Political Identity Formation Research Articles

Gender Representation in the American Politics Canon: An Analysis of Core Graduate Syllabi

ABSTRACTCore graduate-level seminars, in many ways, establish the “canon” literature for scholars entering a discipline. In the study of American Politics, the contents of this canon vary widely across departments and instructors, with important implications for the perspectives to which graduate students are exposed. At a basic level, the demographic characteristics of the authors whose work is assigned can have a major impact on the diversity (or lack of diversity) of viewpoints presented in these introductory courses. Using a unique dataset derived from a survey of core American Politics graduate seminars at highly-ranked universities, this project assesses the gender diversity of the authors whose research is currently taught—overall and within a comprehensive list of topics and subtopics. We also assess the “substantive representation” of women (and other underrepresented groups) within the American Politics canon by examining the frequency with which gender, racial, and other forms of identity politics are taught in these introductory courses.

#EndRapeCulture Campaign in South Africa: Resisting Sexual Violence Through Protest and the Politics of Experience

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the #EndRapeCulture campaign in South Africa, where women students took to the streets in 2016 to protest against the pervasive normalisation of sexual violence on university campuses. In many cases, some participated topless and brandished sjamboks (whips) to show their resentment and anger at the prevailing conditions of sexual violence. The article looks at the role of digital media in circulating slogans around the campaign and asks the question whether these protests can be compared with SlutWalks or FEMEN. Another way of understanding the #EndRapeCulture campaign is to think through the implications of using experience as a form of identity politics.

Representations of land in Kenyan song

Historically, land has been central in political debate and identity formation in Kenya. From the different communities’ myths of origin to the colonial occupation and especially in the liberation struggle and beyond, land has been central to the writing of Kenya’s histories. This article explores two key perspectives on land as presented in music performance: the pre-independence claim to the idea of land as ‘a God-given right’ and as synonymous with political rights, and the post-independence irony of achieving political independence with no access to the land. The article examines two Mau Mau freedom songs: Kenya nĩ bũrũri wa andũ airũ (Kenya is a land of black people), and Twarĩkanĩire (We had agreed), and one post-independence choral art music: Nimerudi Mashambani (I have returned to the farmland) as examples to demonstrate not only how music archives, reflects and responds to, social, economic and political issues but also how it is influenced by the contexts within which it is created. The paper analyses the songs’ narrative strategies regarding land and their invocations of nationhood, the structural aspects of the music in relation to salient issues on land (dis)possession and nation building, and their performance contexts. It argues that the songs demonstrate the enduring, emotive, moral, cultural and political value of land, especially for those Kenyans who are unable to access or release the material or monetary value of land.

МОЛДОВА: ВЕЧНОЕ ДВИЖЕНИЕ К СТАБИЛЬНОСТИ

In the article, the key challenges are analyzed, which Republic of Moldova has been facing since gaining independence. The main accent is put on such factors as formation of political identity, socioeconomic development, geopolitical status of the country, shaping of sustainable political institutions. The author provisionally identifies two periods of Moldova’s sociopolitical development - the 1990s and the 2000-2010s. It is argued that the key differences in the country’s development during both periods can be explained by the evolution of Moldova’s political system, which is moving towards greater centralization, and by the change of the country’s geopolitical status, which makes the classical post-Soviet “seesaw politics” now impossible for Moldova.

Political geography I: Agency

This report focuses on human agency – the capacity to act in a given context – as it is studied and reflected upon in political geographic research. I first discuss the investigations of agency in the wide-ranging work on political subjectivity and identity formation. The report then turns to the efforts to trace ideas and things in political processes. I showcase the attention to transnational networks and fields as well as the work inspired by the concepts of assemblage and actor-network. The analysis finally turns to questions of method in the study of political agency as I foreground the growing interest in ethnography, emotions, and ethics in the sub-discipline. No amount of conceptual innovation, I conclude in the final section, can substitute for the careful study of inherently difficult political issues in specific social settings. In order to effectively problematize the boundaries between politics and culture, subject and object, state and non-state institutions, or public and private spheres, research must closely consider the contingent and situational character of these categories.

Making Burgenland from Western Hungary: Geography and the Politics of Identity in Interwar Austria

This study explores the role that geographical knowledge production played in the post-World War I “discovery” of Austrian Burgenland, focusing in particular on the relationship between geographical discourse and the politics of identity formation in the 1920s and 1930s. The primary task is to offer insight into this knowledge-making process by highlighting the discursive strategies employed in a variety of scholarly and popular texts, and by shedding critical light on the various actors and epistemic communities responsible for the imagining of Burgenland from its annexation to Austria in 1921 to the dissolution of the region and its subsequent re-invention as a Greater German border zone after the Nazi Anschluss of 1938. As Jankó and Jobbitt argue, Burgenland’s discovery between the wars was both figurative and literal. Whether the “discoverers” were Austrian or German, national or local, Burgenland was as much a discursive concept as it was a physical reality. Its emergent identity as a region, therefore, much like its actual borders, was fluid and often contested.

Out and Asian: How Undocu/DACAmented Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Youth Navigate Dual Liminality in the Immigrant Rights Movement

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) represent the fastest-growing racial category in the U.S., largely due to its increasing immigration from the Asia-Pacific region (AAJC 2015). Of the 10.9 million undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S., 14% (1.5 million) are from Asia (Migration Policy Institute 2014). In response to immigrant youth organizing, President Barack Obama initiated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, which offers temporary relief from deportation to approximately 2 million undocumented childhood arrivals (Ibid). Yet, the unique perspectives of AAPI youth have gone unheard, and their political activities have been rendered invisible in public discourse on undocu/DACAmented youth in the immigrant rights movement. This study aims to capture political identity formation through what I coin “dual liminality” that leads to political participation for undocu/DACAmented AAPI youth. It considers how their status as undocumented or DACA, as being marginalized from both mainstream and co-ethnic claims to belonging, helped them form a collective political identity and engage in political activities. The use of strategic storytelling (Polletta 2006) throughout the process of their political development also led to their return to organize co-ethnic communities against internalized stereotypes of both “Model Minority” and “Yellow Peril”. This study involves 12 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with politically active AAPI, ages 20–26, from four major cities on the East Coast, conducted between 2014 and 2015. The interviews demonstrate how these youths’ choices to reveal their status shape their collective identity formation that leads to their political engagement. Through strategic storytelling, they use their dual liminality to shape their narrative framing in both the immigrant rights and in AAPI communities, enhancing their political participation across inter-racial boundaries.

Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation. By Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi

Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation. By Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi

Book Review: John Thomas. 2016. Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the Formation of Naga Political Identity

Book Review: John Thomas. 2016. <i>Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the Formation of Naga Political Identity</i>

Celebrar el futuro, venerar la Monarquía. El nacimiento del heredero y el punto de fuga ceremonial de la monarquía isabelina (1857-1858)

La Monarquía tuvo un papel esencial en el siglo XIX, adaptándose a las nuevas circunstancias políticas, social y culturales que el liberalismo fue planteando. De esta forma, participó directamente en la conformación de las identidades políticas y culturales. Este artículo propone incorporar el estudio de la institución monárquica en una interpretación sociopolítica y cultural que enfatiza el juego entre su poder político y simbólico, respondiendo a su plasticidad y capacidad de supervivencia. Para ello, introduce el estudio de las ceremonias como un espacio privilegiado para analizar sus discursos y representaciones, así como sus fuentes de legitimidad, su recepción popular y su interiorización. Desde esta perspectiva se analizan las cesuras ceremoniales que trajeron el nacimiento del príncipe Alfonso en 1857: la presentación y el bautizo del recién nacido, la salida pública a la Basílica de Atocha y la confirmación en Covadonga. Utilizando estos momentos, analizamos el desarrollo ceremonial, los discursos generados en torno al evento y las respuestas sociales que dichos eventos suscitaron, imbricando el nacimiento del heredero a la Corona española dentro de la elaboración de la identidad nacional y de género.

Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation by Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi

Reviewed by: Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation by Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi Danny Mathews amanda beckenstein mbuvi, Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016). Pp. xii + 167. Paper $49.95. This is a theological study of the received text of Genesis that explores the implications of the joining of the patriarchal accounts in Genesis 12–50 with the Primeval History in chaps. 1–11. The main purpose of Genesis when read this way—as a canonical text from a reader-oriented approach—is to facilitate a transformation of identity by providing the means by which readers can envision themselves in relationship with one another in the world. To make this case, this short but succinct and substantial book is organized into two parts. Chapters 1–3 function as prolegomena, explicating the theoretical and theological foundations of the book. By means of a trenchant critique of Erich Auerbach's interpretative approach to Adam and Eve in Mimesis, Mbuvi rejects a "Eurocentric" perspective of biblical interpretation that reflects and reinforces preexisting Western culture that is loosed from its Hebrew and Jewish moorings, especially the bifurcation of society into a hierarchal structure of "us" over and against "them." In contrast, M. points to a very different view earlier in Mimesis where the Bible intends to present its own reality, a perspective she terms "YHWH-centric," which seeks rather to transform the readers' own conceptualization of reality. Finally, the introductory section concludes by arguing that Genesis intentionally employs family storytelling, or family narrative, as the precise means for communal identity formation. The rest of the book applies this approach to selected segments of Genesis, namely, 5:1–12:7; 16:1-16; 21:1-21; and 26:1-33. Based on a study of the theological function of genealogy in Genesis, M. argues that the genealogical notices in 5:1-3 and 9:28-29 (among other features such as the Lamech speech in 5:29, which exhibits lexical and thematic links with chaps. 6–9) serve to organize Genesis 5–9 as a discrete literary unit. The recurring genealogical notices via the tôlĕdôt formula play a crucial theological role in placing kinship identity beginning in Genesis 5 in a cosmological framework exhibited in the first use of this formula in Gen 2:4. This underscores that the varieties of kinship and national identities in Genesis are all actually part of one human community. "Unlike plants and animals, humans only have one species" (p. 49). This approach yields a rich harvest of theological insights from Genesis 5–9, which narrates both the positive and negative aspects of family identity, from an ongoing process of life through childbearing as well as death and struggle, and ultimately to the complete obliteration of the network of God, land, and humanity. This concludes with both redemption via reconstituting the community through covenant and the perpetuation of curse and conflict in the renewed sibling rivalry among Noah's sons. Next, in a detailed study of Noah's cursing of Canaan for the actions of Ham, M. presents a helpful image of a "family tree" in contrast to a "social ladder" to portray the differences between a modern and a Yhwh-centric reading of Genesis. She argues that readers who reject a racial interpretation of this curse nevertheless maintain a social-ladder view of a rigid and orderly differentiation of communal identities based on cultural and ethnic differences. Rather, a close study of Genesis 10 and 12:1-7 reveals fluidity among various [End Page 512] groups that show "multiple levels of belongings" (p. 81), such as the classification of humanity in Genesis 10 into overlapping levels of kinship, language, land, and nationality. This view is reflected in the image of a family tree that embodies dynamic and fluid circumstances by developing and growing in reaction to environmental changes, as well as exhibiting clear variety and differentiation within the community that emerges from a common source. The image of the tree provides another metaphor of fruitfulness that is made possible only when the branches diverge and grow while remaining connected to the...

Формирование политико-цивилизационной идентичности Дагестана в ситуации конфликта идентичностей

The article discusses the formation of political and civilizational identity, Dagestan in the context of civilization identity of Russia. Against the background of the struggle of two civilization projects Russia-European and Eurasian in Dagestan comes opposition and with the Islamic civilizational project. Conflict civilizational projects lies in the heart of the crisis of political identity, Dagestan.

¿Quién es el troll?: La construcción de identidades políticas en social media en el contexto peruano

One can easily find discrediting accusations between users with different political affiliations or ideological orientations on social media. The objective of this article is to affirm that these practices are neither superfluous nor secondary, but rather fundamental in the formation and consolidation of political identities of those who participate in these discussions. This article reviews up-to-date academic literature about three recent trends in the dynamics of political discussion on social media (the polarization of the political debate, the focus on personalities and figures, and the trolls’ practices) and, using tools taken from Netnography, it explores and applies these concepts to the Peruvian context. Consequently, the article offers an outline about the daily political dynamics on social media, how users take sides and disputes happen, and how this serves to the (re)production of political identities. The results of this investigation show a scenario where two characteristics prevail: the polarization between different political stances and the uncertainty about the information and identities in circulation.

СЕТЕВЫЕ МЕХАНИЗМЫ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ И ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЕЙ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ МОЛОДЕЖИ

СЕТЕВЫЕ МЕХАНИЗМЫ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ И ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЕЙ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ МОЛОДЕЖИ

МУСУЛЬМАНСКАЯ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЬ В СОВРЕМЕННУЮ ЭПОХУ: СВЯЩЕННЫЙ ТЕКСТ И СОЦИАЛЬНЫЙ ОПЫТ

The article focuses on the formation of modern Muslim political identity on the macro-po-litical and individual levels. The author explores the relation between its Islamic and state-national levels. It is shown that this relationship is of dynamic nature and that at present both these levels are significantly differentiated: nationalism outgrows the framework of state nationalism and gradually acquires civil dimension, while the Islamic layer, losing its significance as the only source of identification and self-identification for Muslims, acquires new socio-political content. The latter is reflected in the development of “Islamist pluralism”. It is noted that the ascriptive orientations to kin-groups, ethnic groups and clans remain significant and especially vibrant in the times of political turbulence.

Mapping the Demos: The Scientisation of the Political, Electoral Research and Dutch Political Parties, c. 1900–1980

The ‘scientisation of the political’, understood as the increasing influence of social science within twentieth century (party) politics, provides insight into politicians’ conceptions of political representation and the shifts in those conceptions over time. Social science based knowledge exerted a profound effect on how parties approached political identity formation and on their perceptions of the electorate. Based on a Dutch case study, this article tracks the impact of electoral geography and mass psychology and, from the 1940s onwards, electoral research and polling data on party strategies, showing the important role played by party political think tanks which acted as hubs of social-scientific knowledge. Comparisons with British and West German political parties reveal the complex reception and negotiation of social scientific insights regarding the nature and behaviour of the electorate, as well as the persistence of ingrained stereotypes.

What Makes a Utopia Inconvenient? On the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Realist Orientation to Politics

Contemporary politics is often said to lack utopias. For prevailing understandings of the practical force of political theory, this looks like cause for celebration. As blueprints to apply to political practice, utopias invariably seem too strong or too weak. Through an immanent critique of political realism, I argue that utopian thought, and political theory generally, is better conceived as supplying an orientation to politics. Realists including Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss explain how utopian programs like universal human rights poorly orient their adherents to politics, but the realists wrongly conclude that utopias and other ideal theories necessarily disorient us. As I show through an analysis of utopian claims made by Michel Foucault, Malcolm X, and John Rawls, utopias today can effectively disrupt entrenched forms of legitimation, foster new forms of political identity, and reveal new possibilities within existing institutions. Utopias are needed to understand the political choices we face today.

The Party Politics of the ‘New English Regionalism’

This article explores the potential that ongoing regional devolution in England might transform the so-called ‘party politics of Englishness’, complicating and potentially compromising the emergence of a nascent English political nationalism. It provides a primary examination of the extent to which conceptual and normative intersections between nationalism and regionalism are reordering both the constitutional architecture and the party political landscape of England. The article argues that politicised manifestations of ‘new English regionalism’ raise new and important challenges to how the two main Union-wide political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, frame and articulate issues of English national party organisation, policy development and identity. The article concludes by noting that the emergence of national and regional forms of identity politics in England is undermining the plurinational organisation and political unity of both parties.

Closing the closing space: sustaining democracy promotion in European foreign policy

Democracy promotion is a policy firmly embedded in the EU’s external action. However, amidst a proclaimed “backlash” against democracy and the questioning of the merits of value-based policies by certain European leaders, the EU needs to reaffirm the importance of democracy promotion activities in pursuing its interests. This issue is all the more relevant as the EU elaborates its planned Global Strategy. This article argues that the promotion of democracy is – on the one hand – an important aspect of the EU’s political identity formation and – on the other hand – a policy with potentially important strategic payoffs. The EU needs to be aware of the strategic (as opposed to the normative) aspects of the policy and emphasize these to counter criticism that value-based policies only hurt the Union’s material interests. Furthermore, the paper proposes policy recommendations for burden-sharing and instrumental labour division among the EU, member states and organizations to help all actors navigate through the “closing space” for democracy promotion.

The Sounds of North: Political Efficacy and the “Listening Self” in Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air

In a historical moment where sound and aural senses are elided, either as a result of technological advancement or as noise pollution, Elizabeth Hay’s novel Late Nights on Air mounts a defense of sound and listening by foregrounding alternative discourses from the period that derive from the Canadian North. Specifically, by alluding to Glenn Gould’s method of contrapuntal listening and the explorer John Hornby, whom John Moss in 1971 aligned with the “greatest Arctic narrative [of] silence” (56), the novel configures sound and listening as efficacious, both in terms of political engagement and identity formation. Ultimately, in Late Nights on Air sound and, by extension, aural sensory engagement within a specifically Canadian northern tradition disallows a reductive understanding of Canada’s sonic environment in the late twentieth century as technologically obsolete or as ecologically threatening by revealing its value as a political and identity-forming tool.