College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item Transforming Espacios Culturales into Cultural Spaces: How the Salvadoran Community is Establishing Evangelical Protestan Churches as Transtional Institutions in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area(2008-12-04) Luna, Ronald W; Geores, Martha; Townshend, John; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transnationalism is a theoretical concept that explains the current migration patterns that are in stark contrast to the prevailing theories of Acculturation and Assimilation. Migration can no longer be described as a linear process. Transnational "migrants" have a foot in both worlds. No matter where their legal citizenship lies, they have a dual social citizenship. Transnationalism is used not just to identify how immigrants maintain their culture in the host country but just as importantly, how they establish and maintain social and economic linkages between both countries. Transnationalism lacks a cohesive definition and a way to test whether it is present. The Salvadoran Evangelical Protestant Churches in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area serves as case study to examine how the transnationalism process occurs. Key findings include understanding first how transnational communities are established in the host country, as well as how transnational institutions such as Salvadoran Evangelical Protestant Churches began their process of transnationalism in the home country. Furthermore, the Salvadoran Evangelical Protestant Churches reflect and parallel the overall transnational Salvadoran historical and demographic trends. In addition, Salvadoran Evangelical Protestant Churches reinforce the process of transnationalism in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area through memory, ethnic identity, transmigration, networks, and cultural space. It is important to understand that ethnic churches are a major facilitator of transnationalism in the host country; however, there are many other transnational institutions that reinforce the process of transnationalism. This study examines independently each element, which contributes to the process of transnationalism: memory, ethnic identity, transmigration, networks, and cultural space. The research concludes by redefining transnationalism as the process that by which transmigrants create economic, political, social, or cultural networks by participating directly or indirectly in transmigration. Furthermore, transnationalism refers to the process by which migrants become transnational agents when they create linkages at various scales, over time, and across space between the host and home countries and vice versa.Item The Political Struggles of the Ulama of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband: Identifying and Operationalizing the Traditionalist Approach to Politics(2005-12-13) Hamid, Myra; Glass, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper uses the example of the political struggles of the religious scholars (ulama) of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, a highly influential Islamic seminary founded in North India in the 19th century in the wake of Muslim defeat in the Mutiny of 1857 against the British, to identify the salient features of the traditionalist approach to politics and examine how this approach can be operationalized. The paper compares the traditionalist orientation to politics, which the school at Deoband and the movement that emerged from there came to represent, with modernist and fundamentalist/Islamist approaches. It proposes that the understudied but extremely important traditionalist paradigm provides the basis for more creative, balanced, fruitful, and Islamically authentic political engagement than either of the two opposing trends popular in the Muslim world today.Item Autocephaly as a Function of Institutional Stability and Organizational Change in the Eastern Orthodox Church(2005-02-01) Sanderson, Charles; Pearson, Margaret; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The ecclesiastical organization uniquely characteristic of the Christian East is the autocephalous ("self-headed," or self-governing) church, which in the modern states of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Balkans are truly national churches, whose boundaries, administrative structures, and identities closely mirror those of the state. Conventional wisdom attributes autocephaly to nationalism: Christianity inevitably becomes closely associated with national identity in those states whose churches are of Byzantine political patrimony, and autocephaly is the organizational manifestation of that association. This study argues that a better explanation for the prevalence of autocephaly lies with the church's institutional framework. Formal and informal institutions, or "rules of the game," structure the relationships between groups of local churches and provide incentives to observe constraints upon actions that restructure those relationships. A restructuring of ecclesiastical relationships implies that an alteration in incentives changed the equilibrium. In the Christian East, enforcement of the equilibrium historically has been carried out by the state. This study explores the institutional framework of the Orthodox Church, outlining the formal (canon law) and informal (conventions and tradition) rules governing organizational change. These rules are then examined in light of historical evidence of how autocephalous churches have come into being throughout the two millennia of the church's existence. The study concludes that the institutional framework of the Orthodox Church, formed within the political context of the Roman and later East Roman (Byzantine) Empire, became increasingly incongruent both with the changing political geography of Eastern Europe and with the enforcing role afforded to secular political authority as imperial structures gave way to modern nation-states. Since the formal institutional rules have proved resistant to change and unable to keep pace with the changing political geography, the Orthodox Church has relied increasingly upon flexible informal rules which has resulted in a proliferation of autocephalous churches. In addition to locating a more compelling explanation for autocephaly within institutional theory, this study argues that the Orthodox Church provides a compelling area for exploration of some of the more vexing analytical problems in institutional theory, such as why institutions change slowly or even appear not to change at all.