Introduction: The Ukrainian Crisis

By Lena Surzhko-Harned

Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 135-137

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Maintaining a Chinese Nationalism: Patriotic Education, Second-hand Rose and the Politics of ‘National Conditions’

By Jonathan Doughty

Abstract

This article considers the development of China’s system of ‘patriotic education’ (aiguozhuyi jiaoyu). It examines Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents on patriotic education’s establishment, along with high-school (gaozhong) texts used as ‘national conditions’ (guoqing) curricula, in order to demonstrate how subsequent considerations of the development of Chinese nationalist identity must consider various modes of the party-state’s educational apparatus in the ‘teaching’ of nationalism. We may then view from a better vantage how the Chinese party-state maintains discursive hegemony over the Chinese cultural past – inherited, imagined or otherwise – in its ideological seizure of nationalism, and how this ‘official’ nationalism interacts with and engages other nationalisms of the Chinese nation, such as that found within the vibrant Chinese subculture of yaogun yue (rock and roll).

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Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective by David Little and Donald K. Swearer (Editors)

By Vivian Ibrahim

Volume 8, Issue 1, pages 177-179

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An Anatomy of Nationhood and the Question of Assimilation: Debates on Turkishness Revisited

By Serhun Al

Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 83-101

Abstract

Scholars have primarily debated the anatomy of Turkishness within the framework of an ethnic versus civic dichotomy. Arguing that such an approach would be inconclusive and less explanatory, this article approaches Turkishness from a singularity/plurality framework. First, the article emphasizes the singular nature of Turkishness – defined as monolithic nationhood – in the early Republican years that rejected any alternative identity approaches other than the definition of the state elites. Second, the article argues that the homogenization of the nation by the new state targeted those who considered themselves Turks as well, especially those who did not fit the ‘ideal’ or ‘imagined’ Turk (i.e. Muslim but secular, urban, and Western). The final section analyses the persistence and change in the monolithic nationhood in Turkey throughout the twentieth century and considers the implications of the state’s recent identity policies on the meaning of Turkishness.

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Reinterpreting the Past or Asserting the Future? National History and Nations in Peril – The Case of the Tibetan Nation

By Anne-Sophie Bentz

Volume 6, Issue 2, pages 56-70

Abstract

In this paper, I will explore the idea that the importance of the past tends to become overwhelming when the nation is in peril. The Tibetan nation is one of those nations which is, or thinks it is, in peril; hence, I contend, its constant need to assert its existence. I intend to examine how the history of Tibet has been transformed into a national history by discussing key historical events and relating them to the Tibetan interpretation as it developed in exile, particularly in India. With this I hope to shed a new light on how national history, or, more precisely the (re)construction of a national history, can become instrumental in asserting a threatened nation’s existence and how this can affect the very content of the nation’s history.

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