(Un)becoming Dayak: Intermarriage and the Dynamics of Identity and Belonging in East Kalimantan

Much of the ethnographic literature on East Kalimantan has assumed relatively stable group identities. Intermarriage between different Dayak groups has been frequent, but is usually perceived as leading to swift cultural assimilation of the in-marrying party. Similarly, Dayak-Malay intermarriages have been understood in terms of socio-religious assimilation (masuk Islam). This article suggests that a number of socio-historical developments, including Christian mission work, the spread of formal education and recent advances in regional political autonomy, have resulted in high cultural adaptability among East Kalimantan's ‘Dayaks’, leading to hybrid identity formation. Simultaneously, people of mixed ancestry are confronted with ethno-nationalist revitalisation and often face a problematic lack of belonging, challenging them to become—or un-become—‘Dayak’. This article explores the marital histories and social networks of two extended families in the urban and semi-urban centres of the province. It suggests that children of mixed parentage have cultivated various modes of adaptation to the expectations of Dayak indigenism, often involving the strategic invocation of essentialised ethnic labels (suku).     

Inventing Tradition,Inventing Modernity: Dayak Identity in Urban Sarawak

While a good deal of ethnographic work has been done on the Dayak groups of Sarawak, much of it refers to a hinterland life that is now rare. As Sarawak's urban areas burgeon under the impetus of industrialisation, its ethnic groups are coming to understand themselves, ethnic fellows and ethnic others in new ways. In this article, I draw upon a field project involving 112 interviews of Dayaks living in Kuching to locate such changes within the context of a changing Malaysia and a changing world. What is emerging from the research is that ethnicity, in Sarawak as elsewhere, is helpfully seen as a key element in the struggle to define what is traditional versus what is modern. Increasingly, Dayaks have vested interests in what their government promotes as modern, but there are indications that these same Dayaks want input into how modernity is constructed, and wield a concept of ethnicity as a means to exercise some control over the process. Such intrigues lead us far from the 'end of culture' that proponents of globalisation have touted, as people manipulate the modern in keeping with their own ends, though not without constraints on their capacity to act.     

Framing the tribal: ethnic violence in Northeast India

This article examines the framing of ‘ethnic conflict’ in Northeast India, focusing on militant groups and insurgency in the hill areas of Assam and a form of political violence known locally as ‘ethnic clashes’. The article argues that ‘ethnic clashes’ have become an institutionalized form of armed violence in the region, while ‘ethnic rivalry’ is a key diagnostic frame for conflict. As enactments and imaginaries of institutionalized violence, ‘ethnic clashes’ are a product of actors who hold stakes in representing armed political violence as a result of ‘ethnic conflict’ between rivaling tribal communities. The article looks at the representation of causes of conflict as well as the framing of acts of violence as key sites of contestation, and thus as integral aspects of the conflict. This raises questions about the feasibility of scholarly efforts to make sense of specific cases of conflict via generic categories such as the ‘ethnic conflict’.     

Looking beyond ethnicity: the negotiation of Chinese Muslim identity in Penang,Malaysia

The conflation of ethnic and religious identities, particularly that of Malay and Muslim, has long historical and political roots in Malaysia. Being one of the most safeguarded identity marks in Malaysia, Islam has become part of the core of Malay ethnicity and plays a prominent role in ethnic politics. Muslim converts from ethnic minorities, such as the Chinese and Indians, are therefore faced with social expectation and pressure to ‘become Malay’. This paper discusses the difficulty and improbability of Chinese Muslim identity in the previous literature and the recent development that enables the decoupling of religious and ethnic identities. By looking beyond ethnicity, the most salient social divider in Malaysia, and looking into other possibilities, such as religious identity, this paper aims to paint a picture of social relations and identification that is more complex yet flexible amongst the Chinese Muslim converts in Penang.     

Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’: intersections of ethnicity and violence in the lives of youth of ‘mixed’ heritage

This article looks at young Rwandans of ‘mixed’ Hutu–Tutsi heritage, exploring how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda. It reveals the complex position of these young ‘Hutsi’ and the significant constraints they face in exercising identity choices in a context with a history of ethnic violence and where state policies have outlawed ethnicity. This article argues that the experiences, narratives and performances of these young Rwandans simultaneously challenge and reinforce the binary ‘ethnic logic’ that persists in contemporary Rwanda. Yet it suggests that providing space for Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’ and their diverse experiences could help to de-essentialize the categories ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ and reduce the risks of future violence.     

Slave Ships and Coffin Ships: Transatlantic Exchanges in Irish-American Blackface Minstrelsy

Abstract

Irish participation in blackface minstrelsy underwent complex transatlantic exchanges as it jumped from the US to Ireland and back again from the era of the Great Famine through the end of the nineteenth century. Most research on Irish-American blackface minstrelsy treats the Irish in America as a homogenous group that used ‘blacking up’ to establish its ethnic whiteness. However, there were at least two distinct groups of Irish Americans who participated in blackface minstrelsy: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. The latter’s incorporation into the history of minstrelsy means that we must reconsider assumptions about how and why the Irish performed blackface in both Ireland and America. Because Irish Protestants’ whiteness was never in question, theories of ethnic assimilation and working class anxieties do not adequately account for Irish gravitation to minstrel shows. Something else about Irish identity captivated performers and audiences. Moving beyond the racial assimilation mode, I argue that blacking up carried tensions of land dispossession, national identity, and ethnic conflict in Ireland into American culture.     

Substantive signifiers? Ethnic and religious identifications among second-generation immigrants in the Netherlands

In the context of increasingly ‘culturalised’ discourses on immigrant integration in Europe, this article aims to contribute to a de-essentialised understanding of ethnic and religious identity. Based on the analysis of quantitative data, it reveals the multifarious relationship between identification and culture among second-generation Turkish and Moroccan Dutch in the Netherlands. Some instances of self-identification with nominal labels (‘Turkish’ and ‘Muslim’) appear to go hand in hand with stronger sociocultural orientations in daily life and are more substantive; others (‘Moroccan’) do not. These findings point to different social mechanisms at work in shaping identifications with certain identity labels and once more illustrate that ethnic and religious identifications do not necessarily reflect cultural ‘otherness’.     

Indigenous Micro-Ethnicity and Principles of Identification in Southeast Borneo

This article explores the nature of indigenous ethnicity in Borneo and its historical transformation. The principal focus is on Dayak ethnicity beneath the level of generic Dayak identity. Through examples from interior southeast Borneo, I describe a historically dominant pattern of identification with small and localised groups and the emergence of larger ethnic categories. Like elsewhere in Borneo, a condition of pervasive micro-ethnic differentiation was endemic, while larger categories were generally unimportant and mostly evolved only recently. I assess the importance of different underlying principles of collective identification for this pattern—culture, descent, kinship, locality and politics—and examine the importance of state influence for the subsequent development of larger categories. I propose that ethnicity in Borneo, as in most places, is fundamentally political. I discuss how this applies to both past and present forms, and relates to a distinctive significance of locality for collective identification.     

从族群与国家认同矛盾看阿拉伯国家的国内冲突

在阿拉伯世界，族群、国家、民族、宗教多元认同的存在决定了阿拉伯国家的国家认同深受多元认同的困扰。本文主要探讨了种族、语言、宗教、教派等族群认同对阿拉伯国家认同的挑战，分析了阿拉伯国家族群冲突的四种主要形态：权力分割族裔化而引发的国内冲突；权力垄断族裔化而引发的国内冲突；主体民族与少数民族族裔群体的冲突；跨界族群寻求自治与独立引发的冲突。阿拉伯国家的族群冲突反映了阿拉伯民族国家建构存在的问题和遭遇的挫折。     

The ‘Feminine Advantage’: A Discursive Analysis of the Invisibility of Older Women Workers

This article discusses the overlap of gender and age identity and its implications in a specific political context — a public inquiry into the problems facing the older unemployed. Using discourse analysis, it examines how ‘older worker’ identity is socially constructed in this setting. At the beginning of the inquiry, fundamentally gendered versions of ‘older worker’ identity were initially constructed, yet by its conclusion, female versions had disappeared. The analysis shows that this ‘invisibility’ of female ‘older worker’ identity is the outcome of a central discursive struggle for recognition of older male workers as a disadvantaged group in the labour market. This ‘disadvantaged’ status is achieved by constructing a companion version of ‘feminine advantage’ in the search for employment. The article discusses the complexity of discursive processes through which this invisibility is accomplished and its implications for those targeted by female and male older worker identity.     

Cultural hybrids or ethnic fundamentalists? discourses on ethnicity in Singaporean SMEs

This paper examines national and ethnic discourses within Singaporean small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the ambiguities and dichotomies characterising Singaporean national and ethnic identity. Singapore is represented officially as a multi‐ethnic state with a Chinese majority which claims to integrate minority groups such as Indians and Malays successfully, and it boasts a generalised Singaporean culture and identity that supposedly embrace the racial and ethnic diversity of the population. However, Singapore also hosts tensions and conflicts associated with such diversity. This paper examines workplace discourses which address tensions and congruencies. The paper is based on research conducted between April 2002 and May 2003, involving 50 SMEs representing various sectors of the economy and constituting various ethnicities. The research found that, while discourses on ethnicity and nationality may be characterised as somewhat ‘shifting’ and ‘fluid’, the respondents present their identities as rather fixed. Primordial ties rather than postmodern multiplicity may better characterise discourses among the workers and owners of Singaporean SMEs.     

Neoliberal discourses and ethnonormative regime in post-recognition Peru: redefining hierarchies and identities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the impact of ‘recognition’ of cultural and ethnic diversity in Peru. It proposes that the rise of a new global ‘ethnonormativity’ – a regime to define and administrate cultural and identity differences, to establish boundaries between those who ‘are’ ethnic and those who are not, and to set rights and duties derived from identities – has had meagre effects in Peru. While the past decades have witnessed the emergence of Latin American political actors who regard indigenousness as their basic political identity, there has been no ‘emergence of indigenous movements’ in Peru. The discourses that highlight the importance of diversity have gained terrain – unsettling, to a certain extent, the narratives of assimilation through ‘development’ and mestizaje – and the Peruvian state has officially embraced ‘recognition’, including it in its official rhetoric and creating institutions to design policies to guarantee the rights of the indigenous and Afroperuvian ‘peoples’ (itself a label part of the language of multiculturalism). The state has also crafted a definition of ‘indigenous peoples’ and introduced ethnic variables in censuses and official statistics, thus being active in the production and regulation of subjects. Some civil society actors have also incorporated ethnic labels into their rhetoric to adapt to the global turn to identity politics. Peru remains, however, a fertile terrain for neoliberal policies and discourses of a different kind. A discourse that exalts ‘emprendedurismo’ (entrepreneurship) and states that success depends entirely on personal effort has become a new common sense, obscuring the structural inequality that has historically affected indigenous and Afroperuvian people. Extractivism continues to damage the environment and the rights of indigenous people, while the expansion of agribusiness in the coastal valleys of Peru keeps people – regardless of their ‘ethnic’ self-identification – in poverty and without basic labour and social rights. The article suggests that the ambiguities of the ethnonormative regime in Peru may serve as a diversion from structural issues in a context of neoliberalism and may re-elaborate racial hierarchies, racism and the narratives of mestizaje it allegedly opposes.     

Constructing border ethnic identities along the frontier of Central and Eastern Europe

The analysis is based on an empirical sociological study (interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union Project) aimed at exploring the various aspects of people’s diaspora affiliations and their ethnic and national identity on the Eastern borderland of Europe. We surveyed ethnic minority groups in eight countries along the frontier of Central Eastern Europe. With the ethnic minorities having a similar ethnic status along the border, we demonstrated how ethnic minorities ‘deal’ with their minority status in their ‘host’ country. The analysis reconstructs the image of the ethnic minority at the societal level. We model personal and collective ethnic identities as a stock of knowledge based on cognitive and affective components, and test them along the different ethnic dyads. The paper shows how successive generations are able to transfer the pattern of ethnic identity within the family, and also how language use practices and personal networks play a role in preserving personal ethnic identity.     

Seeing Red,Tasting Blood: Sensual Citizenship on Christmas Island

Christmas Islanders participate together in blood metaphors, drawn from the island's biotic life. These metaphors proceed along specific sensual lines such that, in and through participation in this shared sensual citizenship, the identity category ‘Christmas Islanders’ is yielded. Pan-islandic sensory citizenship is based on participation in a highly visual and rhythmic auditory Christmas Island sensorium and other specifically ethnic relationships to the Island proceed primarily along the sensory lines of taste. Participation in particular sensory registers of island life is key in locating Christmas Islanders precisely as such, and is equally important in creating and maintaining ‘senses’ of ethnic difference between them. At the same time as local people participate together in pan-islandic metaphors, some ethnic groups have made sensory connections with the island that are not made by others. These connections are instrumental in locating islanders of particular ethnic membership as ‘native’ (over local), or as damaging to pan-islandic identity.     

Civic,ethnic, hybrid and atomised identities in Central and Eastern Europe

While the topic of identity of ethnic minorities abounds in theoretical insights, most discussion is still clustered around the civic–ethnic divide while assuming conclusions with limited empirical evidence. By contrast, this article uses a four-category typology of identity that considers both in-group and out-group attachments to address hypotheses about competing identities and about factors influencing minorities to adopt one identity type over others. Based on unique data evidence of 12 ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, this study concludes that the ‘hybrid’ identity, rather than the literature-assumed ‘ethnic’ identity, tops the identification preference of minorities, although there are differences in levels and patterns when controlling for various covariates. The choice of identity depends on the socialisation process, the economic status, the perceived discrimination and intergroup tensions, reflecting variations in the system of values common to a region with complex ethnic dynamics.     

New Styles of Community Building and Philanthropy by Arab-American Muslims

Among Arab-American Muslims, secular ethnic and humanitarian giving, focused on ‘results’ and ‘measurable impact,’ is displacing religiously inspired giving, that is driven by ‘charity’ and ‘love of mankind.’ This trend is supported by evidence of the way donors position themselves and philanthropic organizations appeal to their donor base. The case is supported by qualitative data drawn from interviews with key informants and from trend data on giving. I propose a new model of giving based on identity and giving, using Grounded Theory methods. This model challenges our understanding about the connection between community and philanthropy and proposes that philanthropy can create ‘community.’     

Children,Kitchen, Church: does ethnicity matter?

Ethnic differences in the allocation of non-market time are important, as they may shed more light on the integration level of ethnic minorities and on the factors that affect both household productivity and ethnic identity. In this paper we examine the role of ethnicity and gender by analyzing differences in the time spent on a range of activities employing the 2000 UK Time Use Survey. Based on the economics of religion and identity economic models, we hypothesize that if ethnic minority women have lower opportunity costs of time and a strong ‘ethnic’ or ‘traditionally female’ identity, they will engage more in ‘traditional’ home activities. Double-hurdle regression results indicate that while the effect for childcare is not significant when estimated for parents only, non-white women spend significantly more time on food management and particularly religious activities than white women, with the greatest effect of the latter being for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women.     

A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century: ‘De-politicization’ of Ethnicity in China

All multiracial and multi-ethnic nations are confronted with the important issue of how to handle ethnic relations and of the role that government should play in guiding the direction of such relations. In viewing ethnic minorities, ‘culturalization’ has a tradition of thousands of years in China. Until the late Qing dynasty, that tradition resulted in a united-pluralistic polity with a huge population by assimilation and prosperous economy. Under the new historical conditions of the twentieth century, however, China has adopted the policies of the former USSR since the 1950s and given ethnic minorities more political emphasis, what is called the ‘politicization’ of ethnic minorities. This paper proposes that, in the twenty-first century, China should learn from its own historical heritage and the lessons of the US, the former USSR and other nations, and redirect its policy from ‘politicization’ to ‘culturalization’ of ethnic issues so as to strengthen national identity among its ethnic minorities. This new perspective might also be insightful to other multiracial or multi-ethnic nations around the world in the new century.     

‘Between authenticity and pretension’: parents', pupils' and young professionals' negotiations of minority ethnic middle‐class identity

Despite an increasing sociological interest in the middle classes and their educational practices, research has largely concentrated on the white middle classes. This paper considers the case of the minority ethnic (ME) middle classes through empirical data from a small, exploratory study conducted in England with 36 minority ethnic, ‘middle‐class’ individuals (parents, pupils and young professionals) from a range of ME backgrounds. It is argued that participants experienced ME middle‐class identity as a profoundly conflictual and precarious space, negotiated through a matrix of relational classed and racialized positionings. ‘Authentic’ middle‐classness remains the preserve of white society due to racial inequalities and the dominance of whiteness as the popularly legitimated marker of middle classness. Moreover, attempts to define an acceptable, legitimate and principled ME middle‐class identity are compromised by the discursive threats of ‘inauthenticity’, ‘pretension’ and ‘misrecognition’.     

Grieving for mestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan,Mexico

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story – mestizaje and elegancia – represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.