Kikuyu women and the Harry Thuku disturbances: some uniformities of female militancy

Africa ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Wipper
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Formal Systems ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Male Authority ◽  
Male Superiority

Opening ParagraphAfrican men, like men everywhere, have dominated the public sphere, holding the vast majority of official positions of power and authority. In pre-colonial African societies women were formally subordinate to male authority and male dominance was buttressed by an ideology of male superiority and a status system where women showed deference to men. But formal systems, ideologies and codes of etiquette are not realities. In some societies women wielded considerable influence and authority, so much in fact that these systems have been characterised as dual-sex political systems with each sex managing its own affairs (Okonjo, 1976). Women were not so much involved in hierarchical orders of relationships as in complementary, mutually dependent relationships.

scholarly journals After the post-public sphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1545-1563
Author(s):  
Philip Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Transitional Phase ◽  
Over Time

The idea of a public sphere has long been central to discussion of political communication. Its present condition is the topic of this essay. Debate about the public sphere has been shaped by the boundary-policing of competing political systems and ideologies. Current discussion reflects the accelerating transition from the mass media era to the ramifying entrenchment of the Internet age. It has also been influenced by the vogue for analysing populism. The present transitional phase, whose outcome remains unclear, is best described as an unstable ‘post-public sphere’. This instability is not unusual as, over time, conceptions of the public sphere’s underpinnings and scope have continually shifted. Latterly, states’ responses to the development of the Internet have given rise to a new shift of focus, a ‘regulatory turn’. This is likely to influence the future shape of the public sphere.

scholarly journals Ecotours and politics of fun in Iran: From contested state–society relations to emancipatory nature–society relations

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1276-1291
Author(s):  
Simin Fadaee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Political System ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Explicit Analysis ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article shows how nature–society relations in Iran’s burgeoning ecotourism industry are influenced by power-laden state–society relations and the state’s regulation of public space. Based on original research, this article demonstrates that ecotours operate as a means through which young middle-class residents of Tehran practise fun beyond the socio-political restrictions they face in the city’s public sphere. Non-human nature represents a safe setting for these ecotourists to engage in restricted ‘unislamic’ practices of self-expression and socialization. In other words, the non-human nature functions as a zone of transgression. This article provides an example of how the nature–society interface can provide opportunities to defy conservative social norms in a restricted socio-political system and it shows that the influence of political systems on nature–society relations requires more explicit analysis. Moreover, it enhances our understanding of everyday politics in a society where social conducts in the public sphere are heavily controlled.

Religion, Human Rights, Equality and the Public Sphere

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCrudden
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religion In Public Life

This article distinguishes three different conceptions of the relationship between religion and the public sphere. The reconciliation of these different aspects of freedom of religion can be seen to give rise to considerable difficulties in practice, and the legal and political systems of several Western European countries are struggling to cope. Four recurring issues that arise in this context are identified and considered: what is a ‘religion’ and what are ‘religious’ beliefs and practices for the purposes of the protection of ‘freedom of religion’, together with the closely related issue of who decides these questions; what justification there is for a provision guaranteeing freedom of religion at all; which manifestations of religious association are so unacceptable as to take the association outside the protection of freedom of religion altogether; and what weight should be given to freedom of religion when this freedom stands opposed to other values. It is argued that the scope and meaning of human rights in this context is anything but settled and that this gives an opportunity to those who support a role for religion in public life to intervene.

scholarly journals Specyfika etyk kobiecych w ujęciu Carol Gilligan

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Bartosz HORDECKI
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Moral Development ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Research Tool ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Carol Gilligan ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Ethics Of Caring

The paper discusses the ethical views of Carol Gilligan that emerged to dispute the theory of six stages of moral development developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. In his opinion, women tend to reach the higher stages of his scale less frequently than men do. According to C. Gilligan this does not evidence the moral supremacy of men over women, but the faulty de- sign of the research tool. In her opinion, the Kohlbergian conception was based on an ethics of justice that took into account an exclusively male point of view. Women, whose voice is not heard in the public sphere, adopt a different type of ethics, namely the ethics of caring. C. Gilligan believes that it is necessary to promote this specific type of female ethics in order to overcome male dominance which is harmful both for women and men. Introducing a fe- male ethics will make it possible to refute the ‘double lie’ underlying patriarchal civilization. The lie involves (1) the assumption that male ethics are universal; and (2) female concealment of their own models of moral reasoning.

THE FUNDAMENTALIST DILEMMA: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI HAREDI CASE

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Netanel Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Entire Society ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Secular Politics

AbstractThis article explores the “fundamentalist dilemma,” or how fundamentalist movements participate in secular political systems, especially when they gain prominent political positions that allow them to impose their extreme ideology on the entire society. After analyzing prevailing responses to this dilemma, ranging from political integration to aggressive takeover, the article turns to the case of Israeli Haredim. It explores three models of political integration through which Haredim have applied religious practices in the public sphere: protest, consolidation, and takeover. The study's main finding is that, opposite to a commonly accepted assumption that fundamentalists’ integration into secular politics causes them to moderate, the more political power that fundamentalists accrue the stronger is their tendency to promote their religious agenda. Yet the Israeli Haredi case also reveals the limitations of this tendency: fundamentalists often restrain their expansionist instinct when having to take nonfundamentalist reactions into consideration.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

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