Studying the overlaps between religion and politics in human geography is no longer a niche pursuit. Now, a plethora of literature in the discipline covers various facets of the topic, analysing the role of religion in contexts ranging from welfare contracts to geopolitical imaginations. Furthermore, investigating the religion/politics interface has been enhanced in recent years by increasing theoretical innovation in religious geography, incorporating poststructural epistemologies into the subdiscipline. This shift has directed geographers to the fluid construction of practices and places through the everyday lives of religious subjects and communities. Despite these developments, I argue that studies at the religion/politics interface still lack an epistemology that can adequately comprehend emerging empirical work in geography and associated disciplines that highlights the blurring of religious praxis into activism. Geographers have rarely represented the mechanisms that produce the heterogeneity of religious involvement in politics, putting the new poststructural epistemologies in the subdiscipline to work by categorising religious subjects and communities as homogeneously progressive or regressive, or focussing instead on the affective atmospheres and internal dynamics of faith communities. In this thesis I argue that in order to understand religious involvement in activism, geographers of religion need to begin to blend poststructural epistemologies that attend to the everyday fluidity of religion with epistemological work on networks in activist geographies. This is necessary work because these two realms are beginning to intermingle on the ground, consequently highlighting the production of religious subjectivities between religious and activist practices. In response to this gap between theory and empirics, I turn my attention to faith communities that embody elements of a postchristendom ethos, flattening religious hierarchies, welcoming difference, and engaging beyond themselves through social justice activism. By addressing this context I can underscore the knowledges that geographies of the religion/politics interface have missed so far, examining the multiple factors at play in the formation of faith community raison d’êtres, the accommodation of difference in faith communities, and how religious subjects negotiate their praxis between religious and activist spaces. By drawing attention to these issues and developing an epistemology to deal with them, this thesis develops more nuanced ways of producing knowledge about religious subjectivities and communities as they relate to activism.

This thesis presents a comparative and interdisciplinary investigation into the relationship between politics and the Turkish and Kurdish novels, which are treated not only as artistic constructions but also as socio-cultural and historical artefacts. The primary objective of this investigation is to understand the principle social, political, and historical reasons and root causes behind the close relationship between politics and literatures in Turkey and the principle socio-political and literary ramifications of such strong relationship. Towards this end, the thesis focuses on four main themes: language, love, religion, and history. Besides being the most common novelistic themes in the Turkish and Kurdish literary institutions, these are inherently heavily politicised and ethno-nationalistically charged themes - thus especially suitable for such inquiry. In line with this politico-historical and literary vein, the thesis also discusses some of the main political questions in Turkey, viz., the reasons behind the failure of Turkish democracy, its maladies and the resultant deadlock on some of the most important issues of the modern history of the country such as the Kurdish imbroglio and the conflict of secularisation and Islam. As the discussions on politics of love, language, religion, and history show, profound ideological competitions and antagonisms do not necessarily mean divergent political and literary structures. As such, the strong links between the Turkish and Kurdish literary institutions, as well as the ordeal of the Kurdish question and democratisation in Turkey, is as much caused by rival nationalisms, hostile ideological positions, and the like as by congruity, parallel political visions, and similar power structures. The main argument of the thesis, thus, is that the Kurdish and Turkish literary, political, and intellectual actors could not contribute towards the solution of the persistent political and literary questions in Turkey because of their failure in adopting a transformative politics and developing fully autonomous literatures. The future of the two literatures, as was in the past, this thesis argues, will remain intrinsically bound to the political structures and developments and the future of democracy in Turkey.

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Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Apresentando como principal expoente a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, o segmento evangélico neopentecostal tem obtido sucesso em sua inserção político eleitoral, através da utilização de estratégias eleitorais características, como o cadastramento de fiéis, a adoção de campanhas oficiais distribuídas por região de acordo com o potencial do eleitorado e o uso da mídia própria e dos púlpitos para o marketing político. Inserida nos estudos de comportamento eleitoral, esta dissertação fará uma análise sobre os eleitores dos autodenominados políticos de Deus, com a utilização de surveys, dados eleitorais e pesquisa de campo. Através da aplicação da Teoria da Escolha Racional, será investigada a hipótese de que os eleitores neopentecostais não se distanciam da concepção de Homo politicus da teoria downsiana, agindo racionalmente quando atribuem seu voto a um irmão de fé. / Featuring the Universal Church as the most important exponent, the neopentecostal gospel segment has been successful in its electoral political insertion by using specific electoral strategies, such as the registration of followers, the adoption of official campaigns distributed by regions according to the electorate potential and the media and the pulpits for political marketing. As part of the studies on voting behavior, this dissertation will analyze the voters of the self-appointed "politicians of God", by using surveys, electoral data and field research. Through the application of the Rational Choice Theory, it will be investigated the hypothesis that neopentecostal voters do not distance themselves from the conception of Homo politicus of the Downs` theory, acting rationally when they give their vote to a "brother in faith".

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Apresentando como principal expoente a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, o segmento evangélico neopentecostal tem obtido sucesso em sua inserção político eleitoral, através da utilização de estratégias eleitorais características, como o cadastramento de fiéis, a adoção de campanhas oficiais distribuídas por região de acordo com o potencial do eleitorado e o uso da mídia própria e dos púlpitos para o marketing político. Inserida nos estudos de comportamento eleitoral, esta dissertação fará uma análise sobre os eleitores dos autodenominados políticos de Deus, com a utilização de surveys, dados eleitorais e pesquisa de campo. Através da aplicação da Teoria da Escolha Racional, será investigada a hipótese de que os eleitores neopentecostais não se distanciam da concepção de Homo politicus da teoria downsiana, agindo racionalmente quando atribuem seu voto a um irmão de fé. / Featuring the Universal Church as the most important exponent, the neopentecostal gospel segment has been successful in its electoral political insertion by using specific electoral strategies, such as the registration of followers, the adoption of official campaigns distributed by regions according to the electorate potential and the media and the pulpits for political marketing. As part of the studies on voting behavior, this dissertation will analyze the voters of the self-appointed "politicians of God", by using surveys, electoral data and field research. Through the application of the Rational Choice Theory, it will be investigated the hypothesis that neopentecostal voters do not distance themselves from the conception of Homo politicus of the Downs` theory, acting rationally when they give their vote to a "brother in faith".

Orientador: Izabel Andrade Marson / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T02:42:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Costa_AlexandreJoseGoncalves_D.pdf: 2151629 bytes, checksum: 5b1de45a42ffca90c338135b2a026836 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: A pesquisa aqui apresentada trata da mudança de sentido no discurso políticosocial católico no Brasil em meados do século XX. Através da análise da revista A Ordem, no período de 1931 a 1958, mostramos como há um movimento de afastamento dos fascismos e de defesa de uma concepção autoritária de sociedade para a aproximação da democracia e defesa de seus valores. Neste deslocamento, identificamos as permanências, as mudanças, as recriações de elementos em seu discurso que sustentaram a apropriação dos valores da liberdade, do pluralismo político, da justiça social. Os intelectuais católicos responsáveis por essa passagem eram ligados ao filósofo francês Maritain e constituíam o principal núcleo político católico leigo no Brasil de meados do século passado / Abstract: The present study concerns the change in direction in the Catholic politicalsocial discourse in Brazil in the middle 20th century. Through analysis of the periodical A Ordem in the period 1931-1958, we show that there is a distancing from fascism and championing of an authoritarian concept of society to an approximation of democracy and supporting of its values. In this dislocation, we identify in its discourse the permanences, changes and re-creations of elements to support the appropriation of values of liberty, political pluralism and social justice. The Catholic intellectuals in charge of this transition were associated with the French philosopher Maritain, and composed the main lay political core in Brazil in the middle 20th century / Doutorado / Politica, Memoria e Cidade / Doutor em História

This work reinterprets the idea of progress at the heart of Woodrow Wilson’s liberal internationalism through the lens of secularization theory, which holds that modern philosophies of progress stand on religious foundations and represent secularized vestiges of biblical eschatology. Previous applications of this insight reveal a selective pattern: Whereas totalitarian and illiberal narratives of progress such as Nazism and Marxism-Leninism have received lavish attention and spawned extensive political religions literature, liberal progressivism has been ignored. This dissertation rectifies this neglect. Initial chapters present the biblical conception of history as the myth of salvation, introduce secularization through the writings of Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg, respectively its principal proponent and main critic, and test the limits of the concept to confirm its applicability to liberal progressivism. The main part aims secularization theory at Wilson’s idea of progress in the broader context of American liberal thought. From the 17th-century Puritan vision of a “city upon a hill” to the 19th-century doctrine of “manifest destiny”, biblical eschatology defined the way Americans envisioned history and their role in it, giving rise to a sort of liberal-republican millennialism. Wilson was no exception: Considering faith essential to authentic knowledge, he regarded history as a providential process, the United States as a divinely appointed redeemer nation, and himself as a Christian statesman performing God’s work in a fallen world. His foreign policy was fundamentally a religious mission to transform international relations according to the Bible, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of salvation. The dissertation demonstrates the eschatological foundations of his statecraft through specific examples and draws attention to their illiberal and totalizing implications. Final passages note the enduring relevance of Wilson’s principles and, based on their reinterpretation in this work, reflect critically on their suitability as a guide for future American foreign policy.

Les intellectuels iraniens ont toujours été un groupe social important au sein de la société civile iranienne. Depuis 1990, ce champ d’intellectuels aux vois discordantes, s’élève face à la tentative d’islamisation de la société enclenchée par le pouvoir politique. Constitué en différents groupes, ces penseurs se penchent sur la potentialité d’instaurer Etat-Nation démocratique iranien. Cette recherche rend compte des différentes mouvances qui traversent la sphère intellectuelle iranienne actuelle et prend le parti de réfléchir à quatre groupes importants : les intellectuels "religieux", le cercle des philosophes, les historiens et enfin les sociologues politiques. Tous reconnaissent le risque d’une politisation du religieux et conjointement d’une certaine sacralisation du politique. Leurs réflexions construites autour d’un axe commun questionnant les notions «Etat » et « religion » révèlent un profond souci de changement. A travers cette étude qui met en parallèle les différents discours et les arguments de chacun, ce projet aborde les rapports qu’entretiennent ces intellectuels avec d’autres groupes de la société civile tels les femmes ou les étudiants. L’ambition de cette thèse est d’offrir un panorama théorique des interrogations actuelles en réfléchissant aux stratégies de ces intellectuels. / The Iranian intellectual has been always an important part of civil society. Since 1990, this intellectual field with conflicting voices, rising against islamization of society which has been enforced by political power. This intellectual stream is constituted of different groups bend over study of potentiality of establishment of democratic Iranian Nation-State. This study examines various spheres which crossing the actual Iranian intellectual domain and deliberates over four important categories: religious intellectual, philosophical circle, historians and political sociologists. All these thinkers conjointly consider the risk of politization of religion and the sacralization of politics. Their reflections are constructed around a common axe of two notions “State” and “religion”, which reveal the crucial question of change in political system. Through this approach which puts in a parallel direction different discourses and arguments beside each other, this study looks into the relations between the intellectual field and the other units of civil society. The ambition of this research is offering a theoretical panorama on present problematic of intellectual society with probing their strategies.