Toward a unified theory of ethnic antagonism: A preliminary synthesis of three macro models

This study analyzes and compares the Marxist-class, prejudice-discrimination, and middleman minority theories of ethnic antagonism by extracting the key endogenous variables in each and presenting them in abstract models. Then, a composite model is developed in a preliminary effort to combine the essential elements of the theories. In turn, this composite model is used to develop five abstract propositions on the underlying dynamics of all ethnic antagonism. These propositions argue that competition, perceptions of threat, discrimination, identifiability, and stigmatization are the basic dynamics in all ethnic antagonism. The composite model and abstract propositions are viewed as a starting point for the analysis of the common processes inhering in diverse historical/empirical cases.     

Toward a reconceptualization of "choice": challenges by women at the margins

It has been suggested that recent first world and third world feminist movements have gained impetus from a shared emphasis on "body politics" (abortion, rape, and domestic violence). It has been made clear by other writers, however, that first and third world women (including women of color in the first world) have very different conceptions of which policies and practices should be pursued to change their reproduction experiences (because the overriding experiences of their entire lives are so very different). Likewise, the concept of "the right to choose" has been challenged on the grounds that it ignores the external conditions (such as economics) which, in fact, dictate "choice." Eugenics also influences which "choices" are promoted among populations considered "undesirable." The dilemmas associated with reproductive choices are further highlighted by debate about the use of amniocentesis in India for sex determination and female feticide. At the center of this debate is whether calling for a ban on this practice would support or violate a woman's choice. The rhetoric of choice arose in the first place because women who wanted to end a pregnancy had "no choice" but to seek illegal abortions. However, working class women and Black women in the US object to the narrowness in the abortion rights agenda dictated by the use of this term. To assert women's "choice" absolves all others of the responsibility for a pregnancy. The "choice" concept is also vulnerable to political manipulation. "Choice" also evades ethical problems such as sex selection. Disabled feminists have also pointed out that it is as important to create conditions which include "the choice to have a disabled child" as it is to choose not to be a mother. Can feminists oppose the selective abortion of female fetuses while leaving the choice to abort a defective or unwanted fetus of either sex up to the mother? Objection to sex determination can be categorized as consequentialist (based on various predicted social and psychological consequences, such as more men would lead to more violence in the world) or nonconsequentialist (based on the inherent immorality of selective abortion). The benefits of sex selection would possibly include a reduction in sex-linked diseases and a reduction in the overall birth rate. Most US feminists support the moral, but not the legal, condemnation of sex selection. In India, where sex selection is openly practiced, feminists have tried to achieve legal prohibition of the use of tests for this purpose. This difference from the US position may be due to the difference in the abortion context in the 2 countries. Whether feminists support legal and/or moral prohibition of sex selection, however, almost all call for the longterm structural changes which must be made in the context of imperialism, racism, and poverty which would allow true "choices" to prevail.     

Legal pluralism and the Shari'a: a comparison of Greece and Turkey

The creation of a national and unified legal system was an important aspect of the rise of the modern state and national citizenship. However, this interpretation of legal rationalization has been challenged by sociologists of law such as Eugene Ehrlich (1862–1922) who claimed that this juridical theory of state‐centred law masked the presence of customary laws outside this formal system. In critical theories of the law, legal pluralism is proposed against the idea of legal sovereignty or legal centralism. In this article we explore the implications of the growth of the Shari'a as an example of legal pluralism. We take Turkey and Greece as two interesting but different examples of legal pluralism and consider the implications of these case studies for debates about liberalism, multiculturalism and citizenship in multi‐faith societies.     

Migrations of ethnic unmixing in the "New Europe"

"This article addresses a... neglected, link between migration and ethnicity or nationality in Europe. It explores migrations of ?ethnic unmixing' or ?ethnic affinity'. Ethnic unmixing and ethnic affinity have somewhat different connotations and call attention to two distinct respects in which ethnicity may figure in such migrations: (1) as a push factors at the point of origin, and (2) as a pull factor at the point of destination. "     

The international field placement: a reconciliation of identity

The international field placement is a site of both identity confusion and identity development for the social work student. Aiming to develop their professional identity they are faced with a challenge: the presence of two dominant identities, the tourist identity and the student identity. Whilst the embodiment of the tourist identity has often facilitated the student’s motivation to undertake the placement experience, the student identity is what both university staff and agency field educators perceive as integral to student engagement in this remote educational setting. Social work educators perceive this identity challenge as an impediment to learning. In contrast, students report feeling that their tourist traits strengthened their personal and professional capacity, natural curiosity and ability to engage with the local community. By analysing the roles of university staff as liaison support, and field educators as agency supervisors, it is possible to explore a teaching and learning relationship that is student-centred, grounded in the immersive international experience. Through privileging the student’s voice social work educators involved with organising, supporting and supervising international field placements are able to understand the placement as a continuum of learning. On this continuum identity reconciliation is viewed as a crucial element in the development of a professional identity.     

Noah: a story of peacebuilding,nonviolence, reconciliation,and healing

ABSTRACT

For years there has been a failure to show the relevance between the application of religious text within social work and the social sciences. This paper provides a functional framework on the reason for the separation between social sciences and religious studies and then uses the Genesis account of Noah and the flood to show how the two can be integrated for peacebuilding, reconciliation, and healing. The paper applies the Noah story to micro, mezzo, and macro applications of social work practice and concludes with a call for a deeper integration of religious text into social work practice.     

Agency and Organization: Toward a Cyborg-Consciousness

The presumption that agency is primarily thefunction or personification of a naturalized humanactant can be traced through a Western intellectualtradition which draws upon a dualistic conception of the self as a unified, productive, sovereignsubject, and an independent, external, physical other.In this paper, I problematize the prevalence of suchCartesian differentiation. I review an alternative, postfoundational actant ontology, then tracethe resemblances in the work on situated knowledges.These orientations challenge the hierarchical divisionbetween the internal self and the external other and instead emphasize the relational, material,and performative nature of human being . Drawing on thenotion of proximal thinking, I suggest that formalorganizations can productively be described as relational spaces, containing multiple andcomplex frontiers, frames and interfaces, with(in) whichostensibly differentiated and individualistic attitudestoward agency give way to the variety and possibility of the self-in-between; a cyborg-consciousnessable to withstand the tension of partial identities andcontradictory voices.     

Competitive victimhood and reconciliation: the case of Turkish–Armenian relations

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that conflicts tend to be intractable if collective victimhood has become a component of national identity, and when conflicting communities claim to be the ‘real’ or ‘only’ victims, and that their suffering justifies crimes past and present. Turkish and Armenian narratives of competitive victimhood are analysed drawing on public opinion polls from Turkey and Armenia, and personal interviews with Turks and Armenians. The study corroborates past theory and research that competitive victimhood prevents reconciliation, particularly if it has become an essential part of national identity. The paper also shows that Turkish–Armenian relations remain at the bottom stage of the reconciliation ladder. Yet, some of our empirical observations suggest that when grass-roots level interaction between Turks and Armenians is facilitated (which has been prevented not least because of the closed border), there is room for the abandonment of competitive victimhood at least on an interpersonal level, if not on a general societal or political level.     

Cultural pluralism and the future of American unity: the impact of illegal aliens

This paper explores the question of the impact of illegal migration on American unity and cultural pluralism in the US. Assuming that over time the descendants of undocumented workers now in the US will behave substantially like descendants of those who immigrate legally, the long-term impact of illegal migration barely will be noticeable provided it is reduced substantially in the future. The process of acculturation will work in the same way for both groups as it has for other ethnic groups in the past, given comparable levels of education and length of family residence in the US. The author takes special notice of the illegal migration of Spanish-speaking workers and hypothesizes that the behavior of their descendants will not differ from that of the descendants of other immigrants, legal or illegal, in ways that disrupt fundamental patterns of American political unity and cultural pluralism.     

Revisiting the Notion of "Public" in Habermas's Theory—Toward a Theory of Politics of Public Credibility

There exist around the notion of the public three different yet overlapping dichotomies posed on different levels of analysis: public (sphere) versus private (sphere), public versus mass, and publicness versus privacy/secrecy. Habermas's book ([1962]1989) incorporates all the three sets of dichotomy without resolving the contradictory meanings and bridging the gaps among them. As a result, his conception of the public sphere becomes paradoxical in terms, and it undertheorizes the cultural property of publicness. This article proposes an alternative conception of the public that may encompass the structural, institutional, and cultural levels of theorization in a more precise and coherent way. It is argued that the public is an imagined category about citizen membership that is attached to both institutions of state and civil society. In political practices, a symbolic "public" is institutionalized through an open communicative space where it is called upon, constructed, and contested as the central source of cultural references. In this connection, a notion of public credibility is introduced as an attempt to bring forth a richer and more dynamic conception about the role of culture in democratic struggles than that of critical rationality by Habermas.     

Disciplinary pluralism: four models of private justice in the workplace1

This paper develops a typology of four different models of discipline that operate in the workplace. These models are derived from a systematic analysis of the literature using a framework developed by criminologists for examining crime and criminal justice systems. The analysis focuses on each model's views of human nature, social order, rule creation, crime and deviance, disciplinary procedure and philosophy of sanctioning. The analysis highlights the important role played by organizational structure in shaping disciplinary form. The implications of the typology are discussed for current debates about the character of an all-pervasive societal discipline. It is concluded that current unitary visions of such discipline as ‘instrumental’should be modified in the light of the pluralism implied by the typological analysis.     

Home of the Brave,Frantz Fanon and cultural pluralism

Abstract

This article examines Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949, USA), a Hollywood social problem drama about anti-black racism, and the brief but vivid response to the film presented in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon enables a rethinking of some of the film's most central assumptions and the discourses upon which the story relies. At the same time, Fanon's response conveys information about his own biography and his perspectives on cultural representation generally. The article examines the film as a document that reveals competing claims about anti-black racism and, through Fanon's commentary, revisits the relationship between cultural pluralism and racial ideologies in the mid-20th century USA. The article explores the nature of Fanon's anti-racist commentary on the film as a form of 'cultural studies' that offers transnational historical insight and simultaneously provides ways of re-examining the national specificity of race thinking.     

Rethinking assimilation and ethnicity: the Chinese in Thailand

US theoretical models of assimilation of ethnic groups within a larger culture usually assume a unilinear, unidimensional process, which is simplistic, does not account for the persistence of ethnicity, and oversimplifies the process of social change. The argument is advanced that ethnic identity is both primordial and situational (a private sense that is self-maintaining, cumulative, deepening, and self-affirming). Typically, a person has one primary ethnic identity, but where ethnic boundaries overlap, there is instrumental identity. Chinese in Thailand mostly adopt Thai values, speak the Thai language, go to Thai schools, join Thai associations, and celebrate Thai religious festivals. Their secondary identity as Chinese is integrated into their associations with other Chinese and in the home through the use of the Chinese language. Their Chinese identity appears also in ancestor worship. There are symbiotic relationships between native Thais and Chinese Thais along class lines. The Chinese are known to have great financial and economic resources, while the Thais have political and administrative control. These differences with the power elites separate the Chinese from the Thais and interfere with assimilation. The power is balanced. If the Chinese gained in political and administrative power, the balance would be upset, and the interests of both groups would be threatened. The view of Whitten and Whitten acknowledges that individuals and groups act to make the best of the situation and are not merely victims of social forces. Actions are maintained and resisted. The important consideration in theory-building is not the terms of assimilation but the terms specifying the conduct of the group as a whole and as individuals in daily social interactions. The theoretical discussion focuses on border crossings, the Skinner view of the Chinese, bilingualism and cultural education, socioeconomic organizations, occupational differences, and religion, tradition, and ethnic identification.     

Jewish acculturation in late nineteenth-century Russia: the case of Yonah Berkhin

Young Jewish students in the Pale of Settlement have not received comprehensive scholarly attention, despite their impact on Jewish politics and the public sphere in the late nineteenth century. Typically, representations of Jewish pupils and students are limited to the study of small and non-representative radical groups. This paper fills this gap through a contextualized examination of the practices and meanings of acculturation among educated Jewish youth. It focuses on a previously unknown diary by Yonah Berkhin, a Jewish teenager who strove to obtain a secondary education between 1879 and 1882. The discussion of this document adds a critical contextual perspective to the existing scholarship on acculturation among Jewish learning youth in late nineteenth-century Russia. I suggest that acculturation was a complex, multidirectional process. I show how, rather than merely creating alienation from Jewish society – which is often described as a “departure” leading either to a complete assimilation or to “repentance” and “return” – acculturation created new as well as modified existing modes of attachment to Jewish society.