Liberalism Research Articles

Indigenizing Christianity: Indigenous instruments in the Zimbabwean United Methodist Church

This study examines indigenization in the Zimbabwean United Methodist Church. It utilizes historical analysis of archival data to investigate the role of indigenous instrumentations, songs, and music in the indigenization process. The premise is that traditional instruments are operative in the continual indigenization process and play a fundamental role in the 21st-century Zimbabwean United Methodist Church. It further underscores indigenous instruments as a method of theologizing, identity expression and self-imagination. The study concludes that indigenous instruments represent and express United Methodist Church congregants’ spiritual and political liberation in post-missionary Zimbabwe.

Ideological Constitutionalism

A renewed interest in the concept of ideology is evident in recent constitutional theory. Ideology has featured prominently not only in restatements of traditional Marxist positions and attempted retrievals of the material conception of the constitution, but also in democratic critiques of liberal constitutionalism and theories of constitutional identity. The intention of this article is twofold. Firstly, the article defends the explanatory power of a conception of constitutional ideology that is centred on political domination and the ‘universalisation’ of contingent power relations, rather than more diffuse notions like the symbolic construction of reality or worldviews. Secondly, the article considers distinctive ideological dimensions of modern constitutionalism. An analysis of these dimensions, I contend, confirms modern constitutionalism's strong ideological ‘potential’.

All the President’s Women? Female Leaders, Family Ties, and Gendered Cabinet Appointments Worldwide

Abstract This study investigates the nexus between the rise of female leaders and the appointment of women to cabinets and how family ties, crucial for women’s political ascendance, impact these appointments. Using a unique dataset across 160 countries from 1966 to 2021, we find that female leaders generally appoint more women to their cabinets and key cabinet roles. However, this effect is significantly moderated by the “Goldilocks” principle, defined by the nature of a leader’s family ties. Specifically, female leaders with moderate family ties are most likely to appoint women. In contrast, their counterparts from political dynasties and those without familial political ties are less inclined to do so. The exploratory analysis suggests potential mechanisms driving this dynamic: female leaders with a “just-right” degree of political lineage are more likely to have advanced degrees and Western education, potentially aligning them more closely with liberal and feminist values.

Power Peace: The Resolution of the Syrian Conflict in a Post-Liberal Era of Peacemaking

ABSTRACT The complexity of the Syrian conflict prompted the engagement of new actors of peacemaking – notably Turkey and Russia – whose interactions with the UN model have often been described as the confrontation of liberal versus illiberal norms and values. This article investigates the impact of these dynamics on peace and the political system in Syria. Building on the analysis of 100 interviews, it questions the liberal-illiberal dyad. Peacemaking in Syria is more hybrid. It is a marketplace where mediators of all types pursue ‘power peace’, or the pre-eminence of geopolitical interests and statecraft over any ideal of peace.

Thinking solidarity and translation together: Towards a new definition of solidarity

In a cross-disciplinary roundtable discussion on the feminist politics of translation,Judith Butler (Nagar et al., 2017, p. 113)aptly notes that “there can be no solidarity without translation, and certainly no global solidarity”. This article is the first dedicated attempt to definesolidarity from within translation studies: it redefines the concept to foreground the role of translation, understood as a hermeneutic, interpersonal and semiotic process, in solidarity development. The article is also the first to bring together scholarship on solidarity from philosophy, political science and sociology, on the one hand, and translation studies, on the other. I show that insights from translation studies supplement scholarship on solidarity in the other disciplines, where translation is largely overlooked. I also apply analytical categories from those disciplines to discussions of solidarity in translation studies and demonstrate the de factodifferent understandings of solidarity behind translation scholars’ use of the term, thus initiating a discipline-wide theoretical conversation on the concept. Moreover, upon noticing that the roleof translation in generating solidarity is not captured in any existing definition, I redefine solidarity as a sense of interconnection and commonality in difference –developed through caring, careful and inherently incomplete translation –that pursues inclusion and impels action towards common good. Finally, I signal how the definition can inform our understanding of the interlingual human translator as an active agent, adept at forging and facilitating solidarity.

Indonesia's Efforts as a Transit Country in Handling Irregular Migration through the Bali Process

Migration, or the movement of people from their country of origin to another country, is not a new phenomenon in human life. Transnational crime occurs not only due to free trade factors and weak law enforcement but also due to the geographical conditions of the country itself. This research aims to analyse and determine Indonesia's efforts to handle irregular migration as an implementation of the Bali Process. This research uses a type of qualitative research that is descriptive analysis. The data collection techniques used in this research are secondary documents and internet-based techniques. The results of the research show that Indonesia's efforts to deal with irregular migration can be carried out with preventive and repressive efforts as stated in Article 89, paragraphs 1. 2, and 3. Cooperation between Indonesia and Australia to deal with irregular migration in the Bali Process has resulted in several equal partnerships in an MOU. Efforts to handle and protect irregular migration in the Bali process are carried out by taking into account the policies of each country with a comprehensive regional approach in accordance with the principles of Burden sharing and collective responsibility. Cooperation between Australia and Indonesia uses the basic assumptions contained in the theory of institutional liberalism put forward by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, in the form of: 1. Trust in Cooperation, 2. International regime, 3. Complex dependency, and 4. Interdependence.

The experience of teaching national history and the foundations of constitutional knowledge in the late 1930s early 1940s (using the example of railway schools in the Kursk region)

The relevance of the topic under discussion is determined by the significant social importance of school history education. Over thirty years of Russian society's and state's life in conditions of ideological and political diversity, as well as the complete erosion of the Western-scale liberal values, has led to most Russians realizing the need to adhere to traditional moral principles based on ideas of patriotism and humanism. The domestic education system is the main vehicle for this. Therefore, the controversial experience of teaching history in schools arouses professional interest among researchers and practicing teachers.The purpose of the study is to reveal the peculiarities of teaching history in the pre–war years on the basis of archival documents and published materials on the example of departmental educational institutions of railway transport.Objectives: to characterize the contradictions of the process of introducing historical and social sciences disciplines into school education; to reflect the role of historical knowledge in the patriotic education of the younger generation.Methodology. The research was based on the principles of objectivity and historicism. To solve the tasks set by the author, the methods of historical-genetic, historical-systemic, historical-comparative, typological, retrospective were used.Results. The study of the experience of teaching the historical and social sciences cycle of academic disciplines in the pre-war years on the example of departmental educational institutions of railway transport made it possible to objectively assess the impact of humanitarian training of students on the formation of their civic position and the education of patriotic feelings, which had a decisive impact on the behavior of graduates of railway schools during the period of military trials and subsequent restoration of the national economy.Conclusions. The experience of teaching history and the foundations of constitutional knowledge accumulated in the pre-war period is worthy of application in the context of modern reform of historical education. Recognition of the leading role of national history in shaping the worldview of the younger generation requires a systematic approach in teaching and educating young people based on love and respect for their Homeland.

Translator’s ideology: the accented critique of the Church and the missing feminist authorial voice in the translation of Sara Joseph’s Othappu

ABSTRACT Exploring the interactions of female sexuality and spirituality from a feminist lens, Othappu by Sara Joseph, is influential in the genre of women’s writing in Malayalam. Through a textual analysis of the novel’s prize-winning translation by Rev. Valson Thampu, the paper examines how the author’s voicing of female resistance to patriarchal institutions gets effaced in the translation process. The translation appears to be stripped of its explicitly feminist authorial voice, where the specific articulations of female subjectivity get replaced by a universally-appealing critical voice, accenting the translator’s ideology. Contrary to Joseph’s emphasis on the text’s engagement with a woman’s response to religion, Thampu voices his reading of the text as an “individual’s” conflict with faith. The attempt is to locate the discursive presence of the translator and how the translator’s ideological leanings influence the transference of the feminist politics of the source text. Apart from closely comparing the original text to the translation in terms of the specificities of the language and analysis of the paratextual elements, a macro-dimension approach which locates the social context and ideological premise examining the translator’s role as creator of a new social narrative through translation is also employed.

“¡¡¡SOY NEGRA!!!”/“i found god in myself”: Shange, Santa Cruz, and Self-Love as Savior

In this article, I assert that Ntozake Shange and Victoria Santa Cruz engage in a “diasporic dialogue” through their dramatic poetry—a dialogue that transcends genre, language, form, and geographies. I believe they do so not through the actual exchange of words, but rather through the Afro-diasporic aesthetics and Black Feminist messaging at the heart of their respective works: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and “Me Gritaron Negra.” I am invested in the conversation between their pieces—and the consciousness transformation such a conversation allows. By placing these works in conference for the first time and investigating the ways they “talk” to each other, I seek to demonstrate the unique vitality of theatre pieces—especially those led by Black women from across the African Diaspora—as embodied practices of liberatory politics and the transforming (and transformational) Black Feminist thought of the 1970s. Furthermore, by honing in on and getting up close to praxes and articulations of self-acceptance, self-definition, and self-determination in both Shange’s and Santa Cruz’s works, I will demonstrate the usefulness of this kind of embodied performance to something we might think of as the radical political potential of self-love.

Strategi Pusat Kajian Perempuan Solo dalam Memberikan Edukasi mengenai Pendidikan Seksualitas pada Remaja di Kota Surakarta

Teenager are in transitional period that requires appropriate information according to their needs and changes they experience regarding sexuality issues. Problems found in the field such as sexual violence, early marriage, unwanted pregnancy, and taboo perceptions about sexuality issues are the background of the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. The solo women's study center as one of the communities actively engaged in educating teenagers about the importance of sexuality education by considering the Comprehensive Sexual Education curriculum with the aim of increasing knowledge, making preventive efforts, and providing a safe space for adolescents. This research method uses a qualitative approach with a case study type, data collection techniques using in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and documentation. The data that has been obtained is then tested for credibility using source triangulation, then analyzed using liberal feminist theory. The results showed that the strategies carried out by PUKAPS such as sea-project, femstride class, femstride safer space project, making the film “Payung Dara”, campaigning through social media, and advocacy services have a positive influence on the fulfillment of reproductive rights and the improvement of more inclusive sexuality education.

Pancasila in National Curriculum: Political Education or Doctrination?

This article examines the operation of Pancasila, the Indonesian state ideology, in school courses in an Indonesian school in the Netherlands, “Sekolah Indonesia Den Haag” (SIDH). It aims to examine the way Pancasila is taught at SIDH, whether it functions as political education or political indoctrination. The study was conducted using qualitative data analysis, with data from interviews and field observations. The findings show that the way Pancasila is taught at SIDH is a dynamic process consisting of both cultural value and critical engagement to help students understand Indonesia's cultural heritage and instill national identity. The findings also indicate that Pancasila is taught as political education, predominantly relying on rote memorisation and prescribed textbooks, within the context of Dutch liberal cultural values. This leads to identity conflicts among the students. The findings in this study can inform policymaking in education and the formulation of curriculum. For example, to promote a more holistic understanding among students, we can foster critical thinking and open dialogue and encourage interdisciplinary exploration. Investing in teacher professional development may also facilitate meaningful teaching beyond nationalistic symbolism.

“Joss is (no longer?) Boss”: three layers of cancelling in the joss whedon fan community

ABSTRACT Over the past few years, and in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, increased attention has been devoted to the practice of “cancelling:” the withdrawal of support from someone whose values, action or speech are deemed unacceptable. While social justice advocates see cancelling as a tool advancing equality and inclusion, the pejorative term “cancel culture” has quickly earned a contested status and was used by opposers to warn against a “takeover” of “woke” values. The Joss Whedon fan community, centered around a creator celebrated for advancing feminist agendas in popular culture, is an intriguing site within this broader controversy. The aim of this study is to explore how fans navigate the ambivalences inherent in cancelling a previously-valued creator, and the tensions between promoting liberal values and protecting objects of fandom. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with Whedon fans and former fans, we propose a framework conceptualizing cancelling as consisting of three layers: cancelling the emotional relationship towards the creator, cancelling his works, and promoting cancelling as an ideological choice. The framework is helpful in understanding the broader tensions inherent in the practice of cancelling, in the context of culture and gender wars.

Waste picking in the age of COVID-19: an environmental justice perspective

All over the world, waste and its disposal are becoming a more prominent issue, as landfills swell up and growing evidence points to its contribution to climate change and environmental degradation. In the developing world, waste pickers sort through solid waste and sell it to vendors, who will recycle the product into something consumable. The work they do is vital to climate change mitigation, as well as urban cleanliness. In a way, waste pickers, especially in India, are vehicles of environmental justice, but they are often discriminated against and subjected to inhumane working conditions. In this environment, the pandemic hit, making waste pickers’ already precarious life even worse. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the academic literature by compiling a systemized literature review of the impacts of COVID-19 on waste-pickers’ lives using an environmental justice perspective. The review also uses a Feminist Political Ecology perspective to illuminate the double jeopardy that female waste pickers face in the era of COVID-19, which academia often ignores. Ultimately, this paper shows that COVID-19 exacerbated the preexisting injustices that the waste picker community face and created an immense burden on women. This paper will show that it is important to notice the differentiation between female and male waste picker challenges, especially at the crux of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper has important policy implications as well as research considerations for both environmental justice and feminist political ecology scholars.

LIBERALISM IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The article analyzes the genesis of liberal theory and the main stages of its development in the context of socio-political changes on the international arena. The main idea is formulated and the main provisions of classical liberalism in international relations are revealed. The essential factors of the emergence of social-democratic liberalism are studied and its influence on international relations is considered. The features and basic values of neoliberalism, declared the highest criteria for the stability of Western society, are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the analysis of certain theories of neoliberalism in the science of international relations: liberal institutionalism, commercial liberalism, and liberal internationalism.

Framing Chinese Youth in the Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution

Abstract The launching of the reform program in 1978 went hand in hand with praising Chinese youth as the vanguard of the new struggle for modernising China. Yet, the official rhetoric projected the ideal youth, while being at odds with the complex reality of the early post-Mao era, when the experience of the Cultural Revolution (CR) turned out to be the main reason for the so-called ‘youth problem’. Both international and Chinese literature have highlighted that in the reform era, youth, intended as a social and cultural category or construct, came to be associated with less positive values, and the traditional discourse of ‘youth as hope’ proliferated along and intertwined with a negative discourse of ‘youth as trouble’. This paper looks at the re-emergence of the Communist Youth League (CYL) as a key institutional actor in setting the stage for the construction of a new social discourse on youth in the transitional period 1978–1981, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership confronted with the need to deal with the tumultuous upheaval of the CR and its impact on youth on the one hand, and to push forward the reformist agenda on the other. By mainly relying on CYL sources (documents, internal publications and the official youth press), a part of which has been largely unexplored so far, it shows how the discourse on youth became complex and multifaceted in those historical circumstances, reflecting not just different views within the élite but also and most importantly the very tensions involved in the reform project. While the existence of the ‘youth problem’ led to establishing a causal nexus with the now condemned ultra-leftist tendencies associated with Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, the need to make sense of the complexity of youth boosted a heated debate on youth characteristics, with a number of cadres and adult experts affiliated to the CYL defining, describing and prescribing what Chinese youth were in ways that, by ensuring they had not been guilty as former Red Guards and recognising them as both victims and increasingly emancipated actors, eventually pushed forward a new idea of youth that conformed to the new modernization aims of the Party. Providing an assessment of the young generation and its inclinations in the aftermath of the CR eventually became the premise for facilitating the emergence of a new youth subjectivity, while envisioning the integration of the self within the broader collective and the coexistence of liberal values with traditional socialist ethics. The debate on youth characteristics reflected the complex changes taking place in China and was constitutive of a broader process that set the stage for rethinking the socialisation of youth in the post-Mao era.

Moral Policing of Gender Norms: Honor-Based Violence as a Mobilizing Factor Towards Militant Islamism

Honor culture, in which the virtue of the family—if not community—depends on the “purity” of its female members, enforced through “moral policing” of gender norms to collectively control women’s sexuality and uphold a patriarchal gender order, is a central aspect of both honor-based violence and the Salafi-jihadist culture in militant Islamist milieus. Drawing on interviews with 1) an imprisoned Danish woman convicted of ISIS-related terrorism, 2) a mother of a deceased Swedish ISIS foreign fighter, who herself was previously part of the Salafi-jihadist milieu, and 3) “professionals” (e.g. police officers, social workers and municipal employees) conducted during ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden and prison ethnography in Denmark, this article explores how honor-based violence can constitute a mobilizing factor for Western Muslims towards militant Islamism in three distinct ways. First, isolation of Muslim women and children through gender segregation and restrictions on accessing public space to “moral police” gender norms enables the Salafi-jihadist milieu to cement and extend its ideological, religious, and physical control. Second, in an honor culture with intense pressure on men to defend and restore family honor whenever it is challenged, joining ISIS can be perceived as a means to fulfill this obligation, thereby affirming “real” Muslim masculinity and upholding a patriarchal gender order. The deeply ingrained cultural expectations to defend honor can even be exploited by militant Islamist milieus in their recruitment efforts. Third, besides providing a “safe space” where one cannot be persecuted and punished for dishonoring one’s family by leaving it as an unmarried woman, ISIS’s multiethnic diversity and embrace of interethnic marriage can be appealing for someone who wants to escape forced endogamous marriage. Given that honor-based violence strikes at the individual freedoms and rights, thereby undermining liberal democratic values and the rule of law, our article contributes knowledge on the broader threat to democracy from anti-democratic forces in the context of militant Islamism.

Influence of Teacher Characteristics on the Implementation of Inclusive Education in Public Primary Schools in Bumula Sub-County, Kenya

Education has been, recognized as basic human right by many world societies. This includes persons having difficulties in education. In spite of this inclusivity of students living with disabilities in schooling is, faced with many challenges. This study therefore looked at the influence of teacher characteristics on the implementation of inclusive education in public primary schools in Bumula Sub-County. Classical liberal theory was, employed in this study since it advocates for equal opportunities to all people in the society. This study targeted total population of 20,125 people with and without disabilities from the 126 public primary schools practicing inclusivity in education. Using Morgan and Krejcie table the study sample size was 379 respondents. A descriptive survey design was embraced utilizing quantitative approaches. Data for this study was, acquired via questionnaires for teachers and learners. Quantitative data from the questionnaires was cleaned, coded and inserted in the computer for analysis utilizing Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. The product of the data collected was, analyzed and presentations shown by percentages, frequency distribution tables, bar graphs and charts settling on the objectives and research questions of this study. The Coefficient of Determination (R square) stood at 0.758, which means that about 75.8% of the proportion of total variations in the implementation of inclusive education was explained by teacher characteristics. The coefficient (β = 0.261) for teacher characteristics was found to be statistically significant (t = 3.831, p = 0.002) at a 95% confidence level (α = 0.05), indicating a notable relationship with the implementation of inclusive education in public primary schools. This study advocates for a deeper exploration of school-based dynamics, aligning with classical Liberal Theory principles, to further bolster the adoption of inclusive education practices. The study recommends more pursuit of school-based dynamics as demonstrated in the Classical Liberal Theory to enhance implementation of inclusive education. Investors, management, government, researchers and academicians would greatly benefit from this study as it provides viable insights that could guide decisions to serve their interests on the critical subject of enhanced implementation of inclusive education.

Erotic Black Diaspora

“The Erotic Black Diaspora: From Your Hands to Mine” is a theoretical exploration of how the erotic informs Black feminist politics, kinship, love, and spirituality throughout the African diaspora. Through an interdisciplinary approach rooted in literary studies, history, African and African diaspora studies, women’s and gender studies, and Black queer studies, as well as archival research, a close reading of letters sent to Black feminist, writer, and poet Audre Lorde reveals how the erotic functions within Black feminist spaces, particularly in the late 1970s–mid 1980s. In using Audre Lorde’s definition of the erotic, as she defines it in “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” this paper argues that the Erotic Black Diaspora is a way of reading Black feminist love, language, and action. Recognizing the diversity within Afro-diasporic experiences, the Erotic Black Diaspora privileges the erotic (platonic and/or romantic) feelings and expressions across continents cultivated between same-sex-loving and queer individuals throughout the African diaspora. Positioning Black feminist archives, in particular correspondence sent between Black feminist foremothers, as a counter-archive to institutions of oppression informs one’s understanding of the ethics of Black feminist politics, love, spirituality, and community building.

“Enlightened Man Incarnate”: Mediating Enlightenment in Eighteenth‐Century Literary Reviews

Abstract‘Crucial to the Enlightenment’, Roy Porter argued, was the work of ‘critics, knowledge‐mongers, and opinion‐makers’; the critic was ‘enlightened man incarnate’. In order to enhance our understanding of the ways in which exponents of print culture sought to orient public opinion and promote recognizably liberal principles and values, this article will examine both the polemical discourses of prolific literary journalists and the intellectual context of key issues, highlighting the work of the lawyer Owen Ruffhead. In often substantive commentaries, Ruffhead and his fellow critics referenced a distinctive set of natural law principles: they celebrated the norms of right reason, of equity and liberty. Amongst the values expounded in the Reviews were Lockean political precepts congruent with core features of liberal theory. From the mid‐eighteenth century, an early and unfamiliar ‘liberal’ vocabulary and agenda can be traced as civil liberties and rights were advocated, including the rights of the colonists, the underprivileged and the exploited. Decades before the term liberalism was devised, critics contributed to the shaping and diffusion of recognizably liberal patterns of thinking. Such an inquiry into a vibrant domain of ideas engages in ongoing historiographical debates, providing a new perspective on the formation and diffusion of influential ethical and socio‐political modes of thought.

Mechanics Institutes in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Victoria: Racial Difference and Liberalism in the Settler Colony

ABSTRACT In the second half of the nineteenth century, mechanics institutes proliferated across the Australian colonies at such a rate that, by 1900, they were more widespread, proportional to population, than in Britain. This article examines the first 30 years of their development in colonial Victoria to offer a new interpretation of their deep entanglement with settler colonial liberalism. As in Britain, the Victoria mechanics institutes largely failed to deliver technical education to working-class men. However, the men who propelled their proliferation had much wider hopes for their pedagogic function in the settler colony. This article examines how the twin forces of political liberalism and settler colonialism underwrote and shaped mechanics institutes in mid-nineteenth-century Victoria. Examining the ideas of colonial liberals who propelled their proliferation and the activities that took place within them, it becomes clear that these institutes were imagined to cultivate certain kinds of settler Britons, capable of bearing the freedoms of an emerging settler modernity. At the same time, moreover, they both legitimated and implemented a settler colonial project of dispossession and demographic replacement. Mechanics institutes, I argue, were thus agents of both settler colonial destruction and liberal cultivation.