Despite the concern with oppressive systems and practices there have been few attempts to analyse the general concept of oppression. Recently, Iris Marion Young has argued that it is not possible to analyse oppression as a unitary moral category. Rather, the term ‘oppression’ refers to several distinct structures, namely, exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. This paper rejects Young's claim and advances a general theory of oppression. Drawing insight from American chattel slavery and the situation of the German Jews (...) during the 1930's, I argue that to be oppressed is to be unjustly denied the opportunity for what I call ‘resilient autonomy’. I argue that all instances of oppression can usefully be analysed in these terms. I test my analysis against each of Young's five structures of oppression, concluding that in each case they are captured by my analysis. (shrink)

Sociological pscychological problems; Islam; essays.

Multiple Sclerosis is a debilitating chronic autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that results in lower quality of life. Medication adherence is important for reducing relapse, disease progression, and MS-related symptoms, particularly during the early stages of MS. However, adherence may be impacted by negative emotional states. Therefore, it is important to identify protective factors. Past research suggests that the ability to discriminate between negative emotional states, also known as negative emotion differentiation, may be protective against enactment of maladaptive (...) risk-related behaviors. However, less is known as to how NED may promote adaptive health behaviors such as medication adherence. Utilizing weekly diaries, we investigated whether NED moderates the association between negative affect and medication adherence rates across 58 weeks among patients newly diagnosed with MS. Results revealed that NED significantly moderated the relationship between negative affect and medication adherence. Specifically, greater negative affect was associated with lower adherence only for individuals reporting low NED. However, this link disappeared for those reporting moderate to high NED. Building upon past research, our findings suggest that NED may promote adaptive health behaviors and have important clinical implications for the treatment and management of chronic illness. (shrink)

During the 20 years since the Rwandan genocide a number of younger Rwandan theologians have reflected on the terrible events that ravaged their country in 1994. They have presented PhD theses at different universities in Africa and Europe. Four of these deal explicitly with the 1994 genocide. The basic main question of this review article is how these theologians are looking to reconstruct the broken Rwandan society. This analysis reveals that, while exploring a variety of subjects, each of these theologians (...) is looking for a way in which reconciliation may be achieved in Rwandan society, which has been torn apart by the consequences of the genocide. This article indicates the main issues put forward by these scholars and highlights what they have in common and to what extent they differ. (shrink)

The great achievement of mankind was the appearance of a printed book that not only significantly expanded the circle of readers, but also in comparison with the handwritten book contributed to the unification of canonical texts, in particular, such as Scripture, church service books, works of the Church Fathers, polemical and other religious literature. Consideration of the words "Japanese typography as the basis for the preservation and transmission of sources of Christian literary culture requires a brief description of the essence (...) of printing, not only as a means of mechanical reproduction of the text, but also a remarkable cultural-historical phenomenon. (shrink)

Professor Benhabib seeks to rely upon discourse theory to ground a `right to membership' — a right of immigrants to seek and be granted naturalization. The effort is unpersuasive because discourse theory cannot provide an answer to the fundamental question of who should participate in the conversation that would establish a right to membership, nor is it clear that persons freely and equally discussing membership rules would reach the normative conclusions that Benhabib defends. Protection of the `rights of others' might (...) be better secured by arguing from human rights principles that guarantee rights to all residents — citizens and immigrants — than by arguing for a right to membership. (shrink)