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The massive accession to Christian faith in postcolonial Africa is leading to the ongoing creation of distinctively African forms of Christian thought and practice that differ in significant ways from those of the West—a trend anticipated by developments in Black American Christianity. Africana religious studies has been imagined as a field that would “generate credible scholarship on indigenous African religious traditions,” yet the rise of African Christianity raises questions about what constitutes indigeneity. If the Ethiopian church represents “Africa indigenously Christian,” do these more recent developments suggest Christianity indigenously African? Can Christianity be considered indigenously African? Is there a need for Africana religious scholarship to reassess the widespread notion of Christianity as a cultural product of the West and an imposition alien to Africana peoples? If so, what does the rise of African Christianity indicate about both the nature and structure of Christianity, understood as an Africana religion?

Background In the early part of the twentieth century, planning theory and practice always voiced strong opposition to density. The error of this insistence was persuasively argued by Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. Subsequently, planning theory and practice came to recognise the importance of density, but this return to favour requires remaining constantly alert to the possible dangers and pitfalls. Methods Critically considering the traditional and contemporary urban planning literature and the empirical evidence in the recent economic and geographical research, this article investigates the whys and wherefores of density in urban planning. It addresses two main questions: Is urban density really desirable (and why)? Is it effectively manageable (and how)? Results Density per se is meaningless unless it is a tool or condition for achieving something further. And even if the instrumental function of density were to be acknowledged, it is crucial to take into account that density is not solely (or merely) a tool which—in certain conditions—can be useful in reducing commute times and minimising the encroachment on undeveloped land. Its primary advantage concerns favouring the concentrated diverse admix of human preferences, tastes, abilities, know-how, uses, activities, and so forth. Conclusions After having expressly laboured to avoid it for so long, the aim is not to create density directly, but to open the door and allow density to happen in our cities, thanks to more abstract and general planning rules.

In Brazilian cities, perhaps the most disturbing criminal activity is the violence perpetrated by police officers themselves. This article is an invitation and a provocation to reconsider social scientific thinking about police violence in Brazil. Illustrated by a court decision from a Northeastern city, in which a black man won a case against the state for being falsely arrested and abused by a black police officer on the grounds of racism, this article investigates three paradoxes: Brazilians fear both crime and the police; black police beat black civilians; and government officials disavow responsibility by stigmatizing the police on racial grounds. It then proposes an alternative reading of these paradoxes that opens the possibility for rethinking police reform and argues that democratization in Brazil is deeply intertwined with the future of its darkest-skinned citizens.

This article proposes a way to transcend the debate on the critical voice in Ethnography of Communication (EOC) and qualitative communication research more broadly. First, it demonstrates how EOC’s epistemological paradigm may prevent ethnographers from understanding their subjects fully. Secondly, the article offers a Weberian approach to rational interpretation as a resolution, replacing the concept of “culture” as an a priori explanandum with “practical rationality”. This move demonstrates the feasibility of a unified method in the social sciences capable of dismantling the artificial divide between interpretive and post-positivist philosophies and research designs. Finally, the article provides an illustration of the proposed approach based on some ethnographic data from a volunteer setting of open-source civic software production in Israel.

This essay argues that neoliberalism has strengthened the sustainability of democracy in Latin America but limited its quality. Drastic market reform seems to have abetted the survival of competitive civilian rule through its external and internal repercussions. By opening up Latin American countries to the world economy, neoliberalism has exposed them to more of the international pressures for preserving democracy that intensified with the end of the Cold War. At the same time, the move to market economics has weakened leftist parties, trade unions, and other proponents of radical socioeconomic reform, reassuring elites and preventing them from undermining democracy. But tighter external economic constraints limit governments' latitude and thereby restrict the effective range of democratic choice; and the weakening of parties and interest associations has depressed political participation and eroded government accountability. The available evidence therefore suggests that neoliberalism has been a mixed blessing for Latin American democracies.

\"Exploring contemporary debates and developments in Roma-related research and forms of activism, this volume argues for taking up reflexivity as practice in these fields, and advocates a necessary renewal of research sites, methods, and epistemologies. The contributors gathered here - whose professional trajectories often lie at the confluence between activism, academia, and policy or development interventions - are exceptionally well placed to reflect on mainstream practices in all these fields, and, from their particular positions, envision a reimagining of these practices.\"--Provided by publisher.

In 'Approach with caution: critical realism in social research', Andrew Brown sets out a series of criticisms of critical realism from the perspective of systematic dialectics. This current article is one critical realist's reply to Brown.

Critical realism has become increasingly influential in employment relations research and has a presence across the human sciences. This article argues that the critical realist ontology has surface appeal for local and specific case study research but is fundamentally at variance with the nature of the capitalist system. Unlike the immediate appearances of a local and specific site such as the workplace, the main features of the capitalist system (commodities, money, capital, profits, wages, etc.) are analytically inseparable – they can only be defined and comprehended together as a unified whole. Consequently, the critical realist ontology of separable structures in interaction hinders comprehension of the capitalist system. In fact, critical realism corrupts an approach termed 'systematic abstraction' which can aid system-wide theory. Despite claims to the contrary, critical realism thereby obscures the system-wide significance of local and specific cases, blocking progress in social research.

A rebuttal to Michael Billig's (1999) critique of Schegloff's article \"Whose Text? Whose Context?\" (1997) sees Billig's remarks as misrepresentative of the article & of conversation analysis principles & methodology. Selected indictments are answered; conversation analysis positions are distinguished from those of critical discourse analysis. Contrary to Billig, conversation analysis does not exclude discourse characterized by gross evil or injustice. Conversation analysts do not view conversation as naturally egalitarian. Schegloff's use of such terms as \"co-participant\" & \"member\" does not imply that turn-taking is egalitarian, nor do his methods for identifying participants in a transcript. In contrast to critical discourse analysts, conversation analysts investigate how the social world works, rather than thinking they already know. 26 References. E. Taylor

Abstract This article explores the definition of the term meta-poetic and its application to the poetry of the ʿAbbāsid age, focusing on short compositions and excerpts in which poets explicitly voice their critical opinions on poetry. The cultural milieu of the period and the debates and issues that surrounded ʿAbbāsid poetry necessarily influenced poets and their creative processes. ʿAbbāsid poets wrote for an ideal reader/critic not only qualified to appreciate their innovations but also capable of placing their contributions in the continuum of the tradition they were writing against, bringing the relationship with the literary past to the forefront of the poet's concerns.