Journal articles on the topic 'Divorce et religion'

RÉSUMÉ En Algérie, colonie de peuplement, vivaient deux populations dotées de références fort différentes au plan de la culture, de la religion et de la civilisation, et situées aux antipodes l'une de l'autre pour ce qui est des traditions administrativo-étatiques. En ce qui concerne le mariage, aux institutions des uns — liens sacrés légitimés dans la société par une cérémonie civile et par l'enregistrement a l'état civil — s'opposait chez les autres une conception communautaire du mariage dont la légitimité ne devait rien à l'État. Les deux populations avaient, par conséquent, des pratiques matrimoniales différentes. Il y avait monogamie d'un côté, avec un faible taux de divorce, et polygamie de l'autre, avec un taux de divortialité très élevé; de plus le divorce revêtait chez les Algériens une forme particulière, la répudiation. La nuptialité est étudiée ici sous l'angle du marché matrimonial : la demande est exprimée par les hommes et l'offre est constituée par les femmes; l'existence de la dot et sa monétarisation totale ou partielle établissent un prix relatif qui permet l'accès au marché; tous les hommes qui ne peuvent payer la dot sont momentanément exclus du marché. L'objectif de cette recherche est de construire une explication du fonctionnement du marché matrimonial dans la société algérienne traditionnelle et de mettre en relief les mécanismes démographiques qui sous-tendent ce fonctionnement.

This article discusses a wife who filed a lawsuit with the Painan religious court. Even though in the Koran it has been explained that it is men who have the right to divorce, but because in this household there has been disharmony and violence because the husband has schizophrenia. The researcher used a liberar sech type of research (literature review). The research information that became primary data was the decisions of judges at the Painan Religious Court, while secondary data came from books, journals and references from laws. The guidelines for writing this research used the book Lukman Hakim, et al, guidelines for writing scientific papers at the Islamic College of Religion, 2017. The results of the study can be concluded that, the background of the wife who submitted a lawsuit to the Painan religious court was because her husband had committed violence and there had been quarrels that continously. Keywords: Judge's Decision, Divorce, Schizophrenia.

This article has a twofold aim. The first is to examine relations between women and religion in Italy in order to discover whether women contribute to the process of Italian secularisation as described in the literature. The second is to explore relations between secularisation and secularism among Italian women. Our main theme is that the women’s loosening relationship with the Catholic Church has been accompanied by their greater flexibility on moral and ethical questions. Since these questions have frequently been the object of intervention by the Catholic hierarchy, they are a valuable lens through which to examine secularism, revealing how far Italian women have distanced themselves from the Church’s mandates. With this end in view, we shall focus on Italian women’s opinions about topics (such as abortion, divorce, sexuality and reproductive rights) relating to “morality-politics” which are intrinsic to the “emancipation of women from the domestic sphere”.

Le présent article s’inscrit dans le cadre des questionnements existentiels auxquels se livre aujourd’hui toute société laïque désireuse de consolider un vivre-ensemble harmonieux. Plus précisément, il s’intéresse, en premier lieu, au rôle normatif que doivent accorder les systèmes de droit civil au droit religieux, puis à l’impact des règles religieuses sur les femmes dans le contexte de la société française. Les adeptes de la laïcité stricte à la française lient généralement ces deux prémisses par la corrélation suivante : les règles religieuses oppriment les femmes et doivent conséquemment être écartées de l’administration de la justice civile. Afin d’offrir une analyse critique de cette position, cet article s’appuie sur une recherche de terrain auprès de femmes françaises juives et musulmanes ayant navigué à travers les systèmes juridiques civil et religieux dans le cadre de procédures de divorce. Les entrevues menées auprès des femmes concernées par ce débat, bien qu’elles ne constituent pas un échantillon exhaustif, suggèrent que l’évacuation totale de tout droit religieux est fondée sur une conception réductrice et inadéquate de la portée réelle des règles religieuses. Les témoignages rapportés dans cet article évoquent un contre-récit pertinent au discours républicain pro-laïcité et démontrent que les normes religieuses peuvent être utilisées, instrumentalisées et réappropriées par les femmes à des fins émancipatrices que le droit civil ne permet pas forcément. Ce constat n’affecte pas les objectifs normatifs de la laïcité. Il met toutefois en garde contre la simplification à outrance du rapport qu’entretiennent femmes et religion et milite en faveur d’une compréhension.

RÉSUMÉLe principal objectif de cet article est d’encourager une approche plus large, supraconfessionnelle, du mariage et de la famille à l’époque moderne. La conjugalité a été “désacralisée” par les réformateurs protestants du 16e siècle. Martin Luther, parmi d’autres, a refusé le statut de sacrement au mariage, tout en valorisant celui-ci comme une arme contre le péché. En réaction, le concile de Trente a réaffirmé avec force que le mariage est bien un des sept sacrements chrétiens. Mais, promouvant la supériorité du célibat, l’Église catholique n’a jamais beaucoup insisté sur les vertus de la vie et de la piété familiales avant le 19e siècle. En parallèle, les historiens décèlent des signes de “sacralisation” de la famille protestante à partir du 16e siècle. Leurs conclusions doivent être relativisées à la lumière de recherches plus récentes et plus critiques, centrées sur les rapports et les représentations de genre. Elles peuvent néanmoins inspirer une étude élargie et comparative, inexistante dans l’historiographie traditionnelle, des réalités et des perceptions de la famille chrétienne au-delà des frontières confessionnelles.MOTS-CLÉ: Époque Moderne, mariage, famille, protestantisme, Concile de TrenteABSTRACTThe main purpose of this paper is to encourage a broader supra-confessional approach to the history of marriage and the family in the Early Modern era. Wedlock was “desacralized” by the Protestant reformers of the 16th century. Martin Luther, among others, denied the sacramental status of marriage but valued it as a weapon against sin. In reaction, the Council of Trent reinforced marriage as one of the seven sacraments. But the Catholic Church, which promoted the superiority of celibacy, did little to defend the virtues of family life and piety before the 19th century. In parallel, historians have identified signs of a “sacralization” of the Protestant family since the 16th century. 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Abstract: In 1539, Johann Bugenhagen wrote a book, Vom Ehebruch und weglauffen (“On adultery and desertion”), to advice King Christian III on the handling of marital cases. Based on Scripture, divorce is allowable only if a spouse commits adultery or runs away secretly. The article compares Bugenhagen’s two grounds for divorce with those found in Niels Hemmingsen’s Libellus de coniugio, repudio, et divortio from 1572 and in the Marriage Ordinance of King Frederik II of 1582. It is argued that Hemmingsen in allowing six grounds for divorce, including e.g. violence and impiety, follows Philipp Melanchthon, who not only accepted the two scriptural grounds, but also a number of additional grounds from Roman Law and Canon Law. With its three grounds for divorce – adultery, desertion, and impotence – the Marriage Ordinance of 1582 reflected legal practice developed in the law courts that had been handling marital cases since the introduction of the Reformation.

Le divorce implique des considérations morales sur les conduites individuelles dans un contexte socio-économique donné. Pour les saisir, il faut dépasser les modèles contractuels et communautaires au profit d’un modèle institutionnel du divorce, qui permet à chacun l’acceptation de sa part comme juste.

En quoi les idées politiques de Milton découlent-elles de ses réflexions sur le divorce ? Christophe Tournu ramène le lecteur dans la France du XVIe siècle, à l’occasion de la naissance de l’analogie du mariage et du pouvoir royal. Milton ne considérait pas seulement le mariage d’un homme et d’une femme comme une métaphore pour signifier l’union d’un roi et de son peuple ; il concevait le lien matrimonial comme une relation contractuelle impliquant des devoirs spécifiques de la part de la femme, de même que la relation politique impliquait des devoirs spécifiques de la part du roi. Tout comme la femme a été créée pour le bien de l’homme, le roi a été créé pour le bien du peuple. S’il viole son engagement à le servir, il doit être destitué, comme doit l’être la femme si elle ne répond plus à ce pour quoi elle est devenue épouse ; le pouvoir politique revient au peuple, comme l’initiative du divorce ou d’un remariage éventuel revient au mari. Plus encore, lorsque Milton expose son programme pour «une libre République» en 1660, il veut dissuader le peuple anglais de restaurer le régime monarchique, parce qu’il l’a rejeté en 1649, comme Dt 24/1-4 interdit à l’homme de reprendre l’épouse qu’il a répudiée.

Aux lendemains du concile Vatican II, trois interventions publiques des évêques catholiques du Canada sur des questions relevant du débat politique expriment la posture citoyenne alors adoptée par les évêques. Ces prises de position contrastent singulièrement, dans la manière de prendre la parole et d'intervenir dans le débat politique, avec celles faites quelques décennies plus tôt sur les mêmes sujets (contraception et divorce). On observe dans chacune de ces interventions des réflexions sur leur conduite qui renvoient à chaque fois à l'enseignement du concile sur les rapports entre l'Église, la société et l'Etat. On peut donc conclure que leur changement de posture découle directement de l'assimilation de cet enseignement et du pari qu'ils ont alors fait d'adopter une posture citoyenne.

L'article analyse la tension, repérable dans quelques passages du premier Évangile, entre l'obéissance aux commandements se situant à l'intérieur du cadre donné par la Loi, et la radicalisation à laquelle invite le Jésus matthéen. L'enquête débute par une exégèse détaillée de Mt 5, 17–20. Dans un second temps, elle s'intéresse à trois épisodes où la tension entre obéissance et radicalisation est apparente: les antithèses du Sermon sur la Montagne (5, 17–48); la controverse sur le divorce (19, 1–9); l’épisode du jeune homme riche (19, 16–22). Dans une troisième partie, l'interrogation porte sur la cohérence des passages analysés avec la déclaration de Jésus en Mt 23, 2–3. Il résulte de l'enquête le constat que le référent du premier Évangile s'est déplacé: la colonne vertébrale structurant la théologie de Matthieu—et donc son identité religieuse—n'est plus prioritairement la Loi et l'obéissance aux commandements, mais le Messie et son enseignement.

L’alliance, du mariage, est grandiose dans tous les Livres sacrés. Le coran la considère comme : « l’union la plus intime » ayant associé l’un à l’autre ». Or, cette union n’est en aucun cas imperméable aux problèmes. Sur le terrain, un couple ou un foyer peut, en perpétuité et dans toutes les sociétés, être confronté à des ennuis surmontables mais aussi à des tourments plus difficiles. Vu leur utilité réaliste, les Livres sacrés, dans l’intention de purifier la cité et épanouir les individus, ont traité et régularisé plusieurs côtés qui concerne toutes sortes de relations humaines y compris celle réunissant l’homme et la femme en général et les couples mariés en particulier pour garantir une atmosphère apaisante régnée par la quiétude et la stabilité. Le texte religieux envisage que le mariage légal est le moyen le plus pur qui puisse garantir ces valeurs de quiétude et de stabilité. Néanmoins, dans cette recherche nous nous limitons à traiter seulement l’annulation et la dissolution du mariage : le divorce. Quelles sont donc les lois et les conditions qui régissent cette institution dans les trois religions monothéistes ? Et quels sont les points d’analogie et de divergence existant entre ces trois traditions ? Ce sont les points que nous allons essayer de les développer à travers ce travail.

In its preamble, The Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism (WA) commits the state to becoming: “A society in which respect for mutual difference is accompanied by equality of opportunity within a framework of democratic citizenship”. One of the principles of multiculturalism, as enunciated in the Charter, is “equality of opportunity for all members of society to achieve their full potential in a free and democratic society where every individual is equal before and under the law”. An important element of this principle is the “equality of opportunity … to achieve … full potential”. The implication here is that those who start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to achieving that potential deserve more than ‘equal’ treatment. Implicitly, equality can be achieved only through the recognition of and response to differential needs and according to the likelihood of achieving full potential. This is encapsulated in Kymlicka’s argument that neutrality is “hopelessly inadequate once we look at the diversity of cultural membership which exists in contemporary liberal democracies” (903). Yet such a potential commitment to differential support might seem unequal to some, where equality is constructed as the same or equal treatment regardless of differing circumstances. Until the past half-century or more, this problematic has been a hotly-contested element of the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans in the United States, especially as these rights related to educational opportunity during the years of racial segregation. For some, providing resources to achieve equal outcomes (rather than be committed to equal inputs) may appear to undermine the very ethos of liberal democracy. In Australia, this perspective has been the central argument of Pauline Hanson and her supporters who denounce programs designed as measures to achieve equality for specific disadvantaged groups; including Indigenous Australians and humanitarian refugees. Nevertheless, equality for all on all grounds of legally-accepted difference: gender, race, age, family status, sexual orientation, political conviction, to name a few; is often held as the hallmark of progressive liberal societies such as Australia. In the matter of religious freedoms the situation seems much less complex. All that is required for religious equality, it seems, is to define religion as a private matter – carried out, as it were, between consenting parties away from the public sphere. This necessitates, effectively, the separation of state and religion. This separation of religious belief from the apparatus of the state is referred to as ‘secularism’ and it tends to be regarded as a cornerstone of a liberal democracy, given the general assumption that secularism is a necessary precursor to equal treatment of and respect for different religious beliefs, and the association of secularism with the Western project of the Enlightenment when liberty, equality and science replaced religion and superstition. By this token, western nations committed to equality are also committed to being liberal, democratic and secular in nature; and it is a matter of state indifference as to which religious faith a citizen embraces – Wiccan, Christian, Judaism, etc – if any. Historically, and arguably more so in the past decade, the terms ‘democratic’, ‘secular’, ‘liberal’ and ‘equal’ have all been used to inscribe characteristics of the collective ‘West’. Individuals and states whom the West ascribe as ‘other’ are therefore either or all of: not democratic; not liberal; or not secular – and failing any one of these characteristics (for any country other than Britain, with its parliamentary-established Church of England, headed by the Queen as Supreme Governor) means that that country certainly does not espouse equality. The West and the ‘Other’ in Popular Discourse The constructed polarisation between the free, secular and democratic West that values equality; and the oppressive ‘other’ that perpetuates theocracies, religious discrimination and – at the ultimate – human rights abuses, is a common theme in much of the West’s media and popular discourse on Islam. The same themes are also applied in some measure to Muslims in Australia, in particular to constructions of the rights of Muslim women in Australia. Typically, Muslim women’s dress is deemed by some secular Australians to be a symbol of religious subjugation, rather than of free choice. Arguably, this polemic has come to the fore since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. However, as Aly and Walker note, the comparisons between the West and the ‘other’ are historically constructed and inherited (Said) and have tended latterly to focus western attention on the role and status of Muslim women as evidence of the West’s progression comparative to its antithesis, Eastern oppression. An examination of studies of the United States media coverage of the September 11 attacks, and the ensuing ‘war on terror’, reveals some common media constructions around good versus evil. There is no equal status between these. Good must necessarily triumph. In the media coverage, the evil ‘other’ is Islamic terrorism, personified by Osama bin Laden. Part of the justification for the war on terror is a perception that the West, as a force for good in this world, must battle evil and protect freedom and democracy (Erjavec and Volcic): to do otherwise is to allow the terror of the ‘other’ to seep into western lives. The war on terror becomes the defence of the west, and hence the defence of equality and freedom. A commitment to equality entails a defeat of all things constructed as denying the rights of people to be equal. Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudeaux and Garland analysed the range of discourses evident in Time and Newsweek magazines in the five weeks following September 11 and found that journalists replicated themes of national identity present in the communication strategies of US leaders and elites. The political and media response to the threat of the evil ‘other’ is to create a monolithic appeal to liberal values which are constructed as being a monopoly of the ‘free’ West. A brief look at just a few instances of public communication by US political leaders confirms Hutcheson et al.’s contention that the official construction of the 2001 attacks invoked discourses of good and evil reminiscent of the Cold War. In reference to the actions of the four teams of plane hijackers, US president George W Bush opened his Address to the Nation on the evening of September 11: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). After enjoining Americans to recite Psalm 23 in prayer for the victims and their families, President Bush ended his address with a clear message of national unity and a further reference to the battle between good and evil: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). In his address to the joint houses of Congress shortly after September 11, President Bush implicated not just the United States in this fight against evil, but the entire international community stating: “This is the world’s fight. This is civilisation’s fight” (cited by Brown 295). Addressing the California Business Association a month later, in October 2001, Bush reiterated the notion of the United States as the leading nation in the moral fight against evil, and identified this as a possible reason for the attack: “This great state is known for its diversity – people of all races, all religions, and all nationalities. They’ve come here to live a better life, to find freedom, to live in peace and security, with tolerance and with justice. When the terrorists attacked America, this is what they attacked”. While the US media framed the events of September 11 as an attack on the values of democracy and liberalism as these are embodied in US democratic traditions, work by scholars analysing the Australian media’s representation of the attacks suggested that this perspective was echoed and internationalised for an Australian audience. Green asserts that global media coverage of the attacks positioned the global audience, including Australians, as ‘American’. The localisation of the discourses of patriotism and national identity for Australian audiences has mainly been attributed to the media’s use of the good versus evil frame that constructed the West as good, virtuous and moral and invited Australian audiences to subscribe to this argument as members of a shared Western democratic identity (Osuri and Banerjee). Further, where the ‘we’ are defenders of justice, equality and the rule of law; the opposing ‘others’ are necessarily barbaric. Secularism and the Muslim Diaspora Secularism is a historically laden term that has been harnessed to symbolise the emancipation of social life from the forced imposition of religious doctrine. The struggle between the essentially voluntary and private demands of religion, and the enjoyment of a public social life distinct from religious obligations, is historically entrenched in the cultural identities of many modern Western societies (Dallmayr). The concept of religious freedom in the West has evolved into a principle based on the bifurcation of life into the objective public sphere and the subjective private sphere within which individuals are free to practice their religion of choice (Yousif), or no religion at all. Secularism, then, is contingent on the maintenance of a separation between the public (religion-free) and the private or non- public (which may include religion). The debate regarding the feasibility or lack thereof of maintaining this separation has been a matter of concern for democratic theorists for some time, and has been made somewhat more complicated with the growing presence of religious diasporas in liberal democratic states (Charney). In fact, secularism is often cited as a precondition for the existence of religious pluralism. By removing religion from the public domain of the state, religious freedom, in so far as it constitutes the ability of an individual to freely choose which religion, if any, to practice, is deemed to be ensured. However, as Yousif notes, the Western conception of religious freedom is based on a narrow notion of religion as a personal matter, possibly a private emotional response to the idea of God, separate from the rational aspects of life which reside in the public domain. Arguably, religion is conceived of as recognising (or creating) a supernatural dimension to life that involves faith and belief, and the suspension of rational thought. This Western notion of religion as separate from the state, dividing the private from the public sphere, is constructed as a necessary basis for the liberal democratic commitment to secularism, and the notional equality of all religions, or none. Rawls questioned how people with conflicting political views and ideologies can freely endorse a common political regime in secular nations. The answer, he posits, lies in the conception of justice as a mechanism to regulate society independently of plural (and often opposing) religious or political conceptions. Thus, secularism can be constructed as an indicator of pluralism and justice; and political reason becomes the “common currency of debate in a pluralist society” (Charney 7). A corollary of this is that religious minorities must learn to use the language of political reason to represent and articulate their views and opinions in the public context, especially when talking with non-religious others. This imposes a need for religious minorities to support their views and opinions with political reason that appeals to the community at large as citizens, and not just to members of the minority religion concerned. The common ground becomes one of secularism, in which all speakers are deemed to be indifferent as to the (private) claims of religion upon believers. Minority religious groups, such as fundamentalist Mormons, invoke secular language of moral tolerance and civil rights to be acknowledged by the state, and to carry out their door-to-door ‘information’ evangelisation/campaigns. Right wing fundamentalist Christian groups and Catholics opposed to abortion couch their views in terms of an extension of the secular right to life, and in terms of the human rights and civil liberties of the yet-to-be-born. In doing this, these religious groups express an acceptance of the plurality of the liberal state and engage in debates in the public sphere through the language of political values and political principles of the liberal democratic state. The same principles do not apply within their own associations and communities where the language of the private religious realm prevails, and indeed is expected. This embracing of a political rhetoric for discussions of religion in the public sphere presents a dilemma for the Muslim diaspora in liberal democratic states. For many Muslims, religion is a complete way of life, incapable of compartmentalisation. The narrow Western concept of religious expression as a private matter is somewhat alien to Muslims who are either unable or unwilling to separate their religious needs from their needs as citizens of the nation state. Problems become apparent when religious needs challenge what seems to be publicly acceptable, and conflicts occur between what the state perceives to be matters of rational state interest and what Muslims perceive to be matters of religious identity. Muslim women’s groups in Western Australia for example have for some years discussed the desirability of a Sharia divorce court which would enable Muslims to obtain divorces according to Islamic law. It should be noted here that not all Muslims agree with the need for such a court and many – probably a majority – are satisfied with the existing processes that allow Muslim men and women to obtain a divorce through the Australian family court. For some Muslims however, this secular process does not satisfy their religious needs and it is perceived as having an adverse impact on their ability to adhere to their faith. A similar situation pertains to divorced Catholics who, according to a strict interpretation of their doctrine, are unable to take the Eucharist if they form a subsequent relationship (even if married according to the state), unless their prior marriage has been annulled by the Catholic Church or their previous partner has died. Whereas divorce is considered by the state as a public and legal concern, for some Muslims and others it is undeniably a religious matter. The suggestion by the Anglican Communion’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law regarding marital disputes or financial matters is ultimately unavoidable, sparked controversy in Britain and in Australia. Attempts by some Australian Muslim scholars to elaborate on Dr Williams’s suggestions, such as an article by Anisa Buckley in The Herald Sun (Buckley), drew responses that, typically, called for Muslims to ‘go home’. A common theme in these responses is that proponents of Sharia law (and Islam in general) do not share a commitment to the Australian values of freedom and equality. The following excerpts from the online pages of Herald Sun Readers’ Comments (Herald Sun) demonstrate this perception: “These people come to Australia for freedoms they have never experienced before and to escape repression which is generally brought about by such ‘laws’ as Sharia! How very dare they even think that this would be an option. Go home if you want such a regime. Such an insult to want to come over to this country on our very goodwill and our humanity and want to change our systems and ways. Simply, No!” Posted 1:58am February 12, 2008 “Under our English derived common law statutes, the law is supposed to protect an individual’s rights to life, liberty and property. That is the basis of democracy in Australia and most other western nations. Sharia law does not adequately share these philosophies and principles, thus it is incompatible with our system of law.” Posted 12:55am February 11, 2008 “Incorporating religious laws in the secular legal system is just plain wrong. No fundamentalist religion (Islam in particular) is compatible with a liberal-democracy.” Posted 2:23pm February 10, 2008 “It should not be allowed in Australia the Muslims come her for a better life and we give them that opportunity but they still believe in covering them selfs why do they even come to Australia for when they don’t follow owe [our] rules but if we went to there [their] country we have to cover owe selfs [sic]” Posted 11:28am February 10, 2008 Conflicts similar to this one – over any overt or non-private religious practice in Australia – may also be observed in public debates concerning the wearing of traditional Islamic dress; the slaughter of animals for consumption; Islamic burial rites, and other religious practices which cannot be confined to the private realm. Such conflicts highlight the inability of the rational liberal approach to solve all controversies arising from religious traditions that enjoin a broader world view than merely private spirituality. In order to adhere to the liberal reduction of religion to the private sphere, Muslims in the West must negotiate some religious practices that are constructed as being at odds with the rational state and practice a form of Islam that is consistent with secularism. At the extreme, this Western-acceptable form is what the Australian government has termed ‘moderate Islam’. The implication here is that, for the state, ‘non-moderate Islam’ – Islam that pervades the public realm – is just a descriptor away from ‘extreme’. The divide between Christianity and Islam has been historically played out in European Christendom as a refusal to recognise Islam as a world religion, preferring instead to classify it according to race or ethnicity: a Moorish tendency, perhaps. The secular state prefers to engage with Muslims as an ethnic, linguistic or cultural group or groups (Yousif). Thus, in order to engage with the state as political citizens, Muslims must find ways to present their needs that meet the expectations of the state – ways that do not use their religious identity as a frame of reference. They can do this by utilizing the language of political reason in the public domain or by framing their needs, views and opinions exclusively in terms of their ethnic or cultural identity with no reference to their shared faith. Neither option is ideal, or indeed even viable. This is partly because many Muslims find it difficult if not impossible to separate their religious needs from their needs as political citizens; and also because the prevailing perception of Muslims in the media and public arena is constructed on the basis of an understanding of Islam as a religion that conflicts with the values of liberal democracy. In the media and public arena, little consideration is given to the vast differences that exist among Muslims in Australia, not only in terms of ethnicity and culture, but also in terms of practice and doctrine (Shia or Sunni). The dominant construction of Muslims in the Australian popular media is of religious purists committed to annihilating liberal, secular governments and replacing them with anti-modernist theocratic regimes (Brasted). It becomes a talking point for some, for example, to realise that there are international campaigns to recognise Gay Muslims’ rights within their faith (ABC) (in the same way that there are campaigns to recognise Gay Christians as full members of their churches and denominations and equally able to hold high office, as followers of the Anglican Communion will appreciate). Secularism, Preference and Equality Modood asserts that the extent to which a minority religious community can fully participate in the public and political life of the secular nation state is contingent on the extent to which religion is the primary marker of identity. “It may well be the case therefore that if a faith is the primary identity of any community then that community cannot fully identify with and participate in a polity to the extent that it privileges a rival faith. Or privileges secularism” (60). Modood is not saying here that Islam has to be privileged in order for Muslims to participate fully in the polity; but that no other religion, nor secularism, should be so privileged. None should be first, or last, among equals. For such a situation to occur, Islam would have to be equally acceptable both with other religions and with secularism. Following a 2006 address by the former treasurer (and self-avowed Christian) Peter Costello to the Sydney Institute, in which Costello suggested that people who feel a dual claim from both Islamic law and Australian law should be stripped of their citizenship (Costello), the former Prime Minister, John Howard, affirmed what he considers to be Australia’s primary identity when he stated that ‘Australia’s core set of values flowed from its Anglo Saxon identity’ and that any one who did not embrace those values should not be allowed into the country (Humphries). The (then) Prime Minister’s statement is an unequivocal assertion of the privileged position of the Anglo Saxon tradition in Australia, a tradition with which many Muslims and others in Australia find it difficult to identify. Conclusion Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia, partly because it is perceived that their faith is under attack and that it needs defending (Aly). They construct the defence of their faith as a choice and an obligation; but also as a right that they have under Australian law as equal citizens in a secular state (Aly and Green). Australian Muslims who have no difficulty in reconciling their core Australianness with their deep faith take it as a responsibility to live their lives in ways that model the reconciliation of each identity – civil and religious – with the other. In this respect, the political call to Australian Muslims to embrace a ‘moderate Islam’, where this is seen as an Islam without a public or political dimension, is constructed as treating their faith as less than equal. Religious identity is generally deemed to have no place in the liberal democratic model, particularly where that religion is constructed to be at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy, namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, it is as if the national commitment to secularism rules as out-of-bounds any identity that is grounded in religion, giving precedence instead to accepting and negotiating cultural and ethnic differences. Religion becomes a taboo topic in these terms, an affront against secularism and the values of the Enlightenment that include liberty and equality. In these circumstances, it is not the case that all religions are equally ignored in a secular framework. What is the case is that the secular framework has been constructed as a way of ‘privatising’ one religion, Christianity; leaving others – including Islam – as having nowhere to go. Islam thus becomes constructed as less than equal since it appears that, unlike Christians, Muslims are not willing to play the secular game. In fact, Muslims are puzzling over how they can play the secular game, and why they should play the secular game, given that – as is the case with Christians – they see no contradiction in performing ‘good Muslim’ and ‘good Australian’, if given an equal chance to embrace both. Acknowledgements This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. References ABC. “A Jihad for Love.” Life Matters (Radio National), 21 Feb. 2008. 11 March 2008. < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2167874.htm >.Aly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen.” M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). 13 April 2008 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08aly-green.php >.Aly, Anne, and David Walker. “Veiled Threats: Recurrent Anxieties in Australia.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27.2 (2007): 203-14.Brasted, Howard.V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000.” Muslim Communities in Australia. Eds. Abdullah Saeed and Akbarzadeh, Shahram. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001. 206-28.Brown, Chris. “Narratives of Religion, Civilization and Modernity.” Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. Eds. Ken Booth and Tim Dunne. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 293-324. Buckley, Anisa. “Should We Allow Sharia Law?” Sunday Herald Sun 10 Feb. 2008. 8 March 2008 < http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,231869735000117,00.html >.Bush, George. W. “President Outlines War Effort: Remarks by the President at the California Business Association Breakfast.” California Business Association 2001. 17 April 2007 < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011017-15.html >.———. “Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”. 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Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151- 71.Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971.Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books 1978.Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism. WA: Government of Western Australia, Nov. 2004. 11 March 2008 < http://www.equalopportunity.wa.gov.au/pdf/wa_charter_multiculturalism.pdf >.Yousif, Ahmad. “Islam, Minorities and Religious Freedom: A Challenge to Modern Theory of Pluralism.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 20.1 (2000): 30-43.

There is growing recognition of the importance of maternal mental health for the well‐being of both mothers and children. In addition to being of importance to public health concern on its own right, maternal depression could impede women's capacity to provide quality care to their children. However, the covariates of maternal depression, especially in low‐resource settings, are not well‐understood. In particular, the role of gender equity in maternal depression needs further investigation. Therefore, we sought to understand covariates associated with maternal depression in a rural farming community in Tanzania. We hypothesized that greater food insecurity and gender inequity in a household would be positively correlated with maternal depression.The Singida Nutrition and Agroecology Project (SNAP‐Tz) is a participatory agroecology and nutrition intervention with rural farmers with children <1 y in Singida, Tanzania. As part of the baseline assessment in February 2016, women from the 587 participating households were asked about a range of socio‐demographic, agricultural, health, and nutrition topics. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES‐D, range: 0–65) was used to measure maternal depression. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS, range: 0–27) was used to measure household food insecurity. Gender equity was indicated by a summed score of husband's help with household chores (range: 0–7), women's (dis)satisfaction with leisure time, and women's experience with domestic violence. Social support was measured using the Perceived Social Support scale (PSS, range:0–40). Multivariate linear regression models of depression were then built using backwards stepwise elimination and include village fixed effects. Standard error estimates considered clustering at the village level.CESD scores indicated probable depression (CES‐D≥17) among 69.2% of women. Probable major depression (CES‐D≥26) was indicated for 42.5% women. The mean HFIAS of 14.0 (sd: 7.9) suggested that food insecurity was also very common. In multivariate models of depression, food insecurity score was positively and strongly correlated with maternal depression score (β=0.62, p=0.000). Having experienced domestic violence was positively associated with increased maternal depression score (β=4.29, p=0.004). Greater help from husband and satisfaction with amount of leisure time were negatively correlated with maternal depression score (β=−0.65, p=0.011 and β=−3.00, p=0.000, respectively).In sum, the prevalence of maternal depression is very high in Singida, Tanzania. While some covariates were not modifiable, several important ones were, including food insecurity, unbalanced household division of task, and domestic violence. Causality should be further explored, but these data suggest important and novel domains in which to intervene to improve maternal mental health.Support or Funding Information(1) Collaborative Crop Research Program, McKnight Foundation. (2) Sera L Young was supported by the National Institutes of Health (K01 MH098902) Household characteristics of participants of Singida Nutrition and Agroecology Project, February 2016 Mean (sd) or n(%) Range HFIAS, mean (sd)1 14.02 (7.89) 0 – 27 Age, mean (sd) 29.59 (7.51) 15.7 – 48.1 Education (years), mean (sd) 5.98 (2.68) 0 – 11 Marital status, n(%) Monogamous married 495 (84.9%) Polygamous married 46 (7.9%) Separated/divorced/widowed 26 (4.5%) Never married 16 (2.7%) Household dependency ratio, mean (sd)2 1.56 (1.03) 0.1 – 7 Social support score, mean (sd)3 34.36 (8.36) 0 – 40 Husband drink more than 3x/week, n (%) 182 (32.8%) Proportion of asset owned by woman, mean (sd) 1.29 (1.66) 0 – 10.5 Husband help score, mean (sd) 2.47 (2.06) 0 – 7 Satisfaction with leisure time, mean (sd) 1.41 (1.06) −2 – 2 Acceptance towards domestic violence, mean (sd)4 4.09 (2.52) 0 – 7 Experience with domestic violence, n (%) 186 (32.2%) Coates, J., Swindale, A. & Bilinsky, P. Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for measurement of Food access: indicator guide. (Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA), 2007). Population's Division, U.N. World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision, vol. I: Comprehensive Tables. (2007). Antelman, G. et al. Predictors of HIV‐1 serostatus disclosure: a prospective study among HIV‐infected pregnant women in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Aids 15, 1865–1874 (2001). DHS Questionnaire Modules (English, French). Available at: http://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication‐dhsqm‐dhs‐questionnaires‐and‐manuals.cfm Bivariate and multivariate linear regression models of maternal depression score bivariate β (p) multivariate, all β (p) multivariate, parsimonious β (p) HFIAS 0.75 (0.00)*** 0.62 (0.00)*** 0.62 (0.00)*** Social support score −3.36 (0.02)** −2.97 (0.07)* −3.38 (0.02)** Husband drink alcohol more than 3x/week 4.19(0.00)*** 1.12 (0.27) Women drink alcohol more than 3x/week 3.08(0.15) Proportion of asset owned by woman 1.43(0.00)*** 0.42 (0.32) Husband help score −1.35(0.00)*** −0.67 (0.01)** −0.65(0.01)** Satisfaction with leisure time −4.41 (0.00)*** −3.03 (0.00)*** −3.00 (0.00)*** Attitude towards domestic violence 0.64(0.01)** 0.18 (0.26) Experience with domestic violence 4.26 (0.00)*** 4.09 (0.00)*** 4.30(0.01)*** Age 0.20 (0.02)** 0.02 (0.86) Education (years) −0.44 (0.03)** −0.69 (0.76) Marital status Married, monogamous (comparison) (comparison) (comparison) Married, polygamous −2.07 (0.32) −1.63(0.33) −1.04 (0.52) Separated/divorced/widowed 9.79 (0.00)*** 5.32 (0.06)* 6.70 (0.01)** Never married −0.08 (0.98) −0.53(0.81) −0.54 (0.80) Asset index deciles −0.68 (0.00)*** 0.04 (0.85) Household dependency ratio 0.93 (0.08)* −0.40 (0.42) Whether women born in the village −(0.19 (0.87) Tribe (comparison) Nyaturu 1.07 (0.78) Nyiramba 4.98 (0.27) Other (comparison) Religion 0.77 (0.54) Muslim 4.57 (0.73) Christian −5.43 (0.69) Traditional African Other N 566 572 Adjusted R‐2 0.369 0.364

Background: Previous research on the perceived causes of poverty has been carried out in the field of sociology (Strapcová, 2005) as well as social psychology (Nasser & Abouchedid, 2001). This research has looked at individuals' perceptions of the causes of poverty and the effect of various sociodemographic variables such as social class (Kluegel & Smith, 1981), income (Lever & Trejo, 2004), subjective assessment of one's economic situation (Strapcová, 2005), gender (Bullock, 1999), age (Niemelä, 2008), education (Hunt, 1996) and employment (Strapcová, 2005). The majority of these studies have been conducted on people who have not directly experienced poverty such as university students (Cozzarelli et al., 2001), middle-class people (Kluegel & Smith, 1981) and social workers (Bullock, 2004). Therefore, there have only been a few studies done on how poor people perceive the causes of poverty (Bullock, 1999; Davids & Gouws, 2013; Morçöl, 1997). Research goal: The present study has two objectives. The first one was to determine whether there are statistically significant differences in the individualistic, structural and fatalistic perceived causes of poverty between the objectively poor and objectively non-poor as well as between the subjectively poor and subjectively non-poor. Secondly, it was to identify the predictors of the individualistic, structural and fatalistic perceived causes of poverty among selected variables including gender, age, marital status, employment status, education, objective poverty and subjective poverty. It was hypothesized that the objectively poor would prefer less individualistic and more structural as well as fatalistic perceived causes of poverty in comparison with the objectively non-poor. It was also hypothesized that the subjectively poor in comparison with the subjectively non-poor would prefer less individualistic and more structural as well as fatalistic perceived causes of poverty. In addition, it was assumed that sociodemographic variables such as objective poverty, subjective poverty, gender, age, marital status, employment status and education would be significant predictors of the structural, fatalistic and individualistic perceived causes of poverty. In particular, it was hypothesized that objective poverty, subjective poverty, gender, and age would be confirmed as positive predictors of structural and fatalistic perceived causes of poverty while marital status, employment status and education would be confirmed as negative predictors. Within the individualistic perceived causes of poverty, it was hypothesized that marital status, employment status and education would be significant positive predictors while objective poverty, subjective poverty, gender and age would be significant negative predictors. Method: The research sample consisted of 150 respondents (77 men and 73 women) aged between 19 and 64 years old (M = 36.67; SD = 13.23). In terms of education, 17 participants stated that primary school had been their highest level of education, 31 participants stated that they had left secondary school without A level exam, 46 participants had left with A level exam and 56 participants had a university degree (15 of them had a Bachelor's degree, 39 participants had a Master’s and 2 participants had a PhD). In terms of marital status, 73 participants were single, 8 cohabitated, 49 were married, 13 were divorced and 7 widowed. With regards to employment status, 79 participants were full-time employed, 11 worked part-time, 27 were unemployed, 7 were retired, 6 were on sick/disability leave invalid retirees and 20 respondents reported their employment status as “other“ (9 of them were self-employed, 9 were students and 2 were on maternity leave). The data were dichotomized into groups according to age (19-25, 26-45, and 46-64 years old), according to relationship status (those not in a relationship and those who are), groups with lower and higher educational attainment and groups of non-working and working participants. For the data collection, occasional sampling was conducted in seven charitable organizations in the regions of Prešov, Košice, and Banská Bystrica in Slovakia. In addition, voluntary response sampling was used through an online survey. In order to assess the perceived causes of poverty, the Attributions for Poverty questionnaire (Bullock et al., 2003) was used. The subjective assessment of poverty was measured by the question “In your economic situation, is it possible to make ends meet?” (Nygård et al., 2017). The equivalent disposable household income of each respondent was calculated as an indicator of objective poverty. The research data were analysed in the statistical program IBM SPSS Statistics. Both a Welch t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to verify the first goal of the study. For the second goal, a multiple hierarchical linear regression analysis stepwise method was used. Results: There were statistically significant differences found in the structural as well as fatalistic perceived causes of poverty between the objectively poor and objectively non-poor as well as between the subjectively poor and subjectively non-poor. The objectively poor and subjectively poor were found to have higher scores in both the structural and fatalistic perceived causes of poverty in comparison with the objectively non-poor and subjectively non-poor. There were no statistically significant differences found between the objectively poor and objectively non-poor nor between the subjectively poor and subjectively non-poor in the individualistic perceived causes of poverty. The results of the regression analysis showed that when the 9 predictors were inputted in three blocks (1. gender, age-3 groups, marital status, 2. education, employment status, 3. objective poverty, subjective poverty), none of them appeared to be significant in terms of the individualistic perceived causes of poverty. For the structural as well as fatalistic perceived causes of poverty only one of the input predictors was shown to be positively significant. Subjective poverty was found to explain 4.2% of the variance in structural and 8.3% in the fatalistic perceived causes of poverty. Conclusion: The findings provide insight into the widely up to now unexplored issue of perceived causes of poverty in Slovakia. Future research on the perceived causes of poverty among the poor could focus on self-assignment of the participant to either the group of the poor or non-poor, distinguish between one's own poverty and the poverty of others and include other variables such as ethnicity, religion, belief in a just world as well as life satisfaction.

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. Helena’s case enables us to identify and understand these narratives as they emerge at the intersection of Instagram aesthetics (easily reproducible), content (aspirational and highly individualised), and spiritual teaching that zooms out of individual perspectives towards wider societal issues. Acknowledgment The article was supported by the programme “International mobility of researchers of the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences II“, reg. n. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_053/0016983. References Abidin, Crystal. “‘Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?’: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity.” Social Media + Society (Apr. 2016). DOI: 10.1177/2056305116641342. ———. Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online. London: Emerald Publishing, 2018. Argentino, Marc D. “Pastel QAnon.” Global Network on Extremism and Technology 17 Mar. 2021. <https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/>. 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Photo by Karl Raymund Catabas on Unsplash The interests of patients at most levels of policymaking are represented by a disconnected patchwork of groups … “After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries – a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. – And we – we must still defeat his shadow as well!” – Friedrich Nietzsche[1] INTRODUCTION Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared that “God is dead!”[2] but lamented that his contemporaries remained living in the shadow of God. For Nietzsche, the morality of his time was still based in the Christian tradition, even though faith in God was waning. Bioethics lives under a similar shadow: the shadow of Enlightenment Era-rationalism. Bioethics curricula focus on principles derived from Kantian deontology and utilitarianism. The allure of maintaining a moral framework that provides a rational method that can be handily applied to any situation remains strong. The principlist approach advanced by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress is taught to nearly all medical students in the United States,[3] and is essentially the canonical ethical framework of bioethics. In this model, the principle of autonomy is Kantian in nature, and the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence are utilitarian in nature.[4] Moreover, the presented framework is an approach that, when applied rationally to any healthcare scenario, will yield an outcome “considered moral.”[5] This reflects a faulty conception of philosophy that plagues much of bioethics, wherein the only contribution of philosophy pertinent to bioethics is moral philosophy elucidated by European thinkers in the Enlightenment Era. The landscape of moral philosophy has evolved significantly from the 18th century. However, the bioethical world has not kept up with the philosophical world, remaining instead in the shadow of antiquated moral thinking. Also lacking in bioethics are other disciplines of philosophy, such as philosophy of language, existentialism, and aesthetics, which are often given no consideration at all. The inclusion of both modern moral philosophy and other philosophical fields is necessary if bioethics is to survive its transition into modernity. l. The Shadow of Enlightenment Enlightenment Era philosophers such as Immanuel Kant argued that one need only employ reason to obtain knowledge; emotion bore no relevance when determining ethical behavior. Kant’s moral theories thus privileged a duty to act according to moral imperatives over feelings. Other Enlightenment Era philosophers such as John Locke developed systems that attempted to quantify human goods and human ills. This quantification potentially reduces human welfare and suffering to utility. Today, in the world of philosophy, such a “neutral analysis,” as Cora Diamond noted, is “dead or moribund.”[6] Bernard Williams remarked that such moral philosophy is “empty and boring,”[7] and G. E. M. Anscombe stated that it “no longer generally survives.”[8] And yet, just as the atheists in Nietzsche’s world dwelt in the moral code of a dead God, bioethicists still pursue a unified moral system that takes an input, applies some moral rules, and generates a moral outcome, like the four principles approach that Beauchamp and Childress laid out.[9] Some detractors of principlism take issue with their approach for not being unified enough and want to replace it with a procedural framework that is even more systematic and complicated. They argue that the resulting moral framework would be a “comprehensive decision procedure for arriving at answers”[10] that retains the “impartiality that is an essential part of morality.”[11] The shadow of rationalist morality has caused bioethical decision making to become detached and rigid when bioethics should concern itself with the humans whose lives it affects. A rational, divorced-from-emotion way of thinking ultimately fails to yield satisfactory results when decisions are made by and for emotional beings. Dr. Paul Farmer, among others, championed the idea that bioethics should be de-philosophized, as philosophy, cold and calculated, fails to adequately respond to the realities of those worst off.[12] Instead, Dr. Farmer emphasized the inclusion of the social sciences, like sociology and anthropology, in bioethics. Undoubtedly, Dr. Farmer was on the right track; bioethics should certainly engage directly with the people whom its decisions involve. If the narrow band of moral philosophy currently found in bioethics – that of stringent rationalism – were all that philosophy had to offer, I, too, would advocate for a de-philosophization. Ludwig Wittgenstein notes that to attempt to capture the complexity of moral thinking in a manner that employs reason alone and casts aside emotion is a “hopeless task,” like reconstructing a sharp image “from a blurred one.”[13] Unfortunately, bioethics is mired in the remnants of this hopeless task. To Dr. Farmer, the dominant moral framework was too restrictive and was unresponsive to the social and humanitarian needs of those whom bioethics is meant to help. As such, he wished to free bioethics from the shadow of a morality derived from rationalist thinkers. ll. Beyond Rationalism Like Nietzsche, who tried to resolve Europe’s post-religion vacuum by providing his society with a new way to live, Dr. Farmer wanted to replace the rationalist philosophy upon which bioethics was built with a “resocialization” of the field.[14] I agree with Dr. Farmer’s call for resocialization, as well as his denouncement of philosophy as it exists in bioethics. Evaluating risks and benefits along a predetermined array of moral principles is far too rigid and impersonal to guide what are often the most important decisions one will make. For Dr. Farmer, the most needed change was restoring the social element of bioethics. However, in advocating for this resocialization, Dr. Farmer casts philosophy as the antithesis of social science, noting that “few would regard philosophy … as a socializing discipline.”[15] I disagree. Rationalist moral philosophy may be lacking in socializing force, but there are other fields of philosophy that are responsive to our social reality. Rather than de-philosophizing bioethics, it makes more sense to replace the antisocial philosophies predominant in bioethics with prosocial philosophies better suited to it. Of course, the contribution of philosophy to bioethics is more than moral theories from the Enlightenment Era. There are more recent philosophical contributions from outside the field of moral philosophy that have roused bioethical interest. Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, et al., argue for philosophy’s continued place in bioethics, citing Derek Parfit’s “non-identity problem,” which altered the landscape of reproductive ethics, and David Chalmers’ contributions to philosophy of consciousness, which have implications for the moral status of brain organoids.[16] Still, these are narrow applications of philosophy to highly specialized areas of bioethics, which not all bioethicists are inclined to delve into. Philosophy in bioethics should not be confined to niche applications in specialist fields but should influence all bioethical thought. Fortunately, there remains untapped a wealth of philosophical disciplines that pertains to exactly this. Philosophy of language investigates the nature of meaning and understanding in communication, which is a necessary social action. Successfully deciphering and conveying moral values in discourse is a bioethicist’s bread and butter, as is resolving disagreements and reaching agreements. Indeed, it is often the case that miscommunication lies at the root of an impasse between a doctor and a patient. An understanding of the nature of the disagreement would help resolve the conflict, as different types of disagreements require different interventions for resolution. For instance, a “substantive disagreement,”[17] in which two parties use the same terms in the same ways and have a fundamental disagreement on which outcome is more desirable, can be resolved only if one party yields to the other. On the other hand, a “merely verbal dispute,”[18] in which two parties use the same terms to represent entirely different concepts and values, requires standardization of terminological usage for its resolution. As such, no one can overstate the moral importance of successful communication in bioethics, and an exploration of language itself would prove invaluable to a bioethicist’s training. Existentialism is another subset of philosophy that acknowledges the social nature of human existence, noting that one’s being in the universe is concomitant with the existence of others sharing the same universe.[19] Thus, there is the recognition that whatever existence is, it is not complete without the existence of others. With this as a starting point, existentialists examined how to live meaningfully with others in this world. Since ethics crucially involves others, it is no surprise that existentialists pondered how to live moral lives. Existentialist conceptions of morality did not revolve around acting in accordance with a set of rules, but rather, recognized individual freedom in choosing how to act and emphasized acting authentically. In this vein, bioethicists should commit to doing what is right rather than committing to applying a set of principles. Existentialism, while part of the broader bioethics literature, is less common throughout bioethics curricula and deserves more prominence. Martin Heidegger, for instance, emphasized the difference between two types of thinking: “calculative thinking” and “meditative thinking.” Heidegger characterizes calculative thinking as a computation, wherein from some given starting conditions “definite results”[20] are determined, and contrasts this with meditative thinking, which he describes as “thinking which contemplates the meaning which reigns in everything that is.”[21] Heidegger was critical of the pervasiveness of calculative thinking, seeing it as the “ground of thoughtlessness,”[22] in which we only relate to the world in a meaningless, mechanical way. This is the emphasized type of thinking in rationalist conceptions of morality popular in bioethics; from a set of starting conditions, a series of rules are applied, and a moral outcome is calculated. Such a technique, however, discounts the personal meaning individuals place on the aspects of their lives relevant to their decision making, as well as the meaning in committing to doing what is right. Under calculative thinking, such a commitment is reduced to rote rule-following. A turn to meditative thinking would ensure that bioethical decisions comport with living meaningful lives. Even aesthetics, a discipline devoted to examining beauty and taste,[23] has a place in bioethics. Just as the viewing of a painting, the listening of a song, or the reading of a book elicits an effective response, hearing a patient’s story leaves an emotional imprint. The recounting of a traumatic moment imparts sadness, and a joyous occasion begets joy in the listener as well. As acknowledged in the field of everyday aesthetics, these aesthetic experiences often spur us to act:[24] The unsightly appearance of a polluted riverbank drives us to remove the trash; the presence of sorrow in one’s life drives us to ameliorate it. To be mindful of aesthetic experiences and allow them to affect us emotionally is paramount to the motivation of a bioethicist to serve the patient, not out of an obligation to a job description, but out of a desire to truly avail the patient of their anguish. For example, the new field of narrative medicine utilizes critical reading and literary techniques to train clinicians and bioethicists in emotional understanding and listening skills that stress the social aspects of medicine beyond rational analysis and decision making. CONCLUSION Dr. Farmer is absolutely correct; bioethics is in dire need of resocialization. It should not be the case that the justification for a moral action is essentially that “the rules say so,” or that simply by teaching such rules to medical students, the very act of making bioethical decisions that diverge from those determined by principles can be seen as an act of “bad faith … hubris or, worse, malpractice.”[25] As bioethicists are coming to realize, the rationalist philosophical traditions that bioethics was founded upon are past their expiry, and the time for change is now. Indeed, as Dr. Farmer urges, “socializing disciplines” like anthropology, history, political economy, and sociology are necessary to humanize the field of bioethics.[26] So too, however, can philosophy be a socializing discipline, if we know where to look. Bioethics should evolve. Its new goal should be to focus on meaningful human relationships, and to phase out rigid, impersonal modes of moral thinking. The limited sampling of unsatisfying moral theories from hundreds of years ago leaves many bioethics students cold, and it is easy to see why bioethicists are ready to part ways with philosophy. I believe this is a move in the wrong direction; there is a place for philosophy in the future of bioethics. Just as bioethics needs a resocialization, it is also needs of a re-philosophization. These enrichments complement one another. There is more to bioethics than mechanically determining the right course of action in a healthcare setting. Bioethics engages with the most ancient of philosophical questions: questions of what makes human existence meaningful, what makes us who we are, how we want to relate to others, how and why we feel, what our place in the world is, how we can communicate what we think, and why our moral intuitions are so compelling. We would be remiss if we did not begin to investigate additional contributions to morality from a wider range of philosophies that try to provide answers to such questions, as they offer a richness to moral thinking that cannot be gleaned from traditional bioethical approaches alone. - [1] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, ed. Bernard Williams, Josefine Nauckhoff, and Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 109. [2] Nietzsche, 120. [3] Daniel C O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced: Principlism, Narrative Ethics, and the Case of Living Donor Liver Transplantation,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 47, no. 1 (February 1, 2022): 97, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhab039. [4] K. D. Clouser and B. Gert, “A Critique of Principlism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15, no. 2 (April 1, 1990): 219–36, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/15.2.219. [5] O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced,” 97. [6] Cora Diamond, “Having a Rough Story about What Moral Philosophy Is,” New Literary History 15, no. 1 (1983): 168, https://doi.org/10.2307/468998. [7] Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Canto ed (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), xvii. [8] G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33, no. 124 (January 1958): 1, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100037943. [9] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 13. [10] Clouser and Gert, 233. [11] Clouser and Gert, “A Critique of Principlism,” 235. [12] Paul Farmer and Nicole Gastineau Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics: A View from Below,” Developing World Bioethics 4, no. 1 (May 2004): 17–41, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-8731.2004.00065.x. [13] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. Joachim Schulte, trans. P. M. S. Hacker, 4th edition (Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 40. [14] Farmer and Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics,” 20. [15] Farmer and Campos, 20. [16] Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby et al., “The Place of Philosophy in Bioethics Today,” The American Journal of Bioethics: AJOB, June 30, 2021, 3–5, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1940355. [17] Brendan Balcerak Jackson, “Verbal Disputes and Substantiveness,” Erkenntnis 79, no. S1 (March 2014): 31–54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9444-5. [18] C. S. I. Jenkins, “Merely Verbal Disputes,” Erkenntnis 79, no. 1 (March 1, 2014): 11–30, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9443-6. [19] Steven Crowell, “Existentialism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2020 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/existentialism/; Anita Avramides, “Other Minds,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2020 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/other-minds/. [20] Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, Harper Torchbooks (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1969), 46. [21] Heidegger, 46. [22] Heidegger, 45. [23] Nick Zangwill, “Aesthetic Judgment,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2021 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/aesthetic-judgment/. [24] Yuriko Saito, “Aesthetics of the Everyday,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2021 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/aesthetics-of-everyday/. [25] O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced,” 112. [26] Farmer and Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics,” 20.