Towards pluralistic and grassroots national identity: a study of national identity representation by the Kurdish diaspora on social media

ABSTRACT

This study examines the distinctive roles that social media play for the diasporic Kurds in regard to the political and nationhood process. It attempts to understand how the notion of Kurdayeti [Kurdish nationalism] has been affected by the growth of Kurdish social media. It argues: although the Kurdish political activism has been accelerated by the rise of social media and the ethnic identity discussions have become much more visible, the idea of a unified imagined Kurdish nation has been affected by the existing socio-political fragmentations among the Kurds and transformed into a participatory and pluralistic imagined community.     

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.     

Postcolonial Hong Kong identity: hybridising the local and the national

This paper investigates the changing contour of Hong Kong's cultural identity. This is an empirical longitudinal study which conceptualises Hong Kong identity as the cultural affect of the local from the national — a spatial distance between ‘us’ and ‘others’. While the citizenship of Hong Kong is a closed issue after China resumed Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997, the question of cultural identity is open to negotiation. The transition marked the apex of the identification. After 1997, however, Hong Kong people might not have the strong identification with China as appeared during the political transition in the high intensity of media coverage of the re‐nationalisation. Yet, what is evident is that Hong Kong people no longer strongly oppose the Chinese authorities. More importantly, people started to face the reality of appropriating a new dual Hong Kong‐China identity, and hence there is a clear trend of increasing identification with the Hong Kong as well as the Chinese authorities; the legitimacy of the two are more likely perceived to be aligned. Hong Kong people manifested an identity which has become increasingly hybridised between the local and national identity.     

In the Name of God and Nation: The Overlapping Influence of Separatism and Religion on Ethnic Conflict

Processes of migration, diaspora and exile offer diverse and complex environments for the renegotiation of social identities. Immigrants and refugees must not only adapt to the material circumstances of uprooting but must also confront, maintain or recreate a sense of self, often in contexts which are vastly different and fraught with constraints, in which they are removed from their familiar social networks and in which their previous identities may be of little meaning or relevance to the new society. In confronting an altered social status and radically different circumstances, individuals may be required to come to terms with a new or reconstructed sense of ethnic or national identity. This process is not only a personal one but involves affiliations with others who engage in similar interpretations and adaptive strategies and enmity toward those who do not' Field, 1994: 432 . Such a process can be seen as part of the phenomenon of transnationalism, the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement' Basch et al., 1994: 7 . One important aspect of transnationalism is the role that immigrants and refugees play in political activities in both their countries of origin and residence, and their political commitment often has important implications for their sense of self, particularly when those political activities are directed towards the creation of a new homeland for oppressed minorities. This paper examines the role played by diaspora intellectuals in promoting a nationalist discourse which calls for the creation of an independent state for the Oromo, who constitute one of the largest ethnic populations in Africa and the manner in which their participation in such discursive activities allow them to engage in a reconstruction of their own identities and in the shaping of national and personal senses of the self.     

Neglected middle men? Gatekeepers in homeland politics. Case: Flemish nationalists' receptivity to the plight of Turkey's Kurds

Studies of transnational political activism or diaspora politics have tended to disregard the importance of political gatekeepers in the pursuit of immigrants' and refugees' political change back home Furthermore, when attention has been given to the crucial role of gatekeepers for politically engaged migrants to negotiate their ways into host-country politics, it has often been confined just to resumés of those involved and the activities undertaken. Rarely has research engaged with questioning political gatekeepers themselves about their personal beliefs underlying their commitments to the cause. Nor has research often looked into how certain alignments and cooperative relationships between transnational political actors and their gatekeepers in receiving countries came into being, and how such genealogies might lend insight into the transnational advocacy networks and the particular types of activities that transnational political actors have developed. This paper aims to help fill this lacuna, by providing original and unique insights into the genealogy of Flemish nationalists' support for Turkey's Kurdish nationalist movement, and thus also to testify to how investigations into political gatekeepers can improve our understanding of the ways in which transnationalism materializes.     

Statelessness in a world of nation-states: the cases of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK

Mass displacement in the Middle East is a major political challenge for contemporary Middle Eastern and Western states. As a consequence, statelessness has emerged as one of the central political issues in relation to the collapse and weakening of the states in the Middle East. Through deploying a qualitative inquiry and interviews with 50 Kurdish immigrants, this article investigates how members of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK conceive and experience statelessness in a world of unequal nation-states and hierarchical citizenship. Since diasporas are important non-state actors in nation-building processes, it is important to analyse their diasporic visions and the ways they challenge or reinforce the power of the nation-state in the context of migration. While from a legal or a right-based approach, the solution to statelessness is found in acquisition of a nationality/citizenship, I posit that in a world structured by the political normativity of the nation-state, nations without states will continue to be in search of national self-determination, political autonomy and sovereignty in the international comity of sovereign nations.     

The unbearable proximity of the Orient: Political religion,multiculturalism and the retrieval of South Asian identities

The phenomenon of religion -- specifically its recent return as 'political religion', and its seeming incompatibility with the demands of multiculturalism -- continues to be a vexed issue in attempts to rethink retrievals of South Asian identity beyond a neo-colonial imaginary. This move 'beyond' has routinely followed a deconstruction of the 'religious effects' of Orientalism whose conceptual matrix, some argue, can be located in Hegel's writings on history and religion. Taking its cue from Derrida's enigmatic remark -- 'what if religio remained untranslatable?' -- this paper re-examines Hegel's writings on India, revealing the workings of an ontotheological matrix which underpins not only the recent resurgences of religious nationalism or political religion in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, but also, paradoxically, the secular frameworks of contemporary multiculturalism and anti-imperialist critique. Despite sharing the same onto-theological matrix, these bastions of secular modernity still refuse to recognise that retrievals of religious identity might constitute a significant reorientation of the political, instead continuing to put into play a series of well rehearsed distancing techniques which serve merely to sanitize the 'religious effects' of the Orient.     

The dynamics of negation: identity formation among Palestinian Arab college students inside the green line

How does granting certificates of ‘business clean of Arab workers’ to owners of shops, stores, and Jewish businesses who prove they are not employing Arab workers shape identity? Identity development involves making sense of, and coming to terms with, the social world one inhabits, recognizing choices and making decisions within contexts, and finding a sense of unity within one's self while claiming a place in the world. Since there is no objective, ahistoric, universal trans-cultural identity, views of identity must be historically and culturally situated. This paper explores identity issues among members of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. While there is a body of literature exploring this subject, we will offer a different perspective by contextualizing the political and economic contexts that form an essential foundation for understanding identity formation among this minority group. We argue that, as a genre of settler colonialism, ‘pure settlement colonies’ involve the conquering not only of land, but of labor as well, excluding the natives from the economy. Such an exclusion from the economy is significant for its cultural, social, and ideological consequences, and therefore is especially significant in identity formation discussed in the paper. We briefly review existing approaches to the study of identity among Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and illustrate our theoretical contextual framework. Finally, we present and discuss findings from a new study of identity among Palestinian Arab college students in Israel through the lens of this framework.     

To see ourselves as others see us: identity and attitudes towards immigration amongst civic nationalists

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different conceptions of national identity can be linked to attitudes towards cultural pluralism. The tensions between more culturally pluralistic societies and sustained support for nationalism represent an important political issue in modern western European politics. Such tensions are of particular relevance for stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) for whom national/regional identity is a major political driver. This article empirically tests the relationship between different conceptions of national identity and attitudes towards cultural pluralism in two SNRPs—the Scottish National Party and the Frisian National Party. The article draws upon evidence from two unique full party membership studies and is supported with evidence from documentary analysis. A key finding is that the manner in which members conceptualise national identity has significant implications for their attitudes towards cultural pluralism, which has the potential of becoming a source of tension within SNRPs. A key implication of the article is that there is evidence that attitudes of general members and officially stated party positions and narratives diverge on issues relating to cultural pluralism and national identity. These tensions could potentially be harmful for the party's overall civic image.     

Taiwan and ROC: A critical analysis of President Chen Shui-bien's construction of Taiwan identity in national speeches

Names used to address Taiwan – such as taiwan and zhonghuamingguo (Republic of China [ROC]) – are symbols defining Taiwan's political realities, each with their own unique historical significance. Since his election in 2000, Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bien has had to alternate between taiwan and ROC to strike a balance among conflicting ideas about Taiwan's national identity. The act is grounded in complex political discourse dictating that Taiwan must not be seen as separate from the sinic world and simultaneously to respond to steadily rising Taiwanese consciousness. Facing intercessions by the United States and China, as well as ever-present domestic clashes, rhetorical exigency requires the president to fashion unique political discourse concerning what Taiwan is and ought to be. This study explores how these names and related expressions are used in Chen's public addresses to the nation during his two-term tenure from 2000 to 2008, and how their development reflects the struggle over Taiwan's national identity.     

Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism,Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe

This article explores the connection in the late eighteenth century between the invention of citizenship and the obfuscation of local, corporate or national identity under the guise of cosmopolitanism. The common premise in much recent writing on nationalism is that the nation, even if it is an 'imagined' community, provided the critical framework in which political identity and, hence, political participation first became possible for ordinary people. However, it is clear that in absolutist Europe, private subjects were often best able to make themselves into political actors on either the national or the continental stage by de-situating themselves rhetorically, that is, claiming to speak from no place, no position, and no name except 'friend of humanity' or 'citizen of the world'. Moreover, this literary strategy of insisting on one's fungible individuality—the notion that one was no more than a generic 'simple citizen' and no less than 'the plenipotentate of my own ideas' in a culture obsessed with social position and family name—ultimately helped to bolster an alternative (and often historically overlooked) way of thinking about relations among states and the individuals within them that marked an early challenge to the hegemony of national interest.     

加拿大原住民自治政府:联邦主义下制度构建与政治文化相背离的困境

本文指出 ,加拿大原住民自治政府虽然具有道德正义性而且其合法性与加拿大联邦主义的原则不冲突 ,但其作为一个在联邦制度内的制度构建与加拿大的主导政治文化和政治权力结构却有一种背离矛盾关系。这种主导共同体与亚集体认同矛盾的现象在多民族国家的政治制度构建中是带有普遍性的问题 ,如何在宪政建设中解决这个问题对加拿大联邦制的前景至关重要 ,而且对中国这样的多民族国家将来的宪政建设也有很大的启示作用     

Navigations: Insularity versus Cosmopolitanism in the Bahamas: Formality and Informality in an Arichipelagic Nation

Bahamians have traditionally considered themselves as one people, despite the fragmentation of the territory they inhabit, and the porous nature of the islands' natural boundaries. Paradoxically, the inhabitants of the archipelago are far more cosmopolitan and globally integrated than their apparent isolation would suggest. This article looks at how variation throughout the archipelago makes the imagination of a single identity difficult. Issues of identity, for instance, are rendered fluid by the islands' separation from one another. Thus, the means by which identity is created and maintained, and the various symbols used to cognise, legitimise and incorporate this fragmentation into a consciousness of self, are both fluid. The following examples are used to show how Bahamians make sense of these paradoxes and so knit a common bond from the apparent fragmentation of their land: racial and ethnic identity, the manipulation of symbols such as 'family' and 'home', communication and discourse among the islands, and questions of national versus local politics.     

Social construction of national identity: Taiwanese versus Chinese consciousness

The struggle to break away from the parent state and claim independence often results in political unrest, terrorist activities and even ethnic cleansing. Understanding the nature of the secessionist movement does not only preserve national unity, but can also avoid conflict and violence, and maintain peace. Irredentist and secessionist advocators generally defend themselves in terms of common blood, race or culture. None of them regards the issue from the human agency theory, namely Weber-Thomas-Berger's social construction theory. This paper uses phenomenological analysis to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during socialization. Individuals make sense of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become the actor's stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political conflict. This theory is applied to the Taiwan Strait conflict. People in Taiwan are searching for national identity, manifested in the processes of Sinicization and Taiwanization. The struggle between Chinese and Taiwanese consciousness is the underlying cause of conflict within Taiwan and across the Taiwan Strait. The growing tendency of Taiwanization and diminution of Sinicization in Taiwan render the Cross-Strait relation vulnerable. The paper concludes that Cross-Strait exchanges and communication provide opportunities for people to understand each other and re-define their national identity, hence resulting in a peaceful political resolution between Taiwan and mainland China.     

Japan.com

Contemporary Japan is in the midst of an identity crisis grounded in conditions of economic, political and social confusion and a lost sense of national direction and purpose. This paper explores the bases of Japan's evolving national political identity. It notes the construction of a sense of Japanese homogeneity and the role of official discourses in the formation of Japan's national identity. The paper argues that internationalisation, cybernetic contacts and community insecurities are undermining the received idea of what it means to be Japanese and posing fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of the contemporary Japanese state.     

Arab-American male identity negotiations: caught in the crossroads of ethnicity,religion, nationality and current contexts

We examine how the identities of male adolescents of Arab descent (ArD) relate to their current physical and phenomenological contexts and to the negative fallout from recent ethnicity-related political events. Seventy-seven ArD adolescents in seven United States middle schools with varying proportions of ArD students participated in focus-group interviews. Qualitative analysis provides evidence that adolescents' social identities depended on complex combinations of personal, situational, and contextual factors. Findings extend Spencer's PVEST theory, demonstrating that the salience of adolescents' national, pan-Arab, hyphenated Arab-American, or assimilated American identity stems from phenomenological experiences within their current context and from the cognitive processes and associated affects of their prior experiences in other proximal and distal contexts.     

Sectarianism in Alawi Syria: Exploring the Paradoxes of Politics and Religion

The religious and the political intertwine in all sectarian conflicts and the violent conflagration in Syria is no exception. However, sectarianism as an explanatory paradigm is extremely limited; it provides a monolithic reading of a complex phenomenon with a well-established historical pedigree. This paper traces the manifestation of the sectarian dimensions of the conflict, following the development of the heterodox Alawi community from a marginalized sect to its ascendance as Syria's ruling class. It focuses on how sectarian identity has constantly been exploited by hegemonic powers such as the Sunni Ottomans, the French Colonisers and, most recently, the Asad regime. The paper suggests that the only escape from the sectarian minefield is the entrenchment of a strong Syrian national identity within the framework of equal citizenship, pluralistic democracy and the protection of minority rights. This could potentially limit the interference of outside parties, but such an outcome is over-optimistic at the current juncture since vested interests outweigh the interests of internal peace and stability.     

‘The Machine that Creates Slovenians’: The Role of Slovenian Public Broadcasting in Re-affirming and Re-inventing the Slovenian National Identity

This article illustrates how Slovenian national public television came to serve as a central site of contention where fundamental issues of identity, politics and national culture were challenged, negotiated and defined. The Slovenian case offers an interesting laboratory for an analysis of the role of journalism in creating and asserting a particular version of national identity. This article explores how Slovenian television's elites (journalists, editors and officials) articulate the importance of public television as the ‘machine that creates Slovenians’. Based on an analysis of roughly twelve interviews with journalists of Slovenian national television, I argue that one of the most important cultural and political institutions in the creation, maintenance and reinforcement of Slovenian national identity was, and continues to be, national public television.     

Sketching the Identity Politics Divide and its Implications for Transformative Education

This paper commences with an acknowledgement that feminist discourses are characterised by both theoretical diversity and commonalities. Despite the non-unitariness of feminist discourses, the debates emanating from them provide partial and tentative resolutions to the issues facing women in patriarchal and capitalist societies. Accepting that much of the diversity characterising the fissures in feminist discourses spring from women's various social positionalities, as they relate to race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, language, etc., the paper explores conceptions of identity in relation to the history and scope of identity politics by linking its emergence to wide-ranging political activism and theorising which are aimed at eradicating the disenfranchisement of women and other marginalized social groups. Central to this discussion is the ongoing tension between theorists advocating essentialising aspects of identity in order to mobilise and agitate for social rights, and those calling for the recognition of identity as multiple and in-process. As a way of reconciling the tensions between essentialist identity and multiple identities, for practical purposes, some scholars advocate the formation of provisional coalitions based on principled and strategic alliances, which could be used to mobilise for social transformation.