122 research outputs found
The UK's Response to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994
No full textFormer Prime Minister Tony Blair described the UK’s response to the Rwandan genocide as “We knew. We failed to act. We were responsible”; this thesis sets out to explore these three claims. The thesis, which draws on newspaper archives, oral history interviews and government documents obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as British and US official documents already made public, begins by exploring Britain’s knowledge and understanding of events in Rwanda in the build-up to, and during the first few weeks of, the genocide. It then moves on to review how the government responded and, by drawing on various theories of bystander intervention, to build up a multi-factor assessment of what influenced that response. The thesis finishes by addressing the question whether the British government, or indeed any other British foreign policy actor, bears responsibility for the crisis. It therefore looks at the Rwandan crisis from the perspective of various influences on foreign policy: the media, public opinion, Parliament and NGOs, as well as exploring the response of John Major’s government. The thesis concludes that media coverage of the genocide led to a significant misunderstanding of the crisis; this misunderstanding influenced the public response and shaped discussion within Parliament and government. In terms of official response, whilst it has to be acknowledged that the government initially failed to correctly identify the events in Rwanda as genocide and consequently delayed their response until the majority of killings had ended, the thesis shows that rather than failing to act the British government was in fact a leading aid donor to Rwanda and a leading provider of troops to the UN peacekeeping mission serving in Rwanda. This aid did come too late to prevent or halt the genocide, but did save many thousands of lives in the immediate aftermath
His Majesty's advocate : Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (1635-1713) and Covenanter resistance theory under the Restoration monarchy
No full textThis thesis is the first to explore the life and political thought of Sir James
Stewart of Goodtrees (1635-1713). The first part reviews the life of his father, Sir
James Stewart of Kirk field (1608-1681) to 1661, and Goodtrees' own life from birth
to his admission to the Scots bar in 1661. This provides the backdrop of history
necessary to appreciate his contributions as both writer and radical activist.
Particular attention focuses on the conflict between Charles I and Charles II, on the
one hand, and the Church of Scotland, on the other; the National Covenant (1638)
and the Solemn League and Covenant of(1643); the British wars of religion; and
the upheavals following the Restoration in the 1660s, culminating in the Pentland
Rising of 1666.
The next part develops Goodtrees' political philosophy from his two most
important writings. Chapter 3 reviews and interprets Naphtali (1667), a defence of
those who rose at Pentland. Chapter 4 reviews Andrew Honyman's Survey of
Naphtali (1668, 1669), a rebuttal of Naphtali and standard Anglican case for royal
absolutism. Chapter 5 reviews and interprets Goodtrees' Jus Populi Vindicatum, or
The People's Right, to defend themselves and their Covenanted Religion, vindicated
(1669), his rejoinder to Honyman. His Calvinist, covenantal constitutionalism is
shown to be an important link between earlier resistance theorists like John Knox
and Samuel Rutherford and the later Whigs, represented preeminently by John
Locke.
The third part (chapters 6-7) reviews Goodtrees' life and minor writings as radical critic of the Restoration monarchy; a participant in plots among British
exiles in Holland to overthrow it; a member briefly of James's Scottish government
before the Revolution; and lord advocate and churchman pursuing political, legal,
and ecclesiastical reforms afterwards
The Gospel on the Margins: The Ideological Function of the Patristic Tradition on the Evangelist Mark
No full textIn spite of the virtually unanimous patristic opinion that the evangelist Mark was the interpreter of Peter, one of the most prestigious apostolic founding figures in Christian memory, the Gospel of Mark was mostly neglected in the patristic period. Not only is the text of Mark the least well represented of the canonical Gospels in terms of the number of patristic citations, commentaries and manuscripts, the explicit comments about the evangelist Mark reveal some ambivalence about its literary or theological value. In my survey of the reception of Mark from Papias of Hierapolis until Clement of Alexandria, I will argue that the reason why the patristic writers were hesitant to embrace the Gospel of Mark was that they perceived the text to be amenable to the Christological beliefs and social praxis of rival Christian factions. The patristic tradition about Mark may have little historical basis, but it had an important ideological function in appropriating the text in the name of an apostolic authority from the margins or periphery
Community-based risk management arrangements : an overview and implications for social fund programs
No full textRisk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household or individual-specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community-based development funding. The study discusses potential advantages (such as targeting, cost, and informational) and disadvantages (such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk) of these arrangements, and their implications for the design of innovative social fund programs.Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Debt Markets
'Conventions are conventions.....’: Some thoughts about the techniques of direction and misdirection – with particular reference to genre features - in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, and an assessment of their intentions and effects.
No full textThe thesis deals with the development of Nabokov's treatment of a number of the more common routes and courses which are traditionally supplied by the author to ease the passage of the reader through fiction. It attempts to show how these marked paths and familiar signposts - 'melodrama,' 'totalitarian novel,' 'biography,' 'erotic confession,' 'critical edition,' 'family chronicle, 'mystery story,' and 'autobiographical confession' - emerge in the books as equally misguiding and misguided. The satisfactory application of such labels is demonstrated as becoming progressively more difficult as the novels proceed, with a rising degree of sophistication, to incorporate distinctive combinations of genre features usually considered as mutually exclusive. Further inquiries into the manner of fictional orientation and location encouraged by this regular disappointment of apparently familiar leads and landmarks, however, is increasingly seen to disclose the underlying procedures and desires of the reader to place and confine narrative. The manner in which Nabokov's reader is repeatedly obliged to return to a non-metaphorical 'first base' by way of these false trails, which seemingly point towards an authoritative text, and there to re-examine his own imaginative input is also traced..... Dull work recounting all this bores me to death. But yearn as I may to reach the crucial point quickly, a few preliminary explanations seem necessary
The sense of a beginning : Bakhtinian dialogic criticism on 'the gospel' in Mark.
No full textContemporary literary approaches have caused paradigm shifts in Biblical Studies in the last two decades as it appears in a great deal of Markan studies using narrative, reader-response, deconstructive, feminist, and new historicist approaches. However, literary studies on the Gospel of Mark have not taken into account theoretical questions underlying those approaches. As a result biblical critics are driven by new trends without ever having a chance to examine the critical baggage of the approaches. Consequently, there is a gap of communication between the old and the new one. Therefore this thesis is an attempt to meet the need of enhancing the quality of critical endeavour in biblical studies. In the light of most recent competing critical theories of literature, the first contribution of this thesis is the methodological finding that Bakhtinian dialogic criticism contains the most profound philosophical and practical foundations for solving some crucial theoretical problems in contemporary literary theories. It is a critique to a Saussurian linguistic system of language which becomes the very foundation of modern and postmodern literary criticism. Bakhtinian literary theory shifts the foundation of literary criticism on linguistic signs into the creative activity of the socio-cultural production of human communication. The shift into socio-cultural reality of language communication makes the notion of 'genre' very important to unlock the problem of text and context in literary studies. Since the Gospel of Mark has fascinated most literary critics in Biblical Studies, the problem of 'genre' of this gospel is chosen as the focus of this study. Secondly, as no agreement is reached as to what 'genre' the Gospel of Mark belongs, this thesis makes its contribution to the discussion by locating the problem of 'genre' of Mark in the context of genre theories and argues that the Bakhtinian suggestion to find genre in the socio-cultural sphere by analysing artistic intercourse between narrative agents in Mark has freed the competing analysis from the unresolved problem between the kerygmatic (content oriented) approach and the analogical (form oriented) approach. To achieve finding 'genre' in the socio-cultural sphere, this thesis focuses on Bakhtinian analysis of the process of artistic intercourse between narrative agents. The narrative communicative interrelationships between narrative agents is constructed in this thesis as a 'stereophonic' Bakhtinian model of dialogic communication. This model is an original contribution of this thesis for revising the traditional two dimensional model of narrative communication. Based on this dialogical model of communication, a special role is given to the Bakhtinian 'author-creator' in the realization process of genre through the interaction of polyphonic voices. Through the interaction of voices of the author-artist and the hero we are led to discover a relatively stable type of portraying and controlling reality in Mark, known as the genre of Roman 'satire'. The closest literary affinity is Satyrica by Petronius. This narrative strategy of 'satire' in Mark has its root in the prophetic discourse of the Old Testament which is saturating the speech of the narrator, John the Immerser, the centurion, the people, and even Jesus. Finally, the whole search for Markan 'genre' culminates in the analysis of the realization of genre through the analysis of Bakhtinian chronotope. The reality of the genre of Mark is its social reality that is in its role as dpxrj/ 'beginning'. As the Gospel of Mark proclaims itself as 'a beginning', it defines its claim of socio-cultural 'authority' in early Christianity. It is this 'sense of beginning' which enables the narrating and the narrated world of Mark to interact dialogically
The worlds of Arthur Hildersham (1563-1632)
No full textThis thesis seeks to explore the various worlds of early modern spirituality through the lens of one important and influential figure, Arthur Hildersham. Using diocesan, parish, and national records, and a close study of Hildersham’s printed works, it traces the story of one strand of England’s parallel Reformations. Hildersham’s long association with the parish of Ashby-de-la-Zouch provides the opportunity to examine the progress of the puritan Reformation in a particular locality over an extended period. His role as a godly pastor, and the message he delivered to his people, are considered. The thesis attempts to show that the effect of puritanism within a parish community was not necessarily divisive or unpopular, particularly when it was promulgated for many years and supported by a godly patron. Hildersham’s participation in networks of godly sociability and movements for further reformation illustrate how powerful and wide-reaching such associations could be.
As an archetype of ‘Jacobethan’ nonseparating nonconformity,
Hildersham’s career supplies a focus for looking at shifting configurations of conformity and orthodoxy. His ambivalent relationship with the ecclesiastical establishment, it is argued, demonstrates that even the most principled nonconformists had more agency than is sometimes allowed. How Hildersham was able to maintain a position of influence despite his frequent suspensions is examined. Recent studies of puritan culture have challenged a familiar radical/moderate paradigm, and this thesis supports the argument that the boundaries between mainstream puritans like Hildersham and those on the radical fringes were, in practice, blurred. However, it rejects the conclusion that all puritanism was intrinsically radical and that its adherents were incipient heretics. Hildersham’s legacy allows us to explore how a later age fashioned and used the memory of the past. It is hoped that this study will contribute to our understanding of the multi-layered experience of post-Reformation English religion
Book Reviews
No full textROSE COTTAGE CHRONICLES: CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF THE BRYANT-STEPHENS FAMILIES OF NORTH FLORIDA, edited by Arch Fredric Blakey, Ann Smith Lainhart, and Winston Bryant Stephens Jr., reviewed by Brian R. Rucker; THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA AND ITS PREDECESSOR COURTS, 1821-1917, Walter W. Manley II, editor and co-author; E. Canter Brown Jr., contributing editor and co-author; Eric W. Rise, co-author, reviewed by John J. Guthrie Jr.; GLADESMEN: GATOR HUNTERS, MOONSHINERS, AND SKIFFERS, by Glen Simmons and Laura Ogden, reviewed by John J. Guthrie Jr.; BIOARCHAEOLOGY OF NATIVE AMERICAN ADAPTATION IN THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS, edited by reviewed by Dean J. Saitta, Brenda J. Baker and Lisa Kealhofer; SLAVERY & THE LAW, edited by Paul Finkelman, reviewed by Jonathan Lurie; THE DEVIL’S LANE: SEX AND RACE IN THE EARLY SOUTH, edited by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie, reviewed by Marcia G. Synnott; A HARD FIGHT FOR WE: WOMEN’S TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM IN SOUTH CAROLINA, by Leslie A. Schwalm, reviewed by Barbara Krauthamer; COME SHOUTING TO ZION: AFRICAN AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH AND BRITISH CARIBBEAN TO 1830, by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, reviewed by Cynthia Lynn Lyerly; MASTERED BY THE CLOCK: TIME, SLAVERY, AND FREEDOM IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, by Mark M. Smith, reviewed by Alexis McCrossen; MANIFEST DESTINY AND EMPIRE: AMERICAN ANTEBELLUM EXPANSIONISM, by Robert W. Johannsen, John M. Belohlavek, Thomas R. Hietala, Samuel W. Haynes, and Robert . May, edited by Sam W. Haynes and Christopher Morris, reviewed by William Earl Weeks; PENITENTIARIES, REFORMATORIES, AND CHAIN GANGS: SOCIAL THEORY AND THE HISTORY OF PUNISHMENT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA, by Mark Colvin, reviewed by Henry Kamerling; “ONE HELL OF A GAMBLE”: KHRUSHCHEV, CASTRO AND KENNEDY, 1958-1964. by Aleksankr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, reviewed by Frank DeBenedictis; WORKERS’ CONTROL IN LATIN AMERICA, 1930-1979, Edited by Jonathan C. Brown, reviewed by Victor M. Uribe; THE QUIET VOICES: SOUTHERN RABBIS AND BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS, 1880s TO 1990s edited by Mark K. Bauman and Berkley Kalin, reviewed by Mark I. Greenberg; GHOST DANCING ON THE CRACKER CIRCUIT: THE CULTURE OF FESTIVALS IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, by Rodger Lyle Brown, reviewed by Robert E. Snyder; ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN’, by Rick Bragg, reviewed by William W. Rogers; REGION, RACE, AND CITIES : INTERPRETING THE URBAN SOUTH, by David Goldfield, reviewed by Stan Deato
Steering Taste: Ernest Marsh, a study of private collecting in England in the early 20th Century
No full textThe primary aim of this thesis is to focus attention on the bourgeois, 'un-named' collector. The driving force behind most museum and art gallery collections of the Victorian and Edwardian period. British museum and art gallery records of gifted collections, bequests and loans usually note their donors. However, with a few notable exceptions, little is known about the collectors, their activities and motivation in making such presentations.
Using the interests and activities of the Quaker miller and collector Ernest Marsh (1843-1945) as a case study, this thesis explores how in the period 1890-1945 a collector came to be a key agent in the construction and manifestation of taste in British Applied Arts and to a lesser degree in the Fine Arts. Through primary visual and documentary evidence of the Marsh home, and reference to contemporary and later commentaries it considers the relative influences of husband and wife on decorating and furnishing the domestic interior, the evolution of taste, and, for Ernest Marsh, its impact upon his artistic interests within the public arena.
By examination of private papers, metropolitan and provincial art gallery and museum archives it also considers evidence of the inter-relationships between donors and curators, and the mutual advantages and disadvantages accruing to both, particularly focussing on the processes in bringing about changes in individual and institutional collecting policy. Further, by review of records of, in particular, the Contemporary Art Society and the Greenslade archive, it examines the degree to which private benefactors and those in public or semi-public office, acting as fund-raisers and spenders exercise influence through patronage of particular practitioners, choice of works and initiating new designs
Charismata and compassion : Dhinakaran, Charismatic healing and Pastoral Pentecostalism in South India : a practical theological assessment
No full textThis dissertation is a theological assessment of the Jesus Calls divine healing movement as it developed in South India. It analyses the thought of the founder D. G. S.
Dhinakaran, India's pre-eminent healing evangelist and explores its potential and adequacy as a pastoral theology. It draws out Dhinakaran's healing theology and model for ministry that has significantly contributed to Indian mission and attained international recognition. Until now, this movement has received no critical analysis.
The author, a native of South India, as an observer-participant, takes up this task.
The emergence and impact of the modem Pentecostal movement and the `full gospel' with healing as its flagship is discussed. The study highlights lesser-known precursors
and theological roots that give Indian Pentecostalism its distinct identity from the 1906 Azusa Street Revival, USA. It reveals how Charismatic Christianity flourishes due to
its bhakti spirituality, guru leadership, apostolic charismata and practical compassion. The thesis maintains that the dialectic of Pentecostal power and pastoral care is an effective mission strategy and proceeds to demonstrate this in Dhinakaran's ministry.
The research method progressed from a description of Dhinakaran's healing praxis via theological analysis to a critical assessment. It shows some major influences and the
appeal of his prayer movement and argues that the key to its success lies in its highly pragmatic, culturally adaptive and syncretic nature. Three doctrinal concepts that are embodied in Dhinakaran's model are presented: compassion, the wounded healer and healing evangelism, which correlate within a theological apparatus to make
interpretative sense of his praxis resulting in what is termed `Pastoral Pentecostalism'.
The hybridity in Dhinakaran's `miracle healing' is explored within two wider contextual interfaces: the traditional Hindu culture with the shamanic manthiravadi and an imported but adapted version of American faith healing. Here, an easternwestern synthesis is shown to contribute at once to a viable indigenous ministry and to global trends in Charismatic Christianity, allowing each to inform and shape the other. Dhinakaran's distinct prosperity message is located within the Guru movement and assessed against the American health-wealth gospel for pastoral integrity. The thesis advocates a Pastoral Pentecostalism that holds charismata and compassion in creative tension and re-presents Dhinakaran as a significant charismatic healing evangelist
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