Articles
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/1014
2024-03-28T17:05:52ZA NATION’S HOLY LAND: KAZAKHSTAN’S LARGE-SCALE NATIONAL PROJECT TO MAP ITS SACRED GEOGRAPHY
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/6948
A NATION’S HOLY LAND: KAZAKHSTAN’S LARGE-SCALE NATIONAL PROJECT TO MAP ITS SACRED GEOGRAPHY
Tsyrempilov, Nikolay; Bigozhin, Ulan; Zhumabayev, Batyrkhan
This article focuses on the project Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan, launched in 2017 in Kazakhstan as part
of the nationwide program Ruqani Zhangyru (Modernization of Spirituality). The officially stated goal of the
project is to cultivate a sense of patriotism in the country’s residents related to places and geographic sites
that are important for the historical memory of independent Kazakhstan. The authors assume that the real
goal of the project is national territorialization, or recoding of the semantics of space, by selecting, codifying,
and articulating some symbols and practices, while leveling and “forgetting” others. The analysis, which is
based on expert interviews and official documents, shows that this postcolonial process fits into the tendency
toward ethnonationalization of Kazakhstan, in which discourse on the civil nation continues to be
reproduced at the official level, while real activity is more focused on reinforcing the idea of Kazakhstan
as the state of the Kazakh nation. The institutionalization of organizing and recoding the sacred landscape
involves a wide variety of groups and actors. These factors may explain the success of the project in
comparison to other projects being implemented under the Ruqani Zhangyru program.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Role of Experts in the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Their Epistemic Authority in Democracy
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/4971
The Role of Experts in the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Their Epistemic Authority in Democracy
Lavazza, Andrea; Farina, Mirko
In the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, medical experts (virologists, epidemiologists, public health scholars, and statisticians alike) have become instrumental in suggesting policies to counteract the spread of coronavirus. Given the dangerousness and the extent of the contagion, almost no one has questioned the suggestions that these experts have advised policymakers to implement. Quite often the latter explicitly sought experts' advice and justified unpopular measures (e.g., restricting people's freedom of movement) by referring to the epistemic authority attributed to experts. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the basis of this epistemic authority and the reasons why in this case it has not been challenged, contrary to the widespread tendency to devalue expertise that has been observed in recent years. In addition, in relation to the fact that experts' recommendations are generally technical and supposedly neutral, we note that in the COVID-19 crisis different experts have suggested different public health policies. We consider the British case of herd immunity and the US case of the exclusion of disabled people from medical care. These decisions have strong axiological implications and affect people profoundly in very sensitive domains. Another goal is, therefore, to argue that in such cases experts should justify their recommendations-which effectively become obligations-by the canons of public reason within the political process because when values are involved it is no longer just a matter of finding the “best technical solution,” but also of making discretionary choices that affect citizens and that cannot be imposed solely on the basis of epistemic authority.
2020-07-14T00:00:00ZFACT-TRACKING BELIEF AND THE BACKWARD CLOCK: A REPLY TO ADAMS, BARKER AND CLARKE
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/4562
FACT-TRACKING BELIEF AND THE BACKWARD CLOCK: A REPLY TO ADAMS, BARKER AND CLARKE
WILLIAMS, JOHN
In “The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, and Safety”
(2015), Neil Sinhababu and I gave Backward Clock, a
counterexample to Robert Nozick’s (1981) truth-tracking analysis
of knowledge. In “Knowledge as Fact-Tracking True Belief”
(2017), Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke propose that
a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on
reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is,
reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. They argue
that their analysis evades Backward Clock. Here I show that it
doesn’t. Backward Clock likewise shows their analysis to be too
weak. The broader lesson seems to be that Backward Clock tells us
the time is up for purely modal analyses of knowledge....
2018-09-08T00:00:00ZМосковская епархиальная революция
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/4442
Московская епархиальная революция
Scarborough, Daniel
In the months after the February Revolution, the Church was convulsed by a general revolt against ecclesiastical authority. The Church survived this revolt, and organized an " All- Russian Council ( Sobor)" from September of 1917 untilAugust of 1918, which re- established the Patriarchate of Moscow and negotiated a reform of the Church's authority structure. The ultimate success of the reform process depended on the ability of the Church's various communities to forge a compromise in the midst of a political and ecclesiastical revolution. This article traces the development of that compromise through the discourse of canon law.
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Sangho in the Age of Degradation. Responses of the Russian Buddhists to the Russian Revolution and Civil War
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/4377
The Sangho in the Age of Degradation. Responses of the Russian Buddhists to the Russian Revolution and Civil War
Tsyrempilov, Nikolay
The Buriat Buddhists who constituted the majority of the Buddhist population of the former Russian Empire did not stay away from the revolutionary events. The secular segment of the Buriat society viewed the collapse of the monarchy as the unfolding opportunity to get rid of the colonial legacy, including discrimination of their reli‑ gion. However, already in 1918 the deviation of the positions of cleri‑ cal and secular segments of the Buriat society became obvious. If the Buriat nationalists remained hostile to the idea of Restoration, the official Buddhist circles supported admiral Kolchak, whereas a part of rank‑and‑file lamas consolidated around the idea of Buddhist the‑ ocracy. After the Soviet regime firmly established in Trans‑Baikal area, a part of the Buddhist monks, the Buddhist renovationists un‑ der leadership of Agvan Dorzhiev, attempted to come to terms with the Bolsheviks. These attempts ended in the total defeat of the organ‑ ized Buddhist community by the late 1930s.
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Ismaili of Central Asia
http://nur.nu.edu.kz:80/handle/123456789/3639
The Ismaili of Central Asia
Beben, Daniel
The Ismailis are one of the largest Muslim minority populations of Central Asia, and they
make up the second largest Shiʿi Muslim community globally. First emerging in the
second half of the 8th century, the Ismaili missionary movement spread into many areas
of the Islamic world in the 10th century, under the leadership of the Ismaili Fatimids
caliphs in Egypt. The movement achieved astounding success in Central Asia in the 10th
century, when many of the political and cultural elites of the region were converted.
However, a series of repressions over the following century led to its almost complete
disappearance from the metropolitan centers of Central Asia. The movement later reemerged
in the mountainous Badakhshan region of Central Asia (which encompasses the
territories of present-day eastern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan), where it was
introduced by the renowned 11th-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Ismaili
missionary Nasir-i Khusraw. Over the following centuries the Ismaili movement expanded
among the populations of Badakhshan, reaching a population of over 200,000 in the 21st
century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ismailis suffered a series of severe
repressions, first under local Sunni Muslim rulers and later under the antireligious
policies of the Soviet Union. However, in the decades since the end of the Soviet period,
the Ismailis of the region have become increasingly connected with the global Ismaili
community and its leadership. While many aspects of the history of Ismailism in the
Badakhshan region remain obscure and unexplored, the discoveries of significant
corpuses of manuscripts in private collections since the 1990s in the Badakhshan region
have opened up wide possibilities for future research.
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z