Moral Crusade Research Articles

The “Evil Spectators?”

Abstract This article rethinks the relationship between opium and empire in twentieth-century Asia. A rich scholarship focuses on the success of anti-opium activists, whose moral crusades gave birth to today’s global drug control regimes. By contrast, I center attention on the lesser-known pro-opium forces, demonstrating how “bad” actors, recognized now as apologists for a dangerous drug, were once essential stakeholders in imperial rule. This article traces the interconnected lives of actors that favored continuing the drug’s legal commerce across Southeast Asia: the merchants, bankers, agents of shipping firms, insurance agencies and warehousing companies as well as employees of colonial industries and governments that sustained opium supply chains from India to British Malaya and French Indochina into the 1930s. Hardly a coherent coalition of profit-seeking actors, these pro-opium forces represented situational allies with linked fates despite diverse opinions, fragmented interests, and ambivalent positions toward their own opium-entangled practices. Understanding their dispersed nature gives scholars reason to revisit the imperial origins of global drug control, while underscoring Southeast Asia’s importance for understanding global histories of drugs and international relations.

Judges as Agents of Coloniality: Understanding the Coloniality of Justice at the Pre-trial Stage in Brazil

Abstract This paper exposes how colonial ways of knowing and being shape judicial behaviour in Brazil, where pre-trial detention is excessively used against racialised groups. I argue that judges continue to conceptualise and operationalise justice according to colonial logics and thus reveal the coloniality of justice. Drawing on decolonial theory from across South America and from interviews and court observations in Rio de Janeiro, I reveal how judges understand themselves as heroic crime fighters, acting beyond the law in a modern moral crusade. I examine how violence remains a central component of justice and consider how judges deal with the contradiction of neutrality and aggression. I argue that judges, by endorsing or tolerating violence, become agents of coloniality.

The Motif of Mental Illness in the Works of M. Pantyukhov (1880–1910) and А. Mire (1874–1913)

The article studies the motif of mental illness in the works of two littleknown writers of the late XIX – early XX centuries: M.I. Pantyukhov (1880 –1910) and A. Mire (1874–1913). Pantyukhov's novella «The Silence and The Old Man» and Mire’s short stories «The Insane», «At Bicêtre» and drama «The Defeated»
 were analyzed. These works were selected as they all are characterized by the motif of mental illness and psychological dissonance. The aim of the analysis was to study the characters showing symptoms of a mental disorder and determine
 their function in the narrative. Having a long history, the mad hero type became peculiarly popular in the Russian literature of the named period as those texts reflected the perturbations of the turning stage of the history and a crisis state of
 people’s minds those processes led to.
 The problem of madness was addressed by both key writers and obscure authors. The writers under study might be interested in that topic because of their personal lives, too: both of them suffered from mental disorders and happened to be patients at a hospital. Paradoxically, despite their addled minds, Pantukhov’s and Mire’s characters grasp the truths which are unobtainable for mentally healthy people and, due to this, become social malady denouncers and – sometimes – moral crusaders. Apart from having a specific, «sick» view of life, mad heroes are extremely
 vulnerable which makes them victims unable to resist the cruelty of life.

Commentary on "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States".

I am a practicing urologist with expertise in female genital cutting. In this commentary, I respond to Dr Dina Bader's article "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation." I outline the current climate around genital cutting, the various actors shaping female genital cutting (FGC) legislation, and public perceptions surrounding the issue. I conclude that legislative changes sweeping across the United States to ban FGC have a variety of motivations. Some are to lift politicians' profiles; some are to prevent destination FGC cutting domestically. The possibility of increased racial profiling or increased Islamophobia is perhaps underrecognized by liberals, and perhaps a discreet and intentional agenda for conservative lawmakers. The effect of this legislation also increases attention on the genital alteration of all children, male, female, and intersex, which could be the greatest benefit of all.

From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States.

This article investigates the recent flurry of state-level legislation regarding female genital mutilation (FGM), which occurred in the aftermath of the first federal criminal court case of FGM in 2017. Drawing on publicly available material, it shows how this court case, which involved a group of Muslims of Indian heritage, elicited a moral crusade against FGM, largely led by Republican lawmakers, and spurred a resurgence of anti-Muslim discourses, which first came to the fore after 9/11 to legitimate the "war on terror." Although FGM is not an Islamic practice and is also carried out by non-Muslim groups, the author concludes that femonationalism and anti-Muslim racism are important analytical lens for understanding the recent history of legislative efforts to combat FGM in the U.S.

Examining FGC Survivor and FGC Impacted Community Involvement Behind FGM/C Legislation in the United States: A Response to Bader's "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States".

As an American-born woman who grew up as a South Asian Dawoodi Bohra Muslim, I have been aware of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) my entire life. So I immediately agreed to give commentary on "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalisim in the United States" by Dina Bader. While I do not necessarily disagree with Bader's observations, I provide additional context to better understand the history of our current FGM/C laws in this country and the influence survivors and advocates' have had in shaping them.

Commentary on From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation.

This commentary reflects on Dina Bader's article From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation, in which the author chronicles the rise in state laws prohibiting female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) through a lens of femonationalism. Expanding upon Bader's thought-provoking article, this commentary adds additional reflection on the content of current state legislation and the need for more comprehensive laws to protect women and girls. Future legislation must be evidence-based and must be accompanied by a multisectoral approach to prevention and response in order to create an enabling environment for the elimination of FGM/C.

Response to Commentaries on "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States".

The author responds to three commentaries on her essay "From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States," published in this symposium. The response addresses three main arguments, namely, the need for a specific ban on female genital mutilation (FGM), the multiplicity of actors involved in the anti-FGM movement, and the problematic way in which words and numbers are used in the public sphere to depict FGM. The author concludes with a call to decolonize the anti-FGM debate and to reflect critically on the political context in which anti-FGM legislation takes place.

Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit. By Benjamin J. Wetzel

In this spiritual biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin J. Wetzel, an assistant professor of history at Taylor University, has done a superb job of examining the 26th president’s religious beliefs and practices. Roosevelt’s religiosity has long been a subject of contention. A politician who sounded like a preacher, T. R. peppered his talks and writings with quotations from the Bible (which he knew extraordinarily well), and he treated the many causes with which he was involved as moral crusades. “Religion was the heart of his life,” averred the Rev. Christian Reisner, an early Roosevelt biographer, but others were not so sure (p. 194). One skeptic, the literary critic Gamaliel Bradford, contended that Roosevelt was not religious because he did not revere God. “He had no need of him and no longing,” wrote Bradford, “because he really had no need of anything but his own immensely sufficient self” (p. 196). Was Roosevelt a true Christian or a Pharisee? That is an interesting question, but Wetzel wisely refrains from providing a concrete answer. “This volume cannot, of course, reach definitive conclusions,” he writes, “about matters that lay buried in Roosevelt’s soul” (p. 197). Rather than focusing on the unknowable, Wetzel focuses on what we can know about Roosevelt’s spirituality.

Narrating Human Rights in Africa by Eleni Coundouriotis

Reviewed by: Narrating Human Rights in Africa by Eleni Coundouriotis Bonny Ibhawoh (bio) Eleni Coundouriotis, Narrating Human Rights in Africa (Routledge, 2020), ISBN 9780367194666, 206 pages. Eleni Coundouriotis’s book is founded on an undeniable premise first espoused by Edward Said: “Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain, and circulate them.”1 Because facts of abuse do not speak for themselves, we must rely on human rights narratives that testify to violations as the evidentiary foundations for redress and protection. The challenge of protecting and promoting human rights can only be met when the voices of victims and their interlocutors are heard, understood, and acted upon. Narratives of rights are the foundations upon which academics theorize, activists mobilize, and the state intervenes to protect human rights. This is why Coundouriotis’ focus on human rights narratives in this book marks an important contribution to human rights scholarship. The main contribution of this book is the centering of narrative in our understanding of human rights. Human rights scholars have not paid enough attention to the place of narrative in defining, contesting, and promoting human rights norms. Enough attention has also not been given to examining how narratives shape the protection of human rights and redress mechanisms for victims of abuse. We often take for granted the stories and testimonies of violations upon which human rights meanings and principles are founded. Narrating Human Rights seeks to bridge this gap by exploring how narratives affirm the values of social justice and human rights while at the same time creating new categories of thought that challenge human rights dogma. The author does this by examining human rights from the perspective of writers from the African continent and situating key theoretical concepts in African perspectives, undercutting the stereotypes of victimhood and voicelessness. The book takes as its starting point the imperative of challenging a methodology that positions narrative as peripheral rather than central to human rights scholarship. [End Page 865] Instead of positioning literary texts as illustrative of points already theorized elsewhere, Coundouriotis argues that “we must foreground the literature to show the concepts it offers, the ideas and responses stemming from complex historical circumstances in Africa and expressed by African writers.”2 Narrative in this context is a means of engaging with historical events, giving a complex account of how truth and reality are entangled. It portrays and mobilizes historical actors, reinscribing them into human rights discourses from which they have been omitted or their voices silenced. The book offers a useful schematization of human rights narrative. The author delineates three types of employment for human rights in literary narrative plots, each presenting a different construction of the heroic. The first type is the moral crusade, which is temporarily thwarted but holds a strong promise of future fulfillment. The second is the witness of a journalist or rapporteur who tells of unassimilable abuse and brutality and positions himself as a redeemer witness striving to create a vision of hope. The third is the collective story of a democratization movement which constructs a heroic and determined people whose efforts, though falling short, must be sustained. Common to all three human rights plots is that they convey teleological moral progress. They emphasize what the story moves toward and the kind of closure it proposes, despite the setbacks that are part of the historical account of events. The author takes up the key challenges to the narration of human rights in which the contribution of African writers is important. The objective is to show how African voices and perspectives shape how we think about human rights and how they have influenced their meanings. The perspective on human rights narration offered in this book is hybrid, engaged with both history and actual events. This is evident in the sustained readings of several topics offered in the chapters. Chapters examine the figure of the child soldier in relation to the history of conflict and state-building in Africa; the tension between flight and stasis in refugee and migrant; the challenge of testifying about rape in war; and narratives that evoke the disappeared in the context of resistance to state oppression...

Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King

Reviewed by: Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King Adam McConville King, Amy Sarig Attack of the Black Rectangles. Scholastic, 2022 [272p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781338680522 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781338680546 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-7 Mac Delaney's sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Sett, has become notorious in their small Pennsylvania town for her moral crusades, which include pushing for stricter curfews, stringent dress codes, and identical house colors. When she assigns Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic in class but hands out copies of the book with black rectangles covering passages she deems inappropriate, socially-conscious Mac and his friends decide it's time to protest. King frames the conversation about censorship around institutional abuse of power, based on a real example from her town in which Yolen's books were censored. For the community-focused premise, though, this is largely a character-driven story about Mac embracing healthy expressions for anger and fear. A constant need to fight the ills he sees makes Mac file his emotions away without processing them, from his developing crush on his friend Marci to his complicated relationship with his largely absent, mentally unstable father. It's Mac's grandfather, a Vietnam veteran, who takes the role of a father figure, helping Mac channel his emotions into protests and activism as he does and creating a positive outlet for Mac's blunt and preachy tendencies. Ms. Sett, meanwhile, is unrepentant throughout, and despite some efforts to round her character, she remains a distillation of authority who is easy to root against. The story wraps abruptly, with the censorship plotline fizzling out after an admittedly eventful school board meeting, but Mac's satisfying emotional journey gets the closure it deserves. Hand this book to social justice-minded readers who may not yet be ready for Dave Connis' Suggested Reading but are nonetheless looking to push back against educator-instigated censorship. [End Page 53] Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Reexamining the Great Meddler

Abstract Most previous biographies of Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Western hemisphere's first animal protection organization, give little attention to the very mixed reaction his efforts received from the media, legislators, fellow social reformers, the general public, and the large number of enterprises that benefitted from the exploitation and even abuse of animals during America's Gilded Age. A Traitor to His Species provides a detailed analysis of Bergh's life and times and explores both the victories and defeats he had while devoting most of his adult life to what he considered to be a moral crusade, building a foundation of a movement that has expanded beyond his expectations.

Politics of International Advocacy Against the Death Penalty: Governments as Anti–Death Penalty Crusaders

Two-thirds of the countries worldwide have moved away from the death penalty in law or in practice, with global and regional organisations as well as individual governments working towards universal abolition. This article critically examines the narratives of these abolitionist governments that have abolished the death penalty in their country and have adopted the role of ‘moral crusaders’ (Becker 1963) in pursuit of global abolition. In 2018, the Australian Government, while being surrounded by retentionist states in Asia, joined the anti–death penalty enterprise along with the European Union, the United Kingdom and Norway. Using the concepts of ‘moral crusader’ (Becker 1963) and ‘performativity’ (Butler 1993), this article argues that advocacy must be acted on repeatedly for governments to be anti–death penalty advocates. Otherwise, these government efforts serve political ends in appearance but are simply a self-serving form of advocacy in practice.

Trans Justice Fights Trans Moral Panic

Between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2021, a violent discussion about trans rights took place in Spain. This paper argues that the discussion can be understood as an instance of ‘social problems work’, more specifically as part of a moral crusade or a moral panic episode. Implicit in this is the idea that there has been an over-reaction to trans recognition and trans equality laws, publicly presented as a major social problem. This paper also provides legal arguments against the fears voiced in the discussion, by summarizing relevant ECHR case-law that agrees with an alternative feminist account of trans rights that de-pathologizes gender-identity self-determination. The paper thus suggests that a ‘cultural war’ over gender identity has been ignited and has yet to be fully fought and won.

Orthodox Mobilizations and Political Identities in Post-Soviet Georgia

Abstract Based on field research carried out over the last two decades, this article analyzes the labile nature of the relationship between religion and politics in Georgia. It aims to understand not only the rational and deliberate processes in which elites engage for political ends but also to grasp the diversity of actors and patterns of religion mobilization. It argues that three main types of articulations have developed since the 1990s: the mobilization of Orthodoxy (1) in the service of nation-building; (2) in the construction of an anti-elite popular identity; and (3) as a moral crusade. Each type of articulation involves specific social actors, organizational forms, and relations with political institutions.

Coloniality, just war & carceral injustice in Brazil

The Portuguese empire brought inescapable violence to the indigenous communities of Brazil and to those it enslaved. Throughout the centuries of colonial subjugation, driven by the Iberian monarchical traditions of hierarchy, militarism and moral crusade, ‘just war’ narratives were employed to legitimate the use of violent legal and extra-legal measures against enslaved peoples and others deemed unruly or rebellious and a threat to colonial order. Two centuries after independence, Brazil remains at war with its ‘internal enemies’. Its justice practices continue to be characterised by colonial rationalisations. This paper illustrates the contemporary coloniality inherent in the carceral system from the moment of detention pre-trial through sentencing and imprisonment.

Folk Devils or Moral Entrepreneurs? Gap Bridging in the Social Studies of Pro-ana Communities

ABSTRACT In moral panic studies, pro-ana communities are usually considered folk devils. Namely, pro-ana culture is investigated as an object of ‘moral crusades’ led by scientists, physicians, activists, politicians, mass media, parents and many other social actors concerned about the epidemics of restrictive eating disorders. In this paper, I put aside this strand of moral panic research and discuss the role of pro-ana communities as facilitators of moral panic to bridge the macro-micro divide in scientific investigations of the pro-ana phenomenon. I propose to examine pro-ana people as entrepreneurs of the moral panic over obesity. This means that pro-ana communities can be analyzed as creating and spreading contemporary legends on obesity in their communication processes. Furthermore, I discuss and exemplify the roles of pro-ana people as amplifiers, supporters and enforcers of this panic. In addition, while reconnecting micro and macro levels in the explanation of the pro-ana phenomenon, I contribute to the development of moral panic theory, as the application of the concept of ‘moral panic’ to pro-ana communities facilitates niche formation in biomedical social research.

‘Distrust all Advice … and Make No Exception in Favour of our Advice’: Financial Knowledge and Knowingness in Late Victorian Britain

Abstract Over the past two decades, our understanding of the development of financial markets in the nineteenth century has been transformed by scholars working in two broad areas. Economic sociologists and literary scholars have explored the discursive underpinnings of the institutions of modern finance, deftly tracing the ways in which stock markets were legitimised through a growing association with science and statistics, and a simultaneous distancing from gambling and chance. From a very different perspective, quantitative analysis of shareholder registers and other archival records by economic historians and historical geographers has provided rich data giving a more precise picture of who invested and what they invested in. Valuable though this work has been, the gulf between the two approaches has resulted in a dearth of empirically grounded studies of the social and cultural dimensions of investment. An area particularly in need of greater exploration is the booming late Victorian print culture which purported to explain finance to new investors. This article offers a close reading of the financial journalism of Henry Labouchere, better known for his subsequent political career as a Liberal MP. Labouchere’s writings are deliberately riddled with contradictions, simultaneously legitimising and questioning the stock market, and switching between the roles of moral crusader and self-interested speculator. This carefully crafted performance encouraged an attitude of ‘knowingness’ towards finance among his readers which helps to explain why the stock market was able to grow in popularity even when it remained so closely associated with fraud.

Wrong versus Right(eous): Online Reader Comments as Scientific Boundary‐Work

We bring a science‐as‐rhetoric framework, which has been used to study the claims of scientists, to examine lay claims about science. Using qualitative content analysis, we scrutinize the rhetoric of science in online reader comments sent in response to New York Times articles covering two recent measles outbreaks. Pro‐vaccine commenters use a variety of rhetorical tactics that simultaneously venerate science and denounce the antivaccination stance. These commenters, thus, participate in the ideological practices of boundary‐work to demarcate science from nonscience for the purposes of defeating their opponents and advancing their agenda. Our analysis foregrounds how and why this publics’ demarcation of science is a type of moral crusade, that equates antiscientific beliefs with normative chaos. We situate our analysis in the larger cultural landscape wherein laypeople create “us” versus “them” using “science” as their wedge. The importance of developing sociological accounts of these dynamics has been made especially clear in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its many science‐based controversies, including those related to vaccination.

Review: Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy, by Domingo Morel

Review: <i>Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy</i>, by Domingo Morel