Protestant Cause Research Articles

Negative Responses toward Москва - Moskva Song by Timati in 2019

This study discusses the negative response of the people of Russia and Moscow to the song Moskva by Timati, the song with the most dislikes in Russia on the video provider site, Youtube. The writer analyzes the data by using Reception theory by Stuart Hall in analyzing people's response, and propaganda theory by Jowett and O'Donnell in finding the causes of protests over this song. The method used in this research is descriptive analysis, literature study, and interview techniques to obtain the required response data. The results of this study are that the many protests over this song are caused by propaganda elements contained in the song lyrics. The lyrics contains lines and verses, viewed from the lens of propaganda, that are heavily political and leans towards a biased belief of one political spectrum. Other than lyrical aspects, the visualization of the song through its music video also contains propagandistic trait. This is manifested through the abundance of skyscrapers in Moscow shown in the music video which signify the urbanized part of the city, leaving the undesired part enclosed. The combination of the song’s internality and responses results in a comprehensive outlook for the song.

Protests in Macao Under Chinese Sovereignty: Against the State or for the State?

The existing literature on contentious politics has long centred on “state-challenging protests,” referring to resistance that denies state legitimacy. However, the implications of “state-engaging protests,” referring to protests that seek state assistance in what are essentially private disputes rather than challenging state legitimacy, have yet to be thoroughly explored. By analysing 2,364 protests in Macao, this study compares the trends and characteristics of protests from 2000 to 2021. The results indicate that state-challenging protests that targeted the Macao government exceeded state-engaging ones but state-engaging protests that targeted the mainland Chinese authorities exceeded state-challenging ones. The conclusion strongly supports the thesis that identity affiliation affects the type of protests: citizens with a strong local Macao identity tend to be involved more in state-engaging protests, seeking state assistance. However, citizens with a strong Chinese national identity tend to engage more in state-challenging protests to criticise the local government. These findings provide a useful comparative perspective on the causes of state-challenging and state-engaging protests.

Drivers of COVID-19 protest across localities in Israel: a machine-learning approach

ABSTRACT Anti-government protests emerged globally in response to COVID-19 countermeasures. What are the key drivers of these pandemic-related protests, and to what extent do they differ from the drivers of non-COVID protests? We examine these questions in the context of Israel, which faced a growing political crisis at the start of the pandemic, effectively blurring the distinction between different causes of protest. Our data features 1,922 protests across 189 Israeli localities for the period between March and July 2022. Using a machine learning approach, we find that all protests, regardless of whether they were directly related to the pandemic or not, were motivated by the same set of key indicators – albeit with the ranking of drivers for COVID-related protests inverted for non-COVID protests. Local infection rates and government responses were more pronounced for the former, whereas differences in residential and commercial property taxes, access to affordable housing, quality of education and demography were among the most important drivers for the latter. Our analysis underscores the role that local governments played in managing the pandemic, and demonstrates that variation in socioeconomic conditions had an important effect on the incidence of protests across Israel.

Paul Choart de Buzanval: A Learned French Ambassador and the Republic of Letters

Abstract Although he enjoys some renown as a friend of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon, Henri iv’s ambassador to the United Provinces, Paul Choart de Buzanval (1551–1607) has rarely been studied in his own right since the 1960s. Yet Choart was a significant champion of the protestant cause, who built a network of contacts spread across Europe, from Venice over Germany to England. This article assesses, first, how Buzanval’s network grew as his career evolved during the final decades of the French Wars of Religion and their immediate aftermath. Secondly, it takes stock of Buzanval’s role as an early modern emissary abroad: it demonstrates how, over and above his diplomatic agency for Henri de Navarre/Henri iv, Buzanval also emerged as a patron and cultural intermediary with the – mostly protestant – Republic of Letters. Thus, from relatively modest beginnings, Buzanval became a notable player in a network that encompassed political as well as intellectual and merchant spheres.

Fear and Trembling: Performing the Protestant Conscience in Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy

With its glorified ghost, godly avenger, and idolatrous Tyrant, Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy appears to offer a thinly veiled allegory of Protestant triumphalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to how its characters do — or do not — respond to the play’s many crises of conscience. This essay sets Middleton’s tragedy against English Protestant understandings of the trembling body and vexed conscience. It demonstrates that while the play’s multiple instances of trembling seem to unsettle its Protestant triumphalism, its special effects, intended to provoke audience trembling, might nevertheless deepen playgoers’ attachment to the Protestant cause.

John Donne in the Hague and the Hague at the Globe: Performing Reformation England's Religio-Political Doctrine of Perseverance

This essay argues that the British delegation's distinctive approach to the Reformed doctrine of perseverance at the Synod of Dort provides necessary context for two international sermons delivered by John Donne in 1619. Donne's rhetoric in these sermons, in turn, is echoed by a striking dramatization of international “current events” performed in the same year by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre. Reading John Donne's sermons at Heidelberg and the Hague alongside John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's collaborative The Tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, this essay demonstrates that James I's delegates at Dort, his European embassy's star preacher, and a popular London play present a richly nuanced yet harmonious public face on an international stage to an often contentious national conversation. King, church, and people speak together on the necessity of persevering in faith (within the established church), in fidelity to God-ordained civil government, and with loyalty to the European Protestant cause held in tension with a “Britain first” national exceptionalism.

Enacting National Trauma on the Female Body in Aubigné's Misères : An Epic Motif

Abstract: The French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century coincided with a literary desire to validate French cultural dominance through poetry. As part of this goal, a traditional epic would establish a Virgil for France and a heroic story to equal Rome's. Though the civil wars prevented the composition of such an epic, they opened the path for Agrippa d'Aubigné's Les Tragiques , an epic account of the Wars themselves. As a Protestant poet on the losing side of national conflict, Aubigné rests upon epic traditions while using them to garner support for his faction and to blame Catholic leadership vehemently for the national crisis. This article examines the epic tradition (seen in Helen, Dido, Bramimonde, and others) by which national trauma and epic conflict are enacted upon female bodies. Aubigné uses this epic motif to specific rhetorical ends: gaining sympathy for the Protestant cause and lamenting Catholic oppression. He adapts the epic tradition to emphasize mothering bodies (pregnant or nursing) to heighten the horror of the war and win the audience to the poet's side. This adaptation of epic tradition takes two forms: the anthropomorphization of France herself and the presentation of victims of civil war. The Misères of the nation, lamented in the poem's first book, resonate in female reproductive bodies to universalize the trauma, thereby aligning the reader with Aubigné's outrage and grief. Though female embodiment of national trauma is traditional to epic, Les Tragiques finds a new angle that serves its rhetorical goals.

P. Sorokin’s Sociology of revolution in the context of theory of revolution of 19th–20th centuries

The article is devoted to the analysis of Pitirim Sorokin’s book “The Sociology of Revolution” in the context of scientific achievements in the field of the theory of revolution. The author analyzes: first, those ideas and thoughts that formed the basis of Sorokin's concept in comparison with those approaches and ideas that existed in his time; Secondly, those ideas and approaches that had been developing in the 20th century under the influence of Sorokin’s book. The author considers, that Sorokin’s “The Sociology of Revolution” needs to be considered in the scientific context of researches on the causes of social protest from Aristotle to Enlightenment, researches on the English and Great French Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries and the development of the theory of revolution in the 19th century. The author concludes that Sorokin's “The Sociology of Revolution” had absorbed into its concept existing approaches and ideas, and became a bright conceptual work, which gave a way to several generations of researchers of the theory of revolution in the 20th century. And its great influence is still valid.

François de La Noue czyta Amadisa z Walii

Amadis de Gaule is a chivalric romance adapted from the Spanish work of Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo by Nicolas Herberay des Essarts in 1540-1548. As the first bestselling novel in France, it initially generated enthusiastic reactions concerning the qualities of style and the pleasure of reading, then, with the progress of violence unleached by civil conflicts, more and more severe. François de La Noue, famous soldier sincerely devoted to the Protestant cause and author of Discours politiques et militaires, is one of the most intransigent censors of the French Amadis. In this paper we show the poisons that according to the Huguenot infect the fiction of this novel: tantalizing depictions of mages and witches, immoral conception of love relationships and fanciful military exploits of the characters. These three layers of the work risk perverting French youth, which plunges the moralist in deep concern.

Understanding the Service delivery protests in South Africa: A case study of Duncan Village

Background: In the years since the first democratic election in 1994, South Africa has experienced mass violent demonstrations in townships, which include the Duncan village massacre in 1985. The phenomenon of violent service delivery protests has become a norm in South Africa. Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) protests constitute the key focus of this study.Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the key challenges that relate to service delivery protests in Duncan village.Setting: This study was conducted in Duncan village, one of the townships in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM), which is located approximately 5 km from East London’s central business district in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with community leaders from Duncan village, including the ward councillor, in the data collection process.Results: The findings of the study revealed that housing shortages, an unhygienic living environment, poverty and unemployment were identified as major challenges facing residents in Duncan village.Conclusion: The BCMM should regulate community clean-ups in order to ensure better living conditions. Develop electronic database to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of houses. Also, community meetings should be monitored and evaluated on a regular basis not only during election or protest time. Moreover, the ward councillor should be available and easily accessible to Duncan Village residents.Contribution: The article sought to investigate the challenges that relate to service delivery protests in Duncan Village and concludes that lack of housing, poverty, dirty location, and lack of communication were the main causes of violent service delivery protests.

Проблематизация исследовательского поля поколения Z

The article outlines the research problems associated with the study of generation Z based on the problematization procedure. Problematization makes it possible to question established ideas and offer new perspectives of research. The author proposes to analyze the generation Z in the context of several concepts. 1. A.O. Hirschman's «voice–exit–loyalty" (EVL) concept and its extended version «voice–exit–loyalty–neglect» (EVLN). For these studies, we apply the tools of game theory. The question is raised about the admissibility of considering youth as a social group as an actor of the game. 2. Concepts about the demographic causes of protests related to the growth of the share of young people, the slowdown of social elevators. Within the framework of these concepts, work on the study of interaction and conversion of online and offline activity seems promising. 3. Concepts of identity and post-materialistic values of youth. Particular attention should be paid to the problems of ageism, digital and intergenerational gaps in modern conditions. It is suggested that the trends in the formation of youth identities are different in different civilizations.

‘Nu plecăm până nu plecați!’- A Case Study on the Rise of the Digital Civic Activism in Romania (2015-2018)

In this study we focused our attention on the involvement of the oldest and the most active online community, Corupția ucide, in organising or rallying protests in 2015, 2017 and 2018. We wanted to show to what extent the representatives of this community managed to increase the number of (involved) fans supporting the cause of anti-corruption protests and how they used Facebook as an interactive tool for communicating with users in the case of the three analysed protests. The Corupția ucide community has provided internet users with information about protests and anti-corruption legislation, has succeeded in connecting and engaging citizens to participate also in the street, not only in social media, and has paved the way for the digital civic activism institutionalisation in Romania.

Protest potential in Kazakhstan: factors and regional features

In the article, the authors investigated the main approaches to the study of protest factors and their features. Based on quantitative and qualitative methods identified the main factors and causes of protests in Kazakhstan. A number of questions of the sociological research are aimed at assessing the respondents’ economic situation in the country, the financial situation and consumer potential of their family, identifying the problems facing the country. Another set of questions focused on identifying the level of trust in the media, determining the degree of influence of social networks on protest activity, assessing the level of protest of the population. The results of a survey of 2 000 respondents and the study of data from 16 focus group discussions in Kazakhstan revealed a hierarchy of factors affecting the protest potential in the country. The protest potential of Kazakhstan’s society is primarily associated with socio-economic problems. In addition, inefficient public administration and corruption are a factor of protest. This article examines the degree of readiness of Kazakhstanis to participate in protest actions. The propensity to participate in protests has been studied in ethnic, educational and sample of regions. The degree of impact of mass media on the protest potential of the Kazakh society is revealed. Key words: protest potential, protest activity, sample of regions, factors, conflict.

Discursive Communities, Protest, Xenophobia, and Looting in South Africa: A Social Network Analysis

The article informs on a study that employed a digital ethnographic approach to analyse a network of human relationships and connections based on the physical and social phenomena of political protest and xenophobia, accompanied by looting and the destruction of property in South Africa. It examines how social media have been used to fuel violence, protest, xenophobic attacks, and the looting of shops, and for ordinary citizens to post videos or images of protest actions on the internet. This article uses the tenets of propaganda (the propaganda model) as a social media theory to analyse online activism in various forms, such as journalism and political protest for citizen mobilisation and participation. The article finds that participation in groups (reflected by hashtags) is determined by shared interests or grievances (mob psychology) and shaped by propaganda. It concludes that social media are tools or platforms that can be used for good or bad, echoing realities on the ground, such as poverty and social inequalities, as causes of political protest, xenophobia, and looting in South Africa. Political players and activists drive their own agendas by exploiting or emphasising the causes of poverty and social inequalities, thereby attracting followers who reaffirm their messages by tweeting and retweeting. The article concludes that social media are weaponised for protest, causing panic, anxiety, and discomfort that linger for an unspecified period until another outbreak.

English

Protest has been employed by those who lack access to the resources of organized pressure groups and/or by those whose values conflict sharply with those of the dominant elite. It has been a means of politics by other means. The use of protest as other means of politics in Ethiopia was more pronounced and recurring between the years 2015 and 2018. However, the problem still is little is known about the root causes of the protests. Despite the vast news reporting on the protests, there is little or no comprehensive analysis on the fundamental causes of the protests. Much of the news reporting on the protests focus on immediate causes and overlooked or failed to present a systematized analysis of the fundamental causes. This paper, therefore, aimed at explaining the fundamental causes of the protests in a systematized manner. Thus, the research methodology is explanatory approach. The study employed case study, protest event analysis (PEA), content analysis and historical research methods to formulate inductive reasoning from separate events and incidents in the effort to unearth the underlying causes of the political protests between 2015 and 2018. Theories of social revolution and empiricism are used to put in perspective separate incidents and events in the effort to build up the case. The content analysis and protest event analysis (PEA) revealed that the underlying empirical causes for political protests in Ethiopia during the period under consideration emerged from structural, institutional, ideological contradictions and weakness resulting in marginalization, economic dogmatism, parochial political culture, strategic exclusion, ideological hegemony and weak institutional set ups. These resulted in politicized discontent and eventually political violence.   Key words: Political protest, theories of revolution, protest in Ethiopia.

Policy on Public Assemblies in Times of Crisis: Recommendations Concerning the Strategy of Militant Democracy

The main purpose of the article is to present the activities undertaken by decision-making centres and public administration entities in Poland in relation to protests against the restriction of abortion law. These protests took place during the second wave of the pandemic and continue. It all started with the judgment of the Constitutional Court, which decided to restrict abortion law in Poland, so far there was a so-called abortion compromise, which allowed abortions to be carried out in three specific cases. The verdict met with resistance from a large part of society and triggered protests that turned into large-scale public gatherings, despite the coronavirus pandemic. During this period assemblies were reduced or banned completely, which may be one symptom of using by the government the strategy of militant democracy. The study’s focus is primarily on the activities taken by decision-making centers with regard to protesters. The analysis makes it possible to explain the ways and causes of protests and public gatherings held despite the restrictions introduced to prevent the spread of the virus. On this basis, it introduces recommendations to the government to restore stability in the state and end the protests.

Policy on Public Assemblies in Times of Crisis: Recommendations Concerning the Strategy of Militant Democracy

The main purpose of the article is to present the activities undertaken by decision-making centres and public administration entities in Poland in relation to protests against the restriction of abortion law. These protests took place during the second wave of the pandemic and continue. It all started with the judgment of the Constitutional Court, which decided to restrict abortion law in Poland, so far there was a so-called abortion compromise, which allowed abortions to be carried out in three specific cases. The verdict met with resistance from a large part of society and triggered protests that turned into large-scale public gatherings, despite the coronavirus pandemic. During this period assemblies were reduced or banned completely, which may be one symptom of using by the government the strategy of militant democracy. The study’s focus is primarily on the activities taken by decision-making centers with regard to protesters. The analysis makes it possible to explain the ways and causes of protests and public gatherings held despite the restrictions introduced to prevent the spread of the virus. On this basis, it introduces recommendations to the government to restore stability in the state and end the protests.

Peasant protests over land seizures in rural China

ABSTRACT This article reports key findings drawing on a database containing more than 12,000 protest news events in China from 2000 to 2018, including over 1500 protests against land expropriation. It finds that while social conflicts over land seizures continue to be the leading cause of protests in rural China, there was an upward trend for the number of related protest between 2000 and 2014 and a downward trend between 2014 and 2018. Under Xi Jinping, police were increasingly inclined to arrest and crack down on land seizure protesters. Failing to adequately deal with land disputes may undermine China's regime legitimacy.

On the ‘Arab Inequality Puzzle’: The Case of Egypt

ABSTRACTThis article surveys and discusses prominent protagonists of the debate on socio‐economic inequality in the Arab region, with a special focus on the World Bank and Egypt. According to official data, the region holds remarkably low Gini coefficients in a context of declining inequality. This contradicts the popular perception of high social inequality as a major cause of regional protests since the Arab Spring; hence the reference to a ‘puzzle’ in mainstream literature. The debate about the reality of social inequality in the region has developed since 2011 — particularly in regard to Egypt, where income and consumption data are periodically collected by means of household surveys. Inequality measures based on this method alone, while income taxation data are inaccessible, are highly questionable and conflict with various observations and calculations based on other indicators such as national accounts, executive income or house prices. Yet, the World Bank upholds official inequality findings in portraying the Arab upheaval as the revolt of a ‘middle class’ that aspires to greater business freedom, in consonance with the neoliberal worldview.

Politics and State: Two Sides of the Same Phenomenon

Introduction. The centuries-old history of the state and political protest movements as their driving force highlights an interesting pattern. Participants, initiators, and leaders are not interested in the underlying causes of protests. The forms and content of management, socio-political systems are changing but in all situations a narrow circle of people continues to make all important decisions.Materials and methods. The study used comparative legal and systemic methods, various materials.The results of the study. Political decisions overtly or covertly threaten performers of these decisions with punishment for non-compliance. However, as a rule only they always bear suffering and losses for erroneous decisions.Discussion and conclusion. According to Hegel a political decision is based “on subjective goals and opinions, on subjective feeling and private conviction that lead to the destruction of internal morality, integrity and conscience, love and law in relations between individuals, on the one hand, and public order and state laws not limited by legal norms and not restrained by public institutions, on the other”. The well-known scientists Weber, Duverger, Bentham and many others also held the same opinion that politics expresses “the desire of those in power to possess it, which provides them with control over society and personal benefits”. The term “politics” in its modern sense has arisen due to a misunderstanding. The prestige of Aristotle was used to give the befitting justification to the right of the sovereign to make decisions according to his preference and whim. In the 3rd century A.D. Aristotle used in his work the word “politics”, which at that time meant “state” (“polity” is the rule of the majority; Aristotle used it as the name of a specific form of state republic). Now, in many contexts, the word “politics” is used along with the terms “political system” or “state”, and the lack of knowledge about patterns is replaced by describing past or fictional events in the lives of the mighty people and fortunetelling about future events.