Elite Strategies in a Global World: A Typology of Polish Patriots

By Joanna Kaftan

Volume 11, Issue 2, pages 194-213

Abstract

This study focuses on how Polish elites view the relationship between Polish identity and Poland’s place in the world. Samples of priests, politicians, and intellectuals were interviewed in 1999 and 2009. A typology of four ideal types is proposed: ideological nationals, pragmatic nationals, pragmatic transnationals, and ideological transnationals. This typology can be viewed as a continuum of elite emphasis ranging between national and transnational themes. This continuum of emphasis can be seen when examining elite responses to questions concerning NATO membership, EU membership, Polish identity, and Polish democracy. This study finds that while the majority of Polish priests and politicians wished to emphasise national over transnational themes, intellectuals stressed transnational themes. Nevertheless, most acknowledged the inseparable nature of these themes when they talked about the contemporary Polish nation.

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Gender and Nationalism in Latin America: Thoughts on Recent Trends

By Sarah A. Radcliffe and Megan Rivers-Moore

Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 139-145

Abstract

Relations between gender and nationalism are forged in the intersection between race, inter-national relations, sexuality, and class in Latin America; the region’s gendered nationalisms reflecting specific histories and configurations of race, gender relations and projects of nationalism. The gendered nature of nations and nationalism in Latin America remains a vibrant research field (for reviews on gender, see Dore and Molyneuz 2000; on nationalism, Miller 2006). For this reason, our piece can highlight only a few dimensions of a multifaceted dynamic set of processes, reflecting our research interests rather than a comprehensive review.

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Comparing Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Asylophobia: The British Case

By Thomas Linehan

Volume 12, Issue 2, pages 366-386

Abstract

This article examines how far discourses on the ‘Other’ and immigration in contemporary Britain resemble antisemitic discourses in Britain during and between the two World Wars. The article contends that there was a particular British species of antisemitism in evidence during the wartime and interwar periods which was made up of a number of key elements, defined here as ‘conspiratorial’, ‘cultural’, ‘religious’, and ‘economic’ forms of anti-Jewish animosity. The article then considers whether similar elements can be discerned in responses to ‘Other’ maligned groups in the contemporary period, particularly in relation to anti-Muslim sentiment or Islamophobic discourses. The article then investigates whether we can identify symmetry in relation to another group which has experienced high levels of discrimination in twenty-first-century Britain, asylum seekers. Here, the article considers whether one needs to situate contemporary ‘asylophobia’ in a wider explanatory framework which both takes account of the possible ‘re-cycling’ of earlier stigmatising representations of Jews, and more contemporary influences and developments relating to neo-liberal globalisation.

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