Search results

This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that the 1917-1929 anti-religion campaign, carried out by the Bolsheviks in the Russian countryside, was primarily intended to secularize the peasantry. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, this paper analyzes the two main tactics of the anti-religion campaign within the context of spiritual belief in rural Soviet Russia: the persecution of the clergy and the seizure of religious property. I argue that the campaign was not designed to secularize the peasantry, but to undermine the political autonomy of Russian villages.

PUBLISHED ; Religion's effect on individual tendency to engage in political protest is influenced both by the resources available to citizens at the individual level and opportunities provided to religious groups and organizations at the country level. Combining data from last two waves of the World Values Surveys with aggregate data on religious regulation, we show that private religious beliefs reduce an individual's protest potential while involvement in religious social networks fosters it. At the country level, we find that government regulation of religion decreases individual tendency to protest, and has an especially detrimental effect on the likelihood of religious minorities joining peaceful protest activities. These findings are in line with opportunity structure theories that stress the importance of system openness for fostering political protest.

Buddhism in Court is the first English language study of the legal interaction between Buddhism and the state in China. It uncovers a long-overlooked Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges that aimed to make ordained Buddhist monks and nuns immune from facing trials and punishment in the state court.

This book presents a new look at the West by tracing the still-recognizable footprints of the past and reflecting on the present challenges is facing. It recalls the genealogies of the plural processes, ideas, and events that structure the West's tradition and identity, and their presence nowadays.

Savigny hat dem Recht ein «selbständiges Daseyn» attestiert – und damit einen Autonomisierungsprozess eingeleitet, der bis heute andauert. Hierin liegt das eigentlich «Moderne» der von ihm begründeten Wissenschaft. Savignys Gegenspieler ist kein Geringerer als der wohl wichtigste Vertreter des deutschen Idealismus, G. W. F. Hegel, der die «Autonomie» sowohl des Rechts als auch der Kunst bestreitet. Der Autor dieses Bandes untersucht den bis heute schwelenden Streit. Er stößt immer wieder auf das Problem der Epochenbildung und wirft neues Licht auf Savignys Beziehungen zur Frühromantik – dem «nach der Aufklärung zweiten Impuls der europäischen Moderne»