Understanding Taliban Resurgence: Ethno-Symbolism and Revolutionary Mobilization

By Kareem Kamel

Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 66-82

Abstract

This article argues that the post-2001 Taliban resurgence was due to their capacity to act as resourceful ethnic entrepreneurs through selective usage of dominant Pashtun and Islamic mythomoteurs in the process of symbolic cultivation. Through comparative historical analysis and an ethno-symbolist theoretical framework, it shows that the main identity determinants informing the movement’s behaviour have played a fundamental role in the process of revolutionary mobilization. With Afghanistan as their territorial referent, the ideological lenses of Pashtun nationalism and Islamism, coupled with their situational ‘village’ lens, have been used interchangeably by the Taliban to shed light on specific symbolic resources for successful resistance.

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Anticipatory Representation: Building the Palestinian Nation(-State) through Artistic Performance

By Chiara De Cesari

Volume 12, Issue 1, pages 82-100

Abstract

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.

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Ethnic Politics, Political Elite, and Regime Change in Nigeria

By Henry Ani Kifordu

Volume 11, Issue 3, pages 427-450

Abstract

Since the 1960s, intermittent social conflicts in Nigeria appear mostly linked to ethnic groups’ differences. Considering the importance of regime change in social and political stability, this article critically analyses the historic and dynamic role of the core political executive elite in the political system’s stability. The article argues that ethnic politics persist in Nigeria based on the nature of interactions between political institutions, institution-builders, and society. It asserts a contradictory link between deep-rooted elite interests and popular preferences in ways that undermine orientations towards democracy. The empirical focus is on the composite nature of the core political executive elite analysed through their ethnic and educational backgrounds. It is observed that, although ethnic shocks are variously motivated, the atypical shape and inequity in power and role distribution at the highest levels of executive office-holding stand out as a salient source and target of antagonism by ethnic groups. This finding has a paradoxical implication: deep-seated economic and political interests of the elite play a diversionary role from the real causes of ethnic conflicts in Nigeria.

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Olympic Bidding, Multicultural Nationalism, Terror, and the Epistemological Violence of ‘Making Britain Proud’

By Mark Falcous and Michael L. Silk

Volume 10, Issue 2, pages 167-186

Abstract

This paper excavates the entanglement of British nationalist identity politics with sport, terrorism, place re-imagining, mega-event bidding, and corporate neoliberalism. We focus on London’s 2012 olympic bidding and the coalescence of corporate, state, civic, and sporting interests surrounding the national (re)imaginings that characterised the bid. We open with a critical reading of the bid narratives explicating how selective assertions of Britishness were envisioned through the motifs of harmonious multicultural unity, ‘youth’, and passion for sport. We focus on how these narratives offered up ‘idealised’ multicultural citizens and harmonious diversity as a reactionary form of nationalist ‘pride politics’ (Fortier 2005). We subsequently juxtapose these narratives with a critical reading of English press and political discourse in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 bombings – the day after London was awarded the olympic games. This juxtaposition reveals the tensions and ambiguities between assertions of inclusive civic nationalism – that apparently transcends ethnic difference – and the geo-politics of the ‘war on terror’ within Britain’s post-imperial self imaginings. Specifically, we tease out the place – and ambiguities – of the 2012 olympics within these imaginings reading the London games as an exemplar of a soft-core ideological spectacle informing selective nationalist narratives within the context of unfolding neoliberal politics.

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