Civic Order Research Articles

In Defence of the Indefensible: Exploring Justification Narratives of Corporate Elites Accused of Corruption

AbstractDrawing on the pragmatic turn in contemporary social theory, we explore how corporate elites accused of corruption in the context of weak institutions engage in their justification works. Empirically, we focus on three high-profile corruption scandals that shook Ghana between 2010 and 2020 and inspired widespread public condemnation. Publicly accessible archival documents, such as court reporting, newspaper stories, press conferences, and the digital footprints of corporate elites implicated in the scandals provide data for our inquiry. Focussing on the juxtaposition of ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’, the findings show justification as performative, and rooted in contextual pragmatism that acknowledges the plurality of logics situated between self-interest and folk-logic. Within this framework, the domestic and civic orders of worth emerge as most prominent, with the justification processes manifesting through victimising, scapegoating, and crusading. Building on these insights, we develop a framework that highlights how the use of justifications serves as a critique of the inadequacies within climates of weak institutional frameworks consequently fostering an atmosphere conducive to framing unethical conducts as morally acceptable.

Democracies in Our Changing Times

The aim of the study is to examine how the transition from the orderly 20th century to the chaotic Post-modern 21st century, affects, reshapes the nature, character and the functionality of the Post-modern Democracy. This examination is conducted thru two phases that explore four areas of behavior; Personal—Needs and Feelings, Economic Drives, Social Concerns and Political Motivations. A short sum-up is presented on two comparison tables. Afterwards, a third section discusses some challenges for the future. Finally, some concluding practical points are offered for implementation. The first phase examines how people’s conduct and expectations, are changing during the transition period. It points-out that people change their aspirations and expectations, as they feel free and ready for meeting new challenges. However, at the same time, grows the number of confused individuals, who limp behind progress and need a special treatment. The economy at that time, has promoted Globalization and High-Tec industries. At the same time, society became heterogeneous and instable, while citizens, in general, seek stability and prosperity. In politics, new voters look for a greater influence and a deeper involvement in the work of government. In sum, many people want to feel, the genuine spirit of the promising post-modern era. The second phase examines the effects and impacts of the transition on the nature and functionality of the Democratic state. It explores the similar four areas and conclude that the study’s observations, well indicate how people’s demands and behavior had changed and expanded due to the requirement to fit better and comply faster, with the Post-modern Chaotic Views. Further, some improving steps for empowering Democratic states, are proposed. At the end, some short practical points are offered for assisting professional, who eventually carry-out most of the implementation work. In sum, the 21st century foresees promising and inspiring prospects for Democratic states. The implementation of these forecasts depends mainly on a solid and consistent determination of the citizens and their leaders.Most Democracies need to run a continual decisive civic order for assuring and securing their people “Blessing of Liberty”. Only history will tell whether and when this inspiring dream would come through.

Autoridad y poder en la filosofía práctica de al-Fārābī

Al-Fārābī is responsible for laying the foundations of political philosophy in the lands of islam. In The virtous city, his key political text, the notion of “authority” (riyasa) occupies a central rol as it explains that, from its union with the agent intellect, virtous actions are projected onto citizens by which civic order is ensured and happiness is achieved as the ultimate goal of the ideal society. In this paper we will analyze the ways in which such actions are engendered in citizens through the concepts of “kingly crafts” (al-mihan al-malakiya) and “[royal] power” (al-mulk) understood as faculties of the “authority” (riyasa) and attending to its role in the configuration of the “virtous city” and in the general framework of al-Fārābī’s political thought.

Precarious Subjects: Picturing Indigenous British Subjecthood in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Australia

Recent discussion in Australia has highlighted how Indigenous citizenship remains troubled by the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. This article takes up a pre-history to these discussions, returning to a transitional period (1830s–1850s) in the Australian colonies when governments worked to activate Indigenous people's newly-clarified legal status as British subjects. How, in this period, did settler colonial culture envisage Indigenous people's relation to the law as citizens-to-be of the empire? Focusing particularly upon visual vocabularies of policing and civic order, the article considers how vacillating colonial visions of Indigenous people as ‘new’ British subjects reflected a wider tension between settler culture's non-recognition of Indigenous law and jurisdiction, and its running disquiet about the insecure terms of British sovereignty.

Terminological conflicts in the application of the terms “public (civic) security and order”

Police of Ukraine regarding the respect for the rights and freedoms of citizens, ensure optimal living conditions, well-being, and order and legality in the state. In the Law, the updated terms “public security and order” were introduced to replace the fixed terms “public security” and “public order”, which caused a lively and still ongoing discussion in scientific circles, and in some places, even disagreement with the innovations. The arbitrary combination of the two terms into one word combination is still unclear, in some regulations “public” (civic) is used at the same time, with the latter taken in parentheses, thereby confirming the semantic similarity and the impracticality of simultaneous use. The purpose of this study was to analyse various scientific views, opinions of practitioners on the content and expediency of using the terms “public (civic) security and order” and their phrases. During the study, scientific methods were employed, which allowed obtaining reasonable conclusions, including system method, hermeneutics, analysis and synthesis, terminological, formal legal, and comparative legal methods. Various literature was processed, including special literature, various scientific sources, provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, Laws, Decrees, orders, etc., on the subject under study. Based on the study results, there are discrepancies and a lack of consensus regarding the use of the terms “public (civic) security and order”, the legislators did not define these terms in the Law of Ukraine “On the Militia” and the Law of Ukraine “On the National Police”. Proceeding from the processed array of data on the use of the terms “civic security” – “public security”, “civic order” – “public order”, the authors of this paper justified the need for their unification through changes to the entire array of laws, resolutions, orders, etc., that are directly or indirectly related to organizing the work of law enforcement agencies in terms of securing law and order

Review: Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

Review: <i>Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity</i>, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest by Stephen T. Kissel

Reviewed by: America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest by Stephen T. Kissel Jon Butler Stephen T. Kissel, America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. 268 pp. $28.00 (paper). Stephen Kissel's new study of religion in the Old Northwest does almost exactly what its title describes. It demonstrates how the new nation's rapidly multiplying Christian groups shaped community among the European immigrants and White and Black Americans who flooded into the fertile lands of the Northwest Territory from Ohio to the Mississippi River between 1790 and 1850. One might regret Kissel's decision not to include Jews and Judaism or expand his discussion of religion and community among American Indians uprooted by unrelenting European-American migration; their experiences likely would have extended Kissel's argument that community was as much the work of religious as of secular forces throughout the Old Northwest. Still, the breadth of Christian groups in the region and the depth of Kissel's research provide a vivid portrait of the fluid means through which Christian groups shaped community in this first "Midwest." Kissel argues that Christian churches' emphasis on family, vigorous print cultures, education, congregations functioning as community centers; their promotion of morals and civic order; and their political engagement shaped the region's culture far beyond the specific spiritual ethos that defined each group (105, 127). Kissel's observations may be standard fare in denominational histories, certainly those of the past half-century. Readers [End Page 106] of Timothy L. Smith's still-vibrant and urban-focused Revivalism and Social Reform (1957) will recognize several themes—education, the role of women, and religious demands for broad social change. But Kissel's success in documenting the range of these values among the Old Northwest's largely rural Christian groups reveals how denominations that seemed so different shared strong cultural values, whether Catholics or Presbyterians, African American or White Methodist Episcopalians, and Baptists or Mormons. Kissel begins with home and family. Before sanctuaries could be built, he notes, settlers "packed private homes to attend prayer meetings, baptisms, weddings, and funerals." The practice bolstered their public authority and reinforced women's roles in family and public life (18). Denominations flooded the region with religious newspapers, tracts, and Bibles, turning Cincinnati especially into a national powerhouse of religious printing. Sunday schools led by Protestant laywomen and Catholic nuns proliferated amidst the common religious focus on education. Having become sites of community gatherings in the earliest years of settlement, congregations became symbols of community commitment as they proliferated. Religious groups that defended "civil order and moral accountability" in their disciplinary proceedings advocated the same values across society at large (105). When denominations' voluntary societies lobbied for temperance and the abolition of slavery in state legislatures, they bespoke their commitment to an "active faith" (127). Not all this activity produced happiness. African Americans employed clergy and congregations to support literacy and education, defend escaped slaves, and demand slavery's abolition. But White Christians segregated them in the Old Northwest, buttressing their beliefs about African American racial inferiority with biblical support. American Indians remained of interest to White Christians largely as subjects of conversion, although some Christian figures strenuously supported ethical treatment of Indians by federal and state authorities. Worse, violence rooted in religious tension rolled across the Old Northwest. A Presbyterian minister led a mob assault against a Shaker community in Union Village, Ohio. Protestant mobs relished attacks on Catholics. Cincinnati Whites, likely churchgoers, destroyed the city's first African American congregational home not just once but three times. Schisms set congregants against each other, and Joseph Smith was not beyond destroying the printing press of a rival Mormon group in his exasperation with Mormon dissidents. State authorities and vigilantes targeted Mormons [End Page 107] and murdered Joseph Smith in Illinois in 1844, the most consequential murder of an American religious figure until Martin Luther King Jr. a century-plus later. America's Religious Crossroads reads smoothly, with clear, crisp sentences set in well-organized chapters. Kissel's research is thorough, deep, and remarkably broad, especially for a first book. He has probed obscure...

America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest by Stephen T. Kissel

Reviewed by: America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest by Stephen T. Kissel Luke Ritter America's Religious Crossroads: Faith and Community in the Emerging Midwest. By Stephen T. Kissel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. 240 pp. $28.00. This clearly written, well-researched book examines the common methods by which various organized religions established viable communities in the Old Northwest from the adoption of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to the entrance of Wisconsin as a state in 1848. Entering a distant region, sparsely populated, bereft of civil institutions, and increasingly diverse in terms of ethnicity and religious affiliation, early pioneers often relied on religion to create a shared identity, purpose, and system of trust. Kissel argues that organized religions coalesced "chain migrations" to the Old Northwest into a collective, ecumenical "mosaic" of faith-based communities, and thus accelerated the region's development (2, 8, 147). How exactly did migrants find unity across such vast landscapes in the midst of unprecedented ethnic and religious pluralism? Kissel explains how humble homes served as initial meeting places for religious adherents in the Old Northwest. According to Kissel, "the neutral setting of the home offered a more ecumenical environment for religious worship than was generally possible under the rigid doctrines of formal church congregations." Home meetings also advanced the role of women, youths, and people of color (16). In the Old Northwest, itinerancy was necessary. Various denominations invented ways to minister to pioneers across space, including the Methodist itinerant preachers who adopted circuit-riding, Catholic priests who traveled throughout their vast dioceses to connect with incoming Catholic settlers, and Presbyterian ministers who engaged in mission efforts. Unlike in the East, the Great Awakening in the West also promised fresh opportunities for utopian communities such as the Mormons, Shakers, Quakers, and Rappites. As "the antebellum Northwest became a leading national center of religious literary production and distribution," Kissel writes in chapter two, communities came to rely on a steady stream of Bibles, religious [End Page 63] tracts, devotionals, and sermons to articulate their faith (38). Organizations such as the American Bible Society, Western Book Concern, American Sunday School Union, and a host of newspapers promoted popular literacy through the mass production of religious literature. Even utopian communities encouraged literary production, such as the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which relied on the publication of the Book of Mormon for converts. Sunday Schools in the West, funded by Christian missionary efforts, advanced regional literacy long before common schools were established. Women played a prominent role as teachers. Denominationally backed seminaries and colleges established formal higher education in the West, for both Catholics and Protestants, men and women. Colleges helped to promote and advance newly settled towns. Mission schools geared towards Indian students proved problematic, however, since "Religion and civilization were inseparable in the eyes of antebellum missionaries," Kissel writes (78). Americans constructed "sacred spaces" for public fellowship, such as the church, the revival campground, and the utopian settlement, more rapidly than secular meeting places, thus ensuring religion's influence over the region's civic landscape (82). African Americans and immigrants from Europe likewise insisted on building their own sacred havens of worship as a sign of their belonging and participation in the bourgeoning American civic order. Financial assistance trickled in from the East, but the duty to build such institutions often fell upon lay congregants, volunteers, and donors in the West. Church dedications were often widely celebrated, ecumenical events, since they "marked a religious and civic milestone in the evolution of pioneer communities" (96). Revival campgrounds brought in hundreds of people from afar. Utopian settlements, although more closed to outsiders, integrated church and town governance into a sacred space for those on the inside. At a time when civil courts and police were sporadic, churches arbitrated civil and land disputes. Churches frequently administered justice in full view of entire congregations, even entire towns. Church-based disciplinary procedures likewise managed ministerial misconduct. Finally, in chapter six, Kissel shows how various denominations worked together to improve their towns morally, socially, and economically. Religious organizations became intricately involved in civic service, charitable outreach, commerce, and politics. Kissel's claim that the antebellum...

Introduction toVisual Arts ResearchSpecial Issue, Body Cam: The Visual Regimes of Policing

Introduction to<i>Visual Arts Research</i>Special Issue, Body Cam: The Visual Regimes of Policing

Popolo and Sindacato in the City of Siena: Rethinking Popular Agency in Medieval Italy

Abstract The Italian sindacato was a procedure that from the end of the twelfth century held major officials accountable and exposed them to public control. While the sindacato presented citizens with the opportunity of bringing forward their claims against officials, the evidence of these claims and their outcomes are sketchy. Recent historiography often portrays this procedure as a rhetorical device of civic order and legitimation that only produced real consequences when used as a tool for the political purposes of the elite. The article focuses on Siena, often singled out for the popular character of its governments, as a unique case to test the actual popular participation and oligarchical involvement in sindacati and their significance in relation to the sindacati in other communal cities. First, it analyzes the wide spectrum of participants in the procedure and, in particular, the interests at play for common actors. Second, it explores the direct relationship between sindacati and other institutions and systems of accountability within the city, as well as their interdependent transformations over time. The result is a revision of sindacati that reintegrates the agency and participation of popular actors. The sindacato appears then as neither a zenith of communal democracy nor a crooked tool in the hands of oligarchical interests, but rather as a central act of civic life articulating a wide range of interests among all sorts of citizens, which allowed for its symbolic relevance to perdure until the Renaissance and beyond.

The Cave of Images: Understanding Visual Politics in and Through Plato's Republic

Plato's Republic links seeing to philosophizing and civic order. Socrates denounces images, but the dialogue's inquiries depend on them while revealing and even enacting the mutual constitution of the visual and political fields. Introducing the text through work by the conceptual artist, Thomas Demand, and representative criticisms of Plato by Ernst Gombrich, Hannah Arendt, and Arthur Danto, I explore the key dependencies and performative moments. My reading undercuts prevailing approaches to Plato while presenting the politics of vision and the visuality of politics in ways relevant to the current image environment yet overlooked in much contemporary political science and theory.

Grain Architecture in Bourbon New Spain: On the Design of Guadalajara and Querétaro’s Alhóndigas

During the late colonial period, numerous Novohispanic cities embarked on an unprecedented number of projects aimed at reshaping their urban spaces and improving infrastructures, including new facilities for grain storage and supply. The construction of alhóndigas (public granaries), along with other public works and infrastructures, was further propelled by the implementation of Bourbon reforms in Spanish America and the 1780s reorganization of the colonies into intendencias (provinces), as part of the monarchy’s efforts to improve the colonial administration and economy and centralize royal power. The newly appointed royal officials (intendentes) were instrumental in the implementation of these reforms, overseeing tax collection, promoting economic growth and agricultural production, improving mining, and developing a program of public works to embellish and modernize the urban environments and ameliorate the living conditions of their residents in sanitation, public health, water infrastructure, and food supply. This essay explores the projected alhóndigas for two late colonial Mexican cities and how they engaged with contemporary discussions about the efficacy of public works, the circulation of ideals promoted by enlightened reformers on good governance and civic order, issues of artistic and architectural production, and the transmission of a reformist aesthetic agenda from the center to the provinces of New Spain.

Introduction: Classics after COVID

Introduction: Classics after COVID Joshua Billings and Irene Peirano Garrison founded shortly after the civil war, TAPA and its predecessors have weathered world wars, depressions, pandemics, and social and political upheaval of all kinds; its pages have documented the transformation of Classics in the United States from a relative scholarly backwater to a vibrant field of study; and the journal has witnessed the growth of the Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association) from a small, insular group of men on the east coast to an increasingly global and diverse membership. Much of the content of TAPA today would seem surprising (and perhaps even alarming) to its founders, but they would also recognize substantial continuity in the commitment of the journal to publishing distinguished research across the field of Classics. They would recognize, too, significant aspects of the yearly gathering of the Society, even as the role that technology now plays might come as a shock. It is a challenge to find evidence of past global crises in TAPA. The yearly “Report of the Editor of Publications” during the years of World War II regularly notes delays caused by wartime conditions, but attests to no greater disruptions to the business of scholarship. Perhaps this is as it should be: even with the fate of millions in the balance, scholarship has its own momentum, which ensures continuity through disruption. But the pandemic of the past two years has made maintaining this continuity significantly more challenging. COVID has disrupted the work of scholarship and teaching in a way and to a degree that may be entirely unprecedented in the more than 150 years of the journal and the Society. Even more, it has obliterated any neat division between global crisis and disciplinary continuity by rendering access to materials impossible for many, imposing unexpected demands on the time [End Page 1] of scholars (especially those with children), and making the simple business of daily life dangerous. COVID has reminded us of the way that scholarship is dependent on a hierarchy of needs—safety (mental and physical), time, and access—and on a host of institutions, academic and otherwise, that make research possible: libraries and universities, but also families, schools, health care providers. The upheavals of COVID have given new meaning to the “permanent crisis” of the humanities and caused many to ask searching questions about the meaning and value of their work as teachers and scholars. These crises of academic life have met, moreover, with exogenous social and political crises, which have placed into doubt the possibility and the desirability of continuity in the institutions that surround life in the academy. The past two years have made us newly aware of the ways that racial and economic injustice divides and oppresses, and have reminded us of the potential for violence to upend politics and civic order. At the same time as technology has operated, in the wider society, as a wedge increasing division, it has also enabled adaptations that have had intensely salutary effects in bringing together communities— both academic and non-academic—and creating new avenues for learning, sharing, and organizing. The pandemic has brought extremes of hope and despair on a global and a personal scale, and caused us to question what “normal” should look like. Returning to the status quo ante seems doubly impossible; even if we could go back, we would not choose to. The section “Classics after COVID” marks a revival of TAPA’s regular feature Paragraphoi, which we intend to devote to exploring issues that relate research in Classics to broader questions of discipline. While we do not anticipate every issue of the journal including a section like this one, we hope to spotlight some of the disciplinary questions that most engage us, and welcome ideas and feedback from our colleagues. This effort responds, in part, to the way that COVID has exposed the precarity of the very possibility of a “research journal”: now, more than ever, we cannot take the boundaries of “scientific” scholarship for granted. In highlighting issues of disciplinary self-understanding and reflection, we join what we feel is one of the most salutary trends to emerge in Classics of recent years...

The Basque socioeconomic model (BSEM): a Lonergan perspective

Bernard Lonergan maintained that economies are goods of order which, when properly disposed, make possible the regular provision of the material conditions for the fuller flourishing human. Lonergan’s economic thought tried to understand the economy related to a society’s civic institutions, political orders, and cultural traditions. In addition, he wished to explain the normative rhythms of economic development and the conditions of its dynamic equilibrium. In this sense, Lonergan’s analysis presents an alternative to conventional accounts of the kind of economic progress the Basque Country has enjoyed in recent decades, in ways that still resonate with the Basque Country’s emphasis on the centrality of the productive process and the values of its people.

Legal Civic Orders and Equitable Lived Citizenships

Most modern Western political theories embrace equal citizenship as a normative ideal. Many scholars, however, focus on “legal citizenship” and conceive of equal citizenship as uniformity of legal rights and duties. Others focus on experiences of “lived citizenship” and conceive of equal citizenship as achieving sufficient economic, political, and social standing for persons to be seen as civic equals. Using the United States as its example, this article offers a unifying framework for mapping the relationship of legal citizenship to lived citizenship. It illustrates the value of this framework by using it show why realistic efforts to achieve equal citizenship must aim for not uniform legal rights and duties but instead equity in the possession of economic resources, political representation, and social recognition among different categories of citizens.

SOCİAL AND POLİTİCAL (THE OTHERS) EXCLUSİONS WİTHİN THE POST-YUGOSLAV ETHNONATİONAL İNSTİTUTİONALİZATİON İN BOSNİA AND HERZEGOVİNA

The paper analyzes the concepts, causes, and normative solutions of social and political exclusions in Bosnia and Herzegovina within post-Yugoslavia's ethnonationalism paradigm and the Dayton Constitution. War, post-war neoliberalism produced economic destitution and social exclusions. Along with the clerical, ethnonationalism showed diligence as the primary determinant of patriotism, advocating the ideology of exclusion. The radicalization of certain groups became acceptable, as they would stand for homogenous countries. Lack of efficient form with a professional and robust government capable of making autonomous reforms in the economy and social spheres influences phenomena. B&amp;amp;H's imposed ethnopolitical concept of "constituent peoples" rigidly removes the civic order, the citizen ideal, rights, and freedoms, decreasing political collectivism. The Dayton patterned ethnic-religious exclusivism and the unconstitutional "hybrid" identities. By ethnoreligious criteria, three groups of citizens are given the right to make decisions, generating political representation issues for the "Others." Although they do not represent a homogeneous group, they have the right to recognize their human rights. With a revised notion (national minorities, non-nationals, Bosnians), "Others" would be given the right to be represented in all state institutions, thus eliminating discrimination. Participation in the state's formation would reduce their unconstitutionality - decision-making process. The true expression of national freedom lies in the richness of human nature instead of the violent rigidity of ethnonationalism reserve. Overcoming sociopolitical exclusions and the economic necessity by systemic institutional transformation and EU political integration is demanding. "Two schools under one roof" model negates emancipation's educational process proclaiming systemic exclusion and ethnoreligious discrimination, amplifying security stalemate. Social status and stigma of trafficking-exploitation victims in sociolegal frameworks have substantial victimization dynamics consequences. More critical insight should be recognized as feminist theoretically significant to studying the phenomenon.

Amalgamated territorial hromadas as new local communities in Ukraine: mechanisms of social cohesion formation

The article is dedicated to the systematic analysis of the peculiarities of the formation and functioning of amalgamated territorial communities in Ukraine as new local social communities. Analyzing the legislative procedure of amalgamation, the author distinguishes the essential features of amalgamated territorial communities that are different from other settlement communities. Within the framework of this investigation, the newly amalgamated hromadas appear as a “second-order” phenomenon, which is a socio-legal construct that is formed in a consensual manner and on a voluntary reciprocal basis. Basing on the analysis of qualitative sociological research data the author demonstrates the importance of the functioning of reciprocity mechanisms at the level of orientations and practices of all social actors involved in the procedure of territorial communities amalgamation. It is illustrated that the "failure" of reciprocity mechanisms contributes to the change of merger scenarios, causes the postponement of this process and the emergence of conflict situations. The paper substantiates that the legislative procedure of territorial communities amalgamation intensifies the formation of social capital and the establishment of a new civic social order. The special, different social status of amalgamated territorial communities in comparison with other settlement communities is explained by the emergence of the phenomenon of social cohesion, the mechanisms of activation of which are contained in the legislative order of territorial communities amalgamation. It is concluded that an important theoretical basis for the sociological conceptualization of ATC is the concept of reciprocity, which explains the mechanism of successful amalgamation, which is facilitated by the attitudes and practices of reciprocity of all involved social actors. According to the author’s point of view, the sociological synthesis of spatial and activity approaches to the analysis of social communities within the framework of sociological conceptualization of united territorial communities is considered heuristic. The synthesis of these approaches emphasizes both the importance of the spatial context of interactions emergence and reproduction, and their essential functionality in the formation and reproduction of hromada social order.

The ‘Recusancy Revolt’ of 1603 Revisited, Popular Politics, and Civic Catholicism in Early Modern Ireland

AbstractThis article contributes to a body of work exploring the possibilities of a popular politics in Ireland before the rising of 1641. It does so by revisiting the ‘recusancy revolt’ of 1603 in which, in the interregnum created by Elizabeth I's death, churches and civic space in towns in the south and west of Ireland were reoccupied for Catholic worship. Reading for meaning in the shaping and timing of the crowd rituals at the heart of the protest, the article argues that Old English elites and people physically acted out the recovery of these spaces for the public performance of a civic Catholicism, in which corporate worship was integral both to the maintenance of the civic order and to the defence of ancient liberties and freedoms against the encroachments of an anglicizing and Protestant regime. Analysing the dynamics of these confessional protests, the article assesses the potential for an active citizenry represented by popular political mobilization in 1603 and contrasts this with later popular mobilization in the 1641 rising. It explores the paradox at the heart of a protest in which it was believed that the restoration of public Catholic worship could co-exist with continuing civic loyalty to an English and Protestant monarchy.

Fall and rise of King Oedipus

This essay is placed within a continuing debate on the appropriateness of a Christian deployment of tragedy. According David Bentley Hart, tragedy legitimates a sacrificial and scapegoating logic that is in contradiction with the Christian gospel. It promotes exclusion and therefore is imaginatively and metaphysically conservative in its import. In the ensuing argument, I hope to show through one example how even Greek tragedy can resist some of these claims. Drawing on the seminal work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, I argue that Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle, firstly, demonstrates the inability of nomos to grasp the exception of Oedipus, and that this might constitute a critique rather than a simple legitimation of the civic order. Secondly, the narrative arc of Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus point towards incorporation rather than final exclusion, and that his apotheosis could be read as resisting deleterious tropes of a final holocaust of the tragic figure. In the final section, drawing on Rowan Williams, I discuss the problems associated with literary Christologies in general, and whether it could be theologically feasible to talk about the Theban cycle as exhibiting a ‘proto-Christology’.

Aesthetic Citizens: Producing Engaged Artists and Civic Art in the Modern University

The connection between the research university and the creative artist has markedly increased during the past half century. As a result, artists are embedded on campuses with the mandate to contribute to the university’s mission and to shape the civic order. Today artists are researchers, theorists, and activists. How did this occur? Based on a two-year ethnography of three master of fine arts programs in the American Midwest, I explain the creation of the discipline of visual arts as academic practitioners have become professionalized, have become able to control their evaluations, and have developed a set of motivating theoretical ideas that lead to participation in civic culture as their practices are linked to social justice and the good society. Artistic practice is not now value free, if it ever was. With the university as a political and a progressive space, students are encouraged to articulate their practices as linked to their responsibilities as aesthetic citizens.