Search Results

The relationship between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas has become a hotly debated issue, with several scholars arguing that John and Thomas are gospels in conflict. The first part of this book argues that the two gospels were written about the same time, but without knowledge of each other. Their authors drew upon similar Jewish and early Christian traditions independently from each other. The second part is devoted to the enigmatic ‘disciple Jesus loved’ in the Gospel of John, arguing that this disciple was created not only to authenticate this gospel, but also to replace the brothers of Jesus. Hence, this figure was developed in the context of a conflict, but that conflict was not related to Thomasine Christianity but to Jewish Christianity.

This work argues for a liberal account of multiculturalism, which draws on a liberalism of fear, like that articulated by Judith Shklar and inspired by Montesquieu. Liberalism should not be centrally concerned either with preserving or with transcending cultural communities, practices, and identities. Rather, it should focus on mitigating evils such as interethnic civil wars, cruel practices internal to cultural communities, and state violence against ethnic minorities. This ‘multiculturalism of fear’ must be grounded in the realities of ethnic politics and ethnic conflict. It must therefore take seriously the importance, which persons feel their ethnic identities and cultural practices to have, without falling into a celebration of cultural belonging. Levy argues against nationalist and multicultural theories that accord significant moral weight to cultural communities as such. Yet he also insists that the challenges of life in a multicultural world cannot be met with appeals to cosmopolitanism, with attempts to deny the importance that particularist identities and practices have to individual persons and to social life. The book applies the multiculturalism of fear to a variety of policy problems confronting multi‐ethnic states. These include the regulation of sexist practices internal to cultural communities, secession and national self‐determination, land rights, customary law, and the symbols and words used by the state, including official apologies. It draws on cases from diverse states such as Australia, Canada, Israel, India, South Africa, and the US.

The book is the first in-depth ethnographic study of churched religion in the Pacific Northwest. It describes and explains how Protestant churches survive and thrive in the most unchurched region of the country. The study is based on nearly 450 interviews from thirty-four vital liberal and evangelical Protestant churches in the Pacific Northwest. These two sets of congregations embody separate moral worldviews and the study shows how these moral worldviews conflict, compete, and, on rare occasions, find common ground in five areas: ideology; religious beliefs; organizational and ritual life; mission (both local and international), and finally, how each relates to the politics of the region and nation. Evangelicals have dominated the public discourse on American religious life and politics over the last decade; it has become popular to accuse them of advocating an American theocracy. There was no evidence for this claim in the data from this study. Evangelicals do want influence — focusing intense energy on a political culture to nurture families — but they express the same intense distrust of the government that was found among liberals. Moreover, the study found relative disinterest on the part of liberals in influencing the public square. There was little consensus among liberals in protesting the Iraq War. Nonetheless, liberals were committed to a “moral culture” like evangelicals, though with distinctively different values — embracing a culture of inclusiveness and hospitality for homosexuals, the homeless, and the hungry.

Currently, International Humanitarian Law (IHL) also known as the law of armed conflict, makes the distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts. International armed conflicts are regulated by more treaties than their non-international counterparts. Furthermore, the regulation of international armed conflicts is also considerably more comprehensive than that offered for participants in and victims of non-international armed conflicts. This book asks whether the legal distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts remains viable or whether international law should move to maintain its consonance with the situations it seeks to regulate by developing a unified legal regime applicable in all armed conflicts. There is considerable precedent to support moves towards the elimination of the legal distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts. This book argues that IHL, a law which has, as one of its primary aims, the protection of the person in times of armed conflict, should not distinguish between types of armed conflict, specifically in how the law treats the vulnerable in times of armed conflict – those hors de combat due to illness and injury, and those deprived of their liberty through capture or surrender

This book examines the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council in the management of conflicts in Namibia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. It sets forth three main arguments. Firstly, that informal groups of states are agents of incremental change. They proliferated in the 1990s out of the increasing demands on the United Nations to adapt to the new security environment of the post-bipolar world, without formally changing the constitutional foundation of the Organization. Secondly, that informal mechanisms may narrow the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple incapacities that prevent the Security Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. Informal groups of states may enhance Council governance if they strike a balance between competing demands of inclusiveness, efficiency, informality, transparency, and accountability. Thirdly, that the post-Cold War era has fostered an environment where the substance of conflict resolution and the process of its legitimation have become increasingly detached. The former tends to be delegated to informal groups or coalition of states, while the Security Council provides the latter. The successful merger of right process and substantive outcome may strengthen the legitimacy of the Council and make actions taken by informal settings more acceptable.

While an old doctrine of Just War exists, surprisingly little conceptual thinking has gone into what constitutes a Just Peace. This book presents various — and at times conflicting — viewpoints on this question of Just Peace from perspectives originating in political science, history, international law, political philosophy, cultural studies, and theology, as well as from a policy perspective. The book challenges a liberal perception of peace founded on norms claiming universal scope, and instead looks to negotiation for arriving at shared views that help build a consensus on what justice might mean in specific circumstances. Although some contributors explicitly outline and advocate specific cases for ‘justifiable violence’, it is made clear that alternative and non-violent ways to peace need to be contemplated, and conceptualized. Even though the path through justice is a demanding one, its accomplishment opens the way to a durable settlement accepted by the parties initially engaged in conflict. Clearly, the more ambitious goal of peace with justice can lead to smaller chances for success. It may even derail the whole enterprise and keep the flames of violent conflict alive through the search for ‘justice’, particularly because this concept is not necessarily the same for all concerned parties. Ultimately, an inter-subjective consensus needs to be built through negotiation with both parties to a conflict so that the concepts of shared history, and an often inextricable future, can be reached with a mutual understanding. In this collective process, it is more likely that a stable foundation can be created through recognition, renouncement, and rule, and thus a Just Peace can be achieved.

This book provides an updated theory of the nature of anxiety and the brain systems controlling anxiety, combined with a theory of hippocampal function, which was first proposed thirty years ago. While remaining controversial, the core of this theory, of a ‘Behavioural Inhibition System’, has stood the test of time, with its main predictions repeatedly confirmed. Novel anti-anxiety drugs share none of the side effects or primary pharmacological actions of the classical anti-anxiety drugs on the actions of which the theory was based; but they have both the behavioural and hippocampal actions predicted by the theory. This text is the second edition of the book and it departs significantly from the first. It provides, for the first time, a single construct — goal conflict — that underlies all the known inputs to the system; and it includes current data on the amygdala. Its reviews include the ethology of defence, learning theory, the psychopharmacology of anti-anxiety drugs, anxiety disorders, and the clinical and laboratory analysis of amnesia. The cognitive and behavioural functions in anxiety of the septo-hippocampal system and the amygdala are also analysed, as are their separate roles in memory and fear. Their functions are related to a hierarchy of additional structures — from the prefrontal cortex to the periaqueductal gray — that control the various forms of defensive behaviour and to detailed analysis of the monoamine systems that modulate this control. The resultant neurology is linked to the typology, symptoms, pre-disposing personality and therapy of anxiety and phobic disorders, and to the symptoms of amnesia.

After 1949, the British Empire in Hong Kong was more vulnerable than the lack of Chinese demand for return and the success of Hong Kong's economic transformations might have suggested. Its vulnerability stemmed as much from Britain's imperial decline and America's Cold War requirements as from a Chinese threat. It culminated in the little known ‘1957 Question’, a year when the British position in Hong Kong appeared more uncertain than any time since 1949. This is the first scholarly study that places Hong Kong at the heart of the Anglo–American relationship in the wider context of the Cold War in Asia. Unlike existing works, which tend to treat British and US policies in isolation, this book explores their dynamic interactions — how the two allies perceived, responded to, and attempted to influence each other's policies and actions. It also provides a major reinterpretation of Hong Kong's involvement in the containment of China. The author argues that, concerned about possible Chinese retaliation, the British insisted and the Americans accepted that Hong Kong's role should be as discreet and non-confrontational in nature as possible. Above all, top decision-makers in Washington evaluated Hong Kong's significance not in its own right, but in the context of the Anglo–American relationship: Hong Kong was seen primarily as a bargaining chip to obtain British support for US policy elsewhere in Asia. Using a variety of British and US archival material as well as Chinese sources, the author examines how the British and US government discussed, debated, and disagreed over Hong Kong's role in the Cold War, and reveals the dynamics of the Anglo–American alliance and the dilemmas of small allies in a global conflict.

In 1993, when Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin sealed the Oslo peace agreement, it was heralded as the beginning of a new era in the Middle East peace process. Instead, violence on both sides has continued to plague the region. The brutal facts on the ground have called into question the style of diplomacy that saw its greatest triumph with the Oslo Accords. This book asserts that the failure of the peace process stems in large part from its complete neglect of cultural and religious factors; attempted solutions have ignored the basic needs and values of average people. The author argues for a far greater integration of the religious communities of the region into peace‐building efforts. Drawing on his own personal experience with religion‐based peace initiatives in Israel and Palestine, he writes of the individuals and groups that are already attempting such reconciliations. He offers a detailed prescription for future negotiations using methods specifically designed to undermine the appeal of religious extremists by subtly incorporating religious values and symbols into the procedures of official and unofficial diplomacy, believing that a combination of secular and religious methods of peacemaking will yield a rich and creative model for conflict resolution. Any effort at peacemaking that fails to take into account the deep religious feelings of Muslims, Jews, and Christians is destined to fail. Only by including religion in the peace process can we move past fragile and superficial agreements and toward a deep and lasting solution. The book is arranged in two parts – Analysis, and Practical applications.

Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Prize “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” This came after he had taught a game theory and rational choice course for forty-five years at an advanced level. This book presents the concepts Schelling taught as they are useful tools for understanding decisions and consequences. Mathematics often makes game theory challenging but it is presented as something very simple in this book. Along with a summary of the material Schelling presented this book looks at problems from his course and similar less challenging questions. While considerable analysis is carried out with the basic game theory tool—the two-by-two matrix—much of the book is descriptive and rational decision-making is presented through stories and explanation. Chapter supplements are added to illuminate points presented by Schelling and two chapters are case studies for detailed analysis of strategic thinking. The story of professional basketball coach Phil Jackson concerns the conflict between self-interest and group interest of star players in a multi-person form of the prisoner's dilemma. The second study illustrates the most dangerous decision-making moment in history, the Cuban missile crisis. This book is based on Thomas Schelling's course, which has provided guidance and insight to a great number of people around the world in academic and leadership positions.

This book explores the challenges that culturally plural liberal states face when they hold competing political commitments to cultural rights and sexual equality, and advances an argument for resolving such dilemmas through democratic dialogue and negotiation. Exploring recent examples of gendered cultural conflicts in South Africa, Canada, and Britain, this study shows that there is an urgent need for workable strategies to mediate the antagonisms between the cultural practices and arrangements of certain ethno-cultural and religious groups, and the norms and constitutional rights endorsed by liberal states. Yet such strategies will be successful only insofar as they can resolve conflicts without either reinforcing women’s subordination within cultural communities or unjustly dismissing calls for cultural recognition and forms of self-governance. To this end, the book develops an approach to mediating cultural tensions that takes seriously the demands for justice by cultural and religious minorities in liberal democratic states. Grounded in an argument for democratic legitimacy, this approach invokes norms of political inclusion and democratic dialogue, and highlights negotiation and compromise as the best vehicles for arriving at resolutions to conflicts of cultural value. However, the book also reconceives the basis of democratic legitimacy so as to include not merely formal expressions of political consent, but also a range of informal democratic activities that occur in the private and social spheres, from acts of cultural reinvention and subversion to outright expressions of dissent and cultural refusal.

This book addresses some of the special challenges that arise when two or more national communities share the same (multinational) state. As a work in normative political philosophy, its principal aim is to evaluate the political and institutional choices of citizens and governments in states with rival nationalist discourses and nation-building projects. The first chapter takes stock of a decade of intense philosophical and sociological debates about the nature of nations and nationalism. The remainder of the book focuses on the three major political and institutional choices in multinational states. First, what can political actors and governments legitimately do to shape citizens’ national identity or identities? This is the core question in the ethics of nation-building. Second, how can minority and majority national communities each be given an adequate degree of self-determination, including equal rights to carry out nation-building projects, within a democratic federal state? Finally, even in a world where most national minorities cannot have their own state, how should the constitutions of multinational federations regulate secessionist politics within the rule of law and the ideals of democracy?

Religious free exercise conflicts occur when religiously compelled behavior (whether action or inaction) appears to violate a law that contraindicates or even criminalizes such behavior. Fearful of the anarchy of religious conscience, the U.S. Supreme Court opted instead for authoritarianism in this church and state matter: The state's need for civil order is conclusively presumed to be achieved by enforcing uniform obedience to generally applicable laws, and thus legislation must trump the human and constitutional right to religious freedom. Rejecting the Court's unthinking rigorism, the book more appropriately views a free exercise case as a conflict of principles or “goods”: the basic constitutional and human right to freedom of conscience and religious freedom versus the societal good furthered and protected by the legislation. The book recommends an alternative analytical free exercise process grounded within the common law tradition as well as social ethics: casuistry. Casuistical reasoning requires a careful analysis of the particulars and factual context of the case, and relies upon analogies and paradigmatic illustrations to get to the heart of the principles at issue. The book furthermore explores the panoply of theories, self‐understandings, typologies, contexts, and societal constructs at play in free exercise conflicts, and in the final chapters applies casuistry to two free exercise situations, spiritual healing methods applied to children, and ingestion of sacramental peyote in Native American Church rituals.