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.     

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.     

Elderly health care: diverse cultural implication

ABSTRACT

Cultural diversities, histories, communities and nations are intricately intertwined with experiencing old age. Individual and/or household culture, norms and expectations precede the decision-making process for health-seeking behaviour that influences elderly people’s choice and use of health-care services. This study addresses the understanding of this issue among migrant Bangladeshi elderly women from culturally and linguistically diverse background, residing in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. Accordingly, data were collected through purposive sampling from 104 elderly women, all aged above 65. Processed data highlighted inconvenience – related to (language) pronunciation, socio-economic status, traditional health beliefs, understandings and practices, and reliance on alternative medical amenities.     

Being Indian in post-colonial Hong Kong: Models of ethnicity,culture and language among Sindhis and Sikhs in Hong Kong

Using data from four focus groups, this paper examines the ways in which Hong Kong Sindhis and Sikhs talk about ethnic identities and their relationships to culture and language. It finds that in all the groups, a range of different ‘cultural models’ (Gee, 1999 Gee, James Paul. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) of ethnicity, culture and language are drawn upon, with the same participants sometimes using several different models as they position themselves within the group discussions. However, the data also suggest that there may be a tendency for the two communities to foreground different models of ethnicity. Specifically, Sikh participants tend to draw more on an essentialist model of ethnicity than do the Sindhis, while the Sindhis seem to be more prepared to draw on more flexible models of the relationships between identity, culture and language.     

Book reviews

This study analyses the changing identity of immigrant and second generation Indian Jains. Using surveys and interviews in the United States and Mumbai, India, we find that Jains, a distinctive religious minority in India, acquire an ethnic identity of ‘Indian’ in the United States despite concerted efforts to maintain a religiously based identity. Social practices developed by Jains to maintain social cohesion after domestic migration within India actually aid in the creation of ethnic identity after transnational migration to the United States. The geographic context of these immigrants in the United States, including physical settlement patterns and interactions with non‐Jain Indian immigrants, also lead this group to express greater solidarity with ‘Indians’ than with ‘Jains’.     

Reflections on diaspora and soft power: community building among female US expats in Southern Europe

ABSTRACT

Illuminated by life stories of American women in Italy and Greece, our work examines a complex relationship between expatriate collectivity and soft power agency. The data were collected from in-depth interviews with 60 US nationals who live in Italy and Greece. Our findings show that these women shape as a strong diasporic collectivity through activities of ecological civic engagement, which, however, do not result in a successful exercise of soft power. The isolationist nature of their collectivity causes a number of diasporic mistakes and turns their chosen community project into a weak resource for soft power, a translation of which remains highly problematic. The basic mistakes that such expats make while exercising soft power are misunderstanding of the notions of community and its main building tool (civic engagement) as well as overall inability to learn the new culture quickly.     

Between and among the boundaries of culture: Bridging text and lived experience in the third timespace

Abstract

The anthropological notion of Culture is founded on the presupposition of a radical difference between self and other, here and there, Eurocenter and Third World. This conceptual foundation has increasingly been under challenge, as the Eurocenter is being forcibly relativized by national liberation movements from without and ‘new’ social movements from within. The relativisitc notion of cultures that are autonomous and bounded is now contested by a notion of historically grounded multiple subject positions. A jumble of cultural-political practices and forms of resistance have emerged that have variously been named hybrid, border, or diasporic. The most creative and dynamic of these resistances are located on the borders of essentialism and conjuncturalism. They refuse the binarism of identity politics versus post-modernist fragmentation, opting instead for what Sandoval terms ‘differential consciousness’. We name this terrain of practice and theory, this zone of shifting and mobile resistances that refuse fixity yet practice their own arbitrary provisional closures, the third timespace.

The third study of third timespaces aims to displace the canonical anthropological notion of Culture as well as to nudge Cultural Studies away from its text — a Western-centered focus. Such an undertaking will require a revision of the ethnographic distinctions between ‘home’ and ‘the field’. Fieldwork becomes ‘homework’, as differences between the ethnographer and the subject under study are broken down, as the ethnographer is incorporated into the text, and as theory and text reflect and participate in the multiply-positioned and fluctuating realities of quotidian life.     

Navigating labels,seeking recognition for victimhood: Diaspora activism after mass-atrocities

This article analyses diaspora mobilization for transitional justice as efforts to gain recognition for victim-based identities. Building on research among diaspora groups from Rwanda and Sri Lanka in North America and Europe, the article investigates how diaspora actors in their quest for victimhood recognition navigate, make use of and challenge labels such as “victim”, “perpetrator”, “genocide”, “survivor” and “terrorist”. The article uses Jacoby's theory of victimhood to draw attention to the diasporic space as particularly conducive for recognition struggles, and discuss the different stages through which victim-based identities are constructed. The empirical examples reveal how serveral competing and interrelated processes towards victimhood recognition are simultaneously at work, and how diaspora actors both refute and creatively make use of categories that assign blame or signal victimhood and resilience.     

Same-sex marriage and the pinkwashing of state migration controls

In May 2015, the Republic of Ireland became the first country to affirm same-sex marriage through the popular vote. This paper explores how the same-sex marriage referendum enabled the Irish state to pinkwash its migration regimes, thereby naturalizing harsh policies that reproduce gendered, sexual, racial, economic, and geopolitical inequalities. Following scholars' suggestions that state migration regimes should be analyzed comprehensively rather than piecemeal, the paper explores where/how the language and logics of the same-sex marriage referendum interfaced with the Irish state’s strategies for managing the diaspora, tourists, and family reunification for migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers. The paper concludes that coalitions such as the Anti-Racism Network Ireland provide critical models for addressing LGBT and migration struggles as interlinked.     

Swaying in time and space: the Chinese Diaspora in the Caribbean and its literary perspectives

Despite that the Chinese in the Caribbean, unlike Africans or East Indians, is vaguely impressive in terms of racial and social impact; their stance and viewpoint are quite unique and insightful. Willi Chen and Jan Lowe Shinebourne, representing Chinese Caribbean Diaspora, are impressive enough with its strong literary impact. They both show the ambivalence acquired in the process of ‘positioning’, as well as the strong heritage of their ancestral mother land of China. Chen’s work is characteristic with its neutral stance of Chinese characters, and Shinebourne makes her protagonists wander with intermingling sense of tradition and progression. This ambivalence, however, can become a positive sway between groups which may be different, conflictive, or even hostile to each other, and that sway can bring a righteous and truthful judgment to the matter. The Chinese Caribbean writings contribute with the dialectic philosophies included in and inherited from Chinese traditions.