Radical Pluralism Research Articles

Promoting injury or freedom: radical pluralism and orthodox Jewish symbolism

This article provides an interrogation of radical pluralism as an analytical and normative framework through the prism of the eruv. The eruv is a symbolic perimeter structure which, by privatizing public space, enables orthodox Jews to carry on the Sabbath beyond their homes. The article focuses on the controversial, highly contested attempt to establish an eruv in North London in the 1990s. While radical pluralism's response to the eruv constitutes a blend of neo-Marxism, feminism, poststructuralism, and communitarianism, the article critically focuses on the particular influence of liberal individualism on radical pluralism's understanding of privacy, freedom and harm.

On Stoves, Sex, and Slave-girls: Rabbinic Orthodoxy and the Definition of Jewish Identity

ON STOVES, SEX, AND SLAVE-GIRLS: RABBINIC ORTHODOXY AND THE DEFINITION OF JEWISH IDENTITY· Daniel Boyarin University o/California, Berkeley In an enormously influential paper, "The Significance of Yavneh," historian Shaye Cohen produced a virtual revolution in the depiction of rabbinic Judaism, arguing that at Yavneh there was "created a society based on the doctrine that conflicting disputants may each be advancing the words of the living God."l Indeed, more than once, directly contradictory interpretations are validated by a heavenly voice intoning: "these and these are the words of the living God." The opinion of every member of the House of Study is equally valid. Statements such as this have been taken up in much contemporary writing on rabbinic Judaism as encoding either radical undecidability in the theoretical sense or radical pluralism in the social sense. No one, it is suggested, can exercise control over interpretation according to the rabbinic system of midrash, for the Rabbis allegedly understood that no textual interpretation is ever defmitive, even that of the Author himself. Somewhat less lyrically, but equally idealizing, we sometimes find this structure described as one of a radical democratization of interpretation within the rabbinic polity.2 The first Mishna of the tenth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin reads: "All Israel have a place in the next world, and these are they who have no place in the next world: One who denies that the resurrection of the dead is a dogma of the Torah; one who denies that the [oral] Torah is from heaven, and [Jewish] Epicureans." This passage, which has been nominated the "Pharisaic Credo" by Louis Finkelstein,3 seems to be promulgating, perhaps for the first time in a Judaism, a "rule of faith" for who is "orthodox," or even genuinely Israel, and who is not. Resurrection and the revealed Oral Torah are precisely the • I am providing the text here just as it was delivered orally at the University of Wisconsin on March 28, 1999, with only minimal and vital annotation added. A much fuDer version of the argument has appeared in Exemplaria, 12.1 (Spring, 2000). 1 S. J. D. Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism," HUCA 55 (1984) 51. 2 M. Halbenal, People ofthe Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 7. 3 L. Finkelstein, Introduction to Tractates Fathers and The Fathers of Rabbi Nathan, (Hcb.: New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), pp. 212-238. Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 170 Boyarin: Stoves, Sex, Slave-Girls major doctrinal points at issue between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Epicureans are included here in my view, because they also deny a life after death. It seems, therefore, doubly difficult to posit "the emergence of the ideology of pluralism to replace the monism which previously characterized the temple and the sects."4 Pace Cohen, the most straightforward interpretation of the Mishnaic passage seems to be that the three who are denied a place in the next world are indeed not Israel. Otherwise the text logically contradicts itself. It hardly bears out, therefore, Cohen's claim that "This is not the work of a sect triumphant but of a grand coalition."5 All Israel indeed, but an "orthodox" Israel which denies the very name Israel to Sadducees. Another important text in the Mishna will support this conjecture: The daughters of the Sadducees, as long as they are accustomed to follow the ways of their fathers, have the same status [in matters of menstrual purity] as Samaritan women. When they have separated themselves [from the ways of their fathers] and follow the ways of Israel, they have the same status as Israel. Rabbi Yosi says: "They always have the same status as Israel unless they separate themselves to follow the ways of their fathers." [Nid. 4:2]6 Following methodological canons established by my teacher Saul Lieberman,7 I would argue that this text has to be historicized vis-a-vis the time of its production, that is, the late second century. Whether or not the text means to refer to Sadducees contemporary with Rabbi Yosi and the Mishna, in any case the contrast between them...

"Una etapa siempre difícil": Concepts of Adolescence and Secondary Education in Mexico

Previous articleNext article No Access"Una etapa siempre difícil": Concepts of Adolescence and Secondary Education in MexicoBradley A. LevinsonBradley A. Levinson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 43, Number 2May, 1999 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/447552 Views: 14Total views on this site Citations: 30Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The Comparative and International Education SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Erwin H. Epstein Education as a Fault Line in Assessing Democratization: Ignoring the Globalizing Influence of Schools, (Sep 2021): 737–755.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66003-1_42Bradley A Levinson Radical pluralism and the challenges of educating for democratic-ecological civic identities: Reflections from the Mexican school context, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 15, no.11 (Feb 2019): 10–21.https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197919829075Swati Sharma, Prateek Sharma Educational mismatch and its impact on earnings: evidence from Indian labour market, International Journal of Social Economics 44, no.1212 (Dec 2017): 1778–1795.https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-05-2016-0134David Sancho Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men, Ethnography 18, no.44 (Jan 2017): 515–534.https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138116687591Catherine E. Bolten “A Great Scholar is an Overeducated Person”, Journal of Anthropological Research 71, no.11 (Dec 2015): 23–47.https://doi.org/10.3998/jar.0521004.0071.102Dong Dong, Chan Kara Adolescent Girls‘ Evaluation of Brands during Liminal Life Stages, International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance 5, no.33 (Jun 2014): 249–254.https://doi.org/10.7763/IJTEF.2014.V5.379Lesley Bartlett, Dina López, Erika Mein, Laura A. Valdiviezo Adolescent Literacies in Latin America and the Caribbean, Review of Research in Education 35, no.11 (Mar 2011): 174–207.https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X10383210CRAIG JEFFREY Timepass: Youth, class, and time among unemployed young men in India, American Ethnologist 37, no.33 (Jul 2010): 465–481.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01266.xKeith Whitescarver, Judith Kalman Extending traditional explanations of illiteracy: historical and cross‐cultural perspectives, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 39, no.44 (Jul 2009): 501–515.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920801903407Robert F. Arnove World-Systems Analysis and Comparative Education in the Age of Globalization, (Jan 2009): 101–119.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_8Craig Jeffrey Fixing Futures: Educated Unemployment through a North Indian Lens, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no.11 (Dec 2008): 182–211.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417509000085Nadine Dolby, Aliya Rahman Research in International Education, Review of Educational Research 78, no.33 (Jan 2017): 676–726.https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308320291Robert C. Williamson Education: A Continuing Challenge, (Jan 2006): 195–228.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09592-3_9Elizabeth Fussell Measuring the Early Adult Life Course in Mexico: An Application of the Entropy Index, Advances in Life Course Research 9 (Jan 2005): 91–122.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1040-2608(04)09004-5Maribel Blasco Mobilising Family Solidarity? Rights, Responsibilities and Secondary Schooling in Urban Mexico, (Jan 2005): 127–144.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523197_8Bradley A.U. Levinson Programs for Democratic Citizenship in Mexico's Ministry of Education: Local Appropriations of Global Cultural Flows, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 12, no.11 (Jan 2005): 251–284.https://doi.org/10.2979/GLS.2005.12.1.251Leslie Reese Parental Strategies in Contrasting Cultural Settings: Families in Mexico and "El Norte", Anthropology <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Education Quarterly 33, no.11 (Mar 2002): 30–59.https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2002.33.1.30Gerald K Letendre, Motoko Akiba Teacher Beliefs about Adolescent Development: Cultural and organizational impacts on Japanese and US middle school teachers' beliefs, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 31, no.22 (Jul 2010): 187–203.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920120053201 Introduction, (Jan 2001): 1–11.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-001 Historical Contexts, (Jan 2001): 13–35.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-002 Ethnographic Beginnings, (Jan 2001): 36–54.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-003 Institutional Contexts, (Jan 2001): 55–91.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-004 Somos Muy Unidos, (Jan 2001): 92–144.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-005 Sites of Social Difference and the Production of Schooled Identity, (Jan 2001): 145–189.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-006 Friendship Groups, Youth Culture, and the Limits of Solidarity, (Jan 2001): 190–235.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-007 Political Economic Change, Life Trajectories, and Identity Formation, 1988-1998, (Jan 2001): 236–301.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-008 Games Are Serious, (Jan 2001): 302–321.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-009 Notes, (Jan 2001): 363–390.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-010 Works Cited, (Jan 2001): 391–416.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381075-011Erwin H. Epstein Education as a Fault Line in Assessing Democratisation: Ignoring the Globalising Influence of Schools, (): 613–630.https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2960-8_38

Europe and the World of Learning: Orthodoxy and Aspiration in the Wake of Modernity

If Rome was for centuries the centre of power and influence for Christendom and the European world of learning associated with it, Brussels can claim to be such a twofold centre in the late twentieth century. The radical pluralism and postmodernist orientations which are now part of the Enlightenment legacy becloud the point that a new uniformity of belief and outlook—mercenary rather than spiritual—furnishes the context for most educational policy-making in European countries. Far from calling for a return to a patriarchal past, the paper attempts to sketch an understanding of education as a universally defensible practice, while addressing the challenges of both postmodernism and the new uniformity.

Book Review: Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. Edited by Werner G. Jeanrond and Jennifer L. Rike. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. xxvii+296. Price $34.50

Book Review: Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. Edited by Werner G. Jeanrond and Jennifer L. Rike. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. xxvii+296. Price $34.50

Between Leninism and Radical Pluralism: Gramscian Reflections on Counter-Hegemony and the New Social Movements

The rigidities of Leninist views on socialist politics may have consigned orthodox Marxism to the status of historical relic, but equally problematic is the radical pluralist disavowal of any materially-grounded, unifying basis for counter-hegemony. The main features of these two perspectives are contrasted with a Gramscian viewpoint that arguably offers the best prospect for analyzing contemporary movement politics and strategizing about social change. This approach retains the insights of historical materialism, avoids the pitfalls of radical pluralism, and remains open to ongoing transformations in culture, politics, and capitalism.

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS Get access Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. Edited by Werner G. Jeanrond and Jennifer L. RikeNew York; Crossroad, 1991. xxviii+296pp. $34.50 WILLIAM G. Doty WILLIAM G. Doty The University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Literature and Theology, Volume 8, Issue 1, March 1994, Pages 118–119, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/8.1.118 Published: 01 March 1994

Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. Edited by Werner G. Jeanrond and Jennifer L. Rike. New York: Crossroad, 1991. xxvii + 296 pages. $34.50.

Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. Edited by Werner G. Jeanrond and Jennifer L. Rike. New York: Crossroad, 1991. xxvii + 296 pages. $34.50.

Book Review: Radical Pluralism and Truth

Book Review: Radical Pluralism and Truth

‘To Teach Them How to Live’ The Politics of Public Health from Tuberculosis to AIDS

Abstract The AIDS crisis has aroused considerable interest in the critical examination of public health. Much of this work has come from the perspective of ‘cultural analysis’, combining postmodernist theories with the politics of radical pluralism’. This work constitutes a rejection of Marxist state theory, and indeed has directed attention away from the state as an object of inquiry. This article is a response to ‘cultural analysis’, which uses an historical examination of public health in Canada to shows the ways in which it has been oriented around the state, reflecting the character and limits of social policy.

Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements

For some time now, it has been difficult at times even impossible to talk about protest or revolution with the same confidence and encompassing scope with which intellectuals and activists spoke about these vital matters in our most recent past. It is as if the elegant discourses of the 1960s the high decade of both Development and Revolution had been suspended, caught in mid air as they strove toward their zenith, and, like fragile bubbles, exploded, leaving a scrambled trace of their glorious path behind. Hesitantly perhaps, but with a persistance that has to be taken seriously, a discourse has set in. Where one spoke of Development or its flip side, Revolution one is now allowed to speak a very different language: that of the crisis of on the one hand, and new social actors and new social movements, on the other. In fact, many scholars seem to be proposing a radical reinterpretation of social and political reality based on a set of categories such as alternative development, identities, radical pluralism, historicity and hegemony. In the previous period, from the early post-War years to the end of the 1970s, the relation between truth and reality that characterized political discourse was relatively clear and direct. Development was chiefly a matter of capital, technology, and education and the appropriate policy and planning mechanisms to successfully combine these elements. Resistance, on the other hand, was primarily a class issue and a question of imperialism. Nowadays, this transparency has been muddled, and even imperialism and class are thought to be the object of innumerable mediations. But while research and inquiry into the nature of resistance and political practice have been quite alive and growing, the same is not true for the area of development. A problematization of the nature of popular resistance and mobilization, and of intellectuals' understanding of them, has resulted in ways of thinking these issues, especially in relation to social movements. The theory of social movements has become, particularly in Western Europe and Latin America, but also increasingly in other parts of the Third World, one of the key arenas for social

A problem for radical (onto-theos) pluralism

A problem for radical (onto-theos) pluralism

The dark side of reason

In his Farewell to Reason, Paul Feyerabend advocates radical pluralism in all intellectual endeavors and disputes the widely held belief that all issues can and should be resolved rationally. For Feyerabend, it is desirable that mutually incompatible approaches to scientific and scholarly research proliferate. Even an approach that one's favored school of thought dismisses as loony is likely to yield ideas and factual observations that its derogators will find of value and would otherwise have missed. To derive intellectual benefit from an alternative tradition, one need not accept its premises and values; likewise, to ignore uncongenial ideas, one is not obliged to construct a refutation of than, which is just as well, since such a refutation usually can be constructed only by stacking the cards against adversaries about whom one is grossly ignorant.

Ways of Seeing Differently: Complexity and Contradiction in the Critical Project of Sport and Leisure Studies (Response to Rosemary Deem)

Although it is apparent that conceptual reconciliation between the critical frameworks of sport and leisure studies would enable more strategic and innovative work, this paper argues that the complexity of this undertaking should not be underestimated. Several shortcomings in Deem’s analysis of theoretical integration are traced out, and a basis is struck for critically analyzing work in leisure and sports studies generally. Finally, Deem’s conception of “radical pluralism” is reviewed and a way of proceeding is proposed.

“Together We Stand, Divided We Fall”; Social Criticism and the Sociology of Sport and Leisure

The article explores four modes of critical social theory in the sociology of sport and leisure, and attempts to identify common ground between these, especially in relation to their treatment of gender issues. Perspectives differ not only in their concepts and explanations but also in their underlying domain assumptions. First, the Weberian/Figurational perspective taken by Rojek is considered; this approach is the least concerned with gender, although breaking new ground in other ways. Second, the article looks at the work of the neo-Marxist, Hargreaves, which does include gender and race as issues, although secondary to class. Third is the work of Clarke and Critcher, with an important emphasis on the politics of culture and consumption, but again gender is seen as secondary to class. Finally, recent feminist perspectives are analyzed; here gender is primary, but other issues like class have not always been fully incorporated. Synthesis between different critical approaches to sport and leisure is seen as desirable because of the huge task of transforming these social phenomena. The paper suggests, however, that since the domain assumptions of all four are so different, their best way forward may lie in a new radical pluralist approach that does not a priori see any one social division as paramount.

Public Interest Liberalism &amp; the Modern Regulatory State

Liberal public interest groups have been a prominent and enduring feature of public policy making in the modern state. This article argues that neither the prevailing corporatist nor pluralist model of group politics adequately explains the unique character of these modern reform groups. A model of radical pluralism is developed to explain the liberal activist embrace of judicial institutions as both an instrumental resource in policy advocacy and an ideal model for the restructuring of the entire regulatory state. The author gives particular attention to the context of social power and state organization in which the reformers have developed their program for democratic change.

Creativity in the Interpretation of Religion: The Question of Radical Pluralism

question of the interpretation of religion. Indeed, religion as a phenomenon is extraordinarily difficult to interpret, insofar as religion radicalizes, intensifies, and often transgresses the boundaries of those other central human phenomena to which religion is necessarily related (art, science, metaphysics, ethics-politics).' To interpret religion one must also, consciously or unconsciously, end up interpreting these other phenomena as well in order to understand the differentia which are specifically religious. To read the creative interpreters of religion in the modern period alone is to find a pluralism that suggests a seemingly indeterminate creativity of interpretation of any religion-both by its practitioners and its outside interpreters. To read contemporary works in religious studies (or even to read one issue of one of the major journals or attend one session of one of the major conferences of scholars in the field) is to recognize a radical pluralism, indeed an intense conflict of interpretations, from which there can often seem no honorable exit.

War, Politics, and Radical Pluralism

War, Politics, and Radical Pluralism

Radical feminism and pluralist political orders: A note

Radical feminism and pluralist political orders: A note