Religious Elites Research Articles

The British Academy Brian Barry Prize Essay: Can Religious Norms Undermine Effective Property Rights?: Evidence from Inheritance Rights of Widows in Colonial India

Religious norms can undermine the effects of property rights institutions. Districts in colonial India that provided widows with rights to inherit the joint-family property of their deceased husband had significantly higher widow immolations than districts that did not. Religious elites (Brahmins) burnt disproportionately more widows, and widow immolations were higher in regions with a higher density of religious elites. The findings indicate that egalitarianism requires egalitarians. Elite norms embedded in religion can mediate the effects of property rights and lead to negative consequences.

El escenario bélico sudanés en el norte de Sudán: Montañas Nuba, Mar Rojo y Nilo Azul

El artículo presenta el escenario del conflicto armado en las regiones sudanesas del Mar Rojo, Nilo Azul y las montañas Nuba en Kordofán, basando los argumentos en información y datos de fuentes secundarias. El periodo tratado es 1956-2011, y por lo tanto hace referencia a la República de Sudán hasta la independencia del sur, dejando de manifiesto que la violencia y el conflicto armado no se han circunscrito a la dicotomía norte-sur, sino que en el norte los efectos de la represión de los Gobiernos de Jartum se han hecho notar desde el nacimiento del país. De esta manera, los intentos de dominación de las élites político-económicas y socio-religiosas gobernantes han tratado de suprimir otras formas identitarias que no reflejen la visión unívoca de dichas élites, de cara a ejercer la hegemonía e imponer su modelo de sociedad. Para ello, la represión y la violencia han sido herramientas ampliamente utilizadas, provocando un escenario de tensión y guerra casi permanente en amplias zonas del norte sudanés.

Pursuing social justice through public health: gender and sexual diversity activism in Malawi

African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) organizations face various strategic dilemmas in contexts characterized by political hostility to gender and sexual dissidents. In Malawi, we examine how an LGBTIQ social movement organization (SMO), the Centre for the Development of People, navigated one particular strategic dilemma – the dilemma of whether to adopt a less politicized public-health approach or a more nimble, grassroots-oriented, and social-justice approach to their advocacy work. We also examine the consequences of the organization’s strategic decisions. Scholars interpret these approaches as signifying differential political engagement among organizations, with the social-justice approach indicating political engagement and the public-health approach signalling political disengagement. This difference has led critics to argue that a public-health approach is poorly suited to generating social and legal reform because it depoliticizes LGBTIQ issues over time, while a social-justice approach exerts constant pressure on political and religious elites. Drawing on qualitative interview data with Malawian LGBTIQ activists and news media data reflecting public debate around homosexuality in the country, we illuminate how this SMO metamorphosed from an organization ostensibly focused only on public health and HIV/AIDS to one that advances social justice for gender and sexual dissidents. We argue for an understanding of the indigenous development of a hybrid strategy integrating the public-health and social-justice approaches.

Working in Mecca

On the island of Madura, various forms of pilgrimage–migration, a fusion of labour migration and pilgrimage, challenge the Indonesian government’s regulation of pilgrims’ and labourers’ mobility to the Gulf. Among the Madurese people, alternative channels of travelling to Mecca are increasingly popular and informal; personal networks appear to be considered more reliable and accountable than the state’s guidance. The Madurese people’s strong desire to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, local conceptions of migration in search of success and incomprehensible bureaucratic procedures in the official channels of migration and pilgrimage motivate people to circumvent state structures. Moreover, rumours about the ‘Madurese mafia’ in Mecca and the religious elite’s connections to the ‘Holy Land’ strengthen religious and ethnic affiliations. Local loyalties challenge the state’s sovereignty over actual practices of semi-legal approaches to migration and pilgrimage.

Further Forward through the Past: Postwar American Jews Reconfigure the East European Tradition in Cultural Terms

From the 1940s well into the 1960s, a new sociocultural constellation let American Jews redefine their relationship to the religious tradition. This article analyzes the response of a religious elite of rabbis and intellectuals to this process, which was driven by various factors. Many American Jews were at least one generation away from traditional Judaism, which seemed out of place in postwar America. Liberal Judaism, with its narrow concept of religion, on the other hand, while fitting a larger social consensus, did not satiate many Jews' spiritual and identity needs. Sensing this deficit, rabbis and other religious thinkers explored broader concepts of Judaism. Religious journals that sprang up in the postwar decades served as vehicles for the attempt to understand Judaism in broader, cultural terms, while preserving a religious core. The article shows how in this search religious thinkers turned to the Eastern European past as a resource. As other groups similarly tried to mine this past for the sake of their present agendas, its reconstruction became a key process in the transformation of postwar American Judaism and its relationship to the tradition.

Kinship Systems of Xoja Groups in Southern Kazakhstan

The Kazakhs, Turkmens, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Uzbeks in Central Asia share some distinct religious elite groups – Xojas – some lineages of which appear in two or more of them. The Xoja group is a patrilineage, which traces kinship through blood relationships. Endogamous marriages prevail among the Uzbek-speaking Xoja contrary to descendants of nomadic, Kazakh-speaking Xojas. In this article I compare the kinship systems of the Uzbek-speaking Xoja of the Uzbek people and the Kazakh-speaking Xoja of the Kazakh people and analyse their transformation in the twentieth century. The analysis shows that interpretation of differences in kinship terminology is situational: in some cases it is interpreted as an example of adaptation to different cultures, and in other instances it may serve as a symbol of belonging.

Un documento olvidado de un jesuita expulso tucumano: la “Carta crítica sobre el uso de la Santa Biblia en lengua vulgar” de Diego León de Villafañe (1741-1830)

Diego León de Villafañe (1741-1830) fue el único jesuita -no secularizado- que regresó a las tierras del Virreinato del Rio de la Plata luego de los decretos de Godoy de 1797 y 1798. Luego de su regreso se estableció en la ciudad de Tucumán de donde era originario; desde allí se relacionó a lo largo de los treinta años que se dieron entre su vuelta del exilio y su muerte con numerosos miembros de las élites políticas, económicas y religiosas de la región. Sin embargo, esta figura ha sido poco estudiada -en comparación con otros jesuitas de la provincia del Paraguay- por la historiografía argentina. El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una breve obra manuscrita -una de las pocas que se conservan de su autoría- escrita por Diego León de Villafañe que se conserva en el Archivo General de la Nación de Argentina sobre la problemática de la traducción de la Biblia a las lenguas “vulgares”. En la misma, Villafañe critica la aparición de numerosas traducciones del libro sagrado cristiano al castellano. Buscaremos insertar este trabajo no solo dentro del contexto general teológico del antijansenismo europeo, sino también dentro de los debates religiosos que se dieron en el Rio de la Plata entre finales del siglo XVIII y comienzos del siglo XIX.

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Books in the Ets Haim Yeshivah: Acquisition, Publishing, and a Community of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

This essay concerns the place of books in shaping three decades (1728–60) during which Amsterdam’s Portuguese community deepened and expanded its rabbinic study. It discusses two sets of sources primarily. The first consists of annual book acquisition lists discovered in the records of the community’s Ets Haim yeshivah. These lists provide insight into contemporary reading habits and interests, the Ets Haim’s education system and literary emphasis, and the economics of book production and commerce. The second set of sources comes from the hundreds of Hebrew books printed in Amsterdam during these decades. Members of the Ets Haim composed and published their own books, edited the work of their peers, and facilitated the publication of texts authored or brought to the city by rabbinic scholars from abroad. Paratextual material elucidates relations between authors, publishers, editors, printers, and rabbinic leadership. This research shows that the Ets Haim expended huge sums of money on book acquisition, thereby placing unprecedented resources at the disposal of its religious intellectual elite. In turn, the yeshivah’s students enjoyed significant freedom to work and produce as they saw fit. As a direct outgrowth of this freedom, the production and dissemination of books facilitated interaction and collaboration between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews still in many ways demarcated along communal lines.

THE ROLE OF THE RELIGIOUS ELITE IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROCESSES OF DAGESTAN

The crisis phase, which is going through Russia, is a breeding ground for extremist ideas, therefore, a threat to national security of the country is growing. Today it is important to understand all the need and importance of a national Russian idea of ideological support of the fight against terrorism and extremism, tolerant thinking education of citizens, especially young people and the role of the religious elite in this direction. The goal – to identify the role of the religious elite in social and political processes of Dagestan. Method or methodology of work: The article uses the results of sociological research conducted by the author of the survey. Results: a sociological analysis of religious extremism in the Republic of Dagestan for more awareness in combating it. Application of results: the results it is advisable to apply in the framework of the Russian state policy in the sphere of national policy and inter-confessional relations.

Telaah Fenomenologis Patrimonialisme Budaya Politik Terhadap Konflik Sunnî-Shî‘ah Madura

The article attempts to discover the violence conflict between the Sunnî and the Shî‘ah Muslim communities in Karang Gayam and Blu’uran, Sampang, Madura. The conflict between the two communities has occurred since 2005 to 2013, and has escalated from one event to another. The conflict has caused the expulsion of Shî‘ah people out of Madura island to the refugee’s flats of Puspa Agro Sidoarjo on June 20, 2013. Based on the evidences found, the research is intended to study the phenomenon using phenomenological and patrimonial-political-cultural approa-ches. The study finds that the conflict itself has been caused by a set of hatred discourses and accusation of being heretic, which have been intensely propagated by the local religious elites, i.e. kiai against the Shî‘ah community led by Tajul Muluk. Moreover, the conflict escalation was, among other, due mainly to the strength of patronage relations of the kiais to infiltrate their hegemony and produce the mass to commit violent actions. Incongruously, the power of patronage has been also benefited by the government and many political elites to maintain their political electability and votes. As a result, the government seems to be reluctant to show a firm attitude by enforcing the existing rules to deal with the issue.

Kontestasi Pandangan Elite Agama di Gresik tentang Nyekar di Desa Surowiti Kecamatan Panceng

Nyekar has become a pivotal tradition to certain groups of Javanese society as it has been believed to bring about success for every activity they do in their life. A number of public officials, for an instance, perform nyekar in order to sustain their strategic and profitable positions and to gain blessing. The article scrutinizes the opinions of religious elites in Gresik concerning nyekar in Surowiti Village, Panceng, Gresik, East Java. The study finds that there have been two existing opposing opinions held by the religious elites in relation to this tradition. The first group maintains that nyekar is allowed, while the second group argues that it is forbidden. Interestingly, each group supports their argume-nts using religious texts derived from al-Qur’ân and Hadîth. Regardless of disagreements among the religious elites vis-à-vis nyekar, the writer underlines that every religious elite should be wise in respond to such issue. It is important to educate their followers such prudent attitudes as respecting other and maintaining harmony in spite of different views they hold. It is also important to involve both theological understanding along with open, sincere, and democratic socio-historical views to create inclusive understanding of the tradition.

'Esau Hates Jacob' Conflict and Religious Elite Rhetoric in Israel

How do religious elites respond to conflict? While scholars have shown that elite rhetoric influences civil and interstate war, work on how conflict affects elite rhetoric remains limited. In this paper, I examine to what extent Israeli religious elite rhetoric becomes more hawkish during periods of military conflict with the Palestinians. I exploit the variation of conflict intensity over time, in order to compare religious elite discourse before and after different periods of conflict. I use unsupervised and supervised learning methods to classify weekly Sabbath leaflets, which serve as an important media platform for Israel's religious elites. My results suggest that there is a significant increase in nationalist rhetoric during times of military conflict. Additionally, during conflict nationalist rhetoric shifts from an emphasis on connection to the land to nationalist incitement towards the enemy. In contrast, my results suggest that religious elites experience no similar increase in anti-government rhetoric during times of domestic conflict. Overall, these results suggest that religious elites experience short-term radicalization in response to military conflict, but remain relatively unaffected by domestic conflict.

Religious actors and constitution drafting: the Philippines and the Arab awakening in comparative perspective

AbstractWhat strategies do religious elites pursue during potential regime transitions, and what explains this variation? A range of scholarship argues that religious groups, particularly Islamist movements, are prone to maximalist demands during potential transitions, particularly in moments of institutional indeterminacy like constitution drafting. In contrast, I distinguish two strategies open to religious elites in such periods: religious integralism and pious secularism. While religious integralists do attempt to merge state and religious institutions, pious secularists consent to some differentiation of these spheres while protecting a role for religion in post-transition public life. I argue that the choices of religious elites in these periods are heavily influenced by the status of relations with minority religions and secular portions of civil society, which are themselves structured by the prior authoritarian approach to the regulation of religion. I illustrate the framework with case studies d...

Religious Education in Russia: Inter-Faith Harmony or Neo-Imperial Toleration?

This paper explores the approach to religious education that has been instituted in Russia since 2012. The new policy’s manifestly proclaimed goals seem convergent with the values of religious freedom, self-determination, tolerance, and inter-faith peace that are espoused by Western liberal democracies. Yet Russia’s hidden religious education curriculum is far more consistent with a neo-imperial model of ethno-religious (Russian Orthodox) hegemony and limited toleration of selected, other faiths whose reach is restricted to politically peripheral ethno-territorial entities. This model embodies and revitalizes Russia’s imperial legacies. Yet the revitalization is, in itself, an outcome of strategic choices made by the country’s religious and secular elites in the course of its desecularization. Building on discourse analysis of five Russian textbooks and a teacher’s manual, this article shows how the neo-imperial model manifests itself in the suppression of exogenous and endogenous pluralism, cultivation of the ideology of “ethnodoxy”, and in essentially imperialist mythology. The paper concludes by predicting the new model’s potential instability.

PRAYER AND THE ISLAMIC REVIVAL: A TIMELY CHALLENGE

AbstractThis article traces the emergence of the early afternoonẓuhrprayer as a key project of subject formation during the second half of the Anwar al-Sadat period (1976–81). Drawing on three Islamic magazines of differing ideological orientation (Muslim Brotherhood-Islamist, Salafi-Islamist, and state-sponsored), all containing letters to the editor and fatwa requests, it charts contestation among religious elites and the reception of their programmatic visions. Specifically, the article explores the performance of this daily prayer as a hybrid practice that disrupted the temporal and spatial claims of a state-sponsored bureaucratic order to produce national subjects within public schools and bureaucratic institutions, even as it reproduced the state's emphasis on temporal precision and social order. Based on these texts, this article challenges previous scholarly narratives that place Islamist projects of subject formation on the fringes of secularism and previous studies of Islamist mobilization that posit a separate social universe of Islamist activism.

Policing Marriage under the ‘Tree of Despotism’: The Struggle over Marital, Civic and Police-Judicial Relations in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh

In 1850 an attempt by the Conservative MP for Bute, James Wortley, to legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister kick-started an unprecedented and remarkable chain of events in Edinburgh. Over a few short weeks, Scotland's capital became embroiled in a power struggle that would bring Presbyterian churchmen together in a manner that few issues had done since the Disruption, involve the city's religious, civic and judicial elites in a high-profile disturbance and trial, and lay the foundations for a landmark judicial ruling. Although touching upon a number of important historiographical themes relating to marriage, religion, Scottish national identity, and church-state relations, what binds the story together was not only the personalities involved, the events that unfolded, or the perceived conceptual links between them, but male anxieties over control, governance, and masculine honour. In reconstructing this narrative, the essay argues that this was a controversy not just about marriage law, or the perceived abuse of police and judicial power, but of male authority—within the household, the church, and municipal office. It sheds new light on the important role that Scottish values, beliefs, and traditions played in the marriage with a deceased wife's sister debate, and furthers historiographical understanding on police-judicial relations by exploring the intricacies of mid-nineteenth-century Scottish governance.

Adult and child identities in Irish primary schools, c.1830–1909

Drawing on teaching manuals, government reports and school inspectors’ reports from the 1830s up to the early twentieth century, this paper traces the changing conceptual and social distance between childhood and adulthood in Ireland. Using Norbert Elias’s figurational approach, it is argued that children became increasingly involved in both unplanned civilising processes and deliberate civilising missions framed by state functionaries, religious elites and pedagogic experts. Young children were civilised in the broader context of unintentional, but ordered social processes developing over the course of the nineteenth century. While both pupils and teachers were at first addressed and depicted in similar ways, a growing social and cultural differentiation between adult and child gradually developed. This is related to the increasing status of teachers, their position as civilising agents of the state, and the gradual acceptance by elites that Irish teachers of humble social origins had become more emotionally self-controlled.

Pragmatic Dogma: Understanding the Ideological Continuities in Iran's Response to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

ABSTRACTAyatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie cemented Iran's space within Western discourses surrounding blasphemy and Islam. The fatwa has earned its place within the polarizing debate between free speech and religious tolerance, which fundamentally serves the political ambitions of those involved. This article therefore argues that, in order to understand accusations of blasphemy in Iran, one must address the political concerns in which the accusation takes place since these reveal Iran's tendency towards pragmatic dogma – the practice of meeting the needs of the state in a way that accords with its religious ideology. The responses of Iranian officials to the Charlie Hebdo killings in 2015 provide a useful case study for the analysis of this pragmatic dogma, since the Islamic Republic pursued a different approach to the Charlie Hebdo “blasphemy” from that which it had followed with Rushdie. Instead of condoning the killings, Iran's political and religious elite chose to condemn the actions of both the cartoonists and the gunmen, without outlining a punishment. The article will argue that this case demonstrates many of the continuing themes in Iran's approach to blasphemy, since the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have largely been used to reinforce the Islamic Republic's overall worldview.