which resulted in the baptism of the Merovingian king in the late-fifth century or early-sixth century (Isaïa proposes 507 or 508, instead of an earlier date put forward by other historians), a watershed event that served to shape the cult of Remi in relation to the Frankish kings in the following centuries. Chapter 2 focuses on the Merovingian period and the composition of the first (extant) life of the saint in the middle of the eighth century. Isaïa sheds interesting light on the competition between different political lineages, Neustrian as well as Austrasian, in the appropriation of his cult, up to the time when Charles Martel definitively associated the saint with the Pippinid family in the second quarter of the eighth century. The subsquent chapter is devoted primarily to Hincmar's tenure as archbishop of Reims (845-82) and his promotion of the cult of Remi. The national vocation of the saint, whose baptism of the first Frankish king led Hincmar to proclaim him the "apostle of the Franks," signals an important shift in Remi's constitution as a royal patron and protector of the Frankish monarchy, a process that, following various developments discussed in chapter 4, comes to full fruition only in the reign of the first Capetians—in particular, that of Philip I. The broad chronological scope of the study, combined with its minute examination of the extant documentation, forcefully establishes the slow formation of the cult of Remi and the constant interplay between local interests and national pretensions that contributed to project Remi as the premier saint of France. However, the reader can regret Isaïa's somewhat parochial approach and exclusive focus on Remi and Reims, which prevents her from exploring the broader political and religious contexts that would have, for instance, allowed her to situate the development of Remi as a royal saint in comparison with the competing figures of Ss. Martin and Denis. In that respect, a fuller treatment of Hincmar might have proven valuable, since he spent the first part of his career at the abbey of St. Denis, at a time when the [End Page 762] monastic community was busy promoting the role of the St. Denis as a Frankish patron, before his appointment at Reims. Similarly, the establishment of Remi as the protector of the Frankish monarchy at the time of Philip I could have been compared to contemporary efforts on the part of the abbeys of St-Denis and Fleury to attract royal attention by composing royal genealogies and histories of the Capetian dynasty. Such reservations should not deter anyone interested in hagiography to welcome this important contribution to the field. In the wake of previous works by Felice Lifshitz and Thomas Head, Isaïa's study illustrates the fact that the cult of saints always lies at the intersection of religion and politics; of individual faith and personal ambitions; of local affairs and national aspirations. Damien Kempf University of Liverpool Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America Press

Ilegalni migranti u tranzitu kao prijetnja sigurnosti građanima Meksika

The humanitarian impulse

This study aims to examine the rich tradition of panegyric odes composed by Arab poets in honor of Ottoman sovereigns, highlighting the historical, cultural, and political context that gave rise to this distinctive form of literary expression. The paper seeks to explore the reciprocal relationship between Arab poets and the Ottoman Empire, shedding light on how these poets paid tribute to the imperial majesty, conveyed the sultans’ might, and helped to legitimize their rule. By focusing on a diverse range of panegyric odes from the later periods of the Ottoman Empire, the research encompasses the evolving dynamics of power, patronage, and poetic expression that underpinned this unique interaction between Arab poets and the Ottoman court. The primary purpose of the study is to offer a comprehensive analysis of the thematic and stylistic features of these panegyric odes, elucidating the creative strategies employed by Arab poets to extol the virtues of the Ottoman sultans and to articulate their own political, social, and religious allegiances. The paper utilizes historical, literary, and textual analysis, to examine panegyric poetry’s role in fostering cultural exchange and diplomatic communication between the Arab and Ottoman worlds, and its function in bolstering imperial ideology and projecting the Ottoman state’s image. This paper further delves into the critical intersections of politics, religion, and artistic expression within these odes, illuminating how the poets navigated these spheres to construct a nuanced portrait of Ottoman rule. By interpreting the subtexts, allegories, and metaphors employed within these poems, the research uncovers the profound philosophical, spiritual, and cultural paradigms that underscored the political landscapes of the time. Through this lens, the panegyric odes emerge as invaluable literary artifacts that bear testimony to the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire and the intricate socio-political relationships that existed between the Arab poets and the Ottoman court.

Presidents routinely employ Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs) to inform Congress about the executive's thoughts and position on pending legislation. Such statements are used for a variety of purposes, including bill promotion, suggesting changes, issuing veto threats, and addressing perceived threats to traditional powers. While SAPs have been identified as an important vehicle for interbranch communication and a key source of insight into presidential preferences, many questions remain as to how presidents make use of SAPs' full range of potential. Using a novel data set of over 4,600 SAPs across multiple administrations, we explore the content of these interbranch communications to uncover how, when, and why presidents use such statements over time. Ultimately, we demonstrate the many ways that presidential use of SAPs is strategic based on political contexts.

Violence, along with questions regarding national identity and political change, has defined Latin American societies throughout their history, and theater offers a way to understand how this violence has shaped the social and political contexts of Latin American societies in the twentieth century. This book examines how violence has been used in four Cuban and Argentine plays written in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a way to understand the social and political context in which they were written and performed. The plays I focus on explore the violence that appears in the theatrical context of Cuba and Argentina, two of the Latin American countries with the largest theater communities during the period from 1968 to 1974. Cuba and Argentina can be seen as a logical comparison in that they share various points of contact during the 1960s and 1970s, both in the political context and in the theater communities where individuals from one country often traveled or lived in the other. Che Guevara, of course, was an Argentine who fought alongside Fidel and Raúl Castro and was an early architect of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera lived and worked for many years in Buenos Aires. This time period, one known globally for its turmoil, in Cuba and Argentina was a moment of change that was understood most often through violence. Though each play examined in this book approaches violence in a different way, they all represent it as a way to engage their audiences with the social and political contexts surrounding them and allow us to understand the larger framework of both these two countries and the surrounding historical and social contexts.KeywordsPolitical ContextDifficult TimeTheater CommunityCuban RevolutionPrestigious AwardThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.