Unfinished Imagined Communities: States, Social Movements, and Nationalism in Latin America

This article addresses two shortcomings in the literature on nationalism: the need to theorize transformations of nationalism, and the relative absence of comparative works on Latin America. We propose a state-focused theoretical framework, centered on conflicts between states elites and social movements, for explaining transformations of nationalism. Different configurations of four key factors — the mobilization of excluded elites and subordinate actors, state elites’ political control, the ideological capacities of states, and polarization around ethnoracial cleavages — shape how contrasting trajectories of nationalism unfold over time. A comparative analysis of early– and mid–twentieth century Mexico, Argentina, and Peru illustrates the explanatory power of our theoretical framework. José Itzigsohn is Associate Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Developing Poverty (Penn State University, 2000). His current research focuses on two main topics. The first is the formation of ethnic, racial, and national identities. The second is grassroots economies and workplace democracy. Matthias vom Hau is Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. He is currently completing his dissertation, a comparative-historical analysis of nationalism in twentieth-century Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. His research interests involve the intersections among culture and identity, state power, and social movements.     

Lukewarm Nationalism: The 2020 Tokyo Olympics,Social Media and Affective Communities

This article considers the way in which a new nationalism is being created in the age of the Internet and social media by looking at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and other Games in the past. The development of media technology from film, radio, and television to the Internet and social media has changed the character of the Olympic Games as media event. It has been argued that these developments have created a shared consciousness, a sense of belonging and enthusiastic nationalism in the age of modern nation‐state. While the spread of the Internet and social media was originally expected to contribute to globalization or to the emergence of global citizens in a global village, as McLuhan once predicted, it seems that the world is more divided, fragmented, and fluid than ever. At the same time, the digital media organize various layers of community not only by ideology but also by affect: affective communities. This often leads to the rise of chauvinistic nationalism in developed countries. With reference to McLuhan's famous argument on hot and cool media, the article tries to examine the character of contemporary lukewarm nationalism in the age of digital media.     

Nationalism and the Linguistic Rights of Deaf Communities: Linguistic Imperialism and the Recognition and Development of Sign Languages

This paper examines the impact of nationalism on the linguistic rights of Deaf communities. In exploring the subtle hegemony of nationalism in relation to linguistic minorities, the paper discusses the impact of nationalisms on sign languages from two perspectives and in two contrasting situations. First, the paper examines the impact of nationalism on the recognition and promotion of natural sign languages. Second, it examines a particularly potent form of linguistic imperialism as the dominant linguistic forces seek not only to destroy minority languages but to transform existing minority linguistic processes to conform with the form and content of the national language, through the development and promotion of manually coded versions of national spoken and written languages in formal education. These issues are examined in relation to the nationalisms and indigenous sign languages of Australia and Indonesia.     

Fantasy and Reality:Conflicts in Secret Love In Peach Blossom Land

赖声川的《暗恋桃花源》以其独特的艺术技巧和发人深省的主题在海内外广受好评。其主要情节是两剧组争夺彩排场地,在相互干扰的过程中形成的独特场景。在吵闹与冲突中折射出不同的爱情观。     

THE DISCOURSE OF DEMOBILIZATION: Shifts in Activist Priorities and the Framing of Political Opportunities in a Peasant Land Struggle

This paper integrates the political opportunity and framing paradigms to analyze the discursive processes that were involved in the demobilization of a peasant land struggle in El Salvador. The framing paradigm provides a basis for analyzing how activist rhetoric shapes interpretations of opportunities and grievances among social movement participants to alter the goals and intensity of grassroots protest. As the land struggle demonstrates, leaders communicating with grassroots participants in a process of struggle may, over time, underemphasize shifts occurring in some dimensions of political opportunities, while framing more stable dimensions as having changed. They may also alter their framing of grievances.     

Decline of Real Love and Rise of Virtual Love: Love in Asia

In Japan, marriage rates have declined since 1980, and interest in romantic relationships has declined in the 21st century. This article shows, mainly based on the official statistics and surveys, that (i) people in contemporary Japanese society have become less willing to get married or even date; (ii) various forms of virtual love have emerged; and (iii) they have spread in East Asian countries in general. Marriage stems from romantic relationships. Simultaneously, it brings with it new economic life. In Japan and other East Asian countries there is an unwritten norm that marriage should be part of economic life. Therefore, satisfying romantic emotions outside real love and marriage is accepted.     

Appropriateness of the Helpline as a Mode of Service Delivery in Minority Communities: The Case of the Arab Population in Israel

ABSTRACT

In 1996, a project providing a helpline to the Arab-speaking population was established in five different locations in Israel. This article explores the potential fit of the helpline, whose stated goals are to provide psychological support and referral information, as an appropriate mode of service delivery among the Arab population living in Israel, in light of the fact that it constitutes an ethnic and sociopolitical minority with specific cultural norms and values. Such an investigation can make a contribution on both practical and theoretical levels and be another step toward a more culturally sensitive discourse in the helping professions.     

Surface Tension: Boundary Negotiations around Self,Society, and Nature in a Community Debate over Wildlife

This study draws on extensions of a Meadian framework to explore the possibility of nature as a “generalized other” that is experienced through a dialogical eco‐self. The author revisits Mead's work, tracing an emerging literature on the eco‐self, and investigates constructions of human–nature boundaries using interviews from a community reacting to the human destruction of a cattle egret nesting colony. She introduces the concept of “surface tension” to capture the fluid, negotiated, and often contradictory quality of narratives about nature and the self. The findings highlight the eco‐self as an emergent and ongoing accomplishment that is not reducible to any one formulation.     

People,Power, and Land: New Enclosures on a Global Scale

A global land rush is aggressively underway. It is reinventing frontier narratives wherever farmland, rangeland, and forestland appear “underutilized,” particularly in the Global South. Though the means and motives of these acquisitions are diverse, the lens of “new enclosures” lends itself to focusing on their similarities. New enclosures surpass the enclosures of bygone centuries in scale and speed and in the plethora of resources they reach. Sociological interventions, both theoretical and applied, are needed to contextualize and concretize this burgeoning alienation of land rights and power contingencies across communities and continents.     

Religion,Nationalism, and Transnational Civil Society in the Eritrean Diaspora

This article examines the emergence and significance of religion among Eritreans in the United States as a basis for building community in diaspora, reconfiguring nationalist identity, and constituting transnational civil society. It argues three related points: that religious identity and gatherings help mitigate against fractured political identities that have weakened secular diaspora associations; that practicing Eritrean identity through religion challenges the hegemonic power of the Eritrean state to transnationally control diaspora communities and dictate national identity; and that the very incipience of religious bodies as transnational avenues provides Eritreans in diaspora with an autonomous space to resist the state's totalizing demands. Through a critical ethnographic investigation of religious identity and church bodies in Eritrea and one United States diaspora community, the article shows that uneven transnational networks between the United States and Eritrea create new spaces for political action. Specifically, the relative autonomy of churches and the incipience of their transnationalism allow diaspora Eritreans to use religion in the constitution of an emergent transnational civil society.     

Finding Love: Passion,Intimacy, and Commitment in the Relationships of Gay Men

This paper identifies the stages of gay male relationships through a qualitative analysis of the interviews of 12 gay men within the context of the Sternberg ( 1986 ) three component model of love. Four stages were identified: Confrontation with sexuality: Preparing for intimacy, Exploration of Sexuality: Engaging with passion, Experimentation with Relationships: Uniting intimacy and passion, and Formation of Committed Relationships: Integrating passion, intimacy, and commitment. Confrontation with Sexuality was a necessary first step before forming intimate relationships, as it provided a context for the second stage of Exploration of Sexuality, where passion could be explored. Once sexuality had been explored, Experimentation with Relationships was the next stage which involved uniting passion with intimacy, often including a period of experimenting with the types of relationships that are usually explored much earlier for heterosexuals. Finally, the fourth stage of Formation of Committed Relationships was identified which involved the integration of passion, intimacy, and commitment. The therapeutic implications of these results are elaborated by an analysis of these stages in clinical cases.     

Primitive Accumulation,New Enclosures,and Global Land Grabs: A Theoretical Intervention

Recent critical analyses of global land grabs have variously invoked global capitalism and neocolonialism to account for this trend. One line of inquiry approaches land grabs as instances of “primitive accumulation of capital” whereby lands in the Global South are “enclosed” and brought within the ambit of global capitalism. Another perspective invokes the history of Anglo‐American colonialism for critiquing the developmentalist discourse that depicts Africa as the “last frontier” to be tamed by the techno‐industrial civilization of the North. This essay integrates these two perspectives by elaborating capitalism as an irreducibly colonial formation with global inceptions. I begin with a discussion of “primitive accumulation” and, counter to many, question the suitability of “enclosure” for interpreting land grabs. The second section delves into the theoretical origins of primitive accumulation, proposing to situate it in a global and colonial genealogy of capitalism. A final section charts the theoretical and historical contours of this global genealogy and arrives at a more capacious reconceptualization of primitive accumulation. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of contemporary land grabs for in situ displacement, the fungibility of land, and new enclosures in the contemporary reconfiguration of global value chains.