Postcolonial guilt and national identity: historical injustice and the Australian settler state

In nations with a record of historical injustice, guilt about the past is deeply implicated in both efforts towards reconciliation and the construction of national identity. This is as true in notionally postcolonial nations, where past injustice is often denied or avoided, as it is in situations where conflict and injustice have been more recent, overt or visible to the rest of the world. Taking the Australian case as an example, this article considers the dimensions of historical collective guilt, and explores the implications of that guilt for contemporary national identity in postcolonial nations. It argues that until a nation is able to deal with social psychological barriers to addressing historical injustice, it is likely to construct and maintain a narrow and defensive form of nationalism.     

White Australian identities and Indigenous land rights

Land has been central to debates about the relationship between Indigenous (First Nations) and non-Indigenous Australian identities since colonial violence founded the nation. How do white Australians understand Indigenous land rights? This paper draws on an empirical ethnographic study with rural people who self-identify as ‘white Australian’ to analyze the key discourses of land, identity and nation and the complexities of how whiteness and race is socially produced and lived in rural Australia. The study found that white Australian discourses of nation and identity limit most of the respondents' ability to construct their identity in relation to Indigenous sovereignty.     

‘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.     

‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.     

“中华民族多元一体格局”理论定位研究

1988年,费孝通提出"中华民族多元一体格局",一方面体现出对经典人类学社会发展理论和马克思主义民族史观的继承和反思,另一方面,立足本土历史事实和思想基础,将近代以来有关"中华民族"的概念和理论推向了一个全新的高度,并成为当前举国共负"中华民族伟大复兴"历史重任的思想基础。通过勾勒三十年来"中华多元一体格局"的理论定位从结构论到过程论价值释放的总体趋势,指出在此理论定位背景下,相关学术研究应用移用多,对话反思少,整体显现出重当下轻历史的现状;而有关"中华民族多元一体格局"形成的历史过程、逻辑与机制等议题的深入研究尚未充分展开。这在一定程度上限制了对该理论进行拓展、深化与提升的可能。从整合中华民族史的目标出发,基于多年来对于"过程论"的参悟和思考及对当前相关研究成果的吸纳和反思,主张为中华民族史的整合与建构探索新的路径。     

百年来党的中华民族共同体意识历史逻辑与铸牢路径研究

铸牢中华民族共同体意识是党的十九大写进党章的重大决策,是党和国家与时俱进的政策创新,并有其深刻的历史与现实的众多根据。而在这众多根据的背后是中华民族共同体的根本利益。在中国共产党为中华民族的伟大复兴而团结奋斗的百年以来的各个阶段,始终伴随着中华民族共同体的政策利益与政策认识的互动的逻辑:横向表现为中华民族共同体政策利益的物理空间与政策认识的思维空间的辩证统一,纵向表现为政策利益与政策认识为一致的自生、共生至同生的交叉并存的历史特征与趋势。这种历史特征与趋势在新民主主义革命、社会主义改造和探索、反右扩大化和文革、社会主义建设等时期得以逐步完善,并发展成为习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的民族政策新战略。为实现民族政策新战略,应从人民本位上把握中华民族共同体的根本利益,从政治团结上构建中华民族共同体的利益联结,从经济合作上健全中华民族共同体的利益互动,从文化交融上促进中华民族共同体的利益实现。     

Ethnohistorical Construction of Identity: The Lviv Paradigm

The Italian populist movement Lega Nord once famously claimed that the north of Italy was a nation (‘Padania’) that should be granted independence. Padania was posited by the party through a combination of outrageous anti-Italian statements, gatherings in places of historic and symbolic significance and through the selective appropriation of the past. This article takes this new ‘nation’ as a case study through which to further our understanding of the discursive strategies of nationalist movements, as they reinvent and rewrite history and redefine identities. It argues that some within the Lega, far from simply adopting a covert strategy of reinvention of the past (like many of their fellow nationalists do), openly advocated such strategy as a means of ‘liberation’. Moreover, the analysis highlights crucial contradictions between: the reality of strong, heterogeneous local identities in northern Italy and the effort of creating a new unitary community in the area; the needs of a hyper-modern economy and the longing for a mythic past; and, finally, a dubious rediscovered paganism and rooted Catholic traditions. The article argues that the lack of territorial and symbolic coherence in northern Italy was a crucial factor in making the Lega's attempts at re-invention less than compelling.     

The uses and abuses of history: understanding contemporary U.S. immigration*

This article focuses on history, specifically on how history affects our understanding of contemporary immigration. The spotlight is on the United States and the two massive immigrations of the last one hundred and forty years as well as on the integration of immigrants and their children. History is what the present chooses to remember about the past, and to that extent it inevitably distorts. This distortion is what is meant when I use the phrase abuses of history. Myths about the past, selective retellings, cherry-picked examples – they all shape how the story of immigration in the United States is perceived today. History, however, can be an extremely effective and illuminating tool. In examining the uses of history, the article pays special attention to the way that earlier immigrants and their children had an impact on cultural, social, and political institutions and patterns, which, in turn, helped shape the context for present-day arrivals. History, in fact, can deepen and expand our understanding of the contemporary immigrant and second generation; it can also provide some useful hints about the future.     

Narratives of national belonging: the domestic,the wild,and the mutant in Australian film

This article explores understandings of postcolonial national belonging through an analysis of cinematic representations of humans, animals and the environment. It does so by analyzing a series of Australian films about plants, animals or people who are out of place or out of control. The article registers some of the changing representations of Australian flora, fauna and, by association people, as native, domesticated, simpatico, feral and wild; interpreting these shifts as recalibrations of a moral hierarchy of cultural belonging. Films including Lantana (2001) Dir. Ray Lawrence; Razorback (1984) Dir. Russell Mulchay; Rogue (2007) Dir. Greg Mclean; and Black Water (2007) Dirs. David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki are read in terms of political anxieties. Drawing on work ‘that insists humans and animals are currently bound in a complex network of relationships’, I use these films to explore issues of the nation, place, belonging in relation to aliens and natives. Given that in the past 20 years there has been increasing recognition of the history of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples but also a different but related blossoming of environmental nationalism, the key question that animates this research is how these understandings are represented in film and what work animals and plants might have played in filmic cultural representations of national belonging.     

Connecting cultures: rethinking Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘ideals of education’

In 1917, Rabindranath Tagore declared, ‘There is only one history – the history of man’ [Tagore, R. (1917/2009). Nationalism. New Delhi: Penguin, p. 65]. This concept of ‘one-history’, and by extension ‘one-world’ is at the heart of his conceptualisation of what I call, education-sans-boundaries and, as I see it, one of the ways to bring a glocal unity. His goal was to establish the dignity of human relationships across boundaries. Thus, for him, local education and global education should not be two ends of a spectrum but overlapping categories instead. Moreover, the education-sans-boundaries should help in restoring the balance and harmony between man and society, knowledge and knowledge, and nation and nation. In this paper, I will explore Tagore’s relevant writings on education, with a focus on his concerted educational efforts to negotiate the boundaries of nation and geography to restore the lost rhythm. In the highly fractured times in which he lived, Tagore saw education in India was in a double-layered crisis under colonialism and growing nationalism. His was a non-dogmatic defence of harmony and principles of unity, and he tried to achieve this in his education models by going beyond the realms of collapsing of cultural differences and without sacrificing local/individual ties and that admits to no artificial boundaries – political, ideological or geographic. The present attempt, therefore, engages with Tagore’s distinct conceptualisation of open-ended education models by looking at his scholarly-and-practical efforts. It suggests that transmission of cultures has provided a ‘broad-basis’ of education in India and can offer healthy conditions for, and directions towards, building transnational/international solidarities.     

To be or not to be an Australian: Focus on Muslim youth

In 2001, 67% of Australians identified themselves as Christians and only 1.5% as Muslims, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Other Australians are Jews, Buddhists and Hindus – to name just a few of the religious minorities. Since 1975 until recently when the Anti-Discrimination Act was legislated, multiculturalism has been the official policy of the Federal Government. Yet in these terror-ridden times, the policy – however interpreted – has well and truly fallen into disfavour. This article discusses both the historical and contemporary dimensions of Muslim Australians’ national identity, focusing particularly on Muslim youth. It examines how one group of Australian-born Muslims exhibited their national identity during the Second World War and how the newly arrived Muslims feel about their identity during the ‘War on Terror’. The article is based on both primary and secondary sources – particularly on oral testimonies.     

中国民族史学与中华民族形成史研究的新思考:20世纪的学术回顾与理论反思

本文简要回顾了 2 0世纪中国民族史学的成就 ,特别是从族别史研究 ,经民族关系史到中华民族形成史的学术发展历程 ,分析了中国民族史学发展三大阶段的基本特征、核心目的与任务 ,从时空变化的基本视角检讨了理论认识与民族史学发展的密切关系。本文认为 ,从族别史研究发展到民族关系史在中国民族史学发展中具有重要意义 ;80年代后期兴起的“族群关系理论”对民族史学的发展起到重要作用 ;费孝通提出的中华民族“多元一体格局理论”奠定了中国民族史研究的整体史观 ,促进了民族史学研究的全面深入和发展。     

A history of nonviolence? The social construction of Costa Rican peaceful identity

Crime, violence, and insecurity are among the most important social topics in contemporary Costa Rica. These three issues play a central role in the media, politics, and everyday life, and the impression has emerged that security has changed for the worse and that society is now permanently threatened. However, crime statistics do not support this perception. The paper thus asks why violence and crime generate such huge fear in society. The thesis is that the Costa Rican national identity – with Costa Rica constructed as a nonviolent nation – impedes a realistic discussion about the phenomena and their causes, and simultaneously provides a platform for sensationalism and the social construction of fear.     

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.     

Arrivals and Arrivals: Royal Travel at Botany Bay

This article looks at how the sites of the beach and the airport have functioned as chronotopes of 'arrivalism' in Australian history. I suggest that narratives surrounding Queen Elizabeth's 1970 royal tour of Australia, initiated and terminated at Sydney Airport, drew on existing structures of primitivism and modernity at the site of the beach. A re-enactment of Cook's landing at Botany Bay on Australia Day 1970 thus re-inscribed the nation within global space: it showed aboriginal people bearing witness to the (re-)arrival of the colonists. This narrative of national progress linked the British colonial project and Australian economic development — just as Cook 'discovered' Australia, the Queen's flight 'discovered' anew the international space of air travel and trade. A second re-enactment by trade unions and environmental protestors nearby on Australia Day 1976 contested this narrative, and offered an alternative nationalist vision at the site of the beach.     

Words and actions: Italian ultras and neo-fascism

Over the past two decades the link – perceived and actual – between political extremism and football fans has been the subject of academic, political, and policing debate. It is not rare to witness manifestations of intolerance and ideological statements referring to regional, national and international issues at football stadia. In Italian football stadia, political representation has been evident for decades; politics has been integral to all realms of Italian society and culture since the origin of the nation. As one of the most significant Italian cultural practices, football has not been an exception. This combination of theory and action inspires thousands of young male football supporters. The football stadium might thus be interpreted as a twenty-first century social Agorá, where political opinions – otherwise ghettoized in society – can be freely expressed in pursuit of a wider consensus. This paper explores the under-researched milieu of neo-fascist ideology as displayed in contemporary Italian football stadia. Contributing original material and employing as conceptual frameworks the New Consensus Theory on fascism and the works of Julius Evola and Georges Sorel, this analysis hypothesizes that the neo-fascist tenets manifested by the ideologically-oriented ‘ultras’ fan groups, may be understood as both a consequence of, and a resistance against the dominant socio-cultural and political values of contemporary Italy. The research conducted between 2003–2007 sought to evaluate two internationally renowned ultras groups located in the Italian capital of Rome: the Boys of AS Roma and the Irriducibili of SS Lazio who enact their performances on their respective ‘curve’ [football terraces] of the city's Olympic stadium. Utilizing the ethnographic method, unique access was achieved in a notoriously difficult research milieu bringing the researcher into the social-cultural world of the participants and to the echelons of the extra-parliamentary Italian far right. Research sought to uncover the groups’ social interactions, values, and political beliefs, as a way of contributing to an understanding of both the Italian ultras of the twenty-first century and indeed the wider political milieu of the modern nation-state of Italy.     

20年来有关清代前期治理西北蒙藏地区政策研究述评

清代前期对蒙藏民族地区的成功施治,堪称历代中央政府处理这一地区政治统辖关系的典范,素为后人所称道,也为研究者所重视。20年来,史学界对这一领域的研究取得了新进展,成果主要体现在治理的指导思想、基本政策、具体措施、管理机构、统治效果等各个层面。对之进行必要的总结,尤其进行以治理西北蒙藏地区为重点的梳理与评析,指出不足,不仅从整体上对于深化治理蒙藏地区的研究十分必要,也对西北民族史、边疆史、区域史的研究大有助益。     

‘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.     

Mixed matters in Australia

ABSTRACT

Mapping attitudes toward intermarriage – who is and who is NOT considered an acceptable mate – offers an incisive means through which imaginings of belonging – ethnicity, nationhood, citizenship, race, and culture – can be critically evaluated. Looking specifically at Australia, despite a growing body of research on whiteness, and Mixedness, there is very little qualitative research on attitudes toward mixing among the different groups in Australia. Therefore, in this article, I document attitudes towards ‘mixed’ marriage through focus group interviews in communities across Australia to explore what boundaries, if any, exist and the attitudes of different groups toward intermarriage and ‘mixed’ families in Australia. Drawing from these 69 focus groups conducted across seven cities and the surrounding area of the six states of Australia: Darwin, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, and Melbourne with homogenous groups based on the ways Australians self-identify – indigenous (Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander), white (differentiating if applicable between those who identify as Australian as opposed to European or South African), African Australian, and other groups at various community locations, I argue that national discourses of multiculturalism and imaginings of who and what constitutes being Australian heavily influence attitudes toward mixing. Furthermore, there is a clear hierarchy of desirability in terms of who is considered marriable, with pattern in the narratives and counter-narratives offered by different groups. These findings are presented within a larger discussion of how the contemporary situation in Australia compares to the institutional, individual, and ideological practices that discourage mixing globally.     

霍华德政府时期澳大利亚移民人口结构变化及其社会影响——多元文化主义的视角

作为一个拥有悠久移民历史的国家,移民问题贯穿在澳大利亚历史上的每一个篇章中,而霍华德政府时期的移民人口结构则奠定了当代澳大利亚移民人口结构的基本形态,因此研究霍华德政府时期的移民人口结构更有助于认识当代澳大利亚社会。本文从回顾澳大利亚的移民历史着手,分别从移民的类别与年龄、来源国、性别结构、地区分布、受教育水平与英语水平这五方面来研究霍华德政府时期移民人口结构的特点,探寻移民人口结构变化对澳大利亚社会产生的诸多影响。