Nationalist Politics Research Articles

Petitioning the State: Group Councils and the Development of Political Consciousness in Malawi, 1940s–1950s

From the late 1940s to early 1950s, group councils in Malawi’s Southern province wrote several petitions to the colonial state, which seemingly questioned the colonial justice system and what councillors perceived to be abusive socio-economic state policies. The state established group councils as advisory bodies to native authorities to further decentralise state power in line with Britain’s post-war imperial reforms. Why did group councils resort to the use of petitions, and how do the petitions broaden our understanding of political consciousness in colonial societies? This article uses archival sources to address these questions. It discusses how Africans used group councils to contest and place demands on the reformist post-war colonial state. Through these petitions, Africans expressed their grievances against the colonial state, with which they enjoyed a symbiotic relationship as a provider of public services and a defender of their rights. Africans petitioned the state to remind it of its responsibility from which they considered it had strayed. The petitions illustrate the local people’s knowledge regarding how the colonial state repositioned itself to perform its trusteeship role after the war and the contradictions of that commitment. Although overlooked in previous scholarship, the concerns these petitions raised, the article argues, point to how group councils, the very institutions the state created, became local spaces where African political consciousness was nurtured before it entered the broader politics of mass nationalism in the 1950s.

The Shifting Terms of Religious Authority in North Atlantic Politics and Culture


 Religion continues to evolve on both sides of the North Atlantic. In both contexts, traditional ways of understanding religion are confronted by new realities. The emerging and growing influence of modern media and media institutions are important causes of these changes. It is no longer possible to think of ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ as separate categories when ‘secular’ media increasingly define and deploy religious images, interests, and networks, displacing the influence of traditional authorities. The role of media in these trends is especially obvious in relation the emerging politics of populism, nationalism, and retrenchment. The media operate in a number of registers in these relations, including their textual, institutional, and practical dimensions.

German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism by Marc Volovici (review)

Reviewed by: German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism by Marc Volovici Michael Brenner Marc Volovici. German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. 352 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000301 When I was a student at the Hebrew University in the 1980s, I often heard older professors ask half-jokingly: "So, what is the second most important language for Jewish studies?" The answer was Hebrew. The most important one, of course, was German—as most of the significant nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature of Wissenschaft des Judentums was written in German. Marc Volovici's important study could have been entitled "German as a Jewish Language"—but as he makes clear, after the 1930s, this language which once had been identified with so many Jewish endeavors had become a Jewish problem. The language of Goethe was now branded as the language of Goebbels. The language was identified with hashmadah rather than with haskalah. As time passed, the attempts to reclaim German as a Jewish language could be heard again. When Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke in German in the Knesset in 2008, right-wing Israeli politician Arieh Eldad objected by pointing to the fact that this was the language "in which my grandfather and grandmother were murdered." He was countered by former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, who claimed it was also "the language in which Herzl wrote." He concluded: "Languages are not guilty, only those speaking them." Volovici begins his thorough analysis of the love-and-hate affair between the Jews and the German language with the Enlightenment. It was the Maskilim's resistance to the Jargon (as they denounced Yiddish), and their followers' inability to read Hebrew well enough, which opened the door to the use of German as the new language of educated Jews. Moses Mendelssohn's Bible translation initially still had to be printed in Hebrew letters, as most German Jews were not able to read other characters. Not only the early Haskalah but also the Reform movement was initially largely a German-speaking project. German was used as the language of religious reform not only in Germany itself but also in nineteenth-century America, where many synagogue sermons were delivered in German and Jewish periodicals appeared in German. Soon, German was vilified by some Yiddish-speaking east European Jews as the language of assimilation. What an irony that it would also become the language identified with the new Jewish national movement, Zionism. Not only German Jews like Moses Hess wrote their early Zionist writings in German, but the most important Zionist pamphlet before Herzl's Judenstaat, Leon Pinsker's Selbstemanzipation, was written in German despite the Russian Jewish identity of its author. With the emergence of Herzl on the political stage, official Zionist leadership was firmly in the hand of German speakers. The new movement's journal appeared in German, and the lingua franca at the Zionist congresses was, if not pure German, then Kongressdeutsch. Instead of trying to define what Kongressdeutsch is, Volovici is absolutely right in telling his readers why he would rather not define it: "The fact that Kongressdeutsch could not be easily defined was one of its main sources of practicality, allowing participants of the congress to transcend some of the political sensitivities involved in making language choice" (199). One of the most fascinating chapters in the book deals with the gap between theoretical and practical usage of Hebrew by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. While both translated the Hebrew Bible [End Page 476] into German, they struggled with spoken Hebrew. This was a greater dilemma for the Zionist Buber, who confessed to Gershom Scholem: "I believe I have a right to say that 'I know' Hebrew, but as soon as I want to express a thought, it crumbles in my mouth" (160). For the non-Zionist Rosenzweig, Hebrew remained a holy tongue. Both Buber and Rosenzweig continued to express themselves in German—and the Hebraized German of their Bible translation. It was a long way from Kongressdeutsch and Bibeldeutsch to the role of German in postwar Israel. The country that issued passports valid for all countries with the exception...

Marc Volovici. German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. 352 pp.

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The Politics of Style in “Caribbean Man in Space and Time”

This essay reads Kamau Brathwaite’s seminal 1975 essay “Caribbean Man in Space and Time” in terms of its rhetorical politics. Conceptually, the essay’s hybrid and heterogeneous discourses and registers are theorized in terms drawn from Clifford Geertz, Leah Rosenberg, and Mandy Bloomfield. Brathwaite’s style effectively instantiates “Caribbean Man” as an exemplary model of the practice of Caribbean studies. The essay is posited as a palimpsestic text, haunted by Brathwaite’s prior creative and critical texts as well as the work of other Caribbean writers and intellectuals and animated by metaphors of creolization that derive from the archipelago’s geology, geography, and history. Ultimately, “Caribbean Man,” while immured in the nationalist sensibility of the 1970s, eschews a reductive nationalist politics for a more expansive notion of nation and community akin to Wilson Harris’s shamanic espousal of Indigenous and ancestral presences in the Caribbean imaginary.

An African School for African Americans: Black Demands for Education in Antebellum Boston

AbstractThis article examines Black parents’ efforts to establish and secure quality education for their children in antebellum Boston, Massachusetts. It situates the African School, a Black-owned cultural institution, within Black nationalist politics and reveals how the schoolhouse became a site of political tension between Black Bostonians and the Boston School Committee. Analyzing petitions, school records, and newspapers, this essay finds that the African School cultivated Black citizenship ideologies that prioritized political activism. This study invites new understandings of the political intersections of education and citizenship, and it illuminates the utility of Black nationalism in antebellum Boston.

Sharing political nostalgia in Hungary is yearning for the past successful on social media?

Retrospective rhetoric is considered to be one of the most influential political master frames used in response to the multiple crises in Europe. However, there are significant knowledge gaps in this area. First, there is no comprehensive analytical tool for studying the display of nostalgia in politics. Second, there is limited knowledge regarding the role of social media in disseminating nostalgic narratives. Third, there is a lack of data on citizens’ responses to nostalgia during election campaigns. This article addresses these gaps by identifying the patterns of political nostalgia in the Facebook communications of the Hungarian political forces running for seats in the 2019 European parliamentary election. In addition to a qualitative content analysis of the nostalgic posts, the paper investigates their reception by the social media users who reacted to the messages. The data was gathered during the seven-week official campaign period until the election on May 26. The study confirms that right-wing, nationalist politicians expressed nostalgia more often than left-leaning leaders, and the analysis also shows that nostalgic messages are not very efficient in terms of user engagement and the numbers of emoji responses. Our results therefore mitigate the concerns about the influence of political nostalgia in Hungary.

Socio-Political Resistance in Sindh: From Ancient times to British India

If there is a discussion about the resistance in Sindh it had played an important role in history. It helped Sindh on the two fronts. One of the fronts of resistance had helped Sindh to preserve and maintain the age-old separate and distinct Identity from the foreign aggressions. Sindhi people have boldly stood against foreign invaders. It is another matter that like any other nation, Sindhi people sometimes succeeded in this regard to defend their motherland, and sometimes, they failed. But it is clear evidence that Sindh has staunchly opposed the foreign plunderers and attackers. The second important level of resistance is within the society. Sindhi people have initiated individual and collective levels movements against prevailing exploitation and injustice in the society. Sufis have played their part in this regard to curtail religious extremism and to strive hard to bring religious tolerance, harmony, and peace loving society. Besides the Sufis movement, Sindhi scholars, students, women, peasants have long struggled for the major contradictions and injustice in society. Like every other society, now there are various political parties and organizations working in Sindh. A variety of leftist political parties and innumerable rightist political parties are doing their politics. There exists civil society, women’s organizations, and student organizations working for the downtrodden class of society. Nationalist politics with respect to the vested interests of Sindh is commonplace. This was the brief nature of resistance which had remained insignificant in shaping and preserving the separate and distinct identity of Sindh.

The Emergence of Populist Nationalism and ‘Illiberal’ Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT This article examines Sri Lanka’s ‘illiberal’ peacebuilding through the lens of what is referred to as populist nationalism, a distinct form of post-war political order characterised by nationalist politics with a populist orientation. It shows that the notion of ‘victor’s peace’ has facilitated a shift from ethnolinguistic nationalism to populist nationalism. It identifies three interrelated dimensions of populist nationalism – leadership, new social polarisation, and the narratives of crisis and securitisation. This analytical framework is applied to discern how and why ‘illiberal’ peacebuilding emerged in post-war Sri Lanka. The article argues that populist nationalism and ‘illiberal’ peacebuilding have a symbiotic relationship. Populist nationalism provided political justifications to legitimise ‘illiberal’ peacebuilding, which, in return, empowered the war victors, disempowered conflict victims, and enabled populist-nationalist leaders to manipulate peacebuilding resources to consolidate power. Emerging as a leader-centric political discourse, populist nationalism is reinforced by new social polarisations and securitisation, which further deepens social conflicts.

The Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe: Historiography, Archival Resources and Remembrance

<i>The Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe: Historiography, Archival Resources and Remembrance</i>

Pretty fly for a white guy: the politics of race, nation and difference in professional boxing

ABSTRACT In 2008 Joe Calzaghe (from Wales) fought Bernard Hopkins (from the USA) in a light-heavyweight boxing match. Prior to the fight Hopkins had taunted Calzaghe with the refrain that he would never lose to a white boy. This paper assesses the interplay of discourses surrounding race and nation in the build-up to the contest between the two boxers. The analysis highlights how simplistic binaries are used to perpetuate notions of difference and considers how this accentuates divides in contested racial and national terrains.

Constructing national identity through World Heritage: the international and intranational politics of the built environment in Ahmadabad

ABSTRACT In 2017, amidst rising Hindu nationalist politics, the ‘Historic City of Ahmadabad’ was designated India’s first UNESCO World Heritage city for its Islamic architectural heritage. How should we understand the emergence of this seeming counter-narrative at a time of rising ethno-nationalism? Ahmadabad’s diverging international and intranational heritage narratives are instructive in understanding what motivates national identity constructions inside and outside a nation-state’s borders. Using evidence from semi-structured interviews and documents, this paper illustrates how Ahmadabad’s World Heritage narrative is manipulated for different objectives at each scale. Internationally, Ahmadabad’s heritage cooperation with the French government, and framing as ‘multicultural’ is intended to internationalise the city and appeal to a global audience. Internally, its framing suggests inclusivity but operates as a subtle form of control by presenting a carefully curated degree of Islamism. Ultimately, this narrative of inclusion excludes the Muslim and migrant populations most closely associated with this heritage. By unpacking the socio-political and economic forces at play in constructing Indian national identity internationally and internally, this paper highlights the uses and abuses of built heritage.

Lacking Clarity or Strategic Ambiguity? Comment on "Competing Frames in Global Health Governance: An Analysis of Stakeholder Influence on the Political Declaration on Non-communicable Diseases".

This commentary engages with Suzuki and colleagues' analysis about the ambiguity of multi-stakeholder discourses in the United Nations (UN) Political Declaration of the 3rd High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (HLM-NCDs), suggesting that blurring between public and private sector in this declaration reflects broader debates about multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in health governance. We argue that the ambiguity between the roles and responsibilities of public and private actors involved may downplay the role (and regulation) of conflicts of interest (COI) between unhealthy commodity industries and public health. We argue that this ambiguity is not simply an artefact of the Political Declaration process, but a feature of multi-stakeholderism, which assumes that commercial actors´ interests can be aligned with the public interest. To safeguard global health governance, we recommend further empirical and conceptual research on COI and how it can be managed.

Progress towards 2020 global HIV impact and treatment targets.

IntroductionOver the past 20 years, the response to the HIV epidemic has achieved remarkable results. These results have often been motivated by targets adopted by countries through United Nations (UN) Political Declarations on HIV. The 2016 political declaration included two impact targets, to achieve a 75% decline in new HIV infections and AIDS‐related deaths between 2010 and 2020, and to reach the 90‐90‐90 testing and treatment targets by 2020. Our objective is to summarize progress towards these targets using robust and comparable HIV estimates released by UNAIDS in July 2021. In addition, we comment on the importance of targets and the modelled estimates required to quantify those targets.DiscussionThe UNAIDS estimates indicate that at the global and regional levels, the 2020 targets were missed: new infections declined by 31% and AIDS‐related deaths declined by 47% between 2010 and 2020, compared to a target of 75% decline for both indicators. Similarly, no region achieved the 90‐90‐90 testing and treatment targets. Some countries, in diverse settings, achieved these targets showing that the targets were not overly ambitious if the right funding, policies and evidence‐informed interventions at the right scale were in place. The 2021 UN Political Declaration on HIV, adopted on 8 June 2021, has set out a new set of ambitious but achievable targets for 2025. The 2025 targets and the required actions to reach those targets are described in the Global AIDS Strategy 2021–2026, which provides a framework to reprioritize HIV responses by reducing inequalities and building on the achievements of multiple Sustainable Development Goals. The Strategy encourages countries to monitor progress against targets for different geographic areas and populations to maximize equitable services and ensure accountability and also to understand why targets are being missed.ConclusionsThe UNAIDS epidemiological estimates provide information that promote accountability and estimate progress towards global targets at the national level. Additional strategic information and analyses are required to identify the populations that are furthest from the targets and the programmes and policies that are keeping countries from meeting their targets.

We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day by Ivana Bodrožić (review)

BOOKS IN REVIEW a photo album, with each chapter providing a picture of V.’s life with G. at certain moments, all moving toward the abyss. The structure provides the reader with a greater sense of how V. recalls her life in a way that supports, but also makes as accessible as possible, the trauma of her experience . Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that nearly everyone in V.’s life is complicit in the affair. Her relationship with G. was an open secret, and most chose to look the other way or put G.’s behavior down to his “genius” as an author. Perhaps most damning is V.’s mother and her refusal to protect her daughter. The title of the memoir, Consent (Le Consentement in French), is also an indictment of the circumstances and the world in which V. found herself. V. never gave her consent to be used by G. in the way that he did, to become someone’s fantasy, or be sacrificed by her mother and the social circle surrounding them. What is most devastating is the inability to fully recover one’s life, one’s childhood, after a traumatic experience such as this, and V. writes with brutal honesty and precision, further exposing herself to the world. In one of the most horrifically honest statements , V. writes: “When you’re fourteen, it’s not normal for a fifty-year-old man to wait for you outside your school. It’s not normal to live with him in a hotel, to find yourself in his bed at teatime with his penis in your mouth.” It’s not normal to sacrifice our children to monsters. V. is not writing this memoir solely for herself; she’s writing it as a plea to stop normalizing the type of toxic masculinity that is often excused because the male is a “great artist.” Great art does not excuse this type of behavior, and until we acknowledge this and stop accepting it, more childhoods will be stolen and destroyed. Consent is powerful and tragic, and one of the most important testimonies on this subject ever written. Andrew Martino Salisbury University Ivana Bodrožić We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day Trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać. New York. Seven Stories Press. 2021. 240 pages. IN HER NATIVE Croatia, Ivana Bodrožić is controversial. While internally displaced as a nine-year-old at the beginning of the civil war, whose father disappeared fighting for Croatian independence from Yugoslavia, she is cynical about the political and cultural legacy of the 1990s conflict . We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day caused an uproar when it was published in 2016; in the novel, Bodrožić questions every foundational element of the Croatian postwar rhetoric, politics, and institutions that are rooted in war heroism but are actually driven by corruption, bribery , and self-interest. Even more daringly, she suggests that contemporary Croatian issues are self-generated. Her criticism is sweeping, touching religion, nationalism, education, and gender politics, written in a fast-paced, narration-dominant journalistic style: “The war was actually a shiny, radiant point people kept returning to; they hadn’t moved on from what they still saw as a time of pride and glory. The aggression, the destruction, and devastation continued, only now it was not about defending the country. Two decades after the war, damaging behavior was still being honored, exacted, treated as if it were holy.” Many of Bodrožić’s negative characters are almost exact replicas of public figures engaged in political scandals whose careers benefited from the war, easily identifiable to the Croatian reader, and consequently blurring the line between the fictional and factional. The main character’s background is reminiscent of the author’s, and although the location is not specified in the novel, it is easily recognizable as Vukovar, Bodrožić’s hometown. Vukovar is one of the most eastern Croatian cities, located on the Danube and the border with Serbia, and as such was a site of horrendous battles and violence during the ethnic war. Even nowadays, the school system is segregated into Croatian and Serbian, and schoolyards are literally separated by fences. In...

Dividing without Conquering: Generation, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in Taiwan’s 2016 Presidential Election

Based on the literature about the role of rising nationalism in recent world politics, this paper proposes a nationalism-oriented causal model to explain the voting choices of different social groups. With an interest-identity framework, this generic model is applied to Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election to examine whether and to what extent 11 causal mechanisms influence the voting choices of four groups defined by generation, class, and ethnicity. The findings not only reveal generational, class-based, and ethnic differences in Taiwanese voting behavior; they also show that the election was largely one of identity politics centered around the issues of national identity and democratic identification, making the “interest card” played by Beijing less effective in swaying voter choices. This explains why Beijing’s divide-and-conquer economic policy successfully divided Taiwanese voters but failed in the end to prevent the pro-independence candidate from winning the election. The findings also indicate that the economic concerns of voters promoted both their Taiwanese identity and support for Taiwan independence, while identification with Taiwan’s democracy contributed directly to the former and only indirectly to the latter. Overall, the model presents a more fine-grained analysis of nationalist politics and may be applied to the studies of other political behaviors involving nationalism.

Thailand's national strategic plan on antimicrobial resistance: progress and challenges.

Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat that affects all countries. The Global Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance and the United Nations Political Declaration on antimicrobial resistance set standards for countries to resolve antimicrobial resistance challenges under the One Health approach. We assess progress and challenges in implementing Thailand’s national strategic plan on antimicrobial resistance 2017–2022, discuss interim outcomes and share lessons learnt. Major progress includes: establishing a national governance mechanism that leads high-impact policy on antimicrobial resistance and consolidates actions and multisectoral collaboration; creating a monitoring system and platform to track implementation of the strategic plan; and converting strategies of the strategic plan into actions such as controlling the distribution and use of antimicrobials in humans and animals. Interim results indicate that antimicrobial consumption in animals has nearly halved (exceeding the national goal of a 30% reduction) whereas other goals have not yet reached their targets. We have learnt that elevating antimicrobial resistance to high-level visibility and establishing a national governance mechanism is an important first step, and a monitoring and evaluation system should be developed in parallel with implementation. Securing funds is crucial. Policy coherence is needed to avoid duplication of actions. Highly ambitious goals, although yet to be achieved, can advance actions beyond expectations. Political commitment and collaboration across different sectors will continue to play important roles but might not be sustained without a well-designed governance structure to support long-term actions to address antimicrobial resistance.

Nationalism, Class, and Status: How Nationalists Use Policy Offers and Group Appeals to Attract a New Electorate

How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation’s political and cultural status and the socio-economic status of its median member. Drawing on several original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was declining, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics of nationalism, class, and status are closely intertwined.

The language of space and ownership in rural New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth-century: rural workers

AbstractLanguage used in depositions in colonial New South Wales shows a mobile non-Aboriginal society of close surveillance, rumour and informing. This derived from the convict system. In response to this there was considerable play with marking and markers, including the widespread use of nicknames and emphasis on personal space. Outside of this was the dreamlike realm of entertainment to be had in public houses, Aboriginal camps and Chinese tents at the diggings. Aboriginal politics was present at all of these places but Aboriginal camps were also places of considerable danger.

Jackson, The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland

Jackson, <i>The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland</i>