institutional bias Quick reference
A Dictionary of Media and Communication (3 ed.)
... bias ( institutionalized discrimination , systemic bias ) A tendency for the procedures and practices of particular institutions to operate in ways which result in certain social groups being advantaged or favoured and others being disadvantaged or devalued. This need not be the result of any conscious prejudice or discrimination but rather of the majority simply following existing rules or norms : a pervasive and persistent bias in favour of the status quo ( see also conformity ). Institutional racism and institutional sexism are...
institutional bias
Empire Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...the British Crown was inevitably uncertain, it was naturally feared that the erection of representative institutions might provide the forum for continuing frustration of British rule or even for revolt—revolt that might infect the increasingly tense relations between Britain and the nearby Thirteen Colonies. Moreover, the French settlers themselves, having been nurtured on the practices of the French absolutist state, found such representative institutions alien to their traditions. The result was the Quebec Act of 1774 , which placed power firmly in the...
The Minority Report Reference library
Islam in Transition
...Rāzī or Abū Hanīfa. This is the reason that certain recommendations, which reflect subservience to the West of some of the members and their displeasure with Islam, constitute an odious attempt to distort the Holy Qur'ān and the Sunna with a view to giving them a western slant and bias. . . . In order to seek a justification for the arbitrary ijtihād of the Commission, the Introduction of the Report says this about the Holy Qur'ān and the Sunna: The Holy Qur'ān and the Sunna depict events and contain answers to the questions as they took place and arose...
Policing Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...well ordering and comfort of Civil Society’. A professional police force would protect property by keeping the poor under constant surveillance; they would arrest and punish the criminals, but they could also use popular forms of recreation ‘to give the minds of the People a right bias’. Drawing a metaphor from the industrialization occurring around him, Colquhoun stated: ‘Police is an improved state of Society … like the Mechanical power applied to a useful Machine’; properly used, that new machine could ‘gradually … lead the criminal , the idle , and the ...
European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern Muslim States Reference library
S.V.R. Nasr
The Oxford History of Islam
...economic surplus. These aims were achieved as the colonial state devised and refined its institutional setup. That institutional setup in turn determined the workings of the successor states, the nature of relations between the state and society within them, and the paradigm that governs their politics. The institutional setup is perhaps the most pervasive legacy of colonialism. The colonial state was by nature highly centralized and dependent on a core of institutions (such as the police, the military, and the bureaucracy) served as the repositories of its...
Family and Society Quick reference
Ralph Houlbrooke
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...of the family as a social institution have been made since the 1970s. The most useful studies of different aspects of family life from various vantage points (legal, ideological, sociological, demographic, and economic) are also recent ones, though a few much older works may be mentioned. F. W. Maitland's chapters on family law in The History of English Law ( 1895 , 1968 ) are still indispensable reading. Among the many books devoted to marriage and divorce are G. E. Howard , A History of Matrimonial Institutions ( 1904 ), R. H. Helmholz , ...
Architecture Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...classicism held sway during the first half of the period, with its Roman emphasis on richly articulated wall surfaces. After about 1810 , British architects adopted a restrained Grecian vocabulary whose basic structural element was the free-standing column (with a particular bias for the elegant Ionic order) and whose ubiquitous representational image was the detached temple front, a conventionalization of the mythological first primitive hut. The Grecian or *neoclassical revival thus stood for a return to the very beginnings of classicism, and its...
Liberation Theology: Europe Reference library
Luise Schottroff and John Rogerson
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...already been made clear, in the sense of the benevolence of the wealthy. Alternatively they are interpreted moralistically: only those who make wealth their sole aim distance themselves from God; wealth as such is not the problem. In the liberation theology interpretation God's bias for the poor is emphasized. God's action for justice begins with the ‘last’ ( Matthew 20: 16 ). Justice is a process in which the poor of the world are placed in the centre. The ‘teaching office of the poor’ means, ‘that the poor pose the questions, for example about water’ (D....
The Globalization of Islam: The Return of Muslims to the West Reference library
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
The Oxford History of Islam
...of life; in contrast, other studies show that an overwhelming majority of Muslims—over 80%—are proud to be British. Islamophobia and xenophobia, according to Observatorio Andalusí, has increased among the Spanish public as well. A “latent bias” became evident as a reaction to the visibility of Islam and Islamic institutions, including new mosques, wearing hijab, and police actions against suspected Islamist activists. A survey of 2,000 Muslims administered by the Ministry of Interior in December 2008 found that 31% of Muslim participants felt that Islam was...
Irish Local and Family History Quick reference
Kevin Whelan
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...quality and its members can be assumed to be competent and reliable researchers. Genealogy remains underserved by state institutions and record repositories. The National Library, The National Archives, the General Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, the Valuation Office, and the Registry of Deeds all carry essential genealogical records, as does the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. All these institutions have, however, other priorities, but are as cooperative as time and staffing levels permit. For those living outside Ireland...
Scottish Local and Family History Quick reference
David moody
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...folk ways) contributed monographs. Post‐war leadership has come as much from Glasgow, through S. G. Checkland , Edgar Lythe , John Butt , R. H. Campbell , and Anthony Slaven , with Scotland's industrial economy finally taking its rightful place as a subject of study. The bias of Scottish historiography towards agrarian issues was remarked upon in 1983 , when G. Whittington and I. D. White in An Historical Geography of Scotland could note ‘too unbalanced an involvement with agrarian and rural settlement features to the exclusion of most other...
Domesticity Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...the carriage of his employer? Why are women, in many parts of the kingdom, permitted to follow the plough; to perform the laborious business of the dairy … to wash, to brew, and to bake, while men are employed in measuring ribands; folding gauzes? Robinson here exposes the class bias of this construction of femininity, which reserves the prerogative and privilege of passivity to middle-class women. Wollstonecraft mounted a similar vindication of working women when she attacked Burke for representing working women as ‘furies of hell’, to which she responded...
Islam and the Malay Civilizational Identity: Tension and Harmony Between Ethnicity and Religiosity Reference library
Bakar Osman
Islam in Transition
...spiritual types as in the division of the human species into racial and ethnic groups. In this discussion we are primarily interested in the later division but focusing on its civilizational significance. The Qur'an has emphasized this anthropological fact but with a spiritual bias in the following terms: “O humankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you. And God has full knowledge and is...
Political Economy Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...remain more faithful to Smith's enterprise than Ricardo, he became a reluctant apostate on the corn laws, lending cautious support to their renewal in 1815 and only accepting their abolition when it seemed that they might become a major source of political unrest. The agrarian bias imparted by his original point of entry into political economy via the population question led him to question the wisdom of relying on other nations to supply the necessities of life. It was only with difficulty that he persuaded himself that urban manufacturing occupations might...
Transitions and Trajectories: Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire Reference library
Barbara Geller
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...experience the divine outside the institutions and the locales that the bishops controlled. This threat to the hierarchy's authority was curbed in part by the growing institutionalization of monasticism. Even in the lifetime of the earliest solitary, Anthony (ca. 270–356), about whom traditions survive, communities of monks had been established in the deserts of Egypt. The evolution of communal monasticism with its rules and orders, increasingly under the supervision of bishops and abbots, brought the monks under institutional authority. For most Christians,...
15 Children’s Books Reference library
Andrea Immel
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...encouraging instead the dismissal of ‘didactic’ works—including fictions as diverse as Maria Edgeworth’s tales, Hesba Stretton’s tracts, or Charlotte Yonge’s novels—because the authors’ designs upon the child are considered too transparent. It has also helped to reinforce a bias against books that were popular with previous generations of children, but which no longer connect with a contemporary audience. Once a children’s book is no longer read by its primary audience, it is usually discarded as a curiosity, whose appeal is difficult to conceive. Given...
Central Asia and China: A Trans-Regional History of Islam Reference library
Alexandre Papas
The Oxford History of Islam
...has happened to a Jahrī branch in Kashgar). More subtly, the constant discourse against Sufism and its historical past, through figures such as the Khwājas especially (as demonstrated in a series of three historical novels written by Abduwäli Äli published in 2000), propagated a biased and negative vision of Sufism among the populace, at worst, and at best raised serious challenges to the Sufi legacy. A fourth major aspect of Islam in Xinjiang regards “folk” healing and the question of Shamanism. In parallel with Chinese and Western medicines, traditional...
Contemporary Islam: Challenges and Opportunities Reference library
John L. Esposito
The Oxford History of Islam
...of God, apostates from “true Islam” whom they called kuffar , or non-believers. The West was perceived as engaged in a neo-imperialist religious battle, a Judeo-Christian Western conspiracy supporting un-Islamic regimes, and occupation of Muslim majority lands, and providing biased support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Violence was regarded as a necessary and divinely sanctioned response. With the dawn of the 21st century, Islam had become entrapped in a narrative of conflict and violence. Terrorism in the Name of Islam September 11, 2001 was...
Modern Translations Reference library
Stanley E. Porter
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...discussion of Bible translation is that of gender-free language. Known by several different terms, such as gender-neutral or -inclusive language, the issue is how one renders what is sometimes seen as gender-biased language in the original languages of the Bible into gender-free English, despite the fact that English seems to have its own gender bias by failure to have a gender-inclusive third-person singular pronoun. The implications of these grammatical issues reflect on larger issues related to the male orientation of the biblical world, and how one...
