Money, Sex, and God: The Erotic Logic of Religious Nationalism

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation–state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth—the task that will take up the bulk of the text—it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control.     

Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation–state building,migration and the social sciences

Methodological nationalism is understood as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world. We distinguish three modes of methodological nationalism that have characterized mainstream social science, and then show how these have influenced research on migration. We discover parallels between nationalist thinking and the conceptualization of migration in postwar social sciences. In a historical tour d’horizon, we show that this mainstream concept has developed in close interaction with nation–state building processes in the West and the role that immigration and integration policies have played within them. The shift towards a study of ‘transnational communities’— the last phase in this process — was more a consequence of an epistemic move away from methodological nationalism than of the appearance of new objects of observation. The article concludes by recommending new concepts for analysis that, on the one hand, are not coloured by methodological nationalism and, on the other hand, go beyond the fluidism of much contemporary social theory.     

Bridging Immigration Research and Racial Formation Theory to Examine Contemporary Immigrant Identities

This article explores the potential for linking immigration research with racial formation theory to examine contemporary immigrant identities. The current literature is dominated by three paradigms (ethnicity, nationalism, and transnationalism) and five theoretical perspectives on immigrant identities (plain American, hyphenated American, panethnic American, nationality origin, and transnational). They are all flawed in their reductions of race to the concepts of ethnicity, nationality, and transnationality. Based on my reading of the existing research, I will argue that immigration researchers can benefit from using racial formation theory to explore immigrant identity due to its acknowledgment of the autonomous power of race. However, racial formation theory has been correctly challenged due to its high level of abstraction and lack of micro‐level analyses. Certain transnational migration studies have underscored the necessity to integrate national origin into racial formation theoretical frameworks. According to this transnational perspective, my conclusion is that immigrant families represent a logical starting point for conceptualizing the relationship between immigration and racial formation.     

Racial,Ethnic, and National Boundaries: Sexual Intersections and Symbolic Interactions

Sex and race are strained, if not strange, bedfellows. Sexual depictions and denigrations of racial, ethnic, and national “others” and the regulation of in‐group sexual behavior are important mechanisms by which ethnic boundaries are constructed, maintained, and defended. Race, ethnicity, and the nation are sexualized, and sexuality is racialized, ethnicized, and nationalized. The sexual systems that prop up ethnic boundaries and define ethnic identities and communities tend to be inherently conservative blueprints for ethnosexual living. These systems stress endogamy, heterosexuality and reproduction under the rubric of traditional, often patriarchal family life for ethnic group members and tend to demonize and denigrate the sexuality of those outside ethnic boundaries or of those within ethnic communities who do not conform to heteronormative, heteroconventional models of sexuality. I present several examples of the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationalism, and sexuality/ies from U.S. and international settings, and I argue that the symbolic interaction between ethnicity and sexuality is central to their mutual constitution.     

Marriage Migration Policy in South Korea: Social Investment beyond the Nation State

This article seeks to contribute to understandings of South Korea's approach to marriage migration. Situating our analysis of marriage migration policy specifically within the recent emergence of a social investment approach to welfare, we bring together two bodies of literature that due to the methodological nationalism of much welfare state scholarship are usually treated separately. Through an examination of the policy framework governing marriage migration ‐ so‐called ‘multicultural family policies’ ‐ we find that successive Korean governments have actively sought female marriage migrants to perform various social reproductive roles as a means to secure the reproductive capacity of the nation, just as feminist scholars have argued the care work of citizen‐mothers can be understood. Our analysis also suggests that marriage migration policy in Korea constitutes a distinctly transnational dimension to its overall social investment approach, which is strongly motivated by concerns to reproduce the next generation of human capital.     

Multilingualism and European Identification

The literature on ethnicity and nationalism notes the centrality of language in group formation. Developments connected to globalization have simultaneously propitiated learning more than one language and the emergence of post‐national and pan‐ethnic identifications. This article brings the literature on ethnicity and nationalism to bear on the analysis of these changes to assess the causal relationship between multilingualism (ML ) and European identification (EI ). Sociology and social psychology provide solid theoretical arguments for why they should be related. The article tests this relationship with Eurobarometer data from 2010. I show that ML has a causal impact on EI and that interaction helps mediate this relationship. The effect of language on EI is modest, however, and interaction does not appear to be the main mechanism mediating it. The article concludes with speculation as to the role of low relative cross‐national mobility in Europe as the main explanation for some of the findings.     

Methodological Nationalism,the Social Sciences,and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology1

The article examines methodological nationalism, a conceptual tendency that was central to the development of the social sciences and undermined more than a century of migration studies. Methodological nationalism is the naturalization of the global regime of nation‐states by the social sciences. Transnational studies, we argue, including the study of transnational migration, is linked to periods of intense globalization such as the turn of the twenty‐first century. Yet transnational studies have their own contradictions that may reintroduce methodological nationalism in other guises. In studying migration, the challenge is to avoid both extreme fluidism and the bounds of nationalist thought.     

Between a rock and a hard place: second-order minorities in the Aceh conflict

Secessionist movements are often motivated by a sense of exclusion, abuse, and assimilation at the hands of host states. But in waging armed struggles and constructing ethnic nationalisms, they may replicate such grievances against their own minorities. This paper seeks to provide a deeper understanding of how ‘second-order minorities’ respond to secessionist ethno-nationalism. Based on ethnographic research in Aceh, Indonesia, this paper looks to how Javanese, Malay, Alas, and Gayo communities responded to Acehnese secessionism. Aceh’s minorities did not support Aceh’s rebels, opting to flee or resist rebellion. In explaining their reaction, I suggest that the same ethno-nationalist project which united many Acehnese in the secessionist struggle served to repel non-Acehnese communities, leading to ethno-nationalist revivals among Aceh’s minorities and continued tensions in the post-conflict era.     

Making foreign women the mother of our nation: the exclusion and assimilation of immigrant women in Taiwan

Citizenship awarding is politicised. Conceiving female marriage migration as a national threat, Taiwan's citizenship legislation is consciously designed and purposefully utilised to achieve exclusion and assimilation. Driven by a nationalistic impetus, it shows how Taiwan imagines itself as a modern, prosperous and homogenous nation and projects upon the immigrant outsiders as a threat to its self-identity. Examined through immigrant women's lived experiences, this citizenship legislation is biased by gender, class and ethnicity. The implementation of the legislation is not only an example of symbolic politics but also banal nationalism realised at grassroots level in the private domain. Immigrant women's lived experiences show that exclusion and assimilation stemmed from banal nationalism is not just an operation of symbolic politics but is also enmeshed with their everyday life.     

LEVINE ON THE MARXIAN TRADITION: From Idealist Roots to Nationalism and Internationalism

Donald N. Levine's treatment of Karl Marx in his Visions of the Sociological Tradition (1995) is an exemplary one by a non-Marxist scholar. In a careful reading, Levine places Marx inside the German idealist tradition. However, he overstates Marx's affinity to Ludwig Feuerbach and understates his continuing debt to G. W. F. Hegel. Levine also points to Marx's internationalism and cosmopolitanism, drawing on both biographical and theoretical material. In addition, he argues that Marx failed to grasp the importance of nationalism and ethnicity. Here, Levine has not considered sufficiently Marx's illuminating and substantial writings on nationalism, race, and ethnicity, particularly those on Poland, Ireland, and the United States. Nonetheless, some problematic features of Marx's writings on Jews and Judaism bear out part of Levine's critique.     

Improving government communication and empowering rural communities: Combining public relations and development communication approaches

This article proposes combining public relations and development communication insights so that organizations, particularly in the public sector, can engage and empower rural communities to adopt and exploit infrastructure developments for mutual benefit. Applying appreciative inquiry to explore the communication process involved in the development of micro-hydro power plants in Kulon Progo Regency, Indonesia, this article offers a view from those who are regarded as the target of communication, as the opposed to those take an organizational standpoint. The study proposes a new development project communication model which seeks to initiate, secure and sustain positive community outcomes and meet the project initiators’ requirements. This is achieved through collaboration and the gradual relinquishment of power and decision-making from the latter to the former. The model emphasizes the importance of the processes of communication as well as outcomes, and considers rural communities as having agency, rather than as objects of or for development. By embracing community assets such as local knowledge and contextual wisdom and the characteristics of collective communities in non-Western countries such as togetherness, reciprocity, a strong sense of shared destiny, locality, and fraternity, the model offers a community centric approach which encourages progressive community empowerment and ownership. The evidence points to the impacts for both communities and governments being more beneficial and sustainable than current communication practices.     

SUBJECT AND SUBSTRATUM : ON JAPANESE IMPERIAL NATIONALISM

This paper addresses the theoretical and philosophical questions concerning how an individual identified him/herself as a member of an ethnic, racial, or national community in the context of Japanese Imperialist discourse during the 1930's. The central focus is Tanabe Hajime. Together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe established the so-called Kyoto School of Philosophy in the 1920's. With his background in the philosophy of sciences and mathematics, and modern European metaphysics, Tanabe created a philosophical argument for the multi-ethnic nation-state, and proposed the universalistic concept of Japanese national identity which positively evaluates and integrates individuals of different ethnic backgrounds into one. He constructed the Logic of Species (Shu no Ronri) according to which a member of the Japanese Empire could identify with Japan precisely because she or he can participate in the Japanese State which represents the whole, inclusive of all the ethnic groups. Relying upon the Hegelian concept of negativity, he explained the two different levels of belonging: particularistic belonging to the specific identity (shu) such as ethnicity, and universalistic belonging to the generic identity (rui). And he further demonstrated that ethnic identity is far from fixed, and is brought into the subject's self-awareness only insofar as the subject negates it and is free from it. In other words, the subject becomes aware of her/his ethnic origin only when s/he negates it thereby participating in a higher order of social formation, the State, under which ethnic multiplicity is subsumed. Thus the species of ethnicity is constituted only insofar as it is negatively mediated by the genus, that is, the State. Tanabe saw the essential form of human freedom in this negative relation of the subject to his ethnicity, and understood a subject's belonging to a nation as a dialectic and negative process of mediation between the species and the genus. While postwar Japan was built upon the premises of ethnic nationalism, Japanese imperial nationalism of the pre-war period was afraid of ethnic nationalisms which could challenge the Empire's rhetoric of multiethnicity and pluralism. Tanabe's Logic of Species was a response to such needs of Japanese Imperialism and it represented a philosophical attempt to undermine ethnic nationalism. Not surprisingly, it served as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.     

The Migration–Development Nexus: Sri Lanka Case Study

This paper explores the relationship between migration and development in Sri Lanka, a country that has been the source of large numbers of migrants and the recipient of much development assistance. Commissioned as part of a wider study conducted by the Centre for Development Research, Denmark, this case study seeks to answer a set of specific questions about the nature and extent of links between development assistance and migration flows. The paper surveys the socio–economic context in which both migration and development have taken place in Sri Lanka, describing the causes, scale, and features of migration flows from Sri Lanka in recent decades. Two main streams of migration flows are identified: labour migration and political migration. The flows are distinguished by ethnic characteristics (the former is mostly Sinhalese and the latter pre–dominantly Tamil) and destination (the former to the Middle East and the latter to the West). Both flows have intensified during a time of protracted conflict and in the context of waraffected economic development since the early 1980s.
The importance of remittances from migrants to the Sri Lankan economy and the extent to which diaspora activities impact Sri Lanka are also discussed. Despite the lack of statistics, especially on informal remittances from the Tamil diaspora, it is suggested that the remittances have been and will continue to be a sizeable component of foreign exchange receipts in Sri Lanka. The paper concludes that the complex interactions between migration, development assistance, remittances, and conflict are important for the prospects for peace and reconstruction in Sri Lanka. The challenge in Sri Lanka will be to move from a vicious cycle of conflict, underdevelopment and migration to a more virtuous one. In this process, it is suggested that the diaspora will be a key player in the shift towards peace and remittances will be an integral part of reconstruction.     

Mass migration governance and openness toward refugees: Comparing Germany and Turkey

This study seeks answers to the question: ‘Under what conditions do communities with migration experience in refugee-receiving states become more open toward accepting more refugees and why?’. The research seeks answers to this question by examining the attitudes of individuals (N = 37) from Turkey who have been living in Germany for at least a year and who have sufficient familiarity with the characteristics of governance of mass migration in both countries. The findings suggest that the respondents are more pessimistic about the consequences of Turkey accepting more refugees in the future, while they are optimistic about the outcomes of the arrival of more refugees in Germany. This study posits that receiving communities' perceptions about the host state's regulatory and institutional capacity in managing mass migration and integration of refugees shape their attitudes toward the possibility of the influx of more refugees over time. The findings indicate that efficient mass migration governance in a receiving state is identified through four characteristics: (i) admission of educated refugees, (ii) proper refugee registration procedures, (iii) systematic integration processes, and (iv) effective monitoring and law enforcement mechanisms. The study concludes that local communities view public authorities as the key actors in managing the consequences of mass migration and establishing and sustaining good mass migration governance at the receiving state level is likely to facilitate positive attitudes towards accepting more refugees.     

The Double Meaning of Nationalism

Abstract  Although nationalism appears to be a kind of particularism, in fact we often find nationalist movements emerging within the trend toward universalism. For example, contemporary storms of nationalism are taking place in an era of unprecedented universalization in politics, economics and technology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the mechanism which generates nationalism by explaining the contradictory intersection between particularism and universalism. First, the paper looks at the difficulty in defining the nation, and shows that there are two historical stages in the establishment of nation. Second. the difference between social experiences in a nation and those in pre-nation society are discovered through consideration of the fact that the novel and the nation developed contemporaneously. Thus it is established that social experiences in nation are characterized by the acquisition of special transcendent viewpoint. Third, the paper searches for the origin of nationalism in the traditional European political theory according to which the king has two bodies. Fourth, the paper attempts to integrate two excellent theories of nationalism: those of Gellner and Anderson. Fifth, the paper analyses types of nationalism so as to clarify the inner structure of the transcendence proper to nationalism. Finally, this paper explains the mechanism of nationalism by relating it to the dynamics of capitalism. The explanation will enable us to understand why the nationalism chauvinism suddenly reemerges in today's Eastern European societies when they are exposed to capitalism.     

“I was discriminated against because I was seen as PRC-Chinese”: The negotiation between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia

Research on race and ethnicity has focused on conditions under which solidarity will be developed to consolidate collective benefits. For example, facing racial discrimination can bring large-scale affiliations (e.g., people of color, Latinos, or Asians) to fight against racial injustice. Focusing on the negotiation and struggle between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia—a politicizing context associated with a prior definition of Chinese category, despite inherent differences within it, this article shows the complexity of ethnicity when ethnic identity/solidarity intersects with nationalism and racial discrimination. I argue that Taiwanese migrants attach specific meanings to the ethnic (Chinese) category and constantly connect to and shift its boundaries in different contexts. Meanwhile, they also make a distinction between racial discrimination from white Australians and political hostility from PRC-Chinese. This article proposes a procedural and contextual understanding of ethnic identity, solidarity, nationalism, and boundary making/unmaking within the Chinese category as it is enacted in Taiwanese migrants' everyday lives. It also examines situational variability in the salience of ethnic identifications, racialization of the ethnic category, and people's interpretation of ethnic and national identity when facing racial discrimination.     

Endogamy as a Basis for Ethnic Behavior

In this article I argue for endogamy as a fundamental cause of human behavior that is often classified as ethnic. Specifically, I show that it would make evolutionary sense for people to help possible co-progenitors of their descendants. This suggests that in many situations people will help preferentially the minimal endogamous set of people to which they belong. Such help mostly will be restricted to providing benefits that are nearly "non-rival"—benefits that group members can "consume" without making others consume less. This (partial) explanation of pro-ethny behavior reconciles key points from various approaches to ethnicity and agrees with many empirical observations, such as the link between endogamy and ethnicity and the variability of criteria for ethnicity. This explanation yields predictions and explanations in a number of problematic areas; for example, it suggests that expansion of the marriage pool, often occurring as a result of urbanization, is a crucial factor in the transformation of local identities into nationalism.     

Islam and Processes of Minorisation among Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: Oscillating between Faith and Political Economic Expediency

The main focus of studies on ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia is generally their business acumen or the extent to which they are assimilated into their respective country of residence. This paper concentrates on a rather different aspect among this ethnic group, namely the influence of Islam amongst the Chinese, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. This is a topic on which very little research has been done, especially in terms of identity and ethnicity together with processes of integration and assimilation—in relation to both other ethnic Chinese and the local communities in which they are socially imbedded. Because of the deficiency of empirical data, it is imperative that we understand the historical processes that lead up to the present marginalised position of this group of Chinese. As a consequence, the present paper employs a historical approach towards the study of the Chinese Muslims in their respective local communities.     

Re-imagined communities in Macau in cyberspace: resist,reclaim and restructure

Based on the data collected during four years of participant observation of 37 Macau Facebook communities and 12 in-depth interviews, this article examines the “re-imagined communities” in the local context of Macau and the global context of cyberspace. It mainly addresses the research question of how Internet users in Macau resist legitimizing their identity, reclaim their resistance identity, and restructure their project identity, thereby constructing re-imagined communities in cyberspace. This inquiry proposes a possible identity-focused approach to future community studies, especially those that examine re-imagined communities in flux, in cyberspace, and beyond nationalism. This approach particularly implicates the re-imagined communities of the subaltern, the identity politics of the governed, and, most importantly, the agency of the actors.     

Ethnic Violence,Local Security and Return Migration: Enclave communities in Kosovo

Forced migration has become commonplace in the international political landscape. In 2015, 60 million people were displaced by violence, more than ever before recorded (UNHCR, 2015). While we know that violence leads to displacement, we know little about return migration after conflict – who comes back and where they settle. This article seeks to engage and supplement the literature on return migration after conflict, advocating for a broader understanding of the security choices made by displaced people. Emphasized here is the importance of a local understanding of safety and the role played by enclave communities in providing a secure context in which people can enjoy the society of their co‐ethnics.