This paper studies the theological anthropologies of the Catholic thinkers Alice von Hildebrand and Margaret Harper McCarthy. I place my research of these two theologians, categorized as religiously conservative thinkers, among other contemporary research on women in traditional religions by using types of agencies inspired by researchers such as Phyllis Mack, Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. This paper analyzes how the two theologians construct their anthropologies, systems that see man in a relationship with a God-given order that dictates the role of freedom and responsibility in both the relationship with fellow human beings and his or her teleological goals. I argue that this anthropology comes from their reading of biblical passages and interpretations of real life experiences that break with secular, liberal and individualist patterns of thought. Using a hermeneutics aware of the tensions between secular readings of religious texts and readings that focuses on a self-transcendence, I present a reading of the theologians' systems of thought as a balancing act between liberal and poststructuralist feminist critiques. I argue that both Hildebrand and McCarthy reject the liberal and poststructuralist anthropologies because of their conviction that the liberal and poststructuralist anthropology is inadequate by not addressing the ontological reality of the human complementarity of the sexes. I also identify a tension in the theologians critique of feminism and what I take to be a dialectic between criticizing and appropriating feminist goals for women.

This project exposes the problems with the dominant conception of agency in secular liberal discourse. The main critique is that the dominant conception of agency tends to attribute value to certain aspects of action that are not necessarily the most telling or valuable in terms of what constitutes agency. I use Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety to aid in this critique. Her project uses the Muslim rituals performed by women of the mosque movement in Egypt to demonstrate the need for a more nuanced conception of agency in academics. I use CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary to support the approach offered by Mahmood and demonstrate the applicability of such an approach outside of typical considerations of “ritual”. In this case, the approach is applied to cricket.

The British colonial administration in India transformed Muslim law in the nineteenth century through the three concurrent processes of translation, legislation, and adjudication. Although Indian Muslims were gradually displaced in their traditional position as interpreters of that law in the role of muftis, discerning and applying the shari'ah according to Hanafi principles of fiqh, they nonetheless played a vital role in the transformation of Muslim law. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Muslim participation became more noticeable and significant as they moved into increasingly influential positions in the British judicial administration. Syed Mahmood (1850-1903) was a pioneer in this movement, being one of the first Indian Muslims to study law and become a barrister in England, being the first non-European member of the Allahabad Bar, and being the first Indian Muslim appointed to any High Court in British India. During his tenure as judge of the High Court at Allahabad, he wrote numerous judgments on matters of civil law, including matters which the British regime had determined were to be governed by Muslim law, or rather, by the amalgam of Muslim and English law called "Anglo-Mohammedan law" into which it had been transformed. He understood certain aspects Muslim law, especially criminal law and laws of evidence, to have been abrogated by British law in India, but stoutly resisted the incursion of English law and promoted the acceptance of Muslim law as the customary law in other areas. His critique of the British administration of justice in India and his persistent independence of thought while serving on the High Court brought him into conflict with his fellow judges. He was eventually forced to resign in 1892, but his recorded judgments in the Indian Law Reports continued to provide an authoritative exposition of Muslim law for succeeding generations of jurists. In addition to elucidating the transformation of Muslim law

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This thesis uses a philosophical discussion to explore the tensions that result in the meeting between universal claims and particular contexts regarding human rights and how these tensions can be mediated by exploring the right to religious freedom. In order to do this, two approaches will be studied, one liberal and one postcolonial, represented by Martha Nussbaum and Saba Mahmood respectively. In comparing the approaches of Nussbaum and Mahmood, their arguments and positions become clearer, but also the nuances of the debate between universalism and contextualism. The right to religious freedom, with its many tensions between theory and practice, has been useful in exploring what values are at stake when we talk about human rights in general and how we can think about the apparent tension between universalism and contextual sensitivity. The thesis thus shows that there are more similarities between these two approaches than it may first seem and that they are not incompatible. This is argued to provide insight into possible ways of mediating human rights between theory and practice. / Denna uppsats utgår från en filosofisk diskussion kring spänningen mellan universella anspråk och specifika sammanhang när det kommer till mänskliga rättigheter och hur dessa spänningar kan medlas utifrån en undersökning av religionsfriheten. För att åstadkomma studeras två inriktningar, den ena liberal och den andra postkolonial. Dessa inriktningar representeras av Martha Nussbaum respektive Saba Mahmood. I och med en jämförande analys mellan dessa två inriktningar är förhoppningen att deras likheter och skillnader blir tydligare, samt att nyanserna inom debatten mellan universalism och kontextualism blir tydligare. Det finns många spänningar mellan teori och praktik när det kommer till rätten till religionsfrihet och just denna rättighet är på så sätt användbar för att utforska spänningen mellan universalism och kontextualism när det kommer till mänskliga rättigheter. Denna uppsats visar därmed att det finns flera likheter mellan dessa inriktningar och att de därför inte kan anses vara oförenliga med varandra. Detta för med sig en insikt i möjligheter till att medla mänskliga rättigheter mellan teori och praktik.

This essay studies the implicit and explicit perspectives of Bruce Lincoln, Jürgen Habermas, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood, Charles Taylor, José Casanova and their approach to secularism as a phenomenon. This is done by categorizing them into three categories. The categories,enlightenment-centered theorists, critical theorists and implicit-theological theorists, all have explicit accounts and implicit forms of reasoning that shape and contextualize their respective approach. The Enlightenment-centered theorists tend to regard secularism as a neutral and peace-keeping statecraft. This approach implicitly contains the idea of a clear division between secular and religious. This implicit form of reasoning I argue is problematically non-reflexive to the theorist’s own standpoint and risks becoming a form of secular ideology. The theorists categorized as critical theorists view secularism more as a type of discourse where what is seen as religious and the secular is inherently fluid. This is then analyzed by them as a special strategy for Western sovereignty. The perspective of the implicit-theological theorists is similar both to the Enlightenment-centered and the criticaltheorists' perspective in that secularism is primarily peace-keeping and that the categories are often fluid. I show that their approach contains theological assumptions that religion responds to a realm which challenges the immanent world. In the last chapter of the essay, I give a normative evaluation of the three approaches to secularism where I argue that while the enlightenment-centered theorists have useful explanatory models, the critical and to a lesser extent implicit-theological approach to secularism are more fruitful for religious studies. They allow for more flexibility in studying the relationship between secular and religious groups as they do not determine the categories in advance. The essay also contains a concluding discussion on the type of problems for philosophy of science and religious studies that arise when secularism and what is seen as the secular is deconstructed.

Thesis (MA (Political Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This thesis is a theoretical contribution to the debate about statehood in Sub-Saharan Africa. My primary aims have been to interrogate the use of the state concept on the continent, and to open up new theoretical avenues to analyse the state. My starting point has been that the state is a key to solving socio-economic challenges. Yet the social theory that purports to make sense of the state in Africa is poor. Mainstream scholars use prefixes such as ‘failed’, ‘weak’ and ‘quasi’ to make sense of existing African states. If they call for such labels, it is only because an unhelpful ideal type based on the ‘modern’ European state is postulated. Such scholarship is limited to theorising the distance between the ideal type and real states. This approach gives a functionalist account of the state’s relationship with society and economy, but fails to explain the state as a historical product and expression of the distribution of power between social groups. As an alternative way to theorise states, I propose a synthesis between Robert W. Cox and Mahmood Mamdani. Combining Mamdani’s and Cox’s theoretical frameworks avoids the problems that arise when Eurocentric International Relations (IR) theories are applied to an African context. The synthesis adds to both frameworks by addressing a shortcoming in Cox by paying more attention to power struggles in the periphery, and redresses the exclusive focus on Africa in Mamdani. Adding Cox to Mamdani contextualises Mamdani’s African state in space as well as time, whereas adding Mamdani to Cox shows how African states respond to outside pressures and in the process (re)constitute the world order by adding an inside-out pressure. I use a single case study of the Angolan state to illustrate how a Coxian / Mamdanian synthesis contributes to the debate. This theoretical framework turns the attention to four aspects. First, there is a close historical link between the economic structure and the form of the state in the country, from the slave trade to today’s political economy of oil. Second, I look at the attempts of the Angolan state elite to legitimise its own power. I posit that in the context of social destitution and poverty, strategies to sustain consent based rule assumes particular importance. Third, the Angolan state is an expression of internal powers struggles between social groups in the country. The contemporary balance of power is volatile: recent economic growth has the potential of unsettling old power structures, as the relative balance of who has access to economic power changes. Lastly, the world order supports the current structure of power in Angola, largely thanks to the political economy of oil. Oil gives the Angolan regime ample economic resources, as well as crucial support from oil companies and the states that import the oil. This foreign support underwrites the regime and constitutes an important element in its support base

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