Ethno-national Identity Research Articles

Постсоветские судьбы среднеазиатского ислама

SUMMARY: Addressing the factor of post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia, Adeeb Khalid argues that for decades Islam was envisioned as an archetypical opposition to communism, while the study of Central Asian societies was the prerogative of nationalities studies as a subdiscipline of Sovietology. Despite the emergence of several profound studies of Islamic societies in the (former) USSR, the view that automatically ascribes political meaning to Islam still predominates, now turning it from a victim of Communism into a major threat to regional security. Arguing against a view of Islam as a rigid system independent of local context, Khalid maintains that responsible research into Islamic societies of Central Asia must take into account Soviet history: as the USSR fell apart, the re-Islamization of the region proceeded along with the persistence of ethno-national identities in a way specific to the early 21 st century. According to Khalid, during the Soviet period Islam and tradition were attacked, Islam was provincialized, and Soviet Muslims were cut off from the rest of the Muslim world. At the same time, the transmission of religious knowledge was limited. Nevertheless, the authorities established the Central Asian Spiritual Administration for Muslims (SADUM), quite in disregard of Islamic tradition, in 1943. SADUM did help train a small number of theologians and maintain a minimal presence of Islam in Central Asia, while the Soviet-promoted national intelligentsia focused on developing and sustaining ethno-national identities. Soviet authority did not mean the annihilation of local communities, which often assumed a Soviet form as collective farms or other institutions. It was through these communities that Islam was often transmitted. Sufism became widespread for it was well suited for informal existence. As a result, Islam became a marker of local and national identity, without requiring a Muslim to subscribe to religious rules and regulations. Khalid stresses that this situation was widespread among premodern societies. In Central Asia, the Jadid movement attempted to reform and reinvigorate Islam in the 19 th century. Yet, the Soviet “localization” of Islam was not just a return to the pre-Jadid situation: during the Soviet period Islam became part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Adeeb Khalid sees the Soviet experience of intervening in Islamic life and tradition as part of a broader context (although the Soviet case was unique in its longevity and fortitude). The author notes that discussions of post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia are conducted in the context of a “return” to original national culture, of which Islam is a part. Discussions of Islam demonstrate that references made to it are possible only in the context of some other topics (progress, education, culture, etc). The disintegration of the Soviet Union saw the persistence of party nomenklatura riding the national rhetoric. Khalid briefly surveys the role played by Islam in contemporary Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, describes these regimes’ struggle against various Islamic movements, and concludes that ethno-national identities in contemporary Central Asia appropriated Islam as their own.

Советский Народ: Создание Единой Идентичности в Ссср как Конструирование Общей Памяти (На Материалах Бурятской Асср)

SUMMARY: Varnaskii effirmes that the Communist party made ethnicity and ethno-nations into a cornerstone of its policies. He explores the application of the concept of “friendship of peoples” to the historical writing in the Buriat Autonomous Republic as a means to create and promote supranational memory. In particular, class universalism was one of the elements in the construction of a supranational narrative of the past. This was reflected in the early 1950s in discussions of periodization of Buriat history and its specific (in the context of USSR) path. Varnavsky provides various examples of how Soviet historiography underscored growing solidarity of Russians and Buriats against their common exploiters within the empire. However, as ethnic identities became rooted, the Soviet discourse paid less and less attention to the notion of the friendship of peoples. Instead, it focused on the new entity, “the Soviet people”. Varnavskii argues that official definitions of the Soviet people ascribed to it the same qualities as to ethnic nations. The author sees the introduction of the concept and its subsequent use as a means of Soviet nation-building. The impossibility to put forward a concept of Soviet nation based on civic community prevented the Soviet authorities from formulating Soviet nationalism, while ideological (communist) contents of Soviet culture allowed the authorities to temper ethno-national identities.

Ambitious education: the role of family, school and friends in the development of successful Romany life courses

Drawing upon questionnaire data this paper analyses ethno-national identity transformations among a sample of 470 socio-economically mobile Roma in Hungary. The paper concerns a group of Roma who have been successful in escaping the grip of ethnicity-specific poverty. The authors inquire about the extent to which these persons view themselves as Roma and the extent to which they were relatively privileged or disprivileged by their parents' levels of educational attainment. Some variations in the Romany identities assumed or accepted by the mobile respondents are also investigated and these are related to objective and subjective aspects of the respondents' current and especially childhood background. Predictions for respondents' children's identification are also analysed. The article asks what the circumstances are under which intergenerational socio-economic mobility among the Roma is, or is not, associated with identity switch or, alternatively, with the possible variations in patterns of identity rete...

Territories and identities in Jerusalem

Jerusalem is a city of many contrasts. It is a historical-symbolic city, revered by Muslims, Christians and Jews. However, its citizens segregate ethno-nationally, culturally and socially, into different identity groups: Jews and Arabs, Haredi (`ultra-Orthodox') and secular Jews, and lower and upper class socio-economic groups. This essay focuses on how political and social struggles over territories reshape the nature of the identities of four distinct groups in Jerusalem. These are ethno-national groups (Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs), cultural groups (ultra-Orthodox Jews, in Hebrew Haredim (zealots), and non-Orthodox Jews), ethno-social groups (disadvantaged groups mainly of oriental descent, in Hebrew Mizrahim and advantaged groups) and economic and ecological groups (the business sector and inhabitants of private residential areas of the city). Thus, long-term historical processes have produced distinct ethno-national, cultural and social identity groups, which occupy specific territories within Jerusalem. The different groups have endowed their territory with dissimilar geopolitical, cultural, and economic meanings and played a major role in the reconstruction of national, cultural, social and ecological identities in the city. The city of Jerusalem is not only a spiritual centre associated with age-long dreams for peace and justice, it is also a violent city, rife with tensions and conflicts, a symbol of national, cultural, economic and ecological struggles. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing all those concerned about its future is whether Jerusalem's universal image of a spiritual, tolerant and just city can overcome its current, particularistic and conflict ridden image.

Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin (review)

in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, SONIA RYANG, ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2000; 240 pp. Reviewed by CHUNGHEE SARAH SOH San Francisco State University in Japan is a valuable collection of critical yet sympathetic articles that explore from anthropological, sociological, literary, and/or cultural studies approaches the issues involved in the formation, reproduction, and transformation of ethnic identity among Koreans or living in Japan permanent alien residents. The book is both an elaboration and extension of the themes raised in the editor's earlier work, North in Japan. As a result of the postcolonial vision of Japanese nationhood culturally integrated under the emperor (p. 27) that guided the re-formation of nation-state in occupied Japan (1945-52), the myth of Japan an ethnically homogeneous nation has spread not only among the Japanese themselves, culminating in the popular discourse on their cultural uniqueness (nihonjinron) in the 1970s, but also virtually blinding the Western academy to the existence of a discriminated ethnic minority community in Japan. Based on her educational experience Melissa Wender gives personal testimony to the invisibility of in Western studies of Japan. She studied Japanese history at a reputable (but, in retrospect, conservative) university in the United States (p. 74) but she knew nothing about resident until her first stay in Japan in 1986 when she learned about their protest against the fingerprinting requirement of the Alien Registration Law. Wender as a different sort of foreigner (p. 101) gave her prints without a second thought (p. 74) when she registered an alien. How do we explain such different reactions to the same legal requirement? What are their implications for the issues of identity? The editor's Introduction provides a succinct overview of the colonial and postcolonial history of in Japan and their expatriate politics (polarizing the community into supporting North and Mindan supporting South Koreans), before outlining the subject matter of the volume. The contributors include Japanese scholars trained in English-speaking countries and teaching in Japan, an Australian, and Americans of Korean, Japanese, and non-Asian ethnic backgrounds (all with personal experiences of living in Japan aliens), well the editor who is herself a Japan-born, stateless Chongryun currently residing in the United States. From the volume, readers learn interesting details of major historical/political events and connotations of key terms, albeit somewhat redundantly, that have helped shape the evolving, ambiguous contours of the ethnonational identity of a diasporic people living in twentiethcentury Japan. The volume may be divided into three topically connected groups of three chapters each, plus a brief but provocative concluding chapter that questions the effectiveness of the socialscientific approach to ethnic identity. The first three chapters (by Chikako Kashiwazaki, Sonia Ryang, and Koichi Iwabuchi, respectively) highlight the historical, political, and sociocultural dimensions in the legal status of resident and their exclusion from Japanese society. Kashiwazaki analyzes the sociohistorical dynamics involving the alien status of resident in terms of the interactions between Japan's postwar reorganization of nationality regulation and the ethnonationalist politics of Korean organizations in Japan, and discusses the concept of denizen for resident aliens with partial citizenship rights (p. 14). Ryang explores the concept of home found among by examining the meaning of the past repatriation to North Korea (many of whom originated from southern Korea) and the contemporary reality of double homelessness (p. 51) for the second-generation overseas nationals of North Korea. …

The place and role of religion in the processes of ethno-national identification

The acquisition of Ukraine in 1991 independence has actualized the problem of national identification of its peoples. According to the Constitution, they were able to have a full-fledged ethno-cultural existence not only Ukrainian but also other ethnic groups living in Ukraine. It turned out that religion, besides language, education, consciousness, and custom of the ritual elements of national life, is important for the processes of ethno-determination (especially Tatar, Polish, Jewish, German, Greek, Bulgarian and some other peoples of Ukraine).

Negotiating National Identity and Self‐Determination in Ethnic Conflicts: The Choice Between Pluralism and Ethnic Cleansing

The contradictions of ethnonational identity, which make it a prime force in both the promotion and the destruction of human dignity and social justice, have become more pronounced with the ending of the Cold War. It is necessary to reconceptualize national identity and develop new norms for accepting a group's right to national self‐determination through establishment of an independent state expressing its national identity, and even for accepting its claim to national identity itself. This article proposes that (1) implementation of a group's right to self‐determination cannot be left to the group alone, but must be negotiated with those who are affected by that decision, particularly minority populations; and (2) national identity itself must be “negotiated” ‐ explored and discussed ‐ with those who are affected by the group's self‐definition.

The Making of a Dominant Myth: The Second World War and the Construction of Political Identities within the Soviet Polity

W orld War II was a watershed in the articulation of political and ethnonational identities within the Soviet polity. The myth of the war became a point of departure in the self-identity and conduct of large segments of the population and the body politic, including those whose identity was allegedly shaped by the profound transformations of the Civil War, collectivization and industrialization. The experience of the war became a yardstick by which identity, meritocracy and status were measured throughout the Soviet polity, superimposing a new set of tropes onto prewar categories. Regardless of the general awareness of the mythical place that the war had come to occupy in the public and private spheres of Soviet society, the prevalent interpretation of the impact of the experience of the World War II on Soviet society and politics has been to marginalize it either as merely a continuation or as a temporal disruption of prewar structured policies. The primary voices in the Soviet historiographical discourse have argued for the primacy of socioeconomic structures and have subscribed to the view that the experiences of the 1920s and early 1930s constituted the formative and enduring moments in the Soviet polity.' Within the di-

Living in Limbo: Bosnian Muslim Refugees in Israel

Challenging the idea that all refugees need to reestablish a new home in their country of refuge in order to avoid social disorganization and collective losses of identity and self-worth, this article shows that Bosnian Muslim families in Israel maintain family cohesion and their ethno-national identity while they live in limbo. This limbo, however, is relatively secure and stable, and due to the policies of the Israeli government, is family and work oriented, ensuring that Bosnian family heads can provide for their children, maintain gender complementarity within the household, and play out their hope that the war will end soon. Unlike their counterparts in refugee camps, Bosnian refugees in Israel have not become dependent or typified by the malaise and social disorganization that often accompanies displacement. The article ends by suggesting that the policy of creating limbo, rather than forcing long-term commitment to a new country, may indeed prevent cultural clashes and social problems, especially a...

Being Muslim the Bosnian way: identity and community in a central Bosnian village

This is an ethnographic account of Bosnian Muslims living in a village near Sarajevo. Although they represent a majority of the population in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Muslims are still members of a minority culture in the region that was once Yugoslavia. The question of ethno-national identity has become paramount in this society and the author focuses on religion as the defining characteristic of identity. Bringa pays particular attention to the roles that women play in defining Muslim identities and she examines the importance of the household as a Muslim identity sphere. In doing so, she illuminates larger issues of what constitutes nationality.

Nation-Building in the Former USSR

Nation-Building in the Former USSR Pål Kolstø (bio) In formal terms, 15 new states appeared on the Eurasian landmass with the demise of the Soviet Union. Yet “states” in the true sense do not spring full-grown from declarations of independence or extensions of international recognition. A truly sovereign state must control its own frontiers, monopolize the legitimate use of force within those frontiers, suppress all or most “private” wielders of force (such as warlords or criminal gangs), collect tolls and taxes, and the like. An administrative apparatus equal to these tasks is needed, as is a broad social consensus on the rules and routines to be used. In the fall of 1991, as the USSR crumbled in the wake of the failed August coup, none of its prospective successor states met these preconditions. They had troops and military installations not under their command on their territories. The levers of economic policy, too, were beyond their control. Their borders with each other were undefended, unpatrolled, and in many cases not even adequately marked. For these reasons, it makes more sense to see 31 December 1991, the day the Soviet Union officially expired, as merely the beginning of a process that will take decades. In addition to the economic and institutional problems that present themselves, there are cultural and political issues that must be resolved. The population of a modern state must share some common identity and sense of destiny. The citizens must be bound together by loyalty toward the same institutions, symbols, and values. This does not mean that all inhabitants of the state must belong to the same ethnic group. National identity may, and in many cases must, be political rather than ethnolinguistic. [End Page 118] The USSR prided itself on being a multinational state, with hundreds of ethnic groups living inside its far-flung borders. By contrast, all the successor states save one have proclaimed themselves “national states” or “nation-states.” 1 In the West, the “nation-state” is generally thought of as a political and civic entity where a common territory, a common government, and to some extent a common political history—but not blood lineage—give substance to the communal bond. Rivaling this “civic” concept of the nation, however, is the organic idea of the nation as something formed by a common language, traditions, mores, religion, and so on; in short, an ethnos. Ethnic nationalism has put down deep roots in Russia, for several reasons. In Western Europe, the key force behind the consolidation of the nation-state was the bourgeoisie, which tends to be “civic” rather than “ethnic” in outlook. In Russia, by contrast, the commercial and professional middle classes were numerically small and politically weak, and the dynastic, imperial state remained dominant. Under such conditions, the various language groups subject to the czar developed strong ethnonational identities. 2 The Soviet era continued and reinforced this tendency. When the victorious Bolsheviks and their Red Army reconstituted the empire as a union of socialist republics in the early 1920s, part of their plan was to mollify all major ethnic groups by giving them some of the trappings of statehood. These groups became the titular nationalities of the various Union republics: the Ukrainians in Ukraine, the Turkmen tribes in the Turkmen SSR, and so on. Each titular nationality, moreover, received certain cultural rights within its “own” territory, particularly as regards educational opportunities and language policy. 3 At the same time, Soviet authorities did nothing to make any Union republic ethnically homogeneous. On the contrary, in some cases officials encouraged interrepublican migration. Coupled with the geographical intermingling of ethnic groups that had been present for centuries, this made for a complicated ethnic map. Hence the dual legacy with which the fledgling states of Eurasia must grapple: the intellectual predominance of exclusionary nationalism coexists uneasily with the concrete reality of disparate ethnic groups living cheek-by-jowl within the same republics. With the exception of Armenia, nontitular groups make up considerable minorities in the Soviet-successor states, in some cases comprising close to half the total population (see Table 1). Table 1. Ethnicity in the Soviet-Successor States, 1989 (in percentage of the total population) State Titular...