Rethinking the nation: Apology,treaty and reconciliation in Australia

In February 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Indigenous Australians for past injustices. The apology was presented as a turning point in the history of the nation. According to Rudd, ‘there comes a time in the history of a nation when peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future’. The apology marked a new step in the reconciliation process in Australia, but as this article argues, the treaty issue – another controversial aspect of reconciliation – remains a major challenge to the Australian nation.     

Ethnic and state sports in the context of the 2014 Sochi Olympics

Sports have long been an important point of expression in communal identity in the North Caucasus and recently came to serve as a forum for political dissent. This article examines the emergence and transformation of ethnic sport projects in the North Caucasus in connection with the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It charts the history and progress of two projects known as the Circassiada and the Caucasus Games and evaluates the debate of the sport-nation nexus in the North Caucasus. While the Circassiada and the Caucasus Games reflect the typical elite-driven narratives of border security and terrorism, they also highlight discussions over historical and cultural practices of nationhood and the boundaries of national identity.     

Necronationalism: managing race,death and the nation's skeletons

This paper examines the construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ‘Museum of Tolerance (Jerusalem)’ over Mamilla Cemetery, one of the largest Muslim burial grounds in the region. Tracing the politics of death as exercised through the excavation of the cemetery, I consider how access to settler colonial memory is managed and renewed through the purging of Indigenous corporeality. Inspired by Achille Mbembe's sobering account of necropower, this paper conceptualizes power as a system of domination inscribed through the colonial management of deceased racial subjects and asks how we might understand systems of settler colonial power arranged through dehumanization of the already dead. I contend that the capacity to govern life after death is still firmly rooted in the reach of colonial power, and that by attending to the excavation and erasure of Mamilla Cemetery's deceased Palestinian subjects, we see a particular configuration of sovereignty defined through a calculus of absence. Identifying this practice of settler colonial nation building as ‘necronationalism’, I consider how power over life after death becomes the very terrain through which a nation is imagined.     

White Australian identities and Indigenous land rights

Land has been central to debates about the relationship between Indigenous (First Nations) and non-Indigenous Australian identities since colonial violence founded the nation. How do white Australians understand Indigenous land rights? This paper draws on an empirical ethnographic study with rural people who self-identify as ‘white Australian’ to analyze the key discourses of land, identity and nation and the complexities of how whiteness and race is socially produced and lived in rural Australia. The study found that white Australian discourses of nation and identity limit most of the respondents' ability to construct their identity in relation to Indigenous sovereignty.     

Power differentials and identity formation: Images of self and other on the Russian–Georgian boundary

This article looks at how Russia places herself in relation to one of her southern neighbours, Georgia, and vice versa. Russia and Georgia have recently been engaged in a short but full-fledged war, hence their interrelationship has been intensely debated in both countries. Both Russia and Georgia are, as it were, poised ‘between East and West’.

As a starting point, therefore, we hypothesized that Russians would present themselves as a European nation while they would orientalise the Georgians. Conversely, the Georgians would define themselves into and the Russians out of Europe. We found, however, that identity construction on the Russian-Georgian border is not symmetrical. While the Georigan discourse basically confirmed our assumption, in Russia the dominant discourse is that Russia and Georgia are closely related, fraternal peoples. This shows the importance of power relations in the study of reciprocal identity formations.

While hegemonic discourses often are discourses of exclusion our study shows that a discourse of inclusion—in our case a rhetoric of ‘brotherhood’—often may be a more effective technique of domination. The prevailing discourse in the weaker group, on the other hand, will focus more on cultural distance towards the more powerful Other.     

Revision required: Reconciling New Zealand citizenship with Māori nationalisms

Governments in settler societies conventionally have regarded the incorporation of indigenous peoples into the equal rights of citizenship as an appropriate response to indigenous calls for justice. Yet, the state nation-building agendas behind citizenship sit in tension with indigenous nationalisms, which reflect an alternative form of nation-building not framed by the state. This article first identifies four major ‘citizenship regimes’ in New Zealand's history, noting that symbolic recognition of Māori nationalisms has been made without addressing the fundamental conflation of ‘nation’ and ‘state’. It then explores possible directions for revisioning New Zealand citizenship to overcome these historical limitations.     

Ethnohistorical Construction of Identity: The Lviv Paradigm

The Italian populist movement Lega Nord once famously claimed that the north of Italy was a nation (‘Padania’) that should be granted independence. Padania was posited by the party through a combination of outrageous anti-Italian statements, gatherings in places of historic and symbolic significance and through the selective appropriation of the past. This article takes this new ‘nation’ as a case study through which to further our understanding of the discursive strategies of nationalist movements, as they reinvent and rewrite history and redefine identities. It argues that some within the Lega, far from simply adopting a covert strategy of reinvention of the past (like many of their fellow nationalists do), openly advocated such strategy as a means of ‘liberation’. Moreover, the analysis highlights crucial contradictions between: the reality of strong, heterogeneous local identities in northern Italy and the effort of creating a new unitary community in the area; the needs of a hyper-modern economy and the longing for a mythic past; and, finally, a dubious rediscovered paganism and rooted Catholic traditions. The article argues that the lack of territorial and symbolic coherence in northern Italy was a crucial factor in making the Lega's attempts at re-invention less than compelling.     

Immigration,anti-racism,and Indigenous self-determination: towards a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial

ABSTRACT

Anti-racist attempts to conceptualize Indigenous decolonial justice are preoccupied with the contested relationship between immigrant settlement and Indigenous self-determination. In the process, an ethically and politically driven practice of implicating immigrants onto the settler colonial project has emerged. Paying particular attention to the emerging concept of ‘immigrant settlerhood’ as a sign of severing of political economic considerations from theories of settler nationalism, I advocate for a comprehensive and concrete analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession (of Indigenous people) and precarious incorporation/resettlement (of immigrants). Next, since notions of sovereignty primarily enact the conditions for exploitation of immigrants and impale them onto the settler project via anti-racist claims, I propose ‘no border’ politics as a conceptual tool for confronting settler colonialism. Finally, considering the centrality of land/place in Indigenous self-determination, I reflect on the possibility of a ground between Indigenous rootedness and diasporic placelessness. This essay thus makes an attempt to conceptualize an anti-racist politics that could meaningfully respond to the settler-colonial project of simultaneous recruitment/resettlement (of immigrants) and dispossession (of Indigenous people) without casting social justice demands of Indigenous peoples and immigrants as inherently oppositional.     

Narratives of national belonging: the domestic,the wild,and the mutant in Australian film

This article explores understandings of postcolonial national belonging through an analysis of cinematic representations of humans, animals and the environment. It does so by analyzing a series of Australian films about plants, animals or people who are out of place or out of control. The article registers some of the changing representations of Australian flora, fauna and, by association people, as native, domesticated, simpatico, feral and wild; interpreting these shifts as recalibrations of a moral hierarchy of cultural belonging. Films including Lantana (2001) Dir. Ray Lawrence; Razorback (1984) Dir. Russell Mulchay; Rogue (2007) Dir. Greg Mclean; and Black Water (2007) Dirs. David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki are read in terms of political anxieties. Drawing on work ‘that insists humans and animals are currently bound in a complex network of relationships’, I use these films to explore issues of the nation, place, belonging in relation to aliens and natives. Given that in the past 20 years there has been increasing recognition of the history of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples but also a different but related blossoming of environmental nationalism, the key question that animates this research is how these understandings are represented in film and what work animals and plants might have played in filmic cultural representations of national belonging.     

Connecting cultures: rethinking Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘ideals of education’

In 1917, Rabindranath Tagore declared, ‘There is only one history – the history of man’ [Tagore, R. (1917/2009). Nationalism. New Delhi: Penguin, p. 65]. This concept of ‘one-history’, and by extension ‘one-world’ is at the heart of his conceptualisation of what I call, education-sans-boundaries and, as I see it, one of the ways to bring a glocal unity. His goal was to establish the dignity of human relationships across boundaries. Thus, for him, local education and global education should not be two ends of a spectrum but overlapping categories instead. Moreover, the education-sans-boundaries should help in restoring the balance and harmony between man and society, knowledge and knowledge, and nation and nation. In this paper, I will explore Tagore’s relevant writings on education, with a focus on his concerted educational efforts to negotiate the boundaries of nation and geography to restore the lost rhythm. In the highly fractured times in which he lived, Tagore saw education in India was in a double-layered crisis under colonialism and growing nationalism. His was a non-dogmatic defence of harmony and principles of unity, and he tried to achieve this in his education models by going beyond the realms of collapsing of cultural differences and without sacrificing local/individual ties and that admits to no artificial boundaries – political, ideological or geographic. The present attempt, therefore, engages with Tagore’s distinct conceptualisation of open-ended education models by looking at his scholarly-and-practical efforts. It suggests that transmission of cultures has provided a ‘broad-basis’ of education in India and can offer healthy conditions for, and directions towards, building transnational/international solidarities.     

(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.     

‘Autograph of a Nation’: The Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Old Trails Road, 1910–1927

In 1912, a group of women within the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) undertook to become architects of the first continuous transcontinental automobile route, to be called the ‘National Old Trails Road’ highway. Consistent with many of the private road improvement initiatives during the heyday of America's good roads movement, ‘Daughters’ in many states were involved in mapping the route and posing a variety of marking schemes that would etch upon the landscape the DAR's sponsorship of the route. In doing so, the Daughters staked an explicit claim for the DAR and for American women in the project of nation‐building, by promoting their National Old Trails Road as a culmination of Manifest Destiny. This episode highlights the interrelationship of gender and the nation. This article argues that while women function passively in nationalist rhetoric to symbolise the nation, one must also acknowledge the agency of conservative women's groups in constructing and perpetuating nationalist narratives in ways that were often surprisingly complex and not simply imitative of men.     

武当道茶文化研究

This article explores the promotion of tea culture at Wudang Mountain, a Daoist tem-ple complex in Hubei Province that is a popular tourist destination. At shops in temples and market areas, vendors brand their tea as Wudang Daoist tea, emphasizing its health benefits and connecting their teas to the Daoist discourse of life-nourishing ( yang sheng) practices. In their marketing materi-als and on their websites, the management of the Eight Immortal Temple Tea Plantation further cites folklore and mythic history to claim profound local roots for Wudang tea culture. In so doing, this company echoes the memory narratives of more fa-mous Chinese teas like Iron Guanyin and Dahong-pao. In China as elsewhere, convenient travel now puts people in contact with areas and peoples that a few decades earlier only a few non-locals explored. As a consequence of a global trend towards com-modification, members of local groups, including distinctive ethnocultural groups, now seek to create distinctive local brands for a tourist market. Corpo-rations now regularly mine local traditions to find i-tems that they can transform into commodities for a wider market ( Comaroff and Comaroff 2009 ) . One of Hubei’s richest tourism assets is the Daoist temple complex at Wudang Moutain, which draws pilgrims and tourists from China and Greater China. China’s State Council identified Wudang Moutain as a National Key Scenic Area in 1982 , and UNESCO added its ancient temples to its World Heritage list in 1994 . The Chinese govern-ment has worked with the Daoist Federation to de-velop Wudang’s temples and pavilions, which are spread over 400 square kilometers of mountainous terrain, into a major tourist destination. The gov-ernment tourist office promotes Wudang Mountain for its scenic beauty, its deep historical heritage, its religious culture, and famous martial arts. Al-though its tea culture is less renowned, local tea sellers claim that Wudang tea has a deep history and Daoist qualities. At Wudang Mountain, the Eight Immortal Temple Tea Plantation markets their tea as Wudang Daoist Tea, using history, legend, ritual, and sa-cred location to distinguish its green, black, and oolong teas from those produced elsewhere. They seek to valorize their teas through claims about the excellence of their growing environment ( not un-like the terroir of a fine wine ) and the historical depth of their tea history. They further use legend and mythic history to position their products, and associate their teas with Daoist traditions of health preservation, including martial arts. Finally, they use modern marketing techniques to promote their teas, including a promotional video directed by a In Ethnicity Inc, John and Jean Comaroff pro-pose that “commerce has been instrumental either in crystallizing or in reproducing the sociological entities (‘people’, ‘nation’, ‘community’ ) in which cultural identity is presumed to inhere”( Comaroff and Comaroff 2009:114 ) . In particu-lar, they conclude that people use identity-laden objects as a vehicle through which “ethnic con-sciousness is materialized” ( 33 ) . They focus on the modern discourse of intellectual property rights, including competing national claims to trademark signature products (122). Wudang tea vendors have used story, packa-ging, and performance to promote teas that evoke Wudang’s history, local traditions, and landscape. Hubei officials pay premium prices for the Eight Immortal Temple Plantation’s highest quality teas, but outside China Wudang tea is not well known. As global awareness of this world heritage site grows, Hubei’s Wudang Daoist tea series may find a place among the specialty teas now sold on the world market. But for now, Wudang Daoist Tea is an innovative brand that symbolizes a heritage that is simultaneously imperial, national, Daoist, and deeply local.     

Culture and identity: two different notions

A clear, precise conceptual distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ is an essential precondition for analyzing social processes. The anthropological concept of ‘identity’ has been built up over time and enriched by studies on interethnic relationships, ethnic borders and ethnicity. The objective of this essay is to add to an already well-defined concept of culture by incorporating decisive contributions from theories on the nation. Culture and nation are not only highly complex theoretical notions with a long history; they both deal with heterogeneous and conflictive entities. The essay asserts that culture and identity allude to analytically different aspects of social processes. No relationship between the two can be presupposed or generalized to fit all cases. It is necessary to analyze cultural and identitary aspects separately.     

‘Before they kill my spirit entirely’: insights into the lived experiences of American Indian Alaska Native faculty at research universities

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) comprise about 2% of the US population and 0.5% of the faculty in higher education. While scholars have documented the experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, the perspectives of AIAN faculty at elite universities are largely absent. Although AIAN faculty share many of the same barriers to success as URM colleagues, their unique status as Tribal peoples and their relationship to settler colonialism pose particular challenges and resistance strategies. Findings from a mixed methods study of 25 AIAN faculty at research universities, employing a decolonizing, survivance-oriented framework, examines their lived institutional experiences. The data yielded five themes regarding (1) institutional climate, (2) mentorship, (3) family–work balance, (4) cultural taxation and role stress, and (5) discrimination. The authors conclude that decolonization involves the repatriation of Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous ‘place’ in the growth of science, research, and knowledge production, creating liberatory spaces within the academy.     

Breaking with English: the nation as ethnoscape1

Broken English and the bone people, a New Zealand film and novel respectively, fall into the category of nation‐building texts. Many narratives in this ‘genre’ accomplish cultural reunification through the family. However, these two works are particularly intriguing because they use land and specific spaces in order to work through these transcultural shifts as they are played out within the main characters' relationships. ‘Breaking with English’ is therefore not only a linguistic concept, but also a metaphor for the transculturation of bodies and land undertaken throughout these two titles.     

泰北主体民族泰庸人与老挝泰佬人历史关系研究

泰北泰庸人与老挝泰佬人虽然是不同国家、地区的民族,但却是同源民族,而且分化时间较晚.加上泰庸人通过泰庸文化圈对老挝泰佬人进行过文化输出,使得两个民族之间进一步加深了文化方面的相似性.在历史发展的进程中,两个民族一直保持着友好的“兄弟之邦”的友谊,主体民族的统治阶层之间也保持着相互联姻、共御强敌的协作关系,极少发生冲突与争端.     

Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university Aboriginal studies

Higher education courses designed to equip students to work effectively with Indigenous peoples by teaching about racism and inequality often encounter resistance to these concepts. In particular, students argue that individual and structural racisms, and their own white privilege, are ‘not their fault’. This article examines different forms of student resistance expressed within a number of Aboriginal Studies courses taught in a regional Australian university. This article reflects on data collected from various research initiatives with students, and personal teaching experiences over decades, and argues that although the notion of white supremacy can explicitly identify white privilege it also actively promotes even greater student resistance to learning. As such, this article argues for a consistent sequence of anti-racism approaches and suggests a number of key pedagogical strategies for anti-racism education.     

“第四世界”论说源流及浅析

20世纪70年代中期产生的"第四世界"这一可归属于人类学、民族学学科的观念,如今已发展为一套渐趋完整的、理论色彩浓厚的论说或思想。它从土著民自身而非"他者"的视角出发,明确地主张土著民是具有与其他群体不同特点和性质的群体;在整个人类世界的视野下,全面考察各地区土著民在经济、政治、文化等方面的处境及其因由,并提出相应对策,对日益壮大的全球土著民运动具有不可忽视的指导意义和深远的影响。追溯该论说之源头,分析其架构和内涵,归纳其显著特征,有助于我国学术界较为深入地理解土著民运动这一当今世界重大的族际关系问题。     

‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.