Female narratives of ‘new’ citizens’ belonging(s) and identities in Europe: case studies from the Netherlands and Britain

Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's ‘longing just to be’, focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities. The narratives of women participating in these studies show multilayered angles of belonging presenting an alternative to the increasing strong argument for a fixed notion of positioning and national belonging. The female ‘new’ citizens in our study tell stories of individual choices, social mobility and a sense of multiple belonging in and across different communities.     

Going Home to Pakistan: Identity and Its Discontents in Southeastern Europe

In this article I explore the claim that post-independence Macedonia is a cornerstone of European civilization (a traditional Greek claim) and analyze efforts to assert the country's position in the international arena as a “modern” and authentically Western state deserving of membership in the European Union. Such efforts involve the establishment of ties between Macedonians and the Hunzukuts, who live on the remote Hindu Kush Mountains in Pakistan and claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great. I also analyze comparable initiatives, sponsored in recent years by the Greek state, to prove ties between Greeks and the Kalasha, who also live in remote areas of Pakistan and believe that they are descended from Alexander the Great. Greece and post-independence Macedonia offer us insights into the populist underpinnings of the nationalist promotion of a European identity presented as rooted in the East.     

Popular Culture,Social Identities,and Internal/External Cultural Politics: The Case of Rangers Supporters in Scottish Football

The article examines the construction of critical, resistant identities among supporters of the powerful Scottish football club, Rangers. The analysis is underpinned by two general arguments relating to identity construction: (1) the need to examine carefully the cultural politics of relatively advantaged groups within the field of popular culture and (2) the need to explore how forms of cultural resistance and contestation are focused particularly on relations within the popular culture, rather than on forms of determination by the wider societal order. The article draws heavily on substantial fieldwork with Rangers supporters in the UK and overseas. The findings highlight the complex and contingent relationships between popular culture and broader societal forces, as illustrated by the diverging arguments of Rangers fans on the legitimacy of ethno-religious and market-focused identities within football.     

Narrating marriage: negotiating practices and politics of belonging of Afghan return migrants

ABSTRACT

This article explores Afghan return migrants’ strategies and constraints to identify with the different spaces of belonging they encountered, through their expressions and practices of marriage. We take an in-depth approach to the life histories of 35 voluntary and involuntary Afghan returnees from European countries. We find that in narrating and performing different marriage practices, some Afghan return migrants construct fixed boundaries between different spaces of belonging, while others try to construct these boundaries as permeable and hybrid. Gender and mobility strongly define the way in which return migrants narrate and perform marriage as a cultural practice that determines who belongs, who wants to belong and who is able to belong. We conclude that while openly negotiating hybrid practices within a delicate theme such as marriage requires careful negotiation of boundaries, mobility can improve the extent to which return migrants can apply inventive and hybrid identifications for their personal needs and desires.     

后现代文化语境中的文化政治概述

文化政治在近些年的学术界频繁出现,正确认识文化政治的含义对于理解当前出现的诸多文化现象有着重要的作用。本文从后现代文化语境出发,对文化政治的当下意义进行了阐释和注解,特别是对后现代文化语境中的文化政治的源起、复合理论的交融、微观政治的倾向以及后现代文化语境中文化政治的两个重要表现:女性主义和后殖民主义进行了概述和阐释,对当前文化政治的含义理解有着启发意义。     

党的政治纯洁性与党的纲领的基本内涵及其内在关系探析

党的纯洁性集中体现在党的思想、政治、组织、作风和制度等各个方面,其中政治纯洁是核心。从理论与实践、历史与未来的结合上看,保持党的政治纯洁性,最关键的就是保持党的政治纲领的纯洁、政治路线的纯洁和政治取向的纯洁。保持党的政治纯洁性与坚持党的纲领既相互区别,又相互联系,辩证地统一于党的建设的系统工程之中,坚持党的纲领是保持党的政治纯洁性的首要任务,保持党的政治纯洁性是坚持党的纲领的重要保证,二者在本质上是一致的。     

The Polish Parliament and the Making of Politics through Abortion: Nation,Gender and Democracy in the 1996 Liberalization Amendment Debate

The collapse of communism across East Central Europe was marked by a renewal of debates around reproduction, with abortion debates surfacing in Romania, Germany and Poland. Reproductive politics and more specifically abortion debates typically come to the forefront in times of crisis or societal transformation. Struggles over women's reproductive rights in Poland, as evidenced by continuing debate around the legal status of abortion, are in this postcommunist context intimately related to and bound up with ongoing symbolic and concrete re-definitions of Polish nationhood, identity and citizenship. Focusing on the connections between discourses of Polish nationhood, gender and democracy, this article offers a detailed and critical engagement with debate in the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament) during the second reading of the 1996 liberalization of abortion amendment. Using a discourse analysis methodology, the article argues that abortion is a symbolic issue through which anxieties about postcommunist reform are raised, nationalist pasts and futures are imagined and through which political projects are articulated.     

Debating Eco/Feminist Natures

This article discusses the experiences in municipal politics of indigenous women in Oaxaca, Mexico. The data base includes in-depth interviews with the eighteen women who have been elected mayor since 1995, when the Government of Oaxaca legally recognized indigenous self-government. By looking at the women as in/outsiders of their own culture, the article examines the ways in which they question various components of the indigenous autonomous project as well as the performance of western political institutions such as political parties and the educational system. Women's views go beyond the tradition/modernity dichotomy, where tradition is associated with backward, patriarchal institutions and modernity with progress and gender equality. Both tradition and modernity are redefined in order to identify the elements that may contribute to gender equality in the indigenous self-government project of Mexico.     

Troubled Engagement in Ethnicized Conflict

Feminist cross-community initiatives, which emerged in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine in the 1980s, are frequently lauded in the gender and conflict literature as evidence of the ways in which women can work across ethnonational boundaries. In particular, the theory of ‘transversal dialogue’, developed by Nira Yuval-Davis and adopted by other feminist scholars and activists, suggests that participants have developed a mode of dialogue that enables them to acknowledge differences while developing common goals. In ethicized conflict, transversal politics is understood as an alternative to the essentializing of ‘identity politics’ as well as their undemocratic character. The empirical research, however, suggests that identity politics remains relevant for participants, particularly when cross-community dialogue is limited by external political realities and internal community divisions. In my view, understanding the ways in which identity politics contributes to the development of feminist goals related to women's inclusion in peace processes and post-conflict peace-building is not at odds with transversal politics; rather, women use both modes of politics to build feminist networks and tackle women's marginalization in hyper-masculinized and militarized zones of ethnicized conflict.     

Acts of resistance: the performance of women's grassroots protest in Peru

Creative approaches such as theatre are rarely addressed in analytic terms in the arena of grassroots political protest. In this article, is is argued that theatre can be an effective medium through which to engage with social change, and that theatrical protest articulates in a variety of intricate ways to achieve this. Two cases of political protest events which use theatre are examined, both performed by Peruvian grassroots women's organisations and set against a backdrop of the volatile period leading up to President Fujimori's dismissal in 2000. In a context of state authoritarianism, poverty and gendered inequality, four key aspects of the practice of performance contribute to political resistance. Firstly, the symbolic potency of making one's voice heard in public as an actively participating citizen promotes a process of ‘democratic discourse.’ Secondly, the reversals and inversions of public space and authority figures challenge established discourses of power relations. Thirdly, theatre as a ‘positive’ form of dissent provides a celebratory contrast to the ‘violence’ of traditional forms of protest. Finally, theatre contributes a space for ‘bearing witness’ to state oppression or corruption. This article demonstrates that in these crucial ways, theatrical grassroots protest is a potent tool through which marginalized sectors of civil society can engage in creative political dissent.