Münster (Westfalen), Universiẗat, Diss., 2003. / Dateiformat: PDF.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The thesis critically examines the view that associates religion with bellicosity in politics. It is argued that the structural link between religion and the propensity to (political) violence is inaccurate because (1) religious theories of just war can be shown to be tolerant of difference in important instances and thus not belligerent; (2) secular ideology can be shown to be intolerant and bellicose in important cases; and consequently (3) the more important explanatory factor of bellicosity is not necessarily religion but it can be found elsewhere. It is argued that the true source lies in the association of a monistic ideological commitment and the willingness of its political agents to impose it on those with different ideological views. The thesis is a critical and comparative discussion of those who have dealt with ideological violence. It compares interventionist theorists with those who are not in religious tradition and contemporary theory of just war to reveal that the cause of violence is located in an avoidable failure to reconcile religious morality and politics. The thesis adds a new perspective on the debate, calling for a rethink of the relationship between religion and violence in politics. It also proposes greater scepticism about widely held assumptions about the bellicose tendency of religiously motivated political agents, arguing that theorists should rethink the real cause of bellicosity beyond the religious domain and pay closer critical attention to the sources of the belligerence of secular agents.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is a multilevel analysis of relationships between religion, intolerance towards ethnic out-groups and homophobia across 47 European countries based on European Values Study data (EVS 2010, wave 4). The analysis accounts for associations between the religiosity of individuals and their likelihood of being disinclined to accept people of a different race, immigrants and homosexuals as neighbours, or to accept homosexual behaviour as justifiable. Secondly, relationships between religious and socio-economic national contexts on the two forms of intolerance are studied. Religion is conceptualised as a three-dimensional phenomenon, thus a distinction is made between believing, belonging and religious practice. The main research question motivating the individual-level analysis is: To what extent is religion in Europe associated with intolerance towards ethnic out-groups and homosexuals? The research question of the contextual analysis is: How do the national religious, socio-economic and political contexts citizens live in matter for their tolerance towards out-groups? The key results of the analyses can be summarised as follows: religion is significantly related to both ethnic intolerance and homophobia. Believing in a Higher Power was found to be strongly negatively and fundamentalism strongly positively related to ethnic intolerance in most countries. Religious devoutness and observance, on the other hand, are positively related to ethnic intolerance only in a minority of mostly South-Eastern European countries. All of them have legacies of ethno-religious conflict, poverty and political instability. High religiosity, alongside poverty, nationalism and right-wing authoritarianism are strong predictors of ethnic prejudice in these contexts. In most of Europe, however, neither religious belonging nor religious practice is statistically significantly related to ethnic intolerance. Regarding homophobia, strong positive relationships with all three dimensions of religiosity were found. Contrary to the author’s expectation, religion matters most for the citizens’ dislike of homosexuals in Western European countries where the overall levels of homophobia are comparatively low. In large parts of post-communist Eastern Europe homophobia appears to have a secular face. The finding surprises, given the frequent utilisations of Orthodox and Catholic Christian symbolism that could be observed at public protests against eastern European gay pride parades of the last couple of years. Plausible explanations are explored alongside modernisation- and identity theory: religion has less impact on homophobic attitudes in societies where homophobia is generally more socially acceptable, while in highly modernised Western societies, where liberal values and a general acceptance of homosexuality are prevalent, religious fundamentalism appears to be strongly associated with anti-modern and traditionalistic identities that are exclusive towards out-groups.

Although social research on sexuality is growing in Latin America, studies into tolerance are scarce. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between queer male practices and tolerance amongst a group of gay, bisexual and travesti men in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To explore this issue 83 men were interviewed and ethnographic research was carried out with the gay rights organisation Arco-Íris and AIDS organisation ABIA. Whilst current literature generally positions the queer community as requiring tolerance from an intolerant society, this study suggests that intolerance of certain gendered and sexualised behaviours is produced within the queer community and affects queer male behaviours. It is suggested that factors such as race, class, religious belief and notions of beauty, style and respect influence the construction and experience of various sites across the city, such as the home, the workplace, the gay scene and the street as tolerant and intolerant. Current work is expanded through exploring the relationship between gendered and sexualised behaviours and (in)tolerance in understudied spaces, such as LGBT organisations, religious spaces and online communities. It is argued that future work must consider the way in which tolerance and intolerance function within the queer community as this study has done, rather than relying on taken-for-granted assumptions that intolerance towards queers originates from those outwith the queer community.