Geometries of ‘global’ evangelicalism

In this article, I explore the power dynamics at play in religious place‐making. I critically discuss the uneven co‐configurations of imaginaries of the ‘local’ and ‘global’ within global evangelicalism. Specifically, I analyse the recent recording of a live album by the famous charismatic Australian band Hillsong United (of Hillsong Church) at various locations in Israel‐Palestine, which was followed by a concert tour in Israel. Palestinian evangelical Christians were critical of this endeavour, for they felt that it marginalized and excluded them from their global evangelical faith family. The frictions between the Palestinian evangelical community and Hillsong United illustrate how dominant evangelical actors create an imagination of the ‘local’, which enters the imaginary of global evangelicalism (and bears material consequences). In the article, I thus argue that privileged financial and cultural resources and travel regimes lead to specific notions of geometries of power in global evangelicalism.     

‘From Behind the Women's Petticoats’: The English Factory Act of 1874 as a Cultural Production1

Abstract In 1874 Parliament passed a law entitled ‘The Factories (Health of Women. etc) Act’ which limited the hours that women and children could work in textile factories to a 56 1/2 hour work week. In this paper I interpret the debates over hours legislation and the resulting Act as cultural productions. These cultural productions contributed to the formulation of a new social problem,‘the working mother’ promulgated an interpretation of who caused the problem, and reinforced a particular view of who was responsible for social reproduction. The rhetoric in the debates about the measure made crucial contributions to the future agenda for public policies concerning married women workers and working mothers, and reinforced a world view that state, economy and family are, and ought to remain, independent entities. My analysis draws from a range of theoretical traditions and works stressing the importance of language and other symbolic practices such as rituals in creating political subjects, problems and solutions. I examine the debates about state regulation in the 1870s to show how a symbolic or cultural analysis illuminates state-level politics and the formulation of public policy. It was through such laws and debates that the state contributed to the social construction of gender and a gendered economy.     

A RESPECIFIED TAX-ADJUSTED FISHER RELATION

How much will a 1% increase in expected inflation increase nominal interest rates? Irving Fisher's famous equation implies that nominal interest rates will rise in proportion to an increase in expected inflation. Darby and Feldstein, correcting the Fisher equation for taxation, predict a nominal interest rate increase of [1/(1 - T)]% where T is the marginal tax rate: i.e., if T =3, then a 1 % increase in expected inflation should cause a 1.4 % rise in interest rates. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that the rise in interest rates is much smaller than the Darby/Feldstein prediction. Estimates are around 9, varying mostly between 5 and 1.15, which is much closer to Fisher's original prediction. It is important to know the size of the interest rate response to inflation expectations in a world in which inflation and interest rates are volatile and in which tax laws are designed to influence savings and investment through interest rates. In this paper we attempt to close the gap between theorized and estimated effects of inflation by incorporating into the Fisher equation two important aspects of the U.S. tax code: historic cost depreciation and the lower tax rate on capital gains. Our model shows that the effect of expected inflation on interest rates is dampened by the lower benefits from depreciation deductions arid the capital gains tax. Our corrected Fisher equation predicts a 1.12 % nominal interest rate increase, rather than the 1.4 % increase implied by the Darby/Feldstein model. The, our model closes about 56 % of the gap between theory and empirical evidence. The remainder could be closed by additional refinements in the model or better empirical modeling.