Secularism Research Articles

SECULARISM IN PAMUK’S SNOW; A POSTCOLONIALISM STUDY

Postcolonial criticism has always analyzed colonial power through the multifarious signs, metaphors and narratives of both the dominating and indigenous cultures, in other words, the cultural formations and representational practices can be understood as colonial discourses. Initially these discourses were examined primarily in terms of binary oppositions, as exemplified in Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism. This paper explores secularism as one part of binary oppositions opposed to religion in Pamuk’s Snow. Before the writer analyses secularism in this novel, thus he would like to discuss the concept of postcolonial theory, mimicry and hybridity, binary oppositions, then he focuses to discuss secularism as one part of binary opposition as opposed to religion in Pamuk’s Snow.

Review: Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory, by Steve Bruce

Review: <i>Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory</i>, by Steve Bruce

Coping with Illness and Threat: Why Non-religious Jews Choose to Consult Rabbis on Healthcare Issues

Whereas modern and advanced medical services are available and accessible to all citizens of Israel, the phenomenon of consulting Orthodox rabbis (Jewish clerics) on healthcare issues is gaining ground among populations that do not identify themselves as religious. The objective of the research was to enquire why non-religious Jews choose to consult rabbis on medical issues. Fifty semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted during 2009-2011 in northern Israel. The article presents the respondents' main motives, expectations, beliefs, and modes of consulting both physicians and rabbis. This study aims to contribute to discussion about conflating modern medicine with spiritual-religious beliefs in modern-secular society.

Liberating Rationalism from Secularism

Liberating Rationalism from Secularism

Theology and literature in the age of Johnson: resisting secularism

Theology and literature in the age of Johnson: resisting secularism

Skin as a Trope of Liminality in Anne Enright's The Gathering

Of the many figurations of liminality and disjunction in Anne Enright’s 2007 novel The Gathering, skin is possibly the most complex trope. As it demarcates and safeguards the protagonist Veronica Hegarty’s elusive sense of self while she traverses a period of mourning, skin recuperates the immediacy of its anatomical function of holding her in, but it also acquires metaphoric value, denoting an inside-outside dialectic that defines both interpersonal relations and psychosocial ontogenesis. Anthropologist Victor Turner’s theorisation of liminality serves to focalise this study of skin as a trope of the permeability of the modern individual to external values, structures and codes and of the prevalence and relevance of ritual in the modern secular society. This essay investigates the constitutive role of ritual and liminality in private experience as thematised through representations of skin, and interrogates the extent to which the individual can insert her private concerns, aspirations and femininity in the communally regulated ritual, and moreover can bring about change in her community.

Adolphe Quetelet and biopolitics as secularized theology

The article recaptures the work of an author who has been forgotten by the contemporary social sciences, that is, the Belgium polymath Adolphe Quetelet. Focusing on his main work, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale, the study underscores how the secularization of theological principles within the realm of science was important to the construction of Quetelet's work. His dual engagement in science and politics is pertinent here, as he was the main nineteenth-century force behind the incorporation of statistics as a science essential to the State's ability to govern its people. He also played a relevant role in the realization of the hegemonic political project of modernity, biopolitics, and its influence in the field of biomedicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Piercing Politics: Religious Garb and Secularism in Public Schools

Piercing Politics: Religious Garb and Secularism in Public Schools

Albert de Brandebourg-Ansbach et la sécularisation de l'Ordre teutonique en Prusse

La décision de séculariser le territoire prussien de l’Ordre teutonique prise par le grand maître Albert de Brandebourg-Ansbach en 1525 sur le conseil de Luther fut préparée par un long processus. Tout au long du XVe siècle, le zèle missionnaire des commencements avait disparu. La noblesse d’Empire voyait surtout dans l’Ordre une institution d’assistance permettant d’établir ses cadets. Le traité de 1466 imposé par la Couronne polonaise et les difficultés croissantes rencontrées par l’Ordre conduisirent les principaux officiers à se tourner vers des cadets de familles princières pour rétablir la situation et essayer de se soustraire à la suzeraineté polonaise.

Spinoza on History and Its Secularization

Spinoza on History and Its Secularization

Secularism: from Solidity to Liquidity

Secularism: from Solidity to Liquidity

La Prusse, du duché au royaume

Le nom de Prusse a designe tant de choses, positives ou negatives, qu’il est necessaire de revenir aux donnees sures : le partage de 1466 entre la Prusse royale polonaise et celle des Teutoniques qui, secularisee, devient en 1525 un duche Hohenzollern et le premier Etat protestant d’Europe. Bien des surprises attendent l’historien qui decouvre une Prusse tres differente de ce qu’elle est ensuite devenue.

The Eighteenth-Century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics by Carol Stewart

The Eighteenth-Century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics by Carol Stewart

COMPARISON OF MEDICAL ETHICS IN ISLAM AND SECULARISM

Islamic culture is compatible with the four medical ethics principles including: efficacy, non_ maleficence, personal authority and justice, but as many of western thinkers have indicated on functioning these principles, there are compatible definitions with those cultures. Islam has the comprehensive ethical principles which these four principles should be commented in that context. This current article is made upon the searched articles in search engines, valid scientific sites and referring to some source books. The usual medical ethics in western societies (and their cohorts) is made upon the secular pre hypothesis. This pre- hypothesis has different basics with those Islamic ones which can make a different function to the ethical matters. The ethical basics of Islam identify the ethics as an internal matter that could be only justified in theism. The human development has made an increasing development in the scope of medical ethics, so it is necessary to make fundamental steps for defining the topics. Different thinkers from philosophers to medical scientists are expected to think deeply on two aspects: 1. The clear and proportional definition of philosophy of ethics in medical sciences. 2. Defining the ethical framework for medics’ decision making in difficult situations and defining the restrictions and their applications. These two can’t be applied but with the interrelation of Hozah and University instructors.

Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India, Michigan

İlk sayısını Haziran 2011'de çıkaran İnsan & Toplum Dergisi, yılda iki kez yayımlanan, hem Türkçe hem de İngilizce yazılara yer veren hakemli bir dergidir. İnsan & Toplum, akademik yayın dünyasında görülen iki temel eksikliği duyumsayarak yola çıktı. Bunlardan biri, kendi disipliner sınırlarına hapsolmuş akademyanın insan ve toplumu birbirinden izole ederek ayrıştırarak çalışma yapmasının bir teamül haline gelmiş olmasıdır. İkincisi de, disiplinlerdeki mevcut yaklaşımların ve araştırma biçimlerinin, diğer disiplinler ile iletişime geçme ve onlardan faydalanma yollarını giderek tüketiyor olmasıdır. İnsan & Toplum bu eksikliklerden hareketle, insana ve topluma dair problemleri ele alan özgün ve eleştirel çalışmaları yayımlamayı kendisine ilke edinmiştir. Bu anlamda sosyal bilimler, beşeri bilimler ve dini ilimler alanında yapılan tüm çalışmalara açıktır. İnsan ve Toplum'da mevcut akademinin dar disipliner yaklaşımlarının ötesine geçme kaygısı taşıyan yazılar öncelenmektedir. Ancak bunu yaparken disipliner yetkinliğe de önem verilmekte; kendi disiplinini içselleştirememiş disiplinlerarası ya da çoklu-disiplinli çalışmalardan ziyade hem kendi disiplininin hem de diğer disiplinlerin yöntem ve kuramlarını kullanabilen nitelikli çalışmaları yayımlamak tercih edilmektedir.

Can Secularism Hinder Democracy? The Turkish Experiment

Can Secularism Hinder Democracy? The Turkish Experiment

Popularizing knowledge, censoring opinion? The access to print in the Bohemian Lands (1770–1815)

In the Habsburg Empire, members of both ‘religions of the book’ – Christians and Jews – gained increased access to the printed word towards the end of the eighteenth century. This paper examines the period between the Seven Years War and the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, focusing on the role the printed word began to play in the Bohemian Lands, especially Prague, and how print culture affected mainly the Christian majority on its way to a modern secular society. It first examines the enormous meaning the printed word had for both Christianity and Judaism and the ways in which the increasing production and consumption of printed texts from about 1770 also implied damaging the ‘aura’ of the Scripture and its traditional custodians. It then sketches the factors and institutions responsible for the growth of an enlightened reading public. The optimistic discourse that circulated in bookshops, libraries, newspapers, reading circles and so on supported a rational, non-exclusive consensus even on quite controversial questions such as the integration of the Jews into the self-representation of society and its history. However, it is also argued on the basis of a previously unknown anti-Jewish pamphlet (1812) from Prague that this development was frustrated at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the weak impact of the Enlightenment, by the ‘national defeat’ in the wars against France and by economic modernization, state bankruptcy and the resulting existential insecurity. Not only state authorities, but also the exponents of the Enlightenment and the Haskalah themselves seem to have changed their view of the public sphere: it came to represent not just a marketplace of progressive ideas but, on the contrary, a growing threat to peaceful political, social and ethnic relations.

Il processo di laicizzazione delle religious offences in Inghilterra e Galles: tra prospettiva storica e comparazione

Contributo sottoposto a valutazione SOMMARIO. 1. Introduzione. I diversi modelli dell’attuale tutela penale della religione negli ordinamenti italiano e britannico – 2. Rapporti Stato-Chiesa e secolarizzazione delle fonti delle religious offences: l’eta delle riforme religiose – 3. Il Settecento: tra laicizzazione del diritto penale ed “istituzionalizzazione” della religione dominante – 4. L’avvio di una laicizzazione dei contenuti delle religious offences nel XIX secolo – 5. Tutela penale, rapporti tra Stato e Chiese e pluralismo religioso nel XX secolo – 6. Osservazioni conclusive.: Abstract The path of secularization of religious Offences in England and Wales: between historical and comparative perspective In recent years in Italy and England some important reforms concerning the traditional criminal offences against religion have been introduced: in Italy, Law 85/2006 regarding crimes against religious denominations that has changed the offence of vilifying, without changing the blasphemy offence; in England and Wales, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, the repeal of the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in 2008 and the offences of defamatory, seditious and obscene libel in 2009. The historical perspective allows us to contextualize the hallmarks by which the two nations deal with the problem of offences against religion. The historical path that led to the current British reforms, in fact, was characterized by the transition from the institutionalized model of protection under criminal law of the Church of England, as established Church, to the formal and substantive secularization of religious Offences, which finally led to their abolition, without questioning - at least formally - the general system of the Established Church of England. The differences between the two models of criminal protection of religion are rooted in that path and are reflected in the more general legal treatment of religion and in the state/churches/religions relations in the two countries

El «regreso de Dios» a la política: las religiones «públicas»

&lt;p&gt;Este artículo se acerca al fenómeno de la irrupción de las religiones en el ámbito público, que se produce a partir de finales de los años 1970 a lo largo del mundo. El objetivo de este trabajo es, por un lado, desarrollar los dos modelos típico-ideales de «religiones públicas» posibles, según sea la postura que la religión adopte respecto a la democracia y a la laicidad; y, por otro lado, replantear el paradigma de la secularización, que defendía la privatización de la religión, para que se haga cargo de aquella presencia pública de las religiones que sea legítima y aceptable para una sociedad democrática.&lt;/p&gt;

Review of Olivier Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam. Translated by George Holloch

Review of Olivier Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam. Translated by George Holloch