Journal articles on the topic 'Communisme et religion'

POST-SECULAR EXPERIENCE OF COLETTE PEIGNOT LAURE: RELIGION, COMMUNISM AND THE SACRED Colette Peignot, Laure, is one of those who witnessed the interwar period of profound changes, hopes and deceptions in the most intense manner. Both in her life and work — from the loss of faith and the communist commitment to some sort of mystical experience — she is questioning again and again the relations between religion, politics and the sacred by undergoing a truly post-secular experience. The main purpose of the article is to highlight her experience in its evolution and expression as well as compare it to ideas developed at the same time by Georges Bataille and Simone Weil.

Pourquoi le pays des Soviets a attiré tant d’intellectuels britanniques, de renom, tels J.M. Keynes, G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell ? Confusion des esprits dans le chaos d’après-guerre ? Échec du gouvernement travailliste face à la crise mondiale ? Expérience d’une croyance nouvelle pour des Chrétiens déçus par leur Église ? Les sceptiques envers la religion, comme J.M. Keynes, resteront défiants à l’égard du communisme. Le cas de Béatrice Webb est exemplaire. À vingt ans, une vie sans foi religieuse lui paraît insupportable. Elle découvre la misère sociale de l'East End de Londres, œuvre à la société fabienne, se déclare agnostique, mais ne peut renoncer à une foi perdue. Indifférente envers la révolution bolchevique, elle trouve conforme aux théories fabiennes, le lancement du premier plan quinquennal par Staline, une organisation rationnelle de l’économie. Un voyage en URSS, en 1932, ne la convainc pas entièrement, les statistiques l’ennuient, les procès de Moscou l’ébranlent, mais la nouvelle foi des communistes la rend indulgente envers leurs excès. Le rêve d’une nouvelle civilisation sera brisé par la signature des accords Molotov-Ribbentrop L’envoûtement des intellectuels, de certains hommes d’Église se manifeste dans la référence constante aux Puritains de Cromwell (nouvelle pureté des mœurs, dévotion totale à la cause). Paradoxalement, ces esprits religieux adulent un système qui condamne la religion. Selon G. B. Shaw, la Russie est le seul pays religieux du monde : Luther apprécierait les musées de l’athéisme. Dans les colonnes du New Statesman, on discute du puritanisme en URSS, du comportement chaste de ses citoyens, de leur frugalité, de leur sobriété. Le communiste, comme le puritain, voit dans l’ascétisme le salut de l’humanité. Selon H. G. Wells, amateur d’utopies, la Russie tente de mettre en pratique les idées utopiques les plus insensées ; des îlots d’expériences étonnantes au milieu de la misère, une civilisation moderne in extremis. Ces relations privilégiées cessent avec la génération qui les a entretenues ; la réalité de façade offerte par le pouvoir soviétique aura stimulé leur imagination, en quête d’une issue aux maux dont souffrait leur pays. La génération suivante entreprendra l’édification du Welfare State et du National Health Service.

Imposée voici quarante ans au peuple français à la faveur du triomphe électoral socialiste de 1981, l’abolition de la peine de mort fut alors présentée comme un passage des ténèbres à la lumière. Pourtant, la majorité des Français est aujourd’hui toujours favorable à la peine capitale, dont la suppression revenait à faire passer la vie des assassins avant la vie des innocents. C’est que le refus de la peine de mort se fonde sur une idéologie qui veut voir dans les criminels les victimes innocentes d’une société mal faite, reléguant au second plan la personne assassinée, c’est-à-dire la véritable victime. Cette idéologie anti-pénale, qui conteste à la société le droit de punir les criminels mais lui impose l’obligation de les guérir, n’est qu’une facette de la religion séculière qui a remplacé le communisme comme utopie censée instaurer le bien sur la terre : la religion des droits de l’homme. C’est elle qui est à l’origine du rejet par l’Europe occidentale de la peine de mort, et non pas le christianisme qui y avait vu pendant deux millénaires une prérogative licite de l’État. D’ailleurs, si la peine de mort s’applique toujours aux États- Unis, c’est que la foi chrétienne y reste forte.

- J. van Goor, Rechtzetting. - M.A. van Bakel, A. Appadurai, The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1986. XIV + 329 pp. - C. Baks, Ákos Östör, Culture and power; Legend, ritual, bazaar and rebellion in a Bengali society, New Dehli etc.: Sage Publications, 1984, 224 pp., including notes and glossary. - W.E.A. van Beek, B. Bernardi, Age class systems; Social institutions based on age, Cambridge University Press, 1985, 199 pp. - H.W. Bodewitz, J.-M Péterfalvi, Le Mahabharata. Livres I à V. Livres VI à XVIII. Extraits traduits du sanscrit par Jean-Michel Péterfalvi. Commentaires, résumé et glossaire par Madeleine Biardeau, Paris: Flammarion, 1985 and 1986. 381 + 382 pp., M. Biardeau (eds.) - Paul Doornbos, Raymond C. Kelly, The Nuer conquest - The structure and development of an expansionist system, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1985, 320 pp. - Henk Driessen, Paul Spencer, Society and the dance: The social anthropology of process and performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 224 pp. - D. Gerrets, Daniel Miller, Ideology, power and prehistory, Cambridge: University Press, 1984. 157 pp. numerous figs., Christopher Tilly (eds.) - Peter Kloos, Jacques Lizot, Les Yanomami Centraux, Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris 1984, 267 pp. - Peter Kloos, Jacques Lizot, Tales of the Yanomami; Daily life in the Venezuelan forest, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology no. 55, Cambridge University Press, 1985, 196 pp. - Peter Kloos, H. Zevenbergen, Zwakzinnigen in verschillende culturen, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1986, 109 pp. - Piet Konings, Freek Schiphorst, Macht en Onvermogen: Een studie van de relatie tussen staat en boeren op het Vea-irrigatie project Ghana, Universiteit van Amsterdam, CANSA publikatie nr. 20, 1983, 107 pp. - S. Kooijman, E. Schlesier, Eine ethnographische Sammlung aus Südost-Neuguinea. - H.M. Leyten, Bernhard Gardi, Zaïre masken figuren, Museum für Völkerkunde und Schweizerisches Museum für Volkskunde, Basel, 1986. - J. Miedema, Bruce M. Knauft, Good company and violence: Sorcery and social action in a lowland New Guinea Society, Berkeley, Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1985, X + 474 pp. - David S. Moyer, David H. Turner, Life before genesis, a conclusion: An understanding of the significance of Australian aboriginal culture, Toronto Studies in religion volume 1, Peter Lang, New York, 1983, vii + 181 pp. - B. van Norren, Peter Kloos, Onderzoekers onderzocht; Ethische dilemma’s in antropologisch veldwerk, DSWO Press, Leiden, 1984. - Jérôme Rousseau, Victor T. King, The Maloh of West Kalimantan. An ethnographic study of social inequality and social change among an Indonesian Borneo people, Dordrecht-Holland/Cinnaminson-U.S.A.: Foris Publications, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde no. 108, 1985. viii + 252 pp., maps, diagrams, plates, glossary. - Jérôme Rousseau, Alain Testart, Le communisme primitif, I. Economie et idéologie, Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1985, 549 pp. - Arie de Ruijter, David Pace, Claude Lévi-Strauss. The bearer of ashes, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (Ark Paperbacks), 1986. - B.J. Terwiel, Roland Mischung, Religion und Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen in einem Karen-Dorf Nordwest-Thailands, Weisbaden: Franza Steiner Verlag, 1984. - B.J. Terwiel, Niels Mulder, Everyday life in Thailand; An interpretation, Second, Revised edition, Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1985. 227 pages, paperback. - R.S. Wassing, Sidney M. Mead, Art and artists of Oceania, The Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1983. 308 pp., drawings, black and white illustrations., Bernie Kernot (eds.) - Harriet T. Zurndorfer, Maarten van der Wee, Aziatische Produktiewijze en Mughal India, Ph.D thesis, Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen, 1985. xv + 399 pp. - M.A. van Bakel, J. Terrell, Prehistory in the Pacific Islands. A study of variation in language, customs and human biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1986, XVI + 299 pp.

Cette étude propose une analyse communicationnelle du processus de mise en visibilité digitale d’un militantisme catholique vietnamien suite à la catastrophe écologique « Formosa » qui a eu lieu au Centre du Vietnam en avril 2016. Elle s’appuie sur une approche agonistique honnethienne de la reconnaissance sociale et, par conséquent, sur les travaux d’Olivier Voirol portant sur les luttes pour la visibilité. Ainsi, elle montre que cette mise en visibilité a puisé sa force dans l’articulation d’une triple ressource : la religion catholique vietnamienne (doctrine et organisation ecclésiale), un régime axiologique contemporain autour de la question écologique, et une opérativité performante des médias numériques. Contribuant à l’émergence d’un activisme citoyen et d’une société civile dans un Vietnam contemporain sous régime communiste autoritaire, ce militantisme écologique digital des acteurs catholiques vietnamiens permet d’approfondir la « remédiation » conçue comme une quête de « remède », via le medium numérique, aux préoccupations écologiques et, plus largement, aux problèmes socio-politiques de ce pays vietnamien où cette religion catholique est entre « le ciel et la terre ».

This article analyses the double conversion of a group of Italian women, first to communism then to Catholicism. Offspring of the bourgeois catholic families of Turin, these women became extreme-left activists in the 1960s and 1970s. Today they are active members in traditional catholic milieus: more specifically, they live close to a catholic monastery, carrying out services for the male community. The specific aim of the contribution is to understand whether and to what extent religion influenced the political choice (and vice versa). From a micro-history perspective, the study focuses on the categories of believing, belonging and behaving in both the political and religious communities.

En Pologne, la liberté de conscience et de réligion comme ideé et aussi comme règle juridique est née dans les conditions de l’état confessionnel catholique. Parmi ces conditions, il y avait: l'attachement de la noblesse à la liberté, la diversification de religion de la société, la politique de tolérence des rois Piasts et Jagellons dans les affaires religieuses et, dictée par la raison d’état, non-application de la force en vue de conserver l’unité religieuse de la societé. Aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, la pensée polonaise politique et religieuse a èlaborè la conception très modernę de la liberté de conscience et de religion avec les garanties institutionelles de celles-ci. Elle a trouvé une expression la plus développée chez les ariens, tandis que la confirmation juridique de cette liberté a été apportée par la Confédération de Varsovie en 1573. Grâce à cela, la Pologne constituait longtemps le pays d’asyle pour hérétiques. Après 1918, en Pologne indépendante, la Constitution de 1921 a déclaré à tous les citoyens la liberté bien vaste de conscience et de religion, mais elle n’a pas été soutenue par une législation. La pratique des organes administratifs et judiciers limitait cette liberté par la continuation de l’enseignement religieux obligatoire dans les écoles publiques. Dans la Constitution de 22 juillet 1952, les prescriptions confessionnels se caractérisaient par le niveau très haut de la généralisation. Cela permettait aux autorités de l’Etat communiste de les interpréter toujours d’une manière très arbitraire. A cause de l’absence de la liberté d’expression et de presse, la déclaration constitutionelle de la liberté de conscience n’était qu’une façade. Elle a reçu une nouvelle interpretation grâce aux lois „confessionnelles” du 17 mai 1989, qui ont tenu compte des standarts liberaux et démocratiques des états d’Europe. Dans la IIIême République, deux conceptions opposées de l’état avait l’influence sur le caractre formel et réel de la liberté individuelle et collective de conscience et de religion, à savoir la conception de l’état laïque et neutre dans les causes religieuses d’un côté et celle de l’état confessionnel catholique de l’autre. Les deux conception se manifestaient dans la législation, notamment dans la Constitution du 2 avril 1997, et surtout dans la pratique des autorités de l’Etat, qui ne s’abstenaient guère de 1’ interpretation arbitraire des régies juridiques en vigueur vis-à vis le principe de l’Etat de droit.

The author looks into the revival of Buddhist philanthropy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the last decade. It seeks to tackle the wider question of the social utility of religion in the eyes of the political authorities and to assess the extent to which recent debates on secularization theory may be relevant to the Chinese situation. The emergence of Buddhist philanthropy is coinciding with considerable changes in political, economic and social conditions, characterized by state disengagement from the provision of social services. The author describes various organizations offering assistance to the poor, as well as certain services related to healthcare and education. Yet this rise in Buddhist philanthropy should not be seen as evidence of a “resacralization” process in China because the communist Party-State continues its policy of manifest secularization.

The importance of the early religious commitment of Friedrich Engels, who had such an ambiguous effect on world history, is often recognised but rarely analysed. This article offers a critical treatment of the formative religious experience of the young Engels. His was a (Calvinist) Reformed upbringing and the faith he inherited was taken up with a zeal and exuberance he would later transfer to communism. In the early part of the article, this exuberance is balanced with Engels’s increasing frustrations with the narrow piety of his home town in Wuppertal, a frustration enhanced by his increasing engagement with critical biblical analysis in Germany at the time. The second half of the study deals with two features that would stay with Engels: his sense of the political ambivalence of Christianity, torn between reaction and revolution (as he saw it embodied in his formidable minister, F. W. Krummacher); and his intimate knowledge of the Bible, which would lead to a life-long practice of citing biblical passages at will. In the end, Engels may have lost his Christian faith, but he could not evict Christianity from his life and thought, returning to it again and again to explore its revolutionary potential. L’influence exercée par Friedrich Engels sur l’histoire mondiale demeure ambiguë. Souvent reconnues par les chercheurs, les convictions religieuses du jeune Engels ont rarement été analysées. Cet article offre un regard critique sur l’expérience religieuse du jeune Engels. À la longue, il transformera en communisme la foi calviniste dans laquelle il a été formé, une foi qu’il a assumée avec zèle et exubérance. Dans la première partie de l’article, nous verrons que cette exubérance a été freinée par ses frustrations grandissantes devant la piété étroite de sa ville natale, Wuppertal; des frustrations exacerbées par son engagement avec la nouvelle critique biblique allemande. La suite de l’article traite de deux aspects qu’Engels retient tout au long de sa vie: la conviction que le christianisme (tel qu’il le voyait incarné chez son redoutable curé, F. W. Krummacher) était politiquement ambivalent, divisé entre réaction et révolution; et sa connaissance intime de la Bible, qui lui a permis tout au long de sa vie de citer des passages bibliques à volonté. Même si, à la longue, Engels a perdu sa foi chrétienne, il n’arrivait pas à évincer de sa vie et de sa pensée le christianisme et il y est retourné incessamment dans le but d’en exploiter le potentiel révolutionnaire.

Abstract The issue of religion and Church status in post-communist Romania generates reflections on the elements that legitimize the relationship between the political sphere and the religious phenomenon, as well as the variety of its configurations. One configuration is die normative framework built by the new democratic structures. However, the development of new norms was gradual and presented a certain liquidity. This project aims to examine the reconfiguration of the relations between the political regime and the religious communities through an analysis of the religious presence in the national normative space.

Résumé La notion du sacré s’étend de la réalité substantielle à l’illusion fonctionnelle. Selon nous, la personne humaine en tant qu’être transcendant est un être sacré pour qui la religiosité est un phénomène irréductible; cette personne est aussi un être social. La culture concrétise cette double réalité dans un État, dans une nation. Après 1945, en plus de voir leur existence nationale menacée par une Yougoslavie impérialiste, les Slovènes subirent un régime communiste totalitaire qui voulait créer une société sans classes et un homme libre, mais cette société est plutôt devenue un « sacré » nourri de collectivisme et d’individualisme. L’État et la nation slovènes, en refusant un droit de dénominateur commun à la religion traditionnelle et au mythe de la Narodno Osvobodilna Borna (Lutte pour la libération nationale), se sont soumis aux effets du postmodernisme en raison de leur propre incapacité à vivre leur identité. En se livrant au polycentrisme des valeurs et au plus petit dénominateur commun de la convivialité, les citoyens se reconnaissent aujourd’hui davantage dans la mondialisation que dans les idéaux de leur propre nation.

Liberté de conscience et perestroïka En Union Soviétique l’Eglise est officiellement séparée de l’E tat; de fait ,état’ implique ici ,société’. Le culte religieux est autorisé, mais uniquement à l’intérieur de l’église; par contre, dans la société toute activité religieuse est rigoureusement prohibée. Selon la constitut on l’Etat est a-religieux et non anti-religieux. Mais la réalité est souvent bien différente, car c'est l’athéisme militant qui forme la base du Parti Communiste et celui-ci dirige et oriente la société soviétique. Dès Ie début l’athéisme militant a été la religion d’Etat à laquelle tout citoyen ayant une fonction officielle devait adhérer. L’auteur de l’article explique comment les relations entre l’Eglise et l’E tat se sont développées: les décrets de 1918 et de 1929 concernant la séparation entre l’Eglise et l’E tat, les organisations religieuses et la liberté de conscience. Ensuite il s'arrête aux changements qui se déroulent depuis la perestroïka de Gorbachev et il constate une amélioration dans Ie domaine de l’appréciation intellectuelle de la religion et du renouveau spirituel de l’Eglise. Mais pour réaliser dans l’Eglise une vraie réorganisation structurelle, depuis la direction jusqu’ à la base, il faudra une nouvelle législation sur la liberté de conscience et les organisations religieuses. L’auteur analyse alors les pro j ets de loi qui depuis 1988 circulent en Occident et constate qu’ils contiennent des améliorations certaines par rapport aux textes antérieurs: reconnaissance juridique des organisations religieuses avec droit de propriété; droit d’enseignement religieux, etc. Cependant, Ie tout est encore trop vague et surtout la reconnaissance juridique de 1’Eglise comme organisation hiérarchique avec une doctrine et une structure législative n'est pas encore accordée. Aussi Ie 3 avril 1990 Ie Saint Synode a rendu publique une déclaration qui veut être la traduction d’une perestroïka ecclésiastique et qui adresse à l’Etat douze demandes essentielles pour l’avenir d’une Eglise libre. Le 5 juin, enfin, Ie quotidien Izvestia a publié Ie texte de loi, adopté en première lecture par Ie Soviet Suprême, afin que l’opinion publique puisse en débattre. L’Eglise a exprimé sa déception.

AbstractFollowing the 'changes' of 1989, the churches in "Post-Communist" Europe are in search of a new identity. Some find it in their ethnicity, others in their religious background, their denomination, or in a combination of these factors. They often consider themselves as the 'guardians of national unity'. A gradual shift towards partnership and cooperation can be observed as the different Christian communities seek to overcome the "heritage" of distrust and division left by Communist government policy. A third trend encompasses two conflicting and paradoxical tendencies characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe: collectivism and individualism. It is the most significant challenge in mission work to be sensitive to "leveling" tendencies on the one hand and the strong individualistic ones on the other, and to constructively relating to both. A la suite des « changements » intervenus en 1989, les Église de l'Europe « postcommuniste » sont en quête d'une nouvelle identité. Certaines la trouvent dans leur identité ethnique, d'autres dans leur tradition religieuse, leur dénomination ou un mélange de ces facteurs. Elles se considèrent souvent comme les « gardiennes de l'unité nationale ». On observe un intérêt progressif pour le partenariat et la coopération entre les différentes communautés chrétiennes qui cherchent à dépasser « l'héritage » de méfiance et de division laissé par la politique des gouvernements communistes. Un troisième mouvement concerne deux tendances conflictuelles et paradoxales caractéristiques de l'Europe centrale et orientale : le collectivisme et l'individualisme. Le défi le plus important pour l'activité missionnaire est d'être en même temps sensible aux tendances de « nivellement » d'un côté et, de l'autre, aux fortes poussées d'individualisme . . . et de se relier aux deux de façon constructive. Nach den ,,Veränderungen" 1989 suchen die Kirchen im ,,postkommunistischen" Europa eine neue Identität. Manche finden sie in ihrer Volkszugehörigkeit, andere in ihrem religiösen Hintergrund, ihrer Denomination oder in einer Kombination dieser Faktoren. Oft halten sie sich für ,,Wächter der nationalen Einheit". Ein langsames Einschwenken zu Partnerschaft und Zusammenarbeit macht sich bemerkbar, wo die verschiedenen christlichen Gemeinschaften versuchen, das ,,Erbe" von Misstrauen und Spaltung zu überwinden, das von der kommunistischen Regierungspolitik hinterlassen wurde. Eine dritte Strömung umfasst zwei gegensätzliche und paradoxe Tendenzen, die Zentral- und Osteuropa charakterisieren: Der Kollektivismus und der Individualismus. Die größte Herausforderung der Missionsarbeit besteht darin, auf ,,einebnende" Tendenzen einerseits und stark individualistische andererseits aufmerksam zu sein und sich mit beiden in kreativ in Beziehung zu setzen. Después de los "cambios" de 1989, las iglesias de Europa "pos-comunista" siguen buscando una nueva identidad. Algunas la encuentran en su etnicidad, otras en su trasfondo religioso, su denominación o en una combinación de todos estos factores. Muchas veces ellas se consideran como "guardianas de la unidad nacional". Se puede observar una tendencia gradual a ser partners (compañeras) y hacia la cooperación cuando las diferentes comunidades cristianas buscan superar su "herencia" de desconfianza y división dejada por la política gubernamental comunista. Una tercera tendencia engloba dos inclinaciones conflictivas y paradójicas que son características de Europa central y oriental: el colectivismo y el individualismo. El desafío más importante para la misión es este: trabajar para ser sensible a tendencias que "nivelan" todo, por un lado, y las tendencias muy individualistas, por otro lado, y para relacionarlas de manera constructiva.

Contrairement à l’opinio communis selon laquelle le modèle de l’« Église de maison » se serait formé et développé aux origines du christianisme, dans le sillage de la mission paulinienne entre autres, la présente étude s’intéresse à l’indétermination topographique dont l’apôtre Paul entoure son ecclésiologie et questionne ses incidences sur les hiérarchies et statuts socioculturels dans lesquels la maisonnée antique rivaient ses membres au quotidien.

The relationship between State and Church in Vietnam differs from that in China because of the loyalty of the Vietnamese Church to Rome. As a minority religion (7% of the population), the Catholic Church has adopted a policy of dialogue with the communist State since the reunification of the country in 1975. After a difficult initial period, the Church is now enjoying a marked revival. The reform policy (đ i m i) initiated in 1986 and the opening of the country after more than 40 years of war have contributed to the improvement of State—Church relations. Committed to an international integration process, and under simultaneous pressure from Western countries, international institutions and increasing public unrest, the Vietnamese State is pursuing its policy of religious tolerance even though this policy creates tensions both within the Party and at local level. However, it does not seem to compromise the process of establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

Etiam post Concilium Vaticanum II thema de relationibus inter munus pastorale et potestatem in Ecclesia aliqua problemata ponit. Revera sive identificatic ordinis clericorum cum hierarquia et recognitio exclusivae capacitatis clericorum ad titulum potestatis in Ecclesia habendum ex parte doctrinae anteconciliaris, sive communis bipartitio vel tripartitio potestatis Ecclesiae conceptionem sic dictam personalistam hierarquiae ecclesiasticae supponere videntur. Doctrina Concilii Vatican; II prae occulis habita, problemata de relatione inter munus pastorale et potestatem in Ecclesia proposita melius solvi posse videntur, si in luce conceptionis sic dictae institutionalistae Ecclesiae considarentur. Studium muneris et potestatis in hoc contextu necnon relatio inter ministerium ecclesiasticum, munus pastorale, munus regendi et potestatem conclusionem permittere videtur secundum quam sensu juridico de potestate ordinis et de potestate magisterii independente a potestate jurisdictionis vel in ea inclusa loqui non deberet

Le chapitre 13 de l’Épître aux Romains pose les bases sur lesquelles repose toute la conception du pouvoir dans la pensée politique médiévale. L’objectif de cet article est de reconstruire le processus de longue durée par lequel l’Occident latin a progressivement admis et théorisé la possibilité de désobéir aux autorités temporelles, bien que dans le cadre d’une théorie du pouvoir (à savoir la théorie paulino-augustinienne du pouvoir), qui semble ne laisser aucune place à la dissidence, conférant à chaque potestas une origine divine et une nature providentielle. L’auteur retrace les principales étapes de ce processus : de l’idée que pour obtenir l’obéissance inconditionnelle de ses sujets, il faut se montrer « rex christianissimus » (protéger les personnes et les biens des ministres du Christ), à la difficile légitimation du tyrannicide chez Jean de Salisbury ; des pages de Thomas d’Aquin sur la déposition d’un souverain qui ne se soucie pas de la communis utilitas , à la reconnaissance explicite du pouvoir de destitution des seigneurs séculiers par certains théoriciens politiques des xiv e et xv e siècles.

Post promulgationem Motus Proorii PP. Pauli VI. -Causas matrimoniales-, casus excepti in c. 1990 amplificati sunt ad novos casus speciales normarum X et XI Motus proprii. Manet tamen in substantia modus procedendi et requisita activltatis. Ut processale praesuppositum, documentum certum et authenticum nullae cantradictioni nec exceptioni subiectum adhuc requiritur. In prima parte studii, processalis eminet natura huius activitatis partium ante Ordlnarium ut iudicem actuantemet seiungitur a qualibet activitate quae aliquo modo sit administrativa. In secunda yero parte conspicitur specialis et sumaria natura hulus processus, intra categorias generales ordlnantes diversos processus quos doctrina processalis distinguit. In tertia ampliori parte studii, examinatur paulatim probatio de documentis; primo ut ab aliis viis probationis distinguatur quae, etsi proponantur ut probatio documenta lis, proprie non sunt tales, etenim hic processus discedendus est necessario ex probatione praeconstituta naturae documentalis et repraesentativae apitis nullitatls alegati; secundo ut attingatur notio lata et communis documenti certi authenticique, quod et documentum publicum et privatum amplectetur, et seiungatur a documentis hulus clasificationis codicialis, quod simul exigit accuratum analysim notionum genuinitatis et authenticitatis; tertio, concluditur tudio atque amplitudlne exigentiae defectos contradictionis vel exceptionis relatae ad documentum certum authenticumque, et designatur ei diversam amplitudinem in processus initio et in decisiane assumenda ah Ordinario; in hac secunda suppositione semper exhibebitur ut exceptio delatoria et processalis, quomodocumque sit causa contradictionis vel exceptionis alegatae.

Nova agendi ratio in doctrinarum examine, Sacra e Congregationis in defensionem fidei, 15-1-1971, oritur ab reformatione facta in hac Congregatione post Concil¡ um Vaticanum 11, motu proprio Integrae servandae et, paulo postea, Constitutione Regimini Eeelesiae universae. Primum studetur quem nominant procedimentum extraordinarium, et quem specificant ut procedimentum urgentiae cum efficacitate executiva. Eius initium exsequitur per activitatem designatam sub nominatione iudieii diseriminativi praevii extraordinario et ordinario processui communis. Procedimentum ordinarius resolvitur per totum suum iter procedimentalem, quod eminet progressione per tria momenta dissimilia, in qUibus tria organa distincta Sacrae Congregationis ad examinandas doctrinas interveniunt ed ad emittendum theologicum de eis iudicium consentaneum: Congressus, Coetus consultorum et ordinaria Congregatio. In unaquaque re quod in hac activitate, ex qua etiam surgere possunt iura exigibilia via recursus, pertinet ad ambitum iuridicum, et quod ambitum est theologicum, id est, materia submissa iudicio iIIorum organorum sacri Oicasterii, distinguitur. Hoc iudicium efficitur ab auctoritate Ecclesiae exercitante officia consentanea muneri docendi. Agitur de iudicio congruentiae vel incongruentiae doctrinae examinatae ad mentem Revelationis a Magisterio promulgatae et custoditae. Hausto defensionis tramite quod auctori operis examinati offertur, si iudicium fuisset incóngruentiae et si iterum confirmatum fuisset ab ordinaria Congregatione, tale iudicium devenirte iudicium reprobationis et ederet -igitur efficacitatem iuridicam ex qua emanarent possibilitates adoptandi rationes naturae executivae propendentes in evitandum vel delimitandum damnum quod opus divulgatum cum doctrina erronea vel periculosa posset generare aut forte iam generavisset.

Le questionnement de la philosophie s’est traduit par des lieux communs de problèmes et d’arguments dont l’intelligence ne dépend pas de leur expression dans une langue particulière. On veut faire reconnaître par cet article un tel locus communis philosophiae dans l’argument de Gongsun Long de 公孫龍, d’après lequel « cheval blanc n’est pas cheval ». Gongsun Long, déjà assimilé à un « disputeur » en Chine, a été exilé du champ de la philosophie en Europe en tant que « sophiste ». On montre pourtant que son argument concerne un problème analogue à celui qui a conduit Aristote à faire la distinction entre prédication essentielle et accidentelle ou celui qui a conduit Husserl à parler de ce que vise l’« intuition catégoriale ». Mais la leçon proprement chinoise de son propos tient peut-être alors en son indifférence au choix entre le primat de l’être sur la conscience, selon Aristote, ou de la conscience sur l’être, selon Husserl.

Since the dawn of the 20th century, three ideologies have been constantly interacting in the Indonesian society, namely Islam, Marxism, and nationalism. Each has played a striking role in the evolution of the movement for independence - which led to independence in 1945. And today each of them wonders to what extent it has been responsible for the coup d'État by General Suharto in 1965. Since in the current situation, the relations which exist between these three trends of thought, in many respects, are reminiscent of those which prevailed during the interwar years, a study of that period may shed new light on an important moment of the history of political thought in Indonesia. The question of relations between Islamic, nationalist, and Marxist thought is a prevalent issue in a country where a population of Muslim creed is held in subordination, and where there exist s an important leftist intellectual movement, with or without a significant working class. Through the history of the anti-Dutch nationalist movements, through the rise of various Islamic movements (Pan-Islamism, the moderen, the "laity") and that of the Islamic parties linked to them (Sarekat Dagang Islam, Sarekat Islam), through the expansion of the social-democratic, socialist and communist parties (ISDU - Indian Social Democratic Union ; PKI - Perserikaten Kommunist de India ; Sarekat Rakjat - People's Association), and finally, through Sukarno's efforts to conciliate all these movements with a view to independence, an attempt is made to show that, in the evolution of the nationalist movement in Indonesia, there are two inherent elements, namely the socialist ideology and Islam. In the light of the case of Indonesia, it is therefore tempting to consider religion and politics as being symbiotic ideologies.

Abstract Shakespeare thrives not only in the theatre, but also through what Bolter and Grusin call remediation. This article analyses how opera and musical reread Elizabethan drama shifting from spoken to sung discourse and travelling transnationally, temporally and across genres. Its main approach is comparative and relies on the history of mentalities. Rereading is dictated by cultural context, the conventions of the lyrical theatre, social and political factors and reception. Gender is reread in Bellini‘s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and in Britten‘s A Midsummer Night‟s Dream, and religion - in Gounod‘s Roméo et Juliette and Bernstein‘s West Side Story. Cultural and historical barriers enjoin recontextualisation: the English, French and Welsh verbal fun in The Merry Wives is metamorphosed into Germ-Italian in Salieri‘s Vienna, while prayer is bowdlerised in Bentoiu‘s Hamlet written in communist Romania. Porter‘s Kiss Me, Kate rewrites The Taming of the Shrew in a post-modern musical avant la lettre featuring the cast of a theatre company on- and off-stage. However, operas such as Rossini‘s Otello or Thomas‘s Hamlet are shown to have almost replaced Shakespeare‘s initial message. The article emphasises the idea that operations of rereading and rewriting, in a musical context, significantly enrich the ample panoply of Shakespearean adaptations.

Dilucidare armoniam iuridicae dimensionis et pastorales realitatis socialis Ecclesiae difficile evenit cum valde aequivocum sit verbum «pastoralis», quod praeter eius significationes technicas utitur etiam sensu tactico, vulgari et aequivoco. Cum quoquomodo referat ad ordinem actionum quibus Ecclesia in perficiendo suo munere autoefficitur in Historia, auctor finit significaciones latiores verbi: a) Significationes materiales: actio pastoralis cognominata fit actionis ecclesialis vel christianae, actionis ministerialis vel sacerdotalis, et actionis hodegeticae vel regiminis; b) Significationes formales: actio pastora lis cognominatafit actionis efficacis, actionis mediatricis Dei hominumque, actionis hic et nunc configuratae, et actionis iam designatae. Examinatur deinde locus quem significationes finitae implent in evolutione historica-doctrinale lheologiae pastoralis ut detectetur quae sit conceptio luris Canonici in mente pastoralistarum. Ut non incurratur in «cientifismum» quoddam cum examinentur actiones aedificantes Ecclesiae, proficiscendumest a natura vera pastoralis, id est, in quantum manifestatio naturae Ecclesiae, in quo consistit realiter notio «pastoralis»; sic pastoralis refert ad dynamicam propriam et exclusivam sacerdotii ministerialis, ita ut scientia lheologiae pastoralis constituenda erit tanquam cogitatio de actionibus ministerialibus sacerdotii hierarchici. lamen, cum verbum «pastoralis» nunc maxi me utatur ut notio pure scientifica et non notio realis, distinguendi sunt nitide tres ordines realitatum ad concludendum non esse inter eos nexum causalitatisefficientis et formalis: ordo scientificus (lheologia pastoralis), realitates personales onticae sacramentalesque (indoles pastoris)atque consecutio salutis animarum (efficacitas pastoralis); ac aliqua potests prominere conclusio: in transponendis Ecclesiae notionibus, technicis atque rationibus scientiarum profanarum, reverentia naturae Ecclesiae et esse proprio rius realitatum est praevalens principiumabsolutum. His suppositis delimitatur punctum convergentiae Pastoralis et luris Canonici, quod est natura Ecclesiae, quia pastorale iuridica cumque potius qua m disiunctae realitates sunt dimensiones unius realitatis quae est Ecclesia. Apportatio propria luris aedificationi historicae Ecclesiae est dimensio iustitiae, aspectus attingens totum mysterium Ecclesiae, Ita ut non possimus dicere «campo ajurídico» praevium es se dationi legislativae luris humani ecclesiastici, sicut non est in Ecclesia «campo a divino» praevium neque eius realitates historicae eculiaresque apparent orbae omni norma omnique exigentia iustitiae. tDeinde poste a agitur de deformatione qua m verbum -pastoralis. passum est in conatu intelligendi et resolvendi omnes species mysterii Ecclesiae unice sub hoc prospectu; hic .pastoralismus» ducit ad inumbrandas et frangendas formalitates proprias aliarum scientiarum, et specialiter luris Canonici ratione significata. Describuntur postea tactus proprii praesentis «pastoralismi»: substituit orthodoxiam pro orthopraxl, amittitclarltatem distinctionis essentialis sacerdotii communis et ministerialis, historicismi et sociologismi in aestimatione efficacitatis salvificae Ecclesiae in Historia. Denique ex analysi relationum Pastoralis etluris auctor infert insequentes conclusiones: 1) Actlo pastoralis ut sit vere actio aedificans Eccleslae, prlus debet esse actio iusta. 2) lus Canonicum, quod est tutela identitatis, unitatis ordinisque social¡s Eccleslae, est suppositum et basis necessaria activitatis pastora lis

Wkład biskupów bloku państw komunistycznych w nauczanie Soboru Watykańskiego II na temat relacji Kościół–Państwo Problematyka relacji Kościół–Państwo zawsze należała do delikatnych i skomplikowanych grup zagadnień. Na ich rangę i złożoność wskazuje chociażby fakt, że podczas pogłębiania i rozwijania współczesnej doktryny o społeczności kościelnej i wspólnocie politycznej przez Sobór Watykański II, pierwotnie nie przewidywano oddzielnego dokumentu regulującego to zagadnienie. Jednakże w efekcie umiejscowiono je w dwóch: deklaracji o wolności religijnej Dignitatis humanae i w konstytucji duszpasterskiej o Kościele w świecie współczesnym Gaudium et spes. W artykule przedstawiony został wkład biskupów bloku państw komunistycznych w nauczanie Vaticanum II na temat relacji Kościół–Państwo. Ograniczenie wypracowywania zasad tych relacji przez Sobór Watykański II do wystąpień i pisemnych uwag (animadversiones) jedynie biskupów-przedstawicieli z bloku Państw komunistycznych jest dla badanego zagadnienia celowe i istotne. W Państwach, w których panował ustrój oparty na reżimie totalitarnym, eliminowano jakiekolwiek pierwiastki religijne z życia społecznego, a walka z Kościołem stanowiła program władz państwowych. Dlatego biskupi na co dzień pełniący posługę kościelną w Państwach komunistycznych, dzięki własnemu doświadczeniu, mieli obowiązek unaocznić pozostałym biskupom świata rzeczywiste problemy, z jakimi Kościół powinien się zmierzyć. Swoim zaangażowaniem i głosem wpisali się w założenia Soboru realizowane pod hasłem aggiornamento, wskazując na uwspółcześnienie, odnowienie i dostosowanie działalności Kościoła do zmian, jakie dokonały się we współczesnym świecie. Efektem pracy biskupów z bloku Państw komunistycznych stało się m.in.: wyakcentowanie godności osoby ludzkiej, jako źródła wolności religijnej i przysługiwania wolności religijnej każdemu człowiekowi; określenie, że wolność ta oznacza również wolność człowieka od przymusu do działań sprzecznych z jego sumieniem; podkreślenie prawa rodziców do wychowywania dzieci w wierze; dostrzeżenie pluralizmu światopoglądowego i społeczności pluralistycznej, dla której należy stworzyć model relacji z Kościołem; uwzględnienie wzajemnej niezależności Kościoła i wspólnoty politycznej oraz konieczności ich współdziałania; wskazanie, że chrześcijanie mają swoje obowiązki jako członkowie Kościoła i obywatele Państwa.

W XV - wiecznym kościelnym środowisku płockim obecne były dyskusje dotyczące spraw koncyliaryzmu, reformy Kościoła i husytyzmu, który w tym czasie stał się poważnym zagrożeniem jedności religijnej w Polsce. To, że interesowano się w Płocku sprawami husyckimi świadczą pozostawione na marginesach kart liczne glosy związane z zamieszczonymi w kodeksach traktatami (mowami) i kazaniami. Przechowywane kodeksy zawierały traktaty polemiczne i mowy antyhusyckie skierowane przeciw czterem artykułom praskim, których autorami byli zwolennicy Husa: Jan z Raguzy (Ioannis de Ragusio), z traktatem: De communione sub utraque specie oraz Septem regulae ad habendum verum sensum sacrarum scripturarum, Hieronim z Pragi zwany Mniszek, (Hieronymi Pragensis) z traktatem kazanodziejskim: Sermo, Gilles Charlier (Aegidus Carlerii), z traktatem: De punitione peccatorum publicorum, Henryk Kalteis, (Henrici Kalteisen), z traktatem: Oratio de libera predicatione verbi Dei, Jan de Palomar,(Ioannis de Palomar), z traktatem: De civili domino clericorum, nadto zamieszczono pisma: Excerpta ex Summa Benedicti abbatis Massiliae contra errores haereticorum; Responsiones ad obiectiones et pictura Ioannis Hus, traktat kardynała Juliana Cesarini, Oratio ad convertendos Bohemos oraz traktat Jana de Bachenstein decretorum doctoris, Sermo in concilio Basiliensi. O tym że husytyzm jako prąd myślowy z ukierunkowaniem religijno-społecznym dotarł na Mazowsze, dobitnie świadczą przechowywane księgi i zachowane na nich wpisy marginalne i proweniencyjne, rozczytane przez Adama Vetulaniego jeszcze przed 1939 rokiem. Wprawdzie nie są to traktaty, które zajmują się doktryną Kościoła w ujęciu husyckim, co raczej polemiczne w stosunku do tego ruchu. Zatem książka rękopiśmienna w kręgu kościelnym (katedralnym) płockim w XIV stuleciu, poprzez swoją tematykę służyła również w obronie obowiązującej doktryny katolickiej, niż z nią prowadzonej polemiki. Jednocześnie poprzez wspomniane księgi widoczny jest fakt zainteresowania nowym prądem religijnym w znacznie odległym od ośrodka akademickiego krakowskiego - Płocka i jego duchowieństwa związanego z kapitułą katedralną.

The Atlantic World, 1450-2000, edited by Toyin Falola & Kevin D. Roberts (reviewed by Aaron Spencer Fogleman) The Slave Ship: A Human History, by Marcus Rediker (reviewed by Justin Roberts) Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by David Eltis & David Richardson (reviewed by Joseph C. Miller) "New Negroes from Africa": Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean, by Rosanne Marion Adderley (reviewed by Nicolette Bethel) Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, edited by Richard L. Kagan & Philip D. Morgan (reviewed by Jonathan Schorsch) Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962, by Jason C. Parker (reviewed by Charlie Whitham) Labour and the Multiracial Project in the Caribbean: Its History and Promise, by Sara Abraham (reviewed by Douglas Midgett) Envisioning Caribbean Futures: Jamaican Perspectives, by Brian Meeks (reviewed by Gina Athena Ulysse) Archibald Monteath: Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian, by Maureen Warner-Lewis (reviewed by Jon Sensbach) Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies (reviewed by Linden Lewis) Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures, edited by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert & Ivette Romero-Cesareo (reviewed by Bill Maurer) Caribbean Migration to Western Europe and the United States: Essays on Incorporation, Identity, and Citizenship, edited by Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez, Ramón Grosfoguel & Eric Mielants (reviewed by Gert Oostindie) Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, by Richard Wilk (reviewed by William H. Fisher) Dead Man in Paradise: Unraveling a Murder from a Time of Revolution, by J.B. MacKinnon (reviewed by Edward Paulino) Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa, by Allen Wells (reviewed by Michael R. Hall) Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist, and Self-Making in Jamaica, by Gina A. Ulysse (reviewed by Jean Besson) Une ethnologue à Port-au-Prince: Question de couleur et luttes pour le classement socio-racial dans la capitale haïtienne, by Natacha Giafferi-Dombre (reviewed by Catherine Benoît) Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality, edited by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith & Claudine Michel (reviewed by Susan Kwosek) Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development, by Adrian H. Hearn (reviewed by Nadine Fernandez) "Mek Some Noise": Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad, by Timothy Rommen (reviewed by Daniel A. Segal)Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures, by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey (reviewed by Anthony Carrigan) Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance, by Gary Edward Holcomb (reviewed by Brent Hayes Edwards) The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction, by Celia Britton (reviewed by J. Michael Dash) Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture, by Ignacio López-Calvo (reviewed by Stephen Wilkinson) Pre-Columbian Jamaica, by P. Allsworth-Jones (reviewed by William F. Keegan) Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Margaret E. Leshikar-Denton & Pilar Luna Erreguerena (reviewed by Erika Laanela)

Dans cet article, nous retraçons l'histoire d'une doctrine directement issue de l'éthique chrétienne qui, pendant un moment de l'histoire récente de la Pologne, a pu être traduite en projet politique. Elle s'exprime dans l'injonction « Aimez vos ennemis », reprise par la dissidence anticommuniste qui s'est inspirée d'une longue tradition nationale, mais qui réagit également contre l'esprit de lutte (de classes ennemies) prôné par le régime faussement pacifique qu'elle combattait. Ce cheminement a abouti à une politique de réconciliation et du pardon portée par le personnaliste Tadeusz Mazowiecki - le premier premier ministre non communiste dans l'ancien bloc de l'Est. Après avoir décrit l'importance de cette doctrine pour la politique internationale menée par la Pologne après la chute du communisme, nous montrons comment cette utopie devenue réalité a été mise à mal par le parti Droit et Justice (PIS), qui l'a abandonnée de fait en choisissant son contraire, l'esprit de revanche, de rancune et de règlement de comptes.

« Tradition » et « modernité » sont longtemps apparues, pour les sciences sociales et le sens commun, non seulement comme des notions relatives, initialement définies l’une par rapport à l’autre dans un rapport d’exclusivité mutuelle, mais plus encore, comme des qualificatifs désignant de véritables régimes d’humanité – sociétés traditionnelles et modernes. Pourtant, de l’intérieur même du champ anthropologique, de nombreuses critiques se sont régulièrement élevées à l’encontre de ce découpage trop schématique, appelant à davantage de réflexivité quant à l’usage de ces catégories englobantes. En effet, durant une majeure partie de son existence, l’anthropologie a été associée à l’étude des sociétés « primitives », ou « traditionnelles », alors que la description des sociétés « civilisées », ou « modernes », était dévolue à la sociologie. Cette distinction épousait de fait l’auto-compréhension des sociétés occidentales, dont la reconstruction évolutionniste de l’histoire de l’humanité présentait celle-ci selon une succession linéaire et nécessaire de stades indiquant les progrès de l’esprit humain, manifestes tant au niveau de l’organisation sociale, de la connaissance des phénomènes, de la morale personnelle que des réalisations matérielles et techniques. Aussi, dès la rencontre effective avec des sociétés aux langues, mœurs, croyances ou activités dissemblables, l’intérêt pour l’altérité comme différence s’est trouvé en tension avec une volonté de classification abstraite, selon une philosophie de l’histoire élaborée à partir des catégories intellectuelles propres à la trajectoire occidentale. Cela passe notamment, à partir des 18éme-19èmes siècles, par une auto-identification à la Raison universelle, seule apte à circonscrire le savoir « vrai » sur la réalité physique ou sociale, à distance de tous les préjugés enfermant l’humain dans la coutume, l’ignorance et la superstition. De cette configuration culturelle particulière (dite « post-traditionnelle »), nouveau mode de représentation du monde et de l’Homme apparu à la Renaissance et aboutissant aux Lumières, découleront tant un ensemble de processus socio-politiques définissant la « modernité » (développement scientifique et technique, révolution industrielle, État de droit, capitalisme marchand, individualisation des comportements et des valeurs, etc.) qu’une opposition globale à la « tradition » (les « survivances », en termes évolutionnistes). Ce « désenchantement du monde » – pour reprendre l’expression célèbre de Max Weber –, sera perçu à travers une dichotomie généralisée et normativement orientée, déclinée sous de multiples aspects : religion / science, immobilisme / changement, hiérarchie / égalité, conformisme / liberté, archaïsme / progrès, communauté / société, etc. Si le « grand partage » entre Nous et les Autres, entre modernité et tradition, a pu constituer un soubassement fondamental à la prime ambition empirique et positiviste du savoir anthropologique, il n’en a pas moins dès l’origine de la discipline été contesté sur bien des points. En anthropologie, l’idée d’une tradition fixe et rigide s’avère critiquée dès Malinowski, l’un des premiers à souligner la rationalité contextuelle des « primitifs » en référence à leurs règles communes de coexistence, et à récuser l’assimilation indue de la tradition à une obéissance servile et spontanée, sorte d’inertie mentale ou d’instinct groupal. Chez les Trobriandais ou ailleurs, soulignait-il, « dans des conditions normales, l’obéissance aux lois est tout au plus partielle, conditionnelle et sujette à des défaillances et (…) ce qui impose cette obéissance, ce ne sont pas des motifs aussi grossiers que la perspective du châtiment ou le respect de la tradition en général, mais un ensemble fort complexe de facteurs psychologiques et sociaux » (Malinowski, 2001 : 20). L’anthropologie, par sa mise en valeur relativiste des multiples cultures du monde, insistera alors davantage sur l’importance de la tradition dans la constitution de toute société, comme ensemble de principes, de valeurs, de pratiques, de rituels transmis de génération en génération afin d’assurer la permanence d’un monde commun, fût-ce à travers d’essentielles dynamiques de réappropriation, d’altération et de transformation, trait fondamental de toute continuité historique. Selon Jean Pouillon, « la tradition se définit – traditionnellement – comme ce qui d’un passé persiste dans le présent où elle est transmise et demeure agissante et acceptée par ceux qui la reçoivent et qui, à leur tour, au fil des générations, la transmettent » (Pouillon, 1991 : 710). En ce sens, « toute culture est traditionnelle », même si elle se conçoit comme radicalement nouvelle et en rupture totale avec le passé : son inscription dans la durée vise implicitement un « devenir-tradition ». Dès les années 1950, le courant « dynamique » de l’anthropologie britannique (Gluckman, 1956 ; Leach, 1954 ; Turner, 1957), les analyses de l’acculturation aux États-Unis (Herskovits, 1955) ou les travaux pionniers de Balandier (1955) et Bastide (1960) en France avaient montré combien les « traditions », malgré les efforts conservateurs des pouvoirs religieux et politiques afin de légitimer leur position, recelaient de potentialités discordantes, voire contestataires. A partir des années 1980, certains courants postmodernes, post-coloniaux ou féministes en anthropologie (Clifford et Marcus, 1986 ; Appadurai, 1996 ; Bhabha, 1994 ; Abu-Lughod, 1993), souvent inspirés par la French Theory des Foucault, Deleuze ou Derrida (Cusset, 2003), se sont inscrits dans cette veine afin d’élaborer une critique radicale de la perspective moderne : partant du native point of view des populations subalternes, objectivées, dépréciées et opprimées, il s’agit de dénoncer le regard implicitement colonialiste et essentialiste, qui – au nom de la science objective – avait pu les rejeter unanimement du côté de l’archaïsme et de l’arriération.. Cette reconsidération féconde de la « tradition » rejaillit alors nécessairement sur son envers relatif, la « modernité ». A partir des années 1950, suite au cataclysme totalitaire et aux puissants mouvements de décolonisation, apparaît une critique anthropologique argumentée des principes de développement et de modernisation, encore approfondie dans les années 1990 avec la fin du communisme réel en Europe et l’avènement d’une crise écologique liée à l’hégémonie du capitalisme industriel. Sous l’effet d’une « mondialisation » aux dimensions hétérogènes voire contradictoires, l’Occident semble redécouvrir les vertus des approches dites « traditionnelles » en de nombreux domaines (spiritualité, médecine, artisanat, agriculture, patrimoine, etc.), à la faveur de réseaux d’information et de communication toujours plus denses. Sans trancher sur le fait de savoir si notre époque globalisée relève encore et toujours de la modernité (seconde, avancée ou tardive), ou alors de la postmodernité (Bonny, 2004) du fait des formes hybrides ainsi produites, la remise en cause de la rationalité progressiste entendue comme « métarécit » (Lyotard, 1979) semble favoriser une compréhension plus équilibrée des « traditions vivantes », notamment des mœurs des populations autochtones ou immigrées (pluralisme culturel, tolérance religieuse, éloge de la diversité et du cosmopolitisme), même si certaines contradictions n’en apparaissent pas moins toujours prégnantes entre les divers répertoires de sens disponibles. Dès lors, les deux termes du contraste classique tradition / modernité en ressortent désormais foncièrement relativisés, et surtout complexifiés. Les études historiques ont montré combien les sociétés apparemment les plus modernes contribuaient plus ou moins consciemment à une constante « invention de traditions » (Hobsbawm et Ranger, 1992), évidente dans la manifestation de certains nationalismes ou fondamentalismes religieux cherchant à légitimer leurs revendications politiques et culturelles les plus contemporaines par le recours à un passé idéalisé. D’une certaine manière, loin d’avoir strictement appliqué un programme rationaliste de séparation nature / culture, « nous n’avons jamais été modernes » (Latour, 1991), élaborant plutôt à notre insu un monde composite et hétéroclite, sous la domination d’un imaginaire social qui érige paradoxalement le progrès, la rationalité et la croissance en mythe de la maîtrise rationnelle. Et lorsqu’elle s’exporte, cette « ontologie naturaliste » (Descola, 2005) se voit réinterprétée, transformée, voire inversée, selon une « indigénisation de la modernité » (Sahlins, 2007 : 295) qui bouscule tant les univers locaux de signification que les principes globaux d’arraisonnement du monde. S’avère désormais entérinée l’existence de « modernités multiples », expression synonyme d’une évolution différenciée des trajectoires socio-culturelles à travers des cheminements à la fois interreliés, métissés, contingents et comparables. A l’inverse, nul ne semble pouvoir dorénavant se réclamer ingénument de la tradition sans être confronté à un paradoxe fondamental, déjà repéré par Hocart (1927) : puisqu’elle ne vit généralement qu’ignorée de ceux qui la suivent (selon un agir pratique incorporé dans les us et coutumes du quotidien), on fait appel à la tradition d’abord pour justifier ce qui justement ne va plus de soi, et se trouve en danger de disparaître. Ce passage de la tradition au « traditionalisme » peut prendre à la fois la forme légitime d’une sauvegarde de valeurs et coutumes ou de la résistance à la marchandisation globale, mais aussi le visage grimaçant d’une instrumentalisation idéologique, au service d’un ordre social chimérique, soi-disant pur et authentique, fût-il répandu par les moyens technologiques les plus modernes.

In 1990 the Cistercian monastery of Vyšší Brod in Czech Republic again welcomed monks within its walls after four decades of absence during the communist regime. The reestablishment of monastic life brought new negotiations about the position of the monastery in society. The Cistercian community seeks to revive the place as the place of Cistercian spirituality. Exploring the different layers of memory related to the monastery, we analyse the heterogenous aims in reasserting the monastery in its social environment.

One should not overlook the fact that Asia is a home to humanism, atheism, and secularism. In the 18th-20th century, atheism, communism and other forms of western liberalism and humanistic ideology had taken their roots in several Asian societies. In recent history, various forms of secular worldview, humanistic, atheistic, communistic, agnostic, etc. have also found their niche in the Philippines. Hence, we set out this study to probe the extent of secularization in the Philippines today and from there, to draw some challenges it poses to the future of Asian theology and Christianity. The first part of this article will tackle the answer on the first question presented. I will be a presenting both a theoretical and empirical representations in the macro, meso, and micro level for us to examine the phenomenon of secularization. It is to help the readers to investigate how this phenomenon is manifested empirically among the Filipino youths. On the second part of the paper, I will draw some challenges which secularization poses to the future of theology and Christianity in Asia. This study hopefully will modestly contribute to the configuration of an Asian paradigm of theology that proffers some perspectives in helping individuals, communities and society to envision and live out the contingencies of their faith in the future. References Abinales, Patricio N. and Donna J. Amoroso. State and Society in the Philippines. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005 Athyal, Jesudas. ed. Religion in Southeast Asia: An Encyclopedia of Faiths and Cultures. Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2015. Asad, Talal. Formation of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. __________. Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993. Barrett, David B., Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. 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Towards a Filipino Christian Eco-theology of Nature. Quezon City: Our Lady of Angel Seminary, 2002. Capucao, Dave. Religion and Ethnocentrism. Leiden/New York: Brill, 2010. Capucao, Dave and Rico Ponce. “Secularization and Spirituality from a Theoretical and Empirical Perspective,” in Secularization and Spirituality: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities. Quezon City: Institute of Spirituality in Asia. 2016. Casanova, Jose. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. (2006). “Rethinking Secularization: A Global comparative Perspective” in Hedgehog Review, Vol. 8, 2006. Collins, Pat. Basic Evangelization. Dublin: The Columba Press, 2010. Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby. “Neurocognitive Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange,” in David M. Buss, ed. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Hoboken: Wiley, 2005. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putman, 1994. David, Pablo Virgilio. “Secularization and Evangelization, Taking the Cue from Pope Benedict XVI” in Javier, E. ed. Mission in the Context of Fundamentalism and Secularization. Religious Life Asia. Vol. 13, No. 4, Quezon City: Institute of Consecrated Life in Asia, 2011. Davie, Grace. Europe: The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World. London: Dartman, Longman, and Todd, 2002. __________. “Believing without Belonging: Is This the Future of Religion in Britain?” in Social Compass. Vol. 37, No. 4, 1990. Dobbelaere, Karel. “Secularization Theories and Sociological Paradigms” in Social Compass. Vol. 31, Nos. 2-3, 1984. __________. “Secularization” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. De. W. Swatos. Hartford Institute for Religion Research, http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Secularization.html Eisinga, Robert Nicolaas and Peer Scheepers. Etnocentrisme in Nederland. Dissertation. Nijmegen: Catholic University of Nijmegen, 1989. Gauchet, Marcel. The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion. Trans. Oscar Burge. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997. Gentz, Joachim. “The Religious situation in East Asia,” in Secularization and the World Religions, Hans Joas and Klaus Wiegang, ed. Alex Skinner, trans. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Hellemans, Staf. “ ‘Catholicism Against Modernity’ to the Problematic ‘Modernity of Catholcism’” in Ethical Perspectives. Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001. Iqtidar, Humeira. “The difference between secularism and secularization,” The Guardian, 29 June 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/29/secularism-secularisation-relationship Inglehart, Ronald and Wayne Baker. “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values” in American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2000. Inglehart, Ronald. Modernization and Postmodernization. Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Countries. 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Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pertierra, Raul. Religion, Politics, and Rationality in a Philippine community. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998. Pew Research Center. The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050. http://www.pewforum.org/files/2015/03/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsFullReport.pdf San Martin, Ines. “The Philippines is increasingly secular, but still deeply Catholic” (2015). https://cruxnow.com/church/2015/01/15/the-philippines-is-increasingly-secular-but-still-deeply-catholic/ Santos, Tina G. “Bishops Lament, DepEd ‘God-loving’ no more?.” Inquirer Net: Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 30, 2014. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/634001/bishops-lament-deped-god-loving-no-more. Shiner, Larry (1967). “The Concept of Secularization in Empirical Research” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1967. 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IntroductionIn Britain, hunger is often hidden in the privacy of the home. Yet otherwise private hunger is currently being rendered public and visible in the growing queues at charity-run food banks, where emergency food parcels are distributed directly to those who cannot afford to feed themselves or their families adequately (Downing et al.; Caplan). Food banks, in providing emergency relief to those in need, are responses to crisis moments, actualised through an embodied feeling of hunger that cannot be alleviated. The growing queues at food banks not only render hidden hunger visible, but also serve as reminders of the corporeal vulnerability of the human body to political and socio-economic shifts.A consideration of corporeality allows us to view the world through the lived experiences of the body. Human beings are “creatures of the flesh” who understand and reason, act and interact with their environments through the body (Johnson 81). The growing academic interest in corporeality signifies what Judith Butler calls a “new bodily ontology” (2). However, as Butler highlights, the body is also vulnerable to injury and suffering. An application of this ontology to hunger draws attention to eating as essential to life, so the denial of food poses an existential threat to health and ultimately to survival. The body’s response to threat is the physiological experience of hunger as a craving or longing that is the “most bodily experience of need […] a visceral desire locatable in a void” in which an empty stomach “initiates” a series of sounds and pangs that “call for action” in the form of eating (Anderson 27). Food bank queues serve as visible public reminders of this precariousness and of how social conditions can limit the ability of individuals to feed themselves, and so respond to an existential threat.Corporeal vulnerability made visible elicits responses that support societal interventions to feed the hungry, or that stigmatise hungry people by withdrawing or disparaging what limited support is available. Responses to vulnerability therefore evoke nurture and care or violence and abuse, and so in this sense are ambiguous (Butler; Cavarero). The responses are also normative, shaped by social and cultural understandings of what hunger is, what its causes are, and whether it is seen as originating in personal or societal failings. The stigmatising of individuals by blaming them for their hunger is closely allied to the feelings of shame that lie at the “irreducible absolutist core” of the idea of poverty (Sen 159). Shame is where the “internally felt inadequacies” of the impoverished individual and the “externally inflicted judgments” of society about the hungry body come together in a “co-construction of shame” (Walker et al. 5) that is a key part of the lived experience of hunger. The experience of shame, while common, is far from inevitable and is open to resistance (see Pickett; Foucault); shame can be subverted, turned from the hungry body and onto the society that allows hunger to happen. Who and what are deemed responsible are shaped by shifting ideas and contested understandings of hunger at a particular moment in time (Vernon).This exploration of corporeal vulnerability through food banks as a historically located response to hunger offers an alternative to studies which privilege representations, objectifying the body and “treating it as a discursive, textual, iconographic and metaphorical reality” while neglecting understandings derived from lived experiences and the responses that visible vulnerabilities elicit (Hamilakis 99). The argument made in this paper calls for a critical reconsideration of classic political economy approaches that view hunger in terms of a class struggle against the material conditions that give rise to it, and responses that ultimately led to the construction of the welfare state (Vernon). These political economy approaches, in focusing on the structures that lead to hunger and that respond to it, are more closed than Butler’s notion of ambiguous and constantly changing social responses to corporeal vulnerability. This paper also challenges the dominant tradition of nutrition science, which medicalises hunger. While nutrition science usefully draws attention to the physiological experiences and existential threat posed by acute hunger, the scientific focus on the “anatomical functioning” of the body and the optimising of survival problematically separates eating from the social contexts in which hunger is experienced (Lupton 11, 12; Abbots and Lavis). The focus in this article on the corporeal vulnerability of hunger interweaves contested representations of, and ideas about, hunger with the physiological experience of it, the material conditions that shape it, and the lived experiences of deprivation. Food banks offer a lens onto these experiences and their complexities.Food Banks: Deprivation Made VisibleSince the 1980s, food banks have become the fastest growing charitable organisations in the wealthiest countries of North America, Europe, and Australasia (Riches), but in Britain they are a recent phenomenon. The first opened in 2000, and by 2014, the largest operator, the Trussell Trust, had over 420 franchised food banks, and more recently was opening more than one per week (Lambie-Mumford et al.; Lambie-Mumford and Dowler). British food banks hand out emergency food relief directly to those who cannot afford to feed themselves or their families adequately, and have become new sites where deprivation is materialised through a congregation of hungry people and the distribution of food parcels. The food relief parcels are intended as short-term immediate responses to crisis moments felt within the body when the individual cannot alleviate hunger through their own resources; they are for “emergency use only” to ameliorate individual crisis and acute vulnerability, and are not intended as long-term solutions to sustained, chronic poverty (Perry et al.). The need for food banks has emerged with the continued shrinkage of the welfare state, which for the past half century sought to mediate the impact of changing individual and social circumstances on those deemed to be most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. The proliferation of food banks since the 2009 financial crisis and the increased public discourse about them has normalised their presence and naturalised their role in alleviating acute food poverty (Perry et al.).Media images of food bank queues and stacks of tins waiting to be handed out (Glaze; Gore) evoke collective memories from the early twentieth century of hunger marches in protest at government inaction over poverty, long queues at soup kitchens, and the faces of gaunt, unemployed war veterans (Vernon). After the Second World War, the spectre of communism and the expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union meant such images of hunger could become tools in a propaganda war constructed around the failure of the British state to care for its citizens (Field; Clarke et al; Vernon). The 1945 Labour government, elected on a social democratic agenda of reform in an era of food rationing, responded with a “war on want” based on the normative premise that no one should be without food, medical care, shelter, warmth or work. Labour’s response was the construction of the modern welfare state.The welfare state signified a major shift in ideational understandings of hunger. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ideas about hunger had been rooted in a moralistic account of divine punishment for individual failure (Vernon). Bodily experiences of hunger were seen as instruments for disciplining the indigent into a work ethic appropriate for a modern industrialised economy. The infamous workhouses, finally abolished in 1948, were key sites of deprivation where restrictions on how much food was distributed served to punish or discipline the hungry body into compliance with the dominant work ethic (Vernon; Foucault). However, these ideas shifted in the second half of the nineteenth century as the hungry citizen in Britain (if not in its colonies) was increasingly viewed as a victim of wider forces beyond the control of the individual, and the notion of disciplining the hungry body in workhouses was seen as reprehensible. A humanitarian treatment of hunger replaced a disciplinarian one as a more appropriate response to acute need (Shaw; Vernon). Charitable and reformist organisations proliferated with an agenda to feed, clothe, house, and campaign on behalf of those most deprived, and civil society largely assumed responsibility for those unable to feed themselves. By the early 1900s, ideas about hunger had begun to shift again, and after the Second World War ideational changes were formalised in the welfare state, premised on a view of hunger as due to structural rather than individual failure, hence the need for state intervention encapsulated in the “cradle to grave” mantra of the welfare state, i.e. of consistent care at the point of need for all citizens for their lifetime (see Clarke and Newman; Field; Powell). In this context, the suggestion that Britons could go to bed hungry because they could not afford to feed themselves would be seen as the failure of the “war on want” and of an advanced modern democracy to fulfil its responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens.Since the 1980s, there has been a retreat from these ideas. Successive governments have sought to rein in, reinvent or shrink what they have perceived as a “bloated” welfare state. In their view this has incentivised “dependency” by providing benefits so generous that the supposedly work-shy or “skivers” have no need to seek employment and can fund a diet of takeaways and luxury televisions (Howarth). These stigmatising ideas have, since the 2009 financial crisis and the 2010 election, become more entrenched as the Conservative-led government has sought to renew a neo-liberal agenda to shrink the welfare state, and legitimise a new mantra of austerity. This mantra is premised on the idea that the state can no longer afford the bloated welfare budget, that responsible government needs to “wean” people off benefits, and that sanctions imposed for not seeking work or for incorrectly filling in benefit claim forms serve to “encourage” people into work. Critics counter-argue that the punitive nature of sanctions has exacerbated deprivation and contributed to the growing use of food banks, a view the government disputes (Howarth; Caplan).Food Banks as Sites of Vulnerable CorporealityIn these shifting contexts, food banks have proliferated not only as sites of deprivation but also as sites of vulnerable corporeality, where people unable to draw on individual resources to respond to hunger congregate in search of social and material support. As growing numbers of people in Britain find themselves in this situation, the vulnerable corporeality of the hungry body becomes more pervasive and more visible. Hunger as a lived experience is laid bare in ever-longer food bank queues and also through the physiological, emotional and social consequences graphically described in personal blogs and in the testimonies of food bank users.Blogger Jack Monroe, for example, has recounted giving what little food she had to her child and going to bed hungry with a pot of ginger tea to “ease the stomach pains”; saying to her curious child “I’m not hungry,” while “the rumblings of my stomach call me a liar” (Monroe, Hunger Hurts). She has also written that her recourse to food banks started with the “terrifying and humiliating” admission that “you cannot afford to feed your child” and has expressed her reluctance to solicit the help of the food bank because “it feels like begging” (Monroe, Austerity Works?). Such blog accounts are corroborated in reports by food bank operators and a parliamentary enquiry which told stories of mothers not eating for days after being sanctioned under the benefit system; of children going to school hungry; of people leaving hospital after a major operation unable to feed themselves since their benefits have been cut; of the elderly having to make “hard choices” between “heat or eat” each winter; and of mixed feelings of relief and shame at receiving food bank parcels (All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry; Beattie; Cooper and Dumpleton; Caplan; Perry et al.). That is, two different visibilities have emerged: the shame of standing or being seen to stand in the food bank queue, and blogs that describe these feelings and the lived experience of hunger – both are vulnerable and visible, but in different ways and in different spaces: the physical or material, and the virtual.The response of doctors to the growing evidence of crisis was to warn that there were “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” that progress made against food poverty since the 1960s was being eroded (Ashton et al. 1631), and that the “robust last line of defence against hunger” provided by the welfare state was failing (Loopstra et al. n.p). Medical professionals thus sought to conscript the rhetorical resources of their professional credibility to highlight that this is a politically created public health crisis.This is not to suggest that acute hunger was absent for 50 years of the welfare state, but that with the closure of the last workhouses, the end of hunger marches, and the shutting of the soup kitchens by the 1950s, it became less visible. Over the past decade, hunger has become more visible in images of growing queues at food banks and stacked tins ready to be handed out by volunteers (Glaze; Gore) on production of a voucher provided on referral by professionals. Doctors, social workers or teachers are therefore tasked with discerning cases of need, deciding whose need is “genuine” and so worthy of food relief (see Downing et al.). The voucher system is regulated by professionals so that food banks are open only to those with a public identity constructed around bodily crisis. The sense of something as intimate as hunger being defined by others contrasts to making visible one’s own hunger through blogging. It suggests again how bodies become caught up in wider political struggles where not only is shame a co-construction of internal inadequacies and external judgements, but so too is hunger, albeit in different yet interweaving ways. New boundaries are being established between those who are deprived and those who are not, and also between those whose bodies are in short-term acute crisis, and those whose bodies are in long-term and chronic crisis, which is not deemed to be an emergency. It is in this context that food banks have also become sites of demarcation, shame, and contestation.Public debates about growing food bank queues highlight the ambiguous nature of societal responses to the vulnerability of hunger made visible. Government ministers have intensified internal shame in attributing growing food bank queues to individual inadequacies, failure to manage household budgets (Gove), and profligate spending on luxury (Johnston; Shipton). Civil society organisations have contested this account of hunger, turning shame away from the individual and onto the government. Austerity reforms have, they argue, “torn apart” the “basic safety net” of social responses to corporeal vulnerability put in place after the Second World War and intended to ensure that no-one was left hungry or destitute (Bingham), their vulnerability unattended to. Furthermore, the benefit sanctions impose punitive measures that leave families with “nothing” to live on for weeks. Hungry citizens, confronted with their own corporeal vulnerability and little choice but to seek relief from food banks, echo the Dickensian era of the workhouse (Cooper and Dumpleton) and indict the UK government response to poverty. Church leaders have called on the government to exercise “moral duty” and recognise the “acute moral imperative to act” to alleviate the suffering of the hungry body (Beattie; see also Bingham), and respond ethically to corporeal vulnerability with social policies that address unmet need for food. However, future cuts to welfare benefits mean the need for relief is likely to intensify.ConclusionThe aim of this paper was to explore the vulnerable corporeality of hunger through the lens of food banks, the twenty-first-century manifestations of charitable responses to acute need. Food banks have emerged in a gap between the renewal of a neo-liberal agenda of prudent government spending and the retreat of the welfare state, between struggles over resurgent ideas about individual responsibility and deep disquiet about wider social responsibilities. Food banks as sites of deprivation, in drawing attention to a newly vulnerable corporeality, potentially pose a threat to the moral credibility of the neo-liberal state. The threat is highlighted when the taboo of a hungry body, previously hidden because of shame, is being challenged by two new visibilities, that of food bank queues and the commentaries on blogs about the shame of having to queue for food.ReferencesAbbots, Emma-Jayne, and Anna Lavis. Eds. Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters between Foods and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry. “Feeding Britain.” 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <https://foodpovertyinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/food>.Anderson, Patrick. “So Much Wasted:” Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. 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Introduction The highly contagious COVID-19 virus has presented particularly difficult public policy challenges. The relatively late emergence of an effective treatments and vaccines, the structural stresses on health care systems, the lockdowns and the economic dislocations, the evident structural inequalities in effected societies, as well as the difficulty of prevention have tested social and political cohesion. Moreover, the intrusive nature of many prophylactic measures have led to individual liberty and human rights concerns. As noted by the Victorian (Australia) Ombudsman Report on the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, we may be tempted, during a crisis, to view human rights as expendable in the pursuit of saving human lives. This thinking can lead to dangerous territory. It is not unlawful to curtail fundamental rights and freedoms when there are compelling reasons for doing so; human rights are inherently and inseparably a consideration of human lives. (5) These difficulties have raised issues about the importance of social or community capital in fighting the pandemic. This article discusses the impacts of social and community capital and other factors on the governmental efforts to combat the spread of infectious disease through the maintenance of social distancing and household ‘bubbles’. It argues that the beneficial effects of social and community capital towards fighting the pandemic, such as mutual respect and empathy, which underpins such public health measures as social distancing, the use of personal protective equipment, and lockdowns in the USA, have been undermined as preventive measures because they have been transmogrified to become a salient aspect of the “culture wars” (Peters). In contrast, states that have relatively lower social capital such a China have been able to more effectively arrest transmission of the disease because the government was been able to generate and personify a nationalist response to the virus and thus generate a more robust social consensus regarding the efforts to combat the disease. Social Capital and Culture Wars The response to COVID-19 required individuals, families, communities, and other types of groups to refrain from extensive interaction – to stay in their bubble. In these situations, especially given the asymptomatic nature of many COVID-19 infections and the serious imposition lockdowns and social distancing and isolation, the temptation for individuals to breach public health rules in high. From the perspective of policymakers, the response to fighting COVID-19 is a collective action problem. In studying collective action problems, scholars have paid much attention on the role of social and community capital (Ostrom and Ahn 17-35). Ostrom and Ahn comment that social capital “provides a synthesizing approach to how cultural, social, and institutional aspects of communities of various sizes jointly affect their capacity of dealing with collective-action problems” (24). Social capital is regarded as an evolving social type of cultural trait (Fukuyama; Guiso et al.). Adger argues that social capital “captures the nature of social relations” and “provides an explanation for how individuals use their relationships to other actors in societies for their own and for the collective good” (387). The most frequently used definition of social capital is the one proffered by Putnam who regards it as “features of social organization, such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, “Bowling Alone” 65). All these studies suggest that social and community capital has at least two elements: “objective associations” and subjective ties among individuals. Objective associations, or social networks, refer to both formal and informal associations that are formed and engaged in on a voluntary basis by individuals and social groups. Subjective ties or norms, on the other hand, primarily stand for trust and reciprocity (Paxton). High levels of social capital have generally been associated with democratic politics and civil societies whose institutional performance benefits from the coordinated actions and civic culture that has been facilitated by high levels of social capital (Putnam, Democracy 167-9). Alternatively, a “good and fair” state and impartial institutions are important factors in generating and preserving high levels of social capital (Offe 42-87). Yet social capital is not limited to democratic civil societies and research is mixed on whether rising social capital manifests itself in a more vigorous civil society that in turn leads to democratising impulses. Castillo argues that various trust levels for institutions that reinforce submission, hierarchy, and cultural conservatism can be high in authoritarian governments, indicating that high levels of social capital do not necessarily lead to democratic civic societies (Castillo et al.). Roßteutscher concludes after a survey of social capita indicators in authoritarian states that social capital has little effect of democratisation and may in fact reinforce authoritarian rule: in nondemocratic contexts, however, it appears to throw a spanner in the works of democratization. Trust increases the stability of nondemocratic leaderships by generating popular support, by suppressing regime threatening forms of protest activity, and by nourishing undemocratic ideals concerning governance (752). In China, there has been ongoing debate concerning the presence of civil society and the level of social capital found across Chinese society. If one defines civil society as an intermediate associational realm between the state and the family, populated by autonomous organisations which are separate from the state that are formed voluntarily by members of society to protect or extend their interests or values, it is arguable that the PRC had a significant civil society or social capital in the first few decades after its establishment (White). However, most scholars agree that nascent civil society as well as a more salient social and community capital has emerged in China’s reform era. This was evident after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, where the government welcomed community organising and community-driven donation campaigns for a limited period of time, giving the NGO sector and bottom-up social activism a boost, as evidenced in various policy areas such as disaster relief and rural community development (F. Wu 126; Xu 9). Nevertheless, the CCP and the Chinese state have been effective in maintaining significant control over civil society and autonomous groups without attempting to completely eliminate their autonomy or existence. The dramatic economic and social changes that have occurred since the 1978 Opening have unsurprisingly engendered numerous conflicts across the society. In response, the CCP and State have adjusted political economic policies to meet the changing demands of workers, migrants, the unemployed, minorities, farmers, local artisans, entrepreneurs, and the growing middle class. Often the demands arising from these groups have resulted in policy changes, including compensation. In other circumstances, where these groups remain dissatisfied, the government will tolerate them (ignore them but allow them to continue in the advocacy), or, when the need arises, supress the disaffected groups (F. Wu 2). At the same time, social organisations and other groups in civil society have often “refrained from open and broad contestation against the regime”, thereby gaining the space and autonomy to achieve the objectives (F. Wu 2). Studies of Chinese social or community capital suggest that a form of modern social capital has gradually emerged as Chinese society has become increasingly modernised and liberalised (despite being non-democratic), and that this social capital has begun to play an important role in shaping social and economic lives at the local level. However, this more modern form of social capital, arising from developmental and social changes, competes with traditional social values and social capital, which stresses parochial and particularistic feelings among known individuals while modern social capital emphasises general trust and reciprocal feelings among both known and unknown individuals. The objective element of these traditional values are those government-sanctioned, formal mass organisations such as Communist Youth and the All-China Federation of Women's Associations, where members are obliged to obey the organisation leadership. The predominant subjective values are parochial and particularistic feelings among individuals who know one another, such as guanxi and zongzu (Chen and Lu, 426). The concept of social capital emphasises that the underlying cooperative values found in individuals and groups within a culture are an important factor in solving collective problems. In contrast, the notion of “culture war” focusses on those values and differences that divide social and cultural groups. Barry defines culture wars as increases in volatility, expansion of polarisation, and conflict between those who are passionate about religiously motivated politics, traditional morality, and anti-intellectualism, and…those who embrace progressive politics, cultural openness, and scientific and modernist orientations. (90) The contemporary culture wars across the world manifest opposition by various groups in society who hold divergent worldviews and ideological positions. Proponents of culture war understand various issues as part of a broader set of religious, political, and moral/normative positions invoked in opposition to “elite”, “liberal”, or “left” ideologies. Within this Manichean universe opposition to such issues as climate change, Black Lives Matter, same sex rights, prison reform, gun control, and immigration becomes framed in binary terms, and infused with a moral sensibility (Chapman 8-10). In many disputes, the culture war often devolves into an epistemological dispute about the efficacy of scientific knowledge and authority, or a dispute between “practical” and theoretical knowledge. In this environment, even facts can become partisan narratives. For these “cultural” disputes are often how electoral prospects (generally right-wing) are advanced; “not through policies or promises of a better life, but by fostering a sense of threat, a fantasy that something profoundly pure … is constantly at risk of extinction” (Malik). This “zero-sum” social and policy environment that makes it difficult to compromise and has serious consequences for social stability or government policy, especially in a liberal democratic society. Of course, from the perspective of cultural materialism such a reductionist approach to culture and political and social values is not unexpected. “Culture” is one of the many arenas in which dominant social groups seek to express and reproduce their interests and preferences. “Culture” from this sense is “material” and is ultimately connected to the distribution of power, wealth, and resources in society. As such, the various policy areas that are understood as part of the “culture wars” are another domain where various dominant and subordinate groups and interests engaged in conflict express their values and goals. Yet it is unexpected that despite the pervasiveness of information available to individuals the pool of information consumed by individuals who view the “culture wars” as a touchstone for political behaviour and a narrative to categorise events and facts is relatively closed. This lack of balance has been magnified by social media algorithms, conspiracy-laced talk radio, and a media ecosystem that frames and discusses issues in a manner that elides into an easily understood “culture war” narrative. From this perspective, the groups (generally right-wing or traditionalist) exist within an information bubble that reinforces political, social, and cultural predilections. American and Chinese Reponses to COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in December 2019. Initially unprepared and unwilling to accept the seriousness of the infection, the Chinese government regrouped from early mistakes and essentially controlled transmission in about three months. This positive outcome has been messaged as an exposition of the superiority of the Chinese governmental system and society both domestically and internationally; a positive, even heroic performance that evidences the populist credentials of the Chinese political leadership and demonstrates national excellence. The recently published White Paper entitled “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action” also summarises China’s “strategic achievement” in the simple language of numbers: in a month, the rising spread was contained; in two months, the daily case increase fell to single digits; and in three months, a “decisive victory” was secured in Wuhan City and Hubei Province (Xinhua). This clear articulation of the positive results has rallied political support. Indeed, a recent survey shows that 89 percent of citizens are satisfied with the government’s information dissemination during the pandemic (C Wu). As part of the effort, the government extensively promoted the provision of “political goods”, such as law and order, national unity and pride, and shared values. For example, severe publishments were introduced for violence against medical professionals and police, producing and selling counterfeit medications, raising commodity prices, spreading ‘rumours’, and being uncooperative with quarantine measures (Xu). Additionally, as an extension the popular anti-corruption campaign, many local political leaders were disciplined or received criminal charges for inappropriate behaviour, abuse of power, and corruption during the pandemic (People.cn, 2 Feb. 2020). Chinese state media also described fighting the virus as a global “competition”. In this competition a nation’s “material power” as well as “mental strength”, that calls for the highest level of nation unity and patriotism, is put to the test. This discourse recalled the global competition in light of the national mythology related to the formation of Chinese nation, the historical “hardship”, and the “heroic Chinese people” (People.cn, 7 Apr. 2020). Moreover, as the threat of infection receded, it was emphasised that China “won this competition” and the Chinese people have demonstrated the “great spirit of China” to the world: a result built upon the “heroism of the whole Party, Army, and Chinese people from all ethnic groups” (People.cn, 7 Apr. 2020). In contrast to the Chinese approach of emphasising national public goods as a justification for fighting the virus, the U.S. Trump Administration used nationalism, deflection, and “culture war” discourse to undermine health responses — an unprecedented response in American public health policy. The seriousness of the disease as well as the statistical evidence of its course through the American population was disputed. The President and various supporters raged against the COVID-19 “hoax”, social distancing, and lockdowns, disparaged public health institutions and advice, and encouraged protesters to “liberate” locked-down states (Russonello). “Our federal overlords say ‘no singing’ and ‘no shouting’ on Thanksgiving”, Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, wrote as he retweeted a Centers for Disease Control list of Thanksgiving safety tips (Weiner). People were encouraged, by way of the White House and Republican leadership, to ignore health regulations and not to comply with social distancing measures and the wearing of masks (Tracy). This encouragement led to threats against proponents of face masks such as Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s foremost experts on infectious diseases, who required bodyguards because of the many threats on his life. Fauci’s critics — including President Trump — countered Fauci’s promotion of mask wearing by stating accusingly that he once said mask-wearing was not necessary for ordinary people (Kelly). Conspiracy theories as to the safety of vaccinations also grew across the course of the year. As the 2020 election approached, the Administration ramped up efforts to downplay the serious of the virus by identifying it with “the media” and illegitimate “partisan” efforts to undermine the Trump presidency. It also ramped up its criticism of China as the source of the infection. This political self-centeredness undermined state and federal efforts to slow transmission (Shear et al.). At the same time, Trump chided health officials for moving too slowly on vaccine approvals, repeated charges that high infection rates were due to increased testing, and argued that COVID-19 deaths were exaggerated by medical providers for political and financial reasons. These claims were amplified by various conservative media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham of Fox News. The result of this “COVID-19 Denialism” and the alternative narrative of COVID-19 policy told through the lens of culture war has resulted in the United States having the highest number of COVID-19 cases, and the highest number of COVID-19 deaths. At the same time, the underlying social consensus and social capital that have historically assisted in generating positive public health outcomes has been significantly eroded. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of U.S. adults who say public health officials such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are doing an excellent or good job responding to the outbreak decreased from 79% in March to 63% in August, with an especially sharp decrease among Republicans (Pew Research Center 2020). Social Capital and COVID-19 From the perspective of social or community capital, it could be expected that the American response to the Pandemic would be more effective than the Chinese response. Historically, the United States has had high levels of social capital, a highly developed public health system, and strong governmental capacity. In contrast, China has a relatively high level of governmental and public health capacity, but the level of social capital has been lower and there is a significant presence of traditional values which emphasise parochial and particularistic values. Moreover, the antecedent institutions of social capital, such as weak and inefficient formal institutions (Batjargal et al.), environmental turbulence and resource scarcity along with the transactional nature of guanxi (gift-giving and information exchange and relationship dependence) militate against finding a more effective social and community response to the public health emergency. Yet China’s response has been significantly more successful than the Unites States’. Paradoxically, the American response under the Trump Administration and the Chinese response both relied on an externalisation of the both the threat and the justifications for their particular response. In the American case, President Trump, while downplaying the seriousness of the virus, consistently called it the “China virus” in an effort to deflect responsibly as well as a means to avert attention away from the public health impacts. As recently as 3 January 2021, Trump tweeted that the number of “China Virus” cases and deaths in the U.S. were “far exaggerated”, while critically citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's methodology: “When in doubt, call it COVID-19. Fake News!” (Bacon). The Chinese Government, meanwhile, has pursued a more aggressive foreign policy across the South China Sea, on the frontier in the Indian sub-continent, and against states such as Australia who have criticised the initial Chinese response to COVID-19. To this international criticism, the government reiterated its sovereign rights and emphasised its “victimhood” in the face of “anti-China” foreign forces. Chinese state media also highlighted China as “victim” of the coronavirus, but also as a target of Western “political manoeuvres” when investigating the beginning stages of the pandemic. The major difference, however, is that public health policy in the United States was superimposed on other more fundamental political and cultural cleavages, and part of this externalisation process included the assignation of “otherness” and demonisation of internal political opponents or characterising political opponents as bent on destroying the United States. This assignation of “otherness” to various internal groups is a crucial element in the culture wars. While this may have been inevitable given the increasingly frayed nature of American society post-2008, such a characterisation has been activity pushed by local, state, and national leadership in the Republican Party and the Trump Administration (Vogel et al.). In such circumstances, minimising health risks and highlighting civil rights concerns due to public health measures, along with assigning blame to the democratic opposition and foreign states such as China, can have a major impact of public health responses. The result has been that social trust beyond the bubble of one’s immediate circle or those who share similar beliefs is seriously compromised — and the collective action problem presented by COVID-19 remains unsolved. Daniel Aldrich’s study of disasters in Japan, India, and US demonstrates that pre-existing high levels of social capital would lead to stronger resilience and better recovery (Aldrich). Social capital helps coordinate resources and facilitate the reconstruction collectively and therefore would lead to better recovery (Alesch et al.). Yet there has not been much research on how the pool of social capital first came about and how a disaster may affect the creation and store of social capital. Rebecca Solnit has examined five major disasters and describes that after these events, survivors would reach out and work together to confront the challenges they face, therefore increasing the social capital in the community (Solnit). However, there are studies that have concluded that major disasters can damage the social fabric in local communities (Peacock et al.). The COVID-19 epidemic does not have the intensity and suddenness of other disasters but has had significant knock-on effects in increasing or decreasing social capital, depending on the institutional and social responses to the pandemic. In China, it appears that the positive social capital effects have been partially subsumed into a more generalised patriotic or nationalist affirmation of the government’s policy response. Unlike civil society responses to earlier crises, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, there is less evidence of widespread community organisation and response to combat the epidemic at its initial stages. This suggests better institutional responses to the crisis by the government, but also a high degree of porosity between civil society and a national “imagined community” represented by the national state. The result has been an increased legitimacy for the Chinese government. Alternatively, in the United States the transformation of COVID-19 public health policy into a culture war issue has seriously impeded efforts to combat the epidemic in the short term by undermining the social consensus and social capital necessary to fight such a pandemic. Trust in American institutions is historically low, and President Trump’s untrue contention that President Biden’s election was due to “fraud” has further undermined the legitimacy of the American government, as evidenced by the attacks directed at Congress in the U.S. capital on 6 January 2021. As such, the lingering effects the pandemic will have on social, economic, and political institutions will likely reinforce the deep cultural and political cleavages and weaken interpersonal networks in American society. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated global public health and impacted deeply on the world economy. Unsurprisingly, given the serious economic, social, and political consequences, different government responses have been highly politicised. Various quarantine and infection case tracking methods have caused concern over state power intruding into private spheres. The usage of face masks, social distancing rules, and intra-state travel restrictions have aroused passionate debate over public health restrictions, individual liberty, and human rights. Yet underlying public health responses grounded in higher levels of social capital enhance the effectiveness of public health measures. In China, a country that has generally been associated with lower social capital, it is likely that the relatively strong policy response to COVID-19 will both enhance feelings of nationalism and Chinese exceptionalism and help create and increase the store of social capital. 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Introduction Online influencers play an increasingly important role in political communication – they serve as both intermediaries and producers of political messages. As established opinion leaders in areas such fashion and lifestyle consumption, many influencers recently turned towards more political content (Riedl et al.). For influencers who built their personal brands around aspirational domestic and lifestyle content, the COVID-19 global pandemic created an opportunity (and sometimes even a necessity) to engage in political discourse. The most basic everyday acts and decisions – such as where to shop for food, how to organise playdates for children, if and where to go on holiday – suddenly turned into political discussions and the influencers found themselves either promoting or challenging anti-pandemic restrictions imposed by national governments as they were forced to actively defend their decisions on such matters to their followers. Within this process that I call politicisation of the domestic (Heřmanová), many influencers explored new ways to build authority and leadership within their communities and positioning themselves as experts or “lifestyle gurus” (Baker and Rojek). While the proliferation of political content, including disinformation and conspiracy narratives, on digital communication platforms has been the focus of both public and academic attention in recent years, the focus has mostly been on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (Finlayson). Instagram, the traditional “home” of lifestyle influencers, only recently became the focus of political communication research (Larsson). This article builds on recent scholarship that focusses on the intersection of lifestyle, spiritual, and wellness content on Instagram and the proliferation of political conspiracy narratives on the platform (Remski, Argentino). I use the example of a prominent Czech spiritual influencer Helena Houdová to illustrate the blending of spiritual, aspirational and conspiracy content among Instagram influencers and argue that the specific aesthetics of Instagram conspiracies needs to be understood in the context of gendered, predominantly female “third spaces” (Wright) in the male-coded global digital space. Case Study – Helena When you look at Helena’s Instagram profile, all you see at first is the usual aspirational influencer content – pictures of ocean, beaches, sunsets, and Helena herself in white dresses or swimsuits. Sometimes she’s alone in the pictures, sometimes with her children, and sometimes with a group of similarly serene-looking women with sun-kissed skin and flowers in their hair. In the captions under her Instagram posts, Helena often talks about self-acceptance, self-love, and womanhood, and gives her followers advice how they can, in her own words, “create their own reality” (@helenahoudova, 8 Aug. 2021). Her recipe for the creation of one’s own reality sounds very simple – open your heart, accept the love that the Universe is giving you, accept that you are love. Helena is 41 years old, a divorced mother of 3 children, and a former model and philanthropist. Born in the Czech Republic, Helena won the title of Czech Miss in 1999, when she was 20 years old. She competed in the Miss World competition and started a successful modelling career. After a complicated marriage and divorce, she struggled to obtain an Australian visa and finally found a home in Bali. Over the past few years, Helena managed to build a successful business out of her online presence – she markets online courses and Webinars to her 50,000 followers and offers personal coaching. In this regard, she is a representative example of an “spiritual influencer” (Schwartz), an emerging group of (mostly) female influencers who focus their content on New Age type spirituality, personal healing, and teach their followers the practice of “manifesting”, based on the belief that “the world we perceive, either positively or negatively, is a projection of our own consciousness and that we can transform our reality for the better by transforming ourselves internally” (Urban 226). Helena’s Instagram account is bilingual, and she posts both in Czech and English, though her audience seems to be mostly Czech – most comments left under her posts are also in Czech. Within the Czech influencer community, she is one of the most famous spiritual influencers. Influencers, (Con)spirituality and COVID-19 Spiritual influencers like Helena are part of a global phenomenon (Chia et al.) that has generated lot of media attention over the past year (Schwartz). With their focus on wellbeing and health, they overlap with wellness influencers (O’Neill), but the content they produce also explores various types of New Age spirituality and references to different religious traditions as well as neo-pagan spiritual movements. From this perspective, spiritual influencers often position themselves in opposition to a Western lifestyle (interpreted as materialistic and based on consumption). In this aspect they fit into the category of ‘lifestyle gurus’ as defined by Baker and Rojek: “Lifestyle gurus define themselves in opposition to professional cultures. Selectively and instrumentally, they mix elements from positive thinking, esoteric systems of knowledge and mediate them through folk culture” (390). While prominent figures of the wellness spirituality movement such as Gwyneth Paltrow would be more likely defined as celebrities rather than influencers (see Abidin), spiritual influencers are native to the Internet, and the path to spiritual awakening they showcase on their Instagram profiles is also their source of income. It is this commodified aspect of their online personas that generated a significant backlash from the media as well as from the influencer community itself over the past year. What provoked many critical reactions is the way spiritual influencers became involved in the debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-COVID vaccination all around the world. As I argued elsewhere (Heřmanová), the pandemic impacted on the way influencers build boundaries between ‘domestic’ and ‘political’ within their content and inside the communities of their followers. For women who build their brands around aspirational domesticity (Duffy), the pandemic lockdowns presented a significant challenge in terms of the content they could post. Within the spiritual influencer culture, the discussion around vaccines intersected with influencers’ focus on spiritual and physical health, natural remedies, and so-called ‘natural immunity’. The pandemic thus accelerated the above-mentioned process of the “politicization of the domestic” (Heřmanová). The increasing engagement of spiritual influencers in political debates around COVID-19 and vaccines can be interpreted within the broader context of the conspirituality phenomenon. The term, first coined by Charlotte Ward and David Voas in 2011, describes a “web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldview“ (103). The conspirituality phenomenon is native to the Internet and appears at the intersection of New Age-inspired spirituality and distrust towards established authorities. The conspirituality approach successfully bridges the gap between the spiritual focus on the self and the conspiratorial focus on broader political processes. For spiritual influencers and other types of lifestyle gurus, conspirituality thus offers a way to accommodate the hyper-individualistic, commodified nature of global influencer culture with their message of collective awakening and responsibility to educate wider audiences, because it enables them to present their personal spiritual path as a political act. For the predominantly female wellness/spirituality influencers of Instagram, the term conspirituality has been widely used in the public and media debate, with reference to the involvement of influencers in the QAnon movement (Tiffany, Petersen, and Wang). Argentino coined the term “pastel QAnon” to refer to the community of female influencers initially found on Instagram, but who are increasingly present on various dark platforms, such as Parler or Gab (Zeng and Schäfer), or, in the Czech context, the messaging platform Telegram (Šlerka). “Pastel” refers “to the unique aesthetic and branding these influencers provided to their pages and in turn QAnon by using social media templates like Canva” (Argentino) that is used to soften and aesthetically adapt QAnon messages to Instagram visuality. Many adherents to the pastel version of QAnon are members of the spiritual, yoga, and wellness community of Instagram and were “recruited” to the movement through concerns about COVID-19 vaccines (Remski). This was also the case for Helena. Before the pandemic, her content mostly focussed on her family life and promoting her Webinars and retreats. She rarely commented on political events beyond general proclamations about the materialistic nature of our culture, in which we are losing connection to our true selves. As the pandemic advanced, Helena started to make more and more explicit references to the current global situation. For a long time, however, she resisted openly political, critical proclamations. Then on 12 July 2021 Helena posted a picture of herself standing at the beach in a flowy dress, holding a big golden cup in her hand and accompanied it with the caption: There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves with designated signs. And we must wear a yellow star to sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 1941. There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. (THIS AFTERNOON). We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves, we have to cover our face as a sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 2021. She continues with a call to action and praises her followers, the people who have “woken up” and realised that the pandemic is a global conspiracy meant to enslave people and the vaccination at attempt at “genocide” (@helenahoudova, translated from Czech by author). Fig. 1: Helena's post about COVID-19. This post can be interpreted as a symbolic transgression from spiritual to conspiritual content on Helena’s profile. In the past year, the narrative explaining COVID-19 as an orchestrated political event organised by the global elites to curb the civic and personal freedoms of all citizens has become central in her communication towards her followers. Interestingly, in some of her videos and Instagram stories, she addresses the Czech audience specifically when she compares the anti-pandemic restrictions implemented by the Czech government as an attempt to return the country to its authoritarian, pre-1989 past. Within post-socialist media spaces, the symbolic references to the former totalitarian regime became an important feature of pandemic conspiracies, creating interesting instances of online context collapse. For example, when influencers (including Helena) post content originating from US-based QAnon-related Websites, they tend to frame it as “the return of communism as it we have experienced it before 1989” (Heřmanová). While Helena dedicates her profile almost exclusively to her own content, other Czech spiritual influencers use also other Instagram features such as sharing posts in Stories or sharing content from various Websites, both Czech- and English-speaking, with links to calls for direct actions and petitions against the anti-COVID restrictions and/or vaccination. A few other well-known Czech influencers interact with Helena’s posts by liking them or leaving comments. In this way, the whole community interlinks via different types of political content that is then on the individual profiles blended with lifestyle, wellness, and other ‘typical’, less overtly political, influencer content. Conclusion: Gendered Third Spaces of Instagram Helena’s Instagram presence, along with that of many other women who post similar content, presents an interesting conundrum when we try to decipher how conspiracy theories proliferate in digital spaces. She has, since her ‘coming-out’ as anti-vax adherent and COVID-denialist, branched out her business activities. She now also offers Webinars to teach women how to operate their business in 5D reality that includes intuition as a tool to establish ‘extrasensory’ perception and enables connection to other dimensions of reality (as opposed to the limited 3D perception we typically apply to the world around us). Her journey is representative of a wider trend of politicisation of formerly non-political online spaces in at least two aspects: her prominent focus on women, womanhood, and “sisterhood” as a unit of political organisation, and her successful blend of Instagram-friendly, aspirational, ‘pastel’ aesthetics with overtly political messaging. Both the aesthetics and content of the conspirituality movement on Instagram are significantly gendered. The gendered character of influencers’ work on social media often leads to the assumption that politics has no place in the feminised space of influencer communities on Instagram because it is seen as a male domain (Duffy; Duffy and Hund). Social media, nonetheless, has offered women a tool of political expression, where dedication to domestic affairs may be seen as a political act in itself (Stern). Conspiritual communities on Instagram, such as the one Helena has managed to build, could also be seen as an example of what Scott Wright calls “third spaces” – neutral, inclusive, and accessible virtual spaces where political talk happens (11). A significant body of research has shown that global digital spaces for political discussion tend to be male-coded and women are actively discouraged from participating in them. If they do participate, they are at much higher risk of being exposed to hate-speech and gender-based online violence (Poletta and Chen). The same trend has been analysed within Czech-speaking online communities as well (Vochocová and Rosenfeldová). The COVID-19 pandemic on the other hand opened the opportunity and sometimes necessity (as mentioned above) to engage in political discussion to many women who previously never expressed an interest in political matters. Profiles of conspiritual influencers are perceived both by supportive influencers and by their followers as safe spaces where political opinions can be explicitly discussed precisely because these spaces are not typically designed as political arenas. Helena herself quite often uses the notion of “sisterhood” as a reference to a safe, strong, female community and praises her followers for being awake, being political, and being open to what she calls ‘inner truths’. In a very recent 16-minute video that was originally livestreamed and then saved on her profile, she reflects on current geopolitical developments and makes a direct connection to “liberating sisterhood” as a tool for solving world problems such as wars. The video was posted on 7 March 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine and thus brought war to the near proximity of Helena’s home country. In the video, Helena addresses her followers in Czech and talks about “dark and fragile times”, praises “the incredible energy of sisterhood” that she wants to bring to her followers, and urges them to sign up for her course, because the world needs this energy more than ever (@helenahoudova). Her followers often reflect these sentiments in the comments. They talk about the experience of being judged for embracing their femininity and speaking up against evil (war, vaccination) and mention that they feel encouraged by the community they found. Helena connects with them via liking their comments or leaving responses such as “I stand with you, my love.” The originally non-political character of the third spaces of conspiritual communities on Instagram also partly explains their success in bringing fringe political narratives towards the aspirational mainstream. Helena’s Instagram profile was not originally created, and neither is it run now by her as an openly political/conspiracy account. She does not use hashtags related to QAnon, anti-vax, or any other openly ‘conspiracy-branded’ content. The overall tone of her account and her communication towards her followers has not changed after her ‘coming-out’: she still focusses on highly feminised spiritual aesthetics. She uses light colours, beach photos, and flowy white dresses as a visual frame to her content, and while the content gets politicised, the form still conforms to the standards of Instagram as a platform with its focus on first-person storytelling via selfies and pictures documenting everyday life (Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin). In this respect, Helena’s content can also be seen as an example of what Crystal Abidin calls “subversive frivolity”. Abidin shows how influencers use highly gendered and often mocked and marginalised tools (such as the selfie) and turn them into a productive and powerful means to achieve both economic and social capital (Abidin). In this aspect, the proliferation of conspiracy narratives on Instagram differs significantly from the mechanisms of Twitter and YouTube (Finlayson). While it would be unwise to underestimate the role of recommendation algorithms and filter bubbles (Pariser) in spreading COVID-19-related conspiracies on Instagram, it is also true that the content often circulates despite these mechanisms, as Forberg demonstrated in the example of QAnon communities in the U.S. He proposes to look closely at the “routines” that individual members of these communities employ to make their content visible in mainstream spaces (Forberg). In the case of Helena and members of her community, these routines of engaging with COVID-related content in a way that becomes more and more overtly political form the process of the politicisation of the domestic. While it could be argued that ‘personal is always political’ especially for women (Hanish), Helena and her peers and followers are actively making personal matters political both by naming them as such and by directly connecting themselves, via the notion of sisterhood, to geopolitical developments. In this way, conspirituality influencers are successfully bridging the gap between the individualist ethos of influencer cultures and the collective identity-building of conspiracy movements. 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