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Article Spotlights

Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on recent SEN News Bites. Here, we focus on the significance of political and constitutional processes to nationalism, national identity, and responding to ethnic conflict (and its causes, such as deficit of political representation), potential or actual.

Mara Malagodi’s essay address this area focusing on Nepal, and more specifically debates surrounding constitutional change there since the ‘demise’ of the 1990 Constitution as of 2007.

Mara Malagodi, Forging the Nepali Nation through Law: A Reflection on the Use of Western Legal Tools in a Himalayan Kingdom, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2008, pp. 433-452.

The present article endeavours to analyse the use and scope of Western positivistic legal tools in the creation of the Nepali nation. It suggests a two-level analysis. First, a historical analysis of Nepal’s political and legal developments is presented to investigate the rationale of using law as a social engineering and homogenising tool promoting an identifiably Nepali national identity. Second, the article focuses on the current debates concerning constitutional change in Nepal. The debates about the demise of the 1990 Constitution in 2007, and the election of a Constituent Assembly need to be investigated in the light of the growing politicisation of ethnicity in the country. The overarching demand for inclusion stems from the discontent of Nepal’s ethno-linguistic, religious, and regional minorities with their historical subordination. Ultimately, the article aims to demonstrate that the Nepali experience is situated somewhere between the civic and ethnic models of nationalism Kohn enunciated.

Michel Dormal’s piece considers the role of ‘representative relations as the site of a negotiation of collective identity’, in the context of Luxembourg.

Michel Dormal, Political Representation and Imagined Community: The Case of Luxembourg, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2012, pp. 498-516.

Discussions of nation-building often focus on political elites, who are considered the makers of new communities. This article seeks to sketch out a different approach. It suggests thinking of representative relations as the site of a negotiation of collective identity. Drawing on recent discussions in political theory, the first part of the article discusses conceptual implications of this assumption, arguing that representation should be analysed in terms of its symbolic structure. The second part offers a historical case study of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. It explores how processes of political democratisation and imagination of national community were deeply interconnected in the period from 1890 to 1939. The article illustrates how the representative politisation of social conflict may trigger nation-building.

Didier Ruedin’s article considers the relationship between ethnic and group representation in different national parliaments.

Didier Ruedin, The Relationship between Levels of Gender and Ethnic Group Representation, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2010, pp. 92-106.

This article examines the relationship between levels of gender representation and levels of ethnic group representation in national parliaments. Taagepera (1994) and Lijphart (1999) predicted that because of shared mechanisms and covariates levels of representation in the two forms should be positively correlated. Whilst this paper can identify a number of shared covariates, there is no evidence of an association between levels of gender and ethnic group representation. The lack of negative association suggests that increasing levels of representation in one form does not necessarily come at the cost of the other. Instead it appears that the salience and politicisation of divisions – approximated by the make-up of society – may shape the relationship between levels of gender and ethnic group representation: representation scores tend to be higher in the forms of representation that are thought to be more salient.

Article Spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.

Article Spotlights

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on recent SEN News Bites. Here, we focus on the significance of religious and ethnic conflict to nationalism in South Asia.

Sadia Saeed’s essay deals with this relationship in the context of Pakistan.

Sadia Saeed, Pakistani Nationalism and the State Marginalisation of the Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2007, pp. 132-152.

This paper examines the relationship between nationalism, state formation, and the marginalisation of national minorities through an historical focus on Pakistani state’s relationship with the Ahmadiyya community, a self-defined minority sect of Islam. In 1974, a constitutional amendment was enacted that effectively rendered the Ahmadiyya community a non-Muslim minority, in spite of claims by the community that it was Muslim and hence not a minority. This paper attempts to account for this anti-Ahmadiyya state legislation by arguing that the genealogy of the idea of a Pakistani state is key for understanding the politics of exclusion of the Ahmadiyya community from ‘Muslim citizenship’ – that is, who is and isn’t a Muslim.

Mara Malagodi considers the transition from Hindu monarchy to secular republic in Nepal.

Mara Malagodi, The End of a National Monarchy: Nepal’s Recent Constitutional Transition from Hindu Kingdom to Secular Federal Republic, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2011, pp. 234-251.

The article analyses Nepal’s transition in 2007 from the constitutional definition of the state as a ‘Hindu monarchical kingdom’ to a ‘secular federal republic’, followed by the abolition of the Shah monarchy in 2008. Nepal’s institutional change in 2007–2008 invites reflection on the role of Hindu kingship in informing Nepali nationalism in its constitutional formulation. The developments of the Shah monarchy are interpreted as the product of both the institution and the various historical figures that have occupied that institutional place. However, it is argued that the more or less charismatic qualities of individual Shah kings were ‘contained’ within and minimised by the prevailing institutional dimension of the monarchy in defining the Nepali nation. The nationalist legitimacy of the Shah monarchy as Nepal’s core political institution rested upon the notion of Hindu kingship, which transcended the single historical personalities of the Shah kings and proved so pervasive that it has shaped the constitutional definition of the nation even in republican Nepal.

Sarbeswar Sahoo considers ethnic Hindu politics in India.

Sarbeswar Sahoo, Ethno-Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society: A Case from India, Volume 8, Issue 3, pp. 453-480.

This paper analyses the role of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), an ethnic Hindu(tva) organisation, among the tribal populations in south Rajasthan. It argues that the RVKP has been able to enhance its legitimacy and expand its socio-political support base among the tribals through a well-articulated and planned process of ‘ethnification’. This process has been carried out in four basic ways: (1) utilising development projects as means to spread the ideology of Hindutva, (2) bringing religious awakening and organising mass re-conversion programmes, (3) redefining indigenous identity and characterising certain communities as ‘the other’, and (4) with the support of the various state institutions. The paper concludes that by ethnicising indigenous identity, the RVKP has not just created a ‘culture of fear and violence’ in the tribal regions but also threatened the secular democratic ethos of Indian society.

Subhakanta Behera considers region, religion, and nationalism from a theoretical perspective.

Subhakanta Behera, Identities in India: Region, Nationality and Nationalism – A Theoretical Framework, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp. 79-93.

Given the complexity of identity in India, where ethnicity alone can only inadequately define constituent regional communities such as the Oriyas, Bengalis, Tamils and Keralites, a regional perspective provides a more useful analytical approach. In India, a territorially defined region is the most inclusive segment, which has linguistic, historical and socio-cultural connotations. Apart from the historical importance of region, it has now taken many ethnic characteristics within its ambit. While discussing the importance of ‘region’ in India, this article tries to show the weakness of an ethnic perspective in defining the identity of various language-based, but geographically confined, communities of India. The article also tries to explore how regional identities can be reconciled with a pan-Indian ideology. Perhaps in the post-modern world, this is the greatest challenge that India has to grapple with, and one that requires judicious policies and practices.

Article Spotlights Round-Up – June News Bites

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on SEN News Bites from June. Here, we focus on the significance of performance in the popularization and strengthening of national belonging and nationalist movements. The articles spotlit here are all from 2012’s special edition on ‘Forging the Nation: Performance and Ritual in the (Re)production of Nation’, which itself arose from the 2011 annual ASEN Conference.

Chiara De Cesari’s article focuses on how artistic performance has been used to popularize a sense of Palestinian nationalism in the absence of a Palestinian state.

Chiara De Cesari, Anticipatory Representation: Building the Palestinian Nation(-State) through Artistic Performance, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 82-100.

This article aims to illuminate the ways in which artists and cultural producers can participate in forging the nation(-state) by performing its institutions, and by mocking its operations. It explores two experiments in setting up a Palestinian national museum, which are also art projects in themselves. It also discusses the recent Palestinian art biennials, organised by a Palestinian non-governmental organisation in 2007 and 2009 in various locations across the Mediterranean. It is my argument that the experiments with the Palestinian national museum and the biennials constitute a kind of artistic practice that does not just represent or imitate the social world: they are artistic practices that purport to produce new social arrangements – in particular, a set of new ‘state’ (art and cultural) institutions under conditions of statelessness. I also discuss how such a tactic of anticipatory representation, which calls into being, by representing them beforehand, institutions that do not yet (fully) exist, bears resemblance with recent policies adopted by the Palestinian political establishment.

Jasper Dag Tjaden’s essay deals with the significance of the Chilean independence centenary of 1910 for Chilean national identity.

Jasper Dag Tjaden, The (Re-)Construction of ‘National Identity’ through Selective Memory and Mass Ritual Discourse: The Chilean Centenary, 1910, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 45-63.

Social constructivist theories regard the nation as ‘imagined’ (Anderson), ‘invented’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger), and ‘narrated’ (Bhabha). National narratives use mass rituals, performances, and selective national history to reinvigorate collective identity. This article examines the 1910 centennial festivities in Chile as a collective and discursive quest for national identity in a changing society longing for stability. The article uses a discourse analysis approach to study a series of Chilean national history abstracts and coverage of the centennial festivities as presented in Zig-Zag, the most relevant political magazine at the time. The study finds that selective memory and mass ritual discourse are a constitutive part of national identity. Through the process of selective memory, the sources depict Chilean history as a series of linear, coherent, and meaningful events to foster collective identification with the nation. The images of mass ritual discourse of the centennial celebrations reinforce common national characteristics and confidence in the nation. Mass performances provide emotional self-affirmation and an endowment of meaning for individuals within their national group as they restage current national membership with reference to a common past. The study identifies themes of national representation along which the nation is narrated, and suggests that this typology can be generalised beyond the case of Chile. In doing so, this article underscores the need for further research on the concept of discursive national identity formation and its relevance in contemporary politics.

Erika Kuever’s article examines the celebrations around the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of the People’s Republic of China, in 2009.

Erika Kuever, Performance, Spectacle, and Visual Poetry in the Sixtieth Anniversary National Day Parade in the People’s Republic of China, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 6-18.

The sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 2009 was marked with a massive parade in the heart of Beijing viewed on hundreds of millions of television screens across the nation. English-language media coverage focused primarily on what it saw as the event’s explicit message: the Communist Party’s celebration of the nation’s military might and continued economic growth, and its origins in a coherent and uniquely Chinese ideology. Such coverage largely reflected international fears of China and thus misread the parade’s import and impact on its domestic audience. I argue that the National Day events are better understood as a form of visual poetry that relied on performance to emotionally conflate party, nation, and state. Both the speeches of party leaders and the scripted remarks of state media commentators relied on language and ideas that the Chinese public has heard numerous times. The visual elements of the parade, in contrast, were unprecedented in both scale and spectacle. Hundreds of thousands took part in displays of collective harmony, unified patriotic sentiment, and ethnic unity. The distinctive style and rhythm of the parade depicted a vision of nationhood without the ethnic fractures, labour unrest, and massive inequalities that constitute the greatest threat to the power of the party-state as it embarks on its seventh decade of continuous rule.

Article spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.

Some thoughts on the draft Scottish constitution

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Some thoughts on the draft Scottish constitution

On 16^th June, with a little over three months to go before the Scottish independence referendum, the Scottish Government, represented by the Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, published a draft constitution for an independent Scotland.

The seventy-four page document, formally titled The Scottish Independence Bill: A Consultation on an Interim Consultation for Scotland; lays out the basics on the form an independent Scotland will take. As such, it can be regarded as building on the Scottish independence movement’s ‘manifesto’ for independence, Scotland’s Future, published in November of last year.

The language of the document centres on the word ‘sovereignty’, which appears more than thirty times in the document.* The case for Scottish independence as being based on the right of the people of Scotland to govern their own affairs to the maximum extent within Scotland remains central, as opposed to staking ethnic claims on any difference between ‘the Scottish’ and ‘the British’ or ‘the English’. As the document states: ‘Sovereignty means the people of Scotland always getting the government we vote for to govern our country the way we want.’ (p. 4) The document, like Scotland’s Future, makes not a single mention of the word ‘nationalism’. Yet it is also stated that ‘the fundamental principle’ that ‘the people are sovereign…resonates throughout Scotland’s history and will be the foundation stone for Scotland as an independent country’, (p. 4) pointing directly to the clearly nationalist historical perspective that continues to provide a central plank of the independence movement’s position. In the ‘Explanatory Notes’ section of the document this is elaborated upon, evoking Scotland’s history as an independent kingdom throughout the medieval period, styling a kind of genealogy for independence: ‘In Scotland, the people are sovereign…It is a principle charged with historical resonance, affirming the ancient Scots constitutional tradition that Monarchs and Parliaments are the servants of the people. Sovereignty of the people was clearly set out as early as the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320…’ (p. 27) It is even implied that, historically, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty conflicts on a basic level with ‘the Scots constitutional tradition of popular sovereignty’. (p. 27) A parallel is drawn subsequently between this tradition and the modern idea of self-determination. (p. 28) The avowedly civic face of contemporary Scottish nationalism – in which the word ‘nationalism’ itself is rejected – is supplemented by a discourse of difference based less on ethnicity than on a specific national(ist) historical narrative. At the same time, this narrative, while not in itself exclusionary, establishes a clear dividing line between the Scottish nation of the independence movement and its ‘Other’ – the present political union of Scotland and England.

In the rest of the draft constitutional outline contained in the document, the various positions of the SNP are re-stated, such as the preservation of monarchy in an independent Scotland, automatic transition from British citizenship to Scottish citizenship, independent Scotland continuing its membership of the EU without interruption, and the commitment to nuclear disarmament. Anticipating the question of an opt-out of independence by certain Scottish regions, such as the Orkney and Shetland Islands, the document states that ‘Scotland’s territory, including all islands, internal waters and territorial sea, will remain exactly as it is at present. There is no question of any changes being made.’ The most notable change set out in the document is the codification of a Scottish constitution in the case of Scottish independence (in contrast to preserving continuity with the ‘unwritten’ British constitution). The independence campaign, in Scotland’s Future as elsewhere, has consistently emphasised the continuities that will link Scotland as part of the UK to any independent Scotland. Much of this continues to figure in the draft constitution, yet by any measure the draft for a fully written and codified constitution founded on the principle of popular sovereignty will mark a historic and fundamental change. It will also likely ignite debate among constitutional lawyers, given the determination to marry popular sovereignty with commitment to preservation of the monarchy in an independent Scotland.

It is tempting to draw parallels and contrasts between the movement for Scottish independence and the last nationalist movement that pursued secession from the United Kingdom: Irish separatist nationalism (also known as Irish Republicanism) of the early twentieth century. Prior to the achievement of Irish independence, the secessionist Irish national assembly, Dáil Éireann, composed almost wholly of members of Sinn Féin, the Irish revolutionary party, published a brief provisional constitution, the ‘Dáil Constitution’ of 1919. That document consisted of only five brief articles, and only 370 words. In contrast to the draft Scottish constitution, it did not even establish a provision for an Irish head of state. As Charles Townshend notes, ‘the constitution prepared for the first meeting [of the Dáil] actually made no mention of a state – it was not the constitution of Ireland, but the constitution of the Dáil.’ (Townshend 2013: 62) The major difference, of course, is that the members of the First Dáil Éireann were operating in a context wherein a) they had retroactively endorsed the declaration of the Irish republic made in the Easter Rising of 1916, b) had themselves renounced Ireland’s political connection with Britain through a brief declaration of independence and the intent to have nothing to do with the British Parliament, and c) public order was beginning to break down, and would soon enter a cycle of violence that would be sustained for more than two years to come by both British and Irish republican violence. No such conditions, or ones resembling them, have ever been relevant for the Scottish independence campaign. The Dáil Constitution became defunct in the context of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was superseded by the Constitution of the Irish Free State (1922) a genuine constitution that, as some commentators have argued (English 2007: 310), merged republican content and thinking with constitutional monarchical form. This, I would argue, is the same judgement that best describes the draft Scottish constitution, and the Constitution of the Irish Free State is its most obvious precedent within a ‘British Isles’ context. Whether or not any Scottish Constitution of an independent Scotland would form the basis (as the Constitution of the Irish Free State did for Ireland) of a later and complete breaking of ties with ‘the rest of the UK’ is a question that remains speculative for now.

*An excellent recent study of the significance of ideas and discourses of popular sovereignty in nationalism can be found in: Bernard Yack, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2012)

Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Charles Townshend, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence (London, Allen Lane, 2013)

May News – Article Spotlights Round-Up

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on SEN News Bites from May. Here, we focus on ethnic politics and conflict with articles on Israel, India, and the challenges and the challenges of citizenship and democracy in multi-national states.

Nissim Leon’s article focuses on the role of ‘religio-nationalist’ ideology within the Haredi community in contemporary Israeli politics:

Nissim Leon, Ethno-religious Fundamentalism and Theo-ethnocratic Politics in Israel, Volume 14, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 20-35.

This article addresses the transition of a fundamentalist confrontational religious ideology into an assertive, religio-nationalist ideology by the case of the ethno-Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Shas party in Israel. Alongside the haredi proclivity towards insularity, we also detect, in recent decades, two new trends within the haredi mainstream. First, we see increasing numbers of haredim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) integrating into different frameworks that are situated outside of the haredi enclave: the job market, the army, welfare and charity organizations, and more. A second trend, which I will elaborate upon here, is a fundamentalist religious interpretation of elements of Israeli national identity. This trend seeks to view Jewish law, in its orthodox interpretation, as a source for the conservation and maintenance of Jewish identity in Israel: firstly, through the turning of haredism into a dominant factor in the religio-communal arena in Israel; and secondly, through assuming responsibility for demarcating the boundaries of the Jewish collective.

Sarbeswar Sahoo’s article considers the role of Hindu nationalist politics in the south Rajasthan region of India:

Sarbeswar Sahoo, Ethno-Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society: A Case from India, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2008, pp. 453-480.

This article by John French and Annika Hintze deals with problems of democracy and diversity since the fall of communism:

John French and Annika Hintze, From the Inside Out: Citizenship and Democracy in Multinational States, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2010, pp. 255-270.

Since the fall of communism, democracy has come to be seen as the ‘only game in town’– the only legitimate form of political system. Democracy is considered legitimate because it provides for individual rights and allows the people access to the resources of the state. If ‘we the people’ defines the limits of these entitlements, the next logical question is who are ‘the people’? In contemporary developed states, the problem of diversity is most often framed as a problem of immigration; the arrival of new groups threatens both the presumed homogeneity of established nations and their democracy. We argue for a new conception of democracy, which takes into account the constructed nature of ‘the people’ that democracy empowers. This paper attempts to provide such an account by advocating a new understanding of the relationship between nationalism, citizenship, and democracy.

Article Spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.