Ideology Of Freedom Research Articles

La objeción de conciencia sanitaria en el ámbito penitenciario

To be fully in accordance with constitutional doctrines the notion of conscientious objection must be understood as a manifestation of the fundamental right to ideological freedom as contained in art. 16.1 CE (assuming of course that all objecting conduct is legitimate), but it must also be understood as a principle. That is to say, any conflict between the subject's fundamental right and legal duty that he rejects must be resolved by the judge who must make a careful judgement of values and property. This fundamental right still exists and may invoked and exercised by inmates and health personnel in the prison context in the face of predictions of the forcible imposition of medical treatment as stated in the LOGP and RP, with no more limit than public order itself.

Freedom in the Imperial Imagination: Mental Asylums, Ideology, and Political Economy in Colonial India

Mental hospitals in India, mostly established by the colonial state, remain the backbone of the state's response to mental distress. However, the quantum and quality of care in these hospitals are in urgent need of improvement. In attempting to answer why this is so, this paper responds to the thesis that the popularity of the colonial asylums was in large part due to the social control functions which they performed. It is argued that asylums exist because they are embedded in a discourse of care, improvement, and freedom of the mentally distressed which originated in imperial Britain and Europe. In a nuanced and complex manner the combination of 'care and cure' and 'control and emancipation' was introduced in India through lunatic asylums. This ideology of freedom, however, gained widespread legitimacy because it was nestled within a larger discourse on freedom which was articulated keenly by the emerging political economy. Listening thus to the ideology of freedom in mental asylums and in political economy helps us in understanding the continued reliance on mental hospitals as the frontline in the battle against mental distress in India.

'Becoming a Different Me': Simone de Beauvoir on Freedom and Transatlantic Sexual Stereotypes

Europe’s relationship to America in general, and France’s in particular, centers around questions of freedom and dependency. This paper compares Europe’s search for independence with America’s ideology of freedom as articulated through today’s sexualised transatlantic rhetoric. I examine Simone de Beauvoir’s observations that differences in sexual relations and gender constructions are crucially linked to constitutional and cultural notions of liberty. Her portrayal of male disempowerment in the novel The Mandarins contrasts an intimidating American masculinity with its counterpart in Europe. European masculinity has been constructed as soft and peace loving, while its American counterpart is perceived as emboldened and tough. The ‘War on Terror’, as noted by Timothy Garton Ash and others, has reintroduced the sexual imagery into the verbal abuse hurled over the Atlantic. Europe’s tendency to define itself against America lends itself to revealing conclusions regarding de Beauvoir’s inability to dismantle cultural stereotypes about the ‘New World’ of possibility and abundance.

Religious Freedom in Transition: Spain

After a peaceful and well-conducted transition towards democracy (1975–78), the Spanish Constitution was enacted in December 1978. This article starts with the events which led to the Civil War (1936–39) and studies the relationship between the Spanish state and the Catholic Church throughout Franco's dictatorship. This background is necessary for a proper understanding of the current legal framework on religion, which is the main aim of this article. In the light of the pronouncements of the Spanish Constitutional Court (SCC), I analyse the various paragraphs of Article 16 of the Constitution, especially with regard to the position of individuals and communities. I also deal with the relationship between religious freedom and ideological freedom. I offer a critical judgment on the position of the Catholic Church and the other religious denominations which concluded agreements with the Spanish state in 1992. Finally, I highlight current trends, particularly the difficult relationship between the socialist government and the Catholic Church in the last few years. Although the situation had significantly improved by 2007, there are still occasions on which tension between the two institutions is manifest.

Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!

Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!

Photography after the Incidents

Photography after the Incidents

Reframing the nation-state: Rethinking the Australian dream from the local to the global

Movement across the borders of the nation-state has always been uneven, but over the past few decades the unfettered movement of goods and images has been defended under the ideology of freedom and openness. At the same time, the movement of people, including refugees, has become increasingly administered and restricted in the name of ‘the national interest’. This article argues that Australia has been part of this development. The Australian dream was once for all to own a quarter-acre housing block, protected from the machinations of the world. Across the turn of the 20th century into the present an invidious version of this dream has intensified, shorn of its egalitarian spirit. The nation-state itself has been made over in this image. The Australian state now acts on behalf of the nation to keep unwanted strangers out, while facilitating the open globalization of the Australian economy. In this context, older ethical pronouncements about freedom, equality openness and fairness no longer work. This article develops an alternative approach based upon a layering of ethical considerations. The new Australian dream it suggests will entail a complete renegotiation of how we are to live within and across the boundaries of identity, culture and economy.

Tasting freedom: Happiness, religion and economic transition

Economic transition lowered happiness on average, but did not affect everyone equally. This paper uses Hungarian survey data to study the impact of religion and economic transition on happiness. Religious involvement contributes positively to individuals’ self-reported well-being. Controlling for personal characteristics of the respondents, money is a less important source of happiness for the religious. The impact of economic transition varies greatly across different groups. The main winners from increasing economic freedom were the entrepreneurs. The religious were little affected by the changes. This implies that greater ideological freedom, measured by a greater social role of churches, may not influence happiness per se.

Tasting Freedom: Happiness, Religion and Economic Transition

Economic transition lowered happiness on average, but did not affect all equally. This paper uses Hungarian survey data to study the impact of religion and economic transition on happiness. Religious involvement contributes positively to individuals? self-reported well-being. Controlling for personal characteristics of the respondents, money is a less important source of happiness for the religious. The impact of economic transition has varied greatly across different groups. The main winners from increasing economic freedom were the entrepreneurs. The religious were little affected by the changes. This implies that greater ideological freedom, measured by a greater social role of churches, may not influence happiness per se.

Total Freedom: Toward A Dialectical Libertarianism. By Chris Matthew Sciabarra. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. 390p. $65.00 cloth, $24.50 paper.

Sciabarra's book attempts to conjoin dialectics with libertarianism to produce total freedom. He is led to this seemingly odd conjunction by a concatenation of concerns. He sees dialectics as the logic or method most attentive to contexts and libertarianism as a radical political ideology of freedom. He sees the opportunity to free dialectics of its totalitarian (including Marxist) overtones and libertarianism of its apparent irrelevance, which is the more galling now that once-popular Marxism has failed as radical social theory. He wishes to combine his own academic appreciation of the dialectical elements of Marx's method with his long-standing love of libertarian ideas. Primarily, he hopes to expand libertarian thought from a narrow concentration on economic self-interest and the state as repressive to a broader concern with the cultural, social, and historical preconditions of freedom, and he sees dialectics, with its emphasis on contexts, dynamism, and relations, as a method that can be appropriated by libertarians to realize these broader concerns and to propound a comprehensive and radical social theory. No longer need libertarian thought be seen as atomic individualism struggling for freedom against state violence; building on dialectical thinking shorn of its Marxist content, libertarians can embrace whole individuals living in rich social environments that can carry out, without violence, the social powers that the state has illegitimately appropriated.

The Channel Tunnel and English National Identity

The Channel Tunnel and English National Identity Brian Richardson (bio) Eve Darian-Smith, Bridging Divides: The Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe (University of California Press) I will never think of Kent in quite the same way. In addition to being a county in England, Kent is also a legal, psychological, and inter-national/state/community entity that has also been an historical source, a legal and political ideal, and a point of demarcation. As Darian-Smith notes, the county and the channel, or at least their mythical existence, have been important aspects of English national identity. As a result, the building of the channel tunnel, which creates a fixed link between England and France, raises profound issues “of law, identity, and territory” (page 8). The discussion of English identity in Bridging Divides focuses on the complex, and often contradictory, existence of Kent, an existence which has been at the center of recent debates over the Channel Tunnel and the changing relationships between Britain and the European Community. Darian-Smith has chosen a very appropriate and timely topic to weave together several themes in English national identity — the garden, the island, the common law — with contemporary concerns for the political imaginary, post-colonialism, and symbolic geography. The debates over the channel tunnel bring together a wide range of competing political, national, and legal ideals, which focus attention on the problems and possibilities that are emerging with the European Community, and by extension with the reorganization of political structures throughout the world. And what her discussion encourages us to do, in the end, is to rethink the terms of the political debates, specifically when they either reaffirm the nation-state or resolve the nation-state into a global/local model. The emerging organizations and contests are not so easily contained: there are bureaucratic structures, material structures, and a host of other factors: psychological, historical, national, and so on, which all help form the terrain on which specific contests are engaged and ideals articulated. As she notes in her introduction, Inasmuch as the Tunnel is grounded in English and French national, regional, and local contexts, it is also a significant feature in the emerging pan-European political, economic, and cultural spheres. (page xiii) Kent, by representing the English side of the channel, has always been an important point of transit between England and the continent (or France, the distinction is never very clear). But with the channel the English also saw a natural distance between the island, their island, and the continent. The distance was both geographical and existential. The channel helped the English think of themselves as English. The connection between territory and national identity is best seen in Darian-Smith’s contrast between English common law, which is connected back to a local identity that has existed since time immemorial, and continental law, which is exemplified by the Napoleonic Code. One of the key concepts sustaining England’s ideology of freedom and its linkage to the state territory was the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Having no codified legal system, English common law derived its legitimacy from having existed since time immemorial, thus predating sovereign authority. (page 31) The common law is important for Darian-Smith’s discussion insofar as it is through common law that the English nation is strongly connected to a specific place as well as extended back through time. It may be objected here that the author’s account of “England’s ideology” is simplified. While common law is clearly an important element of the English political order, there are also alternatives, such as can be found in many key English political theorists (Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Mill and so on), where common law is at the very least subject to rational analysis, if not the activities of other players, such as the king and the contemporary political body. While this may be true — she does not even mention most of the key English political theorists — it may also be tangential to her argument. What she is primarily concerned with are the ideological commitments of contemporary England, and in particular of the inhabitants of Kent whom she has interviewed and interacted with. For them...

Shooting Baywatch

Shooting Baywatch

Notes on Viollet-le-Duc's Philosophy of History: Dialectics and Technology

In an effort to expand on the traditional rationalist interpretation of Viollet-le-Duc, this article explores his ideas of progress and history. Viollet's "reason" is described as a dialectical structure which develops in time, unfolding through history. From his description of the origins of architecture to his account of the great periods of mankind, Viollet's philosophy of history presents an ideology of freedom; and through it he attempts to demonstrate humanity's progressive transformation of a nature originally hostile to man into a new world in harmony with him. The historical dialectic follows three distinct stages: Asian civilization (theocraty), Antiquity (aristocraty) and finally Christianity (democraty), which is a synthesis of the previous two. Such trinitarian rule is basic to the dialectical process itself. It underlies not only Viollet's philosophy of history but also his philosophy of nature (theory of crystals). Technique is the realm of human activity which, for Viollet, best speaks of man's dialectical engagement with the world. Viollet's central notion of style defines a technical activity; an object endowed with style must result from the struggle between the real (the world of nature and tradition, the given facts from which human action starts out) and the ideal (the world of human aspirations and progress). Style is an expression of dialectical synthesis. It is in his description of the difference between Greek and Gothic architecture that Viollet's historical dialectic comes through most clearly. Greek architecture, for Viollet, is the first instance of an architecture which seeks to free itself from the enslavement to tradition. The static nature of Greek structural principles, however, still reflects a fatalistic vision of the world. In contrast, Gothic architecture is the birth of a radical spirit of invention which seeks to subjugate totally both nature and tradition. The principle of equilibrium basic to its structural organization is an example of man's cunning play with the forces of nature. It embodies the "Christian rule" which leaves to man his free will and the responsibility for his own works. Christianity is the last stage in the historical dialectic where man becomes "a creature in the image of the Creator."

The Ideology of Freedom's “Fragility” in American Foreign Policy Argument

The Ideology of Freedom's “Fragility” in American Foreign Policy Argument

Refugee Resettlement and Public Policy: A Role for Anthropology

The area now known as the United States of America has been, since the earliest European settlers, a place of ideological freedom, political asylum, and economic opportunity for people from many countries. Only recently, however, has the government of the United States distinguished between refugees and immigrants as a matter of law and public policy. The provision of assistance to persons admitted to this country, as a public rather than a wholly private responsibility, is a still more recent development.2 The first major refugee assistance program was created for Cubans who fled to the United States after the fall of the Batis-