The return of faith and reason to laïcité; Régis Debray and 'le fait religieux'

In 1985, Marcel Gauchet wrote of the ‘retour du religieux’ as an end to the social role of religion and the beginning of its privatisation. However, far from an indication of the withering of religion on the vine of modernity, the return of a religious discourse was resurrected by the democratisation of the ‘croyant’ in the mid-1980s. The ‘âge égalitaire’, coupled with the specificity of the ‘croyant’, created a platform on which to challenge the model of laïcité in contemporary France. This discourse sought to re-appropriate reason from the logic of secular objectivity and postmodern self-reliance, and re-signify it within a Catholic theological language of belief and faith. The transmission of religious ‘knowledge’ would also be seen to compete for intellectual equality with the forms and transmission of knowledge approved by laïcité in the republican school. Régis Debray's report to the Ministry of Education in 2002 on the teaching of the ‘fait religieux’ in French schools advances this debate by defending the introduction of the study of religion in school from the perspectives of theological rigour, the indivisibility of knowledge (the coexistence of ‘témoin’ and ‘savant’), and the inextricable links between faith and reason in their production of knowledge with a valid claim for public consumption

The extraordinary subaltern: testimonio Latinoamericano and representation

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Nutritional Qualities of Three Medicinal Plant Parts (Xylopia aethiopica, Blighia sapida and Parinari polyandra) commonly used by Pregnant Women in the Western Part of Nigeria

The nutritional potentials of three medicinal plant parts used by pregnant women in the western part of Nigeria Parinari polyandra, Blighia sapida and Xylopia aethiopica were evaluated through their proximate compositions as well as percentage mineral elements composition. Blighia sapida was high in crude fibre (44.09±2.20%) compared with Parinari polyandra and Xylopia aethiopica that were 4.21±1.10% and 12.14±0.70% respectively. Moisture contents of Xylopia aethiopica and Blighia sapida were 16.04±1.25% and 10.17±2.60% respectively while that of Parinari polyandra was 30.65±5.02%. The total ash contents of Parinari polyandra, Blighia sapida and Xylopia aethiopica were 2.53±1.20%, 3.66±1.20% and 4.37±0.85% respectively. The total fat of Xylopia aethiopica, Blighia sapida and Parinari polyandra were 9.55±2.10%, 1.25±0.20% and 0.53±0.15% respectively while the total protein of Blighia sapida, Xylopia aethiopica and Parinari polyandra were 2.1±0.25%, 2.1±0.20% and 7.09±0.20% respectively. The total carbohydrate of Xylopia aethiopica was 55.80±4.26%, that of Parinari polyandra was 54.27±3.20% and that of Blighia sapida was 39.45±2.20%. Xylopia aethiopica can be a good source of magnesium (2.236±0.095), phosphorus (0.620±0.04) and potassium (0.510±0.04) as the amount of these mineral elements were higher than that of the other plant parts with the exception of Parinari polyandra having 0.690±0.11% phosphorus. Blighia sapida is also a good source of phosphorus (0.400±0.20), magnesium (0.430±0.20) and calcium (0.348±0.15). Other mineral elements detected in reasonable amounts were calcium, zinc and sodium. Further tests revealed that heavy metals such as lead, chromium and cadmium were not detected. The results of this research indicated that the three plants parts have nutritional qualities that could provide the users with additional nutrients

Financial Development, Economic Efficiency and Productivity Growth: Evidence from China

Financial development may lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In this paper, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China’s total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). We find that China has recorded an increase in total factor productivity from 1993 to 2001, and that productivity growth was mostly attributed to technical progress, rather than to improvement in efficiency. Moreover, using panel data set covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1993-2001 and applying the Generalized-Method-of-Moment system estimation, we investigate the impact of financial development on productivity growth in China. Empirical results show that, during this period, financial development has significantly contributed to China’s productivity growth, mainly through its favourable effect on efficiency.Financial Development, total factor productivity, Chinese Economy

Financial Development, Economic Efficiency and Productivity Growth: Evidence from China

Financial development may lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In this paper, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China's total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). We find that China has recorded an increase in total factor productivity from 1993 to 2001, and that productivity growth was mostly attributed to technical progress, rather than to improvement in efficiency. Moreover, using panel data set covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1993-2001 and applying the Generalized-Method-of-Moment system estimation, we investigate the impact of financial development on productivity growth in China. Empirical results show that, during this period, financial development has significantly contributed to China's productivity growth, mainly through its favourable effect on efficiency.Financial Development;total factor productivity;Chinese Economy

Konstruksi Nalar Politik Kenegaraan Arab-Islam Perspektif al-Jabiri

Abstrak; Konstruksi nalar politik kenegaraan  Arab-Islam  yang di formulasikan oleh Muhammad Abed al-Jabiri merupakan bagian dari Ikhtiar dalam menyamakan persepsi masyarakat Arab minimal pada tingkat Pemikiran dan epistimologis sebelum sampai pada persatuan bangsa Arab  (al-Wihdah al-Arabiyyah ) pada tingkat empiris yaitu pada tataran sosiologis dan politis. Idiologi nalar politik kenegaraan Arab-Islam dalam konteks ini berusaha diwujudkan tidak hanya pada tingkat sosiologis dan epistimilogis bangsa Arab saat ini, akan tetapi juga berusaha mentransformasikan kemajuan Arab-Islam  pada masa lampau dalam tradisi (turats), dimana ia akan mencari unsur-unsur kemajuan dalam upaya merekatkan dan mempersatukan aspek-aspek kebudayaan Arab yang terceraiberai sehingga memungkinkan untuk dijadikan pijakan idiologis kebangkitan “Nasionalisme Arab-Islam“, dengan melakukan upaya reinterpretasi dan pembacaan  terhadap konsep al-Aqidah, al-Kabilah dan al-Ghanimah secara praksis dan aplikatif dalam konteks kekinian. Kata Kunci: Nalar Politik kenegaraan, Arab-Islam, al-Jabir

Pitfalls of a State-Dominated Financial System: The Case of China

State-owned financial institutions have been proposed as a way to address market failure, but the recent literature has also highlighted their pathological problems. This paper studies the case of China for pitfalls of a state-dominated financial system, including possible segmentation of the internal capital market due to local government interference and mis-allocation of capital. Even without formal legal prohibition to capital movement across regions, we find that capital mobility within China is low. Furthermore, to the extent some capital moves around the country, the government (as opposed to the private sector) tends to allocate capital systematically away from more productive regions toward less productive ones. In this context, a smaller role of the government in the financial sector might increase economic efficiency and the rate of economic growth.

Finance-growth Nexus in China: A Channel Decomposition Analysis

This study aims to reassess the finance-growth nexus debate in China, and consequently illustrate the channels through which financial development gives impact on China’s economic growth after 1978. Specifically, this study addresses two channels through which the effects operate, i.e., physical capital accumulation and productivity improvement. The study adopts an approach called channel decomposition which combines the conventional accounting framework and regression analysis. The empirical analysis, using a panel dataset of Chinese provinces between 1980 and 2004, argues that: (1) the relationship between financial development and economic growth in China tends to be a long-run one; (2) the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth has presumably run from the former to the latter in China; (3) the impacts induced by various measures of financial system exert on economic growth are different, and the channels through which they give impact on the growth are different as well; (4) the existence of inter-regional heterogeneity in the context of China’s finance-growth nexus tends to be sensitive to the selection of financial variables.financial development, economic growth, nexus, channel decomposition