Towards a Global History of Voting: Sovereignty, the Diffusion of Ideas, and the Enchanted Individual
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2012, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
This article suggests a framework for moving toward a global history of voting and democracy that focuses less on the diffusion of European ideas (however important those ideas were) than on embedding the history of voting within a worldwide history of ideas on sovereignty. The article posits a general framework for such a history focusing on a ―conundrum of sovereignty‖ grounding legitimate rule in a space imagined as simultaneously within and outside worldly society. Rooted in a ―secular theology‖ such ideas shaped in the 19th and 20th centuries the establishment of systems of mass voting (including the secret ballot), and the sovereignty of the ―people‖ both in Europe and other parts of the world alike, in the process producing an image of the individual voter as an ―enchanted individual.‖ The article looks at developments within Europe and in India in these terms.
Authors and Affiliations
David Gilmartin
The Protestant Reformers and the Jews: Excavating Contexts, Unearthing Logic
This article highlights the important initial tasks of excavating the pertinent contexts of the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers and discerning what is at stake for them (i.e., “unearthing logic”) in order to ana...
Faith Unchanged: Spirituality, But Not Christian Beliefs and Attitudes, Is Altered in Newly Diagnosed Parkinson’s Disease
In this study, we aimed at investigating the validity and characteristics of the concept of hyporeligiosity in Parkinson’s disease. Twenty-eight newly diagnosed, never-medicated patients with Parkinson’s disease and 30...
Transfer of Labour Time on the World Market: Religious Sanctions and Economic Results
This paper investigates the extent to which a term like ―globalization‖, especially in its sense of implying the existence of a system, or of dominant features favouring development towards some system, is adaptable to...
The Catholic Bishops vs. the Contraceptive Mandate
The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States have publicly opposed artificial contraception since they first issued a public statement condemning it in 1919. Thereafter, the bishops were generally unsuccessful in pe...
Transforming Losses―A Major Task of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy
Since Freud‘s ―Mourning and Melancholia‖, bereavement encompasses the dilemma between continuing versus relinquishing bonds to deceased persons. Mourning is the process of symbolizing the loss, of making sense by facin...