Ethno‐Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society: A Case from India

By Sarbeswar Sahoo

Volume 8, Issue 3, pages 453-480

Abstract

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.

Read the full article here.

The Danish Cartoon Controversy and the Exclusivist Turn in European Civic Nationalism

By Robert A. Kahn

Volume 8, Issue 3, pages 524-542

Abstract

The Danish cartoon controversy raises questions about the inclusiveness of Western European civic nationalism. The controversy highlighted a harsh, exclusivist brand of Danish civic nationalism that cast Muslim migrants as outsiders. The controversy also saw a broader group of cartoon supporters from across Europe fault Muslims for failing to respect liberal traditions of freedom of speech and secularism, traditions now explicitly labeled ‘European’. However, others pushed the debate in a more open direction by defending the Jyllands Posten‘s freedom of expression in ethnically neutral terms and explicitly challenging the contrast between an enlightened Europe and an intolerant Muslim other.

Read the full article here.

Symbolic Charisma and the Creation of Nations: The Case of the Sámi

By Lars Elenius

Volume 10, Issue 3, Special Issue: ASEN 2010 Conference Special Issue: Nation & Charisma, pages 467-482

Abstract

The cultural charisma of the Sámi people has served to inscribe them in the nation myths of the Scandinavian states. This charisma was also built into the self‐image of the Nordic countries when they established as a political organisation in the 1950s. While this charisma was to some extent created by leaders of the majority population, its symbolic value has also been used by the Sámi movement as a tool for political mobilisation. The global resistance by indigenous people towards colonialism resulted in a shift of the Sámi people’s strategy from national to global action, and in the redefinition from a ‘nature people’ within the nation‐state to an ‘indigenous people’ in a global legalistic discourse. At the same time, Sámi politicians strive to unite the different Sámi groups through a common homeland, Sápmi, which crosses the nation‐state borders. The political territory of Sápmi can culturally be regarded as an imagined nation in the same way as a nation‐state, even if it is scattered across four countries. The creation of a Sámi nation also faces the same kind of inter‐ethnic problems as the nation‐state.

Read the full article here.

Minimalist Citizenship and National Identity in the Australian Republican Movement

By Francesco Veri

Volume 16, Issue 1, pages 3-19

Abstract

This article explores the way in which the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) in the 1990s considered the meaning of citizenship and national identity. We seek to demonstrate that ARM’s citizenship ideal was minimalist because it largely ignored legal and normative notions of citizenship for pragmatic, political, and theoretical reasons. First, we will explore the meaning of citizenship in the Australian institutional context in order to explain the differences between the legal exclusive notion and the normative inclusive understanding of citizenship. Later, we will focus our analysis specifically on ARM’s political debate during the 1990s. From this point of view, ARM only portrayed an unattractive normative vision of Australian citizenship which relied on universal civic values based on civic‐territorial and egalitarian ideas of citizenship adaptable to any political system. ARM’s minimalist constitutional proposal hardly had an impact on national identity because it was not designed to harbour an inclusive normative vision of citizenship. ARM had an opportunity to advance a new conception of citizenship which would have advanced a more attractive definition of national identity. ARM’s minimalist approach also negatively influenced the 1999 republican referendum outcome.

Read the full article here.

National Bodies: The ‘Comfort Women’ Discourse and its Controversies in South Korea

By Aniko Varga

Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 287-303

Abstract

This article examines how the nationalist discourse crystallising around the ‘comfort women’ issue (women abducted to function as sexual slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Pacific War) in South Korea has eventually rendered individual victims’ needs and preferences irrelevant to a larger narrative of an unforgivable offence to national sovereignty. The narrative, constructed socially with the active participation of the Korean government(s), has also linked together past grievances felt towards both Japan and the USA (their people as well as their governments) – albeit the latter appears only covertly, and on a more symbolic level its presence is indicative of the general public mood. What have been lost in the discourse are the very victims of military sexual slavery, whose fate and wellbeing has no longer been the subject of any social interest.

Read the full article here.