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Islamic State: media and identity
The so-called Islamic State might have been defeated, but ideas do not die so easily. In this essay I deconstruct its ideology and self-identification and show that it is different from the way ‘the West’ has categorized it.
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On India, poverty and religion
Different religions deal with poverty differently, and in India you find a lot of both. At one point or another, the visitor of the subcontinent will inevitably be faced with more misery than one can bear and the challenging question how to approach it. What answers do religions provide?
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Field notes
What happens when academics go on a ‘field trip’? “Describing any impressions of such a brief moment is per definition more about our own experience than it can be an accurate account of the reality we were asked to report about. ‘Field notes’ as a description of what it is like to experience an unfamiliar environment for someone living in a university. A depiction of a glimpse of someone else’s everyday. In the name of knowledge.”
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Antithesis
Amid the chaos of the city that she was calling her home for a little while now, there were only two sights calm and peaceful: the surface of the river and the setting of the sun. On the bridge, people were gathering to welcome the evening coolness closing in. She walked by them over the…