Popular Nationalism Research Articles

The Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani Revolt and Syrian Youth: An Insider’s Account

The pan-Arab and local nationalist youth movements in Syria and Iraq are linked here through the events surrounding the Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani coup in Baghdad on the eve of World War II. The focus is on the larger political atmosphere of popular nationalism that enabled a band of Syrian youth to go on an adventure into Iraq and receive a warm welcome by the population. The political memoirs of Akram al-Hawrani provide the backbone of this narrative and are self-consciously used to explain how this event was a formative political moment for him and his later involvement in the Arab Socialist Baa’th Party. Syrian political activists were able to envision for the first time the possibility of a long-term partnership between the army and the common people, despite the disillusionment felt by the participating youth who came to Iraq and met leaders such as Hajj Amin al-Husseini and Fawzi Quwaqji, only to be left leaderless in the wake of the British recapture of Baghdad in the months after the coup.

Popular Nationalism Dalam Kebijakan Luar Negeri Tiongkok Terhadap Jepang Pada Sengketa Kepulauan Senkaku/Diaoyu

This paper discusses about Popular Nationalism within China’s Foreign Policy towards Japan in the Context of Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute. Taking Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands’ dispute as the case, it can be conceived that, from two-level game perspective, Chinese government ‘instrumentalizes’ popular nationalism for its foreign policy purposes, i.e. strengthening its international position on the dispute and giving pressure to Japanese government. Practically, while putting pressure to Japan, popular nationalist movement also puts pressure on Chinese government by criticizing the government over its weak foreign policy towards Japan, as well as demanding for Chinese democratization and political change. Chinese government responds this situation by ‘managing’ popular nationalism. The government applies two-sided policy. When popular nationalist movement is favorable for Chinese foreign policy, the government gives popular nationalist a large controlled access to express their anger towards Japan. However, if popular nationalist starts to criticize government, demand for democratization and political change, Chinese government then restricts the movement by using institutional, informational, and ideational resourcesas well as starting to ban any protest and demonstration. This strange policy performed by Chinese government is strategically able to gain domestic support for its foreign policy, and maintain domestic status quo simultaneously.

“Nationalism as a national danger?” Early Romanian socialists and the paradoxes of the national question (1880–1914)

This article traces the gradual accommodation of early socialists in Romania with the predicament of nationalism in the period between 1880 and 1914. The attitudes of Romanian socialists evolved from initial ambivalence toward nationalism to staunch commitment to internationalism in the 1890s, and an inadvertent but unmistakable growing engagement with nationalism after the turn of the century. Locating socialism in the broader political and cultural debates of the time, this article argues that belonging to the Romanian public arena forced socialists to become increasingly more sensitive to the challenges of nationalism. Especially after 1900, the rise of very influential competing nationalist ideologies, as well as the necessity to address the Jewish question and the problem of ethnic Romanians living abroad, turned Romanian socialists into opponents but also implicit partners of dialogue in debates on nationalism. In the long run, however, socialists failed to find a persuasive alternative to nationalism and eventually resorted to the same language, concepts, and imagery they were so vocally dismissing. Engaging the popular nationalist trends of the time required socialists to reevaluate their own theoretical tenets and to put forward different, but essentially no less nationalistic, projects for the future.

„W imię Boga i Ojczyzny!”. Działalność społeczno–polityczna Narodowej Organizacji Kobiet 1919–1939 – wybrane zagadnienia

„In the Name of God and the Fatherland!”. The Socio–Political Activity of the National Organisation of Women 1918–1939 – Select Questions The National Organisation of Women (NOK) was one of the most prominent and largest women’s associations in the Second Republic. Its establishment in 1919 was the outcome of work performed by numerous generations, and its form and style corresponded to the challenges created by the reconstruction of Polish statehood in 1918. The NOK elite was composed of outstanding individuals – educated women originating from intelligentsia, landowning, and aristocratic families, whose ideological sympathies were close to the National Democracy. Functioning in 1919–1939 NOK was a sovereign organisation and formally was not supervised by the authorities of the Popular–National Union (ZLN) or after 1928 by the board of the National Party. NOK activists, however, remained within the range of the ideological influence of the national movement and were proud of their affiliation. At the time of the Second Republic they supported the election campaigns of National Democratic candidates to Parliament and self–governments. Lists of ZLN and SN candidates also included names of NOK leaders. This mingling of the worlds of men and women in public life compels to perceive the efforts made by NOK as parallel and frequently supplementary. The fundamental task of NOK involved women’s awareness. The association postulated absolute equal rights regarding both legal solutions and daily life. Postulates formulated by NOK activists referred to national solidarism and regarded the principles of Christian ethics as the foundation of the state policy. Attempts to implement these proposals entailed political, social, and economic activity denoting predominantly presence on the parliamentary forum. In their capacity as representatives of ZLN and SN, NOK members participated in work on statutes and took part in debates concerning numerous domains of public life. The association’s endeavours also encompassed social and economic issues. NOK organised adult education courses as well as public meetings and lectures, and popularised readership. It also showed special concern for children. An essential element of its charity work involved assistance rendered to the homeless and the poor, clothes collections, and training for wage–earning professions. The history of NOK constitutes a very interesting chapter in the history of women in independent Poland. It is also evidence of the unique character of the Polish national movement, whose prime force was a social program inspiring Polish men and women representing assorted professional milieus and social groups to undertake civic activity and thus to expand the impact of national ideology.

The Party v. the People

The South China Sea conflict is spurring a popular nationalist movement in Vietnam that challenges the ruling communist Party by demanding Hà Nội to sever relations with its patron in Beijing. This paper examines this movement by connecting it to the often misunderstood historical relationship between the ruling Party and modern Vietnamese nationalism. This historical relationship explains why the Party has tried to suppress the movement and why movement discourse strives to debunk national myths and reconstruct national history. Linking national interests to democracy and human rights, the currently fragile movement is creating dissent within the Party and damaging its legitimacy.

Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877–1956. By Ellen J. Amster (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013) 350 pp. $54.00 cloth $27.43 paper

<i>Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877–1956.</i> By Ellen J. Amster (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013) 350 pp. $54.00 cloth $27.43 paper

Biblical Literacy and the English King James Liberal Bible

Using the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as a test case, this article illustrates some of the important ways in which the Bible is understood and consumed and how it has continued to survive in an age of neoliberalism and postmodernity. It is clear that instant recognition of the Bible-as-artefact, multiple repackaging and pithy biblical phrases, combined with a popular nationalism, provide distinctive strands of this understanding and survival. It is also clear that the KJV is seen as a key part of a proud English cultural heritage and tied in with traditions of democracy and tolerance, despite having next to nothing to do with either. Anything potentially problematic for Western liberal discourse (e.g. calling outsiders “dogs,” smashing babies heads against rocks, Hades-fire for the rich, killing heretics, using the Bible to convert and colonize, etc.) is effectively removed, or even encouraged to be removed, from such discussions of the KJV and the Bible in the public arena. In other words, this is a decaffeinated Bible that has been colonized by, and has adapted to, Western liberal capitalism.

Book Review: Huntley, The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America’s Most Popular National Park, by William Deverell

Book Review: Huntley, The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America’s Most Popular National Park, by William Deverell

With Arms Wide Shut: Threat Perception, Norm Reception, and Mobilized Resistance to LGBT Rights

This article utilizes original survey and interview data to explore why norms governing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights mobilize an active resistance in some cases and not in others. Based on a comparison of Poland and Slovenia, this article shows that differing perceptions of threat define the way international norms are received in distinct domestic realms. Threat perception is heightened in cases where religion is historically embedded in the essence of the popular nation. In Poland, the Catholic Church created a role for itself as a symbol of the nation. There, the domestic opposition succeeded in framing a narrative that linked LGBT rights to external forces threatening national values. By contrast, the Catholic Church in Slovenia could neither maintain nor (re-)establish similarly strong ties to the popular nation, stifling the opposition's ability to mobilize a robust popular resistance. Whether resistance is effectual, however, is a related but separate question. The data suggest that resistance produced in high-threat contexts can be self-defeating in that it enhances the salience of the norm in the domestic setting.

&lt;italic&gt;"Toy Kit" of the Emperor:&lt;/italic&gt; Exhibiting National Palace Museum's artefacts of Emperor Chien-lung on tablets

Representing "interest in playfulness", The value of a curio box is appreciated by cleverness of its design, including hidden layers and triggers setting them off.This idea serves as the inspiration of our new application: exhibiting popular National Palace Museum artifacts on social sites in the form of a "toy kit," on tablets. More precisely, we see our highly interactive design as "curio boxes" for modern emperors&#x2013;the users. Our goal is to bring about enjoyable, engaging and intimate experience over the artifacts.This application, though under extensive construction, received positive reviews from a focus group composed of the students of National Chengchi University. We find by fostering the archive as a virtual, yet touchable toy kit can obviously bring the user closer to our content. In this project, with the support from National Science Council of Taiwan, we will help the NPM develop brand new mobile experience of its collections.

‘Not a drop for the settlers’: reimagining popular protest and anti-colonial nationalism in the Moroccan Protectorate

This article reevaluates the so-called Meknès water riots of 1937 as a way to understand how rural economic decline and the contest over natural resources during the Protectorate period sparked anti-colonial protest in Morocco. The ‘riots’ have long been considered an early example of Moroccans unifying under the banner of an emergent anti-colonial nationalism. This article argues, however, that the revolt cannot be adequately conceptualised as simply a reflection of the nationalist message based on the rehabilitation of the Alawi sultan and Islamic scriptural reform. When situated in the long-term transformations of the regional economy, urban infrastructure and local forms of religious power, the protest emerges as an organic and powerful attempt by Meknès residents to reclaim local sovereignty over natural resources that had been wrested away from their pre-Protectorate arbiters by the sultan's government and French forces. Popular action in Meknès took many forms based on a range of local logics that had little to do with abstract questions of national rebirth and was often diametrically opposed both to nationalist groups from outside the city and to the sultan's government.

Nationalist Protests, Government Responses, and the Risk of Escalation in Territorial Disputes

While the existing literature emphasizes that elites often have incentives to pander to nationalist sentiment, much less attention has been paid to elite efforts to subdue popular nationalism, either to avoid unwanted domestic instability or international escalation. This article examines how different governments respond to nationalist protests and the resulting effects that such protests have on the risk that interstate disputes will escalate to armed conflict. We emphasize the importance of regime type, arguing that nationalist protests present particular dangers in transitional or hybrid regimes, where demonstrations often pose serious threats of instability but are difficult or costly for the government to subdue, tempting or forcing leaders to escalate to appease domestic critics. We illustrate the theory with four cases representing a range of regime types: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Tourism and Chinese popular nationalism

As a complex and emerging phenomenon, nationalism presents a serious challenge to international marketers, with no exception to the field of tourism. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence in understanding the role of nationalism in tourist travel intention. A qualitative research approach with in-depth interview and on-site observation was adopted to bridge this gap during the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island Incident between China and Japan since late 2012. In particular, this study seeks to shed light on the influence of nationalism on Chinese tourists. A nationalism dynamics model has been established to explore and explain different segments of tourists based on their self-perceived level of nationalism. The findings of this paper offer important implications for both scholars and practitioners in their strategic responses to this challenging nationalism phenomenon.

James Matthews. Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.

James Matthews. Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.

National Identity, Ideological Apparatus, or Panopticon? A Case Study of the Chinese National Search Engine Jike

This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symbolic, social, and political implications of Jike, China's national search engine. Through a case study of Jike, we demonstrate that semiotic and political economic perspectives could critically inform our understanding of complex information intermediaries. Semiotic analysis shows how Jike tried to tap into popular nationalism to brand itself strategically as friendly, “high tech,” and patriotic. A political economic analysis of Jike reveals the mechanisms through which a changing mode of digital propaganda production by the state attempts to use the market to subsidize the Party press's digital infrastructures and “thought work.” The article also raises awareness of Jike's potential surveillance capabilities, as the state advances its ambition for information control under the auspices of economic development and modernization of Chinese society. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of national search engines for Internet policies.

English

This paper demonstrates the use of remotely sensed data and geographic information system (GIS) techniques for monitoring the land-use and vegetation cover changes in the Kainji Lake Basin between 1975 and 2006- a period of thirty one (31) years. Since 1968 when Kainji Lake was constructed, various activities such as agriculture, deforestation, irrigation, fishing and construction of roads and bridges have taken place. It is all these activities coupled with other natural factors that cause environmental degradation and the damage of the ecosystem of the lake basin. Landsat TM image of 1975, Landsat MSS image of 1986 and Landsat ETM+ images of 2001 and 2006 were acquired, classified and analysed with the use of Ilwis 3.3 and Idrisi 32 to study the landuse and vegetation changes in the Lake Basin between 1975 and 2006. Area calculations of Idrisi 32 were used to derive the trends, rates and magnitudes of changes, while map overlay was employed for assessing the nature and location where the changes have taken place. Map overlay technique was also used to create a matrix to discuss the location of the changes within the study periods. The study reveals that the Lake Reservoir and settlements around the lake were gradually increasing; intensive agriculture was capturing the basin at alarming rate, while the lake surface itself is recently been occupied by weeds. The woodland vegetation in which the first and the most popular National Park in the country where it is located is also discovered to be changing to other land-use types. Various conservation and control measures were suggested for the sustainable utilization of the Lake Basin. Key words: Remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), image classification and land-use and land-cover, change detection.

Review of Karen Strassler's Refracted Visions

Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java by Karen Strassler . Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 400 pages hardbound $78.88, ($24.07 pbk)

Book review: Resistance in the Age of Austerity, by Owen Worth

Owen Worth Resistance in the Age of Austerity, Zed Books, London, 2013; 170 pp: 9781780323350, [pounds sterling]14.99 (pbk) We have seen many books, articles and documentaries on 'the crisis' of 2008 and its aftermath. Never before, it seems, has a recession inspired such a wealth of journalistic and academic investigation, ranging from the optimistic--Freed Zakaria (2009)--to the pessimistic: Harry Shutt (2009) or Jack Rasmus (2010). These writers have sought to identify the causes of the crisis and suggest remedies, or at least offer arguments for why recovery may never come. Few have attempted to think through the kind of resistance government economic policies have provoked, and even fewer have tried to think through why a crisis that has been used as a pretext for simultaneously cutting jobs and wages, and cutting welfare benefits and entitlements, has not provoked a transnational anti-systemic movement. These are the big questions Owen Worth investigates in this current work. Resistance in the Age of Austerity examines the Occupy movement, the Tea Party, the rise of popular nationalism and the rise of religious fundamentalism through a Gramscian lens. Can any of these become a post-modern prince; that is, a movement capable of challenging the common sense of neoliberalism? The book opens with a short sketch of the post-Cold War economic order. The chapter includes an outline of neoliberalism as theory and practice, the globalisation of neoliberalism, and a discussion of neoliberalism as a hegemonic project. This final section of the opening chapter places emphasis on the idea that the neoliberal project has provoked much resistance around the world. As Worth comments, 'by the time the financial crisis occurred, neoliberalism was being contested on grounds of inequality, for being undemocratic, for subverting national identities and sovereignty, as a weapon of US led imperialism, and for appearing to be the enemy of a particular religious belief' (p. 28). Post-crisis, these various criticisms have been unable to form themselves into a coherent alternative, and this has allowed the neoliberal project to continue. The next chapter continues the theoretical groundwork with a very interesting discussion of forms of resistance, ranging from counter-hegemony to religious fundamentalism. Counter-hegemony represents the Gramscian 'war of movement' or 'war of position'. War of movement is taken to mean a frontal assault on the state, and war of position is taken m refer m mass strikes, mass protests and armed insurrections. Other forms of resistance discussed in this chapter include a Polanyian counter-movement, through which society attempts to protect itself from the chaos unleashed by market forces. Also discussed are critical movements, through which subaltern classes resist rather than contest rule by elites; progressive internationalism; national populism and religious fundamentalism. The two latter ideas introduce something interesting that is often overlooked; that is, that anti-neoliberal movements can come from the far right as well as the liberal left, and that they can also be authoritarian, rather than liberatory. Here, Worth highlights a mistaken belief in comparative politics 'that the far-right were broadly supporting a neo-liberal agenda' (p. 45). This led to the widely held belief that the far right was simply a reaction to multiculturalism and mass immigration--that their nationalism was purely cultural. Yet as the movements examined later in the book suggest, the far right also has an economic critique of neoliberalism, and is capable of articulating a nationalist economic agenda. Religious fundamentalism suffers from the difficulty of being parochial, and from the fact that all religions are open to alternative interpretations. If religious movements were to be successful in constructing a counter-hegemonic movement, then the most likely result would be fragmentation. …

The Philippine Komedya and the Recuperation of the Cosmopolitan: From Colonial Legacy to Cross-Cultural Encounter

ABSTRACT:This article critiques the komedya vis-à-vis its institutionalization as national theatre form and proposes a cosmopolitan alternative in the critique. It argues that the imposition of a nationalist perspective in the reading the form falls into the trap of territoriality and “othering” because of its Roman Catholic and Tagalog-centric orientations. The cosmopolitan critique is necessary because it embodies a middle-path alternative to the essentializing and territorializing character of popular nationalism and the anarchy of pluralism. The discussion of cosmopolitanism comes from the irony that komedya could have offered a cosmopolitan possibility when Filipino artists began its indigenization. The efficacy of this possibility was overpowered by methodological nationalism based on the hegemony of the center (The Greater Manila Area) and its central religion – Catholicism. Thus, the komedya was contextualized as a Catholic theatre form and strengthened a particular hostility against non-Catholics, especially the Muslims.

At the Nexus of New Challenges: China’s Leadership Change and Cross-Strait Relations

China’s 2012 leadership change revealed signs of factional divide at the top level. The elitist/princeling faction has outnumbered the populist faction. Princelings have better and stronger ties with the military, which tends to have a more hawkish view regarding any potential Taiwan independence. In Taiwan, changing social experiences have created a new Taiwanese identity, which is different from that of the Chinese. People in Taiwan are increasingly thinking of themselves as Taiwanese instead of Chinese. On the mainland, Chinese popular nationalism has been on the rise, as anti-Taiwan independence remains one of the most nationalistic issues. When the forces of new identity and nationalism meet each other, a diverging path regarding the future of Taiwan is being created. Moreover, China’s economic and military power continues to rise, giving China more confidence. I argue that the overall effect is that China’s new leadership will increasingly have the capability to act tougher against any potential Taiwanese independence. The potential need to act tougher with Taiwan may be beyond the desire and control of Chinese elites due to the rise of popular nationalism in China and the leadership’s need to maintain internal legitimacy and survival.