Ethno-national Identity Research Articles

An artistic landscape of the newest kazahkstani novel

In the context of the new bi- and polylingual picture of the world, the novel continues to hold leading positions as the leading genre of prose. The Kazakh novel generalizes the aesthetically immanent factors of identity and is created in the Kazakh and Russian languages. Ethno-national identity is important for both the author and the characters. The modern phenomenology of perception actualizes not only the role of the anthropological turn, but also the role of the subjective factor - the reader. Comparative analysis allows you to look at the novel from different conceptual points of view. Transnational tendencies are intensely manifested in the work of prose writers. The search for answers to the most important questions of our time, the challenges of globalization contributes to the disclosure of the ethnocultural world. Opposition one's own/other, one's/another's allows to convey the national attitude and reveal the national image.

Work, Life, and Identity Negotiation in a Foreign Land: A Study of Taiwanese Working Holiday Makers in Belgium

This study examined the living and working experiences of 14 Taiwanese working holiday makers (WHMs) in Belgium as they negotiate their identity and social lives while they live overseas, using both participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The study demonstrates that the low salary level and high work pressure in Taiwan are two of the major factors pushing these young Taiwanese to leave their homeland and work overseas. However, the majority of these Taiwanese WHMs face difficulties in speaking Belgium’s local languages, and their opportunities for work are further limited by the temporary visa regulations. Workplaces run by mainland Chinese, especially in the hospitality industry, have become vital places for Taiwanese WHMs to negotiate their ethnonational identity. Although they only have limited social lives and networks in the host society, they claim that they have developed intercultural competences and a greater open-mindedness by living in the multicultural and international environments of Brussels or other Belgian cities.

Negotiating Multi-layered Cultural Identities: A Study of Pan-Chinese Immigrant Descendants in Belgium

This study makes use of hybridity identity theory and the dynamic perspective of identity negotiation as a framework for exploring how pan-Chinese immigrant descendants in Belgium culturally and ethno-nationally identify themselves, how they negotiate with various ethno-national identity labels, and how they perceive differences between their immigrant parents’ heritage culture and the culture of Belgian host society. Ethnographic and qualitative research methods were employed to collect data from 2017 to 2019 at Sun Yat-sen heritage school in Brussels. Based on 200 hours of participant observation and 30 interviews conducted with immigrant descendants, the results indicate that cultural differences could be observed in participants’ familial and social life, including education, parenting, and lifestyle. Moreover, three vital dimensions whereby pan-Chinese immigrant descendants negotiate, perform, and situate their cultural and ethnic identity are food practices, popular cultural consumptions, and friendships. Notably, few participants identify themselves as either Chinese or Belgian; the majority espouses a dual identity and tends to place their identity “in-between” the pan-Chinese and Belgian ethnic affiliations. This study further finds that the descendants of Taiwanese immigrants find it difficult to settle their cultural and ethnic identity as they frequently struggle to establish a sense of belonging.

Diaspora and Transnationalism: the Changing Contours of Ethnonational Identity of Indian Diaspora

Abstract Diasporic communities have historically maintained—either actively or passively—their ethnonational identities, be it in the case of classical diasporas such as the Jews or Armenians or the case of more modern diasporas such as the Indians or other South Asians. However, the ethnonational identities of diasporic communities have strengthened significantly in recent times as a result of the global forces such as the Internet that created and recreated the existing and newer ways of transnationalism and ethnonationalism. The study of the Indian diaspora is inherent because of the fact that these global forces have drastically changed the ethnonational identity of Indians in the diaspora. There are a plethora of factors that played an important role in this process of transformation. This article tries to examine two of the most significant factors that strengthened the ethnonational identity, such as the dynamic changes in the Indian government policy towards diaspora and the role of the Internet that facilitates the youth to play a prominent role in this neo-diaspora.

Home food making, belonging, and identity negotiation in Belgian Taiwanese immigrant women\u2019s everyday food practices

This article examines the experiences of (re)producing home food in the daily life and food practices of Belgian Taiwanese immigrant women. The research is based on ethnography—both online and offline—and qualitative semi-structured interviews with seventeen Taiwanese immigrant women/housewives in Belgium. Participants’ food practices involve buying, growing, making, and sharing food. Buying Taiwanese food ingredients presents a genuine challenge, as Chinese and Asian supermarkets in Belgium do not carry all Taiwanese food items. Consequently, many Taiwanese immigrant women and housewives in this study share similar experiences of growing specific foods in their home garden; moreover, by doing so, they also transform their gardens in their private homes into transnational social spaces, and thereby connect their previous lived experiences and homeland memories with their present living circumstances. Moreover, Taiwanese immigrant women like to prepare and cook food with their husband and children while imparting Taiwanese food and cultural values through personal stories. Furthermore, by organizing and regularly participating in activities involving sharing and eating food with other Taiwanese immigrant women, these food-sharing events and behaviors also become an important social networking strategy that allows them to make, expand, and cultivate friendships; in addition, food sharing activities also assist the participants to construct a collective social identity of being immigrant mothers/housewives in a foreign land. However, what is meant by “Taiwanese” food varies substantially between participants, as do the associated emotional and ethnic meanings. Several things were stated to account for the taste of Taiwanese food, such as using certain condiments or the Ta Tung rice cooker. Equally diverse is the personal attachment of ethnonational identity toward the notion of home food, as discussions of childhood memories, ethnonational identity negotiation, and cultural markers are accompanied by critical reflection on the social constructed nature of home/ethnic foods in the migration contexts.

The good Arab: conditional inclusion and settler colonial citizenship among Palestinian citizens of Israel in Jewish Tel Aviv

AbstractDominant majorities often use idealized categories to validate the ‘goodness’ and deservingness of minority citizens. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, this category is the ‘good Arab’. Since its origins in early Jewish settlement of Palestine, it has become a powerful and controversial metaphor in Israeli public discourse. As an experienced condition of limited inclusion, the ‘good Arab’ exemplifies the Palestinian dilemma of accessing socioeconomic opportunities in Jewish Israeli spaces that stigmatize and fend off their ethnonational identity. Combining a historical genealogy of the ‘good Arab’ with ethnographic research among Palestinians in Tel Aviv, this article shows how a historically evolved logic of settler colonial control and indigenous erasure continues to define liberal frameworks of conditional citizenship and inclusion. Theorized through the emerging concept of conditional inclusion, these insights open up new avenues for analysis and comparison in anthropological debates surrounding indigenous struggles, settler colonialism, urban inclusion, and citizenship.

Nation-building in Exile: Teachers’ Perceptions on the Goals of Teaching History in the Tibetan Refugee Schools

ABSTRACT History teaching is often seen as essential to the project of nation-building and construction of national identity. Despite the rise of disciplinary approach, national master narratives and nationalist history teaching remain predominant in many countries. While most of the extant research were done on large nation-states, this study is focused on a refugee community. By employing qualitative thematic analysis of interviews conducted with fifteen teachers, it investigates Tibetan teachers’ perceptions on the goals of teaching social studies and history in the Tibetan refugee schools in India. It argues that, for Tibetan refugees, who are engaged in a nationalist struggle for freedom and whose identity is threatened by displacement, history is perceived as pivotal to the construction of their ethno-national identity and the nationalist struggle.

Contestation of etic categorizations and emic categories: resurgence of Zo ethno-national identity in the Indo-Myanmar borderland

ABSTRACT Colonial ethnographers employed certain categories for classification, invariably picked from neighbouring communities, to identify the people they studied. As a result, such categories have ‘regional’ connotations, depending upon the routes taken while entering their territory. This article examines how various local group identities were formed across clans and lineage identities, and argues that such identities have directional, locational and dynastic connotations. These identities may be characterized mainly as etic categories of description, as they were given to them by others. The article argues that the failure of colonial categorizations to subsume a cultural entity in its entirety has engendered the resurgence of the Zo identity, which is a self-ascriptive identity considered through emic perspective for the cultural collectivity referred to as Kuki-Chin by colonial ethnographers. This article examines the contestation between the resurgence of a self-ascriptive identity, the Zo identity, and the etic categorizations adopted by the colonial ethnographers.

Rehabilitacija urbanog nasljeđa u službi etno-nacionalnih podijela na primjeru gradova Sarajeva i Banje Luke

This paper discusses the impact of the process of rehabilitation and revitalisation of the cultural and historical heritage of Banja Luka and Sarajevo on the strengthening of ethno-national policies /patterns of a divided society. Special attention will be paid to the processes of preserving the urban centres/historical cores of the mentioned cities, which are recognisable as places of separation and distancing for 'non-belonging' ethnic groups. In that sense, the rehabilitation of the urban heritage of Banja Luka and Sarajevo will not be exclusively problematised as preservation and aestheticisation of cultural and historical heritage 'per se', but as a kind of instrumentalisation of urban space for the purpose of over emphasising ethno-national identities in the post-war period. The survey will be primarily based on a comparative analysis of available data on the development of urban centres so far. The survey results indicate that the mentioned instrumentalisation of urban heritage is manifested through the planning and construction/renovation of specific facilities that (un)justifiably fit into the existing cultural and historical context characteristic of these cities. From that perspective, it is noticeable that the cultural and historical cores of Banja Luka and Sarajevo today have a far more significant role in promoting ethno-national identities and divisions than was the case in the past. The character of these processes does not have exclusively intentional features, but is conditioned by other current policies of urban development that do not have an ethno-national background.

Multiple forms of discrimination and postpartum depression among indigenous Palestinian-Arab, Jewish immigrants and non-immigrant Jewish mothers

BackgroundWhile discrimination takes multiple forms, racial or ethnic discrimination is a root cause of this health-damaging social phenomenon. We drew on intersectionality theory, which offers an account of discrimination’s multiple effects, to consider associations between women’s experiences of discrimination and postpartum depression (PPD) using four measures: single forms of discrimination (SFD); multiple forms of discrimination (MFD); ethnic discrimination combined with MFD (E-MFD); and a composite MFD that interacted with women’s identity (C-MFD).MethodsWe interviewed a stratified sample of 1128 mothers face to face in 2014–2015 during mothers’ visits to maternal and child health clinics. The mothers belonged to three groups in Israel: Palestinian-Arab minority, Jewish immigrant, and non-immigrant Jewish. We conducted unadjusted and adjusted logistic regressions for PPD, measured on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, in associations with SFD (experiencing discrimination based on any of the following: age, sex, class, ethno-national identity, religiosity level and skin color); MFD (experiencing 0,1, 2 or ≥ 3 of SFD); E-MFD (ethnic discrimination combined with other MFD); and finally, C-MFD (interaction between MFD and women’s identity).ResultsPalestinian-Arab mothers had higher PPD and reported higher SFD (based on ethnicity, religiosity level, and socioeconomic status), as well as higher MFD and E-MFD. This was followed by Jewish immigrant mothers, and lastly by non-immigrant Jewish mothers. However, both MFD and E-MFD had a strong association with PPD among non-immigrant Jewish mothers reporting 2MFD and ≥ 3MFD, and Palestinian-Arab mothers reporting ≥3MFD, but no significant association among immigrant Jewish mothers. When we used C-MFD, we found a dose-response association in which Palestinian-Arab mothers experiencing more MFD (2MFD and ≥ 3MFD) were more likely to experience PPD. This was followed by immigrant Jewish mothers (reporting 2MFD and ≥ 3MFD), and lastly by non-immigrant Jewish mothers.ConclusionsMFD should be considered in relation to women’s identity (being part of a minority, immigrant, or non-immigrant majority group) in maternal mental health research and practice. Otherwise, we risk underestimating the effects of MFD on PPD, especially in minority and immigrant mothers, who are more likely to face interlocking forms of discrimination.

Remapping citizenship: Relationships between education levels and ethnonational identities in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Liberia

This article investigates the relationships between ethnonational identity and educational level in three West African contexts: Liberia, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. Citizens in these neighboring countries identify with overlapping ethnic groups, but have varied historical experiences, with Americans settling in Liberia; the British colonizing Ghana, and the French colonizing Côte d’Ivoire. In the recent era, Côte d’Ivoire elected an opposition leader at the end of its civil war in 2010; Ghana is considered as the most stable democracy in West Africa; and Liberia experienced two protracted conflicts over the past 30 years and completed its first peaceful transition of power in 2017. We analyze 2014 Afrobarometer data from these three countries to consider if respondents are more likely to value local identities, national identities, or equally value both in each context, and how these valuations vary according to schooling experiences and national context. The findings do not show a linear relationship between education and civic identity, as more respondents who completed only primary school identified primarily with ther national group than those who completed secondary school. Most respondents who completed graduate study in all three countries identified with both their national and ethnic group; none identified primarily with their ethnic groups. In addition, the trends in identity and schooling in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are more similar to each other than to Liberia.

Збереження етнонаціональної ідентичності українців у Болгарії: історичний та сучасний контексти.

Збереження етнонаціональної ідентичності українців у Болгарії: історичний та сучасний контексти.

The Resistance of the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany and its Relevance for Contemporary Politics

National populist leaders throughout the world increasingly seek to co-opt religion as an ethno-national identity marker. In contemporary discussions within religious communities about how to react, the German Confessing Church, which had opposed Nazism during the Third Reich, is often cited as a potential role model of resistance. This article reviews the historical origins, nature, methods, and evolution of this movement within the German Protestant Church from 1933–1945. It argues that the theological, political, and personal ambiguities of the Confessing Church’s opposition to Hitler are as instructive for today’s discussions as the heroism and integrity of its members.

On the Significance of Culinary Culture in the Cultivation of Ethno-National Identity of the Koreans Residing in Japan

This study examines the historical trajectory of and the impetus for the selection of bulgogi by the Koreans residing in Japan, contextualized in Japanese history as well as vis-a-vis theories of cultural anthropology and the practice thereof. Moreover, it focuses on the cultural-economic and diachronic processes of bulgogi’s development into a veritable ethno-national food industry amidst the influence of Japanese society upon Korean-Japanese dietary habits. Finally, the study addresses the place of Korean culinary traditions, including bulgogi, in education that may impart a sense of Korean ethno-nationalist consciousness in the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Korean- Japanese in various social spaces within Japanese society. This is so done in face of lived experiences in the attempts to solve the problem of heritance of ethno-nationalist consciousness for the Korean-Japanese people. In sum, three suggestions are forwarded: 1) In the future, it will be necessary to produce talented individuals who can cultivate ethno-nationalism through a systematic study of the culinary traditions of Korea. In addition, possibilities for extending to other grade levels the courses that are currently executed at the middle-school first-grade level must be explored; 2) Through regularly held re-education that includes research and seminars by and for the Korean-Japanese people in the food industry in not only Japan, but also in South Korea, possibilities toward a more creative, progressive culinary culture for Korean food, including bulgogi made of wagyu, Korean beef, as well as other types of beef, should be sought from the persepective of nutrional science and management systems; and 3) In sharing common goals of the disparate groups in the Korean diaspora, including the Korean-Chinese people in Yanbian, possibilities for collaborative research should be explored, and the problem of cultivating ethno-nationalist consciousness on foreign soil must be discussed.

Poland? But which? Jewish Political Attitudes toward the Polish State in Formation during World War I

What kind of country are we talking about when we speak of Poland from the perspective of the organized Jewish political leadership in Poland? What should the scope and characteristics of the new Polish state in their view be? What kind of relations should Poland have with neighbouring states, as well as within, among its various populations and societies? The paper explores the changing answers given by different political Jewish leadership in a period of liminality – the interval between two stages and two distinct situations: the imperial order (Austrian and Russian) and the Polish national state. It examines Galicia and the Congress Poland from 1914 to 1918 when the territory was disputed among different empires and nations and its fate was far from clear. The article claims that the different visions of Poland presented by the Jewish leadership were grounded in two assumptions. The first was that the Jews as an integral part of society were legitimately entitled to express their own vision of the future state, the second – that the Jews, as an integral part of society, were entitled to equality on all levels of social life. That is the reason, the article claims, behind the demands for a fair distribution of the state’s resources regardless the mother tongue, religion, or ethno-national identification. The efforts the leaders of the Polish Jewry made to include the Jews as a minority group equal to others in the Polish state took place in the framework of the ethno-national ethos as the constitutive principle of state-building. The changing political circumstances and the growing hegemonic discourse based on the nation and nationality brought, claims the article, to the raising of a new Jewish national leadership during World War I. This leadership became convinced that, in the light of the discriminatory policies and growing anti-Jewish violence, only a mechanism of minority rights could guarantee Jewish existence in Poland.

LGBT Rights in Bosnia: The Challenge of Nationalism in the Context of Europeanization

AbstractNationalism has been one of the domestic constraints to progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, especially in the Balkans that are dealing with multiple postwar transition realities. Ethno-nationalist challenges, often influenced by religion, have been significant in Bosnia-Herzegovina given weak state identity and democracy, competing institutionalized ethno-national identities, and slow Europeanization. Through the lenses of gendered nationalism, the societal security dilemma, and political homophobia, this article analyzes how the politics and discourse of LGBT rights during the past decade in Bosnia reveal tensions between competing and multiple identities and narratives—European, multiethnic, ethno-nationalist, and religious—using the violent response to the 2008 Queer Sarajevo Festival as a key illustration. However, in the past decade, LGBT rights have progressed and antigay backlash to LGBT visibility (in addition to stronger external leverage and other factors) has resulted in stronger activism and change. The public discourse and response to the announcement of Bosnia’s first Pride Parade represents another turning point in LGBT visibility that seems to reveal that ethno-nationalist challenges may be lessening as LGBT rights norms gain strength.

Theory vs reality: partisanship and Northern Ireland's Public Accounts Committee 2011–2016

ABSTRACTPublic accounts committees (PACs) are tasked with scrutinising executive use of public money, undertaking inquiries with the support of the legislative auditor. Through several means, an expectation is placed on members to be politically neutral in undertaking committee work. However, in the context of Northern Ireland, where consociationalism entrenches binary ethno-national identities throughout the political institutions, it would be expected that party-political interests would prevail and fracture the committee. This paper analyses Northern Ireland's PAC from three perspectives alongside qualitative data from interviews with committee members: theory, party-partisanship and changes in the committee's working relationship with the legislative auditor. It is argued that over the 2011–2016 mandate, this PAC coalesced and functioned well as a unit despite expectation to the contrary, and that the changing dynamics of its working relationship with the Northern Ireland Audit Office over this time are testament to its development in this way.

Language, religion and ethno-national identity: the role of knowledge, culture and communication

ABSTRACTThe influence of religion and language on ethno-national identity is well-established. This article explores these concepts as mutually reinforcing aspects of cultural identity and examines their relationship to the formation of world views and causal interpretations shaping often incompatible ethno-national identities and hence conflicts. Especially we focus on the role of oral cultures as primary communication forms as against print-based ones, and how they differ in recording the past and interpreting the present and future. In orality we find a relatively strong influence of traditional religion, mysticism and past references as key informers of identity, whilst print correlates with the declining role of traditional religion and the rise of science as fundamental dimensions of ethno-national identity. We argue that this distinction helps to explain different experiences of ontological security and insecurity linked to ethno-nationalism and religion.

Navigating “Red Lines” and Transcending the Binary: Tensions in the Pedagogical and Political Goals of Peace Education Work

In this article I explore the tensions that arise in the context of educational initiatives implemented by organizations that have both pedagogical and political aspirations. I draw on the work of Sadaka Reut, a veteran Jewish-Palestinian peace education organization, to highlight how the ideological commitments held by an organization working for structural equality can limit possibilities for openness to multiple perspectives and can thus serve as a barrier towards successfully achieving pedagogical aspirations, in particular Sadaka Reut’s goal of educating towards a binational community of Jewish and Palestinian activists working in partnership. I also highlight the tension inherent in working simultaneously to help Jewish and Palestinian participants develop a strong sense of ethno-national identity; and to facilitate the development of a transcendent identity as activists in solidarity.

Immigrating into the Occupation: Russian-Speaking Women in Palestinian Societies

Social researchers have extensively addressed the immigration of one million Russian speakers to Israel/Palestine over the past twenty-five years. However, the immigrants’ incorporation into the Israeli occupation regime and the ongoing colonisation of Palestine have rarely been questioned as such. In the interviews informing this article, Russian-speaking immigrant women living in Arab-Palestinian communities discuss their complex relations with Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli and Russian-Israeli communities. Sharing a background with Russian-speaking Jewish Israelis on the one hand, and marital kinship ties to Palestinians on the other, these women encounter multiple boundaries of territory and identity in their everyday lives. Drawing on feminist border thinking, I explore these encounters as a navigation through geopolitical and epistemic borderlands in a dense colonial reality. I am particularly interested in the potential of such an exploration to question essentialism and destabilise binary ethno-national categories of identity, such as Arab/Jew and Israeli/Palestinian, that dominate not only hegemonic but also emancipatory discourses. These binary divisions are not a straightforward outcome of political regimes but rather the result of ongoing border-making processes, which are vulnerable to disorder and disruption. This perspective aims to enrich understandings of the roles that gendered ethno-national identities play in sustaining the colonial relations of power in Israel/Palestine.