This paper aims to address the difficulties of high school students in bridging their computational understanding with their visualization skills in understanding the notion of the limits in their calculus class. This research used a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design research on 62 grade 10 students enrolled in the Science, Technology, and Engineering Program (STEP) in one of the public high schools in Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines. A series of remedial sessions were given to help them understand the function values, one-sided (...) limits, limits of a function, and its discontinuities with the aid of the GeoGebra. Results revealed that there is a significant improvement in their mathematics performance before and after the remediation, t(61) = -19.99, p<.05. The real-time feedback provided by the drawing interface of GeoGebra has provided the students the insights into how objects behave in geometrical space, bridging their understanding in locating the values shown by the computational algebraic processes. Additionally, the significant difference in the achievement reveals a large effect size (Cohen’s =2.54) which could be accounted for by the remediation using interactive activities in the GeoGebra. (shrink)

Critical remarks on Geo Maher's _Anticolonial Eruptions_.

Villa critically examines, among other topics, the promise and limits of civil society and associational life as sources of democratic renewal; the effects of mass media on the public arena; and the problematic but still necessary ideas of civic competence and democratic maturity."--BOOK JACKET.

Many critics bemoan the lack of civic engagement in America. Tocqueville's ''nation of joiners'' seems to have become a nation of alienated individuals, disinclined to fulfill the obligations of citizenship or the responsibilities of self-government. In response, the critics urge community involvement and renewed education in the civic virtues. But what kind of civic engagement do we want, and what sort of citizenship should we encourage? In Socratic Citizenship, Dana Villa takes issue with those who would reduce citizenship to (...) community involvement or to political participation for its own sake. He argues that we need to place more value on a form of conscientious, moderately alienated citizenship invented by Socrates, one that is critical in orientation and dissident in practice. Taking Plato's Apology of Socrates as his starting point, Villa argues that Socrates was the first to show, in his words and deeds, how moral and intellectual integrity can go hand in hand, and how they can constitute importantly civic--and not just philosophical or moral--virtues. More specifically, Socrates urged that good citizens should value this sort of integrity more highly than such apparent virtues as patriotism, political participation, piety, and unwavering obedience to the law. Yet Socrates' radical redefinition of citizenship has had relatively little influence on Western political thought. Villa considers how the Socratic idea of the thinking citizen is treated by five of the most influential political thinkers of the past two centuries--John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss. In doing so, he not only deepens our understanding of these thinkers' work and of modern ideas of citizenship, he also shows how the fragile Socratic idea of citizenship has been lost through a persistent devaluation of independent thought and action in public life.Engaging current debates among political and social theorists, this insightful book shows how we must reconceive the idea of good citizenship if we are to begin to address the shaky fundamentals of civic culture in America today. (shrink)

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Through insightful readings of Arendt's best-known works, from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) to The Life of the Mind (1978), Dana Villa traces the importance of Arendt's ideas for today's reader. In so doing, Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame (...) with the publication of Origins, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual. A sometimes controversial figure, Arendt is now recognised as one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century and her works have become an acknowledged part of the Western canon of political theory and philosophy"--From the publisher. (shrink)

Many criticisms of epistemic logic have centered around its use of devices such as idealized knowers with logical omniscience and perfect self-knowledge. One possible response to such criticisms is to say that these idealizations are normative devices, and that epistemic logic tells us how agents ought to behave. This paper will take a different approach, treating epistemic logic as descriptive, and drawing the analogy between its formal models and idealized scientific models on that basis. Treating it as descriptive matches the (...) way in which some philosophers, including one of its founders, Jaako Hintikka, have thought about epistemic logic early in its history. Further, the analogy between the two fields will give us a way to defuse criticisms that see epistemic logic as unrealistic. For example, criticizing models of epistemic logic in which agents know all propositional tautologies as being unrealistic would be like criticizing frictionless planes in physics for being unrealistic. Each one would certainly be an unsuitable model for studying some kinds of phenomena, but is entirely appropriate for others. After outlining the analogy between epistemic and scientific models, we will discuss some ways in which idealizations are used by different research programs in epistemic logic. (shrink)

Using a cross‐modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures (...) was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for related gesture–word pairs than unrelated pairs. These results are consistent with the idea of interactions between the gestural and lexical representational systems, such that mere exposure to iconic gestures facilitates the recognition of semantically related words. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean (...) theme of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. (...) class='Hi'>Villa sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Are new democracies with divided government and volatile parties politically ill fated? The literature suggests so, but cases of emergent democracies such as Taiwan and Brazil that face both conditions defy the prediction. This paper explains why: party volatility follows from pursuing distinct executive and legislature agendas under divided government; the political ambition that underlies these conditions sustains democratic and even political performance. We evaluate the argument through government spending in Taiwan. The results corroborate our expectations: they show more parties (...) composing the legislature as government spending favors an executive agenda and neglects a legislative welfare-spending agenda. The findings make three contributions to the literature: first, they reveal a political divide between executive and legislature rather than ideological parties to undercut concerns regarding performance. Second, they demonstrate that the strategic use of government spending to institutionalize party development along an executive agenda fuels party fragmentation. Third, they show that legislators split, switch, or create alternative routes to office in reaction to strategic spending to underscore that ambition underlies party volatility and divided government. (shrink)

This essay takes a critical look at the rubric “age of terror,” a rubric which has enjoyed a certain amount of theoretical and philosophical cachet in recent years. My argument begins by noting the continuity between this hypostatization and contemporary “war on terror” rhetoric, a continuity that is, in certain respects, ironic given the politics of the “age of terror” theorists. It then moves—via Machiavelli, Max Weber, and Hannah Arendt—to a consideration of the topics of state violence (on the one (...) hand) and totalitarian terror (on the other). I use Arendt’s theorization of totalitarian terror for a dual purpose: first, to emphasize the gap between totalitarian terror and the more familiar “terror as means”; second, to question the characterization of recent Islamic terrorism as totalitarian in essence. Arendt’s distinctions between violence, terror and totalitarian terror help us avoid the Schmittian logic installed by advocates of the “war on terror” and by a variety of writers anxious to identify a ill-defined and generic “totalitarianism” as the transhistorical and transcultural “other” of liberalism. Keywords : terror; islamic terrorism; Hannah Arendt; Max Weber; totalitarianism; “Age of Terror”; liberalism; Machiavelli; evil as policy (Published online: 25 August, 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics 2008. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i3.1861. (shrink)

Socially responsible consumption reflects a consumer's political and ethical act. Its measurement is dependent on the socio-economic and cultural context. Consequently, measurement instruments reflecting various behaviour profiles of global consumers have been developed. This study employs a Latin-American-specific measurement instrument to compare socially responsible consumption behaviours in Colombia, Mexico and Peru, countries with the same cultural cluster, that is they reflect a set of values shaped by religion, family, a sense of authority and a nationalist bias in their cultural pattern. (...) The empirical test included confirmatory factorial analysis exercise, factorial invariance analysis and a contrast analysis of variance. The results for the three Latin American countries show the following. (i) The Mexican consumer, compared to the Peruvian and Colombian one, exhibits a stronger tendency to evaluate external practices of corporate social responsibility as a criterion of consumption. (ii) The rationality of the Mexican consumer is better in terms of consumption volume of products, resources and services. Finally, (iii) Peruvian and Mexican consumers (vs. Colombian consumers) exhibit a tendency to assess the responsible practices of companies in labour matters more as a consumption criterion. This study provides empirical evidence of the context-dependent nature of measuring socially responsible consumption. For practitioners, identifying consumer profiles based on the market context enables them to customise goods and services. Moreover, policymakers should implement a sustainable consumption agenda with public policy guidelines tailored to the specific context. (shrink)

This study addressed the questions of perceived importance of social responsibility information (SRI) characteristics in a decision context, as well as the attitudes of institutional investors toward social responsibility involvement. The results showed that SRI presently disclosed in company annual reports did not have any significant impact on institutional investors' decisions. However, if SRI were presented in quantified, financial form, and were focused on product improvement and fair business practices, such information would be perceived as more important for investment decisions. (...) Attitudes toward corporate social responsibility also suggested that institutional investors were not totally opposed to company involvement in social activities. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is that of putting into question the dichotomy between fact-judgments and value judgments in the legal domain, with its epistemological presuppositions (descriptivist image of knowledge) and its methodological implications for legal knowledge (value freedom principle and neutrality thesis). The basic question that I will try to answer is whether and on what conditions strong ethical value-judgments belong within legal knowledge. I criticize the traditional positivist positions that have fully accepted the value-freedom principle and value-neutrality thesis, (...) but I also submit to critical scrutiny the new post-positivist views, that, even if they show interesting conceptual developments on the matter, end up, nevertheless, by presupposing the same epistemological image, while I call descriptivism. I stress that only by giving up descriptivism and accepting constructivism as a general image of knowledge is it possible to see the problem of value-ladenness of legal knowledge in a new light. On the basis of the constructivist image, I present two theses: firstly, at a much broader epistemological level, I advance the minimalist thesis on value-judgments, which simply removes the general ban on treating values as present within knowledge; secondly, I advance the strong thesis on legal value-judgments, which consists in arguing for the necessary presence of ethical value-judgments in legal knowledge. I draw, in the end, some important implications from acceptance of the strong thesis. One of these implications is a new distinction that replaces the traditional distinction between fact-judgments and value judgments, namely, the distinction between value-judgments exhibiting a cognitive function and value-judgments exhibiting a creative function. (shrink)

van Bentham et al. (Merging frameworks for interaction: DEL and ETL, 2007) provides a framework for generating the models of Epistemic Temporal Logic ( ETL : Fagin et al., Reasoning about knowledge, 1995; Parikh and Ramanujam, Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, 2003) from the models of Dynamic Epistemic Logic ( DEL : Baltag et al., in: Gilboa (ed.) Tark 1998, 1998; Gerbrandy, Bisimulations on Planet Kripke, 1999). We consider the logic TDEL on the merged semantic framework, and its extension (...) with the labeled past-operator “ P ϵ ” (“The event ϵ has happened before which. . .”). To axiomatize the extension, we introduce a method for transforming a given model into a normal form in a suitable sense. These logics suggest further applications of DEL in the theory of agency, the theory of learning, etc. (shrink)

Este artigo busca analisar as interpretações mais correntes do conceito nietzschiano do eterno retorno, bem como apresentar uma nova leitura do mesmo enquanto consumação da perspectiva niilista e proposta de um modelo ético baseado no princípio grego do cuidado de si.

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo principal hacer un análisis sobre cuál es el papel que tiene el uso de los dispositivos móviles en la apropiación de los diversos espacios de ciudad, dicho análisis se desarrolla al margen de la investigación sobre el desarrollo de una aplicación para dispositivos móviles que permita el correcto uso de los gimnasios al aire libre en la ciudad de Medellín – Colombia. Esta investigación fue apoyada por los entes nacionales COLCIENCIAS y COLDEPORTES y permitió (...) visualizar cómo los seres humanos han encontrado en sus “gadgets” una nueva forma de estar, sentir la ciudadanía y ser en la ciudad. La era de la información y la cultura de la conectividad, ha catalizado notablemente nuevas posibilidades para la comprensión del espacio público, la aprehensión y comprensión de la ciudad, la conformación de grupos y asociaciones en relación con gustos, actividades y luchas conjuntas, es decir, los dispositivos móviles se están consolidando como la ventana contemporánea, que permite ver, encontrarse y conocer la ciudad o cualquiera de sus actores, con la ventaja de estar siempre al alcance de la mano. (shrink)

Budaya massa, dalam pengertian sederhana adalah “karya kreatif yang dimassalkan, yang diproduksi secara masif, yang ditunjang teknologi dan industri tinggi [...] termasuk model pakaian, fashion, film, televisi, musik pop, lifestyle atau gaya hidup” (hlm. xiii-xiv). Agama, atau lebih tepatnya “tafsir atas agama, atau tafsir atas ajaran agama” (hlm. xiv) dapat menjadi tema karya kreatif itu. Contohnya, terutama, sinetron-sinetron religi bernuansa Islami yang sekarang ini semakin banyak tampil pada layar televisi, tanpa menunggu bulan istimewa Ramadhan. Selain itu, agama juga dapat menjadi (...) sensor untuk menentukan karya kreatif yang pantas dimassalkan lewat media elektronik maupun media cetak. sense yang digunakan oleh para penyensor adalah moral dan ajaran agama, yang dalam keyakinan mereka harus dijaga. Para penyensor ini bukan hanya lembaga sensor, melainkan juga kelompok- kelompok yang menyebut diri pembela agama tertentu. Lembaga sensor menyampaikan larangan; kelompok-kelompok ini menyerukan protes. Mengemban misi menjaga moral dan ajaran agama, para penyensor dan pemrotes lebih sering mengajukan argumen sensor yang tidak masuk akal (doesn’t make sense) alias “ajaib” (hlm. 163) dan konyol. Lebih ajaib dan konyol, mereka, yang mengaku menjunjung agama dan moral, tidak punya sense mengenai ketidakadilan, khususnya yang dialami wanita. Produk budaya massa yang menciptakan image negatif wanita dibiarkan menjejali benak masyarakat. Wanita harus dikendalikan sebab ia binal, nakal—dengan cara diambil hak atas tubuhnya, dibung- kam suaranya, dipermalukan di hadapan publik, dan kalau perlu dira- jam oleh massa, yang adalah laki-laki dan (sama-sama) wanita. Ketidakadilan terhadap wanita, yang dipublikasikan oleh budaya massa dan ajaran agama menjadi sorotan utama Veven Sp. Wardhana di dalam buku ini. Dipublikasikan di sini berarti ditampilkan di ruang publik supaya diterima sebagai sesuatu yang wajar dan sewajarnya oleh masyarakat. Perempuan: seksualitas, sunat, syahwat; Puanografi: Yang Bukan Perempuan (Tak) Ambil Bagian; Televisi dan Fashionista atawa Perempuan Nista; Perempuan di Layar Televisi: Dari Losmen sampai sinema Relijius; dan Catatan sipil, Media Hiburan, dan Fatwa Haram adalah lima judul yang paling sarat dengan gugatan Wardhana atas perlakuan tidak adil terhadap wanita di negeri ini.................. Pembaca perlu mengingat bahwa buku ini merupakan kumpulan delapan belas tulisan Wardhana dari berbagai waktu dan ruang publi- kasi. Oleh sebab itu, ada beberapa pembahasan dan contoh kasus yang muncul berulang-ulang, antara lain, mengenai sensor film Yang Muda Yang Bercinta (1977) karya Sjuman Djaya dan isu perkawinan Bambang- Halimah. Dengan demikian, kedelapan belas judul pada buku tidak merepresentasikan sebuah rangkaian pemikiran yang sistematik. Na- mun, hal ini tidak mengurangi nilai karya Wardhana, tidak pula menum- pulkan kritiknya terhadap keempat penguasa ruang publik: budaya massa, agama, kapitalisme, dan politik. Akhirnya, menyajikan karyanya kepada masyarakat, Wardhana mengajak setiap warga negara ini untuk bersikap kritis terhadap karya- karya kreatif yang dipublikasikan lewat media cetak dan media elek- tronik. Masyarakat tidak perlu menunggu pemerintah dan para kreator budaya massa mengubah haluan dari pembodohan ke pencerdasan. Masyarakat sendiri harus mampu menghentikan proses pembodohan dengan menyeleksi bacaan dan tontonan yang mereka sajikan, dan me- milih hanya yang mencerdaskan dirinya. (Yap Fu Lan, Program studi Ilmu Pendidikan Teologi, FKIP, Universitas Katolik Atma Jaya, Jakarta). (shrink)

In this paper I put forward some arguments in defence of inclusive legal positivism . The general thesis that I defend is that inclusive positivism represents a more fruitful and interesting research program than that proposed by exclusive positivism . I introduce two arguments connected with legal interpretation in favour of my thesis. However, my opinion is that inclusive positivism does not sufficiently succeed in estranging itself from the more traditional legal positivist conceptions. This is the case, for instance, with (...) regard to the value-freedom principle, which is commonly accepted by inclusive positivist scholars. In contrast with this approach, I try to show, in the concluding section, how a constructivistic version of inclusive positivism could legitimately acknowledge the presence of value-judgments in the cognitive activities of jurists and legal theorists. (shrink)

Open Access: This paper will connect literature on epistemic injustice with literature on victims and perpetrators, to argue that in addition to considering the credibility deficit suffered by many victims, we should also consider the credibility excess accorded to many perpetrators. Epistemic injustice, as discussed by Miranda Fricker, considers ways in which someone might be wronged in their capacity as a knower. Testimonial injustice occurs when there is a credibility deficit as a result of identity-prejudicial stereotypes. However, criticisms of Fricker (...) have pointed out that credibility is part of a more complex system that includes both deficits and excesses. I will use these points to argue that we should look closer at sources of credibility excess in cases of sexual assault. This means that in addition to considering sources of victim blaming by looking at ways in which “ideal” victims are constructed, we also need to consider ways in which “ideal” perpetrators are constructed. (shrink)

Resumen:El propósito de este ensayo es analizar en qué manera se producen las elaboraciones de conocimiento social, diferenciando el que es propiamente generado como construcción del mundo social del que, de un modo más específico, tiene pretensión de validez científica. Nuestra intención ha sido hacerlo poniendo el fundamento en esa intuición que se caracteriza por ser una forma de acceso al conocimiento cotidiano habitual, natural, sin complejas elaboraciones, intuitivo, en definitiva, que parece regir los posicionamientos, puntos de vista y percepciones (...) en nuestros días; y lo hace, además, de una forma que puede llamarse estética por las propias conceptualizaciones más clásicas, y también porque la estética parece ser uno de los signos de nuestros tiempos que ha quedado incorporado a los mecanismos por los que se produce el conocer intuitivo. Sobre estas bases, concluiremos proponiendo algunas conceptualizaciones que definan y delimiten la validez de las distintas formas de conocimiento social.Palabras clave: intuición; estética; conocimiento; construcción social; verdad. (shrink)

Historically, the Vienna Circle and the Dessau Bauhaus were related, with members of each group familiar with the ideas of the other. Peter Galison argues that their projects are related as well, through shared political views and methodological approach. The two main figures that connect the Vienna Circle to the Bauhaus—and the figures upon which Galison focuses—are Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. Yet the connections that Galison develops do not properly capture the common themes between the Bauhaus and Neurath’s philosophical (...) projects. We demonstrate this by considering Neurath’s philosophical commitments. We suggest different connections between Neurath’s projects and the Bauhaus, connections that are both substantive and philosophically interesting. (shrink)

Criticism can sometimes provoke defensive reactions, particularly when it implicates identities people hold dear. For instance, feminists told they are upholding rape culture might become angry or upset, since the criticism conflicts with an identity that is important to them. These kinds of defensive reactions are a primary focus of this paper. What is it to be defensive in this way, and why do some kinds of criticism, or implied criticism, tend to provoke this kind of response? What are the (...) connections between defensiveness, identity, and active ignorance? What are the social, political, and epistemic consequences of the tendency to defensiveness? Are there ways to improve the situation? (shrink)

The relation of Hannah Arendt's political theory to Martin Heidegger's philosophy is a fraught topic. This essay explores the basic structure of Arendt's appropriation of Heidegger, the better to defend her theory of political action against oft-repeated charges of elitism and exclusion. In my view, Arendt's critical reading of the canon is deeply indebted to Heidegger, even though her ultimate goal--the recovery of human plurality as a basic and irreducible dimension of politics and the public world--is radically un-Heideggerian in nature.

El presente artículo pretende indagar desde el marco teórico-epistemológico de "imaginario social" de Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997), la subjetivación de la mujer trabajadora en el sistema de educación técnico-profesional en Chile. Se desarrolla una investigación filosófica y cualitativa que incluye análisis documental y entrevistas a sujetos del ámbito técnico-profesional secundario. A través de este marco teórico, desarrollamos las herramientas analíticas necesarias para poder leer e interpretar cómo a pesar de los aires de renovación del sistema técnico-profesional, la oferta política hacia la (...) mujer chilena trabajadora no cambia en realidad el "destino" que pesa sobre ella: ser, dicho peyorativamente "¡Buenas Trabajadoras, Buenas Madres!". This article seeks to investigate since the theoretical-epistemological frame of "social imaginary" of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997), the subjectivity of the hard-working woman in the system of technical-professional education in Chile. It is carried out a philosophical and qualitative investigation including documentary analysis and interviews to subjects of the technical-professional secondary area. Through this theoretical frame, we develop the analytical tools needed to read and interpret how, despite the air of renewal of the technical-professional system, the political supply towards the Chilean woman worker in fact does not actually change the "destiny" hanging over her: to be, pejoratively said "Good Workers, Good Mothers"! (shrink)

The changing situation in South Africa and Eastern Europe prompts Charles Villa-Vicencio to investigate the implications of transforming liberation theology into a theology of reconstruction and nation-building. Such a transformation, he argues, requires theology to become an unambiguously interdisciplinary study. This book explores the encounter between theology, on the one hand, and constitutional writing, law-making, human rights, economics, and the freedom of conscience on the other. Placing his discussion in the context of the South African struggle, the author compares (...) this situation to that in Eastern Europe, and the challenge of what is happening in these situations is identified for contexts where "the empire has not yet crumbled.". (shrink)

I argue that men can be oppressed by virtue of being men; however, our definitions of men and masculinity must be redefined and reclaimed from the dominant white perspective. My claims are: (1) current arguments on the oppression of men simpliciter are misguided as they fail to encompass the experiences of all men; (2) any question regarding the oppression of men must reject the current static and universal definition of men; (3) the oppression of men is an instantiation of structural (...) oppression that allows for men to be both privileged and oppressed in different, forms, degrees, and dimensions; (4) the oppression of Latino men qua Latino men is an example of men being oppressed as men. Therefore, (5) we must redefine and reclaim the definition of “men” and “masculinity.” Last, (6) this redefinition cannot be done a priori but must use intersectionality as a regulative method to illuminate the oppression of men that remains obscured in other, one-dimensional approaches to the topic of the oppression of men. (shrink)