Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
42
result(s) for
"Abulof, Uriel"
Sort by:
Taming self-determination
The right of peoples to self-determination lies at the heart of the modern quest for statehood. This century-old principle warrants a world of true nation-states, where national boundaries make state borders, not the other way around. I argue, however, that the concept of ‘self-determination’ has been effectively (ab)used to foil, rather than foster, its original goal, and explain why and how this paradox transpired. In theory, self-determination is a potent ‘speech-act’: by uttering, en masse, their demand for self-determination, people(s) can change their politics, even create new states. In practice, however, powerful actors have tried to tame self-determination – by appropriating this right from the peoples, and delimiting its applicability to oppressed, non-ethnic communities and to substate solutions. In the tradition of conceptual history, this paper traces the dialectal process through which ‘self-determination’ evolved, from its Enlightenment inception, through its communist politicization, to its liberal universalization and its current predicament.
Journal Article
Samson, Unchained
Biblical tales resonate powerfully with Israeli Jews who live with, in and through their religious past, occasionally re-experiencing it, even as they resist it. The article considers the political sentiments of Israeli Jews through the life and death of the biblical Samson in order to revisit the emotional and moral drivers of their public beliefs, behaviors, and identities. I identify the biblical story’s main facets and show how they resonate with Israel’s political sentiments: the fantasy of a sacred supremacy; the mistrust of adversaries from within and without; a fear of humiliation and isolation; and recourse to sacrificial revenge. I suggest that while the Bible has become a bone of contention between secular and religious Zionists, Israel’s “Samsonian” qualities exist in a dialectical process of divergence and convergence over meaning-making. If Israel is Samson in chains, it may be time for liberation in life rather than death after bringing down the Philistine temple.
Journal Article
The pandemic politics of existential anxiety
We all know we will die, but not when and how. Can private death awareness become public, and what happens when it does? This mixed-method research on the Covid-19 crisis reveals how pandemic politics cultivates and uses mass existential anxiety. Analyzing global discourse across vast corpora, we reveal an exceptional rise in global ‘mortality salience’ (awareness of death), and trace the socio-political dynamics feeding it. Comparing governmental pandemic policies worldwide, we introduce a novel model discerning ‘mortality mitigation’ (coping mechanisms) on a scale from steadfast resistance (‘oak’) to flexible resilience (‘reed’). We find that political trust, high median age, and social anxiety predict a reedy approach; and that the oak, typically pushing for stricter measures, better mitigates mortality. Stringency itself, however, hardly affects Covid-related cases/deaths. We enrich our model with brief illustrations from five countries: China and Israel (both oaks), Sweden and Germany (reeds) and the USA (an oak–reed hybrid).
Journal Article
Introduction: Why We Need Maslow in the Twenty-First Century
What is human nature? Are there innate, hierarchical, human needs and motivations? Have they transformed? What are the social-political implications? Over seventy years ago Abraham Maslow submitted “A Theory of Human Motivation” (1943). His subsequent pyramid-shape hierarchy of needs captured the world’s imagination by suggesting that humans are driven by innate needs for survival, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-realization, in that order.
Journal Article
The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation: Judaism and Zionism's Elusive Quest for Legitimacy
Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion (\"secular nationalism\"), (2) nationalism as a religion (\"civil religion\"), (3) religion as a resource for nationalism (\"auxiliary religion\"), and (4) religion as a source of nationalism (\"chosen people\"). Empirically, I analyze the roles of religion in Zionist efforts to legitimate a Jewish state in Palestine. I argue that Zionism has responded to persistent delegitimation by expanding the role of religion in its political legitimation. The right of self-determination, which stands at the core of the \"secular Zionism\" legitimation, has given way to leveraging Judaism, which in turn has been eclipsed by constructing a Zionist civil religion and a \"chosen people\" justification.
Journal Article
‘Can’t buy me legitimacy’: the elusive stability of Mideast rentier regimes
This paper qualitatively revisits the thesis that rentier regimes can draw on their non-tax revenues to buy political legitimacy and stability. Exploring the material/moral interplay in Mideast rentier politics, I show why and how rents may provide for provisional, but not sustainable, stability for authoritarian rentier regimes. I propose distinguishing between negative and positive political legitimacy, the former being about ‘what is legitimate’ (liberty
vs
security), and the latter about ‘who is the legitimator’ (divine/hereditary right
vs
popular sovereignty). Sustainable stability is predicated on having both legitimacies. Rentier regimes, however, often draw exclusively on negative political legitimacy. These regimes can use rents to buy time — through coercion and expediency — contriving an imagery of a lusty Leviathan. But due to the diversity of rents and the temporal shifts in their revenues, this social contract is materially contingent and morally frail — rendering authoritarian rentier regimes, not least in the Middle East, more mortal than they, and many observers, are ready to admit.
Journal Article
Be Yourself! How Am I Not myself?
Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is mostly animalistic; only self-actualization is uniquely human. Yet even this token of \"human exceptionalism\" is hampered by subscribing to essentialist, rather than existentialist, authenticity. If the former is just about recovering an innate, latent, core, it robs humans of their freedom to (re)create who they are. If we dare to choose, we cannot but be ourselves.
Journal Article