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.