Construction Of Community Identity Research Articles

Crisis, Liturgy, and Communal Identity: The Celebration of the Hispano-Mozarabic Rite in Toledo, Spain as a Case Study

The Hispano-Mozarabic Rite is a helpful case study for liturgists interested in the construction of community identity across time and in light of various types of crises. From the 6th century to today, a number of internal and external crises—political and ecclesial—have shaped the Rite and have threatened its continued existence. From the Arab invasions in 711 CE, the Rite has been key to the preservation of the Mozarab community, the group of Christians who remained in Muslim-ruled Spain and continued to celebrate the Rite. The Rite is key to their self-understanding and preservation. At the same time, the Rite has been coopted throughout its history for burgeoning Spanish nationalist visions. It has also challenged the centralized ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church. In order to shed light on the relationship between crisis and communal identity in this tradition, this article will begin with a historical study of the Rite. The second half of this article will look at the modern celebration of the Rite in Toledo through the use of participant observation. This will reveal the way several communities (the Mozarabs and Spaniards) have used the Rite to navigate various crises throughout history.

Arquitectura y materialidad de la interacción social en la comunidad aldeana del Chañarcito, Los Molinos, La Rioja

In this paper we propose an approach that combines perspectives on the spatiality and themateriality of the Chanarcito village community, La Rioja (600 to 800 AD). Our focus generatesinformation on the social landscape in the eastern foothills of the Velasco Mountains, andsupports the emergence of reproduction of socio-political inequalities mechanisms and practices ofsocial interaction, represented in the construction of public spaces –platform– and the differentialconsumption of ceramic objects. The identification of shared uses of architectural pattern,constructive technologies and ceramic styles, contributes to the understanding on the constructionof community identities in the area. The analysis is based on a local perspective that is alsoinserted in the regional and macro-regional context of the formative communities that developedin the second half of the first millennium.

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity, written by Kipp Davis

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity, written by Kipp Davis

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity. By Kipp Davis.

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity. By Kipp Davis.

Museums and the Construction of Community Identity: Case Study of the Britannia Heritage Shipyards, National Historic Site of Canada

Museums and the Construction of Community Identity: Case Study of the Britannia Heritage Shipyards, National Historic Site of Canada

Common Law, Mountain Music, and the Construction of Community Identity

This article suggests how law and the arts can shape a community’s identity over time, by exploring the unique parallels between the common law and the folk music of the Appalachian region of the United States — two cultural transplants from the British Isles to the early American frontier. Both preserve a backward-looking, cultural memory at the same time as they accommodate gradual changes in social conditions. Thus, this comparison argues that these essentially unwritten legal and musical traditions similarly transcend geographical and temporal distances, reflect and influence normative attitudes, and rely upon relatively open communicative processes in transmitting their core information. As living traditions, then, the common law and Appalachian folk music open small but important spaces for pluralistic discourse, where social conflicts can be reconciled over time and new identities forged from old ones.

Sophistication at a country pace: community sustainability and amenity-based development

There is a lot at stake in the control of landscapes; not only rights and access to resources, but also the symbolic construction of community identities. Having one’s identity represented in the landscape is critical to understanding one’s position within that community—either as an insider or outsider. This paper examines Great Barrington, Massachusetts as a case study of the links between discourses of landscape and community and their relations to processes of social exclusion during amenity-based development. Building upon conceptions of community as a process of creating boundaries between insiders and outsiders, this paper argues that the sustainability of a town cannot be assessed merely from inside a particular community identity but must situate that town within complex multi-scalar processes to determine if it is merely externalizing its unsustainable aspects, people and practices. I extend this argument by examining the ways to concept of multifunctionality has been used both in Great Barrington and in international discourses to promote sustainability through processes of exclusion. The research for this paper was done in collaboration with the Alliance for a Healthier Great Barrington.

The Search for Miss Philippines Bahrain—Possibilities for Representation in Expatriate Communities

AbstractBased on participant observation within the organizing committee of a beauty pageant produced by the Filipino Club in Bahrain, this paper explores group interactions within Bahrain's multinational population. More specifically, the paper asks whether semi‐public events staged by expatriate community organizations serve as nodes of interaction across boundaries of nationality. The first half of the paper describes the transnational context and expatriate community organizations in Bahrain and the type of activities they host. An important distinction is made between activities hosted on the club premises and/or for club members and performance events that are potentially open to non‐members. The second half of the paper uses a beauty pageant organized by the Filipino Club to examine how semi‐public performance events provide a venue for both the construction of community identity and its potential presentation to other nationalities resident in Bahrain. By describing the range of activities organized by the Filipino Club—from professional networking to aromatherapy classes from Christmas parties to beauty pageants—this research expands our ideas of the nature of expatriate lives in the Gulf. The ethnographic analysis of the beauty pageant demonstrates that semi‐public events may not fulfill their potential for reciprocal inter‐group communication.

Reflections on Community Conflicts and the State in India

One of the most important contributions of the recent wave of historical and anthropological scholarship on community identities is to analyze the complex manner in which identities are constructed and to study how such constructions influence their enactment. Similar arguments have been made about caste and “communal” categories and conflicts (see, for example, Dirks 1992; Pandey 1990 and 1992). Political theorists and philosophers have contributed to dismantling old categories by exploring the diverse meanings, possibilities, and limits of secularism in India (Bhargav 1994; Bilgrami 1994; Chatterjee 1994). Given these important methodological and theoretical developments, which focus on the construction of community identities, are there distinctive contributions that students of Indian politics can make to the study of community conflicts? The essays in this symposium provide several important responses to this question.

Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State. Edited by Zoya Hasan. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1994. xxiv, 264 pp. Rs. 250. $19.95 (paper).

This volume challenges the assumption that Muslims in India constitute a homogenous community, with specific characteristics deriving from Islam. Instead it locates the community within the social, economic and political developments that have taken place in the sub-continent, pre- and post-Independence, in order to examinine how exactly the delineation of miority identity takes place. The implications of this process for women are quite clear; social reality is gendered, yet womens attempts to assert their rights have been constrained by the pressures of communal politics. The domain of cultural politics, has generated ideologies that have subordinated gender equality to minority identity. Through an examination of history, law, politics, work and culture, this collection attempts to explore how the construction of community identity has affected Muslim women in India, the processes by which such identities are constructed, how they are represented in the cultural domain, and how the ambivalence of women's multiple identities interacts with the above. Contributors include Barbara Metcalf, Feisal Devji, Paola Bacchetta, Elizabeth Mann, Shahida Lateef, Farid ud din Kazmi, Mukul Kesavan, and Amrita Chhachhi.