Orthodoxy and political myths in Balkan national identities

This article analyses the relationship between Balkan national identities and the region's dominant religion: Eastern Orthodox Christianity. After examining the concept of ‘symphonia’ between Orthodoxy and politics that developed during the Byzantine Empire, this article argues that the political myths that have emerged from Orthodoxy are the most potent in the Balkan mythical imaginary. Political myths have a direct impact on contemporary politics developing a threefold structure: the sacralisation of politics; the perception of the nation as a divine manifestation; and, the construction of a divine realm on earth.     

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.     

Designer nations: Neo-liberal nation branding – Brand Estonia

This article critically examines the emergence of nation branding as a commercial practice at the end of the Cold War by conceptualizing it as a means for nations to redefine and reposition themselves within the master narrative of globalization. It examines the industry literature of the nation branding movement, which seeks to legitimate the practice. It argues that nation branding is an engine of neo-liberalism that explicitly embraces a reductive logic, which privileges market relations (market fundamentalism) in articulations of national identity; also contends that nation branding is a risky business that can backfire, since its success depends, in large part, on the intuitive knowledge of individual industry ‘creatives’. It maintains that the methodology of nation branding, qua methodology, is profoundly anti-democratic. It offers recommendations for making nation branding more transparent and accountable to democratic values, but also explores Umberto's concept of ‘semiotic guerrilla warfare’ as a possible strategy for disrupting nation branding and redirecting initiatives to rethink national identity in more democratic directions.     

Hybridity,ethnicity and nationhood: legacies of interethnic war,wartime rape and the potential for bridging the ethnic divide in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

Relying on the biographical narrative Leila, a girl from Bosnia and the recorded narratives by adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina we illustrate the difficulties and symbolic implications associated with negotiating hybrid identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina against the dominant post-conflict discourse based on ‘pure’ ethnicities. We argue that in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, hybrid identities are marginalized by official politics and societal structures as a legacy of the war. However, they simultaneously embody the symbolic tools through which ethnic divisions could be overcome, envisioning and recalling a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina as a supra-national designation.     

The institutional concealment of the Romanies’ culture: the ongoing legacy of Fascist Italy

This paper presents the case of the Romanies in Italy and the ‘forgotten’ nature of their genocide. The crimes committed by the Fascist regime towards these peoples during the Second World War were not disclosed until recently. In past decades it was commonly believed that Fascism had targeted Romanies merely as a problem of ‘public order’, rather than as a racial issue. This study argues that a lack of official acknowledgement, together with recent authoritarian approaches towards them (such as the introduction of 2008 ‘Nomad Emergency’ and the ongoing adoption of the highly criticized ‘camps policy’), could all be interpreted as an indirect consequence of the government's incapacity to deal with a shameful past and its unbroken ties. The existence of ‘gaps’ in Italian collective memory is now harming the health of Italy's democratic polity, allowing racism to re-emerge, while resuscitating a deep-seated belief in the ‘legendary generosity’ of Italians.     

Colonial Sainthood in Australasia

Concerned with the formation of national identities in postcolonial Australasia, this article compares and contrasts representations of religious women Mary MacKillop (1842–1909) and Suzanne Aubert (1835–1926). MacKillop, constructed as a contemporary popular ‘Australian legend’ is set to become Australasia's first saint, while in April 2004 investigation began into the beatification of New Zealand nun Aubert. Combining religious and secular explanations, despite the two women's lives and work displaying many similar characteristics, the article offers an explanation as to why it is that MacKillop, and not Aubert, will be Australasia's first saint. The article argues that representations of the two women are embedded in the construction of national identities in Australia and New Zealand that draw upon gendered ‘white settler society’ mythologies.     

The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria

This article analyses discourses of Austrian national identity. It discusses the reproduction (and contestation) of national identities on the levels of everyday language, political debate and policy. Three discursive formations of the nation—and their histories—are discussed: a nowadays marginal and de-legitimated discourse of pan-Germanic ethnicism; the hegemonic paradigm of ‘Austrian-ness’, which itself comprises a range of ideological positions and constitutes the over-arching framework to most (relevant) debates; and counter-hegemonic discourses including European- and ‘post-national’ identity formations. The article also discusses individuals’ ongoing negotiation of, and possible resistance to, discourses of national belonging, and concludes by relating its findings to the contemporary salience of national identities as a reaction to the (perceived) consequences of economic globalisation.     

Boxing,national identities and the symbolic importance of place: The ‘othering’ of Joe Calzaghe

In an analysis informed by social identities research, this article critically assesses the importance of place and nation in professional boxing. Based on media accounts surrounding the fight between Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins, it examines how the nation is positioned and how national identities are imagined. Calzaghe serves as a floating signifier of Wales, Britain and Europe in discourse positioning him as an outsider in the American boxing landscape. In examining the ‘othering’ of Calzaghe the article highlights how simplistic binaries are used to perpetuate notions of difference.     

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.     

Fearing yellow,imagining white: media analysis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a watershed event in the context of race, nation, and the law because it denied Chinese immigration into the USA for over 80 years. This paper analyses the media coverage of the Chinese in the San Francisco Chronicle during the year of the Act's passage. The theoretical framework of ‘Purity and Danger’ provides a starting point in analyzing how whiteness and nation are constructed as ‘pure’, while Chinese immigration is constructed as a ‘danger’ within a symbolic, racial and political manner. Discourse analysis was applied to the data for an intersectional investigation of race, class, gender, and nation, to determine how the discourse is organized thematically, as well as uncover ideological meanings in relation to how ‘fearing yellow’ also reflected ‘imaging white’ in media discourse.     

‘Mixed’ Japanese-Filipino identities under Japanese multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

The ways in which multiculturalism is debated and practiced forms an important frame for ‘mixed’ ethnic identities to take shape. In this paper, I explore how young migrants of Japanese-Filipino ‘mixed’ parentage make sense of their ethnic identities in Japan. My key findings are that dominant discourses constructing the Japanese nation as a monoracial, monolingual and monoethnic nation leave no space for diversity within the definition of ‘Japanese’, creating the necessity for alternative labels like haafu or ‘mixed roots’. Japanese multiculturalism does not provide alternative narratives of Japaneseness but preserves the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity by recognizing diversity while maintaining ethnic and racial boundaries. Lastly, these categories have not been actively questioned by my respondents. Rather, they show flexibility in adopting these various labels – haafu, ‘mixed roots’, Filipino, Firipin-jin – in different contexts.     

Fuzzy frontiers of identity: The British case

Abstract

The author examines the formation of British identity, looking at the interaction of ‘the British’ with the Celtic fringe, the Dominions, the Commonwealth, Anglophone America, Europe and peoples described in immigration law as ‘aliens’. He argues that the core identity is constructed in the course of interactions (sometimes hostile) with these externalized identities. The frontiers between identities are often ‘fuzzy’, allowing a degree of penetration by outsiders. The concept of ‘fuzziness’ is elaborated. The shape and edges of British identity are shown to be historically changing, often vague and to a degree, malleable. It is suggested that the move away from the Dominions and Commonwealth to Europe has contributed to a crisis of national identity.     

Gendered projects of national identity formation: The case of Turkey

The consolidation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 took place in opposition to multiple ‘others’ – that is, multiple ideologies with alternative models of modernity and state formation. An important aspect of the resulting negotiations was their gendered nature. This article explores the multiplicity of subject-positions made available to women using the nationalist literary production of the first half of the twentieth century. By linking literary production with the official discourse, it argues that blurring the distinction between public and private discourses can better capture the gendered character of the nationalist discourse. The analysis details the common denominators between articulations about women's bodies and familial ties, and the building of a nationalist discourse. In these works, typologies of mothers, fathers, daughters, step and adopted ones, and those female figures seen as threats to these families tallied with the ongoing attempts to popularise a particular imagining of the nation. The desired unity of the republic, figuring in these roles, seemed to depend on controlling, taming and erasing a variety of designated identities and ideologies.     

Aristophanes on Bawds in the Boardroom: Comedy as a Guideline to Gender Relations in Antiquity

By exploring the links between the notion of public secrets and popular imaginaries of sovereign power in Burundi, this article demonstrates the shortcomings of the pervasive Foucauldian perception of power as mere relations. Through conspiracy theories about the secret machinations of power, people in Burundi attempt to make sense of domination and sovereignty and to locate the evasive kernel of power. They try to pinpoint the sovereign, assuming that he is hiding behind the scenes, pulling the strings of ‘true power’. While conspiracy theories and rumours attempt to reveal the secret, they also reconfirm its existence and hence strengthen sovereign power which depends not only on the spectacle but also on the assumption that it has a hidden supplement. In this manner, secrecy—located at the summit of forces—becomes the irreducible element of political ontology.

The article also explores the relationship between secrecy and ethnicity. It argues that the very ambiguous relationship of ethnic identities in Burundi—allowing friendship and intermarriage on the one hand while leading to ethnocide on the other—is expressed through the lens of secrecy. The perception of hiding true identities leads to conspiracy theories that search for the other's hidden agendas. This in turn means that nobody dares expose his or her true identity for fear of what ‘the other’ might do.     

‘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.     

Initial teacher training: understanding ‘race,’ diversity and inclusion

There is little research which has explored how students on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses understand and conceptualise discourses of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion. This article will focus on student understandings of racialised identities; it will explore the discourses by which students understand what it means to be White and what it means to be Black, within the context of ITT. The article will examine the different facets and themes of identity within the context of belonging and exclusion which exist within higher education in the cultural and social contexts of English universities. The findings indicate that students’ understandings of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion on ITT courses are complex and multifaceted. The article argues that greater training is needed in relation to the practical assistance that student teachers require in terms of increasing their understanding of diversity and dealing with racism in the classroom.     

The rise and fall of the ‘inner city’: race,space and urban policy in postwar England

ABSTRACT

In postwar England, the ‘inner city’ has loomed large in urban discourse and policy, serving as an important site through which ‘race’ has been rendered socially and spatially meaningful. Drawing on insights from history, geography and sociology, this paper traces the material and symbolic processes through which the ‘inner city’ has been the subject and object of socio-political knowledge and action. The article examines what shifting understandings of the ‘inner city’ and related policy responses reveal about the racialisation of space and bodies, and the role of the state in rationalising and enacting specific urban imaginings and interventions. In historicising dominant conceptions of the ‘inner city’, we identify three periods revealing key transformations within this formation: firstly, we consider how the idea operated as a spectre, in which the American ‘ghetto’ was seen as a predictor of ‘race relations’; secondly, we contend that during the 1970s and 1980s, the ‘inner city’ came to be ‘territorialised’ as a pathological, racialised space subject to particular modes of institutional regulation; finally, we examine the relative fragmentation of the ‘inner city’ in recent decades, through urban regeneration and changes in the spatialisation of ‘race’ and ethnicity.     

From ‘Russianness’ to ‘Israeliness’ through the landscape of the soul: therapeutic discourse in the practice of immigrant absorption in Israel with ‘Russian’ adolescents

This article explores the increasing incorporation of professional therapeutic knowledge and practices into the state-led apparatus of absorption of new immigrants in Israel. Singling out this phenomenon is the seemingly unexpected alliance between the therapeutic ethos, which leans on individualist, a-national and universal values, and state-led absorption practices, based on a Zionist, collectivist and local ethos. According to the Zionist ethos, the newcomer ‘returning to an historical homeland’ is expected to become part of a territorially bounded collective entity and to adopt a new national identity that will predominate over other identities. The therapeutic ethos undermines moral authorities promoting collective redemption through identification with community goals and challenges a patronizing attitude towards new immigrants. Analysing the rhetoric and practice of Na'aleh – a decade-and-a-half-old project for adolescents immigrating from the former Soviet Union, characterized by a ‘therapeutic absorption policy’, this article examines the meaning of ‘therapeutic’ absorption in shaping a new Israeli citizen within the current social context. In order to clarify the historical uniqueness of this phenomenon, Na'aleh's absorption paradigm is compared to Youth Aliyah – the project that absorbed youngsters in a distinctly different ideological period of Israeli history (early 1940s), particularly with regard to the status of Zionism. A locus of comparison is the perceptions of the absorbing personnel and the absorbed immigrants in both ventures. The main claim of this article is that the psychologizing of the absorption apparatus both challenges and fortifies the traditional role of statist Zionism under global, postmodern conditions, typified by the erosion of the nation-state and questioning the moral status of its constitutive ethos. Therapeutic absorption transforms the newcomer into the object of therapeutic intervention rather than assimilative education. However, it simultaneously enables the ‘Russian’ teenagers from a ‘pre-therapeutic society’ to internalize a ‘therapeutic habitus’, which grants them the skills and competency to become a ‘local’ and to attain symbolic goods significant in their new social environment. Therapeutic personnel, characterized by emotional skills and cultural proximity to the absorbed pupils, rather than ideological identification with Zionist project, serve as a newer version of traditional agents of Israeli socialization, by virtue of their own unique course of absorption in Israel that blends the process of ‘becoming Israeli’ with socialization into a professional/therapeutic culture.