Sacred communities: contestations and connections

This article discusses a project whose purpose was to review existing qualitative and quantitative data from two separate studies to provide new insights about everyday religion and belonging. Researchers engaged in knowledge exchange and dialogue with new and former research participants, with other researchers involved in similar research, and with wider academic networks beyond the core disciplines represented here, principally anthropology and geography. Key concluding themes related to the ambivalent nature of ‘faith’, connections over place and time, and the contested nature of community. Implicit in terms like ‘faith’, ‘community’, and ‘life course’ are larger interwoven narratives of space, time, place, corporeality, and emotion. The authors found that understanding how places, communities, and faiths differ and intersect requires an understanding of social relatedness and boundaries

REDD+ on the rocks? Conflict over forest and politics of justice in Vietnam

In Vietnam, villagers involved in a REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) pilot protect areas with rocks which have barely a tree on them. The apparent paradox indicates how actual practices differ from general ideas about REDD+ due to ongoing conflict over forest, and how contestations over the meaning of justice are a core element in negotiations over REDD+. We explore these politics of justice by examining how the actors involved in the REDD+ pilot negotiate the particular subjects, dimensions, and authority of justice considered relevant, and show how politics of justice are implicit to practical decisions in project implementation. Contestations over the meaning of justice are an important element in the practices and processes constituting REDD+ at global, national and local levels, challenging uniform definitions of forest justice and how forests ought to be managed

The judiciary and political change in Africa : developing transitional jurisprudence in Nigeria

At a time of increased evaluations of law, human rights, and the rise of judicial power all over the globe, the work of most African judiciaries and the principles of the jurisprudence they espouse in promoting social justice remain an unlikely focus of comparative legal scholarship. This ought not to be so in view of the considerable activities of the courts on the continent in the dawn of the third wave of democratization. This article explores the work of the Nigerian Supreme Court in the political transition to democracy since 1999. Utilizing insights from the work of Ruti Teitel, it attempts to outline some of the major constitutional and extraconstitutional principles adopted by the Court in mediating intergovernmental contestations in the turbulent transition away from almost three decades of authoritarian military rule. It emerges that the task of fostering social transformation through the “weakest” branch seriously tasks the institutional integrity of the judiciary

Are We “Reading the World”? A Review of Multicultural Literature on Globalization

Given its commitment to “reading” the social context, how is multicultural education accounting for the shifting context of our globalized world? A conceptual review of multicultural journals reveals limited engagement. However, a more sustained analysis could fuel re-articulations and contestations of the purpose of education in the 21st century

Sustaining Peace in Solomon Islands through a New Constitution? Part 1: Historical Contestations

This In Brief is the first in a two-part series that discusses a critical aspect of the Solomon Islands (SI) internal peace process through the development of a new constitution. It provides a brief history of the various calls, demands, and contestations expressed by various groups and leaders in the country over the years on the favoured government arrangements. Part 1 also outlines the misconceptions and ‘half-truths’ that were the basis of contestations in Solomon Islands

Parenthetical Remarks on Literary Contestations by Dubravka Ugrešić

In the article, the literary texts of the Croatian authoress are considered, since they present a critical comportment that is to remain in opposition to the crisis of the contemporary culture. The article makes an attempt to describe a specificity of the writer’s literary contestations, derived from a stance of the avant-garde and modern rebellion, adopted among others by Miroslav Krleža, and from an intellectual revolt, expressed by the postmodern aesthetics and philosophy. The growing on both contestation traditions determines a manner of thinking, perceptiveness of interpretation regarding the depicted world and life. The literary contestations of Ugrešić focus on problems of the postmodern aesthetics, ethics, sociopolitical and cultural transformations.In the article, the literary texts of the Croatian authoress are considered, since they present a critical comportment that is to remain in opposition to the crisis of the contemporary culture. The article makes an attempt to describe a specificity of the writer’s literary contestations, derived from a stance of the avant-garde and modern rebellion, adopted among others by Miroslav Krleža, and from an intellectual revolt, expressed by the postmodern aesthetics and philosophy. The growing on both contestation traditions determines a manner of thinking, perceptiveness of interpretation regarding the depicted world and life. The literary contestations of Ugrešić focus on problems of the postmodern aesthetics, ethics, sociopolitical and cultural transformations