Zionism and Judaism: The Paradox of National Liberation

This article discusses the paradoxical history of national liberation and religious revival as manifested in three states that achieved independence after World War II: India, Algeria and Israel. Although the original leaders of all three national-liberation movements—the Indian National Congress, Labor Zionism, and the Algerian FLN—were secular, in the states that they created a politics rooted in what can loosely be called fundamentalist religion is today very powerful. The resistance of the traditional elites to national liberation, which is by definition a secularizing, modernizing and developmental creed, takes on a new ideological form after the achievement of political independence, when the defenders of traditional religion, themselves renewed and modernized, begin the construction of a counterrevolutionary politics.     

Between Disagreement and Consensus: Unravelling the Democratic Paradox

The idea of a rational consensus has become an increasingly controversial dimension of recent democratic theory as radical democratic theorists have challenged the ways in which liberal democracies deal with political disagreement and contestation. As a result, several theorists within the liberal tradition have attempted to incorporate models of dissent in their democratic arguments but this paper contends that they tend to result in forms of majoritarianism or proceduralism which reflect the original limitations that inspired the radical democratic critique. A more useful approach is one that recognises that contestation is inherent to democratic politics and understands that the paradox of democracy is the need to embrace the impossibility of establishing rational consensus in democratic practice.     

Combining an archaeomagnetic and radiocarbon study: dating of medieval fireplaces at the Mühlegasse,Zürich

During the restoration of the Radium cinema located in the old Town of Zürich, a stratigraphic sequence of medieval fireplaces came to light. Based on ceramic finds, a preliminary age of about 1000 AD was assigned. In this paper we show the results from archaeomagnetic and radiocarbon dating, which combined with the stratigraphic information yield a better constrain of the period of use of these fireplaces. Whilst the radiocarbon technique continues to be the most widespread methodology for dating young archeological artifacts, archaeomagnetic dating is becoming increasingly more established in Europe thanks to the increased number of available measurements. A Bayesian model on the period of use of these fireplaces was produced with OxCal, by a combination of magnetic and radiocarbon ages, together with the stratigraphic information. The results show that the fireplaces were probably used during 1 to 2 generations (e.g. 20–40 years each), and are in good agreement with the archaeological context of this site. To make use of the magnetic measurements for future reconstructions of the field, we carried out an additional age model using only the radiocarbon and the stratigraphic information. Although some of the structures show large directional scatter due to poor baking in antiquity, the results confirm the trend of the geomagnetic field around 1000 AD.