Why did Qajar elites become such enthusiastic patrons of ta'zīyah? A simple question with a complex answer

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Kamran Scot Aghaie
Keyword(s):  
Female Characters ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Relative Independence ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Qajar Period ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The Qajar elites of Iran used various Shi'i religious rituals to bolster their legitimacy, but ta'zīyah was the Qajar ritual par excellence. This article argues for the key role played by the following factors. First, the relationship between the Qajar elites and the elite ulamā was often contentious. Second, since the ulamā controlled most religious spaces and rituals, it was difficult for the Qajar elites to sponsor rituals independently of the ulamā, and third, since the ulamā had conflicting and ambivalent attitudes towards certain Shi'i rituals, because of the practices of dressing up and representing holy Shi'i persons (including males dressing up as female characters), and because of the injurious aspects of rituals like qamah zanī and zanjīr zanī. Finally, hierarchies of status within the ulamā developed throughout the Qajar period, following the victory of the Ūsūlīs over the Akhbārīs in Iraq and Iran. A combination of these factors meant that the highest-ranking ulamā typically did not sponsor rituals like ta'zīyah, which provided a unique opportunity for Qajar elites to promote their legitimacy, with relative independence from the elite ulamā.

In a word, I’ve been there

2019 ◽  
pp. 246-256
Author(s):  
A. K. Zholkovsky
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Core Problem ◽  
Typical Solution

In his article, A. Zholkovsky discusses the contemporary detective mini-series Otlichnitsa [A Straight-A Student], which mentions O. Mandelstam’s poem for children A Galosh [Kalosha]: more than a fleeting mention, this poem prompts the characters and viewers alike to solve the mystery of its authorship. According to the show’s plot, the fact that Mandelstam penned the poem surfaces when one of the female characters confesses her involvement in his arrest. Examining this episode, Zholkovsky seeks structural parallels with the show in V. Aksyonov’s Overstocked Packaging Barrels [Zatovarennaya bochkotara] and even in B. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago [Doktor Zhivago]: in each of those, a member of the Soviet intelligentsia who has developed a real fascination with some unique but unattainable object is shocked to realize that the establishment have long enjoyed this exotic object without restrictions. We observe, therefore, a typical solution to the core problem of the Soviet, and more broadly, Russian cultural-political situation: the relationship between the intelligentsia and the state, and the resolution is not a confrontation, but reconciliation.

scholarly journals Female agency in the films of Jean Renoir

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110129
Author(s):  
Barry Nevin
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Male Power ◽  
Jean Renoir ◽  
The Relationship

Although Jean Renoir’s oeuvre has been extensively debated since the emergence of the politique des auteurs in the pages of Cahiers du cinéma, his representation of gender relations has sustained less discussion than his signature formal style. This article posits that Renoir’s films provide a valuable means of identifying how gender, specifically female identity, affects temporal trajectories in cinema. First, it illustrates Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of crystallisation and situates it in relation to current scholarship on gender representation in the director’s work. Second, it conducts a close analysis of the relationship between female identity and crystallisation through a close analysis of the central female characters of La Règle du jeu (1939) and The Golden Coach (1952). This article ultimately argues that whether these characters belong to an upper-or lower-class stratum, they are subordinated to male power, which plays a determining role in the range of potential futures available to them.

scholarly journals MIGRATION, WAR, AND THE MAKING OF A TRANSNATIONAL LEBANESE SHIʿI COMMUNITY IN SENEGAL

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara A. Leichtman
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
West African ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Political Ties ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

The July 2006 Lebanon war was an important turning point for West African Lebanese. For the first time since their formation as a community, the Lebanese in Senegal organized a demonstration in Dakar displaying solidarity with Lebanon. This protest illuminates the dynamics between global forces and local responses. Hizbullah's effectiveness in winning the international public opinion of both Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims in the war against Israel led to a surge in Lebanese diaspora identification, even among communities who had not been similarly affected by previous Lebanese wars. By analyzing the role of a Lebanese shaykh in bringing religious rituals and a Lebanese national identity to the community in Senegal, this article explores how members of the community maintain political ties to Lebanon even when they have never visited the “homeland” and sheds new light on the relationship among religion, migration, and (trans)nationalism.

Religious Rituals and Logical Thought in Durkheim

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Karsenti
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Central Function ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
The Relationship

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, ritual has a central function in Durkheim’s argument. It is on its redefinition that the constitution of sacred things rests, in relation to the constitution of the group itself and to the formation of categories of thought. In this study, we restore the basis of this conception: the interpretation of the ritual of the intichiuma, and more particularly its mimetic dimension, which prevails over its sacrificial dimension. The relationship between practice and objective thought then turns out to be the touchstone of the concept of the sacred developed by Durkheim.

Autonomy in the Kitchen?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Lindenfeld ◽  
Fabio Parasecoli
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
White Female ◽  
Lead White ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Domestic Environments ◽  
The Relationship

Considers instead the relationship between women and food, in professional and domestic environments. Cooking is presented as a way for women to assert themselves and their independence, while at the same time allowing unconventional negotiations of gender, class, and race with their environment. Fried Green Tomatoes (Avnet, 1999), No Reservations (Hicks, 2007) and its German predecessor Mostly Martha (Nettelbeck, 2001), Waitress (Shelly, 2007), The Ramen Girl (Robert Allan Ackerman, 2008), and Julie & Julia (Ephron, 2009) present the lead (white) female characters as powerful and autonomous, but the films collectively work to undermine the characters’ political agency at the expense of their ability to function in the kitchen. As such, they tend to privilege a heterosexist perspective and elevate white characters over characters of color.

Indecipherable Lostness

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Benedict Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Knowledge System ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
American Character ◽  
Ethical System ◽  
System P ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the play with genre in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010), a film which troubles the relationship between many familiar signifiers of the western genre—including its mute characters—and their customary significations. The film does not simply rearrange meanings; binary Manichaeism is not replaced by an alternative ethical system, female characters do not become active narrative drivers, and the Native American character does not become heroic. Instead, meaning is complicated, as inarticulate silence disrupts the settlers’ sense of identity and the Native American becomes an inscrutable signifier for both salvation and destruction. This chapter argues that genre is used as a critical (rather than textual) apparatus for marshalling films into pre-arranged significance that relies on the seamless operation of genre signifiers. Meek’s Cutoff makes visible the complications at work in all westerns, invites a reappraisal of these eccentric films, and critiques genre as an ideological knowledge system.

Leadership in crisis situations: merging the interdisciplinary silos

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Paquin ◽  
Ilana Bank ◽  
Meredith Young ◽  
Lily H.P. Nguyen ◽  
Rachel Fisher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Pediatric Emergency ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Relative Independence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Medical Simulation Training

Purpose Complex clinical situations, involving multiple medical specialists, create potential for tension or lack of clarity over leadership roles and may result in miscommunication, errors and poor patient outcomes. Even though copresence has been shown to overcome some differences among team members, the coordination literature provides little guidance on the relationship between coordination and leadership in highly specialized health settings. The purpose of this paper is to determine how different specialties involved in critical medical situations perceive the role of a leader and its contribution to effective crisis management, to better define leadership and improve interdisciplinary leadership and education. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study was conducted featuring purposively sampled, semi-structured interviews with 27 physicians, from three different specialties involved in crisis resource management in pediatric centers across Canada: Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Otolaryngology and Anesthesia. A total of three researchers independently organized participant responses into categories. The categories were further refined into conceptual themes through iterative negotiation among the researchers. Findings Relatively “structured” (predictable) cases were amenable to concrete distributed leadership – the performance by micro-teams of specialized tasks with relative independence from each other. In contrast, relatively “unstructured” (unpredictable) cases required higher-level coordinative leadership – the overall management of the context and allocations of priorities by a designated individual. Originality/value Crisis medicine relies on designated leadership over highly differentiated personnel and unpredictable events. This challenges the notion of organic coordination and upholds the validity of a concept of leadership for crisis medicine that is not reducible to simple coordination. The intersection of predictability of cases with types of leadership can be incorporated into medical simulation training to develop non-technical skills crisis management and adaptive leaderships skills.

scholarly journals Failures of Domesticity in Contemporary Russian-American Literature: Vapnyar, Krasikov, Ulinich, and Reyn

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
American Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Female Writers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Women's Gender Roles

Hybrid literature has flourished in the Russian diaspora in the last decade and much of it is semi-autobiographical, concerned with the reconfiguration of identity in emigration. It dwells productively on the translation of the self and (more broadly) on the relationship between center and margin in the post-Soviet, transnational world. Gender roles are subject to contestation, as writers interrogate and reconsider expectations inherited from traditional Russian culture. This article situates Russian hybrid literature vis-à-vis Western feminism, taking into account Russian women’s particular experience of feminism. Four female writers of contemporary Russian-American literature – Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov, Anya Ulinich, and Irina Reyn – inscribe failures of domesticity into their prose. Their female characters who cannot or do not cook or clean problematize woman’s role as nurturer. Home (geographic or imaginary) carries a semantic load of limitation and restriction, so failure as a homemaker may be paradoxically liberating. For female characters working in the West to support their families in Russia, domesticity is sometimes even more darkly cast as servitude. Rejection of traditional Russian definitions of women’s gender roles may signal successful renogotiation of identity in the diaspora. Although these writers may express nostalgia for the Russian culture of their early childhood, their critique of the tyranny of home is a powerful narrative gesture. Failures of domesticity represent successful steps in the redefinition of the self and they support these writers’ claim to transnational status.

Democracy and Scandal: A Research Agenda

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 851-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jensen Sass ◽  
Thomas Crosbie
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Institutional Effects ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Recent Edition ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Scandal

Abstract In a recent edition of this journal, Scott Brenton (2012) announced a refreshing perspective on the relationship between political scandal and liberal democratic institutions: though scandals are often thought anathema to democratic politics, a cause of public distraction or a sign of institutional degradation, their effect may actually be to reinforce and rejuvenate the polity. We consolidate and then challenge this perspective. We begin by reconstructing Brenton’s observations on scandal as a process model which we term the “scandal reform cycle”. We then suggest a raft of challenges to the model to reveal the complexity of scandals and their uncertain institutional effects. Our larger ambition is to articulate the relationship between scandal and democracy not as a simple question but rather as an ambitious and timely research agenda.

scholarly journals Power Analysis in The Handmaid’s Tale

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Meijiao Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Power Theory ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

<em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is one of Margaret Atwood’s most popular novels. As a dystopian novel, it describes an absurd society in the future and explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women resist and attempt to gain independence. By applying Michael Foucault’s power theory, this paper analyzes the power situations in Gilead, revealing the relationship between power and body, also aims to analyze the relation between female characters’ status and power in the novel to reveal the cruelty of the totalitarian government and patriarchal society.

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