Protestant Discourse Research Articles

Engaging citizens: local interactions, policy discourse and courses of protest against mobile phone cell site deployment

ABSTRACTThis article puts forward an interactionist discourse approach for studying the course of local political protest. We argue that how local policy-makers engage with the (anticipated) demands of citizens and mediate national policy produces distinct framing and feeling rules about potentially controversial issues. These framing and feeling rules open up or close down opportunities for citizen concerns to develop into collective action and policy change. Our contribution refines cultural approaches to social movement theory, focusing on local interactions in the formation of discourse, and allows us to better understand within-country variation in the course of contentious collective action. We develop our argument through a comparison of sixteen cases of installing mobile phone cell sites in the Netherlands. We show that the interaction between municipalities and citizens establishes a specific framing of the issue, of the role of citizens in decision-making and of the rules concerning what citizens may legitimately feel about mobile phone masts being erected in their neighbourhoods. This gives rise to four typical patterns of engagement between municipalities and citizens.

A pragma-semiotic analysis of ‘Occupy Nigeria Group’ online posts on the 2012 fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria

In response to the fuel subsidy removal by the Nigerian government on 1st January 2012, Occupy Nigeria Group, a protest movement, embarked on different mass strike actions and demonstrations including online activism. The civil resistant actions geared towards reversal of petrol pump price increase deployed certain verbal and visual means in portraying the government and its actions. Previous studies on online protest discourse in Nigeria have adopted sociolinguistic and discourse analysis approaches in examining issues of identity and self-determination with little attention paid to visual-pragmatic strategies in representing people and their actions. This article, therefore, undertakes a pragma-semiotic investigation of ‘Occupy Nigeria Group’ online posts on the 2012 fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria with a view to examining verbal and visual modes of representing people and their actions in the event. Seventy-two online protest posts purposively sampled from the groups’ page are used to identify and categorize various pragma-semiotic elements and functions in the representations using insights from Mey’s (2001) pragmatic act and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal discourse analysis. It is observed that the verbal mode complements the visual in projecting the demands and resistance of the group. The posts which are classified under six semantic fields, namely divine intervention, security consciousness, innovation, exaggeration, defamation and abusive placards have various visual-pragmatic strategies such as prayer, negative labelling, humour, mockery, abuse, passionate and fierce appeal, including photo trick. The strategies correspond to the dominant pragmatic acts such as demonstrative, assertive, suppository, condoling and stipulating. All these acts are presented within the Nigerian socio-political and linguistic context.

Adygeya: processy reislamizacii i vyzovy islamskogo radikalizma (1990-e – 2015 g.)

The article analyzes the transformation of Islamic community of the Adygheya Republic during 1990-2015, new tendencies and actors. The author reveals new trends in the 2010s updated by the dynamics of the political background of Adygheya. The main focus is the factors constraining Muslims from radicalism in the 1990s - 2010s, as well as factors that may contribute to the spread of radical version of Islam today. According to the author, the factors of radicalization of Muslims in the Adygheya can be divided into two groups - federal and regional. The first concerns the many unresolved methodological issues relating to New As practice shows, the state unequivocal support of the traditional Muslim clergy contributes to the isolation of Salafis, limits the possibilities of intraconfessional dialogue. The facts of destruction of mosques, injunction books, extra-judicial persecution of Muslims and ban on headscarves (hijabs) in schools in the other regions of the Russian Federation forms the protest discourse. At the regional level a crisis of ethnic ideology Adyghe Khabze, economical crisis and broken social lifts contribute to the radicalization of Muslims. Islamic radicals are very active and professional in social networks, they create the groups whose target audience is youth. The activities of the radical Internet imams, electronic religious authorities are typical for Adygheya and for the whole North Caucasus outside the native region. Their influence, agitation and propaganda are destructive and will have a negative impact in the future. A new trend is the departure of the Adyghe Muslims in ISIL (about 21 people from the beginning of 2015).

Building a Future in Times of Crisis. Young, Highly Qualified Migrants in the UK

This paper explores the migration of young, highly qualified Spaniards in the context of the current financial crisis. Various data sources are taken into account to show that the UK is currently the main destination country for young Spanish migrants. Drawing on qualitative interview data, the paper discusses the two main themes occurring in Spanish participants’ narratives: a belief in progress and meritocratic ideals as well as a strong sense of political anger. Participants’ belief in progress, the paper argues, constitutes an ‘attitudinal capital’ that originates in the economic bonanza preceding the crisis. At the same time, the participants’ interviews contain traces of political protest discourses that stem from Spanish pressure groups and alternative media who are critical of the current conservative government. The paper concludes by pointing out that while for the time being migration trajectories of young Spaniards in the UK seem to be rather positive and characterised by the acquisition of human capital, their sense of political anger could potentially become problematic if the upward social mobility they aspire to remains inaccessible.

Punching Korean Protestantism: Challenging from within through a Televised Theological Roundtable

Little attention has been given to religious television that counters dominant views within the same tradition. In this paper, I examine a South Korean TV show as a ‘‘mediated critical insider movement’’ that challenges mainstream Protestant Christianity in South Korea. Naensi Raeng ŭi sinhak p’ŏnch’i ( Nancy Lang’s Theology Punch ), with its incisive questioning of taken-for-granted beliefs, critically engages dominant Korean Protestant discourses. While it debunks some of the popular teachings in the Church, the show also disseminates discussions and debates from diverse theological perspectives. By analyzing the show, and through interviews with some of its producing agents and invited guest theologians, I argue that this mediated arena is a critical-insider movement that attempts to democratize theology by exposing theological information and promoting rational-critical argumentation, a practice that is marginalized in the Korean Protestant Church.

«Антиязык» как социальная форма языка на примере российского протестного дискурса 2011-2012 годов

«Антиязык» как социальная форма языка на примере российского протестного дискурса 2011-2012 годов

ТЕОРЕТИКО-МЕТОДОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ПОДХОДЫ К ИЗУЧЕНИЮ СЕТЕВОЙ ПРОТЕСТНОЙ АКТИВНОСТИ: ОТ «УМНОЙ ТОЛПЫ» К СЛАКТИВИЗМУ

The article considers the basic methodological approaches towards online network protest activity in western and Russian sociology. Five theories are described: smart mob theory (H. Theingold), cost minimization theory (C. Shirky, A.B. Nevesenko), theory of networks and flows (M. Castells, S.V. Dokuka, A.E. Gapich, D.A. Lushnikov), theory of solidarity and social performance (J. Alexander, I.V. Ksenofontova), and slacktivism theory (E. Morozov, Z.Bauman). The way that online social networks shape public protest activity is ambivalent, according to researchers. On the one hand, information and telecommunications technologies open up new perspectives for expressing civil position, collective mobility, and actualization of the problem field of the social protest, etc. On the other hand, they estrange the users from the actual protest movement focusing them on online interactions; when preparing for the protest actions, the protest movement leaders are de-anonymized which causes stricter control carried out by the authorities and law enforcement bodies. At the same time, each theory considers online social networks as an effective resource for getting information, for mobilisation, solidarity and synchronization that minimizes time and financial and emotional costs. Structural difference in approaches refers to the impact of new information and telecommunications technologies on protest activity which can be positive, negative or neutral. The proposed theories describe the online protest activity in terms of new form of civil initiatives carried out through intensive online interactions (joining the group or community, participating in online discussions, dissemination and approval of certain information, etc.), engaging the public in protest discourse, and causing immediate reaction to the actual problems.

Why are lions killing us? Human–wildlife conflict and social discontent in Mbire District, northern Zimbabwe

AbstractAn emerging perspective on Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) in Zimbabwe is that increased authoritarianism in governance has enabled elite capture of wildlife resources and silenced local people's voices. This paper qualifies this perspective, showing how ordinary people continue to raise their concerns about local governance. In the Mbire district, people's interpretations of an upsurge in lion attacks on livestock and people in early 2010 took on a dimension of social commentary on the evolving governance arrangements in the district and beyond. Beneath an apparent human–wildlife conflict lie complex human–human conflicts about access to, and governance of, wildlife resources. Interpretations of the lion attacks built on two distinct epistemologies – a local religious discourse on spirit lions and an ecological one – but invariably construed outsiders as the ones accountable for local problems. This construction of outsiders is also a salient feature of Zimbabwean political discourse. Local voices thus constitute a widely understood discourse of protest.

A call to multiple arms! protesting the commoditization of hindu imagery in western society

ABSTRACTOver the past two decades, with the explosion of all things yoga, Hindu imagery has become part of an “Indo-chic” marketing trend, which has seen the mass production of henna, bindis, yoga mats, and “sari-esque” merchandise for Western consumption. Lunch boxes, nightlights, and T-shirts with the likeness of Hindu gods are popular sellers. While the appearance of these products is somewhat problematic due to their decontextualized nature, these commodities are not considered inherently disrespectful to the Hindu community. It is the emergence of Hindu imagery on other types of products—objects considered polluting in certain Hindu contexts—that has been significantly more disconcerting. This essay highlights the connection between an asserted globalized Hindu community and Hindu imagery. It further explores how Hindu images are signified through the discourse of protest generated by diasporic Hindus in reaction to the representations of gods and goddesses on commodities—in the North American, European, and Australian context—that are deemed ritually impure. By examining the discourse of protest and the consequent apologies issued by the offending companies, this essay argues that new rituals and regulations for the appropriate usage and placement of divine Hindu images and symbols are established.

The linguistic landscape: mobile signs, code choice, symbolic meaning and territoriality in the discourse of protest

In the social and political act of protesting, signs carried by protesters are mediational means to clarify demands and express feelings and, thus, add to physical action such as demonstration, sit-ins, chanting and barricades. Taking as a case in point the “Arab Spring” revolution, triggered by the successful popular uprisings in Tunisia, then Egypt, in early 2011, and, for comparative purposes, a few examples of similar mass protests elsewhere, I show, through a semiotico-textual analysis of these mobile signs, the significance of code choice and the symbolic meaning of these artifacts. Mobile signs are texts resulting from a judicious code choice in relation to multiple target audiences – local, regional and foreign. Code choice is also examined for symbolic meanings which reveal the power of signs to mediate action, their intersection with, their role and their embedding in, the act of protesting. Pregnant with discourse, signs are a powerful tool for giving cultural and political meaning to protest. The inclusion of mobile signs in the study of the linguistic landscape scholarship challenges the notion of territoriality as a fixed place.

Crisis as opportunity: youth, social media and the renegotiation of power in Africa

This paper conceptualises ‘global financial crisis’ as primarily political and focuses on the way it impacts on the ability of youth to renegotiate their place and space with patterns of authority and control in Africa, using the instrumentality of new media. Three main arguments are made. First is that, even though the crisis occurred within the economy, non-economic causal factors were key triggers. Second, the intersection between youth protest, the pressures of a global system in crisis and the opportunities being provided by globalised social media has been critical not only to the deepening of resistance, but also to the ability of youth to appropriate the discourses and channel grievance. Third, youth appropriation of protest discourses surrounding the pressures of the recent global crisis has forced a renegotiation of patterns of authority and control and is deepening stability challenges in different ways. This paper concludes by examining how the state has responded to this emerging youth ability to not only demand but also impose discourses within the public space.

Book Review: <em>The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India</em>

Book Review: <em>The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India</em>

Religious Periodicals and Presidential Elections, 1992–2008

In a 1992 study, J. David Fairbanks and I found that two prominent Catholic journals, America and Commonweal, devoted more coverage to presidential campaigns during the presidential elections from 1960 to 1988 than Christian Century and Christianity Today, their Protestant counterparts. The current study, which also reviews Crisis and First Things in addition to the four previous journals, finds that the sectarian split has disappeared in terms of quantity of campaign coverage. Instead, the qualitative difference in coverage is ideological, akin to James Davison Hunter's culture wars thesis, with America, Christian Century, and Commonweal manifesting a progressive Christian outlook while Christianity Today, Crisis, and First Things express an orthodox Christian outlook. In the Catholic journals, progressive and orthodox discourses during the campaigns are as antagonistic toward one another as they are with Protestant or secular discourses, reflective of Timothy Radcliffe's theological distinction between “Kingdom” and “Communion” Catholics.

Peter Gabriel, From Genesis to Growing Up (review)

Peter From Genesis to Growing Up. Edited by Michael Drewett, Sarah Hill, and Kimi Karki. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. [xvii, 267 p. ISBN 9780754665212. $29.95.] Music examples, photo - graphs, bibliography, index. Although there has been a blossoming in popular studies over the past two decades, much pop writing remains in the purview of non-music specialists. As a result, some edited volumes of pop essays can tend towards the overly abstract and theoretical, without a grounding in the music. This can result in collections which are of limited use to scholars, as authors engage critically with politics, lyrics, media framing, reception, or other postmodern inquiries, while discussions of become a corollary. Peter From Genesis to Growing Up, succeeds first and foremost because it places Gabriel's (or performance of it in concert or video) in the foreground of almost every essay. This includes both close readings of single songs and wider examinations that stretch across his repertoire. Editors Michael Drewett, Sarah Hill, and Kimi Karki have curated a strong, interdisciplinary volume that focuses on a single multifaceted artist, using a wide variety of analytical methods and theoretical approaches. Additionally, most of this volume's authors base their arguments on a well-reasoned and clear understanding of various theoretical (philosophical, sociological, anthropological) frameworks, although their conclusions are sometimes unexpected. essays are grouped into three sections by methodological approach. first section is titled Identity and Repre - sentation, which attempts to address the many facets of Gabriel's self which he has revealed on record and through his videos (p. 4). second section is concerned with Politics and Power, and is largely focused on Gabriel's role in the South African anti-apartheid through his song Biko, released in 1980, as well as his other endeavors in the genre of world music. final section deals with Production and Performance, highlighting certain aspects of Gabriel's in live performance and his innovations in the studio. As a result of this organizational scheme, some articles on the same subject (for example, the video for Sledge - hammer) are placed at opposite ends of the book. middle part of the volume, Politics and Power, is the most cohesive, in part because the essays deal with a relatively narrow slice of Gabriel's output; namely, his world songs and specifically Biko. However, this cohesion seems staged for the book, since the first three of these four chapters were previously published elsewhere. final essay, Dave Laing's 'Hand-made, Hi-tech, Worldwide': Peter Gabriel and World is a direct response to the previous essay, a barely edited reprint of chapter 2 from Timothy D. Taylor's book on world (Timothy D. Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets [New York: Routledge, 1997], 39-52). editors have provided a useful service by collating essays from disparate sources into one place; however, there is very little new scholarship offered in this section. Still, the editors have created a meaningful recontextualization of these essays by placing them adjacent to one another. Michael Drewett's The Eyes of the World Are Watching Now: Political Effective - ness of 'Biko' by Peter Gabriel, argues that Gabriel's involvement did not constitute membership of or strict allegiance to the anti-apartheid movement (p. 110). This historicization avoids the impulse to romanticize, essentialize or exalt the part [Gabriel] played in anti-apartheid struggle (p. 110). Conversely, Ingrid Bianca Byerly reveals how Biko became an integral part of the cultural and musical discourse of protest amongst South African activists. Although she acknowledges that music itself . . . can probably not be considered a sole agent of change (p. …

The Birth of Consciousness out of Conscience in Giordano Bruno’s Heroic Frenzies and Shakespeare’s Hamlet

This essay historicizes Hamlet’s consciousness, which has so often been read as modern consciousness avant-la-lettre, by considering the link of early modern consciousness to conscience. Through a rereading of Hamlet alongside Protestant treatises on conscience and Giordano Bruno’s Heroic Frenzies, I demonstrate that consciousness in Hamlet is indebted both to medieval conceptions of conscience and to emerging Protestant discourses. I trace the transformation of “conscience” in Post-Reformation England, and its link to consciousness, which is also designated by the word “conscience” prior to 1632, when it receives its first OED entry. Turn-of-the-seventeenth-century Protestant treatises on conscience increasingly define it as self-knowledge instead of knowledge shared with God, exemplifying the growing importance of consciousness within the concept of conscience. Giordano Bruno’s model of a consciousness that is born out of man’s connection to God sensitizes us to its connection to conscience. Thus historicized, Hamlet’s consciousness reveals its indebtedness to its origins in conscience, from which it is never fully divorced, and it is, therefore, distinctly early modern.

ELEMENTS OF PROTEST

By taking Ernesto Laclau's recent book On Populist Reason as its starting point, the article sets out to establish a critical dialogue between Cultural Studies in the Birmingham tradition and political discourse analysis in the Essex School tradition. It is argued that Laclau's notion of antagonism (as a name for the logic by which differential elements are articulated into chains of equivalence) might be useful as the ‘missing link’ explaining the passage from micro-political forms of resistance, as analyzed by Cultural Studies, to macro-political hegemonic formations, as analyzed in the Essex School tradition. In addition, Laclau's recent theorization of the ‘minimal units’ of protest discourse – identified by Laclau as demands – may prove productive not only for Cultural Studies but also for discourse analytically informed New Social Movement research.

Soziale Proteste in Israel: die Eroberung neuer sozialer Räume

This assay recaps the social struggle in Israel that begun in the summer of 2011. It offers somecomparison between praxis and discourse of protest in Israel and some of the other socialstruggles of 2011. Mainly, this assay captures some of the main coordinates of the social strugglethat are unique to the Israeli politico-economic context, namely the effort to constitute asocial sphere that is based on economic justice while suppressing the dominant political divideover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this end I will review those methods of building newcommon grounds, claims that the protest in Israel was able to disseminate, and its achievementsso far.

Globalism and Liberal Expansionism in Meiji Protestant Discourse

This essay discusses the domestic moral and cultural reformism and the liberal expansionist discourses of leading Japanese Protestant journalists at the turn of the 20th century. It gives special attention to Uchimura Kanzō and examines his important theoretical relationships with the leading proponents of imperialism at the time, such as Tokutomi Sohō, Yamaji Aizan, and Takekoshi Yosaburō. Although it is important to consider Uchimura’s religiosity and intellectual biography because they are essential to his resistance to imperial Japan, it is also necessary to compare Uchimura’s journalistic writings with those of his friends and contemporary rivals and consider them together in the context of the intellectual currents of the time. As I argue, amid developing imperialism in East Asia at the turn of the 20th century, Protestant intellectuals overall championed cosmopolitanism, promoted liberal education and international comity and ethics over jingoism, and urged sophisticated cultural development comparable to that of the West. Uchimura and other Protestants, moreover, supported liberal expansionism, that is, Japan’s expansion through peaceful and economic means in tandem with British and American imperialism and emigration overseas. Furthermore, liberal expansionism was inspired by a historicist view that the development and expansion of liberalism and capitalism would inevitably lead Japan and the rest of the world to peaceful coexistence and higher moral civilization.

Language in Action: Funk Music as the Critical Voice of a Post–Civil Rights Movement Counterculture

From work songs and spirituals during slavery to the gospel, soul, and funk of the civil rights movement, Black music offers a new historicist interpretation of the African American experience. Through Black popular music, the struggles, faith, and joys of a people are expressed. More than mere entertainers, Black musicians are the village griots, the revisionist historians, and the voice of a people. African American music solidifies messages of societal concerns, offering snapshots of social conditions and defining moments within a society. This research posits that funk music was the social protest discourse of poor and working-class Black youth after the euphoria of the civil rights movement faded in “the decade of the detached.” Music accompanied many prominent protest movements, including the civil rights and Black power movements. But with an apparent lull in protest activities in the 1970s and 1980s, research focused on the previous decade, leaving an absence of immediate post—civil rights scholarship. While large mainstream social protest movements were less apparent, a counter protest movement emerged through the rhetorical means of funk music. This form of creative communication used everyday experiences to challenge the dominant power structure and ideology of the time period. Consciously or unconsciously, the work of funk musicians recognized language as a form of social control, thus ending their blind consent to manipulation through language by developing a counterdiscourse that challenged accepted social norms. The functional approach to rhetorical social movements is applied to further support this claim.

Confronting ecological futures: global environmental crises in contemporary survival quests for young adults

This paper examines representations of societal concern in the futuristic ecological disaster fi ctions of three British authors: Julie Bertagna (Exodus; Zenith), Jan Mark (Riding Tycho; Voyager) and Marcus Sedgwick (Floodland). The depicted refugee journeys in these futuristic worlds speak into a growing global disquiet that surrounds current historic events. Environmental crises that ground the emergent world orders of depicted future societies set the scene in each coming of age frame: each survival quest embeds social and cultural issues recognisable to contemporary audiences in futuristic representations of changed world orders, limited resources, and isolated communities. Authors resist the mythic frame of a traditional quest journey − a call to journey, the engagement with growth through a road of trials and then celebrations in a return to home territory: their conclusions offer limited resolutions, the struggle to survive entrenched as a linear path. Because authors link depictions of the refugee subject with environmental degradation, apocalyptic scenarios that signify the devastating consequences of global environmental crises provide an ecocritical platform from which each author situates a discourse of protest. Interrogating contemporary political positions of ambiguity and denial their novels profi le social justice issues experienced by refugee populations in contemporary society.Keywords: Bertagna; Mark Sedgwick; ecocriticism; refugees; postdisaster fi ction; displacement; transformative utopianism.