As long as there have been formal governments, there has been political contention. Where political studies tend to focus on either those who rule or those who are ruled, the essays in this volume call our attention to the interaction between these forces at the very heart of contentious politics.
Provides a comparative analysis of church-state issues in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, England, and Germany, and argues that the U.S. is unique in the way it resolves religious freedom and religious establishment questions.
Preface p. ix Acknowledgments p. xv 1 A Brief Historical Background of Shi`ism and Moharram p. 3 2 The Qajar Elites and Religious Patronage (1796-1925) p. 15 3 Qajar Society and Religious Culture: Tehran as a Case Study p. 30 4 The Pahlavi Regime and the Emergence of Secular Modernism (1925-1979) p. 47 5 Religious Rituals, Society, and Politics during the Pahlavi Period p. 67 6 Hoseyn, "The Prince of Martyrs" p. 87 7 Fatemeh, Zeynab, and Emerging Discourses on Gender p. 113 8 The Islamic Republic p. 131 9 Conclusion p. 154 Notes p. 163 Bibliography p. 179 Index p. 195.
The evolution and reception of the Renaissance was mediated by developments in various other spheres of early modern life and culture. Foremost among these were the religious changes initiated by the Protestant Reformation, which are discussed in the opening chapters of this book. Religious and cultural developments in Germany are contrasted with sixteenth-century Spain and are further explored through the study of the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes. Subsequent chapters explore the Renaissance fascination with witchcraft and demonology in both learned discourse (Pico’s Strix) and popular drama (The Witch of Edmonton). The volume concludes with a study of one of the most influential and provocative writers of the sixteenth century, Michel de Montaigne, whose Essays provide stimulating material for a reassessment of the impact of the Renaissance on contemporary thought.
In a thoroughly revised and expanded edition that now includes France, this essential text offers a rigorous, systematic comparison of church-state relations in six Western nations: the United States, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. As successful and stable political democracies, these countries share a commitment to protecting the religious rights of their citizens. The book demonstrates, however, that each has taken substantially different approaches to resolving basic church-state questions. The authors examine both the historical roots of those differences and more recent conflicts over Islam and other religious minorities, explain how contemporary church-state issues are addressed, and provide a framework for assessing the success of each of the six states in protecting the religious rights of its citizens using a framework based on the ideal of governmental neutrality and evenhandedness toward people of all faiths and of none. Responding to the general confusion about the relationship between church and state in the West, this book offers a much-needed comparative analysis of a topic that is increasingly a source of political conflict. The authors argue that the US conception of church-state separation, with its emphasis on avoiding government establishment of religion, is unique among political democracies and discriminates against religious groups by denying religious organizations access to government services provided to other organizations. The authors persuasively conclude that the United States can learn a great deal from other Western nations in promoting religious neutrality and the free exercise of religion.
Until now, scholarly analysis of Elizabethan processions has always regarded them as having been successful in their function as propaganda, and has always found them to have effectively 'won over' the common people - that group of the population at whom they were chiefly aimed. Both her Royal entries and progresses were regarded as effective public relations exercises, the population gaining access to the Queen and thus being encouraged to remain loyal subjects. This book represents a new approach to this subject by investigating whether this was actually the case - that is, whether the common people were actually won over by these spectacular rituals. By examining original documents that have thus far been ignored, as well as re-examining others from the perspective of the common people, the book casts a new light on Elizabethan processions.
How do religious emotions and national sentiment become entangled across the world? In exploring this theme, The Secular Sacred focuses on diverse topics such as the dynamic roles of Carnival in Brazil, the public contestation of ritual in Northern Nigeria, and the culturalization of secular tolerance in the Netherlands. The contributions focus on the ways in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform, enforce, and spill over into each other. The case studies offer a bottom-up, practice-oriented approach in which the authors are wary to use categories of religion and secular as neutral descriptive terms. The Secular Sacred will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists, and social psychologists, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies and semiotics. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
The work considers the international and European obligations of the UK in the realm of challenging the far-right and assesses the extent to which it adheres to them. It looks at the role of criminal law in tackling hate speech and hate crime and assesses how English law deals with political parties which may deviate from agreed norms and principles such as non-discrimination. The legal analysis is placed within a contextual framework of far-right parties in the United Kingdom and also incorporates a definitional framework in terms of how the law defines themes relevant to challenging the far-right, such as racial discrimination, terrorism and extremism. The book presents a valuable guide for students, academics and policy-makers in the areas of International Human Rights Law, Criminal Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, National Security Law, Comparative Politics and Terrorism Studies.