Identity Politics Research Articles

Indigenous women as agents of environmental change: a study of selected Indian ecodocumentaries

ABSTRACT Mainstream feminism has always revolved around the experiences of white women and has failed to acknowledge the plight of indigenous women who were subjugated to both patriarchy and colonialism. A gendered notion of indigeneity is necessary to bring the marginalization of Indigenous women to the forefront to ensure tribal sovereignty. Indigenous women’s activism has always been distinctly connected to the environment in order to protect the community from external agencies such as companies and government bodies. Several grassroot environmental movements have emerged from the indigenous communities where women have played a pivotal role in the success of these movements. Thus, this study focuses on the environmentalism of indigenous women by analyzing selected documentaries from India i.e. Missing: Forgotten Women in India’s Climate Action Plans (2015), The Seed Guardians (2016), Agar Wo Desh Banati (2018) and Thengapalli (2020). The paper aims to recognize the struggles of these women to achieve basic environmental rights and how they promote sustainable living with the help of their traditional knowledge. Indigenous feminism will not simply be taken as a matter of identity politics, rather it will be used as a framework to understand indigenous women’s struggles as a part of a global liberation movement.

THE PHENOMENON OF RESENTMENT IN CULTURE: NIETZSCHE, SCHELER, FUKUYAMA

The article delves into the concept of ressentiment within the context of phenomenology and its profound impact on the formation of moral values and socio-cultural dynamics. Drawing on the ideas of Max Scheler, which are partially rooted in Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy and extended through Francis Fukuyama’s works, the paper explores how ressentiment serves as a critical factor in transforming various spheres of human social activity. The article identifies ressentiment as a driving force behind the crisis of humanistic ideals and examineі its pervasive effect on contemporary values. It emphasizes the importance of understanding this phenomenon in shaping socio-cultural dynamics, particularly in relation to moral-legal perceptions and the collective shifts in society’s values. By examining the internal conflict experienced by individuals influenced by ressentiment, the article sheds light on its role in moral conflicts and social tensions. Furthermore, the work underscores the relevance of Scheler’s phenomenology and Fukuyama’s exploration of identity politics in addressing the challenges posed by ressentiment. It highlights the need to grasp ressentiment not merely as a sociological phenomenon but as a complex psychological experience with deep social implications. The study also opens avenues for future research into how ressentiment influences modern political ideologies and cultural narratives, impacting both individual identities and collective consciousness. Additionally, the article discusses the implications of ressentiment in the digital age, where social media amplifies these sentiments, further polarizing societies and intensifying identity-based conflicts. By providing a focused and nuanced analysis of ressentiment, the article emphasizes its significance in the evolution and transformation of cultural and moral values in the modern world, making it a crucial topic for ongoing philosophical inquiry. This exploration is essential for understanding the roots of contemporary societal divisions and offers insights into potential pathways for addressing these deep-seated issues.

The role of historical knowledge among contemporary Druze in Lebanon: applying anthropology to preserve intangible cultural heritage

The millennium-long history of the Druze continues to shape members’ sense of ethnoreligious particularism and relations with other groups in Lebanon. Their contemporary heritage narrative and processes of enculturation are associated with basic knowledge of community history in the region. Participant interviews provided insight into the role that knowledge of history and dogma plays in shaping the identity politics of the Druze community. An applied anthropological and political economy approach offers contextualization of the factors that shape contemporary Druze cultural heritage. This work seeks to identify the connections among the community’s social problems, including exogamy, apathy, poor relations with other religious groups, and a self-described knowledge gap. By exploring the role of formal and informal cultural resources among the Druze, this study offers new insights into the role of history in shaping attachment to ethnoreligious community identity.

‘Comrade unknown to me’: colonialism, modernity, and conjunctural translation in Familiar Stranger

ABSTRACT This essay considers the possibility of what I would call conjunctural translation. While literal translation has accelerated cultural ethnocentrism as well as settler colonial violence, conjunctural translation seeks to glimpse the possibility of solidarity buried beneath the collaborative rule among the empires. This essay first retraces colonial modernity in the British Caribbean and Britain. Reading the selected chapters from Familiar Stranger, I propose that this memoir registers the three phases of colonial modernity: transatlantic slavery, migration to metropolis, and the prison-house of identity politics. In contrast to this, literal translation was at the core of cultural ethnocentrism that underpinned colonial modernity in Korea and Japan. The second part of this essay explicates the relationship between colonialism and modernity in East Asia that is punctuated by the following three phases: settler colonialism, migration to metropolises, and the curtailment of identity and citizenship. In this case, each phase appeared as deprivation of land, migration to Japan and the crises of security, and the loss of nationality during the Cold War era. The last part of the essay concerns unpredictable connections between colonial modernities. Though separately formed in the transatlantic and transpacific regions, these modernities create crosscurrents of thought, struggles, defeats and victories: conjunctures. Published in the early 1950s, the writings of Martin Carter and C. L. R. James differently refer to the Korean War. By comparing their work, this essay concludes that the future of solidarity comes from ‘the ability to be exposed’. As Hall unexpectedly encountered the Caribbean migrants in London in the key moments of his memoir, such conjunctural translation was undertaken by the Caribbean intellectuals of the 1950s. To expose oneself to these unexpected encounters is the very momentum that urges us to be vigilant to the dangers of literal translation.

Who are the ‘real’ people? The concept of relational popular identity and the self-identification of populist voters in Poland

Research on national, political, and social identities in the study of populism is typically limited to analysing populist identity framing in political and media discourses and measuring its effects on individual populist attitudes. Thus, the self-identification of populists’ supporters, i.e. how they relate to populist identity framing when reflexively constructing their identities, remains largely unexplored. To address this issue, the article introduces the concept of relational popular identity, capturing the complexities of late-modern political identities, and the relational identity mapping technique used to investigate the web of relations forming these identities. The article also presents a case study of loyal voters of the Law and Justice party in Poland and discusses how a relational right-wing popular identity may serve as an ‘intermediary identity’ that articulates elements of other identities to maintain their integrity and a ‘community of last resort’ that unites the ‘real’ people through an immunitarian mechanism of exclusion.

Mapping sovereignism(s) in South America

AbstractSovereignism is said to be on the rise: defending a nation's political autonomy, international borders, and cultural identity and protecting the domestic economy from the perils of globalisation are core demands. What about Latin America? To what extent are sovereignist claims a key component of Latin American parties' platforms and rhetoric? How do these vary according to national contexts and ideological foundations? Is sovereignism truly novel in the region? This article, relying on qualitative analyses of party manifestos from six different countries, as well as on data from the Manifesto Project, aims to map Latin American sovereignism in its different dimensions (political, economic, cultural, international) according to country and party families. As our data show, claims for defending or achieving ‘sovereignty’ are a key component of the (mostly left‐wing) populist idiolect in the region. The Latin American extreme right tends to adopt a sovereignist rhetoric to justify a traditional pro‐market agenda. The article overall calls for a problematisation of the concept of ‘sovereignism’ by proposing a stronger cross‐regional perspective. There are different ‘varieties of sovereignism’ depending on whether state sovereignty is primarily viewed as something to be restored or, alternatively, to be achieved (as is the case in South America).

Covering the land with oil palm: revelation, value, and landownership among the Kairak‐speaking Baining of Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis article explores how a displaced Papua New Guinean people decided to lease their customary land for oil palm plantation farming to restore their land use rights and resolve ongoing disputes with migrant settlers. By transforming the landscape into a territorialized space as a plantation, Kairak‐speaking Baining hoped to gain actual landownership status and control over their land, which in turn, they believed, could bring them the development they had long dreamed of. I argue that Kairak conceptions about the plantation as a tool to reveal their landownership and remove the settlers drew on Melanesian notions about covering and revelation, changing perceptions of value, and discourse around ‘settlerhood’ and ‘nativism’, and show how agribusiness capital expansion strategies leverage regional politics of identity and autochthony. By illustrating how the plantation expansion unfolded differently in this region, the material offers new insights on the Plantationocene, global land grabs, dispossession and migration, and reaffirms the consequences reported elsewhere in the world where enclosures of exclusion lead to forceful rearrangements of people's social and economic lives, leaving their hopes and plantation promises unrealized.

Nostalgia, Scapegoating, and Alterity Politics. An analysis of the Albatross Undercutting Zimbabwe’s Leverage of Bilateral Relations with China

The article explores the interplay of nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics within the context of China–Zimbabwe relations. Grounded in postcolonial critique, constructivism, and psychology, the paper grapples with how identities, historical narratives, memory, and the legacy of colonialism shape state behavior and policymaking. Therefore, this study interrogates the contradictions, continuities, and discontinuities surrounding the ideological frameworks, histories, and power structures as they impact Zimbabwe’s postcolonial policy praxis and maneuvers with China. Pursuant, I foreground the agency of domestic political dynamics in shaping the nature, impact, success, or failure thereof, of China–Zimbabwe relations. Overarchingly, the study brings nuance to the broader salience of identity politics in shaping the Global South relations with emerging powers either as a source of leverage or hindrance.

The Linguistic Construction of Political Identity: the Case of Catalonia

In the last decades much research has been carried out on discourse as a form of social practice from the Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. The Vienna school of CDA led by Wodak and her associates has developed a discourse-historical approach to discourse which investigates the linguistic construction of national identities through a method of description and analysis which posits three categories –topics, strategies and linguistic devices– employed in the construction, perpetuation, transformation and dismantling of nations and national identities. Following this approach, the present paper aims to analyse the linguistic construction of Catalonia’s present and political future in a corpus of public discourse fragments produced by Catalan pro-independence leaders and activists during the so-called Catalan crisis. The analysis reveals that the linguistic construction of the Catalan present and political future relies on constructive, justification and dismantling strategies that seek to support self-determination and construe Catalonia as an independent Republic.

Managing the visibility of dissent: Stigma, social media, and family relationships among Azerbaijani activists

This study examines the strategies young Azerbaijani activists use to manage the visibility of their stigmatized political identities, particularly in relation to their families. Drawing on concepts of socially mediated visibility, stigma, and honor culture, we analyze interviews with 29 activists to explore how they navigate the complex trade-offs between visibility and concealment in an authoritarian context. Our findings highlight the central role of courtesy stigma and relational repression in shaping activists’ decisions, as they seek to balance their desire for political expression with the potential risks to their families. We also show how social media platforms both enable and complicate activists’ visibility management strategies. The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of activism and resistance in honor culture and authoritarian contexts.

The border as temporal horizon: a borderlands massacre and the contested futures of federalism in eastern Ethiopia

AbstractIn 1995, a coalition of former rebel groups redrew Ethiopia's map, establishing an ethnic‐federal system. By 2017, internal border conflicts signalled federalism's potential unravelling. This article analyses expectations about federalism's future among Somalis in Ethiopia, drawing on anthropologies of time to understand how everyday processes of border‐making orient around the ‘future in the present’. Anthropologists and historians concerned with political time have focused largely on how the ‘past in the present’ shapes state‐building and political identity formation. Meanwhile, political scientists and commentators, as well as many Ethiopians living amid uncertainty, prognosticate about the future of identity politics in Ethiopia and attempt to discern whether decentralization is paving the way to state fragmentation. Foregrounding how people work to manage time at borders and through borderwork, this article analyses the roles borders play in people's collective constructions of political futures – and the role anticipations about the future play in people's engagement with borders.

Moving beyond us-versus-them polarization towards constructive conversations

ABSTRACT The global surge of political polarization poses a significant threat to liberal democracies. The prevailing “us-versus-them” mentality prevents leaders from effectively addressing societal issues. While intergroup dialogue shows promise in bridging divisions among diverse identity groups, the dynamics of real-life conversations between individuals with opposing political identities remain underexplored. This study investigates a unique case study of constructive face-to-face interactions among American political elites on a contentious issue. By examining how opposing leaders collaborate towards shared goals, the research identifies communicative actions that can reduce polarization. This study delves into the complex dynamics of polarization, as both an issue-based and identity-based conflict, focusing on interactional framing strategies leaders use to navigate their differences. The findings reveal that political leaders bridge ideological divides by embracing multiple frames, reconnecting conflicting frames, and developing neutral non-political frames. They also foster positive relations, use superordinate identities, and decrease social distance, thereby bridging their identity gap. By fostering convergence rather than accentuating differences, they effectively counteract polarization. Studying rare examples of constructive bipartisan collaboration offers valuable insights into reducing polarization, restoring political trust among the general public, and mitigating broader societal impacts, ultimately strengthening the foundations of a healthy democracy.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Joe Biden’s First Speech as President in 2020

This research article endeavors to apply the CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) model by Norman Fairclough to reveal the political identities and distinct ideologies of the United States' political personalities. The U.S. has always been drowned in different leadership and especially race/color discrimination crises. This paper presents the CDA of the presidential-elect inaugural speech of Joe Biden after the historical U.S. election of 2020. This speech was delivered on 7th November 2020. Like all modified academic disciplines, CDA is developed as an advanced academic discipline. The present research article stands on the base of Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional analytical model. Applying Fairclough’s 3D framework helps examine the ground political ideology of the speech. Analysis of linguistic choices has been examined at the first level and discourse practice of the text at the second level. The third level examined sociocultural practices. The underlying aim of this research paper was to examine the linguistic resources the speaker used. It also aims to examine Joe Biden’s political ideology behind his speech. This study lays out an impetus for further research in this field by providing initial grounds for it.

Not exactly twins: Authoritarians and populists differ in their attitudes toward trust in government, elitism, pluralism, political identification, and identity fusion.

Authoritarianism and populism are used regularly to describe the individuals responsible for anti-democratic action. These two constructs share some similarities with regard to how they hinder democracy and at times have been used interchangeably to describe such issues. However, authoritarians and populists may differ with regard to their political identification, as well as how they view the government and the existing establishment. With a US college sample, this study's goal was to examine how authoritarianism and populist attitudes influence views on pluralism, elitism, trust in government, identity fusion, and political identification (identification with American political parties). The findings indicated that right-wing authoritarians trusted the government, endorsed elitist attitudes, but were low on pluralism; this pattern was the opposite for those high on populist attitudes. Left-wing authoritarianism was related only to low pluralism. Moreover, low trust in the government partially mediated the link between populist attitudes and pluralism. Results also indicated that right-wing and left-wing authoritarians identified with the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, whereas political identification was unrelated to populist attitudes. Furthermore, identity fusion partially mediated the link between right-wing authoritarianism and identification with the Republican Party. Authoritarianism and populist attitudes may explain different motivations for anti-democratic thought and behaviors. This study contributes to ongoing debates found in contemporary populism and authoritarianism research as well as different solutions to addressing their rise in mainstream politics.

Do policy instruments that restrict social identity expression increase economic cooperation?

Recent public and corporate policies restricting social identity expression, such as the face-covering restrictions in many European countries, presume that prominent signals of our social identity differences drive division even when inference about social identity is unaffected. Social identity theory predicts that limiting identity expression could positively or negatively affect how groups interact. We use an experiment to test whether a treatment that bans displaying an identity pin affects cooperation in public goods provision. Our subjects are U.K. residents who were in favor of leaving or remaining in the European Union. Each subject is simultaneously in two different yet economically identical environments that are distinguished only by the social identities of the group members. They play two simultaneous one-shot public goods games, one with others who share their identity (in-group public good), and one with a mixture of Leavers and Remainers (mixed-group public good). The political identities of all subjects and the structure of each group are known by everyone. Our treatments vary whether there exists a ban on displaying a Leaver/Remainer identity pin to others and whether Leavers or Remainers are the majority identity in the mixed groups. We find that banning pinning increases contributions to the mixed group when Leavers are the majority. These increases can be explained by changes in beliefs rather than the notion that shared group identity per se affects behavior. These setting- and identity-specific results suggest that policies designed to promote integration should be examined in the context in which they will be applied.

Exploring the Construction of Angela Merkel's Identity by Global Print Media across International Platforms

This study is an attempt to observe and analyze the intricate operations of media discourses in the identity construction of “world leader” i.e. Angela Merkel. It highlights that how through the explicit and implicit discourse layers’ construction, the macro and micro semantic structures are created in a newspaper, for portraying the desired positive or negative image of a world leader. The theoretical framework has been structured over the basics of the Van Dijk’s (1980) The Theory of Semantic Macrostructures. The macro- level analysis focuses the core themes and main propositions publicized in the selected data. The micro-level analysis concentrates on the lexicalization and syntactic patterns employed by media experts in creating the larger positive image as world leader through smaller level discourse language constructions, focusing her social and political posterities. Furthermore, the study highlights the gradually constructed personal, social and political identities’ portrayal of Angela Merkel as a powerful world leader, through the world newspaper articles discourse and discursive practices.

Beyond exit: how populist governments disengage from international institutions

Abstract There is a widespread belief among scholars and policy-makers that populism has fuelled a unilateralist backlash because of its emphasis on nationalism, popular sovereignty and identity politics. Although a few populist governments have indeed withdrawn from some international institutions, this ‘disengagement hypothesis’ needs to be scrutinized and unpacked. In this article, we develop a framework that distinguishes between four types of institutional disengagement—criticism, obstruction, extortion and exit—and show that populist governments use them in a fluid and tactical way to navigate between the radical and pragmatic imperatives of populist politics. Our comparative case-study of the Hungarian executive under Viktor Orbán (since 2010) and the Trump administration in the US (2017–2021) demonstrates that both governments have frequently used criticism, obstruction and extortion to disengage from international institutions but have only rarely exited from them. The article thus deepens our understanding of the impact of populism on both individual institutions and the multilateral order more broadly, and helps policy-makers develop strategies to counter the adverse effects of populism.

Religious, ethnic and regional identities in Nigerian politics: a shared interest theory

ABSTRACT This essay examines the complex interplay between religious, ethnic, and regional identities in Nigerian politics, challenging the idea that religion solely dictates political behavior. It delves into the manipulation of identities for political advantage, with an emphasis on religion. The Social Identity Theory (SIT) is discussed, highlighting the cognitive processes in forming social identities and their role in promoting in-group bias and out-group prejudice. The novel contribution that this essay makes is the introduction of what I termed the ‘Shared Interest Theory’ or the ‘Common Interest Theory,’ arguing that changes in interests, both tangible and intangible, can trigger shifts in social identity and group dynamics. This theory offers a rational framework for understanding social identity dynamics, providing insights for promoting social cohesion in diverse societies. This framework on identity and politics underscores the importance of recognizing and addressing the divergent interests of different groups to mitigate conflicts and foster social harmony.

Iran’s axis of resistance through the lens of ontological security

Unlike traditional approaches that analyse an actor’s foreign policy by focusing on the search for physical security and material interests, ontological security advocates a more nuanced approach that considers identity politics, regime security, issues of legitimacy, and emotional motives. This article aims to examine Iran’s Axis of Resistance from the perspective of ontological security, without rescinding the possibility of power struggles or ideological motivations in influencing Iran’s foreign policymaking process. This study posits that the Axis of Resistance embodies a profound meaning and overarching significance for Iran that transcends mere considerations of physical security or sectarian-­ideological inclinations. The pursuit of the Axis of Resistance by Iran serves to provide the regime with ontological security, achieved through the utilisation of national narratives, the establishment of routines, concerns pertaining to domestic order, and the incorporation of emotional underpinnings of the Islamic regime. The existential significance that Iran ascribes to the Axis of Resistance is of crucial importance in maintaining this paradigm, despite all its costs.

Culturally constituted self in Taylor and Gramsci: A concern for philosophy of education

This article addresses the problem of two extreme positions in the self-understanding of human beings namely ignoring culture or its over-determination. Though Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci are widely known to differ from each other in many respects, we endeavor a congruent reading to evolve a comprehensive perspective. We make avail of their concepts, such as background, horizon, and common sense, to comprehend the nature of the culturally constituted self and its relevance for education. For both Taylor and Gramsci, the human self is situated in a cultural framework. Though the relation between self and culture is constitutive and inevitable, culture does not entirely determine or overshadow the self. This stance gives space for upholding freedom, dignity and liberation of the human self in both of them. While preserving the essential role of culture in the formation of the human self, education must not be reduced to identity politics. Education must incorporate culture, be critical of it and pay attention to forming a critical self.