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
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25248
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel3020407
- Views 401
- Downloads 15
The Dardenne Brothers and the Invisible Ethical Drama: Faith without Faith
The cinema of the Dardenne brothers represents a new kind of cinema, one that challenges a number of our conventional ways of thinking about the distinction between religion and secularism, belief and unbelief. Their f...
Reframing Catholic Theological Ethics: Summary and Application
This text represents a summary of the major points developed in the book, Reframing Catholic Theological Ethics, and a brief overview of how the author understands the relation between religion, ethics, and the buildin...
The Reincarnation(s) of Jaya and Vijaya: A Journey through the Yugas
Among the earliest reincarnation narratives found in India’s Puranic texts, we find the stories of Jaya and Vijaya, the two gatekeepers of the spiritual world. Though there is little in these stories to explain reincar...
Revising the Modern Moral Paradigm with the Book of Proverbs
The modern moral paradigm champions a codified format, where ethics is conceived of as and conveyed by means of law. Among the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, the book of Proverbs offers an alternative to modern...
The Paranormal in Jane Jensen’s “Gray Matter”
The main research issue of this article is to determine the extent to which Western esotericism influences the formation of computer game plots. The methodological framework is the occultural bricolage theory (C. Partr...