1,087 research outputs found
Discursive Struggles Reflected in the Communication of Conservative Christian Parents and Their Adult Children With Differing Religious Beliefs and Values
Nearly half of American adults no longer believe in their childhood faiths (Pew Research Center, 2015). The steady decline of Christianity could have considerable impacts on family life (Pew Research Center, 2022). From a postmodern critical perspective and guided by Relational Dialectics Theory 2.0, the researcher sought to discern how conservative Christian parents and their adult children with differing religious beliefs and values communicated when they discussed these differences, as well as to identify the discourses that informed and were reflected in their talk and illustrate how these discourses interplayed and animated the meaning of participants’ Christian family identities. The researcher undertook turning points interviews; 30 adult children with differing religious beliefs and values from their conservative Christian parent(s) identified relational change sites. The researcher then used contrapuntal data analysis to analyze the data. Based in relational dialectics theory, the researcher discovered two primary discourses that informed and were reflected in participants’ talk concerning their communication with their conservative Christian parents: (a) righteousness and exclusion; and (b) openness and inclusion. Most participants countered the dominant discourse of righteousness and exclusion with the discourse of openness and inclusion. Others negated righteousness and exclusion altogether and/or entertained it along with openness and inclusion. Some participants brought the two discourses together, creating discursive hybrids. The findings of the present study facilitated the researcher’s argument that when adult children with differing religious beliefs and values from those of their conservative Christian parents assert their own religious identities to these parents, both the conservative Christian parents and the adult children experience difficulty making meaning of their Christian family identity. Understanding the interplay of the discourse of righteousness and exclusion and the discourse of openness and inclusion in participants’ talk provides insight into the processes of individual and collective identity construction and meaning making. The researcher discusses these insights and applications for these family members.
Advisors: Dawn O. Braithwaite and Jordan Soli
A Cultural Analysis of the Relationship Between Nationalism and Populism: The Case of South Korea
This study focuses on the relationship between nationalism and populism by analysing the political history of Korea. Populism studies have merely dealt with the cases in East Asia on those issues, as general literature remains a normative understanding of those issues and democracy, overlooking the tentative research cases in the region. The comparative studies of populism develop with a minimalist definition, emphasising the antagonism between the homogenous groups—‘the elite’ and ‘the people’. However, this minimalist definition homogenised heterogeneous natures of ‘the elite’, ‘the people’, and their forms of confrontations in different regional and historical contexts. This study expands the cases for populism studies while clarifying the relationship between nationalism and populism. The historical experience of people in South Korea is an excellent example of analysing the interaction between the nation-state and society. This thesis contributes to introducing new dimensions, the temporality of political economy and the spatiality of political cleavage.
With nation and state decoupled, the meanings of the people varied significantly across Korean political history, causing the populistic elements in the country. A strong and administrative-oriented state vis-à-vis society resulted in the absence of horizontal confrontation between the Left and Right, instead conceptualising social demands as national, strengthened by a vertical antagonism between society and the state. The rapid development of the national economy enforced this verticality. Korean history has been prevalent with the imagination of power relations between the state high above and the people or society below. Analysing political history in South Korea provides an opportunity to innovate the recent definition of populism regarding its global political activism of nationalism and democracy
A configuration of trade regimes in Eastern and Southern Africa region: Implication for deeper integration and WTO compatibility
This work has examined the implication the proliferation of identical econOITllC groupings portends for the east and southern Africa region. The thrust of the study here has been to interface and interrogate the incidence of the configuration of integration regimes in the east and southern Africa region. The work has investigated the question as to whether the proliferation of trade regimes has prepared a fertile ground for greater and deeper integration in the region. The thesis has also interrogated the proposition that such proliferation is the very antithesis of the desired goal to promote trade harmonization and reach out for deeper integration in the region. Importantly this work has ventured to query the confluence of identical trade regimes in view of the compatibility imperative as enshrined in the wro legal framework. We have examined the implication this configuration of integration regimes portends for the wro disciplines. This work conunenced with an extensive examination of current works on regional integration regimes in general and integration initiatives within the east and southern Africa region in particular. The interrogation exercise was premised on works, both economic surveys and legal treatises undertaken on the recently concluded EU-SA free trade agreement, the SADC Trade Protocol, the COMESA Treaty and the Cotonou Agreement. The actual texts of these instruments form the bulk of the sources. We note that without exceptlon, significant and to that extent costly restructuring programs will have to be undertaken by States in the east and southern Africa region in response to the disruptive EU-SA trade partnership. We have established that these integration regime scores well on the imperative of wro compatibility. We gather that the present wro structures are not malleable enough for the cash strapped sub-Saharan Africa trade regimes to reconfigure themselves in such a way as to deepen the integration agenda. We have urged for more flexibility in the wro framework on this score to augment integration processes currently crowding the regional landscape. Mataywa W Busieka - 10th July, 200
GENDER, SEX, AND THE BODY IN MEDIEVAL ARMENIA
This dissertation investigates textual representation of the body, gender, and sexuality in Armenian chronicles produced between the fifth and eleventh centuries CE. In so doing, it reconstructs the development of Armenian somatology between Zoroastrian and Islamic suzerainties. Specifically, the dissertation examines the modalities by which the body functioned to medieval Armenian cognition as the locus of identity and alterity through the deployment of such devices as the following, to each of which is devoted a chapter: masculinity, femininity, archetypes of sexual morality, legislation of sexual conduct, sexual experientiality (in both temporal and eschatological dimensions), anatomy, and violence. As such, the body operated visibly in medieval Armenian subjectivity as a definitionally ethnicized object whose value was mediated by its gender assignment (and conformity thereto), carnal continence, spiritual obedience, and corporal vulnerability. The dissertation asserts in conclusion that medieval Armenian traditors directly positioned native purity, articulated as the containment of carnal impulsions and rejection of sensory excess, against foreign intemperance and incontinence. These inclinations to be contained included those not only sexual but dietetic, emotional, and even verbal. In this way, these auteurs operationalized the body to dissimilate Armenian ipseity from intrusive exogeneity. This research finds, secondarily, that the genre of medieval Armenian historical writing was characterized by a pervasive but tacit prohibition against direct acknowledgment of the female body, discussion of which is instead conspicuously (and often awkwardly) displaced onto the more socially acceptable male body or else onto an insentient object of analogy. Finally, the dissertation situates medieval Armenian medical consciousness within a broader regional context, considering it alongside contemporaneous Greek, Persian, and Arabic somatological discourse
Using US Artificial Intelligence to Fight Human Trafficking in Europe
editorial reviewedHuman trafficking is keeping pace with new technologies, but so is its repression. Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) systems support the daily work of law enforcement authorities in detecting and investigating trafficking schemes. These systems were developed, and are used primarily, in the United States of America (US). As the fight against human trafficking is a worldwide priority, they are often exported from the US or replicated. Yet, so far, little research has been done to examine how (US) policies and values might be embedded in these specific systems. This article argues that the spread of US tools using artificial intelligence to combat human trafficking hinders the autonomy of foreign States. Particularly in the European context, these tools might challenge national criminal sovereignty as well as Europe’s digital sovereignty. The article highlights the US policies surrounding human trafficking that are embedded in these AI systems (legal definition, political priorities and decisions) and the lack of adequate consideration of existing European standards. These are meant to protect human rights while developing and using AI systems, i.e. the protection of personal data and control over technical standards
Gender-Competent Legal Education
Male-dominated law and legal knowledge essentially characterized the whole of pre-modern history in that the patriarchy represented the axis of social relations in both the private and public spheres. Indeed, modern and even contemporary law still have embedded elements of patriarchal heritage, even in the secular modern legal systems of Western developed countries, either within the content of legislation or in terms of its implementation and interpretation. This is true to a greater or lesser extent across legal systems, although the secular modern legal systems of the Western developed countries have made great advances in terms of gender equality. The traditional understanding of law has always been self-evidently dominated by men, but modern law and its understanding have also been more or less “malestreamed.” Therefore, it has become necessary to overcome the given “maskulinity” of legal thought. In contemporary legal and political orders, gender mainstreaming of law has been of the utmost importance for overcoming deeply and persistently embedded power relations and gender-based, unequal social relations. At the same time and equally importantly, the gender mainstreaming of legal education – to which this book aims to contribute – can help to gradually eliminate this male dominance and accompanying power relations from legal education and higher education as a whole. This open access textbook provides an overview of gender issues in all areas of law, including sociological, historical and methodological issues. Written for students and teachers around the globe, it is intended to provide both a general overview and in-depth knowledge in the individual areas of law. Relevant court decisions and case studies are supplied throughout the book
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