Promoting majority culture and excluding external ethnic influences: China’s strategy for the UNESCO ‘intangible’ cultural heritage list

ABSTRACT

China’s enthusiasm for having many World Heritage–listed sites is well-known as a national strategy of cultural soft power, economic development, and incorporating minority groups into the Han-dominated Chinese state. Relatively understudied are China’s efforts related to UNESCO’s lists of ‘intangible’ cultural heritage, which inscribe people’s living culture – such as dances, costumes, and songs – as world heritage. This study focuses on how some ethnic groups’ intangible culture has been objectified for the World Heritage Lists by the Chinese state. This study argues that by enlisting ethnic minorities’ culture under the name of Chinese state, the state can reinforce state borders that often run across ethnic and cultural boundaries, reducing external influences on minorities from their trans-border ethnic or cultural kin. Concomitantly, the majority’s cultural prominence is further entrenched in this process by the emphasis placed on minorities’ folklore in contrast to the Han’s culture of civilization.     

The Vernacular International: Heimat,Modernism and the Global Market in Early Twentieth-Century Germany

This article proposes a reconceptualisation of regionalism, nationalism and globalisation as simultaneous and causally connected phenomena, which first peaked in the early decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher and others active in the Deutscher Werkbund, it examines how competition in the global market inspired a search for modern yet uniquely national forms that derived their 'authenticity' from vernacular culture. Yet paradoxically, the visual vocabulary of Heimat was frequently inspired by English and American models. This article interprets the aesthetic and political translations which the peripatetics of localism entailed, and shows how consumer goods 'made in Germany' came to be invested with a sense of cultural mission.     

Armenian crafts in the Ottoman Empire: Armenian identity and cultural exchange

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how the dominant narrative of Armenian national identity shapes perceptions of Armenian culture and offers examples of Ottoman Armenian craft art to bring to light an under acknowledged, yet intrinsically valuable, dynamic within Armenian cultural identity. Within studies of art history, cultural exchange between Ottoman Armenians and Turks has been ignored due to its inconvenience to the conflictual understanding of Armenian-Ottoman relations central to Armenian national identity. These artifacts speak out against reductive norms and offer an important addendum to the understanding of what it meant and continues to mean to be Armenian.     

Ambiguous 'Culture': Contrasting Interpretations of the Basque Film Ama Lur and the Relationship Between Centre and Periphery in Franco's Spain

This article focuses on the last decades of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. Two apparently distinct issues are brought together here: the discussions of the National Council of the Movement, which was dependant on Spain's single political party, regarding the possibility of defining a cultural policy to counteract separatist tendencies; and discussions of the possible interpretations of the Basque film Ama Lur (1968). Both exemplify the ideas of the authorities about how to handle the cultural dimension of the challenges represented by peripheral nationalist movements. The aim of this study is to shed light on the questions of how and to what extent attempts by the Francoist authorities to use culture as a political tool worked.     

To see ourselves as others see us: identity and attitudes towards immigration amongst civic nationalists

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different conceptions of national identity can be linked to attitudes towards cultural pluralism. The tensions between more culturally pluralistic societies and sustained support for nationalism represent an important political issue in modern western European politics. Such tensions are of particular relevance for stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) for whom national/regional identity is a major political driver. This article empirically tests the relationship between different conceptions of national identity and attitudes towards cultural pluralism in two SNRPs—the Scottish National Party and the Frisian National Party. The article draws upon evidence from two unique full party membership studies and is supported with evidence from documentary analysis. A key finding is that the manner in which members conceptualise national identity has significant implications for their attitudes towards cultural pluralism, which has the potential of becoming a source of tension within SNRPs. A key implication of the article is that there is evidence that attitudes of general members and officially stated party positions and narratives diverge on issues relating to cultural pluralism and national identity. These tensions could potentially be harmful for the party's overall civic image.     

Leveraging the common and outsourcing the distinct: institutional difference and multinational company identity in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the challenges of outsidership faced by multinational companies (MNCs) accessing emerging economies. The paper departs from popular conceptualisations of culture drawing instead on social identity theory as part of an institutions-based view, to explain how employing a singularities approach can allow the identification of commonalities of Indianness and Australianness that can be leveraged to ameliorate negative socially embedded business norms that pose a challenge to MNC success in emerging economies. This study shows that despite recognised formal (regulatory) and informal (cultural) differences, managers of Australian MNCs operating in India were able to innovatively identify and exploit cultural commonalties/singularities to ease cultural adjustment and mitigate intergroup conflict, allowing them to achieve an innovative institutional fit. The paper discusses how, using this approach, sole-venture MNCs can access many of the benefits provided by collaborative entry modes while preserving MNC identity. We further propose that the singularities approach can provide a valuable starting point to develop culturally appropriate competence training initiatives.     

National Identity Formation in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire: The Skerst Family in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The modern history of the Baltic provinces of the former Russian Empire has essentially been written from an ethnic/national perspective. It is basically the story of the formation of the Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian and German 'communities', of their 'specific' national identities and eventually of nation states. With those who acquired a German identity, the focus has essentially been upon the landed nobility, the so-called 'Baltic Barons', the traditional elite that formed a minority even of the ethnically German population. The existence of other German groups has been recognised, such as the 'literary estate' (Literatenstand), which in the nineteenth century 'brought into Baltic higher culture, rationalist viewpoints and represented a potential threat to noble control of local politics.' However, such groups have received comparatively little attention from historians, especially among those publishing in English. Even then there is limited acknowledgement of their possessing distinctive cultural and other forms of self-identification. A recent study by a Canadian scholar of the Germans of Riga before 1914 tends to impose the values of the landed elite upon them. In works published in post-1945 (West) Germany by emigres from the region, there is an inclination to present a distinctive 'Baltic German' identity that is largely derived from the experience of the landed elite.     

Generating social identity in times of war and terror

The social-political analysis in this paper addresses many of the ambiguities that a critique of ideology and values, especially in the fields of education, media and morals, tends to evoke. Crises in identity and values accompanying the Jewish State since the beginning of the twentieth century have characterised the modern history of Israel as a continuing conflict between Israeli and Palestinian societies. In the search for a new post-colonial identity, Post-Zionism has emerged as a global ethos that challenges the ethno-religious Zionist ethos. Another aspect of the modern Israeli phenomenon is the Israeli addiction to power making the use of military power unavoidable. This appears on centre stage in terms of both public life and the Israeli psyche and resulted in the rise of the concept of power in the Israeli ethos.     

Vive la France! Vive la République? The Cultural Construction of French Identity at the World Exhibitions in Paris 1855–1900

Abstract

This article analyses how the world exhibitions were instrumentalised for national identity-building in 19th-century France. It argues that they probably strengthened a broadly consensual conception of a superior French culture and civilising mission. In contrast, it is doubtful whether the Second Empire and the Third Republic succeeded in hijacking them to sustain their political visions of the French nation. The exhibitions crystallised criticism of the two political systems, and vociferous debates about their nature and ideological content took place in the Republic. They also helped to strengthen other, sometimes conflicting identities, such as region and class, emphasising the cultural and political diversity of France.     

Physicians,Humour and Therapeutic Laughter in the Ancient World

This paper examines the ways 'mixed race' women in Canada contemplate their relationship to national identity. Through qualitative, open-ended interviews, the research demonstrates how some women of 'mixed race' contest ideas of the nation as constituted through the policy of multiculturalism in Canada. To challenge the tropes of the national narrative, some women of 'mixed race' develop nuanced models of cultural citizenship, illustrating that national identities are formed and transformed in relation to representation. Refusing to be positioned outside the nation, they effectively produce their own meanings of identity by working through their own personally identified 'mixed race' bodies to the national body politic, where some of them see their own bodies as intrinsically 'multicultural'. The paper ends by addressing the paradoxes of multiculturalism, emphasising through narratives that the policy produces hierarchical spaces against which some 'mixed race' women imaginatively negotiate, contest and challenge perceptions of their racialised and gendered selves.     

'The Justice of Queen Victoria': Boer Oppression,and the Emergence of a National Identity in Lesotho

The growth of a national identity in Lesotho after 1910 was a direct response to the threat of incorporation into the Union of South Africa. The Basotho feared being governed by what they considered to be an unjust and hostile South Africa. The Basotho appealed to the justice of the British government - for them to continue to honour the protection that they had extended to the nineteenth-century Basotho chief, Moshoeshoe. The protection which Moshoeshoe had secured entrenched his position as the centrepiece of the Basotho's emergent national identity in the twentieth century.     

Corporate social responsibility and multinational enterprise identity: insights from a mining company's attempt to localise in Ghana

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how a US gold mining multinational enterprise (MNE) – one of the world's largest – operates its subsidiaries in various parts of the world by creating a unique ‘glocal identity’. The US parent company has experienced several significant challenges across its network of subsidiaries. These challenges were mostly linked to the enforcement of the MNE's identity and culture in its host environment. We contribute by describing, in detail, the attempts made by this company to localise its corporate social responsibility practices in Ghana as it sought to gain legitimacy and create an identity that would overcome the issues relating to the liability of foreignness. Our data come from a combination of sources, including questionnaires and detailed semi-structured interviews conducted with the key management employees of the mining company, members and opinion leaders of the company's host communities, and secondary sources. Our main finding is that the construction of a ‘host-friendly’ identity was centred around the mining company's involvement with the Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation.     

Political Institutions,Elites, and Territorial Identity Formation in Belgium

Territorial identities in Belgium require a political rather than a cultural or structural explanation. The forces behind the development of identities in Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels and the German-speaking area are similar to the ones that produced the Belgian identity they are challenging. Political institutions and elites are at the heart of the process of territorial identity formation in Belgium. The emergence of Walloon and Flemish identities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the by-product of a struggle between the dominant French-speaking bourgeoisie and the traditional Flemish lower bourgeoisie within the institutional context of the early Belgian state. Transformations in the party system and reforms to political-territorial institutions in the last 40 years have strengthened these identities and created entirely new ones.     

Constructing a social space for Alevi political identity: religion,antagonism and collective passion

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the construction of an Alevi political identity in terms of cultural, social and religious values at a time when the role of religion is increasing in the political life of Turkey. It indicates the emergence of a new form of conflict and hegemonic articulation between Sunnism and Alevism that offers an alternative means of conflict resolution by the Alevi political agents within a radical pluralism and agonistic democracy. It also argues that the social construction of Alevi political identity is both a political project and an ontological question as this identity focuses on religious discourses in establishing a counter-hegemonic culture through mobilizing political ‘collective passion’.     

Negotiating postcolonial Eurasian identities and national belonging in global-city Singapore

ABSTRACT

A racial classification regime, partly derived from colonial race categories that solidified during the British Empire, remains a key governance strategy in postcolonial Singapore, sorting citizens into the categories of Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other (CMIO). This racial grid continues to be a simplification of the actual complexity of lived identities and experiences, particularly for people of mixed descent. In this context, we explore the contemporary meanings and resonances of racial identity and national belonging as negotiated among members of a historic mixed-descent community – the Eurasians – in the context of a nation-state built on an institutionally fixed racial template. As a community, Eurasians are commonly attributed to the presence and mixing of especially Dutch, Portuguese and British – but also other Europeans – with an equally variegated palette of Asian cultures, since the 16th century. Based on 30 biographical interviews with self- identified Eurasians of two generations, this paper examines how individual and collective narratives of ‘old’ hybrid identities are changing in relation to the emergence of potentially new hierarchies of racial belonging with the arrival of new migration and the rise of international marriage in globalizing times. Given the lived reality of an expanding range of ‘race’ identities of different permutations and combinations, the politics of choice is played out between countervailing forces which draw racialized boundaries around the community more tightly on the one hand, and liberalize claims to racial and national belonging on the basis of self-identification on the other.     

Indigenous identity construction: enacted upon us,or within us

ABSTRACT

This commentary essay questions, theorizes, explores and grapples with the phenomenon of the creation of racial, social and cultural identity: in childhood as Native American identity is negotiated from others; and in adulthood as Native identity is constructed from within. ‘Indigenous Identity Construction: Enacted upon Us, or Within Us?’ is a commentary piece focused around Native American identity and how it is formed both through childhood and into adulthood. I analyze and interpret my experiences and understanding of my identity formation as an indigenous person- which usually is left out of the socio-political notions of modernity. Conceptualizations from ‘othering’ racial identities are discussed along with indigenous ontologies constructed within land and water. Through metaphorically revisiting past racializing incidents this piece continues working through the idea of othering and induction into whiteness in childhood, but also focuses on how indigenous identities might be constructed and sustained in adulthood. Efforts to model the indigenous assertion of self-determination and decolonizing the mind was used to re-present thoughts on the construction of Native American identity     

Fabulachia: urban,black female experiences and higher education in Appalachia

Abstract

This article draws on focus group conversations with black female college students attending a small, liberal arts institution in Kentucky. Based primarily on group interviews and discussions, as well as observations and analysis – a theoretical domain (referred to throughout the article as ‘Fabulachia’) emerged as a site-specific outcome of events and ideas regarding race, gender and identity experienced by the research participants. Specifically, ‘Fabulachia’ functions as a theoretical hybrid space in which urban (e.g. ‘ghetto fabulous’) black college student-voices find a sense of empowerment as they construct their own narratives of leaving ‘the hood’ to attend college in rural Appalachia. This project revises and updates previous research on race and rural identity/ies in order to situate the urban black female experience into an Appalachian context. Drawing on hip hop feminism and urban education based theoretical paradigms, the Fabulachia study seeks to give voice to black females in contemporary Appalachia, with attention to their self-proclaimed ‘ghetto fabulous’ identities honed in and through their urban upbringings. The unique experiences of (Fabulachian) black females are an important and largely absent part of larger conversations of the growing body of Urban education research that seeks to situate the black student/black youth and schooling experience in the US. In the Fabulachia study, a group of black female students shared personal narratives (part-oral history and part direct response) to prompts and queries about the role of hip hop culture, race and gender identity in their lives. They also discussed and debated what it means to be a black female in contemporary (often racist) Appalachia, and about how their families and urban surroundings influenced their processes of being and becoming in the context of higher educational achievement.     

Taiwan and ROC: A critical analysis of President Chen Shui-bien's construction of Taiwan identity in national speeches

Names used to address Taiwan – such as taiwan and zhonghuamingguo (Republic of China [ROC]) – are symbols defining Taiwan's political realities, each with their own unique historical significance. Since his election in 2000, Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bien has had to alternate between taiwan and ROC to strike a balance among conflicting ideas about Taiwan's national identity. The act is grounded in complex political discourse dictating that Taiwan must not be seen as separate from the sinic world and simultaneously to respond to steadily rising Taiwanese consciousness. Facing intercessions by the United States and China, as well as ever-present domestic clashes, rhetorical exigency requires the president to fashion unique political discourse concerning what Taiwan is and ought to be. This study explores how these names and related expressions are used in Chen's public addresses to the nation during his two-term tenure from 2000 to 2008, and how their development reflects the struggle over Taiwan's national identity.     

Migrating rituals: negotiations of belonging and otherness among Tamils in Norway

ABSTRACT

By examining a funeral ritual devised by Tamil refugees living north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, I argue that the study of migrant rituals offers new insights into migrants’ senses of belonging, identity and wellbeing. Within a context of the exclusion and inclusion of cultural minorities, I describe the process of creating a funeral ritual that involves encounters between local Norwegians and Tamil refugees. The funeral followed the sudden death of a Tamil worker at the local fish plant as a result of a freak accident. The article focuses on how the Tamils’ work of devising and performing the funeral speaks to local migrant experiences of living on the boundaries between the Tamil and Norwegian life-worlds. A centrepiece of the case study involves a young widow, thus the analysis includes social and cultural dimensions of widow- and womanhood, while also highlighting issues of migration and the shared human condition. In conclusion, I underscore the way in which the migrant ritual, embodiment and (Othering) discourse cohere together to form a temporal phenomenon that responds to the present-ism of human life.     

Protestant Ulster: Ethno-history,Memory and Contemporary Prospects

This article highlights the processes by which an Ulster Protestant identity came to be fashioned, in the era of political conflict over Irish Home Rule, in accordance with ethno-religious and, more ambiguously, ethno-nationalist criteria. It explores how processes of myth-making and remembering have been central to the reproduction of this sense of identity. Finally, it considers the role played by ethnic essentialism in the contemporary period, and the question of whether ethnic imperatives might be transcended within the context provided by the Good Friday Agreement and the promise of new British-Irish structures and new relationships within these islands.