Politics Of Naming Research Articles

The politics of naming and construction: university policies on gender-based violence in the UK

ABSTRACT The problematisation of a social phenomenon is a political process that both constructs the problem and, in doing so, suggests possible remedies and occludes others. Based on the first-ever comprehensive analysis of 129 UK university policies to address Gender-based violence (GBV), we examine how the ‘problem' of GBV is conceptualised in institutional policies. We explore three interconnected themes: the nature of the ‘problem’ that is constituted, analysing whether GBV is explicitly acknowledged and constructed narrowly or broadly; the place of gender and its intersection with other social relations of power in this problematisation; and the implicit ways in which GBV is constructed as an individual or a social problem. We also examine the implications of such constructions for imagining possible responses to GBV. In doing so, this article contributes to academic debates on the conceptualisation of GBV, while offering original insights into how such conceptualisations are materialised within institutional policy and regulatory frameworks.

Womanimality and Gender Polarity in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments

This article focuses on the Western philosophical traditions responsible for objectifying women and animals. It looks at how Margaret Atwood has engaged with these issues in The Testaments, which is the sequel of The Handmaid’s Tale. The purpose of this study is to use a deconstructive approach to analyse sexual differences through animal differences. Animals and women have been standing at the periphery since the start of western civilisation. Animal and gender metaphors play a significant role in creating these differences. In Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, handmaids have a problematic relationship with this androcentric classification of women as animals. The reason behind this animal objectification is to make them realise their inferiority as women. The marked differences have utopian and dystopian characteristics; both parallel each other. Compared to these bifurcated images of life, Atwood imagines a post-utopian and dystopian reality that she names utopia. It connotes an idea of gift, love and democracy; there is no separation based on animal and sexual differences. The importance of language in the bifurcation of sexuality cannot be ignored, significantly when the name of handmaids is redefined according to the patriarchal perspective. The politics of naming is connected with the myth of creation; commanders and aunts consider naming women a patriarchal prerogative. Significantly, these sexual differences discourage multiplicity and promote singularity in the dystopian state of Gilead.

Socio-psychedelic imaginaries: envisioning and building legal psychedelic worlds in the United States

After decades of criminalization, psychedelic substances such as psilocybin and LSD are experiencing their comeback in science and Western culture more broadly. While psychedelic plants and fungi have a long history of use in Indigenous cultures, the Western prohibitionist reality instantiated around 1970 has stigmatized psychedelics as medically useless and a threat to society. Yet studies are increasingly demonstrating their potential to treat widespread mental health conditions such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety in combination with psychotherapy. Most of this research is currently taking place in the US, where additionally decriminalization and legalization efforts and religious exemptions have paved the way to make psychedelics legally accessible. Based on 3 years of ethnographic research in the US (both in-person and virtual), this article explores contemporary US-American socio-psychedelic imaginaries, i.e., collective visions articulated and enacted to reintegrate psychedelics legally and responsibly into society. Four socio-psychedelic imaginaries are identified, described, and interpreted: the biomedicalization imaginary, decriminalization imaginary, legalization imaginary, and sacramental imaginary. These imaginaries diverge and converge around several politics: politics of access, politics of responsibility, politics of naming, politics of assimilation and social change, and politics of epistemic credibility. Contemporary socio-psychedelic imaginaries are co-evolving, mutually shaping, and amplifying each other. Together they function as societal corrective to the politically motivated prohibition of psychedelics. Although enacted by humans, the radical imagination expressed in socio-psychedelic imaginaries has its roots in human-psychedelics entanglements.

Do words matter?: Using inquiry and the politics of naming to promote critical global citizenship education

Purpose US president Donald J. Trump has referred to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as the “Chinese” virus. Trump's choice of terms (i.e. naming) provides an illustrative entry point concerning the politics of naming and how analysis of language used within historical and political contexts can be used to engage students with global education principles.Design/methodology/approach This work aims to extend Hanvey's (1976) notion of perspective consciousness to include critical elements (e.g. Andreotti, 2014) that aim to uncover power structures that ultimately shape worldviews and manifest in communicative signs/signals (e.g. language). Utilizing Dewey's invocation of language as the “tool of tools,” the authors provide a series of three classroom-ready inquiries that serve to foster critical global citizenship education.Findings Three classroom-ready inquiries informed by the inquiry design model are presented along with resources needed to teach them.Originality/value Research has suggested the concept “global” is understood by much of the world as an instrument of US hegemony that commonly normalizes Western supremacy myths (see Andreotti, 2014; Myers, 2006). Running parallel with these concerns are research findings that suggest practitioner avoidance of global citizenship education (see Cogan and Grossman, 2009; Merryfield and Kasai, 2010; Zong, 2009). With these concerns in mind, this work provides teachers with accessible tools that promote critical notions of global citizenship education in the classroom.

In Defense of the X: Centering Queer, Trans, and Non-Binary Pilipina/x/os, Queer Vernacular, and the Politics of Naming

This essay is an engagement of the dialectics of naming and violence, discussed from the perspectives of the trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming Pilipina/o/xs whom we interviewed in the Summer of 2020.  Applying a transnational queer diasporic methodology, we center their material realities, which we feel remain missing in both scholarly and popular debates about the term “Filipinx.”  Indeed, it was LGBTQI+ Pilipinxs in North America who were the first to use the term “Filipinx” and “Pilipinx” in online spaces. Instead of positioning the X as our main focus, we use it as an entry point to discuss the violence that LGBTQI+ people of Philippine-descent have historically faced for simply identifying themselves on their own terms. It is toward such violence that the queer, non-binary, and trans people who began using the X and other linguistic innovations were and are asserting themselves. Revealed are perspectives and practices of dignity, self-determination, resistance against cultural homogenization and gender gatekeeping, and self-naming as radical imagination initiated by those facing intensified carcerality and other forms of violence that stretch within and beyond nation-state boundaries.

Reflections on the Politics of Place (Re)-Naming: Decolonisation, the Collapse of Totalitarian Regimes, and Government Changes

Previous research on toponymy analyses the roots and meanings of place names. However, the advent of the Critical Toponymy Theory has added a new dimension to the study of toponymy, particularly, focusing on the politics of naming. Theorists have

Navigating the nationalist landscape of exclusion: Armenian citizens of Turkey and the politics of naming.

This article examines how Armenian citizens of Turkey employ names and naming strategies in their everyday life in order to navigate a nationalist social landscape. Studies of nationalist politics in everyday life have been particularly successful in demonstrating how nationalism is experienced and reproduced through the consumption of national symbols and rituals. What remains relatively glossed over in these accounts are the individuals' constant and dynamic engagements with nationalist politics not only through national symbols and rituals but also through everyday social practices with fellow citizens. The present study seeks to capture and analyze this latter, relatively understudied, aspect. In doing so, the discussion reveals how individuals use different name strategies in order to fend off shame and humiliation as well as inhibit threats to status advancement. Overall, the following narrative moves beyond a demonstration of the functionality of nationalism as a source of unity and solidarity. Instead, it reveals the ways in which nationalist politics and minorities' responses align, diverge and/or conflict on the ground.

Brothers, Workers or Syrians? The Politics of Naming in Lebanese Municipalities

Abstract Displaced Syrians in Lebanon face a multitude of legal, social and political categories that operate together to structure their lives and opportunities. One important site of juxtaposition of these various categories can be found in the area of municipal governance, namely in the form of bannered discriminatory curfews that line the public squares of many of Lebanon’s urban neighbourhood, towns and villages. The various named ‘targets’ of these curfews—whether foreigners, Syrians, displaced, labourers, brothers or the disembodied ‘motorbike’ (a class marker in this context)—instantiate the complexity of issues of Syrian belonging in this context. This article examines these categories through their historical, political and social dimensions, and through the lived experience of Syrians who encounter, negotiate and—at times—resist them. Building on over a year of fieldwork in Lebanon from October 2015 to December 2016, this article relies on a diverse set of sources, including ethnographic observation, documents and interviews with a wide array of actors including Lebanese citizens and displaced Syrians, mayors and municipal police officers, as well as lawyers, journalists, aid workers and central government officials.

Empty Signs, Historical Imaginaries: The Entangled Nationalization of Names and Naming in a Late Habsburg Borderland by Berecz Ágoston (review)

REVIEWS 369 classic works as well as the newest historiography in both English and the languages of Eastern Europe, the author has provided his reader not only with a detailed ‘crash course’ on how the people of Eastern Europe formed nations there, but also with a ‘road map’ for further intellectual immersion. John Connelly’s monograph, therefore, serves as a valuable contribution to the broader understanding of Eastern Europe and an introductory textbook on a geographic space where more good and bad happened during the twentieth century than anywhere else. The Polish Institute of International Affairs Paweł Markiewicz Warsaw Berecz, Ágoston. Empty Signs, Historical Imaginaries: The Entangled Nationalization of Names and Naming in a Late Habsburg Borderland. Austrian and Habsburg Studies, 27. Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2020. xiv + 334 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $149.00: £110.00. The summer of 2020 saw the centennial of the Trianon peace treaty. A new memorial was unveiled in central Budapest right across from the Parliament. It features more than 12,000 localities, cities, towns and villages, as listed in a gazetteer published in 1913. They all bear Hungarian names, yet most of them are located in one of the successor states. The monument claims to preserve a feeling of togetherness and cohesion. Playing on the aesthetics of the Vietnam War Memorial, it fosters an atmosphere of nostalgia and mourning. But a random search of ‘Bratislava’ or ‘Sibiu’ yields no results. So where do these names come from? The Magyarization of place names in late Dualist Hungary has not drawn much scholarly attention. Just like the Magyarization of given and family names, the process and the motivations behind it seemed too obvious, too offensive and often too ridiculous to merit substantial study. Ágoston Berecz now shows that, on the contrary, there is much to learn from the politics of naming about the workings and limits of Hungarian nationality politics and how they failed to impose the vision of a golden age of Hungarian history on a partly indifferent and partly alienated population. He starts out from the basic assumption that names are semantically weak, mere tags assigned to a referential person or object. They bear no direct meanings and invite speculations on their etymology, which makes them ideal projection screens of nationalist visions. These visions collided with pre-national practices. In this respect, the focus of the study on historic Transylvania, Banat and the counties of Arad and Bihar (former Partium) proves particularly fruitful, since SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 370 the fairly new imposition of family names since the late eighteenth century and the increasing impact of registering the population collided with traditional practices of patrilineal naming among the predominantly Romanian peasant population. Family names as imposed by the state were new to them, and they were not readily accepted. The entire process of naming was additionally complicated by the fact that the Romanian language was much in flux during the nineteenth century. The Uniate impact of Latinism was still strong, and the gradual transition from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet with or without diacritics turned consistent orthography into a challenge. Spelling names was particularly demanding where names intersected closely with Hungarian or German versions, hinting at centuries of contact. Whether a person was registered as Lazăr or Lázár, Mihai or Mihály was not an innocent issue even before Magyarization, to take just one of the less complicated from a highly diverse set of examples that Berecz unearths. Such intersections and influences did not stem from earlier assimilations, as nationalists claimed, and they did not betray an earlier, presumably submerged Magyar, Romanian or German identity. Names had already been markers of religious and social belonging and ethnic borders before the advent of modern nationalism, and this function was not easily obliterated. Peasant society reluctantly reacted to the demands which increasing state activity imposed on their use of given, family and place names. This should not be confounded with national indifference. It rather paved the way for competing nationalist visions that were increasingly connected with naming from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. In the years before and after the Ausgleich of...

What’s in a name? Children of migrants, national belonging and the politics of naming

ABSTRACT As Western societies experience a ‘transition to diversity’ spurred by international migration, an enduring question is how this transition impacts on the nation and its symbolic borders. The article addresses this question by adopting an original analytical lens, what I call the ‘politics of naming’, i.e. the agonistic tensions around naming practices between the majority society and children of migrants. Focusing on the case of Italy, the article identifies three main discursive practices: the embracement by children of migrants of the names ascribed to them by the majority society as a way to claim social visibility and citizenship rights; the rewriting of ascribed social categories (e.g., ‘second generation’) as a way to rewrite the boundaries of national belonging; the rejection of these interpellations for more plural identities. The findings suggest, on the one hand, the persistence of an ethno-racial bias which continues to inform the nation in the age of diversity and, on the other hand, an attempt by the children of migrants to re-imagine the nation along cultural (rather than ethno-racial) lines. It is by more closely attending to this tension that the impact of the transition to diversity on the nation can be revealed.

The East is a Delicate Matter

This article is Martin Müller’s response to essays and remarks that critically examined the Russian translation of his article “In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South” (Russian Sociological Review. Vol. 19. № 3). The material for the analysis were texts published in the thematic block “The Global East: The Politics of Naming and Knowledge Production” (found in the same issue). The article analyzes these texts according to the standpoint principle, that is, in keeping with the desire to go beyond the dominant social construction of reality in order to understand marginalized groups and regions by giving them a voice. The focus is on the generational differences between the author and his critics, as well as the inevitability of the differences in reactions to the author’s proposal to pay more attention to a region traditionally referred to as post-socialist. Examples of the specific reactions and positions of the critics are given. The author has highlighted the following aspects of the problems associated with the popularization of the concept of the Global East: the non-identity of this concept to post-socialism, the importance of “global” in this concept, the pros and cons of understanding the Global East through the prism of strategic essentialism, and the complex temporality of this concept (“future for the past”).

East Sea, The Politics of Naming and Geographical Imaginations

East Sea, The Politics of Naming and Geographical Imaginations

Undoing Patrilineality: New Maternal Families and the Politics of Naming in Turkey

Abstract Based on the topical life stories of fifteen single mothers from Turkey, this article traces the act of naming as a practice of social and legal boundary making and as a means of undoing patrilineality and to seek acknowledgement for a new maternal family. Analyzing the politics of naming in the stories of these single mothers, this contribution first discusses the stigmatizing aspects of conventional patrilineal and marital family naming in Turkey. It traces changes in the registration of family names, how single mothers decide on the registration of the father’s first name, and their concerns and strategies during these legal, bureaucratic procedures. Whereas family law reform has given more rights to single biological and adoptive mothers, they still remain affected by the emotional aspects of a stigmatized practice. Strategically planning their future and that of their children, one solution is to use naming to merge their maternal families with their own paternal families.

Crude talking: radio and the politics of naming, blaming and claiming in oil-age Niger

ABSTRACT At the beginning of production, the presence of oil in Niger was characterised by talking oil politics. In this talk, political actors invoked the ‘resource curse’ thesis to question the legitimacy of their opponents through the speech acts of naming, blaming and claiming. Analysing two radio debates from late 2011 about the future fuel price and the prospects of Niger’s oil refinery, I situate the actors’ oil talk according to their positions in the political arena, thereby revealing their personal projects. In doing so, I show that oil talk is enacted in a double sense. Firstly, political actors’ agendas shape their talk and secondly, privileged access to radio is essential in becoming a potent political actor in the talk around oil. Using these findings, I discuss the importance of radio in Nigerien politics and try to decode the ‘how’ of Nigerien politics itself.

The Politics of Naming in Unusual Collocations Used by Trump in November and December 2020

Collocations have been approached differently by different linguists, and a plethora of books have been written about this term. Since neologisms are intruding into English language, it is time now to look at some terminologies that hourly appear in English. The parameters by which linguists can judge whether a combination of newly formed bundle of words is classified as a collocation are made easier by the support of AntConc. Software which shows the MI score and the frequency of co-occurrence of these items in a specific context by a specific user. The present study may yield some results for lexicographers who are interested in creating new dictionaries of collocations. Further, teaching students these combinations in writing will extensively and effectively add to their authenticity in writing.

Health and Freedom: The Tense Interdependency of HIV/AIDS Interventions and LGBTIQ Activism in Kenya

In recent decades in Kenya, public health interventions to address the HIV vulnerability of sex workers and men who have sex with men have been accompanied by a rise in gender and sexual minority (hereby also interchangeably referred to as LGBTIQ) activist initiatives that frame access to healthcare, legal recognition, and social acceptance as a human right. Complementing long-term engagement and ethnographic research among sexual minorities in Kenya, in addition to fieldwork stints between 2016-2018, the authors analyzed online statements regarding priorities and strategies of LGBTIQ organizations (local and global) and legal case files. We examine one case in which transgender and intersex plaintiffs objected to the name and mission of an NGO working towards equality and full inclusion of sexual and gender minorities because it incorporated the words gay and lesbian while applying for its official registration and it would include trans and intersex in the organization’s mission. As such, the politics of naming, identity, and representation are neither new nor exclusive to Kenyan LGBTIQ activism. This case and related files reflect the everyday interactions of groups with seemingly conflicting goals, showing them to be part of a rich, connected “niche activist” scene. Rather than take this as a rigid split between activist organizations, we argue that these tensions are historically rooted in – and form a microcosm of – the politics of the global NGOization of both healthcare access and human rights advocacy in Kenya.

A politics of naming and sharing: One therapist's personal journey of traumatic grief, grooming, and sexual abuse in the workplace

A politics of naming and sharing: One therapist's personal journey of traumatic grief, grooming, and sexual abuse in the workplace

Giving Back the “Queen Charlotte Islands”: The Politics of Names and Naming between Canada and the Haida Nation

On June 17, 2010, representatives of the Indigenous Haida Nation held a ceremony to formally return the “Queen Charlotte Islands,” a name that had been colonially imposed on Haida Gwaii, their ancestral homeland and sovereign territory since the nineteenth century. This ceremonial return is analyzed as a process through which the Haida Nation can incorporate settler governance into a regime of respectful relations that functions on Haida terms. Framed simultaneously as the rejection of an unacceptable imposition and a respectful act of relationality in its own right, the ceremony offers a searing critique of colonial domination and invites settler powers into an alternative modality of relationship based in mutual understanding and respect. Through this process, I argue, the Haida Nation constitutes itself concurrently as a particular kind of political entity with clear traditional antecedents and essentially equal—if not superior—relationships with foreign governing powers.

Giving Back the “Queen Charlotte Islands”: The Politics of Names and Naming between Canada and the Haida Nation

On June 17, 2010, representatives of the Indigenous Haida Nation held a ceremony to formally return the “Queen Charlotte Islands,” a name that had been colonially imposed on Haida Gwaii, their ancestral homeland and sovereign territory since the nineteenth century. This ceremonial return is analyzed as a process through which the Haida Nation can incorporate settler governance into a regime of respectful relations that functions on Haida terms. Framed simultaneously as the rejection of an unacceptable imposition and a respectful act of relationality in its own right, the ceremony offers a searing critique of colonial domination and invites settler powers into an alternative modality of relationship based in mutual understanding and respect. Through this process, I argue, the Haida Nation constitutes itself concurrently as a particular kind of political entity with clear traditional antecedents and essentially equal—if not superior—relationships with foreign governing powers.

Straight A's: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words ed. by Christine R. Yano and Neal K. Adolph Akatsuka

Reviewed by: Straight A's: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words ed. by Christine R. Yano and Neal K. Adolph Akatsuka Reuben B. Deleon (bio) Straight A's: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words, edited by Christine R. Yano and Neal K. Adolph Akatsuka. Duke University Press, 2018. Xiv + 231 pp. $25.95. Paper. ISBN 978-1-4780-0024-2. This text, a collaboration between Christine R. Yano, Neal K. Adolph Akatsuka, and the Asian American Collective, explores the narratives of high-achieving Asian Americans at Harvard University, an institution currently embroiled in an energetic and contentious fight over affirmative action and racist events on campus. This book serves as a means to champion voices of those who have "played the game" and now are learning to survive what many would consider an "ideal" educational experience. The stories in the book engage with, and to a larger extent disrupt, dominant college experiences. The majority of the book is comprised of interview transcripts, musings, and other texts of Asian American undergraduates on several themes: family/class, race, sexuality, gender, intimacy, mental health, organizations, and extracurricular activities. Each theme is explored in a chapter with a combination of analysis and excerpts of student narratives, interviews, and writing. Presenting the narratives in raw form creates an intimate and close feel for the reader, which was the editors' intention. In the introduction, both the editors and members of the collective advocate that this is not a book meant to take down the "model minority myth" or serve as a longitudinal ethnography on the Asian American experience. Rather, it is meant to take a nuanced look into a handful of unique lives within this particular sociopolitical and historical context. Using this in-depth approach allows readers to wrestle with what the editors call "Harvard Stories" (21). Chapter 1 explores common familial experiences: the constant fight between Western and Asian cultures, the politics of naming, familial roles, religiosity, and filial piety. Chapter 2 delves into race through stories related to finding common allies on campus, the self-denial and reclamation of Asian Americanness, and its intersections with politics, the body, and their peers. Commonly seen throughout the text is a fight for finding the "right" kind of Asian to be. Chapter 3 complicates this by arguing how intersectional identities are often in contention with one another. For some students, representation was a source [End Page 519] of pride and frustration. In one case, a student discusses a terrifying account of how difficult it was to convince the university of the credibility of a threat to Asian Americans on campus from an internet stalker. Chapter 4, a chapter on intimacy, centered around both the necessity and resistance towards interracial dating. Students also explained how rampant fetishization both through race and gender have altered how they navigate relationships with their partners. Chapter 5 focuses on mental health and how cultural norms, gender, and family dynamics muddle a student's ability to track down the causes of their feelings. Family is used as a medium for understanding coping mechanisms for students, intertwining it with stories of migration, sacrifice, and resilience. Other narratives also centered on the disconnection students felt with their elders regarding their future goals and struggles with eating disorders. Chapter 6 ruminates on ethnic student associations and their utility, purpose, and effect on one's sense of belonging. In conjunction with previous chapters, interviews and narratives wrestle with the residual effects of racializing student experiences. Opinions regarding organizations spread across the spectrum, with some regarding them as a suitable medium for finding their voice, and others feeling them to be a way to divide the Asian American community. In short, students found clubs to be a microcosm of understanding class, gender, and institutional prestige. Chapter 7 broadens student experiences beyond ethnic organizations and looks at other extracurricular activities. Specifically, the editors interrogate the intense activity-driven atmosphere on Harvard's campus. In the introduction to the chapter, one of the overarching themes of the book is reiterated: "Straight A lives often mean type A involvement" (171). Embedded in this statement is a strained relationship between students and mitigating familial expectations, Eurocentricity, and anti...