The origins and nature of American nationalism

This article critically analyzes the origins and nature of American nationalism. The first part examines the historiographical debate on the question in what period the formation of an American national identity occurred, i.e. before or after the American Revolution. The second part is concerned with the nature of American nationalism, casting doubt on the claim that American nationalism is exceptional, i.e. inherently different and morally superior to other nationalisms. It refutes the exceptionalist claim by applying recent findings in European nationalism research to the American case and by reinterpreting American nationalism not as an introspective phenomenon but as a demarcation process.     

Making ethnic boundaries in the society of religious renaissance: Islam and everyday ethnicity in post-Soviet Tatarstan

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the conflict between closely intertwined specific ethnic and universal religious practices that affect the formation and maintenance of ethnic group boundaries in the society of simultaneous Islamic and ethnic renaissances: contemporary post-Soviet Tatarstan. I argue that the negotiation of this conflict produces both reinforcement and erosion of the titular ethnic group boundaries. I pay special attention on ethnicity performance and ethnicity consumption practices. Thus, I conclude that practices of performing and consuming ethnicity serve as effective mechanism of boundary formation not just between various ethnic groups in the multi-ethnic republic but also inside the group itself.     

Diversity and nationalism in the Basque Country and Flanders: understanding immigrants as fellow minorities

Why have immigrant integration policies in the Basque Country and Flanders been framed according to multicultural principles? This paper offers an addendum to rationalist and institutionalist approaches, arguing that we cannot make sense of multicultural policies in these two cases without considering the interplay between historical narratives that undergird the nation and elite decision-making. Narratives of cultural oppression have been essential for nationalist mobilization in the Basque Country and Flanders. In turn, the choice of multiculturalism over assimilation by sub-state elites made sense because it fits with their understanding of the nation as an oppressed group.     

The power of Hyphen-Nationalism: Martin Scorsese's sojourn from Italian American to White-Ethnic American

Martin Scorsese is one of the most celebrated American filmmakers of the last 50 years. This essay looks at his public story in films, books, television, radio, journals, and newspapers. This story reflects the personal and artistic journey of Scorsese and the collective rendition of this journey by Scorsese, critics, journalists, and others. It shows the intersection of the personal life, public biography, creative work, and critical reception of a public intellectual negotiating his ethnic and racial-identity for six decades. Informed by work in Race and Ethnic Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Rhetoric Studies, this essay uses this story as a case study of the ideological power of white ethnic-identity and white racial-identity in the racial formation of post-civil rights America. I show how the public story of one of the most popular and critically acclaimed American artists over the last half-century transcribed the conversion of an ‘unmeltable’ Italian-American of the late 1960s Ethnic Revival to a White-Ethnic American of an end-of-the-century Hyphen-Nationalism. I demonstrate the power embedded in the institutional and cultural regime of Hyphen-Nationalism in the United States that acts to erase in personal memory, creative imagination, and art the power and legacy of white privilege.     

Brother Jonathan and John Bull build a nation: the transactional nature of American nationalism in the early nineteenth century

This article employs a transactional approach to examine the role of national stereotypes in the rise of American nationalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Despite deep sectional and partisan divisions within the US population, an American national identity was constructed in contrast to the British national character and perceived British ideals. This identity was constructed on an external categorization by the elite males of other nations, particularly England. Political satires and caricatures, particularly in the character of Brother Jonathan and John Bull, illustrate the oppositional nature of this nascent national identity during the early nineteenth century.     

Statelessness in a world of nation-states: the cases of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK

Mass displacement in the Middle East is a major political challenge for contemporary Middle Eastern and Western states. As a consequence, statelessness has emerged as one of the central political issues in relation to the collapse and weakening of the states in the Middle East. Through deploying a qualitative inquiry and interviews with 50 Kurdish immigrants, this article investigates how members of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK conceive and experience statelessness in a world of unequal nation-states and hierarchical citizenship. Since diasporas are important non-state actors in nation-building processes, it is important to analyse their diasporic visions and the ways they challenge or reinforce the power of the nation-state in the context of migration. While from a legal or a right-based approach, the solution to statelessness is found in acquisition of a nationality/citizenship, I posit that in a world structured by the political normativity of the nation-state, nations without states will continue to be in search of national self-determination, political autonomy and sovereignty in the international comity of sovereign nations.     

中西方乡村地区基督教本土化的特点比较

乡村地区基督教的相关资料对于基督教本土化的研究具有重要参考意义。乡村地区基督教的发展是基督教传播过程中最重要的一环,它的发展状况可以清晰地揭示出当地的基督教本土化进程是如何进行的。本文就对中西方乡村地区基督教本土化的特点进行了详细的比较,以揭示出基督教在当地的作用及影响。     

The paradox of integration and isolation within immigrant organisations: the case of a Latin American Association in Israel

Most immigrant organisations aim to facilitate the integration of immigrants into the host society while seeking to preserve their cultural heritage. In order to explore the tension between these two apparently opposite processes within immigrant organisations, a case study was carried out on the Organization of Latin American Immigrants in Israel (OLEI). The research question focuses on how, and to what extent, OLEI contributes to the integration of Latin American immigrants into Israeli society and how, and to what extent, it contributes to their isolation. The findings indicate that while individual services promote the integration of Latin American immigrants into Israeli society, communal services both isolate and integrate them simultaneously. To address this paradox, I suggest an interpretation of this process as ‘integration through isolation’, since OLEI socially isolates immigrants, but at the same time integrates them into the host society by providing Israeli culture in Spanish.     

The disinterested state: negative diasporic policy as an expression of state inclusion and national exclusion

ABSTRACT

This article engages with the understudied phenomenon of the ‘disinterested, denouncing’ diaspora state (Levitt, P., and N. G. Schiller. 2004. “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” International Migration Review 38 (3): 1002–1039. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x) or ‘indifferent’ diaspora state (Ragazzi, F. 2009. “Governing Diasporas.” International Political Sociology 3 (4): 378–397. doi:10.1111/j.1749-5687.2009.00082.x). Focusing on U.S. citizens abroad, the article argues that there is negative diasporic outreach on the part of the state – ‘disinterested’ from the state's perspective, but ‘denouncing’ from that of the diaspora. Negative diasporic outreach is exemplified by the 2010 FATCA legislation, which sought to root out tax evaders resident in the U.S., but has, instead, affected millions of American emigrants through increased financial control and the repercussions of those policies, and has resulted in sharply higher citizenship renunciation figures. Impact on an American diaspora was not considered in the law's proposal, debate and passage into law. Second, the article argues that this negative diasporic outreach, in combination with the continued facilitation of the right to vote, is a reflection of the inclusion of these American emigrants in the American state, but their simultaneous exclusion from the American nation.     

Euro-myth: nationalism,war and the legitimacy of the European Union

This article engages with Montserrat Guibernau's argument about the ‘non-emotional’ nature of European identity. In critiquing this argument, this article also advances a broader argument of its own: that we are witnessing an emergent European nationalism. The article suggests that although there are few people who passionately defend European integration today, those that do are increasingly resorting to arguments that depend simultaneously on invoking and rejecting collective memories of intra-European conflict derived from the ‘emotive’ period of European integration in the 1940s to shore up the increasingly challenged legitimacy of the European Union today in its hour of greatest crisis.     

Towards pluralistic and grassroots national identity: a study of national identity representation by the Kurdish diaspora on social media

ABSTRACT

This study examines the distinctive roles that social media play for the diasporic Kurds in regard to the political and nationhood process. It attempts to understand how the notion of Kurdayeti [Kurdish nationalism] has been affected by the growth of Kurdish social media. It argues: although the Kurdish political activism has been accelerated by the rise of social media and the ethnic identity discussions have become much more visible, the idea of a unified imagined Kurdish nation has been affected by the existing socio-political fragmentations among the Kurds and transformed into a participatory and pluralistic imagined community.     

2008年世界宗教热点问题评析

宗教问题与民族问题一样,是人类社会面临的重大社会问题之一,它动辄就会影响到人类社会的和平、稳定与发展.世界上没有哪个国家或民族能够对此袖手旁观或置身于其外.2008年世界舞台上的宗教热点问题不乏其例,本文仅选择10例来加以评述,祈望能够引起人们的关注和重视,更期冀人们能够本着求同存异、和平协商、互谅互让、相互宽容的精神,化解宗教矛盾,消除宗教纠纷,共同为构建宗教和谐、民族和谐和社会和谐尽一份力.     

基督教宣道会对西北藏族传教地理格局的形成及其演变

对藏族传教是宣道会在近代西北传教的重要内容。宣道会对西北藏族传教地理格局经历了由大于号形到带形的演变,从1934年起出现不断萎缩的趋势。本文主要依据宣道会的档案资料,分析上述大于号形传教地理格局的形成、演变及其原因,认为民族团结是民族地区预防和抵御外国宗教势力渗透的一项不可或缺的工作。     

Living as a non-Christian in a Christian community: experiences of religious marginalisation amongst young Korean Americans

Christianity is a critical element in the study of Korean Americans. It is estimated that over 70% of all Korean Americans are affiliated with Korean Christian churches. Much of the existing literature illustrates that these churches provide essential resources for Korean immigrants and they serve as important social mechanisms. This study responds to the need to investigate the lives of secular migrants where religious marginalisation may play a significant role in their everyday lives in relation to their predominantly Christian communities. In particular, the study focuses on the unique experiences of those aged between 25 and 35 living in the greater Boston area. The study compiles vivid narratives of non-Christian Korean American experiences within a dominant Christian ethnic community focusing on their religious and non-religious performances.     

Gendered beings,gendered discourses: the gendering of race,colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism in three Zimbabwean novels

This article aims to explore the gendering of race, colonialism and anti colonial nationalism in selected novels from the Zimbabwean literary canon with the view of showing how this gendering affected different facets of colonial life and, by implication, post independence life. It relies on the Gramscian concept of hegemony in terms of how it refers to gender, particularly masculinities. The selected texts, A Son of the Soil by Wilson Katiyo, The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing and Bones by Chenjerai Hove, cover the colonial period from the moment of contact to the early post independence period. The article links the gendered nature of colonialism to the gendered aspects of anti colonial nationalism and shows how the two existed in an oppositional yet ambivalent relationship. This is also manifest in the schizophrenia of the post independence state in modeling itself after its predecessor, its anti colonial rhetoric notwithstanding.     

当代少数民族大学生宗教信仰状况与思考--西北民族学院大学生宗教信仰调查

本文作者通过发放问卷、抽样调查、统计分析、理论探索等手法，对当代少数民族大学生的宗教信仰状况以及他们对宗教信仰的认识，参加宗教活动的情况，获取宗教知识的途径，对宗教政策和宗教现状的评价，所关心的宗教问题，对宗教与邪教、宗教与迷信的区别以及对待宗教与科学之间的关系等方面进行了较为深入的调查研究，由此总结出少数民族大学生宗教信仰的自身特点，并提出了存在的问题及解决的思路与方法。     

人类学视野中的民族宗教研究方法论探析

本文扼要介绍了改革开放以来中国民族宗教研究领域的发展状况,阐述了宗教研究与文化研究相结合的理论视角的重要意义,强调了民族学人类学基础理论的指导作用,旨在探讨并论证中国民族宗教研究领域研究方法创新的必要性和可能途径。笔者推出的宗教文化类型理论是一种历史与现实并举、宏观与微观共进、动态与静态结合的综合性研究方法,展示了继承传统、引进西学、自主创新的有效途径以及民族宗教研究的广阔前景。     

从概念厘定到理论运用:西方民族冲突研究述评

此起彼伏、经久不息的民族冲突引发了国内外学术界的高度关注。自20世纪后半期,尤其是90年代以来,西方关于民族冲突的研究取得了快速发展。内容涉及界定概念、扩展范畴、探究原因、寻找规律和思考对策,尤其是在理论运用方面,致力于实现民族机制、冲突机制和国际关系机制的内在统一,为更好地理解民族冲突,探求解决民族冲突的理路提供了启示。     

民国时期宣道会对渝东南毗邻地区族群文化差异的认知与行动策略研究

20世纪上半叶美国宣道会因政策调整从长江中、下游中心城市进入渝东南及毗邻多民族居住区后,传教活动取得了稳定的发展,其中对不同族群文化的认知与认同起到了关键作用。宣道会通过前期实地考察识别出渝东南及毗邻民族地区的族群差异,以民族语言、民族文化、民风民俗、村落布局、社会关系和地方问题为切入点,在基址设置、外方人员的分派、布道活动的方式、人际关系的处理和民族文化的发展等方面积极调整其固有的活动方式,充分融入地方族群文化,构建出宣道会在渝东南及毗邻民族地区特有的行为模式,反映了与当地民族文化的联动关系。     

明末到民国时期康区宗教性集会与集市之关系考察——以甘孜镇为例

宗教性集会是藏传佛教传统文化的重要内容,既有宗教和文化娱乐的功能,还具有经济功能--为剩余产品的交换提供时空条件.这样,借助宗教性集会形成藏区集市.文章以甘孜镇宗教性集会、集市为例,简要探讨明末到民国时期这一时间段内,康区宗教性集会与集市的关系及其特点.