Extreme Sacrifices Research Articles

After Israel’s Nationality Law of 2018: Is the “Blood Covenant” Broken for the Druze?

ABSTRACT This article examines the medium-term effects of Israel’s 2018 Nation-State legislation on Druze consciousness and prospects for the future. It is informed by interviews with fourteen Druze political thought leaders (more than half of whom are current or former Members of Knesset). From the founding of the State of Israel, the relationship between the Druze minority and the Jewish majority has been constructed on the narrative of a “covenant of blood” or “blood pact.” This refers principally to the extreme sacrifices undertaken by soldiers, Jews and Druze alike, when fighting in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and other security institutions to protect their shared homeland. Despite systemic inequities revolving around land and employment, the idiom of “blood pact” endured. With the passage of the 2018 Basic Law of the Nation-State, however, a pillar of the covenant has been shaken. So has the mutually beneficial ambiguity that had squared Israel’s self-definition as Jewish and democratic. Although representing different parties and ideological viewpoints, Druze political thought leaders concur on one point: although the law has not (yet) had a significant impact on the day-to-day lives of the Druze community, in the longer-term, judicial decisions will increasingly be constrained or framed in ways deleterious to the civic rights of Druze. Corrective amendment to the law acknowledging Druze service to the Jewish state is more likely than outright abrogation of it. If and until such “correction” occurs, the covenant will continue to erode. The J-Curve “frustration of rising expectations” model is adapted to explain the vociferous mass Druze reaction to the passage of the Nationality Law.

“I’ll Be Right Behind You”: Native American Families, Land Debt, and College Affordability

Family connections are critical for Native student persistence, yet families’ voices are absent in research. Using an Indigenous-specific version of educational debt, land debt, we center familial perspectives by exploring the financial struggles among Native families as their students transition to a Predominately White Institution. Findings indicate that Indigenous families experienced fear and frustration surrounding college affordability and the financial aid process. Regardless, these Native families made extreme sacrifices in paying for college. These findings were contextualized within the economic conditions created by land theft from Indigenous peoples. Returning to land debt, we argue that institutions need to begin from a perspective of what is owed to Native peoples in their policy decisions. That is, such decisions should take account of the benefits historically accrued by institutions residing on forcibly taken Indigenous land, and then examine how that debt can be repaid by supporting Native students, families, and communities.

What motivates devoted actors to extreme sacrifice, identity fusion, or sacred values?

Why do some individuals willingly make extreme sacrifices for their group? Whitehouse argues that such willingness stems from a visceral feeling of oneness with the group - identity fusion - that emerges from intense, shared dysphoric experiences or from perceived close kinship with others. Although Whitehouse's argument makes a valuable contribution to understanding extreme sacrifice, factors independent of identity fusion, such as devotion to sacred values, can predict self-sacrifice.

Effect of identity fusion on decision to make extreme sacrifices in romantic relationships: Themoderating role of impulsiveness.

The present research investigated the roles of identity fusion and impulsiveness in extreme sacrifices for romantic partners. After completing questionnaires assessing identity fusion, inclusion of other in the self, passionate love, and communal orientation, participants responded to the trolley dilemma in which they could save their partner by sacrificing themselves. Participants in the time-pressure condition were given eight-seconds to respond to the dilemma; the other group had no time constraints. Identity fusion was the only variable that significantly predicted ultimate sacrifice. Hurrying participants' response to the dilemma (i.e., inducing impulsive decision-making) increased self-sacrifice in highly fused but not in weakly fused individuals.

Staging Resistance from the Clergy During the Holocaust

The resistance to the Holocaust from Catholic and Protestant clergymen came in myriad forms. A few clergy willingly gave up their lives, thus becoming martyrs for refusing to be judged by Nazi law, surrendering instead to divine justice. Such noble and heroic decisions in which a humble person surrenders life in defiance of a totalitarian regime opposed to Christian humanism is a subject most worthy of study. This essay focuses exclusively on stage representations of the extreme sacrifices the clergy made during the Holocaust as reflected by martyrdom in Arthur Giron’s Edith Stein and David Gooderson’s Kolbe’s Gift. The protagonists of these two plays, Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe, died and suffered greatly to uphold the moral position of the Church.

The power of ‘feeling one’ with a group: identity fusion and extreme pro-group behaviours / El poder de ‘sentirse uno’ con un grupo: fusión de la identidad y conductas progrupales extremas

Why do some people make extreme sacrifices for their group? We propose that the identity fusion theory helps to understand extreme pro-group behaviour. Identity fusion entails a visceral feeling of oneness with the group. Since the borders between the personal and social self are highly permeable for fused persons, they care about the outcomes of the group as much as their own outcomes. In this article we start by introducing what identity fusion is and the four principles that conceptually capture its essence. After presenting the three alternative methods for measuring identity fusion, we review empirical evidence demonstrating what identity fusion predicts, and the underlying mechanisms that moderate and mediate its consequences. The next sections focus on the possible causes of identity fusion, and we introduce suggestions for diminishing undesirable extreme behaviours by decreasing fusion (i.e., ‘de-fusion’). In a final section, we briefly discuss alternative theories of the causes of extreme behaviours and their relation to identity fusion theory.

Identity Fusion, Extreme Pro‐Group Behavior, and the Path to Defusion

AbstractIdentity fusion refers to a visceral sense of oneness with an ingroup. For fused individuals, group membership is not a means to an end (e.g., a positive social identity). Rather, membership is an all‐absorbing goal in itself; little other than the group matters. Group membership is also seen as enduring, sustained by chronically activated psychological structures as well as features of the context. Fellow group members are likewise seen as permanent members of the group, as they are members of the ingroup “family”. And just as family members are compelled to make extreme sacrifices for their family, so too are highly fused individuals – including even the ultimate sacrifice. These efforts to protect the ingroup can have negative consequences when, for example, people become strongly fused to groups that are devoted to extreme, anti‐social behaviors. In such instances, it may be prudent to encourage “defusion” from the group, but the emotional investment associated with fusion may thwart such efforts. We discuss the implications of these and related considerations.

What makes a group worth dying for? Identity fusion fosters perception of familial ties, promoting self-sacrifice.

We sought to identify the mechanisms that cause strongly fused individuals (those who have a powerful, visceral feeling of oneness with the group) to make extreme sacrifices for their group. A large multinational study revealed a widespread tendency for fused individuals to endorse making extreme sacrifices for their country. Nevertheless, when asked which of several groups they were most inclined to die for, most participants favored relatively small groups, such as family, over a large and extended group, such as country (Study 1). To integrate these findings, we proposed that a common mechanism accounts for the willingness of fused people to die for smaller and larger groups. Specifically, when fused people perceive that group members share core characteristics, they are more likely to project familial ties common in smaller groups onto the extended group, and this enhances willingness to fight and die for the larger group. Consistent with this, encouraging fused persons to focus on shared core characteristics of members of their country increased their endorsement of making extreme sacrifices for their country. This pattern emerged whether the core characteristics were biological (Studies 2 and 3) or psychological (Studies 4-6) and whether participants were from China, India, the United States, or Spain. Further, priming shared core values increased the perception of familial ties among fused group members, which, in turn, mediated the influence of fusion on endorsement of extreme sacrifices for the country (Study 5). Study 6 replicated this moderated mediation effect whether the core characteristics were positive or negative. Apparently, for strongly fused persons, recognizing that other group members share core characteristics makes extended groups seem "family like" and worth dying for.

SPEEDING UP OF LITHUANIA’S ECONOMY VIA GLOBALIZATION

Lithuania after two decades of the post-communist transformation and large scale experimentation with the European integration needs to dynamize and modernize the economy to arrive at viable 21 st Century global models. Lithuania also needs to adopt very bold and innovative ways to “sell” to the world its extreme austerity sacrifices during the continuing period of global Great Recession and its earlier periods of bold systemic transformations as well. By 2013, we have arrived at the critical amount of experiential knowledge and it is a high time to manage this knowledge for a much more realistic new understanding and more efficient governance of new risks and evidence-based policies in market economies fit for the 21st Century. The big problem is that so far Lithuania’s changing economic models could not fully deploy its human resources in the modern way.The economy is still beset by the Soviet legacies and this constitutes the barrier to effectively employing human resources that are increasingly educated in modern ways at home or abroad.So the dual problem is that Lithuania badly needs modern human resources for its further rapid and modern development but at the same time there is not enough effective demand for them due to the outdated political-economic and financial structures and other still lingering Soviet legacies. The big challenge before the country therefore is how to target the entire globe as Lithuania’s(current or potential)market in order to induce entirely new perspectives and actually create many more advanced opportunities for the young,newly educated people.If this problem is not solved in time,many will emigrate and thus condemn Lithuania to further transitional periods in its development on Europe’s periphery. The new methods of strategic management and competitiveness-boosting networking based on knowledge management are presented in the article. The article shows how Lithuania can benefit integrating education, research and business fostering innovations which catalyze the creation of added value.Two key aspects of today‘s knowledge-based economy: knowledge creation and knowledge transfer to businesses are presented in the article. Lithuania’s long term goals are to develop higher education and higher added-value market niches that will precisely call upon the new human resource capabilities to create an entrepreneurial economy that is integrated continentally and globally. The paper attempts to make more specific proposals for generating and effective use of synergy effects through the establishment of transport hubs and innovation research centers attached to universities which sponsor and help to spread an innovative culture amongst economic actors in Lithuania. The main strategy is the strenghthening of Lithuania’s knowledge economy and higher education that can sposor Lithuania to compete globally;It is being developed in the form of the”Strategy Lithuania 2030” where new challenges of dynamism and leadership were called for, the problems of higher education were on the agenda at the Vilnius conference”European Higher Education in the World” which was held on 5-6 September 2013during the Lithuanian Presidency in the European Union(EU2013LT). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.7.4181

Economic Well‐Being in Salvadoran Transnational Families: How Gender Affects Remittance Practices

This article examines how migrant parents' gender affects transnational families' economic well‐being. Drawing on 130 in‐depth interviews with Salvadoran immigrants in the United States and adolescent and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador, I demonstrate that the gender of migrant parents centrally affects how well their families are faring. Gender structurally differentiates immigrant parents' experiences through labor market opportunities in the United States. Simultaneously, gendered social expectations inform immigrants' approaches to parental responsibilities and remitting behaviors. Remittances—the monies parents send—directly shape children's economic well‐being in El Salvador. I find that even though immigrant mothers are structurally more disadvantaged than immigrant fathers, mother‐away families are often thriving economically because of mothers' extreme sacrifices.

Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-socialist China (review)

Reviewed by: Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-socialist China Maris Gillette (bio) Judith Farquhar . Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-socialist China. Body, Commodity, Text, a series edited by Arjun Appadurai, Jean Comaroff, and Judith Farquhar. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. xii, 341 pp. Hardcover, $54.95, ISBN 0-8223-2906-9. Paperback, $18.95, ISBN 0-8223-2921-2. In Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-socialist China, anthropologist Judith Farquhar explores the emerging new ideologies of the body, desire, gender, personhood, and the social order that pervade the lived experiences of contemporary Chinese citizens. "New" in this case signals a broad array of Western imports, such as the idea of the bourgeois individual, and revamped versions of the old and the very old, for example the 1980s and 1990s reimaginings of collectivist ethics and ideals by fiction writers, filmmakers, and advertising companies, and Reform Era reinterpretations of ancient Daoist sex manuals. Farquhar is interested in the politico-historical forces that promote particular ways of remembering and forgetting Maoism in the Reform Era. She investigates how food, sex, and other aspects of embodied life in the contemporary People's Republic, such as love, subjectivity, and the practices surrounding traditional Chinese medicine, respond to and often react against Mao-era imaginings of the person and society. Her methods of inquiry encompass close readings of Maoist and post-Mao cultural artifacts such as novels, short stories, films, social science surveys, the autobiographical writings of senior traditional Chinese medical doctors, medical case histories (traditional Chinese medicine), and publications on ancient Daoist erotic arts, and reports and reminiscences from her ethnographic research in Guangzhou, Zouping, and Beijing from the early 1980s to 2000. In Appetites Farquhar argues persuasively that "appetites" are never natural, and she demonstrates conclusively that Mao's [End Page 146] collectivist ideals remain part of the national imaginary in China in complex and contradictory ways. Like the cultural historian Joan Scott, Farquhar wants her readers to recognize that "experience" is thoroughly saturated with ideology. To this end Far-quhar provides situated readings of literary texts and ethnographic materials wherein she explores the explicit and implicit ideas shaping these artifacts and their ramifications for the embodied experiences of Chinese citizens. Farquhar's rich text ranges from the most personal of anecdotes to structural descriptions of the principals of traditional Chinese medicine, from translations of and reflections upon contemporary Chinese fiction and autobiographical writings to detailed examinations of Reform Era sex surveys, from the meticulous scrutiny of advertising posters to ethnographic accounts of banqueting among cadres. Her methods resonate with those used by Ann Anagnost in her 1997 volume National Past-Times and by Louisa Schein in her 2000 study Minority Rules. All three authors work to expand the analytical methods and domains of cultural anthropology, and all three attend closely to the discourses that create and animate the social and cultural worlds of PRC citizens. Farquhar shifts back and forth between the collective and Reform eras in Appetites. She simultaneously reinforces and troubles the clarity of this most common of historical periodizations. The difference between the Maoist and post Mao eras is Farquhar's most persistent point of departure and the foundation for her political critiques of the Reform period. As her text makes clear, Farquhar shares these points in common with many of the Chinese intellectuals whose work she studies. At the same time, Farquhar gives many examples of the persistence of Maoist ideals, longings, and rhetoric among her informants and in the novels, films, and advertisements that she explores, demonstrating the myriad ways in which the collective era continues to influence the Reform period. Farquhar's investigations of the emerging social order in China lead her to express the hope that the historical experiences of Maoist collectivism might make possible a post-socialist alternative to Western neo-liberal capitalism that avoids the essentialisms and selfishness of bourgeois individualism and the extreme sacrifices and deferral of Maoist collectivism. Farquhar divides her text into two parts. The first half concerns the sensory politics of eating. Here Farquhar explores Maoist and Reform Era ideas about hunger, satiation, and health and their link to politics. For example, in chapter 1...