Identity Contestation Research Articles

Contesting the past on the Chinese Internet: Han-centrism and mnemonic practices

Digital technology has brought critical changes to mnemonic practices in China, such as the empowerment of social groups to discover previously underrepresented historical accounts and produce alternative historical narratives. This article examines the mnemonic practices of Han-centrism, a type of ethnic and cultural nationalist movement based on the Chinese Internet. It analyzes how Han-centrist netizens reinterpret national history through their efforts to rediscover forgotten historical narratives of glory and trauma. It suggests that digital technology in China facilitates the emergence of online groups that are dedicated to the struggle for “historical truth” and social-cultural changes, motivated by a crisis of identity. Their mnemonic practices may be partly tolerated by the authoritarian state under some conditions. However, given China’s complicated and conflictual history, such online groups can easily turn the Internet into a battlefield of nationalism. This article highlights the confusion and contestation of memory and identity in contemporary China and the role of digital technology in the long battle.

Defining Arabism: the Contestation of Arab Identity in the Hadrami Community in Betawi

This study of defining Arabism aims to analyze Arab identity in the hadrami community in Betawi. Arab identity in the hadrami community in Betawi could be seen in the use of the marriage title, and their respect for the ‘alawiyyin community. The hadrami community in Betawi made religion a distinctive feature of Arab identity, thus causing conflict between the hadrami community in defining Arabism. The problem in this study is events that occurred in the past, thus materials such as archives, books, journals, and newspapers related to the theme were used as sources in this study. The analysis of this study uses the hermeneutic phenomenology method in order to obtain a reconstruction of the history of Arabism that is close to the truth. This study provides the conclusion that identity is a source of conflict, resulting contestation in the hadrami community in Betawi.  Kajian tentang mendefinisikan arabisme ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis identitas Arab pada komunitas hadrami di Betawi. Identitas Arab pada komunitas hadrami di Betawi dapat dilihat pada pemakaian gelar pernikahan, dan penghormatan mereka terhadap kelompok ‘alawiyyin. Komunitas hadrami di Betawi menjadikan agama sebagai bahan dari identitas Arab, sehingga menyebabkan konflik diantara komunitas hadrami untuk mendefinisikan arabisme pada identitas Arab tersebut. Masalah pada penelitian ini adalah segala peristiwa yang telah terjadi di masa lampau, maka bahan-bahan seperti arsip, buku, jurnal, dan surat kabar yang terkait dengan tema digunakan sebagai sumber dalam penelitian ini. Analisis penelitian ini menggunakan metode fenomenologi hermeneutik agar dapat diperoleh rekonstruksi sejarah arabisme yang mendekati dengan kebenaran. Penelitian ini memberikan kesimpulan bahwa identitas adalah sumber konflik sehingga menimbulkan kontestasi pada komunitas hadrami di Betawi. Â

The role of social media in negotiating identity during the process of acculturation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of the role of social media in negotiating and managing identity for transient migrants relating to the home and host culture during the acculturation process.Design/methodology/approachFocussing on international students in the UK, this paper reports on findings from a qualitative study involving interviews with 27 transient migrants about their social media use and the negotiation of their identity online.FindingsThis paper highlights the multifaceted role that social media plays in the identity negotiations of transient migrants and it offers three theoretical contributions. First, the authors show that social media serves as a medium, consequence and determinant of identity. Second, provide four strategies for identity management are provided: boundary management, access management, online content management and offline content management. Third, contextualised support is provided for a reciprocal relationship between the different identity-related roles played by social media.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper highlights the complex role of social media for identity within the acculturation process for transient migrants. Identity contestation may be salient for young student migrants, especially where there is a large cultural distance between the home and host culture. Identity negotiations and struggles may not be salient with older migrants or migrants who have migrated for different reasons or where there is a small cultural distance between the home and host culture.Practical implicationsThis paper offers recommendations for social media site designers for enhancing the users experience during acculturation by guiding the navigation with identity management strategies as well as to highlight the possible predicaments of not managing their identity online.Originality/valueBased on qualitative research with transient migrants using social media during acculturation, the paper provides a theoretical model of the role and reciprocal relationship of social media for identity, serving the role as a medium, consequence and determinant. The paper incorporates four identity management strategies that migrants can use on social media.

Contested and mistreated? Contested racial identities and unfair treatment due to race

ABSTRACTRace is a dynamic experience in which racial identities are not necessarily validated by outsiders, raising questions about how individuals experience racial bias. This raises questions about reports of racialized unfair treatment and how those who experience racial identity contestation, or when one identifies with a race they believe they are not seen as, experience unfair treatment. Drawing on data from the 2006–2010 Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System, this study examines the relationship between racial identity contestation and unfair treatment. This is explored in two distinct settings: at work and when seeking healthcare. The results suggest that identity contestation is associated with the likelihood of perceiving unfair treatment. Contestation is associated with a greater likelihood of reporting unfair treatment due to race for Whites but a lower likelihood of reporting unfair treatment for Latinx and Black individuals. This association is strongest for assessing unfair treatment in the workplace.

Postures of Piety and Protest: American Civil Religion and the Politics of Kneeling in the NFL

Over the past ten years, athletes Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick have become famous for kneeling on the NFL football field. However, public reactions to these gestures varied significantly: Tebow’s kneeling spawned a lightly mocking but overall flattering meme, while Kaepernick’s stoked public controversy and derailed his NFL career. In order to interrogate these divergent responses, this article places the work of sociologist Robert Bellah and philosopher Michel Foucault in dialogue. It argues that spectator sports are a crucial space for the negotiation and contestation of American identity, or, in Bellah’s terms, civil religion. It then draws on philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of the docile body to explore the rationales behind and cultural reactions to the kneeling posture. I argue that Tebow and Kaepernick advance divergent civil religious visions within the “politics of the sacred” being negotiated in American life. In this process of negotiation, American football emerges as both a space for the public cultivation of docile bodies and a crucial forum for reassessing American values and practices.

Nyai Madura: Representation of Female Religious Leaders in Contemporary Indonesia

This paper examines the roles and position of female religious leaders in Madura Island, known as Nyai. Nyais are female religious leaders and are highly respected by the rural communities for not only being someone who is master in Islamic teachings, and her dakwah (outreach), but also being influential amongst the communities. Yet, the role and position of nyai in a patriarchal society of Madura are crucial in the sense that their dakwah and teachings have gradually become doctrine for female communities in the male-dominated environment. Particular nyais have demonstrated their determination in identity contestation and playing their agency role for their communities. Their popularity and growing followers have become a serious concern and criticism of some male religious leaders (known as kyai) in the Island. An ethnography study applied to observe the daily life of two female nyais in two regional districts of Madura, they are Nyai Sitti of Sampang and Nyai Dausy of Sumenep, and found that in the context of nyai’s hierarchy in Madura, these two nyais have built what have created authority and represented their leadership positions on their social class. They are the central figures, where their popularity are shaped by their charisma, genealogy, and people’s power. Indeed, they have reached the position of ‘nyai rajheh’ (great leader), which is a leading influential figure, especially for women in contemporary Madura Island.

SRIKANDI LINTAS IMAN : Praktik Gerakan Perempuan dalam Menyuarakan Perdamaian di Yogyakarta

Based on the research conducted by Setara Institute in 2017 shows that Yogyakarta is one of the ten intolerant cities in Indonesia. But this reality is inversely proportional to tourism promotion about Yogyakarta which always considered as a tolerant city. Problems regarding intolerance appear as an arena of identity contestation and refer to certain interests. As a result, intolerance arises not only in the form of utterances but also acts of violence, one of the issues that arises is intolerance towards groups of different religions. Among the discourses on intolerance, there are various movements of society that attempts jointly to realize tolerant values in the society. One of them is a women’s movement that known as Srikandi Lintas Iman, namely women are from various faiths (Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism) who take part in voicing peace issues among the diversity of life in Yogyakarta. This study aims to explain the dynamics of the movement and the efforts that made by Srikandi Lintas Iman in voicing peace issues. This research will be conducted by using qualitative method through a phenomenological approach. This research will interview members of Srikandi Lintas Iman consisting of women with various educational, occupational and religious backgrounds.

‘The River Between’: Negotiating Dual Identities in the Anglican Churches of Kenya

The double identity of missionaries acting as both Christian and Western representatives carried a burden for their enterprise, resulting in the continuous inquiries by Africans as to whether an individual is an African Christian or a Christian African. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in his novel The River Between depicted these two worlds using Kameno and Makuyu, communities in the mountainous regions of Agikuyu land, as they tried to negotiate their religio-cultural identities amidst the tension between the missionary enterprise and irua practice (the puberty rite of passage among the Gikuyu community). Nevertheless, the river between – the river Honia – acted as a conciliatory agency for the two communities. This article focuses on the inter- and intra-dependence of irua practice and confirmation practice in the Anglican Church of Kenya in their negotiation of religio-cultural identities. Through a historical account of indigenous rites of passage, the development of confirmation practice and their encounters, the article explores the resurgence of irua practice and ‘Christianisation’ to find ‘the river between’. Using examples from three Nairobi Metropolitan Anglican Cathedrals that have adopted the various forms of ‘Christianised’ irua practices, the article will show how they act as recipes for this dual religious identity construction, contestation and negotiation.

Futurologi Undang-undang Pemilu di Indonesia Perspektif Maq?s}id al-Shar?‘ah

This article is a response to some regulations of the election in Indonesia, facing the General Election of 2019. This article will make a more complete analysis than before, yet the people over the general election a few years ago based on the regulation. Even, inside the process, there are many issues that must be concealed in future time. So that, this article also give a new paradigm based on maq?s}id al-shar?‘ah become a foundation to formulate the next. This article concludes that for the future, to get all coherences of maq?s}id al-shar?‘ah in ideal concepts, the regulators must be put al-mas}lah}ah al-‘?mmah as a core. Al-Mas}lah}ah al-‘?mmah means that regulations will erase the contestation of political identities, strengthening the presidential system, and regulate over the money politics on the campaign process in the future election.

Gender and Sexual Diversities (GSD) and Socio-Cultural Identities – Identifying the Challenges Associated with the Construction and Contestation of Gender Identities and the Social Integration of LGBTIQ Muslim Youth in Pakistan and Germany

Gender and Sexual Diversities (GSD) and Socio-Cultural Identities – Identifying the Challenges Associated with the Construction and Contestation of Gender Identities and the Social Integration of LGBTIQ Muslim Youth in Pakistan and Germany

RELIGIONS AND RECONCILIATION OF CONFLICTING SOCIOCULTURAL IDENTITIES

In the many cases of conflicts co-fuelled by sociocultural identity contestations, religions cannot play the role of reconcilers, because they have become part of the problem through association with one of the contesting parties. This contribution argues that, in order to come to terms with this, religions have to rediscover the reconciliation practices within their traditions, become more critical of their own past reconciliation record, and develop a theology that pays proper attention to the challenges generated by sociocultural identities. The argument is illustrated with an analysis of the role played by Christian churches in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Contestation of Religious Identity in the Cyber World: A Case Study of arrahmah.com and VOA Islam Dealing with Religious Others on Facebook

<p>Religious identity frequently causes tensions that in turn lead to social polarization. Contestation and representation of religious identity not only hit the real world but also extend to virtual communities, which are part of a new form of identity contestation in the cyber era. This study uses an ethnographic approach focusing on the beliefs, language, values, rituals, customs, and behavior of people who interact in the community as the object of research. Thus, this study portrays the phenomenon of contestation of religious identity, both in the process of forming the identity (personal identity) of members or followers. The result of this study is that there is the process of forming religious identity on Facebook i.e., in the case of arrahmah.com and VOA Islam. Such process occurs because of the awareness of personal identity, in the form of aspects that differentiate others (self-categorization) and social identity in the form of religious identity that has been internalized through the interaction process in the group. While the demographic contestation of religious identity can be categorized into primary participators as creators of content and religious mindedness narratives, and secondary participators as members who are actively involved in consuming content, and lurkers as silent participants who are targeted by propaganda. The basic form of contestation in these two communities is exclusive religious understanding and views other groups as ‘the other’.</p>

Oral History and the Discursive Construction of Identity in Flint, Michigan

This article explores the ways that Flint residents report on their encounters with various kinds of “outsiders” who are influenced by mass‐mediated images that position Flint and its residents in a certain way. Through the voicing of outsiders who engage in the circulation of negative discourses about Flint, residents then insert their own voices as they contest negative discourses about the city. Here, the images that they project about life in Flint provide a powerful counternarrative about what it means to have lived in the city during its deindustrializing period. This suggests that oral history interviews are an important site for the discursive production (and contestation) of individual and collective identities for Flint residents.

FROM “JIBARA” TO “CHIQUITA”: CONFESSIONS OF DIS-BELONGING IN ESMERALDA SANTIAGO’S MEMOIRS

This paper by focusing on the intersection of race, gender and identity as reflected in the three memoirs of the Puerto-Rican American writer Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican (1993), Almost a Woman (1998) and The Turkish Lover (2004), attempts to read into the complex dynamics of the Puerto-Rican migrant female experience. Esmeralda Santiago’s memoirs that intertwine the problem of transculturation with that of male dominance and cultural patriarchy rest on her desire to find and sustain a stable point of reference in a world marked by mobility, transitivity, discontinuity and fragmentation. The feelings of vulnerability and invisibility that she constantly experiences within her Puerto-Rican culture and later with her Turkish lover lead her to resist rather than accept a gendered and racialized self. However it also leads her to forge an identity “distinct from” and “in conflict with” the significant Others around her. In When I was Puerto Rican, she is the black jibara “Negi” highly critical and at odds with her Puerto/AmeRican island heritage; in Almost A Woman, she is the lost young female Esmeralda trying to rise above her mother, family and Nuyorican community; and in the The Turkish Lover she is the Esmeralda Santiago who learns to judge her own self and others through the social and racial categories and cultural standards of American society. This paper asserts that unlike many women autobiographical writers, Esmeralda Santiago can achieve to create a sense of belonging in her life only through an assertion of difference and later through the contestation of her Puerto-Rican female identity.

Different paths to regional hegemony: national identity contestation and foreign economic strategy in Russia and Turkey

IPE scholars have extensively studied regionalisms in various parts of the globe. However, little has been done to explore the role that countries with regional leadership aspirations have played in fostering regional integration. Why do regional powers pursue different forms of leadership to exert economic influence over their neighbors and achieve regional hegemony? Through a comparison of Russia and Turkey, I argue that elite national identity conceptions construct national economic interests and shape foreign economic policies of these regional powers. In both countries, ruling elites have embraced national identity conceptions that were in stark contrast to the national identity conceptions of their predecessors. Russia under Putin has pursued a coercive hegemonic form of leadership in Eurasia contrary to the Yeltsin era. Conversely, Turkey under Erdogan has pursued liberal regional economic leadership in the Middle East as opposed to the coercive and isolationist policies of Westernist elites. In both cases, the consolidation of political power and international developments have strengthened the prevalent national identity conceptions at home, and reinforced regional economic leadership strategies. As it highlights the domestic ideational sources of the pursuit of regional hegemony, this study has implications for the study of regional powers, regionalism and economic nationalism.

Identity Contestation of Contemporary Painting Art in Makassar

Identity Contestation of Contemporary Painting Art in Makassar

Indo-Mozambican Interactions with the State (1947-1992): Civic and Religious Institutions in Lourenço Marques/Maputo as sites of ethnic identity affirmation and migratory contestation

Using in-depth ethnographic and archival data, this study argues that over the late 20th century religious and civic institutions in Lourenco Marques/Maputo served as spaces of transnational identity contestation for Mozambican residents of Indian and Pakistani origin (herein referred to as “Indo-Mozambicans”). During this period, Indo-Mozambicans absorbed the aftershocks of four particular geo-political shifts in the Indian Ocean and the Lusophone world: Indian independence from Britain in 1947, the annexation of Portuguese India in 1961, Mozambican independence in 1975, and the Mozambican civil war from 1977 to 1992. This study explores how representative organizations changed their name, membership, and purpose over this period to ensure their institutional survival and to solidify their value as a transnational site of cultural significance. Institutional resilience is contrasted across Indo-Mozambican associations of varying faiths with special attention given to the institution of the Comunidade Hindu (herein referred to as “Comunidade”). In light of forced migration, successive decolonization movements, and fluctuating citizenship rights, the Comunidade’s continued existence today presents a valuable case study in the survival tactics employed by ethno-religious organizations to overcome pervasive vulnerability and to support members through serial insecurity. Individual members’ oral narratives articulate how ethnic sub-identity was defined and divided as political and social shifts in the Indian Ocean and Lusophone worlds collided in the late 20th century. Indo-Mozambican associations served as transnational sites where ethnic identity and migratory agency were cyclically constructed and deconstructed to respond to and cope with federal power structures and local demographics.

Teologi Kem(u)(a)rahan Allah: Sebuah Upaya Mengkonstruksikan Teologi Kemurahan Allah

In the context of identity contestation in today’s Indonesia, it is worth putting back the discourse of the “face of God”, since it may raise questions such as: “Does the fierce religious expression refer to the theology of the wrath of God? What is the contribution of the theology of mercy in intervening the interreligious dispute? What is the biblical response on the relationship between God’s wrath and mercy?” To expose those issues, this article constructs the theology of God’s mercy as a basis for a distinct religious behavior presenting the true companionship.

Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec, by GENEVIÈVE ZUBRZYCKI

The dramatic nature of social change in Quebec is a fascinating story skillfully told by Geneviève Zubrzycki in this beautifully written and deeply researched book, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec. The secularization of Quebec is dramatic in two senses. It occurred in a relatively compressed interval, conveyed for example by the fact that the birth rate dropped from 4.0 to 2.09 within the space of 12 years (between 1959 and 1972). It is dramatic too in that its process of becoming secular was acted out, literally, in public performances—and it is this performance work that drives much of the book. What a treat! Zubrzycki, keenly attuned to cultural icons and their dynamic centrality to the construction and contestation of collective identities (already on fine display in her earlier book, The Crosses of Auschwitz), attends here to St. John the Baptist. It was he who, for many good reasons, became the figure-head in the making of a distinctively Catholic and French Canadian identity, with the Church at the center of institutional and everyday activity (chapter 2). His feast day, June 24, became Quebec’s ethno-national holiday and, happily coinciding with summer solstice, was celebrated with elaborate pageant-like public parades, festivals, and bonfires, as well as special Masses and commemorative medals.

Grafting Eco-Diasporic Identity in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Selected Novels

This paper is based on three selected novels entitled Does My Head Look Big In This? (2005), Ten Things I Hate About Me (2006), and Where The Streets Had A Name (2008) written by Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979), a Palestinian-Egyptian Australian Muslim diasporic writer. In this article, we examine the manifestations of grafting eco-diasporic identity by Abdel-Fattah in order to address how identity graft is operated by interacting with ideology, culture and nature in the contexts of the host land and the homeland as represented in the three selected novels. Using Colin Richards’ theory of graft as a framework, we explore identity contestations of Muslim young adults in the novels from an ecocritical and diasporic perspectives. In the novel Does My Head Look Big In This?, the images of Amal’s sense of being marginalised in the semiosphere of the host land and the sense of self-respect of her Muslim rootedness and heritage of the homeland semiosphere frame the fractured graft of identity. The character of Jamilah, in Ten Things I Hate About Me displays genuine manifestations of the collective emblem of the grafted identity. Finally, the symbol of the iconic jar of the homeland soil and its potentiality of regenerating Hayaat’s identity in Where the Streets Had A Name exhibits the ecological semiosphere in which the grafted identity is shaped. The current discussion, therefore, offers fresh insights into allowing a new horizon for identity grafting in Abdel-Fattah’s works as well as other writers within the tradition of Muslim Diasporic Literature.