A global transformation of modes of religious authority has been taking place at an increasing pace in recent years. The social and political implications of the growing dominance of neo-scripturalist discourses on Islam have been particularly noticeable after 11 September 2001. This evolution of religiosity, which is mediated by mass media and new media technology, creates the conditions of existence of a post-Weberian and post-Durkheimian order. In this new social context, legitimacy can be more easily disconnected from the institutionalized framework (...) of religious and political authority. Both in Muslim countries and in Western democracies, the attempt by Islamic activists to make the Shari’a relevant in contemporary settings creates new opportunities and challenges for legal pluralism. At the same time, the multiplication of Muslim voices claiming to be able to interpret the sacred texts, particularly in virtual communities, creates an increasingly inchoate ‘noise’ about Islamic orthodoxy. In the context of an exponential increase in the global possibilities for religious identification and expression, the growth of neo-scripturalist interpretations of Islam reflects a quest for parsimony and stability. (shrink)

De toutes les émotions, la colère est l’une des plus puissantes. Elle s’accompagne de nombreux autres affects – indignation, culpabilité, amertume, ressentiment, haine, désir de vengeance – devenus les dénominateurs communs d’une globalisation confuse. Violences politiques et terrorismes transnationaux, soulèvements populaires et protestations « indignées » à travers le monde, insurrections armées au long cours, montée des populismes et reflux des nationalismes, regains et consolidations autoritaires, haine de l’« autre », interminables guerres civiles et conflits gelés, rancœurs sociétales nouvelles comme (...) plus anciennes, belligérances numériques inédites… Inexorablement, sous nos yeux, c’est la colère qui semble dévorer une globalisation que d’aucuns qualifiaient autrefois d’« heureuse ». Cet article analyse ce qu’est « être en colère » et tente d’en saisir les rapports complexes au « global ». Assiste-t-on à un phénomène passager ou cet emportement général, visible partout, a-t-il déjà mué en logique durable? De quelle « globalisation » la colère est-elle le nom? (shrink)

The neo‐Gramscian framework offers one of the more innovative contributions to a discipline long embedded in the self‐same verities of behaviouralism, positivism and neo‐Realism. As with conventional wisdom, however, neo‐Gramscians reproduce either assumptions of liberal neutrality or cultural thickness in relation to the ‘peripheral zones’ of the global political economy. These tendencies produce a variant that can be likened to ‘soft Orientalism’. In the first instance, cultural difference is not much of an impediment to the establishment of (West‐centred) global hegemony. (...) In the second instance, otherness becomes the principal source of counter‐hegemonic movements or resistance. This article provides a Gramscian rereading of these antinomies in relation to the apparent consolidation of a natural attitude towards Islam in the wake of recent dramatic events. (shrink)