Nation-building Project Research Articles

Symphonic music and cultural statecraft: the rise of symphonic statecraft in the post-Mao China

ABSTRACT Despite extensive studies on China’s soft power assets and strategies, the role of symphonic music within its cultural statecraft remains underexplored. This paper introduces the notion of ‘symphonic statecraft’ to examine the targeted and context-specific nature of China’s cultural efforts, focusing on how China adapts this globally recognized art form for its nation-building project. Using mixed methods, the study analyses awards from national composition contests between 1978 and 2012 and the programming choices of the China National Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2023 to reveal an environment shaped by selective state sponsorship that allows for artistic autonomy. The findings demonstrate a nuanced interplay between global influences and local interpretations, illustrating how China crafts narratives that interweave its enduring civilizational essence with contemporary aspirations. This evolving strategy absorbs increasingly diverse themes and moves beyond surface-level propaganda while maintaining strategic boundaries, reflecting the process of selective openness in China’s symphonic identity formation.

The Joe Biden administration s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and the dominance of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban): Plans and Strategies

Despite the fact that America had spent a lot of money since 2001 and after the collapse of the Taliban to advance the project of nation-building in Afghanistan; but this militant group was able to take over Kabul again on August 15, 2021.The action of the Taliban in Afghanistan was accepted at a time when Joe Biden had determined his new policy towards Afghanistan based on the withdrawal of America from this country; for this reason, many experts should know that the control of the Taliban is the result of the government's policy, which was followed by Trump before. However, another question and concern that was raised at this time was whether the steps should be taken in relation to the withdrawal of the United States from a pre-determined regional plan with specific goals and foundations, or whether it was just at the top to reduce America's foreign spending and on the basis of partisanship. Did the democratic government accept this incident? The authors of this research have tried to compare these two views based on the method of case study. The result of this study shows that despite the existence of two main views on foreign policy, different components and variables should be included in the strategy for Afghanistan, which is a multi-faceted approach. This multi-factor approach has been presented by the authors in the end.

Biofinancing Citizenship: Gotong Royong and the Political Construction of National Health Insurance Ideology in Indonesia

This paper examines the fund-collecting model of Indonesia's national health insurance system, Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), performed by its organizing body, Badan Penyelenggara Jaminan Sosial (BPJS). The system is based on the home-grown idea of gotong royong, often vaguely defined as ‘mutual assistance.’ As gotong royong has been prominent in Indonesia's nation building projects since before independence, scholars have argued that the term has carried numerous interpretations shared by political elites and the larger public they sought to mobilize. Analyzing recent public debates regarding the JKN, we argue that these debates are rooted in the unstable nature of the gotong royong principle. We begin with a brief history of Indonesia's national health insurance system and the evolution of the gotong royong notion, before presenting the various interpretations of gotong royong in the national health insurance system. We also examine the concept of biofinancing citizenship that has emerged as a consequence of the current implementation of the gotong royong principle as the central ideology of Indonesia's national health insurance system. This paper aims to enrich the literature in welfare politics by providing insights from one of the world’s largest and most ambitious national health insurance programs.

The Deportation of the Poles to Kazakhstan: Ethnic Cleansing, Collective Suffering, and Cultural Assimilation

The paper explores and analyzes one of the darkest pages of the history of the Polish people linked to the deportation of the Poles from Ukraine in 1936 and from Ukraine and Belarus in 1940-1941 to Kazakhstan. The central argument of the study is that the deportation of Poles from their historical homeland was carried out based exclusively on their ethnicity. We argue that the real intention of the Soviet regime’s genocidal policy was not confined only to the collective punishment and extermination of Poles as a distinct ethnic group, but the regime also sought to subject the deported Poles to slave labor exploitation for profit and to forced Russification. The assumption here is that Poles were uprooted from their homeland not only for extermination, but also the Soviet regime considered Poles to be an important component of its nation building project and their assimilation into Russian-dominated society was on the totalitarian regime’s agenda. The theoretical basis of this study constitutes the concept of ethnification of Stalinism, yet we add another dimension to our research, namely we employ the concept of racialization as a theoretical underpinning of the study to further deepen our analysis and indicate how ethnic identity of Poles was racialized. The study draws upon archival sources and the extant literature on the history of deportation in the Soviet Union, specifically we increasingly focus on Polish deportees’ collective and individual experiences who went through horrendous dehumanization and brutalization in exile in various parts of Kazakhstan between 1936 and 1956.

The Denationalization of Iraqi Jews: The Legal and Rhetorical Production of Otherness

Abstract This article examines the ways Iraqi Jews have been portrayed as foreigners who do not belong to the national realm, whether in the past or the present, through a discussion of articles in ultranationalist newspapers between 1948 and 1970, and laws of denaturalization from 1950 to 2006. In Iraq, the process of articulating Arab solidarity in support of Palestine entailed the disarticulation of an Arab/Iraqi Jewish identity. As Jewishness was dissociated from Arabness, it was linked to Zionism in that being a Jew was translated as being loyal to the Zionist project of nation-building in Israel and as being disloyal citizens who were intent on the destruction of Arab countries. While denaturalization laws constituted a legal process of denationalization, the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the ultranationalist press entailed the de-Arabization and deindigenization of Iraqi Jews, namely the denial of cultural and political belonging and their rootedness in Iraq. This article discusses the anti-Jewish rhetoric in ultranationalist presses in order to show how denaturalization laws codified, and lent legitimacy, to these Othering discourses. Even though the views embraced by ultranationalist writers did not represent the majority of Iraqi society, their narrative was embraced and reproduced by Iraqi officials when they enacted denaturalization legislation.

From developmentalism to the homegrown economy of Ethiopia: The narratives and the reality

The political and economic narrative has shifted from developmentalism to the homegrown economy in post-2018 Ethiopia, but maintains the hegemony of the developmental state project of nation-building. This article investigates the shift to homegrown economic narratives, assesses the alignment with macroeconomic data and various sources and their implications. The narrative seeks an endogenous growth model and emphasizes macroeconomic stability, industrialization, private-sector growth, and contributions of key sectors for economic transformation. In some respect of industrialization and macro-financial stability, the macroeconomic data align with the reform narratives. However, agricultural productivity, export diversification, and dependency on imports remain critical challenges of the economy and implicate structural issues of the reform. Several factors, mainly civil war, Covid-19 and climate change, complicate this economic landscape. The article underlines a sustainable and inclusive growth in Ethiopia requires greater transparency and revisiting the assumptions and implications of the homegrown economic narratives.

Forging the West Indian Nation: Federation and Caribbean Activism in Post-war Britain, 1945-60.

This article explores how Caribbean activists living in Britain after 1945 engaged with the movement for the West Indies Federation. By considering overlooked organizations such as the Caribbean Labour Congress, London Branch (CLC) and the West Indian Workers and Students Association (WIWSA), it shows that, first, Britain became a hub for Caribbean nationalism and support for Federation in the post-war years. Secondly, it argues that the West Indies Federation of 1958-62 significantly influenced the formation of important British Caribbean institutions, such as the West Indian Gazette and the Caribbean Carnival. In contrast to traditional narratives regarding post-war Caribbean political activity in Britain, which often treat the 1950s conjuncture through the lens of race and of the prehistory of a 'multi-cultural' Britain, this article seeks to recover a moment when British Caribbean activism was moved by a broader, transnational, self-consciously 'West Indian' nationalist movement. In doing so, it reveals the significance of the West Indies Federation, and Caribbean decolonization more broadly, to the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, and their political activities. Moreover, it illustrates how diasporic and exilic communities and figures continued to play an important role in anti-colonial and nation-building projects.

The Tyranny of Schools: Nature and Nation in the Schools of Transylvania and the Romanian Kingdom, 1870-1914

This research investigates the development of the nature study movement in the secondary schools of Transylvania and the Romanian Kingdom between 1870 and 1914. Building on the scholarship dealing with the rise of the “biological perspective” in Germany, the paper deals with the roots of the Romanian nature preservation movement and its relationship with the political and economic projects of nation-building that developed in the dualist Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It analyses how methodological changes in the teaching of natural history and the introduction of teaching aids such as nature excursions, botanical school gardens, and celebrations of birds and trees, influenced the development of a nationalist, utilitarian, anthropocentric and racial approach toward the natural environment.

Столицы сибирских автономий – миссия нациестроительства (динамика функций, статуса и этнизации городского пространства)

The implementation of the Soviet nation-building project assumed the decisive role of cities in the formation of nations - an urban product by definition. Within the framework of the ideology of institutionalization of ethnicity, they were appointed capitals of the created national autonomies and were endowed with the appropriate mission and resources. For the emerging or prearranged nations of Siberia those were either Russian cities in terms of population or new cities grown for this purpose on the basis of Russian villages. The rooting policy a tool for cultivating a titular cultural and political elite in them, building an urban infrastructure adequate to the status of the national capital. In the process of implementing this mission, cities with a special culture of relationships have been formed, with a greater regulating role of ethnicity than in ordinary capital cities. The general genesis predetermined the similarity of the capitals of the Siberian autonomous regions considered in the article - Ulan-Ude, Kyzyl, Abakan, Gorno-Altaisk. No less clearly visible are the differences that demonstrate the different results of the implementation of the standard national program. The reasons for these differences were starting resources (the presence of a city and an urban tradition, a European-educated titular elite with experience in political and cultural mobilization), a demographic factor, and a different role in national modernization development.

Confronting or incorporating middle-class nation-building? Right-wing responses in the pan-Canadian context

ABSTRACT Canada is often praised for successfully integrating ethnically diverse immigrants into its multicultural nation, so successful indeed that the country has been considered an exception to the twenty-first-century right-wing populist wave. The recent ascent of political mobilization associated with right-wing populist repertoires across Canada, however, has exposed the need to revisit the exceptionalism thesis. With this goal in mind, our article examines the contemporary right-wing responses to the Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC) post-2015 discourses and policies on immigration and multiculturalism. Building on existing scholarship, we first characterize the LPC’s approach as a nation-building project with strong middle-class partialities that emphasize high skills and human capital. We then explore how right-wing parties oppose or embrace this ‘middle-class nation-building’. Qualitatively analyzing the platforms of center-right parties and those further to the right at the federal and provincial levels (Alberta and Québec), we observe three prevalent response types: those that follow a cultural logic to prioritize identity and values, an economic logic to underline merit and contribution, or a combination of the two. Besides modulating the Canadian exceptionalism thesis, our findings complicate the assumed dichotomy between market-based and cultural forms of nationalism, as political actors can merge them in various permutations.

ENGAGING COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA: EVALUATING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE EXPROPRIATION OF LAND WITHOUT COMPENSATION BILL

The post-1994 era in the South African public imagination was envisaged to herald widespread and transformative efforts to reverse the gross injustices and human rights violations inflicted over many decades of apartheid and colonialism. One of the key measures initiated by the democratic government to drive this nation building project was the land reform programme. The ‘land question’, which is a popular tagline in South Africa when reference is made to land reform, has come to define the general discourse of socioeconomic disadvantage and change in the post-apartheid and post-colonial period – similarly to other former settler colonies in the African continent and the broader Global South. For South Africa though, this specific issue has been characterised by numerous challenges and failures largely at the level of the state, wherein a significant lack of public engagement, public participation and democratic redistribution was not being done according to ‘the will of the people’. On several occasions, the South African state has gone on a ‘solo crusade’ to implement the land reform programme under complex conditions that are largely unfavoured by ordinary people ‘on the ground’ – especially those who were the primary victims of land dispossession under colonialism and apartheid. As a result, over the past few years, indigenous black communities across the country especially in (semi)urban and township areas have voluntarily ‘occupied’ land at their own will and sometimes ‘illegally’, to take up settlement space and determine their lives on the land of their birth. Beyond the public discourse of ‘land invasions’ and ‘failed land reform projects’, this study was conducted to closely understand the extent to which public engagement and participation has been integral in the systematic mechanism(s) to transform the patterns of land ownership and control in the democratic South Africa. To do this, the site of KwaZakhele, Silvertown, in Port Elizabeth was selected to conduct the study. Methodologically, qualitative semi-structured interviews were utilised to conduct the study and the Marxist Concept of Citizenship was selected as a theoretical framework for the study by the researcher. The study has found that, amongst the general legislative and political shortfalls of public participation breakdown, there are other deep seated structural socioeconomic issues that are at the root of the problem – such as economic inequalities and very low prospects of social mobility – which collectively reproduce the persistent inadequacies of political instability and social unrest in the area. The study recommends an astute combination of ‘bottom-up’ active citizenship and major socioeconomic transformation in the area as a systematic and structural mechanism to empower the community of Silvertown to be the champion of its own liberation struggle for the freedom of its people to own land and democratically participate in their own governance, self-determination, and prosperity.

Technofeudalism or Technosocialism? WeChat as Socialist Alternative to Platform Capitalism

The emergence of Chinese platform technology, WeChat (微信) an application that singularly incorporates functions of messaging, social media, financial services and more, marks a new development in the construction of Chinese socialism and the Chi- nese nation-building project. What then of the Western critiques of platform tech- nology and their interaction with political economy: technofeudalism and platform capitalism? This article argues that these analyses which successfully critique the way Big Tech platforms have manifested as technologies for capitalist extraction in the West do not accurately account for the function of WeChat in China's system of socialist de- velopment. Notably, both platform capitalism and technofeudalism presuppose that platform technologies emerge out of neoliberalism. Arguing that WeChat's advance- ment and success is partly attributed to China's rejection of neoliberal austerity politics and policy, this article looks to WeChat as a potential alternative to Western modes of digital capitalism.

Everyday Ethnicity and Popular Responses to Nation-Building Projects in Moldova After 1989

Abstract This introductory article highlights the main developments in the Republic of Moldova from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the present from the perspective of national sentiment and manifestations. Using Mark Beissinger’s concept of “tides of nationalism”, the article examines the bottom-up ethnic mobilisation between the “quiet” and the “noisy” phases of national projects in Moldova. With the persistence of the “quiet” phase of nationalism, in the last three decades, Moldova’s population transitioned from identification based on ethnicity to one focused on civic coexistence. However, Russia’s attack on Ukraine risks disrupting this balance, while contributing to the resurgence of ethnic sentiment at the expense of civic cohesion. Following an analysis of the literature in the field of “everyday nationalism”, the authors present the contributions to this thematic section, highlighting the relevance of the Republic of Moldova’s case within the regional and international context.

Colonialism, eugenics and ‘race’ in Central and Eastern Europe

The legacies of eugenics in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and their connections to global colonialism remain uncharted. Therefore, it is worth pondering over this relationship, which requires a historical perspective and a repositioning of the recent postcolonial ‘turn’ in CEE to include the history of eugenics. For the most part of the 20th century, eugenics took shape within both colonial and nation-building projects. Eugenic strategies devised to preserve the colonial system outside Europe have always coexisted with programmes designed to improve the well-being of nations within Europe. This convergence between colonial, racial and national dimensions of eugenics requires a critical rethought. While this key line of inquiry has been a major focus in Western Europe and the US, it remains under-theorised in CEE. By highlighting the colonial implications of nation-building in the region, we attempt to destabilise the all-too-pervasive historiographic misconception that CEE nations are largely untouched by the global circulation of eugenics and scientific racism.

To Protest for Black Life during the Pandemic: Resistance and Freedom in a Settler State

AbstractThis article reflects on the global uprisings in support of Black life during the early pandemic. The focus is on what the protests reveal about Black resistance to the nation-building project of Canada. Protests during this period are understood here to have included taking to the streets, practicing care, and calling for abolition. Drawing on critical race theory and Black Studies, especially Black feminism, the author claims these forms of protest condemned Black dispossession under Canadian laws, while they simultaneously exceeded Canada’s jurisdiction. In other words, the protests can be understood ambivalently, as occurring under and responding to, but not being of, domination. They refashioned the self and the collective, expressing transient freedom from domination and partial redress, even as settler colonial laws would continue to suppress Black and other subaltern peoples. The article navigates such insights through works by Dionne Brand, Saidiya Hartman, and Katherine McKittrick, among others.

Burning Desires: Zanzibari Women in the Throes of Concubinage and Gunpoint Matrimony

This article examines the two instances of concubinage (suria) during the Omani rule of Zanzibar and the Ndoa Za Karume Forced Marriage Act that followed the revolution in 1964 on the island. Both practices can be seen as laboratories in which the complexities of sex and power were in full display. Throughout, the author draws inspiration from anthropologist Tim Ingold's theory of human correspondence alongside valuable insights from the intersection of black feminist thought and humanistic anthropology to deepen our understanding of both concubinage and forced marriage as forms of sexual bondage occurring within particular political circumstances and historical realities. For indeed, both objectifying practices assumed a variety of meanings in colonial and postrevolutionary Zanzibar. When conjugating suria and ndoa within the complex grammar of race, class, and gender, we also often encounter inconsistencies inherent in fraught human relationships and furthered by the marked fluidities and slippages of both practices and their varying connotative, pragmatic, and ideational significances. Was the Ndoa za Karume an act of retribution against concubinage? Or was it a contribution to a nation-building project in a society adrift? To consider these questions, the article draws on a variety of ethnographic insights gathered in Zanzibar and Oman between 2016 and 2019 and a constellation of texts, including archives, local historiographies, a collection of Swahili statements for and against ndoa possessed by an interlocutor, memoirs, and other field notes gathered in 2020–21. The article explores what was at stake in these two parallel modes of exploiting women's bodies, arguing that they cannot be understood in isolation from their “correspondences” and the emotionality manifested in both gendered social dramas.

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

This article situates Mexican sexology, and how it engaged homosexuality and gender nonconformity, within more familiar nation-building projects in Mexico following the Revolution (1910–20). It argues that much like with understandings of race, Mexican sexologists, influenced by neo-Lamarckism and ‘Latin' eugenics, viewed sexuality as caused largely by social and environmental factors, rather than simply as a congenital characteristic. Such experts advocated for social solutions for what they saw as the ‘state of danger’ that homosexuality represented, targeting their interventions at youths, who were seen as pliable, future citizens, rather than adults, who were largely seen as irredeemable and best isolated from the national body. The article explores discursive, ideological, and methodological threads in Mexican sexology from the 19th to the mid-20th century, the field’s professionalization and transnational connections, case studies of youths in which the preferred solutions involved promoting family stability and coherence, and adult cases ranging from prison studies to the case of Marta Olmos, recipient of Mexico’s first widely known sex reassignment. Overall, it demonstrates important intersections between sexology and nation-building projects related to criminology, anthropology, and eugenics, and how the attempted management of homosexuality and gender nonconformity sheds light on Mexican development more broadly.

Türkiye’s European Union Accession Process Evaluation in The Context of Kemalism

Republic of Türkiye's involvement with European integration dates back to Democrat Party period. It is clear how difficult and questionable this period of many years is. Türkiye 's European Union accession process, which started to accelerate especially since the first half of the 2000s, was resolutely criticized by many nationalist intellectuals in the same period. The central point of these criticisms was that the European Union process would wear out the nation state and was absolutely incompatible with Kemalist principles. In terms of the ideology of Kemalism, which was shaped as the mortar of the nation-building project in the early Republic period, it was undoubtedly an acceptable fact that the European Union membership, which would mean the transfer of the sovereignty of the nation-state, was viewed negatively. Based on the fact in question, the aim of this article is to give a brief summary of the European Union process, which accelerated in the first half of the 2000s and gradually faded in the second half, and then to evaluate the European Union membership process from the Kemalism ideology perspective. Thus, it will be put forward whether the EU membership process and the Kemalism ideology constitute two separate poles, as asserted by nationalist intellectuals.

Loyalty and patriotism: the role of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine’s nation-building project

ABSTRACT During the Revolution of Dignity and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Crimean Tatars overwhelmingly expressed their loyalty and identification with the Ukrainian state. This article examines the factors that account for Crimean Tatars’ siding with Ukraine and interrogates the meaning of Ukrainian identity for their culturally, linguistically, and religiously distinct community. To do that, the author engages in a twofold approach of 1) macro-level, long-term historical examination of the relationship between Ukrainian state actors and Crimean Tatars, and 2) micro-level, sociological analysis of the contemporary relationship within Crimean Tatar society. Tracing the genealogy of encounters between Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian dissidents in the Soviet period, the author argues that their shared anti-Soviet outlook allowed the two nations to view each other as allies in independent Ukraine. Furthermore, the liberal, anti-colonial discourse shared widely among Crimean Tatars found its reflection in their newly embraced civic Ukrainian identity. Yet it is also important to take into account the internal struggle among Crimean Tatars during the annexation, which reflects the tensions, risks, and rewards that come with the choice of identification.

Was the prehistoric man an Azeri nationalist?: Mobilized prehistory and nation-building in Azerbaijan

ABSTRACT Gobustan, a prehistoric site 60 km south of Baku, has an impressive collection of rock carvings from different prehistoric eras. Near the site, a national museum presents the prehistoric findings in a narrative that connects them with modern-day Azerbaijan, calling the hunter–gatherer tribes that lived in Gobustan ‘our ancient Azerbaijani ancestors’. While many nation-building projects dig deep into the past, reconstruct it, claim ancient civilizations as their own and sometimes even invent historical narratives that never happened, the Gobustan Museum and the narrative it implies (that prehistoric people living in 15,000 BCE were Azerbaijanis) seems like ‘overkill’, an exaggerated effort to connect the past and the present. The data from the museum points to a larger story: the construction of national identity and collective memory in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. This paper presents some of the author’s anthropological field research findings in the museum and explains why the narrative of ‘ancientness’ is so essential in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.