Malgré un format institutionnel classique, l’État libanais ne présente pas certaines propriétés par lesquelles la sociologie politique caractérise le pouvoir étatique. Il figure ainsi régulièrement dans la liste des États faibles. Ce travail de recherche remet en question la pertinence de cette qualification en s'inscrivant dans une démarche de sociologie politique du droit et de la justice, appliquée à la justice civile des mineurs ainsi qu’à la justice de la charia. Il documente l’activation à partir de 2002 des juges des enfants sur un terrain libanais où le droit de la famille est pluriel, et où plusieurs droits religieux sont mis en œuvre par plusieurs systèmes juridictionnels religieux, en l’absence d’un droit civil commun. Cette thèse mobilise la notion d’“épreuve d’État” pour étudier un conflit public, de 2007 à 2010, entre ces juges des enfants et les tribunaux sunnites de la charia autour de la protection de l’enfant en danger. Ce conflit, quoique clôturé en 2010 par un recul des ambitions des juges civils, produit des effets au-delà des arènes juridictionnelles, sur des mobilisations de femmes qui tentent avec un certain succès de modifier en leur faveur le droit religieux sunnite de la famille. Ces effets d’État ne passent pas par les éléments traditionnels recherchés par la sociologie de l’État et de l’action publique : des budgets, une bureaucratie, des règles centrales obligatoires. Il s’agit ici de formes originales d’étatisation par concurrence entre tribunaux autour de l’enfant et de la famille libanaise. L’enquête ouvre ainsi la boite noire de l’État réputé faible à travers l’épreuve du conflit interjuridictionnel, pour s’attarder sur les formes et les effets de la présence de l’État là où il est supposé être absent. Au lieu de chercher le changement dans les droits rigides de la famille uniquement à travers une politique publique sécularisante du centre civil, cette démarche permet de suivre et de mieux comprendre les bouleversements à l’intérieur même des normativités religieuses et de leurs droits supposés immobiles. Le rapport entre l’État et la communauté religieuse n’est plus un jeu à somme nulle, les droits religieux de la famille montrent une certaine réactivité face aux mobilisations des droits par le bas, et l’État libanais acquiert une effectivité que ne lui reconnaissent pas les récits récurrents de sa faiblesse. / The Lebanese state is often depicted as failing to possess some of the properties through which political sociology usually defines state power. Therefore, it is often described as a weak state. I question the relevance of this description through a political sociology of law, an approach I apply to civil juvenile courts and to sharia courts. I study the activation in 2002 of juvenile judges in Lebanon, where several religious family laws are implemented by parallel religious courts, in the absence of a common civil law for the family. I use the notion of "State test" to study a public conflict (2007 - 2010) between these juvenile judges and Sunni sharia courts around the protection of endangered children. This conflict produces effects beyond judicial arenas on women mobilizations that are trying, with some success, to change religious Sunni family law. These "state effects" are not channeled through the traditional elements sought by the sociology of the state and policy studies : budgets, bureaucracy or mandatory central rules. These original forms of stateness are the result of a competition between courts for the child and the Lebanese family. Instead of seeking change in rigid family laws only through a secularizing public policy from the civil center, investigating these "state tests" and their effects can allow us to track and better understand the changes within religious groups and their supposedly immobile legal systems. The relationship between the state and the religious groups is no longer a zero-sum game, religious family laws appear more responsive to legal mobilizations from below, and the state acquires an effectiveness that often goes unrecognized by the recurrent narratives of its weakness.

In this dissertation I address urban sustainability with a focus on loss of cultural heritage and ecological knowledge by expanding the concept “extinction of experience” (EoE). Conceptualized by conservationist Robert Michael Pyle, EoE is the loss of nature experiences leading to apathy towards biodiversity and degradation of the common habitat. I expand upon Pyle’s formulation of the concept by considering the EoE cycle as an indirect driver that amplifies biodiversity losses. Additionally, I introduce the analysis of interrelated losses of biological and cultural diversity in relation to EoE. With a biocultural approach I discuss that EoE is tied to the infrastructural inertia within the global urban economy. I propose that addressing the EoE cycle is critical in that as a complex and multi-faceted process, it cements threats to biological and cultural diversity as permanent fixtures within society by obscuring their significance in light of economic development. This cycle remains a hidden problematic in that it perpetuates the environmental crisis while making such losses invisible within day-to-day lifestyle habits, constructing an emerging urban culture within the global economy that is ignorant of ecological processes and sustainability requirements. I frame the implications of EoE with an analysis of the newly proposed revisions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals voted on in September 2015 to prioritize local ecological knowledge and biocultural heritage.

The diploma thesis Printed Municipal Bulletins in Prague-We st District and Beroun District deals with municipal printed bulletins as a specific kind of media. Municipal bulletins provide information about political, economic, cultural, and sport events in respective areas. They have a very important role in distribution of local news. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part offers the definition of municipal bulletins and other important terms, and a description of legal aspects of their publishing. The second part analyzes results of a questionnaire research, which was conducted with publishers of municipal bulletins in Prague-West District and Beroun District. The purpose of this research was to obtain complex information on the number of municipal bulletins that are currently published in the districts. The research focused on organizational, economic, technical, and personnel background of publishing of the municipal bulletins. This important part of the research also attempted to obtain information about the level of pluralism of provided by the bulletins. The third part contains results of in-depth interviews with persons who are in charge of publishing the bulletins. The purpose of these interviews was to obtain thorough information on how the municipal bulletins are created....

This research paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse texts produced by the political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. The analysis use Machin and Mayr’s (2012) concepts of Language and Identity and Nominalisation and Presupposition with the aim to understand how the BJP can influence the democratic society in India through discourse. The texts analysed was taken from BJPs website and from parts of their 2014 manifesto. The theoretical framework and literature review are built on the role of Hinduism in the democratization of India. In this research, Hinduism act as an important factor in defining identity in India and Hindutva as an important factor in defining identity for the BJP. The analysis concludes that when looking at identity, the BJP demonstrate that their texts can have both a positive and a negative effect on the democracy in India. The BJP strongly use ‘India First’ to state that they want to unify the country under one identity and similarities can be drawn to their previous use of ‘Hindutva’. By promoting ‘India First’ the BJP includes a large audience and a somewhat tolerant outlook by stating to include all castes and ethnicities. However, the analysis demonstrates that their strong promotion of ‘India First’ conceal who is responsible to uphold this identity and that in turn could affect the tolerance in society. The analysis also shows that their definition of ‘India First’ is left vague and this can conceal certain interest. Their use of ‘India First’ as an identity can lead to a fear that everything that does not belong under this category is a threat. This combined with the diffuse definition of what ‘India First’ mean can have a negative effect on the pluralistic and tolerant society that was needed for India to transform to a democracy. The research also explores whether the strong promotion of ‘India First’ can be compared to a religious or spiritual movement and touch upon the implications that could follow from that.

The rapidly changing political environment in our Western liberal democracies poses a big challenge not only to elected representatives but also to scholars. In this dissertation thesis I describe and clarify the main principles and ideas of the three currently most dominant, debated and promising democratic theories, namely participatory democracy, deliberative democracy and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism. Their criticisms and the most important polemics are included as well. The first theory introduced in dissertation's theoretical part is participatory democracy, which is heavily neglected in the Slovak academia. It is presented especially through the prism of Carole Pateman's, C.B. Macpherson's and Benjamin Barber's writings. Their ideas on civic engagement in public life appear to be noteworthy again, especially in the light of the changing conditions of democratic citizenship - particularly in regards to the EU-wide decline in voter turnout, increasing income inequality, downgrade of social solidarity and cooperation, growing intolerance or dissatisfaction with representative democracy and its institutions. This theory has been verified on the example of the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECI), which are deemed to be one of most promising political tools adjusting EU's democratic deficit....

Pentecostalism has always been regarded as a movement that does not have all the ecclesiastical qualities that qualify it to be called a fully-fledged tradition alongside other major streams of Protestantism. Contrary to popular theologies that undermine the great role that the Pentecostal tradition can play in the global church, modern Pentecostal theologies agree that most of the misconceptions and assumption are misplaced because the Pentecostal tradition is a rich tradition with vital elements and symbols necessary to advance the ecumenical goal of unity and reconciliation. Based on this perception that Pentecostal ecclesiology is ecumenical, this research critically analyses Pentecostal ecclesiology as portrayed by Kärkkäinen in order to determine its ecumenicity or relevance to the ecumenical goals of unity, tolerance and reconciliation. This research confronts the paternalistic assumptions and misconception that regard Pentecostalism as simply a superstitious and naive sect which is only relevant to the lower class by bringing out the different elements and symbols within the tradition that are vital for the success and development of the global church in a modern global context. Some of the critical elements and symbols within the Pentecostal tradition that are explored within this study include÷ unity in diversity, the mission nature of the church, experiences of the Spirit as portrayed in its Pneumatological Christology and Soteriology, its rapid adaptation to new global south contexts and critical elements of inclusivity and plurality as portrayed in the foundations of the tradition. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology

The purpose of this study is three-fold. The first is to provide the reader with a review of the literature concerning the topic of regional political integration. The second purpose is to provide an operational definition of regional political integration which can be useful in the testing of hypotheses. Regional political integration is defined in terms of the regional decision-making process. Various levels of regional political integration are defined, operationalized, and identified. The levels from lowest to highest are as follows: regional promotion, regional information exchange, regional policy coordination, regional monitor, and regional authoritative decision-making. The third purpose of the study is to analyze the factors which are hypothesized to be correlated with and responsible for the changing levels of regional political integration.

The dissertation attempts to do two things: First, to move political theory and philosophy from a humancentric to an ecocentric worldview. This entails thinking about justice and equality—and hence about reciprocity, solidarity, and cooperation—in both ecological and social terms. Second, I argue that the shared conditions of interdependency and vulnerability allow us to bridge the gap between the social and the ecological, and thus to reconnect politics with nature. As little attention has been paid to ecology and sustainability in democratic theory, my work’s ambition is to demonstrate the transformative potential of a relational ethics that is not only concerned with human animals, but also with the multiplicity of beings that inhabit the earth, and the relations in which they are enmeshed. The purpose is to think about ways of cultivating and fostering the kinds of relations that are needed to maintain human and more than human diversity, and therefore to sustain life on earth. In order to accomplish this task, I begin by critically examining the scholarship on pluralism and diversity, and by pressing the limits of the prevailing frameworks within which these themes are generally approached. The argument I attempt to put forward is that most of the literature bounds the scope of diversity and plurality to the worlds of human animals, which constrains our understanding of difference and why it matters. Such scholarship remains largely confined to phenomena such as culture, religion, and legal authority at the collective level, as well as to epistemic diversity at the individual level. These forms of diversity and plurality are not only exclusively concerned with humans, but they are also underpinned by a problematic conception of human animality. As feminism, care ethics, disability studies (among other critical approaches) have shown, much theorizing about reasoning, dialogue, collective action, and other fundamental concepts in democratic theory were conceived in the image of the Enlightenment man, and hence in opposition to embodiment, affectivity, and empathy. Moreover, political theory in general, and democratic theory in particular, have been built on a presumption of able-bodiedness and able-mindedness that excludes many forms of being human from political participation. And it is my contention that reflecting critically on our own condition of human animality—and on the ways in which it has been portrayed in political thought until relatively recently—will inevitably prompt us to reconsider the relations we entertain with each other and with more than human forms of life on earth. / Graduate

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Chinese American images in selected children's fiction to determine whether or not data support the position of the Council on Interracial Books for Children, that the works of fiction studied tend to stereotype Chinese Americans. After reading the selected fifteen works of fiction, a criterion checklist was devised by the investigator to examine the behavior and lifestyle of Chinese Americans depicted in a variety of circumstances. validity of the criterion checklist was established by a panel of experts in the area of Chinese American studies. Inter-rater reliability was determined by two readers who utilized the criterion checklist to analyze the content of one lower elementary grade and one upper elementary grade work of fiction. Finally, the criterion checklist was used to analyze the fifteen works of fiction and draw conclusions related to the purpose of this study. The findings in this study do support the conclusions of the Council on Interracial Books for Children that this group of fiction portrays Chinese Americans in a one dimensional, stereotypic manner. In the checklist items related to environment, food, utensils, physical attributes, cultural celebrations, occupations, and recreation, Chinese Americans were portrayed as adhering to Chinese-specific characteristics. However, in cross-cultural and behavioral items, Chinese Americans were portrayed as desiring Western-specific characteristics. This tendency was especially prevalent in upper elementary grade fiction. A more integrative or multi-dimensional view of Chinese Americans appreciating, and able to function well in, both cultural contexts is disconcertingly absent. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made: 1. That teachers, librarians, and other school personnel who use this collection of books, supplement them with materials containing contemporary and realistic information about Chinese Americans. 2. That future writers of children's fiction dealing with Chinese Americans portray them in a multidimensional manner. 3. That curriculum writers of textbooks use a similar criterion checklist to offset the one-dimensionality of Chinese American images in existing children's literature. 4. That future writers of children's fiction on Chinese Americans utilize a criterion checklist such as the one in this study to assist them in developing multi-dimensional characters.