Between Civilizations: One Side of a Dialogue

In the present global context, the ‘problem’ of religion in relation to gender has become predominantly about the situation of Muslim women and what this indicates about the state of our civilization. Thus, in such incidents as the death of Aqsa Parvez (age 16) in late 2007 in Toronto, Canada, Muslim women's bodies, as many scholars have argued, become the battlegrounds which clearly demarcate the line between the civilized secular modern nation and premodern religious fundamentalisms. In this paper, I want to extend this critical work by bringing in an analysis of the second or ‘homegrown’ generation as it is in this context, I will argue that national anxieties about Canada's global status as a tolerant multicultural nation are most pronounced. Drawing on the work of Asad (2003), Mahmood (2006) and Brown (2006), I will outline how conceptions of tolerance and secularism operate through culture to produce a racialized distinction between the civilized, modern citizen and premodern fundamentalist groups in the making of Canada as a white settler multicultural nation. In order to illustrate this concretely, I will carry out a critical content analysis of representations of Aqsa Parvez's death in the media, representations which clearly demonstrate the contemporary operation of secularism and tolerance in relation to multiculturalism and its particular intensity as it pertains to second generation Muslims. In the conclusion, I want to reflect on how we might rethink our understanding of violence against Muslim women in order to destabilize this powerful binaristic framing which continues to secure a white settler hegemony of ‘multiculturalism within a bilingual framework’ even as it obscures the power relations through which it sustains a racial hierarchy.     

Pools,Piety, and Participation: A Muslim Women's Sports Club and Urban Citizenship in Germany

Abstract

This paper introduces the Muslim Women's Sports Club (MWSC) in Stuttgart, Germany and analyzes this club's role and contribution in the construction of urban citizenship. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I illustrate that this club is a vibrant space of civic participation. I argue that associations like this sports club are crucial sites of Muslim civic engagement where individuals configure forms of religiously circumscribed citizenship. The club plays a vital, but largely overlooked, role in the urban civic sphere, as it articulates and strengthens the bonding and civic participation of pious Muslim women and creates cross-ethnic relationships and networks. Some members are initiated into the landscape of civic associations, as they learn about their rights, duties, and potentials, through cooperation with other associations or institutions. I argue that an association such as the MWSC, regardless of its rather invisible activities, is a full-fledged part of the urban public sphere in Germany. Theoretically I engage questions of urban citizenship and civic participation in the context of a faith and/or identity-based association.     

(Re)-migration: Indonesians of mixed descent and the journey ‘home’

ABSTRACT

Indonesia has a long history of outward migration, with the result that many children have been born outside Indonesia but consider it, through a parent, a ‘homeland’ in an emotive sense. This article examines the experiences of a number of different groups of people of ‘mixed descent’ (termed ‘Indo’ in Indonesian) who returned to Indonesia and found that they did not feel that they belonged, whether because they experienced a sense of disjuncture upon discovering that their memories did not match reality, or because they had never lived in Indonesia previously and only imagined it through a parent's stories. I closely examine the interconnectedness in the popular imagination of nationality with race and appearance in the Indonesian context, and argue that Indonesian national identity is strongly predicated upon anti-foreign sentiment, thereby making attempts of Indos who grew up outside Indonesia to describe themselves as Indonesian contentious. I also draw out the historical development of contemporary understandings about who can claim to be a ‘real’ or ‘pure’ Indonesian, which are based on colonial categories that in practice were different to how they have been portrayed in historical consciousness. The strong links between nationality and appearance/race and the complexities of the lives of individuals who choose to call several places home because of ancestral links complicate simplistic narratives of ‘local’ and ‘foreign’, ‘exile’ and ‘return’ to a homeland.     

The Turkish Connection: Neo-Ottoman Influence in Post-Dayton Bosnia

Bosnia has been defined by its perpetual state of transition—politically, culturally, and socially—since it seceded from Yugoslavia in 1992. The country's Balkan geography renders it both East and West, and its cultural affinities straddle the two poles as well. Hence, the country is in perpetual liminality, tugged by the influences of both Western and Eastern nations and organizations. This has particularly been true for the Bosniak population, a group that has received support from various Muslim-majority nations and organizations. Prominent among those influences is Turkey, which resonates with Bosniaks because their history and identity are intertwined with the Turkish Ottoman past. The emergence of Neo-Ottomanism links Bosnia to Turkey's past and future; this phenomenon is paving the way for a Bosnia that is increasingly being defined by its slight Muslim-majority population and culture. In “The Turkish Connection: Neo-Ottoman Influence in Post-Dayton Bosnia,” I situate contemporary Bosnian cultural products, including film and literature, as responses or interactions with Neo-Ottoman modes that seek to (re)imagine the Balkans and specifically Bosnia, through the lens of the “golden age” of sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire.     

Not at Home in the Empire

ABSTRACT

The distaste for the work of a colonial official, so clearly expressed in George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant', is often seen as reflecting a straightforward liberal commitment to freedom. This interpretation misrepresents both Orwell's standpoint and the character of liberal political reason. As a doctrine of government, liberalism is indeed committed to ruling over, and as far as possible to ruling through, the activities of free individuals. But it has also taken the view that substantial portions of humanity consist of individuals who are not -- or not yet -- capable of acting in a suitably autonomous fashion. This view results in a division of the world into settings in which individuals can normally be trusted to conduct themselves as autonomous rational agents and other settings in which they cannot be trusted to behave in this fashion. Examination of the consequences of this view for the practice of colonial government suggests a different interpretation of Orwell's account: it reflects a cultivated liberal's distaste, on the one hand, for working with and living among people he clearly regarded as inferior and, on the other, for the dirty work of paternalistic rule. A short concluding section considers the post-colonial liberal condition.     

Israel's immigration policies: the twofold face of the ‘demographic threat’

This article deals with the discursive practices employed in various public sites of Israeli society to support and legitimise the immigration policy towards prospective immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) from 1989 to 1990. During those years Israeli society witnessed one of the country's biggest immigration waves. However, like many state policies, Israel's immigration policy towards prospective immigrants from the FSU has not been carried out uncontested. There were vibrant and often heated public disputes concerning this policy. The purpose of the article is to reveal the racist attitudes of Israeli society expressed in the discursive practices that have been employed to support immigration from the FSU in these public disputes. Assuming an inextricable combination of old and new racism, these practices — involving processes of adverse racialisation of Arabs and Mizrahi Jews — have portrayed them as a demographic threat to Israeli society, a threat that can be forestalled by the admission of prospective immigrants from the FSU. However, the fact that these processes are not directed only against Arabs but also against Mizrahi Jews discloses some of Zionism's inner tensions and ambivalence. It challenges the thesis advanced by Lustick, for instance, that the exclusive goal of Israel's immigration policies is to marginalise and to contain the Palestinian minority by allowing the entrance of non‐Jews to Israel as long as they are not Arabs. Not disputing the immensely significant role that the goal of Palestinian containment plays in Israel's immigration policies, I intend to show that this goal exists alongside a perception of Mizrahim as a ‘demographic threat’ to Israel's ‘European character’.     

民族地区网红经济的生成逻辑、演化路径与经济社会影响研究

网红是随着互联网发展而出现的一种新兴群体,随之产生的网红经济是一种新型商业模式。近年来,随着互联网的普及和脱贫攻坚战的推进,我国民族地区网红经济发展速度迅猛。网红经济在帮助民族地区民众增收脱贫和推动地方经济发展方面发挥了重要作用。文章结合网红经济的生成逻辑和演化路径,对民族地区网红经济的生成逻辑、演化路径进行了探究,分析了网红经济对民族地区经济社会的影响,摸清了网红经济在民族地区发展遇到的困境,并从基础设施建设、质量监管体系、特色民族文化等角度提出相关政策建议。     

Museums and the Utility of Culture: The Politics of Liberal Democracy and Cultural Well-Being

Contemporary museums exist as variously configured sets of institutional coordinates that aspire to function as popular, demotic spaces dedicated to representing a variety of experiences and modes of citizenship. In some cases, they can be seen as gesturing toward Yúdice's formulation, whereby recognizing the value of culture as a resource may facilitate or enable a new episteme that is ‘posthegemonic’ (from the ‘purview of the national proscenium’) and predicated on the withdrawal of the state from the public sphere (which also redefines the parameters of social agency). This post-Habermasian take on publicity has real implications for museums, which are, by and large, still functioning within what is, according to Yúdice, an exhausted model of citizenship.

This paper examines whether, in aiming to provide a much-publicized social advocacy role for indigenous peoples and source communities, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa might be seen as producing open and inclusive public spaces that encourage debate about what constitutes citizenship in postcolonial multicultural societies. I argue that a neo-Habermasian realm of association and interaction may be provided by cultural centre-like museums. However, I qualify this point by adding that this suitability also reveals the double-edged role of culture at the NMAI and Te Papa—where it is unclear whether culture provides a key resource for the state's social management discourses, or whether it is connected to discourses of development produced by—or in consultation with—communities.     

The Benefits of in-betweenness: return migration of second-generation Chinese American professionals to China

In an era of growing transnational practices, this paper considers the trend of second-generation Chinese Americans who have ‘returned’ to the People's Republic of China (PRC) to work. Previous studies of return migration to China have focused on issues of ethnic and racial identity that arise during temporary homeland trips undertaken by those seeking to connect with ancestral and cultural origins. Accordingly, most research has highlighted the sense of cultural ‘in-betweenness’ experienced by Chinese Americans whose travels in the ancestral homeland bring an uncomfortable realisation that they are considered neither fully Chinese nor fully American. By contrast, my in-depth interviews with 52 second-generation Chinese American professionals in Beijing and Shanghai suggest that this liminality can be particularly useful in the workplace. I argue that first-world Chinese co-ethnics who work on a long-term basis in the PRC can uniquely leverage Western training with their assumed knowledge of Chinese culture to create personal economic advantage: a practice that I refer to as ‘strategic in-betweenness'. Nonetheless, while participants described distinct career-related benefits to being Chinese American in the PRC, they also feared they would soon be replaced by high-skilled, Western-educated Chinese natives who are moving back to their home country in large numbers.     

A comparative study on national pride among Iranians who live in Canada,those who applied for immigration to Canada and Tehran residents

This study examines the role of national pride on immigration. The main question is whether national pride in Iranian residents of Canada, those who applied for immigration to Canada and Tehran residents is different. A total of 75 Iranian residents who were living in Canada, 99 Iranians who had applied for immigration to Canada and 98 Iranians who were living in Tehran participated in the study and filled out the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) questionnaire. Participants in the three groups were generally matched in terms of their demographic characteristics. Results revealed that in all items, except for two, there were significant differences between groups – that is, Iranian residents of Canada had the lowest national pride, while non-immigrant Iranians had the highest national pride. Although the national pride scores of the immigration applicants were between those of the immigrants and non-immigrants, the former group was more similar to the immigrants. Discussion is focused on explaining the reporting role of different components of national pride in forming one's attitude towards immigration. It is concluded that political dissatisfaction, accompanied by a sense of low levels of social welfare, leads to reduce social attachment and brings up the immigration issues. It is also concluded that one of the most effective and urgent strategies to increase national pride in Iran is to put more emphasis and attention on Iran's culture, art and history.     

Development Mobilities: Identity and Authority in an Angolan Development Programme

This ethnographic essay considers how international non-governmental organisations are able to make claims to authoritative knowledge about development work by offering the transnational mobilities of their staff members as evidence. I examine how one professional's biography—his trajectory from Angola to Britain and back again—was differentially presented to external donors and internal staff members as befitting the institutional needs of an international good governance intervention in Angola. These presentations reflect a commoditisation of the cosmopolitanism of professionals' histories in the service of development as a regime of mobility. I argue that, in this development regime, a global hierarchy prevents some individual professionals, particularly those from developing nations, from realising the same benefits of their cosmopolitan mobility as professionals from industrialised nations. While one of mobility studies' many strengths is that it highlights global interconnectedness, social scientists should not read equality in these interconnections but examine how patterns of transnational mobility may produce and reproduce global structures of inequality.     

Between separation and integration: the case of educated Bedouin women in the Negev

In this qualitative paper, I have examined how women from a conservative minority group handle their encounter with the values of the majority group as they acquire academic education. This examination was undertaken in the general context of the research tradition that addresses the sociological and anthropological attributes of conservative societies when in confrontation with the processes of moderation, and is based on the acculturation model formulated by Berry. The source materials for this qualitative study are based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 Bedouin students. The fact that Bedouin women who wish to study strive to maintain traditional values, such as their manner of dress, indicates their understanding that it is necessary to create change and acquire an academic education in order to earn a suitable salary and aid their communities, while at the same time upholding the boundaries and conventions set by the community. Tradition is thus maintained, and traditional and even religious values continue to exist within the boundaries of the minority group, alongside the stretching of those boundaries and the integration of values from ‘outside’ with those ‘inside.’     

Melbourne's Islamic Museum of Australia: The “White-Washed ‘I’” as an Apollonian Celebration of Liberal Myths

Abstract

This paper examines how the Melbourne's Islamic Museum of Australia tells a story of an “Australian Islam” through its use of material and artistic objects; how it symbolizes and synthesizes the assumed binary of East and West, through spatial expressions that narrate a religious community's “growing up” in a changing urban and Australian context. Furthermore, it looks at how the curators, intentionally or otherwise, deal politically with the Muslim community's affective relationships that are shaped by their experiences as a minority that endures a persistent Islamophobia in the community. By examining the role the Museum's material artefacts play in intercultural relations within a multicultural Australia the paper draws from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, to argue that the Museum reflects an Apollonian sense of art that attempts to regulate and control the wilder excesses of a Dionysian and communal spirit. The Apollonian view translates to an expressive and abstract celebration of liberal myths about progress and individuality that purposely relegates the more dangerous struggles of Muslim immigrants dealing with the conditions of a Dionysian post-colony to the shadows.     

Exposing her body,revealing the nation: the carnival vedette,black femininity and the symbolic order

This essay examines the significance of a ‘self-objectifying’ carnival performance that draws upon stereotypes of sexualized black femininity. The scholarship in this area has focused on whether performers reify or contest dominant stereotypes. I shift the lens from the performer to the audience. Specifically I examine fan responses to Rosa Luna (1937–1993), an Afro-Uruguayan Carnival vedette who became synonymous with Montevideo's annual Carnival from the 1950s until her death in 1993. In a nation that is Eurocentric, yet draws on aspects of Afro-Uruguayan culture for its identity, Rosa Luna became a national icon. Her performance embodied dual stereotypes of black femininity – the over-sexualized black woman and the black maternal. By turning to psychoanalytic theory, I argue that the performer is produced through the audience's desire. I suggest that the encounter with the vedette can be understood as a public ‘specular moment’ that activates the oedipal drama. Her performance reverberated with the symbolic ordering of sex, gender, and race hierarchies, provoking both the desire, and the disavowal of the desire, for black femininity. This insight draws attention to public performance as a site for the negotiation of desires that are structured through, and structure, hierarchical systems.     

浅谈藏吧与藏文化在都市中的发展——以兰州市藏吧为视点

藏吧是近年来在都市中兴起的以藏族文化的民族风情为特色的酒吧。它一方面起到了展示民族文化,丰富都市生活的作用,另一方面也存在着一些问题亟待解决。通过对兰州市藏吧市场的调查,分析其存在问题的原因,找出解决问题的办法,以期能对少数民族文化在都市中的发展起到实践作用。     

Diversities of National Identity in a Multicultural Society: The Australian Case

During the past half-century Australian immigration policy has moved from the assimilationist doctrine of Anglo-conformity, whereby non-British settlers were expected to adopt the Australian way-of-life, to a policy of multiculturalism that accepts and respects the cultures and traditions of newcomers, governed only by an overriding commitment to the basic institutions of Australian society. Newcomers are encouraged to take out Australian citizenship, which is available to immigrants after two years' residence, provided that they meet some other requirements, for example, the ability to speak and understand basic English. Notwithstanding changes in official policy, the population at large has a more diverse range of understandings of what it means to be 'truly Australian'. In this paper, I validate an earlier typology of such understandings and explore the social and attitudinal correlates of beliefs about Australian identity among four broad groupings of Australians: dogmatic nativists; literal nativists; civic nationalists; and moderate pluralists. Data are drawn from modules on Australian identity from the 1995 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the 1996 Australian Electoral Survey (AES). I explore the substance of these different understandings in terms of the beliefs and attitudes that Australians of various persuasions hold about a range of current social and political issues, such as levels of immigration, the effect immigrants have on the economy and society, views about the monarchy versus a Republic, the role of trade unions, and related issues.     

Multicultural nationalism? National identities among minority groups in Scotland’s census

This paper uses data from a new question in the 2011 UK censuses of population to investigate national identities among ethnic and religious minorities. It focuses primarily on Scotland, while presenting comparative data for England and Wales. A robust comparison of national identities between different minorities in Scotland and with similar groups in other nations of Britain has previously not been possible because ethnic and religious minority groups represent a small proportion of Scotland’s population and are weakly represented in sample surveys. The new census question on national identity therefore offers an unprecedented opportunity for this kind of analysis. The analysis is used to critically evaluate previous claims of the existence of multicultural nationalism in Scotland and previous research that has suggested that Scottish identity is relatively inclusive of people in minority groups. The findings suggest that while Scottish national identity is relatively inclusive of minorities in some respects, the conclusions of previous research should be treated with some caution.     

A president,A scholar,and an immigration bill

ABSTRACT

In this paper I look critically at George Borjas's scholarship on immigration. Borjas is widely considered to be academia's leading immigration skeptic. He consistently contends that low skilled and low educated immigrants (both ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’) hurt the US economy in many different ways, including suppressing the wages of different minority groups. However, a rigorous reading of Borjas's scholarship reveals many troubling epistemological assumptions.