Dynamic Forces
Religious Populism: A Comparative Analysis of Greece's "NIKI" and Turkey's "AKP"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stavroula Koskina
This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of religious populism by examining the Greek political party "NIKI" and Turkey's "Justice and Development Party" (AKP) through the lens of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. The study explores how both parties construct their political identities and mobilize support by intertwining religious rhetoric with populist narratives. Employing a discourse-theoretical approach, the analysis delves into the articulation of "the people" versus "the elite," the antagonisms and equivalences formed, and the hegemonic projects pursued by each party. The findings reveal that while NIKI and AKP operate within distinct cultural and political contexts, they both utilize religious symbolism to forge a unified populist front, challenge secularist establishments, and legitimize their political agendas. This comparative examination contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of religious populism in different socio-political landscapes and underscores the versatility of Laclau and Mouffe's framework in analyzing contemporary populist movements.
Reform or Restore?: Christian Conservatives, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Future of American Constitutional Rights
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jason Whitehead
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in the Dobbs case, Christian conservatives and the new conservative Supreme court majority seemed united. But a conflict is brewing between “reformist” and “restorationist” wings of judicial conservatism, which could produce radical changes for the court and the nation. Judicial “reformers” seek legal changes within existing doctrines and precedents. For example, Justice Alito’s Dobbs majority opinion accepted other unenumerated constitutional rights, but he said abortion threatened “potential life” in a unique way. “Restorationists,” by contrast, want to return constitutional law to its (largely imagined) Christian founding values by eliminating all contrary doctrines. For example, Justice Thomas’s Dobbs concurrence rejected unenumerated constitutional rights altogether because their discernment relies too much on judicial subjectivity. The roots of this reformist-restorationist divide run deep. Judicial reformism relies on the theory of Legal Positivism, which eschews all judicial value judgments. By contrast, Christian restorationists blame positivism for elevating subjective opinions over objective, unchanging moral norms. They want judges to adhere to those moral norms and abandon any contrary legal doctrines and rights. Christian conservative legal organizations were once content with positivist reformism, because it conferred intellectual respectability on them while still chipping away at ungodly precedents and doctrines. But Christian conservative legal organizations are increasingly abandoning reformism and embracing restorationism in their legal arguments. This Christian restorationist trend, I argue, will increasingly lead to majority opinions rolling back other constitutional rights, such as the right to marry, contracept, and express alternative sexualities and gender expressions.
Conceptualizing Spirits: Studies from Africa
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sanaa Riaz
Spirits occupy a world that simultaneously dwells between the divine and the earthly binary, while speaking to all forces of nature, marginality and extremity in between. In this paper, I discuss the conceptualizations and social agency of spiritual beings. To do justice to the diverse ways in which mythology, popular beliefs and interpretation of spirits is done across the globe, I use ethnographic examples from Africa in particular. The paper highlights how a prevailing social consciousness of the spirits reflects the transience and fluidity of human life. An examination of the nature and role of spirits in Africa allows one to understand the ways in which colonial influences brought by Catholicism and Islam added to the repertoire and syncretic imaginations of spirits. It is important to see the conceptualization of spirits in unison with sorcery and spirit possession, central to voodoo practices, also because they speak volumes about the experiences of slavery and marginalization. A discussion on spirits also requires examining the rituals and mediational forces and their performance that allow participants to safely and morally tackle adversity, voicelessness and embrace social harmony.
