Protestant Cause Research Articles

Protests as “Events”: The Symbolic Struggles in 2013 Demonstrations in Turkey and Brazil

Abstract Introduction: The concept of “event” offers a valuable lens to understand the discursive contestations in and around protests. Events create ruptures that disturb the logic of continuity and open up new way of thinking and talking about the past and the future. Drawing on this concept, this article analyzes the 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil. It investigates how the causes of these protests were framed and debated in each country and how these frames shifted over time by opening up new interpretations of the past and the future. Materials and Methods: Data is generated from four Facebook pages capturing the messages posted during the first 30 days of protests in each country. In the Brazilian case, we collected the posts of: (1) Passe Livre São Paulo (301,787 likes), the group that started the wave of protests; and (2) O Gigante Acordou (155,690 likes), a collective that emerged during the protests, representing nationalist perspectives. In total, 626 posts were collected from both pages. In the Turkish case, we analyzed posts that appeared on the pages of : (1) Taksim Dayanismasi (82,479 likes), an association that played a significant role in organizing and mobilizing Gezi Park protests; and (2) Recep Tayyip Erdogan (6,957,408 likes), a pro-government and inherently anti-protest page. We coded each post inductively focusing particularly on the way they framed the causes of the protests. We then identified the number of times each frame was mentioned during the first 30 days of the protests and explored whether and how frames changed over time. Results: Our analysis reveals a significant shift in the way the causes of the protests were framed over time in both countries, yet with different implications. While in Brazil, we observe a frame transformation undermining the initial rationale of the protests, in Turkey we see a frame extension and the emergence of broader issues as the real causes of protests, such as the authoritarian nature of the regime and the restriction of democratic rights in this country. Discussion: The article offers a way of analysing protests based on a conceptual lens of event. It sheds light on the role of social media as a platform for symbolic struggles over the protests. Furthermore, the article opens up a debate about the developments of democracy in both countries.

Causes and Elimination of Indifference and Student's Protest to National Design. Methods of encouragement

The article explores the essence of the concept of design. It is determined that the purpose of design as a phenomenon of modern culture is to promote the improvement of the quality of life of people and to improve the socio-cultural relations between them by forming a harmonious subject environment and its components in all spheres of life in order to meet material and spiritual needs. The main factors determining the formation and development of design education in Ukraine are outlined. Features of national design are noted. The main causes of indifference and protest to the national design of future designers are formed. Measures to eliminate indifference and protest are outlined. It is noted that the formation of professional competence depends considerably on the encouragement that researchers determine by the generator of the educational process. The main methods of promotion include the use of non-traditional forms of training, the use of method-projects in teaching practice, case-method and method of teaching support. It is also suggested to introduce professional-psychological trainings, to involve students in participation in domestic and international contests, scientific-practical conferences.

“Never Better”: Affliction, Consolation and the Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern England

Abstract This essay examines the central role of consolation in early modern Protestant culture. It first maps a number of the important tropes in early modern Protestant consolation literature, focusing on England. It then analyses the language of consolation in early modern printed and manuscript sources on the legal proceedings against the Puritan pamphleteers Bastwick, Burton and Prynne, showing how consolation was both widely shared and politically contentious, undermining the very idea of a unified Protestant cause which it served to foster. Finally, I examine the notebooks of the London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington as a case study of the ways in which self-writers, in recording and reflecting on affliction, drew on consolation discourses. While consolation is a central strand in Wallington’s reflections on affliction, it is also elusive and provisional, especially where everyday, personal suffering is concerned. In Wallington, consolation seems available especially if the religious suffering it alleviates has a political dimension, and can be construed as a way of suffering for the true faith.

Esther Inglis & Maurice of Nassau

This article concentrates on a manuscript that the calligrapher Esther Inglis (1571-1624) dedicated to Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625) in 1599. She was of Huguenot descent and lived in Edinburgh. He was heavily involved in the Dutch Revolt. During her lifetime she produced a number of gift books, of which some 60 are still extant, usually religious in content, written in a variety of hands, carefully decorated and bound, their size sometimes not much larger than a matchbox. They were offered to high placed persons within the circle of the Scottish and English courts, in the hope of a reward. In 1599, however, she decided to present a booklet to Maurice. Why? This article traces Maurice’s role in the Protestant cause as the main reason for the manuscript’s production, shows the influence of Dutch propaganda prints in its decoration and looks at how it could have reached Maurice.

Mediating Cultural Memory: Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution”

Mediating Cultural Memory: Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution” Leith Davis (bio) On 5 November 1688, William of Orange landed his force of 40,000 men at Torbay in Devonshire. Over the following month, he marched his troops to London, assuming control of the government as James II fled to France. This “Dutch invasion,” in Jonathan Israel’s phrase, would in time be reconceived as the “Glorious Revolution.”1 It would become, in other words, a powerful lieu de mémoire, a term coined by French historian Pierre Nora to designate “any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community.”2 According to Nora, lieux de mémoire “emerge in two stages.” First, “moments of history” are “plucked out of the flow of history,” then are “returned to it,” but in an altered state so that they are “no longer quite alive but not yet entirely dead, like shells left on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded.”3 The 1688 Revolution was plucked out of then returned to history in such a way that it became a “symbolic element” not only of “the memorial heritage” of the English nation but of the British empire as well,4 as it was credited with saving the English nation from tyranny, establishing the rights of individual subjects, and bolstering British power overseas.5 As G.M. Trevelyan famously pronounced, the “Glorious Revolution” was a “turning-point in the history of our country and of the world.”6 While the Revolution has been the subject of a long and complex historiography, recent work has provided new perspectives on the imperial [End Page 185] aspects of 1688, examining, among other issues, its repercussions in British, Atlantic, and European contexts.7 This article contributes an archipelagic context to this wider approach to the Revolution by focusing on the Williamite wars in Ireland. Although William and Mary were proclaimed monarchs in England in February 1689, the conflict in Ireland, known in Gaelic as Cogadh an Dá Rí, or the “War of the Two Kings,” dragged on for nearly three years after William’s landing in Torbay. During this time, as I will suggest, Ireland moved front and center into the sights of the citizens of the metropolis. I begin by considering the way Irish events were initially mediated in newspapers and examining how Ireland itself became represented in space and time through maps and printed works like, Richard Cox’s Hibernia Anglicana, that were advertised in the newspapers. I focus next on how the first major government victory in Ireland, the relief of the siege of Derry on 29 July 1689, served as a crucial point in shaping the conflict in Ireland for the English population. As I indicate, the representation of the siege of Derry drew on articulations of a previous Irish lieu de mémoire, the 1641 Rebellion, reframing them into a template which constructed the rest of events in Ireland as a providential narrative for both Irish and English Protestants. I conclude by arguing that the construction of the 1688 Revolution as a lieu de mémoire subsequent to William’s victory necessitated the erasure of the inconvenient matter of Ireland.8 Instead of appearing as an important theatre of war determining the fortunes of William’s Protestant cause, the “War of the Two Kings” was decoupled from the story of the “Glorious Revolution,” as Ireland itself became a foil to the English and British modernizing project. This writing and re-writing and un-writing of Ireland within the context of the 1688 Revolution thus tells us much about the relationship between cultural memory, cultural amnesia, and empire. Information regarding the conflict in Ireland was initially represented in England on the pages of the six unlicensed newspapers that sprung up shortly after William’s arrival in London in December 1688; the Orange Gazette paid particularly close attention to Irish affairs.9 With their periodic style of reporting, the newspapers gave the war in Ireland “a precise location in space and in time,” shaping the messy confrontation into...

The institutional causes of environmental protests in China: a perspective from common pool resource management

This article approaches environmental protest in China as a failure in cooperative common pool resource management and engages with the institutional design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom to identify underlying institutional causes. The results show that, at the constitutional choice level, the fundamental ideology, and political institutions of China do not support a nested environmental governance system that involves non-governmental powers. At the collective-choice level, the monitoring and graduated sanctions systems suffer from unaccountable local officials, opaque information, lax law enforcement, and the rising but still restricted role of non-governmental organizations and media. At the operational level, low-quality and even fraudulent environmental impact assessments do not clearly define boundaries for resources and users, which prevents the evolution of congruent rules and neglects the stakes the public may have in a project. The options to reform the existing institutions are then considered in light of China’s constitutional and institutional tradition.

Ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) over mineral extraction in India: An overview

Mineral extraction is growing worldwide, generating serious social and environmental impacts, and in the process, sparking significant resistance. The present article provides the first overview of non-fuel mining conflicts in India. The analysis is based on 100 cases of conflicts that occurred between 1992 and 2014, which constitutes the most exhaustive database compiled to date. In each case, location, mineral extracted, actors involved, cited causes of protest, conflict duration and outcomes were recorded. We found that the commodity responsible for the most conflicts is sand, the extraction of which is widespread and often carried out illegally by small-scale actors near rivers. Resistance against metallic ore mining, in contrast, typically pits local populations against larger corporations. Most resistance movements are composed of subaltern rural and/or indigenous populations; very few national and international NGOs were found to be involved in local movements. The causes of such conflicts have largely been ecological and responsible for an undermining of local livelihoods. Mineral extraction is expected to increase in India over the next decade, and with it, the number of associated conflicts.

Protestant Unity and Anti-Catholicism: The Irenicism and Philo-Semitism of John Dury in Context

AbstractThis article examines the religious and political worldview of the Scottish minister John Dury during the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. It argues that Dury's activities as an irenicist and philo-semite must be understood as interrelated aspects of an expansionist Protestant cause that included Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, and the Atlantic world. Dury sought to imitate and counter what he perceived to be the principal strengths of early modern Catholicism: confessional unity, imperial expansion, and the coordination of global missionary efforts. The 1640s and 1650s saw the scope of Dury's long-standing vision grow to encompass colonial expansion in Ireland and America, where English and continental Protestants might work together to fortify their position against Spain and its growing Catholic empire. Both Portuguese Jews and American Indians appear in this vision as victims of Spanish Catholicism in desperate need of Protestant help. This article thus offers new perspectives on several aspects of Dury's career, including his relationship with displaced Anglo-Irish Protestants in London, his proposal to establish a college for the study of Jewish learning and “Oriental” languages, his speculation regarding the Lost Tribes of Israel in America, and his cautious advocacy for the toleration of Jews in England.

Do adverse ecological consequences cause resistance against land acquisition? The experience of mining regions in Odisha, India

In India, there is a long history of protest against land acquisition, which has halted a number of development interventions. The issue has been particularly serious in the state of Odisha, which is mineral-rich but backward, economically. While ongoing debates focus mainly on the price of the land and compensation for, and resettlement of, those uprooted by the proposed changes, the present paper focuses on the potential adverse ecological consequences of mining. Through analysis of primary and secondary data, the study finds that there are more negative impacts on the environment and ecology in mining districts than in the non-mining districts of Odisha. However, potential adverse ecological consequences are a dominant cause of protests against land acquisition for mining in the state.

‘I’d like to see your identity cards please’ – Negotiating authority in police–adolescent encounters: Findings from a mixed-method study of proactive police practices towards adolescents in two German cities

Next to exclusionary and discriminatory practices in other live domains, tense police–adolescent relations and the treatment of ethnic minority adolescents by the police are discussed as the foremost trigger for urban riots across Europe. Discretionary identity checks and ‘stop and search’ practices are particularly contentious. Situated in a country that has not experienced urban riots by marginalized and ethnic minority young people yet, our study investigates the impact of police behaviour, in particular stop and search practices, on the quality of interactions between police and young people in Germany. The study is based on extensive participant observation of police patrols, in-depth interviews with police officers and a large-scale standardized youth survey. Qualitative and quantitative evidence unequivocally suggest the absence of discriminatory practices by the police based on the ethnic background of adolescents and an overall positive character of police–adolescent relations. However, transparency – explaining the reasons for police actions – and adhering to formal rules cannot be said to be the primary attributes of the proactive control actions we observed. Rather, informal adaption strategies seemed to prevail. These findings shed new light on the question of how police authority is negotiated on the streets and contribute to the search for causes of violent protests against the police.

Performing Exile: John Foxe's Christus Triumphans at Magdalen College, Oxford

AbstractWhen Laurence Humphrey became President of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1561, one of his earliest endeavours was to commission a production of John Foxe's Christus Triumphans. Although it remains uncertain whether the play was actually performed, this article explores the implications of Humphrey's request, taking his interest in staging the play as a starting point for understanding the value Christus Triumphans held for a generation of returned Protestant exiles. I begin by placing Foxe's apocalyptic comedy alongside the writings of Marian Protestants, situating the play within the concerns of exile and demonstrating the particular importance of conversion to the Protestant cause. I then consider the circumstances of Humphrey's production at Magdalen, using key archival documents to illuminate what that performance might have looked like. Humphrey's proposed staging of Christus Triumphans not only elucidates the salient concerns of the play itself, but also reveals how drama became a potent religious tool at this crucial post‐Marian moment. By realigning the play's engagement with the conditions of religious persecution, Humphrey sought to imbue the play with a retrospective significance, carefully shifting its message for an audience of collegiate spectators. At the same time, his staging of the play reflected – and perhaps heralded – a new interest in the visual capacities of university performance, ultimately demonstrating the vitality and influence of neo‐Latin religious drama in the academic setting.

Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, Gender, and Population Politics after Slavery by Juanita DeBarros (review)

Reviewed by: Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, Gender, and Population Politics after Slavery by Juanita DeBarros Katherine Paugh Juanita DeBarros. Reproducing the British Caribbean: Sex, Gender, and Population Politics after Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. 296 pp. $32.95 (978-1-4696-1605-6). This fascinating study of the history of reproduction traces efforts by imperial and local government officials and agencies, as well as philanthropic organizations, to tailor the size and health of populations in the British Caribbean colonies to political and economic demands. The book traces an intriguing evolution in the aims of population policy. In the mid-nineteenth century, in the immediate aftermath of the emancipation of enslaved Afro-Caribbeans, many colonial officials and wealthy landowners saw the promotion of reproduction among both Afro-Caribbeans and East Indian indentured laborers as an antidote to the declining profitability of Caribbean plantations. Consequently, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, schemes to promote formal training for midwives emerged alongside philanthropic “baby saving leagues” aimed at promoting hygienic practices among working class mothers. These maternal and child welfare initiatives were initially staffed primarily by white British women. Single women who were older and of “less attractive appearance” were seen as particularly qualified to provide the asexual yet maternalistic care of a “benevolent colonialism” (pp. 96, 100). By the early twentieth century, however, the growth of pan-Africanism and the rising influence of creole politicians and labor leaders led to the growing involvement of middle class women of color with philanthropic organizations such as the Garveyite Black Cross Nurses. This opportunity to publicly espouse a “maternalist” perspective aimed at racial uplift helped to cement these women’s status in colonial society (p. 123). This focus on racial uplift, ironically, coincided with a growing interest in eugenics among some colonial officials and medical experts during the early twentieth century and the concomitant assertion that reproductive policy should focus on cultivating only the best “stock” while discouraging childbearing among the unworthy. By the mid-1930s, in the context of violent protests that swept through the Caribbean, concerns about overpopulation among Afro-Caribbean workers escalated into a proposal by a government committee in Bermuda for the compulsory sterilization of the parents of illegitimate children. This proposal was bashfully deferred by colonial officials and angrily condemned by radical advocates for the Caribbean working class. Nonetheless, the report of the Moyne commission, a British government inquiry to investigate the causes of protests in the region, emphasized the problems created by overpopulation. De Barros thus skillfully connects the political and economic history of the Caribbean with key shifts in the aims, strategies, and personnel of colonial and imperial organizations focused on shaping reproduction. The tendency of colonial officials to associate the size and health of Caribbean populations with the effects of moral and sexual vice is also a theme that runs throughout the book. The supposed lack of civilized sexual mores in the Caribbean was, in fact, marshaled by colonial officials at various times to explain both underpopulation and overpopulation. The civilizing mission of British colonialism thus provided a sustained and adaptable rationale for governmental [End Page 157] intervention in Afro-Caribbean reproduction. Disease, too, was frequently seen as a consequence of colonial barbarism with unfortunate consequences for Caribbean populations. DeBarros discusses medical discourses surrounding cholera, hookworm, malaria, and venereal disease, in which the language of hygiene was employed by both colonial officials and London-based experts in tropical medicine to condemn the “racial habits” of Afro-Caribbeans (p. 155). Yet significantly, some Caribbean physicians who gathered at a multiethnic regional conference in 1921 rejected racialized ideas about hygiene, arguing that in fact unsanitary habits in the Caribbean were more attributable to social and working conditions in the region. Overall, the book focuses on governmental and philanthropic interventions in the Caribbean, and on the perspectives of the colonial officials and medical personnel who carried out these interventions. Through their stories, we catch glimpses of the practices of those working people who were targets of intervention. We hear, for example, of the objections of a public health educator in Guyana to the local practice of giving infants tea in their mothers’ absence, and...

German Lutheran Centennial Dramas

This essay uses German Lutheran drama in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a vehicle to assess Lutheran memory and identity in the Holy Roman Empire. In particular, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon are considered as mirrors of confessional anxiety in plays written before the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618), an era of confessional conflict that coincided roughly with the one-hundred-year anniversary of the posting of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517. Lutheran clergymen Martin Rinckhart, Heinrich Kielmann, and Balthasar Voigt took the leading in publishing plays during the centennial, using materials from popular Luther biographies and invoking numerous anti-Catholic tropes to support the Protestant cause. To explore the roots of the polemic and catechesis, this essay also analyzes Zacharias Rivander’s Luther Reborn (Lutherus redivivus, 1593), a five-act comedy that attempts to resolve the Lord’s Supper Controversy (Abendmahlsstreit) dividing Lutherans and Crypto- Calvinists in Electoral Saxony. In all the plays, Luther is presented as a hero and a teacher to the German people. Luther’s opponents—competing theologians like Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Calvin—are presented as corrupt and misguided leaders who by their teachings demonstrate how far a religious person can fall into evil.

Anglo-German relations and the Protestant cause. By David Scott Gehring. (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World, 10.) Pp. xv+243 incl. frontispiece and 14 figs. London–Brookfield, Vt: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. £60 ($99). 978 1 84893 369

Anglo-German relations and the Protestant cause. By David Scott Gehring. (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World, 10.) Pp. xv+243 incl. frontispiece and 14 figs. London–Brookfield, V<scp>t</scp>: Pickering &amp; Chatto, 2013. £60 ($99). 978 1 84893 369

Milton and the Tradition of Protestant Petrarchism

Scholarly accounts of Milton?s engagement with Petrarch often suggest a hostile reading of the Italian poet?s work. The Protestant ideal of Adam and Eve?s companionate marriage in Paradise Lost has been seen as a rebuke to the unfulfilled petrarchan lover and his chaste mistress; the seductive language of petrarchan pleading has been traced in Satan?s tempting speeches. In Of Reformation (1641), however, Milton invoked Petrarch as an authority in the Protestant cause. This paper seeks to reconstruct the alternative tradition of petrarchism which underlies Milton?s reference. It explores the international network of Protestant polemicists and writers among whom it originated, and looks at its influence on works in English, including Spenser?s earliest poems, which precede Of Reformation; it considers the bibliographical evidence for Milton?s reading of Petrarch; and it argues that the politicized and protestantized Petrarch provided an important model for Milton?s own religious sonnets.

Examining the possible influence of societal violence on governance effectiveness in South Africa

This paper examines the possible influence of violent protests on the effectiveness of governance in South Africa. South Africa continues to experience huge number of labour as well as popular municipal service delivery protests. The popular social view with ensuing protests has often pointed at governance inefficiency as the cause of violent protests. This paper adopts a slightly different view in its analysis of violent protests and instead looks at possible influence of violence as possible instigator of ineffective governance. The paper is conceptually rooted in reviews – combined with simple regression test of possible relationship between violent protest and governance effectiveness. The authors also present an examination of probable relationship between violent protests and governance effectiveness using observation of macro-economic data trends from the World Bank. The findings reveal a probable weakening in governance effectiveness or its perception thereof as a result of violent protests. Amongst others, violent protests produces a psyche of perpetual victimhood that leads to further violence resulting in less value attached to lives, destruction of economic property, increases pollution, production stoppages for goods and services and in turn depletes government revenue generation and frustrates international investors. We postulate that under condition explained above, government effectiveness in managing public resources becomes weakened and may lead to wastage and inefficiency as the resources and revenues employed in controlling violent protests are unplanned and do not often lead to constructive and sustainable public policy. We suggest that this condition therefore may result in reduction in economic growth which in turn perpetuates the same weaknesses that led to society protests and violence

Online Social Media and Political Awareness in Authoritarian Regimes

Do online social media undermine authoritarianism? The conditions under which online social networks can increase public awareness of electoral fraud in non-democracies are examined in this article and it is argued that a given online social network will only increase political awareness if it is first politicized by elites. Survey data from the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections show that usage of Twitter and Facebook, which were politicized by opposition elites, significantly increased respondents’ perceptions of electoral fraud, while usage of Russia's domestic social networking platforms, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, which were not politicized by opposition activists, had no effect on perceptions of fraud. This study elucidates the causes of post-election protest by uncovering a mechanism through which knowledge of electoral fraud spreads.

Comments on Recent Mass Protests of Environmental Pollution in China

After years of rapid economic development, environmental pollution has become a big concern to the general public in China. Numerous mass protests happened because of actual or perceived environmental pollution. This article makes a case study of three recent mass protests to find the features and deeper causes of mass protests for environmental issues. It concludes that, without sufficient information disclosure, the general public may still protest and the government may yeild, even if a project followed all governmental procedures and obtained all governmental approvals. This harms both the credibility of the government and the economy, and eventually the interests of the public. Chinese government has found the deeper causes and is working on the right direction.

Personality Traits (“Big Five”) and the Propensity to Political Protest: Alternative Models

In a representative panel study, citizens of Leipzig (EastGermany) were interviewed in 1993 and 1996 about their incentives for and participation in political protest activities. Conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, and extraversion (theBig Five) were measured with 16 bipolar adjectives. The present report supplements a previous work of the authors that drew on the theories of rational choice and collective action and conceived of incentives as proximal causes and personality dispositions as distant causes of political protest. Based on structural equation modelling (SEM), the present article deals with the respondents' recurrent reports on protest incentives and protest acts as indicators of the latent constructprotest propensitythat is according to the predictions directly influenced by openness to experience (O+), agreeableness (A−), neuroticism (N−), and reciprocity orientation (N*E+) with 35% explained variance.

Food riots: Media perspectives on the causes of food protest in Africa

When food prices spiked in 2007–8, urban Africa experienced more instances of food riots than any other part of the world. Problems were then encountered again during the 2010–11 food price spikes. This paper explores the cases of 14 African countries where food riots occurred during these two periods by presenting a qualitative content analysis of news reports on the riots drawn from both global and local African news sources. This analysis highlights the ways in which the media portrayed the links between food price rises and food riots in Africa. Briefly, our results show that the international media generally portrayed poverty and hunger as the factors that linked the incidence of food price rises with the occurrence of riots. By contrast, the African media tended to portray food riots as being caused by a more complex set of factors, including citizen dissatisfaction and people’s ability to mobilize. Exploring both the international and local interpretations of the drivers behind the food riots is important for the understanding of the multi-scalar and multifaceted factors that shape increasing food insecurity in urban Africa.