Category Archives: SEN Article Spotlight

Article Spotlights Round-Up: Contemporary European Far-Right, Tibet, Quebec

articlespotlight Read on for some SEN articles that reflect on some news items reported on the blog over the past several weeks:

Landscapes of ‘Othering’ in Postwar and Contemporary Germany: The Limits of the ‘Culture of Contrition’ and the Poverty of the Mainstream, Aristotle Kallis, Volume 12, Issue 2, October 2012, pp. 387-407.

In the 1930s the National Socialist regime embarked on a chillingly ambitious and fanatical project to ‘remake’ German society and ‘race’ by deploying a peerless – in both kind and intensity – repertoire of ‘othering’ strategies and measures directed at the Jews, the Sinti/Roma, and non-conformist groups within the Third Reich. At the heart of this campaign was the notion of a ‘zero-sum’ confrontation between the nation/race and its perceived ‘enemies’: namely, that the existence of these ‘enemies’ within German society threatened the very foundations of the German ‘race’ and posed the gravest threat to its mere survival. To what extent can the experience of the 1930s aggressive, violent, and eventually murderous ‘zero-sum’ mindset provide crucial insights into contemporary discourses of ‘othering’, linked with the European radical-populist right but increasingly ‘infecting’ the social and political mainstream? The contemporary ‘ethno-pluralist’ framing of the discussion divulges the persistence of a similar ‘zero-sum’ mentality that is nurtured by socio-economic and cultural insecurity, on the one hand, and powerful long-standing prejudices against particular groups, on the other. The article explores this ‘zero-sum’ insecurity mindset in the anti-immigration ‘mainstream’ discourses in the Federal Republic of Germany, both before and after re-unification. It demonstrates how – in contrast to the postwar ‘culture of contrition’ with regard to the memory of the Holocaust – this mindset continues to be a powerful political and psychological refuge for societal insecurities that has an enduring appeal to significant audiences well beyond the narrow political constituencies of the radical right.

Post-communist extremism in Eastern Europe: The nature of the phenomenon, Othon Anastakis, Volume 1, Issue 2, September 2001, pp. 15-26.

The recent electoral gains of extreme right parties in many countries of Europe have made European citizens realise that the extreme right is not to be regarded exclusively as a fringe phenomenon but as a force that can penetrate mainstream democratic politics. The resilience and occasional rise of the radical right poses a serious challenge for social scientists and policy makers. Social scientists are called upon to examine the nature of the phenomenon, the factors conducive to the existence and resilience of the forces of extremism and the impact of far right political mobilisation within national societies and Europe, at large. Governments and policy makers for their part explore ways to marginalise these forces in order to sustain, in Western Europe- and consolidate, in Eastern Europe, democracy in the continent. But while there is ample analysis of the West European experience, there is an inadequate understanding of the conditions and circumstances that breed extreme right forces in Eastern Europe. In what follows, the paper will attempt to address the academic debate on the causes and nature of the contemporary East European extreme right. It will assess the relevance of a western oriented approach in the East European context. The article mostly refers to extremism in countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These countries are, by and large, functioning democracies, where extreme right parties compete in elections and in some of them are quite influential. All of these countries are applying to become members of the European Union, and this membership is subject to strict political criteria, requiring democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Intercultural Citizenship, Civic Nationalism, and Nation Building in Québec: From Common Public Language to Laïcité, Jean-François Dupré, Volume 12, Issue 2, October 2012, pp. 227-248.

This article analyses the current citizenship-nation building nexus in Québec in light of government publications and recent public discourses on ethnocultural pluralism and immigrant integration. First, the article surveys the changing relationship between Québécois nationalism and citizenship according to political circumstances in Québec, suggesting that debates over immigrant integration have played a central role in the creation of a civic Québécois identity, initially based on French as the public language and interculturalism. The article then analyses recent public debates surrounding ‘reasonable accommodation’ in Québec, and identifies a growing emphasis on laïcité – the secularisation of the public space – as identity marker. This article attributes this growing focus on secularism to dissatisfied nationalists seeking to reclaim the cultural prominence of the French Canadian majority in provincial institutions and press for measures aimed at enhancing Québec’s distinctiveness and autonomy within the Canadian institutional framework. On a more normative note, the article argues that while language nationalism is reconcilable with ethnocultural pluralism, recent discourses on the secularisation of the public space constrain the emergence of an openly pluralistic stance on national belonging in the province, and undermines the legitimacy of Québec interculturalism.

Reinterpreting the Past or Asserting the Future? National History and Nations in Peril – The Case of the Tibetan Nation, Anne-Sophie Bentz, Volume 6, Issue 2, September 2006, pp. 56-70.

This paper explores 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, Bentz contends, 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 Bentz aims 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.

Article Spotlights Round-Up: Borders, Ethnicity and Minorities

Leave a Reply

articlespotlight Read on for some SEN articles that reflect on some news items reported on the blog over the past several weeks:

The Nation-State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities’ in Syria, Benjamin White, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2007, pp. 64-85.

Minorities are specifically modern political groupings: they belong to the era of nation-states. This article explores the emergence of minorities in Syria under the French mandate. It examines the contradictions caused by French attempts to impose a religious political order within the secular form of the nation-state, showing how that form created minorities, most of whom cannot simply be mapped onto the millets, or religious communities, of the Ottoman Empire.

Using French and Syrian sources from the archives of the French High Commission, the article examines various religious and ethnolinguistic minorities to show how their emergence was governed by the nation-state form. French colonial policy influenced their development, but not their existence. The article draws on publications from the nationalist press of the period to show how the formation of minority and majority consciousness constitutes a larger process that is intimately linked to the nationstate form. The Syrian case is presented for comparative study and warns against an unreflective use of ‘minority’ as an analytical category.

Nationalism, Exclusion, and Violence: A Territorial Approach, John Robert Etherington, Volume 7, Issue 3, December 2007, pp. 24-44.

Nationalism can be understood as a doctrine of territorial political legitimacy, in the sense that demands for national self-government necessarily involve claims over a given territory. Such claims are ultimately justified by establishing a relationship of mutual belonging between the nation and ‘its’ territory. This makes nationalism intrinsically exclusionary and potentially violent, since purely civic nations become impossible in practice. Shared political and social values on their own fail to bind nation and territory together, and as such the nation’s ‘home’ might be anywhere, and thus, in a world of competing political claims over territory, nowhere. Ethnic elements of national identity are therefore necessary if an exclusive relationship is to be established between the nation and ‘its’ territory. These arguments are illustrated by analysing a series of nationalisms that have been traditionally considered to be ‘civic,’ such as those found in the United States, Canada and England.

Nationalism, Ethnicity and Self-determination: A Paradigm Shift?, Ephraim Nimni, Volume 9, Issue 2, September 2009, pp. 319-332.

An ongoing paradigm shift is giving birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between nationalism, sovereignty, self-determination and democratic governance. A common element among the various versions of the new paradigm is the dispersal of democratic governance across multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. Governmental processes are no longer seen as discrete, centralised and homogenous (as in the old nation-state model) but as asymmetrical, multilayered, multicultural and devolved into multiple jurisdictions. These changes have hardly affected the two main conceptual frameworks that dominate the study of nationalism: modernism and ethnosymbolism. As a result, these frameworks risk becoming irrelevant to the new forms of national self-determination, asymmetrical governance and shared sovereignty. Modernism and ethnosymbolism insist that nationalism seeks to equate the nation with a sovereign state, while in reality the overwhelming majority of nations are stateless and unable to build nation states because they often inhabit territories shared with other nations. The paradigm shift occurs through the realisation that nation-state sovereignty is no longer a feasible solution to the demands of stateless nations. Ethnosymbolism is in a much better position to adapt to the paradigm shift provided it abandons the claim that the nation state is the best shell for the nation.

From Dissidence in Israel to Theorising Ethno-Linguistic Holism

Leave a Reply

articlespotlight

Inter-connections between our past academic articles and last week’s news, read it here:

Bent Twigs and Olive Branches: Exploring the Narratives of Dissident Israeli Jews Volume 13, Issue 1, pages 20–37, April 2013

This article explores symbolic boundaries and identity-formation of the ‘ethnonational Us’, using narrative analysis of eleven Israeli-Jewish dissidents. The hegemonic nationalist discourse in Israel – Zionism – constructs the dissidents’ identities as the ‘Virtuous Us’, yet these individuals genuinely try to connect with the ‘Demonized Palestinian Other’. I suggest that the dissidents attempt to use alternative national identity discourses to overcome symbolic boundaries. I highlight inconsistencies within individual dissidents’ narratives and attribute them to the employment of multiple discourses, suggesting that some discourses fail to coherently reconcile ‘national’ history with the well-being of the Other, whilst others repel dissidents by appearing to negate or destroy their identities. The dissidents, therefore, cannot use the available discourses to fully overcome symbolic boundaries. Only the hegemonic nationalist discourse can offer a self-evident and compelling enunciation of the dissidents’ political reality, leading one insightful dissident to conclude that there is ‘no way out’ of his dilemma.

A Holistic Approach to Language, Religion, and Ethnicity Volume 13, Issue 1, pages 101–104, April 2013

If language, religion, ethnicity, and nation are all sources and forms of social distinction and personal identification, what happens when these categories/identities overlap or cut across each other? How are these terms used in everyday contexts, and what can we learn from the slippages between them? In light of these two questions, we question Brubaker’s sanguinity regarding religious and language pluralism in the twenty-first century.

East to East: Czech to Indian Nationalism

Leave a Reply

articlespotlight Yet again we have selected some articles for you which speak to the news from last week’s news bites.

Developing an Effective Romani Integration Strategy: Experiences of Ethnoculturally Neutral and Specific Policies in the Czech Republic Volume 8, Issue 3, pages 595–618, December 2008

While the question of how to integrate Romani communities has increased in political significance since the 1990s, a consensus has yet to be reached on how best to design integration policies for such a heterogeneous group of people. This article examines debates on whether ethnoculturally specific or neutral policies are more appropriate. Using the Czech Romani integration policy as a case study, it identifies as a significant problem the conflation of the Romani ethnic identity with the low socio-economic status of many (but not all) Roma. This has led to a policy focus on programmes to tackle social deprivation rather than addressing the discrimination which affects all Roma regardless of class. As a consequence of the decentralisation of power in the Czech Republic and the ingrained nature of anti-Romani prejudice, policies, whether ethnoculturally neutral or specific, will be implemented or rejected at the local level on the basis of local priorities.

Identities in India: Region, Nationality and Nationalism – A Theoretical Framework Volume 7, Issue 2, pages 79–93, September 2007

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

Russian and Albanian Nationalisms at the End of the 19th and Start of the 20th Centuries

Leave a Reply

In today’s selection of past article we reflect on the difference a century makes to two of the nationalisms which cropped up in last week’s news: those of Russia and Albania.

The Relevance of Kohn’s Dichotomy to the Russian Nineteenth-Century Concept of Nationalism Volume 8, Issue 3, pages 560–578, December 2008

This article challenges the common distinction between a Western and an Eastern type of nationalism with regard to Russian nationalism. Analysing the civic nationalism of the Decembrists and the cultural nationalism of the Slavophiles, it argues that the type of nationalism that appears in a specific country has more to do with timing than with place or social conditions. The article also suggests that intellectual thought should be studied in an international rather than a national context and that the world of ideas has to be granted a considerable degree of autonomy from socioeconomic conditions.

Fixing the Frontiers? Ethnography, Power Politics and the Delimitation of Albania, 1912 to 1914 Volume 5, Issue 1, pages 27–49, December 2005

The London Conference (1912–1913) of the ambassadors of the six European great powers, the Triple Entente of France, Russia and Britain, and the Triple Alliance (or Triplice) of Germany, Austria and Italy, was initially convened in an attempt to impose a settlement on the belligerents of the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 to prevent the Balkan conflict from escalating into a general European war. As part of this effort, the ambassadors had responsibility for delimitating Albanian+ boundaries. They decided to do this on the basis of ethnography, which for them meant language, specifically the mother tongue of the population or the language spoken within the family. However, the great powers were not entirely committed to these ethnic objectives and compromised them according to their own political interests, espousing ethnographical arguments only when they supported or reinforced their own strategic ones. This paper studies the socalled ‘fixing’ of Albanian frontiers during the Conference and subsequent boundary commissions. It examines the interests involved, arguments used and the problems faced. Furthermore, it discusses the reasons for the settlements. It evaluates the ethnographical basis of the frontiers established, and considers the resumption of Albanian frontier discussions during the First World War (1914–918) and at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). The paper argues that the ‘fixing of Albanian frontiers’ promoted the objectives of the six European powers, as opposed to the ethnographic dimensions as professed.