A secular age beyond the west: forms of differentiation in and around the religious field

Based on an international research cluster of country specialists interested in the nexus between politics and religion in countries of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, we have edited, together with Shylashri Shankar, a volume that compares the place of religion and the secular in countries outside the West.1 All contributors took as their starting point Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” (2007), in which the author argues that the widespread availability of an option of not believing first evolved in the North Atlantic world. He examines the processes by which this option emerged, mostly by focusing his inquiry 2 on developments in philosophy and religion (specifically, Western Christianity), while social, economic, and political developments for a large part remain back stage. In the following, we summarize some of the lessons our contributors have drawn from their case studies, sometimes paralleling, often contrasting those developments Taylor found to be key in the emergence of a secular age in the West. We close with a sociological framework through which contestations around religion and state can be systematically schematized and compared.Partiendo de un estudio internacional de especialistas que se ocupan de la relación entre política y religión en los países de Asia, África y Oriente Medio, junto con Shylas¬hri Shankar los autores han editado un libro que confronta el papel de la religión y de la secularización en los países no occidentales. Todos los ensayos presentes en la obra toman como punto de partida A Secular Age de Charles Taylor, donde el autor sostiene que la difundida costumbre de no creer se ha afirmado antes que todo en el mundo norteatlántico. Él examina los procesos por medio de los cuales ha emergido esta opción, deteniéndose sobre todo en los desarrollos de la filosofía y de la religión (en particular, la cristiandad occidental), mientras que las evoluciones sociales, económicas y políticas pasan en silencio en su mayoría. Este artículo resume algunos de los resultados que los varios autores han sacado de sus case-studies, a veces similares, otras veces opuestos respecto de las elaboraciones que Taylor ha considerado necesarias para el nacimiento de una edad secular en Occidente. Los autores concluyen con un cuadro sociológico mediante el cual las controversias que atañen a la religión y al Estado pueden ser esque¬matizadas y confrontadas de manera sistemática

Text Mining and the Information Content of Bank of Canada Communications

This paper uses Latent Semantic Analysis to extract information from Bank of Canada communication statements and investigates what type of information affects returns and volatility in short-term as well as long-term interest rate markets over the 2002-2008 period. Discussions about geopolitical risk and other external shocks, major domestic shocks (SARS and BSE), the balance of risks to the economic projection, and various forward looking statements are found to significantly affect market returns and volatility, especially for short-term markets. This effect is over and above that from the information contained in any policy interest rate surprise.Financial markets; Monetary policy implementation

Decision Making Processes at the WTO with Special Reference to the Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancun: a discussion paper

The WTO’s fifth meeting of government ministers in Cancun failed to end with a ministerial text, at least partly because of the flawed decision-making processes of the WTO, particularly in the way the meeting was prepared, organised, managed and run..

Constitutionalism, religion, and education

This article compares the constitutional protection of religious education in Egypt, Ireland, and Norway. It shows that such protection has, in each case, path-dependent qualities that suggest religious education is relatively immune to constitutional attack. This immunity has been marked both at the point of independence and in the more secularizing periods that followed. It cannot be explained by different historical trajectories or by differences in confessional culture. Although the stakes are high in this area (for states, religious bodies, and parents), contrary to what separationist understandings of the modern state would expect, each state has maintained an openly accommodationist relationship with religious bodies in this field more than any other. The conclusion explores some reasons for why these accommodationist practices, which span three centuries, have continued

El cuerpo y la ciudad, dos símbolos emergentes del complot en Plata Quemada

La ciudad es el cuerpo de la historia, memoria de lo que fuimos, somos y seremos. En ella respiran los ecos de las guerras, de los héroes, de las celebraciones y derrotas, de la vida y la muerte. Plata quemada del escritor argentino Ricardo Piglia, publicada en 1997, es una novela que surge para develar la naturaleza de la ciudad, sus personajes se encuentran inmersos en la complejidad urbana, intrincada de visiones de mundo, de ciudades soñadas. La obra se publica en 1997 y nos muestra un suceso real que se vivió en la Argentina alrededor de los años sesenta. Lo importante en la novela no es mostrar o describir un acontecimiento verdadero, sino por medio de la literatura, descubrir que este hecho es producto de una ciudad que tiene un pasado, que conserva una memoria ideológica

Transportation Challenges in Accessing Health Care in North Carolina

This purpose of this paper is to describe transportation as an enabling prerequisite for accessing health care and, accordingly, how transportation-disadvantaged populations face challenges to using health care. I will describe the types of government-provided transportation options available to carless individuals, the unique transportation challenges, and their coping strategies. Finally, I will discuss opportunities for local governments to leverage existing supportive networks to improve access to health care. This paper uses qualitative data from key informant interviews and focus groups conducted in six North Carolina counties in 2013 for an NCDOT-sponsored project. Through coding and analyzing the data for the NCDOT research project, we found that access to health care was a salient concern in all six counties. I then conducted a literature review on transportation and health care and synthesized the access to health care findings from our interviews and focus groups. I found that government provision of transportation services is a resource for transportation-disadvantaged populations. However, even with transit or paratransit, there are many challenges for individuals, including long waits, logistics, high costs, and trip restrictions. To cope, individuals often rely upon non-governmental resources like non-profits or employer-provided transportation. They also use informal solutions like social support networks and self-reliance to get to health care. Agencies in local government should collaborate with each other, with non-profits, and with informal social networks that also provide transportation to more efficiently and effectively improve access to health care for transportation-disadvantaged populations.Master of City and Regional Plannin

Escuela profesional de ingeniería mecánica en el campus II de la universidad nacional del santa en la ciudad de nuevo Chimbote, distrito de nuevo Chimbote, provincia del santa, región ancash

La presente tesis consiste en la investigación y desarrollo del proyecto arquitectónico para el Pabellón de la Escuela Académico Profesional de Ingeniería Mecánica en el Campus II de la Universidad Nacional del Santa en la ciudad de Nuevo Chimbote. El propósito principal de esta investigación es elaborar un proyecto arquitectónico para la Escuela de Ingeniería Mecánica en el cual se puedan realizar actividades académicas, administrativas y de investigación de manera adecuada, satisfaciendo las necesidades de los estudiantes e impulsando tanto su crecimiento profesional como su quehacer investigativo, cumpliendo con los estándares reglamentarios; y a la vez identificando al proyecto con la carrera profesional de Ingeniería Mecánica, asemejando la escuela a una industria. De igual forma, se busca lograr un dinamismo en cuanto a la espacialidad y función del proyecto, haciendo uso de los conceptos de permeabilidad visual y escuela activa; de esta manera las actividades académicas puedan ser compartidas, divulgadas y contagiadas. Además, se propone incorporar en el proyecto sistemas que disminuyan el consumo energético; así como un sistema de inmótica, el cual posibilita un uso eficiente de la energía, brindando seguridad y confort a los usuarios. Es así que el Proyecto se basa en el análisis de las necesidades de los usuarios, así como los requerimientos que la carrera de Ingeniería Mecánica posee en cuanto a infraestructura y finalmente se plantea un nuevo modelo de infraestructura educativa, en la que los espacios públicos y de interacción son tan relevantes como las aulas mismas, ya que contribuyen a que la educación superior en el Perú deje de tener una forma vertical y pueda convertirse en un sistema de retroalimentación en el que la investigación se torne principal y necesaria.This thesis consists of the research and development of the architectural project for the Pavilion of the Professional Academic School of Mechanical Engineering on Campus II of the Universidad Nacional del Santa in the city of Nuevo Chimbote. The main purpose of this research is to develop an architectural project for the School of Mechanical Engineering in which academic, administrative and research activities can be carried out in an adequate manner, meeting the needs of the students and promoting both their professional growth and their investigation tasks, complying with the regulatory standards and identifying the project with the professional career of Mechanical Engineering, resembling the school to an industry. Likewise, it seeks to achieve a dynamism in terms of spatiality in the project, making use of visual permeability; with which academic activities can be shared and demonstrated. In addition, it is proposed to incorporate into the project systems that reduce energy consumption; as well as an inmotic system, which allows an efficient use of energy, providing security and comfort to users. Thus, the Project is based on the analysis of the needs of the users, as well as the requirements that the Mechanical Engineering degree has in terms of infrastructure and finally a new model of educational infrastructure is proposed, in which public spaces and of interaction are as relevant as the classrooms themselves, since they contribute to higher education in Peru ceasing to have a vertical form and can become a feedback system in which research becomes main and necessaryTesi