The Republic Unsettled

The Republic Unsettled

Author: Mayanthi L. Fernando

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2014-09-19

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0822376288

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In 1989 three Muslim schoolgirls from a Paris suburb refused to remove their Islamic headscarves in class. The headscarf crisis signaled an Islamic revival among the children of North African immigrants; it also ignited an ongoing debate about the place of Muslims within the secular nation-state. Based on ten years of ethnographic research, The Republic Unsettled alternates between an analysis of Muslim French religiosity and the contradictions of French secularism that this emergent religiosity precipitated. Mayanthi L. Fernando explores how Muslim French draw on both Islamic and secular-republican traditions to create novel modes of ethical and political life, reconfiguring those traditions to imagine a new future for France. She also examines how the political discourses, institutions, and laws that constitute French secularism regulate Islam, transforming the Islamic tradition and what it means to be Muslim. Fernando traces how long-standing tensions within secularism and republican citizenship are displaced onto France's Muslims, who, as a result, are rendered illegitimate as political citizens and moral subjects. She argues, ultimately, that the Muslim question is as much about secularism as it is about Islam.


Book Synopsis The Republic Unsettled by : Mayanthi L. Fernando

Download or read book The Republic Unsettled written by Mayanthi L. Fernando and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989 three Muslim schoolgirls from a Paris suburb refused to remove their Islamic headscarves in class. The headscarf crisis signaled an Islamic revival among the children of North African immigrants; it also ignited an ongoing debate about the place of Muslims within the secular nation-state. Based on ten years of ethnographic research, The Republic Unsettled alternates between an analysis of Muslim French religiosity and the contradictions of French secularism that this emergent religiosity precipitated. Mayanthi L. Fernando explores how Muslim French draw on both Islamic and secular-republican traditions to create novel modes of ethical and political life, reconfiguring those traditions to imagine a new future for France. She also examines how the political discourses, institutions, and laws that constitute French secularism regulate Islam, transforming the Islamic tradition and what it means to be Muslim. Fernando traces how long-standing tensions within secularism and republican citizenship are displaced onto France's Muslims, who, as a result, are rendered illegitimate as political citizens and moral subjects. She argues, ultimately, that the Muslim question is as much about secularism as it is about Islam.

The Privilege of Being Banal

The Privilege of Being Banal

Author: Elayne Oliphant

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-22

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780226731261

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France, officially, is a secular nation. Yet Catholicism is undeniably a monumental presence, defining the temporal and spatial rhythms of Paris. At the same time, it often fades into the background as nothing more than "heritage." In a creative inversion, Elayne Oliphant asks in The Privilege of Being Banal what, exactly, is hiding in plain sight? Could the banality of Catholicism actually be a kind of hidden power? Exploring the violent histories and alternate trajectories effaced through this banal backgrounding of a crucial aspect of French history and culture, this richly textured ethnography lays bare the profound nostalgia that undergirds Catholicism's circulation in non-religious sites such as museums, corporate spaces, and political debates. Oliphant's aim is to unravel the contradictions of religion and secularism and, in the process, show how aesthetics and politics come together in contemporary France to foster the kind of banality that Hannah Arendt warned against: the incapacity to take on another person's experience of the world. A creative meditation on the power of the taken-for-granted, The Privilege of Being Banal is a landmark study of religion, aesthetics, and public space.


Book Synopsis The Privilege of Being Banal by : Elayne Oliphant

Download or read book The Privilege of Being Banal written by Elayne Oliphant and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: France, officially, is a secular nation. Yet Catholicism is undeniably a monumental presence, defining the temporal and spatial rhythms of Paris. At the same time, it often fades into the background as nothing more than "heritage." In a creative inversion, Elayne Oliphant asks in The Privilege of Being Banal what, exactly, is hiding in plain sight? Could the banality of Catholicism actually be a kind of hidden power? Exploring the violent histories and alternate trajectories effaced through this banal backgrounding of a crucial aspect of French history and culture, this richly textured ethnography lays bare the profound nostalgia that undergirds Catholicism's circulation in non-religious sites such as museums, corporate spaces, and political debates. Oliphant's aim is to unravel the contradictions of religion and secularism and, in the process, show how aesthetics and politics come together in contemporary France to foster the kind of banality that Hannah Arendt warned against: the incapacity to take on another person's experience of the world. A creative meditation on the power of the taken-for-granted, The Privilege of Being Banal is a landmark study of religion, aesthetics, and public space.

Unsettled Land

Unsettled Land

Author: Sam W. Haynes

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-05-03

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1541645405

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A bold new history of the origins and aftermath of the Texas Revolution, revealing how Indians, Mexicans, and Americans battled for survival in one of the continent’s most diverse regions The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land, historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. He shows how the lives of ordinary people—white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those of African descent—were upended by extraordinary events over twenty-five years. After the battle of San Jacinto, racial lines snapped taut as a new nation, the Lone Star republic, sought to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved. This is a revelatory and essential new narrative of a major turning point in the history of North America.


Book Synopsis Unsettled Land by : Sam W. Haynes

Download or read book Unsettled Land written by Sam W. Haynes and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new history of the origins and aftermath of the Texas Revolution, revealing how Indians, Mexicans, and Americans battled for survival in one of the continent’s most diverse regions The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land, historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. He shows how the lives of ordinary people—white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those of African descent—were upended by extraordinary events over twenty-five years. After the battle of San Jacinto, racial lines snapped taut as a new nation, the Lone Star republic, sought to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved. This is a revelatory and essential new narrative of a major turning point in the history of North America.

The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown

The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown

Author: Anna Keay

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2022-03-03

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0008282048

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THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE Eleven years when Britain had no king.


Book Synopsis The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown by : Anna Keay

Download or read book The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown written by Anna Keay and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE Eleven years when Britain had no king.

Unsettling Utopia

Unsettling Utopia

Author: Jessica Namakkal

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2021-08-17

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0231552297

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After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, there remained five scattered territories governed by the French imperial state. It was not until 1962 that France fully relinquished control. Once decolonization took hold across the subcontinent, Western-led ashrams and utopian communities remained in and around the former French territory of Pondicherry—most notably the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Auroville experimental township, which continue to thrive and draw tourists today. Unsettling Utopia presents a new account of the history of twentieth-century French India to show how colonial projects persisted beyond formal decolonization. Through the experience of the French territories, Jessica Namakkal recasts the relationships among colonization, settlement, postcolonial sovereignty, utopianism, and liberation, considering questions of borders, exile, violence, and citizenship from the margins. She demonstrates how state-sponsored decolonization—the bureaucratic process of transferring governance from an imperial state to a postcolonial state—rarely aligned with local desires. Namakkal examines the colonial histories of the Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville, arguing that their continued success shows how decolonization paradoxically opened new spaces of settlement, perpetuating imperial power. Challenging conventional markers of the boundaries of the colonial era as well as nationalist narratives, Unsettling Utopia sheds new light on the legacies of colonialism and offers bold thinking on what decolonization might yet mean.


Book Synopsis Unsettling Utopia by : Jessica Namakkal

Download or read book Unsettling Utopia written by Jessica Namakkal and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, there remained five scattered territories governed by the French imperial state. It was not until 1962 that France fully relinquished control. Once decolonization took hold across the subcontinent, Western-led ashrams and utopian communities remained in and around the former French territory of Pondicherry—most notably the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Auroville experimental township, which continue to thrive and draw tourists today. Unsettling Utopia presents a new account of the history of twentieth-century French India to show how colonial projects persisted beyond formal decolonization. Through the experience of the French territories, Jessica Namakkal recasts the relationships among colonization, settlement, postcolonial sovereignty, utopianism, and liberation, considering questions of borders, exile, violence, and citizenship from the margins. She demonstrates how state-sponsored decolonization—the bureaucratic process of transferring governance from an imperial state to a postcolonial state—rarely aligned with local desires. Namakkal examines the colonial histories of the Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville, arguing that their continued success shows how decolonization paradoxically opened new spaces of settlement, perpetuating imperial power. Challenging conventional markers of the boundaries of the colonial era as well as nationalist narratives, Unsettling Utopia sheds new light on the legacies of colonialism and offers bold thinking on what decolonization might yet mean.

Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe

Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe

Author: Kristen Ghodsee

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-07-27

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1400831350

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Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion. Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.


Book Synopsis Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe by : Kristen Ghodsee

Download or read book Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe written by Kristen Ghodsee and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion. Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.

Torn Country

Torn Country

Author: Zeyno Baran

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780817911461

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Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country's destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey's secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm-a separation that is now in jeopardy.


Book Synopsis Torn Country by : Zeyno Baran

Download or read book Torn Country written by Zeyno Baran and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country's destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey's secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm-a separation that is now in jeopardy.

Underwriters of the United States

Underwriters of the United States

Author: Hannah Farber

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-10-28

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1469663643

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Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. The international information they gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state building and economic development. During the Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation's institutional fabric. By the early nineteenth century, insurers were no longer just risk assessors. They were nation builders and market makers. Deeply and imaginatively researched, Underwriters of the United States uses marine insurers to reveal a startlingly original story of risk, money, and power in the founding era.


Book Synopsis Underwriters of the United States by : Hannah Farber

Download or read book Underwriters of the United States written by Hannah Farber and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. The international information they gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state building and economic development. During the Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation's institutional fabric. By the early nineteenth century, insurers were no longer just risk assessors. They were nation builders and market makers. Deeply and imaginatively researched, Underwriters of the United States uses marine insurers to reveal a startlingly original story of risk, money, and power in the founding era.

Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary

Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary

Author: Meghan Tinsley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 100047173X

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Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary engages with the explosion of public commemorations in Britain and France in the wake of the First World War centenary, alongside the hyper-visibility of British and French Muslims in political and popular discourse. Bringing these two phenomena together, it draws on national commemorations of the First World War centenary in Britain and France, alongside eleven local field sites that foregrounded Muslims, to make sense of how national memory changes when it seeks to include a previously excluded group. Through an identification of three distinct narratives, which correspond to three ways of situating Muslims in relation to the nation—mourning, mobilisation, and melancholia—it intervenes in debates surrounding memory, nationhood, and belonging to make sense of the centenary as an extended exercise in nation-building at a moment when the borders of British and French national identity were openly, and violently, contested. With particular attention to sites of melancholia, the author shows how certain sites disrupt national memory and refrain from producing any cohesive narrative to repair that which has been fractured. An exploration of the ways in which commemoration pushes nations to grapple with their past and present, without prescribing any tidy solution, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in memory studies, nationalism and postcolonial studies.


Book Synopsis Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary by : Meghan Tinsley

Download or read book Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary written by Meghan Tinsley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary engages with the explosion of public commemorations in Britain and France in the wake of the First World War centenary, alongside the hyper-visibility of British and French Muslims in political and popular discourse. Bringing these two phenomena together, it draws on national commemorations of the First World War centenary in Britain and France, alongside eleven local field sites that foregrounded Muslims, to make sense of how national memory changes when it seeks to include a previously excluded group. Through an identification of three distinct narratives, which correspond to three ways of situating Muslims in relation to the nation—mourning, mobilisation, and melancholia—it intervenes in debates surrounding memory, nationhood, and belonging to make sense of the centenary as an extended exercise in nation-building at a moment when the borders of British and French national identity were openly, and violently, contested. With particular attention to sites of melancholia, the author shows how certain sites disrupt national memory and refrain from producing any cohesive narrative to repair that which has been fractured. An exploration of the ways in which commemoration pushes nations to grapple with their past and present, without prescribing any tidy solution, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in memory studies, nationalism and postcolonial studies.

The Majesties

The Majesties

Author: Tiffany Tsao

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-01-21

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1982115521

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In this “bold and dramatic portrayal of characters on the cusp of an impossible choice” (Publishers Weekly), two sisters from a wealthy Chinese-Indonesian family grapple with secrets and betrayal after one of them poisons their entire family. Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, they’ve relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella’s poisoning of their whole clan. As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking act. Was it their aunt’s mysterious death at sea? Estella’s unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their family’s past and the truth about who she and her sister really are? Traveling from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the most spectacular shows at Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourne’s university scene, The Majesties “is a thrilling, tender page-turner” (Krys Lee, author of Drifting House) as well as “a sobering look at the dark side of extreme wealth” (Kirkus Reviews).


Book Synopsis The Majesties by : Tiffany Tsao

Download or read book The Majesties written by Tiffany Tsao and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “bold and dramatic portrayal of characters on the cusp of an impossible choice” (Publishers Weekly), two sisters from a wealthy Chinese-Indonesian family grapple with secrets and betrayal after one of them poisons their entire family. Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, they’ve relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella’s poisoning of their whole clan. As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking act. Was it their aunt’s mysterious death at sea? Estella’s unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their family’s past and the truth about who she and her sister really are? Traveling from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the most spectacular shows at Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourne’s university scene, The Majesties “is a thrilling, tender page-turner” (Krys Lee, author of Drifting House) as well as “a sobering look at the dark side of extreme wealth” (Kirkus Reviews).