Being Canada's national citizen: difference and the economics of multicultural nationalism

This paper examines the ambivalent positioning of difference in western multicultural nation-states in the neoliberal moment. It does so by analyzing the multiple and contradictory ways that the figure of Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese Canadian woman, was utilized in the service of Canadian nation-building. Much heralded as the first racialized minority (and second woman) to be appointed to the highest public position in the land, Clarkson was chosen to represent and define the Canadian nation to itself and to the international community because of, and not in spite of, her difference. Drawing on media and government texts, this paper highlights the narratives that shaped the meaning of Clarkson's appointment as well as the narratives that were negated. The author emphasizes how gender, in addition to class, race and ethnicity, was central to Clarkson's appointment by analyzing how the disassociation between women and Asian capital was key to her ability to speak for us as one of us. In addition to Canadian government and corporate elite courting of Asian capital, gender was also key to the other narratives that could not be spoken, Clarkson's interracial marriage and discourses of miscegenation.     

Post-imperial democracies and new projects of nationhood in Eurasia: transforming the nation through migration in Russia and Turkey

This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-building around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the migration patterns between the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Russia, and Turkey reinforce these new projects of nationhood, aimed at reshaping society and building a new collective identity. By focusing on the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, most studies of nationalism and nation-building overlook the decisive transformations nation-building projects have been going through, particularly in Eurasia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an observable and major change in the definition of the nation not just in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus where it is somewhat less surprising but also in Russia and even in Turkey which was not part of the Soviet Union. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia and Turkey embarked on different nation-building projects. This article argues that despite, or perhaps because of, the stark differences in the policies adopted by various states in post-Soviet Eurasia, the patterns of emigration and immigration reinforced the new nation-building projects underway in Russia and Turkey.     

重新定义民族主义

目前国内外关于民族主义定义众说纷纭。在分析研究已有民族主义概念的基础上,本文试图重新定义民族主义,即民族主义是指在人类社会历史发展进程中,建立于民族共同体基础之上的维护和扩大本民族政治、经济和文化等权益的思想观念、理论思潮和实践活动,以促进本民族的生存、独立和发展。     

Constructing nation: national narratives of history teachers in Ukraine

This paper scrutinizes history narratives as a practice of a specific kind of nation-building and analyzes the role of history teachers in this process. Based on 60 semi-structural interviews with history teachers in Ukraine, this paper analyzes three major national narratives used by history teachers to produce specific meaning of social identity among school pupils. This paper shows how history teachers reproduce national identity in their classrooms by altering the teaching program and textbook narratives and by promoting their vision of a nation, rights of specific groups to participate in nation-building process and defining enemies and allies.     

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.     

Cultivating an Australian Sentiment: John Christian Watson's Narrative of White Nationalism

Contemporary observers and historians have interpreted Australia's first Labor Prime Minister, John Christian Watson, as an ideal leader for Labor's early participation in nation-building following the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Little attention has been paid to the values Watson brought to Labor's participation in nation-building. Race, defence and the ‘cultivation of an Australian sentiment’ formed the recurring themes of Watson's national narrative. Compelled by a need to fix an identity from the peripheral territories of empire as a British subject and the leader of white Australians in a nation, as he claimed, that ‘we have made our own’, Watson's narrative provides insights into the anxieties of racialised white identity in the federation period—an identity tested by conflicting class and national loyalties.     

The origins and nature of American nationalism

This article critically analyzes the origins and nature of American nationalism. The first part examines the historiographical debate on the question in what period the formation of an American national identity occurred, i.e. before or after the American Revolution. The second part is concerned with the nature of American nationalism, casting doubt on the claim that American nationalism is exceptional, i.e. inherently different and morally superior to other nationalisms. It refutes the exceptionalist claim by applying recent findings in European nationalism research to the American case and by reinterpreting American nationalism not as an introspective phenomenon but as a demarcation process.     

Religion as nationalism: the religious nationalism of American Christian Zionists

The term ‘religious nationalism’ is often theorized, at worst as antithetically conjunctive where religion is defined as the allegiance to God and nationalism is the allegiance to the nation, and at best as instrumental. I argue here that this fusion of religion and nationalism takes place most convincingly if we understand religion as adherent performance rather than solely as a theological container of tenants. I illustrate this through American Christian Zionist performances and discourses regarding their self-imagined identity as being in a national diaspora for Israel. I argue this religious nationalism is possible because Christian Zionist performances of a national allegiance to Israeli Jews are grounded in an apocalyptic narrative of the future.     

Honour bound in Australia: From defensive nationalism to critical nationalism

The imprisonment and trial of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks catalysed widespread public debate in Australia over issues of nationalism and citizenship. This article discusses the competing forms of nationalism that underpinned this debate, especially critical nationalism, which evidences both a critique of and caring for the nation. Following Ghassan Hage's notion of the dichotomy between national caring and worrying, the article looks at a theatre production based on the David Hicks story to illustrate the role the arts play in challenging and redefining our attachment to the nation.     

The role of corruption in reintegration: experiences of Iraqi Kurds upon return from Europe

This article examines how corruption affects reintegration. The literature on return and reintegration shows that return migrants often struggle to adjust and adapt to life in their place of origin because that environment can be very different from what they grew accustomed to abroad. One stark difference is the prevalence and meaning of corruption. In many sending countries that migrants come from and then return to, corruption is endemic. By contrast, in many receiving countries that migrants go to and return from, it is incidental. Yet, we know little about how the discrepancy affects reintegration. This study examines how corruption affects the psychosocial and economic reintegration of Iraqi Kurds returning to Iraqi Kurdistan from Norway and the United Kingdom. Interviews with returnees reveal that they consider corruption a major challenge for their own reintegration. Psychosocially, it alienates them from the ideology of the Kurdish nation-building project, challenges their identities, undermines a sense of belonging and creates insecurity. Economically, it shapes economic behaviour and outcomes by obstructing entrepreneurship, producing relative deprivation and conditioning their employability.     

‘What better advertisement could Australia have?’ Encyclopaedias and nation-building

In the early twentieth century, Australians committed to nation-building had to be inventive. With neither a foundation myth nor a unique defining history to resort to, other cultural products were created to succour Australia's postcolonial development. Whereas one such cultural product, the Sydney Bulletin, has been examined in Australian historiography, the role of encyclopaedias has been neglected. It is argued here that the Australian Encyclopaedia (1925–26) plumped the cheeks of the nation; and that encyclopaedias, despite their claims to objectivity, are surprisingly effective in the communication of political ideas.     

二战后菲律宾穆斯林民族构建的尝试——对摩洛分离运动的另一种解释

二战后菲律宾南部穆斯林掀起的摩洛分离运动,不仅是群体要求分立的反抗行为,更是穆斯林精英利用本群体历史上形成的凝聚力而进行的摩洛民族构建的尝试。他们选取民族象征性称号、重新谱写南部历史,试图为当时的分离运动创造合法依据。然而摩洛民族认同并没有真实反映南部地区多元文化的本质,其学理上和实践中的缺陷与矛盾使得穆斯林精英的尝试最终失败,摩洛分离运动也渐入低潮。     

20世纪末以来俄罗斯哥萨克复兴运动解析

哥萨克是俄罗斯一个典型的亚民族,在俄罗斯历史上曾起过举足轻重的作用。1919年"非哥萨克化"政策实施后,哥萨克作为一个独特的军事阶层被取消,失去其军事功能和社会地位。20世纪80年代,随着苏联国内政治环境的变化,哥萨克复兴运动在苏联境内外骤然兴起。时至今日,俄罗斯哥萨克的复兴运动经历了自发复兴阶段、社会地位确立阶段、注册和发展壮大阶段。俄罗斯政府针对哥萨克颁布相应的法规条文,确立哥萨克的社会地位和权利义务及其发展趋势。     

The problem of Iraqi nationalism

This article analyses the development of a tenuous Iraqi national identity since the creation of the Iraqi state in 1920. Informed by the ideas of Anthony D. Smith, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, it argues that various political actors in Iraq have sought to reshape historical memory and thus forge a national identity. Despite many setbacks and a long series of authoritarian regimes seeking to appropriate Iraqiness for their own political purposes, and recently the threat from Kurdish irredentism, this article nevertheless contends that an Iraqi cultural ‘ethnicity’ has been created over the past nine decades.     

Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states

The emergence of Protestant nations in sixteenth-century Europe was driven by the sudden rediscovery of biblical nationalism, a political model that did not separate the religious from the political. Biblical nationalism was new because pre-Reformation Europeans encountered the Hebrew Bible through paraphrases and abridgments. Full-text Bibles revealed a programmatic nationalism backed by unmatched authority as the word of God to readers primed by Reformation theology to seek models in the Bible for the reform of their own societies. Sixteenth-century biblical nationalism was the unintended side effect of a Reformation intended to save souls.     

从阿拉伯民族主义到国家民族主义

本文分析了中东民族主义发展演变的轨迹 :从阿拉伯民族主义到国家和地区民族主义的历史过程。重点分析了阿拉伯民族主义由盛转衰、国家和地区民族主义兴起的主要原因 ,揭示了中东阿拉伯世界民族主义的发展趋势     

The state of the nation: the Norwegian King’s annual addresses – a window on a shifting nationhood

ABSTRACT

This article supplements the limited research on the monarchy by highlighting the symbolic and cultural value of Norway’s Royal House in nation-building. To maintain his unifying and non-partisan role, the king must balance between conflicting perspectives on national identity. Our analysis of royal New Year’s speeches 1960–2014 examines the concepts of ‘Norwegianness’ conveyed, noting the increasing focus on diversity and a multicultural society.     

Migration decision-making and migration industry in the Indonesia–Malaysia corridor

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the involvement of migration industry (MI) in the migration system of Indonesia and Malaysia. The two countries share an extensive border and have much in common in culture and history but they are very different in geographical size, population and economic development, the latter being a main cause for labour migration from Indonesia to Malaysia. The changing context of government policies generates new niches for migration services taken up by formal and informal intermediaries, thereby confronting migrants with a varied migration-decision field and thresholds during their migration process. Much of the migration is legal, but a large part of it also takes place outside the control of the national governments. While taking mental processes in migration decision-making as starting point, we analyse how the MI, by way of fostering, facilitating and controlling geographic mobility and localised employment, connects to the production and negotiating of three migration decision thresholds faced by migrants.     

When Does Language Become Exclusivist? Linguistic Politics in Catalonia

This article traces the development of linguistic policy in Catalonia over the last few decades and argues that language and linguistic policy continue to be crucial elements in the Catalan nation-building project. In addition, the growing politicisation of language has increasingly become a divisive issue amongst Catalonia's political elite. The Catalan linguistic landscape has moved from one based on linguistic 'normalisation' to a situation where bilingualism is the norm, but the degree to which one language predominates or should predominate over the other continues to be subject to intense public debate. Finally, the article argues that the linguistic consensus which prevailed among Catalan political parties for nearly two decades has slowly begun to disintegrate, accompanied by a growing debate on the use of language as an exclusivist mark of identity in Catalan society.     

The imagined ‘other’ and its shifts: politics and identifications in Turkish Cyprus

This article addresses the puzzling case of shifting identity constructions in northern Cyprus, from ethnic to civic–territorial in 2003 and back to ethnic in 2009. It is argued that these shifts occurred when external factors (EU and Turkey) opened/closed windows of opportunity for internal elites’ reconfigurations. It then explains societal responsiveness to these nation-building changes sustaining that, over time, a process transforming the perception of the ‘other’ took place from below and a civic–territorial identity layer (Cypriotness) developed along the ethnic-Turkish layer. These coexist and fluctuate depending on the given context of choice.