This article aims at revealing the patriarchal pattern that has dominated Turkish political thought in the 20th century. I analyse the construction of woman's identity in the writings of three prominent thinkers of the early-republican era (1923–1945); namely, Ahmet Aǧaoǧlu, Peyami Safa and Zekeriya Sertel. The thinkers are deliberately chosen since each represents challenging political dispositions vis-à-vis the others. Ahmet Aǧaoǧlu is a liberal-nationalist, Peyami Safa is a well-known conservative thinker and Zekeriya Sertel is a leftist. However, despite the differences (...) between and/or opposing foundations of their approaches all the three thinkers agree that there is a universally valid woman nature, attested by women's reproductive function, and approach the ‘woman issue’ on the basis of this assumption. The thinkers also argue that participation of women in public sphere inevitably results in their masculinization. Moreover, they distinguish between femininity and womanhood and offer their ideal models of womanhood. Although one can trace differences among the models, all converge on the concept of ‘nation's motherhood’ as the most significant feature of ideal womanhood. The main argument of the article is that women's subordination in the Turkish context is reinforced by the wide acceptance of these assumptions, and is further reproduced by the exclusion of the construction of gender typologies in the studies on Turkish political thought for a considerably long time. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

After briefly surveying three generations of comparative sociologists, interdisciplinary regional and trans-regional studies are shown to complement the work of the third generation of comparative sociologists on civilizational analysis and multiple modernities. Drawing examples from the interdisciplinary Persianate studies, promoted by the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies in the last two decades, and by other recent interdisciplinary studies of performance and world literature as well as Caribbean regional studies, it is argued that the rise of interdisciplinary studies in (...) social sciences and humanities may in fact redeem the unfulfilled promise that comparative sociology once offered. These recent studies constitute a significant contribution to our theoretical understanding of different patterns of socio-cultural development beyond the West, whose historical experience gave birth to modern social science disciplines, and thereby to register the historical experience of a very sizeable portion of humankind as the basis for the reconstruction of social theory in the global age. (shrink)

Imam Abü Hamid al-Ghazalı is perhaps the most celebrated Muslim theologian of medieval Islam yet little attention has been paid to his personal theology. This book sets out to investigate the relationship between law and politics in the writings of Ghazalı and aims to establish the extent to which this relationship explains Ghazalı’s political theology. Articles concerned with Ghazalı’s political thought have invariably paid little attention to his theology and his thinking about God, neglecting to ask what role these have (...) contributed to his definition of politics and political ethics. Here, the question of Ghazalı’s politics takes into account his thinking on God, knowledge, law, and the Koran, in addition to political systems and ethics. _Yazeed Said_ puts forward the convincing argument that if Ghazalı’s legal and political epistemology provide a polemic analogous to his writings on philosophy, for which he is more famed, they would reveal to us a manifesto for an alternative order, concerned with a coherent definition of the community, or _Ummah_. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the Middle East, political theology and Islamic studies. (shrink)

At one point Fish says that a profession produces no “real” commodity but offers only a service. But surely the increasing reification of services and even of knowledge has made them a commodity as well. And indeed the logical extension of Fish’s position on professionalism is not that it is something done or lived but something produced and reproduced, albeit with redistributed and redeployed values. What those are, Fish doesn’t say. Then again he makes the rather telling remarks that he (...) is “turning everything into professionalism” —an instance of overstating and overinsisting at a moment when what he is really arguing for can neither be formulated nor defended clearly. To turn “everything” into professionalism is to strip professionalism of any meaning at all. For until one can define professionalism—and the particular values associated with it—there is very little value in going on about the incoherencies of antiprofessionalism. Fish resorts to the reductionist attitude of telling us that professionalism is what is, and whatever is, is more or less therefore right, which by only the slightest extension of its logic is a view no less applicable to antiprofessionalism.On the other hand, Fish does say that the profession has changed, that new ways of doing things have emerged, that values are contested within and without the profession. Those kinds of observations, however, have to be pursued, made me more concrete, put in specific historical contexts, one of which is the fact that professions are not natural objects but concrete, political, economic, and social formations playing very defined, although sometimes barely visible, roles. Unfortunately, Fish commits the lobbyist-s error by obscuring and being blind to the sociopolitical actualities of what he lobbies for even as he defends its existence. Thus when Fish alleges that the reason most literary professionals “exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors” is because of their damaging antiprofessionalism , he is making an observation whose form is assertive but whose sense is tautological since he neither defines the professional and professionalism nor specifies “machinery” and “labors” with any precision at all. For if you take the extraordinary step of reducing everything to professionalism and institutionalism as Fish does, then the very possibility of talking about the profession with any intelligibility is negated. Few would dispute Fish’s important point, that all interpretive and social situations are in fact already grounded in a context, in institutions, communities, and so forth. But there is a very great difference between making that claim and going on to say that so far as the literary profession is concerned, “the profession” is the context to which “everything” can be related. Edward W. Said’s most recent work is The World, the Text, and the Critic. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions” and “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community”. (shrink)

We know the history of philosophy as Arabian, English, American, Greece, Indian, Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, French, Japanese… But it is surprisingly that we do not use more common concept as "national philosophy", which may be included in notions "regional" and "world" philosophy. The other words common to all mankind. As the President of Independent Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov emphasized, "It is important to understand the life giving, deep sources of national culture, East philosophy which serve at vigorous stimulus (...) of rapid progress and renovation". We suppose that the main part of philosophy is human life, man's coming to be and evolution as a subject of interaction with the world. Any philosophy is the philosophy of a man, His life. A man belongs tosome nationality, nation and mankind. The nature is definite geographic midst for a man. Each nationality, nation has its own history and specific outlines – style of life, way of life, traditions, nation interests, psychology, ideas, values, culture. It is common and typical for all nations and it imposes an imprint at all sides of realityas well as philosophy. (shrink)

Essays in the field of comparative world religions and corresponding axial civilizations.

This article proposes a new problem which is called the Stochastic Travelling Advisor Problem in network optimization, and it is defined for an advisory group who wants to choose a subset of candidate workplaces comprising the most profitable route within the time limit of day working hours. A nonlinear binary mathematical model is formulated and a real application case study in the occupational health and safety field is presented. The problem has a stochastic nature in travelling and advising times since (...) the deterministic models are not appropriate for such real-life problems. The STAP is handled by proposing suitable probability distributions for the time parameters and simulating the problem under such conditions. Many application problems like this one are formulated as nonlinear binary programming models which are hard to be solved using exact algorithms especially in large dimensions. A novel binary version of the recently developed gaining-sharing knowledge-based optimization algorithm to solve binary optimization problems is given. GSK algorithm is based on the concept of how humans acquire and share knowledge during their life span. The binary version of GSK depends mainly on two stages that enable BGSK for exploring and exploitation of the search space efficiently and effectively to solve problems in binary space. The generated simulation runs of the example are solved using the BGSK, and the output histograms and the best-fitted distributions for the total profit and for the route length are obtained. (shrink)

Bu çalışmanın amacı, COVID-19 nedeniyle yakınlarını kaybetmiş bireylerin yaşadıkları stres verici durumla başa çıkma sürecini ve bu süreçte yararlandıkları dini başa çıkma stratejilerini tespit etmektir. Ayrıca çalışma, kayıp sonrası kişilerin yaşamış oldukları psiko-sosyal değişimi ortaya çıkarmayı da amaçlamaktadır. Nitel araştırma yönteminin kullanıldığı makalede veriler, süreç gereği açık uçlu soruların olduğu e-posta anket yoluyla toplanmıştır. Durum çalışması deseninin benimsendiği araştırmada amaçsal örnekleme tekniklerinden kartopu ve ölçüt örnekleme tekniği benimsenmiştir. Ölçüt örnekleme göre yakınlarını COVID-19 nedeniyle kaybetme ve kaybın üzerinden en az 5 (...) ay geçmiş olma şartı aranmıştır. Araştırmaya 17-43 yaş aralığında toplam 28 kişi katılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre katılımcıların kayba, ölen kişinin hayatta olduğunu düşünme, inanamama, şok tepkileri verdikleri gözlenmiştir. Katılımcıların kayıp sonrası daha çok olumlu dini başa çıkma stratejilerini benimsedikleri tespit edilmiştir. Bu sürecin etkisini hafifletmek konusunda Ahiret inancı, imtihan düşüncesi, yaşanılanların Allah’ın bir takdiri olduğu fikrinin yanında olumlu dini başa çıkma unsurlarından dua etmek, şükür, sabretmenin de katkısı olduğu gözlenmiştir. (shrink)

Desde la tradicional linealidad temporal hasta la temporalización estética y premeditadamente elaborada, se estudian aquí los diferentes enfoques de la temporalidad en la novela mexicana desde Al filo del agua de Agustín Yáñez hasta La ley del amor de Laura Esquivel, pasando por Pedro Páramo de Juan Rulfo, La muerte de Artemio Cruz de Carlos Fuentes, Palinuro de México de Fernando del Paso y Arráncame la vida de Ángeles Mastretta.

Resumen: El presente estudio intenta demostrar que mediante la novela Los sinsabores del verdadero policía, Roberto Bolaño construye una alegoría de las fisuras que se provocan en las tramas simbólicas de la geografía global mediante la figura de su protagonista Oscar Amalfitano. A partir de este personaje en constante tránsito por distintos territorios, el autor deja en evidencia la situación diaspórica de un sujeto que representa el conflicto de aquellos individuos que traspasan las fronteras establecidas en la lógica del mapa (...) trazado por Occidente, constituyendo así una transgresión de la propia configuración identitaria nacional. Desde este enfoque, se propone la figura de Amalfitano como el sujeto que deconstruye la idea eurocéntrica de la “rosa de los vientos” y permite apropiarse de esta misma noción para generar un juego casi “archimboldiano”: el origen de una “rosa ilimitada de los vientos”.: The present study attempts to show that through the novel Los sinsabores del verdadero policía, Roberto Bolaño constructs an allegory of the cracks that are caused in the symbolic frame of global geography through the figure of its protagonist, Oscar Amalfitano. From this character in constant transit through other territories, the author shows clearly the diasporic situation of a subject that represents the conflict of individuals who cross borders established in the logic of the map drawn by the West, thus constituting a violation of the configuration of national identity itself. In this approach, the figure of Amalfitano as the subject that deconstructs the Eurocentric idea of wind rose and allows the appropriation of this notion to generate an almost "archimboldiano" game: the origin of the the unlimited wind rose. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that the more individuals view observable entities as animate, the more those entities are associated with having psychological and physiological experiences. This study examined the relationship between children's animistic and anthropomorphic reasoning for concepts of unobservable scientific (i.e., germ) and religious (i.e., God) entities. This study further explored how children's conceptions vary according to the social learning opportunities (i.e., discourse, rituals) parents reportedly create. Parent–child dyads with young children from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds participated. Three (...) central findings emerged. First, children readily associated God with psychobiological characteristics but did not do so to the same extent for germs. Second, children applied more psychobiological properties to both entity types when they believed that the entity was animate. Third, engaging in rituals and discourse with parents was indirectly related to children's concepts of God but not related to their concepts of germs. Overall, this study presented support for a connection between children's animistic and anthropomorphic reasoning for unobservable entities, and an indirect effect of cultural input on this reasoning. The implications of these findings will be discussed. (shrink)

Religion has long been theorized to serve important functions for societies and individuals; specifically, as a source of knowledge about what is real and as a source of norms prescribing how individuals should behave. However, science and scientists appear to be playing an increasingly large role in public discourse. A majority of adults in the U.S. report interest in science and an increasing number are obtaining degrees in the sciences – more so among males than females. As a result, we (...) examined whether and how participants’ demographic background, religious background, and two indicators of well-being relate to a “belief in science” index, and whether those relations differed among males and females. 560 young adults from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds participated. The findings presented here suggest that belief in science and religiosity are strongly inversely correlated, and if belief in science does confer emotion-related benefits, it may operate differently across demographic categories. Specifically, we find that belief in science is related to emotion dysregulation and death anxiety among males, but not females, even though females scored lower on these indicators of well-being overall. (shrink)

The importance of web designs for commercial and informational use has been a focus of research for over a decade and a half. At present, findings concerning the influence of news website designs on the perception and recall of information are rather contradictory. This study aims to identify how the basic web designs aesthetically affect users. A total of 214 students from Arab universities were shown three news sites with different designs and asked to complete two tests to determine their (...) levels of perception and recall. The results revealed that interactive sites with multiple aesthetic elements representing the message of the news item enable users to perceive and remember the information better. The findings of this study can be useful in creating news website templates that improve user comprehension and recall. (shrink)

Social interpretation on vernacular architecture in Kudus, Jawa Tengah Province, Indonesia.

Het in 1978 gepubliceerde boek Orientalism heeft zeer veel reacties losgemaakt. In het westen werd de analyse van de constructies van een stereotiep beeld van dee "Oriënt" overwegend gunstig ontvangen, maar in de Arabische wereld is men nog aan intellectuele nuancering van een beeldvorming toe.

A Common Word Between Us and You is an open letter, dated 13 October 2007, from leaders of the Islamic religion to those of the Christian religion. It calls for peace between Muslims and Christians and seeks common ground and understanding between both religions. This volume examines the document from a number of perspectives. Exploring the events that led to ACW, it provides an overview of responses to the document and its use of scripture. It also relates the reception of (...) ACW to several specific and contrasting contexts, and recommends new avenues for ACW-inspired discussion. Advancing debate and dialogue between Jews, Muslims and Christians, this volume promotes a distinctive methodology for inter-religious studies, and serves as an invaluable resource for students and scholars of theology and religious studies. (shrink)