Nation-building Practices Research Articles

Религия и национализм

The article analyzes the similarities and differences of ethnic and religious identities, their mutual influence and cases of joint impact on society. The author explores the role of these identities in the formation of the nation state. He also examines the ethnic and religious factor in heterogeneous societies, which are characterized by the presence of a significant number of diverse cultural groups united under one government. Russia also belongs to such societies. According to the author, in the current conditions in Russia, ethnic and religious identities cannot be used as a factor in nation building. The Russian form of government is more consistent with the imperial type. States of this type see the meaning and justification of their existence in protecting their constituent peoples, maintaining peace and order among them, and ensuring their development. Therefore, policy in the sphere of managing cultural and religious diversity in Russia cannot be built upon the model inherent in nation states, because the very term “nation” and nation building practices are associated with the division of people into “us” and “them”, unification, and suppression of minorities. Nationalism in Russia has always been and remains a risky project, fraught with the disintegration of the country into several dozen ethno-national states with the prospect of a military clash between them. The research conducted by the author shows that nationalism is most often not associated with religion, acting as secular worldview. In turn, religious traditions do not need national consolidation. The experience of the existence of the church in states and cultures of different types indicates that no ethnic culture or identity of a nation has enduring significance from a religious viewpoint.

The rustic turn during late socialism and the popular movement against Soviet rule

ABSTRACT The success of mass mobilization in Lithuania against Soviet rule in the late 1980s can be attributed in part to the spread of the ethnocultural movement in the post-Stalin era. Characterized in this paper as the “rustic turn,” it began in the late 1950s with the Soviet-wide rehabilitation of kraevedenie (local area studies), part of Khrushchev’s effort to rejuvenate grassroots political participation across the USSR. In Soviet Lithuania, the rehabilitation of kraštotyra had the unintended consequence of restoring nation-building practices from the interwar period and reintegrating individuals repressed under Stalin into public life. Rather than shaping Soviet subjects, the ethnocultural movement developed rituals of transformation that imbued the rustic ethnic past, not the Soviet future, with the aura of sacrality. Ostensibly apolitical, the movement nevertheless cultivated strong associative ties among citizens from various walks of life. With the outbreak of free discussion under glasnost, mass gatherings built upon the rituals of the ethnocultural movement to generate a community of affect grounded in nostalgia for a lost, mythical past and the trauma of displacement under the Soviet regime.

Historical Heritage of the Alash Autonomy and Its Impact on Contemporary Identity Policy in Kazakhstan

This article analyzes some of the key practices of modern identity politics in the Republic of Kazakhstan, namely the appeal to historical events, iconic figures and places of memory. One of these historical components is the memory of the Alash Autonomy (1917-1920), the Alash movement as a whole. It is noted that the Alash Republic has become a certain "historical and cultural place", memories of it in practice were reflected with the help of some symbolic forms. The author refers to such forms 1) renaming of toponyms in honor of the Alash people, 2) memorial policy dedicated to the movement, 3) renaming of social institutions in honor of the leaders of Alash-Orda, 4) cinema (films revealing the role of Alash Autonomy) and 5) official symbols of the Republic Kazakhstan (state emblem), on which the yurt was the key non-heraldic figure as a symbol of the Kazakh intelligentsia in the early 20th century. At the same time, the article not only singles out the nation-building practices formed “from above”, but also analyzes the role of symbolic forms constructed “from below”. The study examines protest movements that appeal to the basic postulates of Alash-Orda, music videos with iconic figures of the past (Alash people), as well as formed brands dedicated to the Alash movement, blogs on social networks dedicated to the Kazakh intelligentsia in the early 20th century. In addition, the paper analyzes the results of sociological surveys, which also showed the historical significance of the Alash Autonomy and the Alash movement for the Republic of Kazakhstan. At the same time, the study emphasizes a certain value gap and conflict between legitimizing, protesting and projective identities.

Slavic World in the Book Collection of Count G.A. Stroganov

The article examines the Russian aristocrat and diplomat G.A. Stroganov’s perception of the ideas of Slavic unity on the material of his library. Pan-Slavic ideas are presented through their interpretation in Russian, French and Common Slavic cultural consciousness as well as in the one of the collection’s owner. The authors of the books conceptualize the Russian version of Pan-Slavism as centralizing and patronizing other Slavic communities. The centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in the Slavic world are described on the material of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech (Bohemian), and Serbian literature and history. The article discusses ideas of Pan-Slavism in connection with the practice of nation-building of the 19th century, the ideas of national revival in Poland and Bohemia, the awareness of the Common Slavonic and national identity of individual communities. The authors of the article reveal ideas of Russian Pan-Slavism, Polish Messianism and Czech Austro-Slavism in terms of designing the Slavic cultural community.

The African state today and the democracy ideal: A case for a critical return

Undoubtedly, many modern nation-states seek to achieve a better form of democratic governance. The African nation-state is not an exception. However, the attempt by African nation-states to achieve the ideal form of democratic governance has been especially problematic. The real problem, as we see it, is that because of the forces of colonization and neo-colonization, Africa especially has scarcely had the opportunity to articulate and practice an uninterrupted democracy that accords with her indigenous political values and contemporary political experience. The upshot of this failure is the myriad of governance problems that plague contemporary African nation-states. Adopting both a descriptive and normative approach in this paper, we aim to uncover valuable aspects of traditional African politics which have been jettisoned in the politics of today. We further discuss why such worthwhile elements need to be refined and incorporated into contemporary African democracies. We analyze the traditional Fante governance system as a model of consensual democracy rooted in the African traditional concept of statehood that must be re-enacted to suit the practice of nation building in Africa today. Thus, we re-echo the largely held view that consensual democracy shows positive prospects for the issue of substantive representation in African politics today. Key words: African democracy, consensual, multiparty, nation-state, colonial mentality, ethnic, tradition and modernity, Fante.

Hot interpretations of difficult heritage: the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre in China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of national heritage through the interpretation of sites and events, with a particular focus on hot interpretation at difficult heritage sites. Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines the processes of difficult heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre over the past 30 years, and examines the resulting political implications.FindingsAligning with contemporary national social and political agendas, heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall actively serves as an authorised educational tool. Despite the hot interpretation techniques used to stimulate the emotional impact of visitor experiences, this particular traumatic past has been utilised in nation building practices that legitimise specific histories and form a national image on an international stage.Research limitations/implicationsHeritage interpretation of difficult history will benefit from open dialogue and assessment of the past from multiple perspectives. This requires all stakeholders to work together to develop interpretation strategies that acknowledge and prioritise the needs of post-conflict societies. Without this form of open dialogue and reflection, the official claims of heritage interpretation achieving reconciliation between conflicted peoples remain superficial. Originality/valueThis study offers a novel contribution to the discussion of heritage interpretation. The results shed light on the cultural processes surrounding state interpretation of traumatic pasts for specific political uses. The study suggests ways in which heritage sectors and authorities can achieve social goals, such as public education, reconciliation and peacebuilding, through such processes of heritage interpretation.

Концепции «nation-building» Ф. Фукуямы и Р. Купера и их значение для современной практики нациестроительства

The process of nation-building in modern societies within the framework of national integration is considered in the article from different approaches and taking into consideration analysis and understanding of foreign experience. Special attention is paid to the concepts and views of Francis Fukuyama and Robert Cooper along with their importance for practice of nation-building. An inference is made that today these concepts and attempts to implement them in practice cannot be recognized as perfect and adequate to current challenges of internal and external origins.

A nest for new Lithuanians: Hostels, discipline and nation-building in Ober Ost and Russia, 1914–1919

World War I represented a turning point not only for the emergence of the Lithuanian nation-state but also for the implementation of nation-building practices. Throughout wartime, the Lithuanian War Relief Committee profited from its position as a tool to develop a network of facilities devoted to children assistance. While having unprecedented rights to autonomously administer relief facilities, the Committee, as far as financial conditions allowed it, supported isolation in hostels as the favourite child relief format. Through formal and informal educational activities as well as the adoption of particular hygiene norms and, later, children relocation, the Lithuanian élite tried and transformed hostels and relief in veritable tools of nation-building aimed at transforming children in would-be conscious nationals. The goal to create prototypical Lithuanians, however, at least partially failed due by children’s alternative (if not opposite) agency.

Democratic and Autocratic Nation Building

AbstractThere are two main trends in the field of nation-building studies. One subset of the field focuses on democratic nation building, seeking to answer questions of how people can live together in divided societies and presenting institutional recommendations. The other subset examines autocratic nation building, or how those in power utilize nation building to maintain their position of dominance. Scholars examine both types of nation building from above, examining government policies and elite action, and from below, analyzing the practices and emotions of non-elites. While there has been much progress in the field of nation-building studies, I suggest that we focus more on the conceptual differences between democratic and autocratic nation building, address the interactions of elites and non-elites in nation-building practices, and disaggregate analyses to take into account in-country variation in nation building.

‘Developmental State’ as an Alternative Development Path in Ethiopia: Miracle or Mirage?

As an alternative development track, developmental state ideology has been openly introduced in the public policy makings of the Ethiopian state only after 2000. In essence, developmental state ideology could be understood as building the capacity of a state to address its diverse development challenges. As such, it is basically about creating enabling normative, structural, institutional, technical, and administrative environments in a given state to achieve its national development vision. In this regard, there are five defining features to evaluate as to whether a given state is indeed developmental: democratic nation building practices with committed political leadership, autonomous and effective bureaucracy, coordinated national development planning, sound social policy, and institutional capacity. In light of these conceptualizations and characterizations of the fundamentals of developmental state, the paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the actual state of developmental state ideology in Ethiopia by critically exploring and evaluating its actual performance. Accordingly, the findings of this paper reveal that Ethiopia fails to satisfy the basic standards of being a developmental state as it claims to be. Thus, the paper argues that the so-called ‘developmental state’ in Ethiopia is something that is mirage, and not actually or really embraced and practiced.

Conflicts of Home-Making: Strategies of Survival and the Politics of Assimilation

ABSTRACTLatinx communities that shape the US cultural landscape and assimilationists who reject this influence each have a desire to feel at home in the US. Nevertheless, people hold conflicting intuitions about which group's home-making practices are morally justifiable. Some feel that those belonging to the cultural majority have the right to determine membership through the admission of only those outsiders who will not disrupt their way of life. Others sense that when assimilationists express the need to feel at home in their country, this seems to be, at the very least, tinged with a morally distasteful xenophobia. In this essay, I provide an account of each of these conflicting intuitions. Drawing from Mariana Ortega's notion of hometactics and from Tomás Ybarra-Frausto's discussions of rasquachismo, I propose that many immigrants and Latinxs’ home-making practices involve efforts to create a sense of familiarity and identity affirmation in a place where they are regularly reminded that they do not belong. Meanwhile, an examination of early and contemporary US nation-building practices demonstrates that assimilationists’ ability to feel at home also aims at identity affirmation, but it is intolerant of difference and requires the eradication, rather than the incorporation, of that which is foreign.

The spacialization of modern, liberal Muslims with the Canadian nation: an animation of Ismaili Muslim exceptionality

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces the production of Muslim exceptionality in Canada. I do this by tracing how Ismaili Muslims, as liberal and modern Muslims are being mapped onto Canada. This mapping happens in relation to other racialized and Indigenous bodies within the nation state. As part of a feminist ethnographic study, this paper specifically analyzes the presence, representation and consumption of a building called the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat on Confederation Boulevard in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. This mapping is undertaken through examining the spacialization of liberal, modern Islam and its significance to ongoing colonial nation-building practices in Canada that are rooted in civilizational and humanistic goals. Through this analysis, the paper argues that the exceptional Muslim takes the form not as a body of negation but as a body of difference that is productively distinct and neo-oriental, paradoxically animating in the space of the Canadian nation.

There’s Sand in My Infinity Pool: Land Reclamation and the Rewriting of Singapore

“There’s Sand in My Infinity Pool” explores land reclamation in Singapore as a speculative material and cultural practice. Typically presented as either a practical engineering feat or an ecologically disastrous approach to coastal development, the significance of land reclamation in the cultural formation of identity and landscape has yet to be addressed. Given the ongoing and speculative nature of land reclamation, this practice-led research seeks to position land reclamation as a form of writing to identify the rewritten boundaries of memory and identity, unearthing the unacknowledged implications of land reclamation as a material and cultural practice in the formation of national identity. Sourced from interviews, ethnographic accounts, and autoethnography, the narratives examine what it means to live with and through land reclamation. The “breakwater” widens the field of conceptual enquiry, juxtaposing ideas from human geography, literary criticism, and critical theory to widen the framework for interrogating this practice of nation building.

SYSTEM-FORMING ROLE OF LEGAL VALUES AND NORMS IN DOMESTIC STATE-BUILDING

Was investigated the system-forming role of legal values and norms in domestic statebuilding. It is alleged that gradation legal values and their social role determined methodological approaches to thinking: positivist or natural and legal. The dominance of the positivist paradigm in understanding the law contributed to the spread of the twentieth century totalitarian and authoritarian political regimes whose leaders rejected natural law values and norms, replacing their so-called «political expediency» and ideological tenets. Repressive totalitarian political regime found its expression in the first place a significant moral person humiliation, catastrophic possibilities for its fulfillment. That is why the criticism of totalitarianism aims to restore such moral and legal values as human dignity.Was indicated that the rooting of democratic values in the public law and practice of nation-building helps overcome strains of legal awareness and legal culture of the population especially in countries that are reforming their political and legal system. For Ukraine, the crucial problem is legal nihilism overcoming, not only among ordinary citizens as among civil servants, senior politicians and so on. Since it is an example of the latter would encourage the establishment of legal values and statist thinking standards.Was proved that the system-forming role of legal values and norms most clearly manifests in collaboration with other values, especially moral and spiritual. The real upsurge of law and legal values is only possible in conjunction with the spiritual and moral nation flourishing, because exactly free individuals and society with a high level of justice are able to deeply understand the importance of instrumental and spiritual rights standards, apply it in daily life.Was analyzed the national idea of the Ukrainian people in terms of values. The legal values and norms filled with concrete content the Ukrainian national idea implementation of which is the development of democratic, legal and socially-oriented state. The ranking of legal value as the embodiment of the national idea depends on ideological postulates which were elected by leaders of state-building process. Wherein the role of legal values and norms will be to design specific legislative ideology, fixing them as institutionally secured state-building decisions. Along with that the law should be maximally remote from the politics, ensuring justice, equality and freedom for all units of public relations.Was grounded the necessity of developing a national legal ideology in the context of contemporary problems of development of the Ukrainian state. In its turn, the legal values are the core of legal ideology, creating an ideological basis for its existence. Legal values constitute the social space and determine the development strategy of the state as a legal phenomenon. The content of legal ideology is poly-aspect and incorporates the following components: strategy legislation, regulation principles, the constitutional construction, administrative, legal and judicial reform, human rights, improvement of the electoral law, the foundations of democracy and statehood, strengthening the rule of law and order.

Critical Reflections on (Post)colonial Geographies: Applied Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Mapping of Indigenous Traditional Claims in Canada during the Early 20th Century

This paper examines tensions between mapping as a practice of nation building and the practice of applied anthropology and “counter-mapping” in Canada during the early 20th century as expressions of Indigenous territoriality. This research helps to correct a misconception within the scholarly community that counter-mapping as an applied practice within anthropology emerged during the 1950s and 1960s. Tracing the emergence of this practice through Frank Speck's anthropological work on the family hunting territory complex during the early 1900s provides important context for understanding the history of and continued use of maps and mapping practices to challenge colonial ideologies and support Indigenous claims for land and access to resources.

ПАНСЛАВИЗМ И КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ В РУССКОЙ И ПОЛЬСКОЙ СЛОВЕСНОСТИ XIX в.

The article describes how the ideas of Slavic unity were used in the practice of nation-building of the XIX century. Distinctive features enable Pan-Slavic motifs in the designing of the national identity of Russians and Poles. The Russian version of Pan-Slavism expanded the understanding of the “Russian” to the universal element that incorporates all the essential features of the Slavic culture and is able to serve as a model for other nations. This interpretation was connected with the imperial vision in which the dominating people was the unifying centre and patron of subordinate national communities. The article traces the evolution of intentions of Russian Pan-Slavism from I.I. Sreznevsky’s romantic Slavic studies to F.M. Dostoevsky’s conception of “vseotzyvchivost’” (world responsiveness). The intention changes reflect the features of national identity formation, firmly fused with the imperial complex. The “centrifugal” Russian interpretation of Pan-Slavism opposed the “centripetal” Polish. Its primary aim was the selection of national identity as a key to cultural autonomy and, ideally, political independence (Polish messianism). For the Poles, after the partition of Poland the preservation of national identity was the only way to resist assimilation. The elements of this ideology were used to confirm the special place of Poland in the circle of the Slavic peoples, allowing, even in the absence of their own statehood, to be a source of cultural and political gravity, an alternative centre of Slavic unity.

Educating the nation: shaping student-citizens in Indonesian schools

Children in Indonesia experience the state in ways that are vastly different from any other citizen. This article explores how the bodies of schoolchildren are a key site for nation-building practices in Indonesia through an examination of two state schools in Riau Islands Province. I investigate the ways in which national identity is inculcated in students through various performances intended to shape the student-citizen, including the wearing of school uniforms, morning national callisthenics and the weekly flag ceremony. Drawing on Judith Butler's concept of performativity, I argue that students’ embodied performances of the nation can be understood as performative in the necessity of repetition or ‘citational practices’, which perpetuate the meaning and maintain the power associated. It is through repetition that meanings embedded in the performances of schoolchildren, such as hierarchy, awareness of a higher bureaucratic power and a sense of belonging to the nation, are perpetuated and normalized to the performers.

Recuperating Histories of Violence in the Americas: Vernacular History-Making on the US–Mexico Border

This article examines the 1915 double murder of Jesus Bazán and Antonio Longoria north of the Rio Grande River in Hidalgo County, Texas, and shows that this event is emblematic of the wider use of violence in subject formation and state-building projects in the Americas. This article describes a state-sanctioned period of racial terror and the culture of impunity in which state agents abused their authority and denied protection to ethnic Mexicans within their jurisdiction. This period of anti-Mexican violence continues to be memorialized a century later. Generational memories of this double murder—and the vernacular histories created by local residents in Texas—continue to challenge historical narratives that disavow generational loss and obscure roots of state violence. These histories confront historical narratives that justify the violence inherent in nation-building practices and make transparent the longer legacies of histories of border policing.

'A MOVING AND A MOVING ON': MOBILITY, SPACE, AND THE NATION IN CHARLES DICKENS'S BLEAK HOUSE

This article argues that despite apparently being the most ‘national’ of his novels, Bleak House is actively engaged with mid-nineteenth-century global travel culture and that reading the text through its mobile structures offers a productive framework through which to reconsider the novel's nation-building practices. It explores the relationship between space, mobility, and social relations in the novel, reading Dickens's employment of mobile structures in the text as evidence of a deep anxiety about the preserve of national place in an era of global modernity and revealing the impossibility of denying Britain's inextricable connection to the modern world.

Ethnic and civic dealings with newcomers: naturalization policies and practices in twenty-six immigration countries

Over the last decade or so, the comparative study of nationalism has produced a large number of cogent critiques of classifying nations according to how ethnic or civic they are. In fact, these critiques have been so convincing that many scholars today seem to agree that any mention of the words ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ is unwarranted. This is unfortunate, because the distinction still offers a useful heuristic device to compare and classify different nation-building practices. This article analyses naturalization policies in twenty-six Western immigrant-receiving democracies in order to show that the distinction constitutes a valuable analytical tool to explore how different countries deal with newcomers. The naturalization policy index developed in this article proves to have a high degree of face validity, to be a good predictor of actual naturalization practices, and to match up well with previous classifications of ethnic and civic nation-building practices.