Arts and Social Sciences Journal

It is commonly acknowledged that many thinkers have predicted a drop in mainstream religious participation and traditional belief, and a retreat of religion from the public sphere in favor of reason and rational thinking. However, religion did “return from exile” with ferocity partly after the Iranian Revolution and remarkably after the 9/11 attacks and the Arab Spring heralding the gradual decline of secularization theory. This comeback of religion does not mean the end of secularism, but rather the conflation or marriage between religion/Islam and secularism forcing Islamic discourse to enter a new phase of post-Islamism and secular discourse to enter a new era of post-secularism. In addition to deconstructing the afore-mentioned concepts and highlighting the role of performance of protest in mobilizing the protesters during the Arab uprisings, my paper is concerned with investigating the issue of spirituality in performance studies and highlighting the reformulation of religion’s place in the Arab public sphere in the post-Arab Spring era. It also argues that the multi-faceted, hybrid and revolutionary post-Islamist public sphere has contributed to the emergence of youth religiosity as a model that is independent of the ideological establishment.

At the primary stage of human development, man struggled against his fellow man in his quest to achieve the essential needs of food, clothing and shelter. But the gradual and steady progress toward communal living was attended by the syndrome of collectivism. From this stage man evolved to nation-state status with the emergence of modern governmental system as one of its towering features. Henceforth, the socio-economic and political fortunes of nation-states have come to bear a direct relationship to the integrity of their governance systems. This paper takes a hard look at public governance in Nigeria. Relying on historical and contemporary data, we found that the enthronement of instrumentalist Nigerian state principally accounts for not only the quantum but also the structure of poverty in Nigeria. Again we observed that the conversion of Nigeria’s abundant human and material resources into prosperity for the great majority of her citizens depends crucially on fixing the governance question.

This paper aims to analyse the philosophical premises on which the idea of unity of law (identity of legal system) is based. In the history of legal philosophy this idea found its main arguments in the presumption of totality of legal regulation. Such totality translated the philosophical tenets of holism according to which law is not limited to the positive-law rules and institutes, and transcends to the supreme values priming over the legal instruments human beings and collectives create for regulation of their mutual behavior. This argument implies one of the highest values (that of justice) under which all the social relations can be subsumed and which finally gives the binding force to positive law. The author argues that this line of thought is based on philosophical objectivism and naturalism, and can easily lead to primacy of the social over the individual. To substantiate the idea of systemacity of law, one can turn to the modern debates about logic of social cohesion (Searle) and construct a legal system identity as a purely intellectual hypothesis necessary for thinking about law. In the terms of Foucault’s analysis of power relations, this integrity can be described as a unity of discourse, or as a unity of societal practices, as proposed by Kuhn. This reconstruction of integrity of law can be extended by appealing to the basic ideas of normative philosophy of law (from Hart and Kelsen to Raz and Marmor) and is reconcilable with the conception of normative systems of Bulygin-Alchourron.

It is a well-known fact that social networking is becoming more and more common among the people of different backgrounds world over. Like their other counterparts across the globe, Nigerian youths especially students in tertiary or higher institutions of learning are seriously engaged in communicating with each other both at local and global levels through these social networks. They are involved in chatting, conveying comments, remarks or feedback on a particular issue at a given social medium such as Face book, twitter and 2go. This paper examines the negative impact of using such social networks to the Nigerian ESL students writing in academic setting. The primary aim of this paper is to show the extent to which these social networks affect their writing behavior. A textual analysis is used to examine the data of this study which is obtained from three most pervasive and commonly used social networks: Face book, 2 go and twitter. The results indicate that students’ writing is hampered by serious writing impediments occurring mainly at three important and crucial writing aspects: lexis, punctuation and grammar.

This study aims to compare Making Choices program and Barkley Behavioral Parent Training on the peer rejection of Iranian children with Conduct Disorder. A total of 136 Iranian children between 8 and 10 years old with Conduct Disorder participated in the study. The peer rejection questionnaire was used to check the results of educating. Making Choices program to children and Barkley Behavioral Parent Training to parents of them. The results of the analysis of repeated measure Anova revealed a significant difference between, Making Choices program, Behavioral Parent training, and a combination of two programs. It showed that three kinds of interventions include Making Choices program, Barkley Behavioral Parent Training and combination of both interventions resulted in decreasing of peer rejection in same level at the time of follow up. It is suggested that the combination of both programs is more effective in a short period of time. However, both kinds of interventions decreased peer rejection of children with Conduct Disorder in a long period of time. The time of follow-up indicated that peer rejection of children decreased more in the group with the combination of both programs. It is recommended to carry out an investigation and compare the teacher and parent rating on symptoms of children with Conduct Disorder.

This is a preliminary research to obtain information to formulate a problem statement for an overall study of the embedding of soft skills in the program courses in higher learning institutions. This research was conducted in the form of single case and multi-case studies. The research data was attained through mixed methods; the quantita - tive method by utilizing questionnaires and the qualitative method utilizing open-ended questionnaires. Qualitative data were used as supporting data in this research. This research sought to study two main issues; the readiness of lecturers and problems encountered in embedding soft skills into teachers’ bachelor’s degree courses in Malaysia’s Institute of Teachers Education. Quantitative data was processed manually to show frequency, while qualitative data was processed according to themes. Research findings indicated that a majority of lecturers are interested and ready to embed soft skills in the core courses. However, lecturers lamented about problems encountered in embedding soft skills in teaching and learning of courses even though the curriculum of the programs have been designed holistically to fulfill the needs to develop soft skills within trainee teachers.

The term globalization has been associated with key areas of change, which have led to a marked transformation of the world order. Globalization in India is generally taken to mean integrating the economy of the country with the world. This, in turn, implies opening up the economy to foreign direct investment by providing facilities to foreign companies to invest in different fields of economic activity in India. The main policy initiated towards globalization by the Government of India can be discussed under many headings. Globalization can be a major force for prosperity only if it is backed by adequate national policies and conducive social and economic environment. The present paper is totally based on secondary data. This paper will give an overview of what the forces of globalization have in store for the women of India. The various impacts of globalization on the society as well on women in India were also highlighted in the paper. The data thus collected shows the status of globalization in India, the significant role played by the new economic policy in promoting the Indian Economy, Does globalization cause poverty, Why are so many people opposed to globalization and Can globalization be controlled. A large group of working women of India is in the rural and unorganized sectors. Socially the majority of Indian women is still tradition bound and is in a disadvantageous position. Since globalization is opening up the Indian economy suddenly at a very high speed, without the required economic and social policies to provide the much required safety net, women who have been involved with production in the traditional ways, have to cope with numerous problems and yet try to avail of the opportunities which an open economy promises. With this background, this paper mainly focuses on the Anthropological vision and critical reality on the impact of globalization on Indian rural women from various angles.

The evolutionary advantage of humans is in our unique ability to process stories – we have highly evolved ‘narrative organs.’ Through storytelling, vicarious knowledge, even guarded knowledge, is used to help our species survive. We learn, regardless of whether the story being told is ‘truth’ or ‘fiction.’ Humans place themselves in stories, as both observer and participant, to create a ‘neural balance’ or sweet spot that allows them to be immersed in a story without being entirely threatened by it – and this involvement in story leads to the formation of empathy – an empathy that is integral to forging a future humanity. It is through empathy, we argue, that stories have the power to save us. The hippocampi process narrative details. Situated alongside are the amygdalae – organs that place the reader in the story. The temporal lobes store ‘story nuggets.’ Finally there’s the frontal cortex to inhibit full participation in narrative, so that the story can be experienced vicariously.

As a strategy to improve the English language proficiency in secondary school, Tanzania issued a communicative competence based English syllabus in 2005. This syllabus that accommodates Communicative Approach in teaching and learning process was introduced to replace the old syllabus which was claimed to be structure based and hence could not produce communicative competent learners. This study investigated the suitability of the Approach in Tanzania and revealed the practical problems encountered by both teachers and students over the use of the Approach in Tanzania. It revealed that the learning environment in Tanzania does not support the use of the Approach because there is a big number of students in classes, a large number of people use Kiswahili and Ethnic Community Languages as their languages of communication, just few students use English only when they are in school environment and most secondary schools use Kiswahili language as their language of communication, and even teachers in these schools use Kiswahili when teaching in the classes though the stipulated language of instruction is English. And finally the researchers conclude by arguing that there is a need of reintroducing the former methods that were used to teach English before CA.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the phenomenon of dematerialization of art, which is increasingly evident. This phenomenon of increasing abstraction is emerging in complex evolutionary systems of communication in multiple forms (from the presumed real economy to finance, from human resources management to the expansion of intellectual capital formalized in trademarks, patents, licenses, copyrights, etc.,). The abstraction of contemporary art reflects a complex phenomenon that can be defined as hypercitizenship in the sense that the levels of observational and operational expertise required for a system to evolve autopoietically are increasingly sophisticated in terms of the four characteristics featuring hypercitizenship: cosmopolitanism, entrepreneurship, scientificity and social autonomy, as compared to the specifics of the art system.

This study argues that understanding the complexity of child labor experiences in the developing countries like Nigeria is a sine-qua-non for sustainable development of the societies. It posits that a distinction needs to be made between child labor and child work. More so, until and unless we comprehend the background of families, the state of welfare, the potency of state mechanisms of control along political will, as well as the motives of the victims in relation to the consequences on the victims and the society in general, we cannot deal with the menace of child labor in the global south. This empirical study surveyed 311 child laborers in Kaduna Metropolis- Nigeria; conducted key informants' interviews; and utilized content analysis to generate the findings of the research. The data illustrate that the dynamics of child labor in the area of study is relatively common to children from poor and difficult parental backgrounds. It shows multiple consequences of such activities on schooling and general well-being of the children. It highlights the tendency for the children's future to be compromised with antecedent consequences such as increasing anti-social behaviors and the tendencies for transition from delinquency to criminality in the metropolis. Conversely, the data indicate that government is relenting on implementing measures to curb the problem. The study therefore recommends improved welfare provision by the state government, enhanced public private partnership (PPP), as well as private initiatives as collaborative efforts for empowerment. These efforts should be a bottom-top approach for the general well-being of notably the less-privileged in the metropolis.

The paper contains some field data from the Oraons and an attempt at the formalization of lineage relations. Starting with the title of the paper “The Elementary Approach on Segmentation of Lineage and Directed Straight Line segment: An Analogical perception of review study in Anthropology,” the purpose of the study simply wants to draw an abstract parallel between lineage relations and mathematical relations. There are sporadic references to Western scholars, including Harary & White’s “parental graph” and W.H.R. Rivers’s “genealogical method.” The study derives from “physics” and applies them to the anthropology of kinship for reasons that “Physics is the study of matter, energy and motion. Since everything in our world relates to these three basic subjects, physics can help understand many working system in the universe. All comes down to energy and matter.

The study was conducted at the university of Gujrat to examine the role of social media specially facebook is creating awareness among students about political system of Pakistan and possible change in political behavior of students after exposure to political content on facebook. Survey research method was adopted in this research. A pilot study was conducted before choosing sample. During pilot study survey method was used to find out that student of which departments of University use facebook the most. It was found that students of CS/IT and MCM department use facebook. Through Survey Research, data was collected from 120 respondents, among which 67 were male while remaining 53 were female. A clear majority of 65% of the respondents belong to age group from 22-24 years. 30%, 19-21.56.7% of respondents belongs to Urban area, 30% from Sub Urban area while only 13.3% belong to Rural area.

This paper deals with the population and the problem of unemployment in LDCs. The economies of the LDCs are characterized by high population growth. They are facing great challenge in generating adequate job opportunities for their teeming population. Many facts and data from notable authors, agencies, websites and organizations were analyzed and discussed in this paper regarding this problem. Nigeria is not left out as their population ever increases with limited number of job opportunities. The factors responsible for the increase in the level of unemployment in Nigeria includes: rural urban migration, wrong government policies, urban bias, lack of population control, lack of mental skill and practicability, corruption and Inspirited Entrepreneur drive. Reviewing the socio-economic organization, monitoring rural-urban migration, promoting agriculture and entrepreneurship programmes, Investment in human capital, and encouraging Public Private Partnership etc. were some of the recommendations made to avoid a “worst-case scenario” of the above problem and to realize the nation’s vision as being one of the leading economies by the year 2020.

Today man is constantly exposed to attacks of two dominant forces of the contemporary world, which organize and structure its logistic of perception: speed and technical images. Paul Virilio, the “high priest of speed” deals with the impact of speed on the contemporary world in his texts. Virilio’s theory shows the far-reaching extent to which the speed conquered all and everything over the centuries: transportation and production, peace and war, men and women, urban and rural areas, work and leisure time, arts and commerce. Virilio clearly shows us how the principle of acceleration of the word has taken root in professional and private lives of individuals and societies in both good and bad sense, and how it has changed and continues changing our standards, values, perceptions and mentality. Vilem Flusser speaks of “technical images” in general. Technical images furnish the space of our everydayness in a similar way as an architect furnishes a room with new furniture. Technical images work by supplying a reality where it is needed. Technical image is an abstraction of the third order. The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses. Our new arrangement of the world, new after the end of the age of linear writing, depends on two things – on apparatuses and on their programmes.

This paper questions the main trends that have developed in Aids prevention campaigns in Brazil over the recent past years and proposes alternatives to the established pattern of Aids and STD prevention in the country. The alternative model proposes a more involved participation of design professionals in every phase of campaign planning, in an effort to promote prevention strategies that may prove more humane, efficient and complete.

This article explores the attempts to create a global tropical timber regime and its underlying competing environmental norms of exploitation, conservation and preservation. It outlines a history of forestry exploitation over time and tracks the stilted development of a global tropical timber regime. It further examines the development of the International Tropical Timber Agreement and its concomitant Organisation. Legro’s test of the robustness of a norm will be applied to the tropical timber regime to determine when and why, and through whose agency, normative change has not been effected within the International Tropical Timber Organisation where conservationist norms have failed to take root.

From 1936 to 1939 a civil war ravaged Spain, resulting in the establishment of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco and the beginning of decades of a totalitarian regime and the suspension of democracy in the country. As with any armed conflict, art and cultural heritage were victimized: even the deadly toll on human lives was considerable, the conflict affected the preservation of cultural heritage. One of the most important attacks to cultural heritage during the war was the appropriation of the archives from the Generalitat (the government of Catalonia), seized by Franco’s troops, among many other documents of people and institutions not akin to his regime. The archives created in the town of Salamanca stored an estimate of two hundred tons of confiscated documents with an important historical value; however, even though attempts have been made for their return to Catalonia (notably, through the passing of a law by the Spanish government in 2005), not much has been transferred to its legitimate owners. The article presents the case of the archives of Salamanca and discusses how the impact of a 73 year old conflict is still being politically and legally felt in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. Particularly, the theoretical framework used is Richard Quinney’s conflict theory, which assumes that the organized state does not represent common interests, but rather the interests of those with sufficient power to control its operations, resulting in the powerful being legally freer to pursue their self-interests, than those less powerful. The article concludes, based on both legal and political grounds, that Quinney’s theoretical framework is a perfect tool for further research on the dynamics and conflicts of interest in both the relationship between the affected region and the country when it regards to the documentation seized during Spain’s civil war, and how these conflicting interests are still active nowadays, decades after the conflict finished.