Imagined Community Research Articles

The feasibility of combining greening schoolyards and nutrition education in primary schools: A qualitative study.

An increasing number of children in the Netherlands is overweight or obese, which is largely attributable to an unhealthy lifestyle and unhealthy living environment. Nutrition education and greening the schoolyard, for example with a vegetable garden, have independently been studied and are shown to be effective in teaching children a healthy lifestyle and providing a healthy living environment. However, the feasibility of combining nutrition education and greening the schoolyard has not been studied yet. Therefore, this study aimed to provide insight into primary schools' vision on making this combination, and the feasibility of doing so. In this study a qualitative research design was used. The theoretical frameworks of Proctor et al. and Sekhon et al. were used to develop the interview guide. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of school teams and school directors. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using the thematical analysis of Braun and Clarke. According to the interviewees, three facets are essential to make the combination of greening schoolyards and nutrition education feasible and successful. Firstly, the interviewees mentioned that the school team and school directors of schools must be able to see the connection between greening the schoolyard and nutrition education. Additionally, support is needed among the parents, school team, pupils and local community. Finally, the interviewees stated that schools must be able to integrate greening the schoolyard and nutrition education into their existing curriculum. The results of this study showed that combining greening schoolyards and nutrition education in primary schools is feasible and successful when vision, support and integration are present. Future research should investigate the vision of the local community and parents on making the combination, and the effects of the combination on pupils and their environment.

Distant-Reading Communities: Monolingualisation in Fin-de-Siècle European Literary Historiography

Abstract A return to earlier forms of distant reading multilingual corpora allows us to reflect on the monolingual authorial position that manages and mediates the language diversity and linguistic specificity (literariness) of multilingual corpora with the objective of fostering supranational (imagined) communities of readers (Anderson, 1983). Revisiting the distant-reading practices of fin-de-siècle Britain can help us identify historiographical focal points and priorities, provide an understanding of the scope and circumference of the corpus, and reveal the conceptions of gain and loss perceived as integral to distant reading. The tension between enrichment and dispossession inherent in the practice of literary historiography is acute when it comes to multilingual corpora, compiled to facilitate a crossing and re-weaving of the boundaries of language, understanding, and community. In the 12-volume series Periods of European Literature, edited and, in part, written by the journalist, literary historian, and Chair of Rhetoric and English Literature at Edinburgh University, George Saintsbury (1845–1933), Anglophone comparatists represent the multilingual corpora of exemplar works, gauging the necessity for, or dispensability of, translation, and managing the “great unread”, which, in this case, equates the “great unreadable”. In their desire to build imagined communities of readers of European literature, Saintsbury and his contributors tend to operate in a monolingual supralinguistic sphere in which languages, authors, and works are named, passages are occasionally quoted, but in which no reading of literature, neither on the side of the comparatist, nor of the reader, takes place. Literary language is thus only tangentially part of literary historiography.

Keeping birth at home: community and service provider visions for perinatal wellness and continued Inuit childbirth in Nunavik

Childbirth on traditional territories is unattainable for many Indigenous peoples living in remote communities in Canada. In Nunavik, Inuit territory in northern Quebec, rapid population growth risks exceeding local midwifery capacity. This poses challenges to community-based childbirth in a region recognized for reclaiming Inuit midwifery and local birthing. To explore community views on protective factors of maternal and family perinatal wellness and continued local birthing. In ten communities, Inuit families and perinatal service providers created a total of 54 fuzzy cognitive maps on protective factors for (1) birth in a good way in Nunavik, (2) maternal and family perinatal wellness, and (3) community-based birthing in Nunavik. We used fuzzy transitive closure to examine direct and indirect connections and collated individual factors into categories using inductive thematic analysis. Well-equipped local medical facilities and services, community birthing centres run by Inuit midwives, and Inuit perinatal traditions had the strongest influence on experiencing birth in a good way in Nunavik. Inuit youth perspectives featured instrumental and emotional support for mothers and families, along with health and self-care in pregnancy as the most influential factors on maternal and family perinatal wellness. Prominent protective factors for community birth in Nunavik included maternal-infant health and wellness, local Inuit midwifery services, and well-resourced medical facilities. Fuzzy cognitive mapping was helpful in informing community visioning of local childbirth and maternal and family perinatal wellness in Nunavik. Inuit-led midwifery services are essential to continued local childbirth in the region.

A Gladdening Vision of a Dancing Christ: Findings of a Ritual Ethnography of Intercultural Icons

The cultural renaissance in 20th-century India has fostered an aesthetic integration of contemplative mysticism with popular religious practices, influencing various artistic and theological movements. This paper examines Christian artist Joy Elamkunnapuzha’s use of Indian classical and mythical elements in his religious artworks, particularly in two North Indian churches. These intercultural icons, which incorporate symbols from Hindu traditions like mandalas and mudras, have been central to the worship practices of local Catholic communities for over three decades. Through ritual ethnography, the study reveals how these visual representations mediate ritual affectivity and communal imagination, impacting identity formation and spiritual engagement in a multi-religious context. Respondents—including worshippers, ministers, and religious students—attest to the transformative impact of these images, as they negotiate between Christian metaphors and Hindu aesthetic traditions. The research is grounded in practical theology, liturgical theology, and ritual studies, contributing to the works of Indian Christian cultural activists like Jyoti Sahi. By exploring the creative dynamics of visual approach, visual appeal, and visual affinity within worship spaces, the study elucidates the complex processes of meaning making through symbolic mediation in interreligious environments.

‘A window of the world’: itinerant silent cinemas in rural Australia

ABSTRACT Moving pictures connected even the most remote corners of the British Empire with its cultural and economic center. Between 1896 and 1916, transnational silent cinema shaped settler-colonial Australia’s relationship to the British Empire in tandem with the colonies’ move toward federation and political autonomy. Traveling exhibitors were key to this process, bringing moving pictures from the UK, Europe, and the US to Australians who lived outside major cities. This paper explores how itinerant silent cinema shows brought not just the pictures to rural Australian audiences, but also a sense of belonging to an imagined transnational community, through films from the UK, US, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Between 1896 and 1905, exhibitors like Maurice Sestier and Wybert Reeve were instrumental in introducing cinema technology, while entertainers like J. C. Williamson, T.J. West, the Marvellous Corricks, and Ettie Wilmott helped maintain the popularity of the cinema in the mid-1900s, in part by incorporating films into variety shows. From around 1910, when permanent cinemas had been established in larger Australian towns, until at least 1914 but in some cases for much longer, itinerant exhibitors and vaudeville shows like Wilmott’s Electric Pictures kept remote rural communities supplied, albeit intermittently, with cinema experiences that connected them to a wider imagined community.

Social Problems of Islam in Modern Indonesia in Muslim Academic Periodicals

The purpose of the article is to analyse the modern Muslim intellectual tradition in Indonesia in the context of analysing the social problems of Islam. The novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the main trends and directions in the development of Muslim social thought in modern Indonesia. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles proposed in intellectual and social history, which allows us to perceive Muslim intellectuals involved in the study of the social problems of the Ummah as an imagined community, and their ideas as invented traditions. The article analyses 1) the theoretical and methodological foundations of modern Indonesian sociology of Islam, 2) national specifics and regional features of the development of Islam in Indonesia in modern Muslim thought, 3) the problems of transformation and contradictions of the radicalization of Islam through the prism of understanding and interpreting this dimension of the modern social history of Islam. It is assumed that Muslim intellectuals make a significant contribution to the consolidation of modern identity by analysing both the social characteristics and characteristics of the Ummah, as well as the threats faced by the Indonesian model of Islam in a secular society in the context of the actualization of the ideas of radical Islam. The author's main conclusions include several points: 1) professional Muslim intellectuals make a major contribution to the development of modern Muslim sociology, 2) specialised journals published by Islamic universities play a leading role in the production and relaying of social knowledge based on Islam, 3) modern Muslim intellectual tradition is the subject to fragmentation, but, in general, the scientific tradition of the Ummah actualizes moderate trends in Islamic Sociology, based on the principles of interdisciplinarity.

The Revolution That Did Not Happen. Labor Insurgency in Late Russian Poland

Abstract Russian Poland was among the most militant tsarist borderlands during the 1905–1907 Revolution in the Russian Empire. However, only a decade later, when revolutionary movements again loomed large and shook the whole region after 1917, Poland remained relatively calm. Forging a new statehood after 1918 rivaled the earlier popular drive toward social revolution. Revolution was aborted in Poland; in other rim regions of the Russian Empire, however, the situation evolved differently, and this scenario should not be taken as self-explanatory. The dynamic of political contention on the ground in the inter-revolutionary decade is the key to understand the pathways of the new state and its society. But the existing accounts deliver only a fragmentary picture, concentrating on the teleology of nation, nation state and its elites or party politics. Meanwhile, the dynamics of labor contention can be hardly squared with unanimous class or national mobilizations. This article addresses this gap drawing from an extensive collection of courses on social unrest and conflict in the Kingdom of Poland based on administrative sources from local Polish and central Russian archives (more than 3300 entries on contentious events). Covering broad available sources, it offers a picture of labor unrest spanning from tinier township workshops, insular, dispersed industrialization of smaller cities harboring quite large mills, to fully-fledged industrial power hubs. The findings show the large heterogeneity of conflict among urban workers. The initial enthusiasm of the 1905 upheaval did not hold sway for long. Workers were tired with the revolutionary mobilization, derailed by the state repression and reluctant to embark on political action again. The lore of 1905 was not an important point of reference for the forthcoming mobilizations. Instead, protests had their own rhythms and spatial patterns, resembling the pre-industrial calendar of festivities turning into insurgencies but also followed pan-imperial causes. Inter-ethnic tensions kicked in: within crews (mostly Polish-Jewish) but above all between rank-and-file workers and foremen, often of German origin. This plurality resulted in various possibilities to build a working class imagined community ranging from a single factory, through branch-wide solidarities, national filiation up to pan-imperial class alliance. Also the tsarist administration, interested in maintaining the basic stability of supply and keep the state going was an important factor. These heterogenous field of tensions did not form any cleavage conductive to singular mobilization. However, it was susceptible to broader political projects binding various claims. Such a project was a new Poland, supported by major parties and perceived by many as nothing less as a revolutionary state for a while promising anti-imperial self-assertion, national rights, political freedom, and social emancipation.

Clapping the nation, or, from a global pandemic to national imaginaries via local solidarities

AbstractIn the early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic, people in England stepped outside their doors once a week to clap the National Health Service. What does this have to do with nationalism? On the face of it, nothing much: clapping exercised local, and not, national solidarities. I will show, however, that local solidarities performed in clapping rituals led to the regeneration of national imaginaries via the symbols on display and the national institutions through which pandemic experiences were channelled. My argument has three parts. First, I show that helping practices during the pandemic shaped local solidarities that found collective expression through clapping. Second, I explain how the local experiences of clapping merged with national imaginaries when performed on a national canvas with symbols that marked an imagined community of national clappers. Third, I argue that clapping was subsumed into a nascent national imaginary via nationally scoped institutions that were exercised to fight the pandemic. Whilst the local has long been appreciated as a site and source for nationalism, I have added how non‐national local practices can also be constitutive of nationalism. A global pandemic led to national imaginaries via the local solidarities that were formed by clapping for carers.

Solar sacrifice: Bataille and Poplavsky on friendship

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought.

‘Still and dark assemblies’: the narrativised chess-player in urban & literary culture, 1834–1864

ABSTRACT This article continues previous research examining the entanglement of the chess-player with urban and literary culture in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. It examines nineteenth-century chess-player and writer George Walker’s 1843 essay ‘The Battles of M’Donnell and De La Bourdonnais’ in which Walker mused on the 1834 contests between two great players of the age – Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell. Two contending narrative forms are evident within the text: the first framed the chess world as an imagined community beyond nationalistic contest and commemorated the passing of time whilst the second detailed the chronicling of the exact moves of McDonnell and Bourdonnais’ chess games undertaken by William Greenwood Walker. Both narrative forms emerged from the intersection of the game’s increasingly prevalent literary presence with its physical presence in the nineteenth-century city. Both narrative forms exposed a fragility in the historical record-keeping process. And, both narrative forms reveal how chess-play can be experienced as both an ordered, linear chronology and a disordered archive of chess-play experienced non chronologically and non-linearly.

The Elusive Borders of Regional Feeling: Re-Imagining the Federalist Map in Early West Germany

While a rich body of work on nations and national borderlands has demonstrated how the ideal of the nation state resulted in ever greater (and often violent) demands for geographic fixity, this article shows how territorial visions of regional communities permitted a tremendous level of flexibility and were able to hold highly divergent geographic imaginings in suspension. The article seeks to demonstrate this by looking at a unique moment in post-war West German history when spatial planers, parliamentary committees, regionalists and an army of experts sought to determine the boundaries of regional belonging in preparation for a planned redrawing of the West German federal map. Many believed that a viable federalist democracy required stronger federal states rooted in a sense of regional community. The states created by the Allies were initially seen as temporary, and Article 29 of the new constitution required that states be redrawn by considering boundaries of regional belonging. The intense efforts of experts, politicians, and regionalists, however, ultimately failed and revealed widely diverging ideas about which territories corresponded to a common sense of regional community. Conflicting historic state borders, the historic force of physical geographies, confession, orientation to urban centres, a profusion of dialect borders, and regional cultural practices all shaped geographic visions of region, but simultaneously underpinned widely-variant cognitive maps. While the failure to redraw the West German map resulted in this episode of history largely being forgotten, I argue that it speaks volumes about how forms of community beyond and beneath the nation state have been imagined in territorial space.

Experiencing ‘Taiwanese’ nationhood in the ambivalent heritage from the Japanese colonial era

ABSTRACT This study discusses how ordinary people experienced and reproduced Taiwanese nationhood in response to the ambivalent heritage of the Japanese colonial era. Heritage serves as a crucial instrument to convey the national imagining; nevertheless, it is unclear how ordinary people could gain a national meaning from the colonial-era heritage of hegemonic discourse. By interconnecting the theoretical ideas of ‘imagined community’ and ‘banal nationalism’, semi-structured interviews were conducted in this study to explore how ordinary people appropriated the colonial-era heritage as the notion of a ‘historic territory’ shared by a ‘national we’. Their discussions revealed intelligence attachments, local characteristics, personal memories, and political statements as scenarios from which they obtained gratification and admiration. The results also revealed that these social narratives extended the official narrative to reshape the colonial-era heritage associated with one particular group and era as the property of all Taiwanese, emphasising the recreation of nationhood through a bottom-up force.

Holocaust as horror. A few remarkson Polish literature 1985–2015

The author suggests that the depictions of the Holocaust in Polish literature of 1989–2015 shouldbe categorized as horror. From the chronological perspective, Czapliński divides those thirty yearsinto three shorter periods: 1) the initial period (from Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Jan Błoński’sessay “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto” to the end of 20th century) was dominated by white horror,which presented Jews as ghosts demanding a place in the Polish memory; 2) during the secondperiod (from Marek Bieńczyk’s Tworki and Jan Tomasz Gross’ Neighbors until the end of the 2010s)the horror poetics was used to reveal those principles of pre-war and occupation-period normalitywhich helped the Germans conduct the Holocaust and which conditioned the exclusion of Jewsfrom the Polish circle of ‘normal humanity’; 3) during the third period (from Gross’s Golden Harvestuntil the end of the second decade) Jews return as the undead, violating the rules of distanceand obliging Poles to physically touch the disgusting matter of the Holocaust. The contact with theHolocaust as something abhorring becomes a condition for collective self-knowledge, purging,and establishment of a new imaginary community.

Welcome to this Brave Bro’s World: the (Re)production of hegemonic masculinity in a Chinese manosphere

ABSTRACT Building on a feminist critical discourse analysis, this study reveals the mechanism of the continuous reproduction of hegemonic masculinity in a Chinese manosphere, Hupu, the biggest sports fandom platform in China. As an ideological foundation on Hupu, hegemonic masculinity directs misogynistic practices (e.g. sexualization of women and misogynistic lexicon development) and shapes an imagined community of toxic brotherhood. In turn, the misogynistic practices and this community of brotherhood also reproduce hegemonic masculinity, ensuring a cycle of the maintenance of a toxic manosphere. We further consider the socio-political context in contemporary China to criticize how state power, platform affordances, and hegemonic masculinity are intertwined and jeopardize Chinese feminism both online and offline.

Unveiling South American collective identities in Brazil: insights into regional integration and identity formation

ABSTRACT This study investigates the construction of South American collective identities in Brazil, emphasizing regional integration and identity formation. Using a seven-scale model adapted from European identity research, it evaluates the psychological existence and identification with South America as a transnational imagined community among Brazilians. The findings highlight the complex interplay between national and regional identities, influenced by historical, cultural, and socio-political factors. The study contributes to the field of Comparative Regionalism by providing a nuanced understanding of identity dynamics in South America, underscoring the importance of elite-led integration efforts and their impact on citizens’ perceptions.

Factors affecting the desire to work among elderly people in Thailand

Globally, the number of elderly people is increasing. It is important for elderly people to be financially active to enhance their values and health. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the factors affecting the desire to work among elderly people in Thailand. The present study was a cross-sectional analytical study conducted using the 2017 Elderly Population Survey database of the National Statistical Office, which includes 32,035 individuals. The statistical analysis was performed by a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM). This study revealed that 31.05% of the elderly participants desired to work (95% CI: 30.54-31.55). Statistically significant factors influencing this desire included demographic characteristics such as gender (female, AOR=1.76), age groups (middle elderly stage, AOR=3.13; late elderly stage, AOR=8.88), and literacy (ability to read and write, AOR=1.21). Marital status also played a role, with married (AOR=1.39) and single (AOR=1.37) individuals showing a higher desire to work. Health-related factors were equally important. Those with better physical health had a much higher likelihood of wanting to work compared to those with very poor health (AOR=5.81). Furthermore, engaging in exercise (AOR=1.30), participating in social groups (AOR=2.50), and community activities (AOR=1.11) were positively associated with the desire to work. Sensory abilities, such as clear vision (AOR=1.14) and hearing (AOR=1.42), as well as residing in rural areas (AOR=1.23), also influenced this desire. Approximately one-third of the elderly people were willing to work. Factors that were associated with the desire to work included gender, age, reading and writing ability, marital status, physical health, engaging in exercise, ability to participate in social groups, participation in community activities, vision and hearing ability and location of residence. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach that considers these factors should be undertaken to promote suitable work for elderly people to enhance their values and health.

How to Humanize ‘Feral Children’: Constructing ‘Proper Identities’ in Liberal and Illiberal Legal Discourses

Abstract The subjects of this article are the mechanisms of constructing the identity of the collective subject of sovereignty in liberal and illiberal discourses and the issue of the relationship between collective identity discourses (primarily those related to law and imposed by law) and the political. The author adopts a specific perspective inspired by post-structuralism and post-Marxism. This perspective denies the claim of modern liberalism to be a meta-category in relation to other political and ideological options. The so-called post-politics inscribed in liberal discourses is, from the point of view of post-Marxism, a political proposition deeply entangled in ideology. The basic thesis of the article is that both the liberal and illiberal discourses in the construction of the subject of sovereignty are essentialist and perceive this subject as an imagined community that must be built with the significant participation of the law and (partially hidden) coercion.

A Fit Resting Place for One Who Loved Liberty, Justice, and Equality”: Liberalism, Antislavery, and the American Expatriate Community in Florence, Italy, 1820–1865

Abstract: This article examines the American expatriate community in Florence, Italy, between 1840 and 1865. Florence, with its history of liberalism, attracted reformers from all over the Atlantic world, including many Americans and Britons committed to antislavery. During the two decades before the Civil War, Florence attracted American and British cultural elites who valued its history, culture, cosmopolitanism, and suitability for untrammeled discussion and debate about a variety of liberal causes, including antislavery. For American reformers and intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, and Sarah Parker Redmond, the city represented both a physical location and an imagined community dedicated to antislavery and liberal reform. American abolitionists’ interaction in Florence with English abolitionists such as Robert and Elizabeth Browning and Fanny Trollope suggests that the city looms larger in the geography of nineteenth-century abolitionism than previously appreciated.

The Reform and Evolution of ASEAN Human Rights Regime: A Communicative Action Perspective

ASEAN has experienced significant progress since the initiation of the ASEAN Community Vision and the incorporation of human rights into its foundations. This development has ignited continuous scholarly discussions over the degree to which the ASEAN human rights framework shape regional identity and impacts member states’ behavior towards human rights. These debates often revolve around two key theoretical approaches: the logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness. These logics pose challenges in fully understanding the complexity of state behavior, as they are often observed operating simultaneously and interchangeably within state actions. The article investigates the ASEAN human rights regime through the communicative action perspective and its logic of arguing. It employs a qualitative instrumental case study approach, focusing on the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) Centre to illuminate the region's evolving human rights strategies. It is characterized by both deliberate reforms and informal adaptations, reflecting a complex interplay of traditional principles, and emerging human rights norms. The findings indicate that ASEAN states are open to being convinced and persuaded by ideas related to human rights instead of dismissing them outright. ASEAN's approach to human rights, while progressing gradually, suggests a shift towards more substantive engagement with global human rights norms, facilitated by the discursive processes embedded within the AICHR and AHA Centre.

On Wor(l)ds and Pandemics.

The spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has stimulated eschatological speculation. To the environmentalist and liberal diagnostician that had already been warning about the Anthropocene and the breakdown of post-Cold War global harmony, an alarm has now been added that in its worst prognosis estimates that, in 2020, we only started witnessing the beginning of a staggered health debacle. The idea of the world, as conceptual support for an imaginary community with global reach, has become a crisis. The world, an object often invoked by theoretical speculation over the last 30years, has been now decreed finished. However, infectious diseases, in their epidemic and pandemic form, have devastated different societies at different times. This paper parallels two historical scenarios and a series of texts dealing with contagious diseases to shed light on the idea of (the end of) the world. The analysis centres on documents that bear witness to the importation of smallpox and other diseases into America and its spread during the European invasion and colonization. By recovering the concept of Pachakuti, a radical turnaround that can be understood as "end of one world", this paper shows that the chronicles reporting on the outbreaks of smallpox in America document a material end of the world for subjects who were not protagonists of history. The current end of the world is, on the contrary, that which would correspond to the protagonist of our phase of globalization and, eventually, to his world-which makes it more resonant and absolute.