Seamus Heaney's exploration of identity politics has long been a subject of debate among scholars. While some view him as a creator of his own ethnic identity, others critique him as a fabricator of myths and idealized origins. However, the truth of Heaney’s engagement with ethnic identity is far more nuanced. His journey, evolving from a focus on communal attachment to active alienation, and ultimately to the deconstruction of binary oppositions, marks a significant shift from essentialism to pluralism. (...) This transformation is deeply intertwined with Heaney's evolving aesthetic and philosophical reflections on key identity-related themes—such as place and displacement, nationalist claims and political martyrdom, center and emptiness, and border and transcendence. Through this process, Heaney engages in a continual negotiation of personal and collective anxieties, producing poetry that is marked by ongoing revision and renewal. His reflections on identity and their poetic revisions provide profound insights into the ethical dimensions of his work, which not only enhances our understanding of his intellectual development but also positions him within the broader context of Western intellectual traditions. In light of contemporary global conflicts, Heaney’s poetic engagement with themes of identity, place, border, and transcendence offers valuable perspectives on the relationship between self and other, as well as between in-group and out-group dynamics. This essay considers how Heaney's reflections can inform contemporary philosophical discussions on identity and the ethical implications of belonging in a divided world. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza la participación de la mujer en el proceso migratorio desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta los inicios del siglo XX mediante la colectividad alemana establecida en Valparaíso. Nos detenemos específicamente en la actividad social, el quehacer laboral y la vida familiar de la comunidad germana, con lo que podremos acceder a un ámbito poco conocido del accionar femenino en la empresa migratoria europea, en donde se desarrollan valores y costumbres que constituyen parte importante de la identidad alemana. (...) Se utilizan principalmente como fuentes diarios de vida y testamentos realizados por mujeres. The paper analyzes the participation of women in the migration process, since the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, through the established German community in Valparaiso. We stop specifically in social activity, professional work and family life of the German community, which we can access a little known field of women in the European migration, where they develop values and customs that are an important part of German identity. We mainly use as sources diaries and wills made??by women. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSocial constructionism, and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory in particular, are well-known for their anti-essentialist understanding of identity. Hence these discourses have theoretically been utilized for understanding social identity construction and for deconstructing identities. However, I claim that social constructionism and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory may have the as yet non-theorized operation of detecting and combating wholesale indictments of identities. This operation helps us diagnose how ethnic identity and affect become incriminated as supposedly inextricably intertwined with (...) racism, chauvinism and related pathologies. Yet interestingly, instead of unveiling and critiquing the new hegemony of blanket indictment of ethnic identity/affect, social constructionism and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory have been used to incriminate identity as such. The present article interprets Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory against the grain to chastise the tendency to declare ethnic identity/affect as the new enemy. It shows how such new, hegemonic incrimination aspires to fill the empty signifier of peaceful coexistence with otherness, yet runs the risk of effacing otherness. The article concludes with an example of a reconstructive alternative. (shrink)

(1997). Ethnicity, citizenship, and identity in the constitution of multiethnic states: Lessons from early‐twentieth‐century Spain and Austria. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, No. 7, pp. 1146-1161.

Due to the historical background, political changes, external cultural impacts, and drastic internal changes in people's lifestyles, ethnic music is step by step on the decline or even on the verge of extinction. This paper analyses the significance, characteristics and dilemmas of the inheritance of folk music, and discusses the influence of social music education policy on the inheritance of folk music, and new ways of inheritance. It proposes two effective paths for the implementation of the social music education (...) policy, namely, the construction of high-quality music teachers and the development of school-based ethnic music programs, which will jointly promote the development of ethnic music in China. In the empirical study, a stratified sampling of schools was conducted in City G. Thirty-four schools were sampled. With a sample of students (1972), teachers (102), and music group leaders (34), the implementation of social music education policy in primary schools can significantly improve students' cognition, experience, understanding, love, inheritance, and development of ethnic music culture. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 701-702, August 2012.

The development of local ethnic music culture is affected by the impact of foreign music culture, the establishment of the teaching system of music culture knowledge, understanding of history, culture, social background to mobilise the sensory mechanism, based on the popular elements of ethnic music innovation, as well as enrichment of the regional ethnic music and cultural activities, and active promotion of the protection of the local ethnic music culture of the five factors. The five factors (...) relationship value are 0.440, 0.517, 0.541, 0.498 are all greater than 0, and there is a significant relationship between the factors. The path coefficients of the refinement factors on the protection of local ethnic music culture are all greater than 0, and p=0.000. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to a problem of power of European nation state during the process of shaping the postindustrial civilization. The author points that the nation state is a relic of an industrial era. Globalization is a real fear for relatively small European states. So, integration is a necessity. But the integration does not mean the centralization of rules. Today we can see a comeback to preindustrial political paradigmatics: decentralization and deconcentration of authorities. The future of Europe is in (...) three-level system that has been built by supranational institutions, e.g. EU, decentralized states (federations and regionalized states) and regional (quasi-states) and local community. But the European Union will not become a federation. It would be a conservation of industrial models. The Europeans must rather think of a new formula of integration. Neo-medieval empire is an adequate to changes’ direction proposal. The author also notices that we are the observers of essential change of identity. The national identity has been relativized by globalization and uniformitarian character of American cultureas well as by aspiration of regional and ethnic groups. European national identity and consensuses could be rather a supplement than an alternative for today’s national identification. (shrink)

The questions raised by Māori identity are not static, but complex and changing over time. The ethnicity known as “Māori” came into existence in colonial New Zealand as a new, pan-tribal identity concept, in response to the trauma of invasion and dispossession by large numbers of mainly British settlers. Ideas of Māori identity have changed over the course of succeeding generations in response to wider social and economic changes. While inter-ethnic marriages and other sexual liaisons have been common throughout (...) the Māori-Pākehā relationship, the nature of such unions, and the identity choices available to their descendants, have varied according to era and social locus. In colonial families, the memory of a Māori ancestor was often deliberately suppressed, and children were encouraged to deny that part of their history and “become” European New Zealanders: a classic form of what we call “trans-ethnicity.” From a Māori perspective, the relationship with Pākehā has been marked by a series of losses: loss of land, language, social cohesion, even loss of knowledge of whakapapa. This article explores this last form of loss, which leads to “suppressed” Māori identities, and possible effects of attempting to recover such lost Māori identity rights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

In 1998 the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities will come into force. But this treaty will only achieve its potential as the centrepiece of ethnic and cultural rights in Europe if the narrow, biased perspective held by many of the state parties can be overcome. This article argues that a just and workable approach to ethnic rights should be informed by contemporary socio-anthropological understandings of ethnicity and culture. When this understanding is considered (...) within the liberal philosophical foundations of the European human rights system, a universal right to ethnic identity emerges. It is thus apparent that immigrant minorities, often excluded from the development of minority rights in international law, have an equal claim to the benefits of the Framework Convention. There is, moreover, a strong argument that ethnic minority rights must involve some measure of long term, positive support for minority languages and traditions. (shrink)

The European Union requires a stronger approach to social solidarity than has been offered in existing theory. Perhaps the exigency of this claim is nowhere more evident than in the recent failed referendums in France and the Netherlands. In both cases the narrow legal-economic sense of the EU won out over what was hoped to be an emerging European public sphere, indeed a shared sense of European identity rooted in history. This article asks what type of ‘history’ this identity requires. (...) Approaching this problem from a theoretical perspective, I will outline why and how such a ‘history’ must accord with the existing limits set by post-and/or transnationalism itself. Second, I will question how well various attempts at writing such a ‘history’ have already managed in terms of these limits. Lastly, drawing on the current work of sociologist Ulrich Beck, I will put forward a theoretical alternative to the existing models. (shrink)

Europeanization is part of globalization and in this context the European Union is propelled by wider forces of technological, economic, financial and political change. Cultural identity is discussed against this backdrop. If presently there is a surfeit of national and ethnic identity talk, evoked from parochial perspectives, there is a deficit of European identity and reflexivity in terms of politics, political economy and the social capitalism which Rhineland Europe used to represent. An open, casual definition of European identity may (...) be appropriate on historical grounds, in view of the multicultural antecedents of European cultures; on theoretical grounds, considering that culture is open‐ended; on political grounds, in view of postnationalist definitions of citizenship. It may be welcome medicine for Eurochauvinism. It may also be pragmatic in relation to ongoing technological and economic changes. With a view to narrowing the split between disciplines and sensibilities it would be important to integrate cultural, political and economic analyses and to arrive at a forward‐looking combination of agendas. (shrink)

While Appiah and Soyinka criticize racial essentializing in Sartre and the Negritude poets, Sartre in Black Orpheus interprets the Negritudinists as employing a phenomenological, anamnestic retrieval of subjective experience. This retrieval uncovers two ethical attitudes: a less exploitative approach toward nature, and a conversion of slavery’s suffering into a stimulus for universal liberation. These attitudes spring from peasant cultural traditions and ethical responses to others’ race-based cruelty, rather than emanating from mystified ‘blackness’. Alfred Schutz’s because-motive analysis, a process of narrative (...) self-constitution, renders plausible these linkages the Negritudinists draw between themselves and peasant or slave ancestors. Such narratives, customarily constructed in common sense by European- and African-Americans, regularly involve mythic elements, serve laudable ethical purposes and require continual theoretical critique by anthropology, genetics and ethics. Theory, though, plays only a critical, corrective role for subjective, anamnestic recoveries of racial and ethnic identity, and it can never replace them. (shrink)

Immigration from Eastern European countries to Portugal is a recent phenomenon. Within the last decade, economic migrants from Ukraine, Russia, Romania and Moldova set up a number of supplementary schools across the country. No academic attention has been given to the phenomenon of supplementary ethnic schools in Portugal, whilst there is a growing interest in and beyond Europe in the ways they serve as cultural, social and political sources for identity negotiation, and structures for social capital formation in migrant (...) communities. This study addresses this gap in knowledge. Drawing on a survey completed by 184 students between the ages of 12 and 20, attending eight Ukrainian supplementary schools, this paper contributes to wider international research through its mapping of the population of Ukrainian schools in Portugal and examining students? reasons for attendance, highlighting both positive and negative aspects of their experiences. Recommendations are made for schools in light of the findings. (shrink)

This article explores the problems and possibilities of different feminist theoretical models of identity for challenging women's symbolic and strategic positioning in the discourses and conflicts that produce national, ethnic and racialized community identities. The discussion focuses on two of the most popular alternative models to emerge within white western feminism, the nomad and the cyborg, while also considering some other suggested paradigm shifts emerging from diasporic and postcolonial feminisms. It asks how successfully these feminist alternative models of the (...) self and community identities deal with two key issues relating to women's positioning in prevailing identity discourses – on the one hand, women's relationship to questions of ‘place’, location and dislocation, and on the other, questions of female embodiment and the ways in which the specifically female body becomes both a symbolic and material target of conflict and contestation in processes of constituting community identities. (shrink)

In this article the author reflects on some of the most recent instances of the hybridization of identities, brought about by movements of migration in the more general context of globalization. New situations triggered by the epoch-making historical developments of the world we live in require us to modify our notion of individual identity, which is no longer seen as a fundamental and self-referential essence of the individual, but rather as the product of a number of relational variables, many of (...) which arise from processes of ethnic amalgamation and cultural blending. In this new historical condition, one that old styles of thought are no longer able to grasp, the notion of memory is paramount. Memory, as Said has indicated, is connected to Vico’s concept of “invention” as “finding again,” that is, as an incessant process of the remembrance and the discovery of stories that are lived, leading to a “re-creation” and reconfiguration of one’s roots. This article, however, does not simply formulate, articulate and discuss the problem, but also raises the question of its genealogy, locating this in Vico’s distinction between the topical and the critical, that is connected with the triad of memory-imagination-ingenuity, and in certain philosophical positions – such as that of Dilthey, which is specifically acknowledged here – that involve an instance of hybridism, interpreted as a relationship between biological-natural and psychological subjectivity on one hand and historical-cultural identity on the other. (shrink)

Asian American women demonstrate higher rates of disordered eating than other women of color and comparable rates to European American women. Research suggests that leading sociocultural predictors, namely pressures for thinness and thin-ideal internalization, are predictive of disordered eating in Asian American women; however, no known studies have tested the intersection of sociocultural and culture-specific variables (e.g., ethnic identity, biculturalism, acculturative stress) to further elucidate disordered eating risk in this vulnerable, understudied group. Accordingly, this project used path analysis to (...) simultaneously examine the role of sociocultural and culture-specific effects on disordered eating in Asian American college women (N = 430). Self-report measures assessing disordered eating, sociocultural (pressures for thinness; thin-ideal internalization) and culture-specific (ethnic identity, biculturalism, acculturative stress) variables revealed that a number of sociocultural and culture-specific factors are predictive of disordered eating. Consistent with prior research, heightened perceived pressures for thinness and thin-ideal internalization were predictive of disordered eating, and thin-ideal internalization partially mediated the relationship between pressures for thinness and disordered eating. Acculturative stress predicted disordered eating and fully accounted for the inverse relationship between biculturalism and disordered eating. Overall, findings highlighted the salience of sociocultural predictors for disordered eating in Asian American women and identified biculturalism and acculturative stress as culture-specific contributors that may uniquely impact vulnerability to disordered eating in Asian American women. Thus, the combined consideration of sociocultural and culture-specific factors may be important in disordered eating research and in the development of individualized treatment plans for Asian American women. (shrink)

For historians of medicine, the professor Theodor Billroth of the University of Vienna was the leading European surgeon of the late nineteenth century and the personification of intervention by organ or body part removal. For social and political historians, he was a German nationalist whose book on medical education heralded the rise of anti-Semitism in the Austrian public sphere. This article brings together and critically reassesses these two hitherto separate accounts to show how, in a period of dramatic social and (...) political change, Viennese surgery split into two camps. One, headed by Billroth, was characterized by an alliance with the German educational model, German nationalism leading to racial anti-Semitism and an experimental approach to the construction of surgical procedure, which heavily relied on the methods of pathological physiology. The other, which followed a long Austrian tradition, stood for a clinically oriented and strictly organized medical education that catered to an ethnically and socially diverse population and, simultaneously, for an anatomically oriented surgery, largely of the locomotor apparatus. This study shows how, in a major centre of medical education and capital of a multiethnic empire, surgical and national identities were forged together. (shrink)

This text will comment on some of the important aspects of the connection between Eastern Orthodoxy and contemporary civilization, the historical development of which has been designated as post-modernity. Being neither modern, nor postmodern, nor anti-modern, Orthodoxy has to answer the question as to whether globalization is analogous to the “cosmic liturgy” sought by the Christian religion as a whole, or to the contrary, is moving away from it. The other basic problem of Orthodoxy – especially in what were formerly (...) designated as East European societies – is that it should be identified with nationality. To be Orthodox often means to be a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Russian, a Romanian, etc. Ethnic affiliation and Orthodox affiliation are often interchangeable. Thus, the nationalization of Orthodoxy is becoming a major problem that the Church must resolve. (shrink)

The first part of this article summarizes research carried out during the last decade in the field of media use of ethnic minorities throughout Europe. Guiding research questions, underlying paradigms, and empirical evidence will be critically discussed in a comparative way. In the second part, empirical data of a Swiss survey among 1,600 adolescents aged 12 to 17 with migrant and Swiss backgrounds are presented. The comparative study points at similarities and differences in access to and use of old (...) and new media such as the Internet as well as with the link between media use and social integration or cultural identity. Special emphasis is given to ethnic versus social factors as underlying explanatory factors. The results of the Swiss study are placed in the context of European research evidence. (shrink)

This volume asks which national histories underpinned which national identity constructions in almost every nation state in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the construction of national identities through history writing and analyses their interrelationship with histories of ethnicity/race, class and religion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

Tsvetan Todorov, in his book Us and Them. French Thinking on Human Diversity, asked the following question: “How does one, how should one relate to those who do not belong to the same community as we do?” This question has been posed somewhat differently by intellectuals of the Americas anxious to develop paradigms of identity that will contribute to the successful construction of a society whose aim is to integrate heterogeneous ethnic groups: “How does one, how should one relate (...) to those who are members of our new society but who live either on its margins or who are frequently considered as different?” The mixed-race (métissage) approach, applied to the Latin Americas situation, was in part a response to this question. Here the “us” did not designate metropolitan Europeans engaged in thinking about the “others,” that is to say non-Europeans, but Latin Americans thinking about relations among various dominant groups and the varying “others” within their own society, since the “others” were part of “us.” The meaning of “us” is equally problematic when applied to North America. “What happens when words like ‘community’ and ‘us’ cease to have the clear and immediate meaning that Todorov seems to ascribe to them?” Sherry Simon recently asked. Although offering a general critique of the monological conception of culture and identity – a critique based on Bakhtin's work on polyphony and dialogism, on James Snead's investigation of the hybrid nature of several texts belonging to the European canon (such as The Odyssey and The Divine Comedy), and on the studies of Angelo Ara and Claudio Magris in regard to the heterogeneity of Trieste – she nevertheless begins her essay on a personal note, describing life in the multicultural city of Montreal, where “many children come out of mixed or immigrant marriages, some going to French schools, some to English,” and who can not “define themselves as products of a single culture” (pp. 15-16). Although I agree with Sherry Simon that the “us” of culture is never a given (it should be mentioned that Todorov himself writes that we must “give up basing our thinking on such a distinction” [between us and them] p. 421), it is essential here to emphasize the special ambiguity of the conception of “us” in the ex-colonies of the New World, where the “collision of cultures” implied not only, on the one hand, a confrontation among Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French colonists, but also between the colonists and the African slaves as well as with the immigrants who arrived after independence. Todorov's conception of nationhood (p. 422) as “a more or less perfect (although never total) coincidence of a State and a culture” - which he toned down a bit by adding that a culture is often identified with a particular region, a group of countries, or even a stratum of the population (pp. 424-425) - is even less applicable to the new societies of America than it is to Europe. Not only are we talking about hybrid societies (and what society isn't, to some degree?), but of societies conceived as hybrid, either multicultural (Canada) or mixed-race (Latin America). If, as Ernest Renan insisted at the end of the XIXth century, the idea of the modern nation is based on a conscious disregard for our diverse ethnic origins, the concepts of identity of the societies of the New World have often been based on an explicit symbolization of their heterogeneity. (shrink)

After life itself, freedom is man's most precious and esteemed possession; and consequently it is the most worthy causes; and when there is doubt about someone's freedom, one owes it to oneself to answer in favor and to judge in favor of freedom. This precept is equally true for Blacks as for Indians.Bartolomé de Las Casas, Tratados, 1552Our America has not fully realized the extent of the African continent's influence on the cultural and ethnic genesis of Latin America. This (...) aspect of its history remains foreign to it and almost consciously denied: a denial that is the legacy of a racial complex created by the European mentality during the course of the Conquest. One of the characteristics of American humanism, however, lies within the valorization of the multi-ethnic origins of Latin American culture; this is why one cannot ignore the breadth of the African contribution to the American identity and the circumstances that determined this contribution. (shrink)

In the modern Middle East, the public institutions associated with the internationally recognized states of the region are rarely viewed as trustworthy or reliable. Born in the demise of the Ottoman Empire, midwifed by European imperial powers who paid lip service to the development of the inhabitants, and nurtured in the cold war by superpowers largely indifferent to the well-being of the peoples of the region, the existing states came to be associated with expectations of welfare provision and structures of (...) accountability that privileged external actors over local interests. In the absence of public institutions that responded to and represented local interests, people organized around those still vibrant alternative forms of community that existed – the exchange networks of informal economies or the kinship systems of extended families and the ethnic and religious communities of language, sect and confession – and sometimes they reorganized and reinterpreted these identities to supplement and ultimately supplant the failing states in which they found themselves. (shrink)

Europe during the last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the position of minorities in general and of minority languages in particular. This interest undoubtedly bears some connection with the influx of aliens into western Europe, and with the at times exceptionally violent outbreak of ethnic conflicts in some former East Bloc countries. Language plays a vital role in matters of ethnicity and identity. The growing interest of which we speak has found expression in the European Charter for (...) Regional and Minority Languages, which establishes a number of rights related to minority languages. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, on 12 September, 1963, the association agreement between the European Economic Community (EEC) and Turkey was signed in Ankara. However, in contrast to many other countries who applied later on, Turkey has not yet become a member of the EU. Nevertheless, Turkey’s candidacy to join the EU is still one of the most considerable and controversial topics within the European political arena. Within the accession negotiations, apart from human rights and the Kurdish and the Cypriot issues, one (...) of the greatest challenges to Turkey’s successful candidacy is the issue of respect for and protection of minorities. It might indeed represent an unsolvable problem, which will ultimately block Turkey joining the EU. Neither the EU nor Turkey has really come to terms or dealt with what the EU sees as an “unsatisfactory” protection of minorities in Turkey. What lies at the root of this disagreement is what the term “minority” actually means. Due to Turkey’s own nation state concept as being a united and undivided country and to the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, which defined Turkey as a nation, the country only recognises non-Muslim minorities. Moreover, contrary to the wording of the minority protection clauses in the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey restricts its recognition of non-Muslim minorities only to the Greek, Armenian and Jewish religious populations. Although being a non-Muslim group as well, the Assyrians are excluded from the Turkish concept of minorities and, therefore, also from minority protection. In contrast to that, the EU’s concept of minority includes ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, which means that according to the EU’s concept of minorities, also ethnic minorities like the Kurds, linguistic minorities like the Laz and religious minorities like the Alevis are included in the term “minority” and, therefore, these minorities should benefit from specific minority protection rights. To find a common basis for discussing the unsatisfactory issue of minority rights in Turkey, the concept of “ethnic groups” is introduced by the author as the most promising approach to deal with this unreconciled conceptual difference. According to this concept, ethnic groups could form a sub-identity of Turkishness and help build a legal basis to the treatment of minority groups founded on human rights, which would be compatible with both Turkish and EU Law. (shrink)

The presence of muslim appeared by post colonial migration in Europe has begun to rice gradually and instinctively since 1960. Today, the population of immigrant muslims exceeding is 15 million has faced many problems such as political, socio-cultural and economic and this situation still remains up to date. Behind all these problems, it is alleged that the significiant integration problems occur and that there are also significiant ethnic and religious identity in front of the integration problems. The debates of (...) Euro-Islam started in the 1900’s at this point are seen as a solution to the adaptation and integration problems of muslim immigrants around the concept of “Euro-Islam”. This study questions whether the provision of a social concept of ‘’Euro-islam’’ is in different terms rather than the results of politic Project assesment of the concept of “Euro-Islam”. In this sense, It reveals as a problem of whether the religious understanding of Muslim differs. The data about “Euro-islam” discussed in the example of Netherland was collected with detailed discussions. Islamic education and Islamic school in Netherland are discussed with the claim that education has significiant impacts in the formation of European Muslim Culture. It was concluded that using the concept of “European Muslim culture” instead of Euro-Islam or Eurooean Islam more accurate and that the differences occur in the culture of religious life of Muslim immigrants parallel to requirements of social life and the intereaction of socio-cultural life of Europe. These differences aren’t occured as a homogenous Muslim culture and emerged in the form of defensive, reactive understanding in which the religion is instrumentalized. (shrink)

As people struggle to come to terms with cultural pluralism, there is growing recognition of bicultural or multicultural persons and their potential communication patterns. Prior conceptualizations of multicultural identity focused on the idea that people can blend multiple cultures in their minds or switch between representations of cultures as ways to be good towards the Other. This approach may sound sensible, but there is the inescapable injustice embedded in any formulation of the other, and not only the Other but also (...) the other of the Other. The very openness of a genuinely multicultural identity precludes the establishment of such things as ethnic, racial or cultural ‘identities’. The fundamental propositions of this article are that multicultural identity can be seen as different ways of being in the world, which is a facet of enlightened experience by coming into being of ‘intuitive intelligence’ that ‘self/personhood/identity’ is an illusion; the acquisition of multicultural identity is a natural process of human growth, one that does involve a radical shift of personal perspectives, maturation of vision. Ultimately, I suggest a radical rethinking and reversal of the essentialist view of multicultural identity and present multicultural identity as an awareness event transcending one’s cultural identity. It is time for a paradigm shift. (shrink)

Civil society consists of members obligated to respect each other’s rights and, hence, trade with each other as equals. What determines the boundary, rather than the nature, of civil society? For Adam Smith, the boundary consists of humanity itself because it is determined by identification: humans identify with other humans because of common humanness. While Smith’s theory can explain the emotions associated with justice (jubilance) and injustice (resentment), it provides a mushy ground for the boundary question: Why not extend the (...) common identity to nonhuman animals? Or why not restrict the boundary to one’s own dialect, ethnicity or race? For David Hume, the boundary need not consist of humanity itself because it is determined by self-interest: a European need not respect the property of outsiders such as Native Americans, if the European benefits more by exploiting them than including them in the European society. While Hume’s theory can provide a solid ground for the boundary question, it cannot explain the emotions associated with justice. This paper suggests a framework that combines the strengths, and avoids the shortcomings, of Smith’s and Hume’s theories. (shrink)

Domestic and foreign scientific circles have long been discussing the affiliation of Ukrainian ethnic lands to civilized Europe. An important aspect in this context is the attribution of the national political and legal mentality to the family of European mentalities. For example, it should be noted that Orthodoxy, contrary to the opinion of many authors, is a European religion, the attitude of Ukrainians to private property is approximately identical to the European one. And based on the nature of the (...) historical development of Ukrainian ethnic lands, the long stay of their part in European states (Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Hungary, etc.), the spread of Christianity (even in its Eastern Orthodox form), area the residence of the Ukrainian ethnos can rightly be attributed to the European space of civilization. It should also be emphasized that the mental diversity of Ukraine can play a positive role in the European integration processes of domestic society.At the same time, we must state significant differences between the content of domestic and Western automatisms. This, in particular, the difference in the attitude to work and its results, the institution of the state and law enforcement agencies, state property. And the concept of law in the Ukrainian legal mentality, in contrast to the European, is often replaced by notions of truth-justice, which on the one hand is a source of legal nihilism of Ukrainians, and on the other, gives the law a certain sacred meaning and «revives» it, preferring « spiritual law «before its» letter «Therefore, it is natural to conclude that domestic behavioral guidelines, including legal, are essentially European, but marked by certain specifics due to the» marginal position «of our people and other factors of stress genesis of domestic legal mentality.Thus, we can conclude that Ukraine is an integral part of the European civilization space, and national and Western legal mentalities in the process of interpenetration do not cause loud dissonance. It is also important that the interaction of Ukrainian and European mentalities results in a constructive transformation of the Ukrainian national character, overcoming the consequences of its stress genesis and creating a psychological basis for Ukrainians to build an effective rule of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle, and Red ViennaMalachi H. Hacohen*A stranger in his homeland even before emigrating in 1937, the philosopher Karl Popper is rarely considered an Austrian. Although he was born in Vienna in 1902 and buried there in 1994, he is known as an Atlantic intellectual and an anti-Communist prophet of postwar liberalism. He first became famous for The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). 1 He (...) wrote the book during World War II in his New Zealand exile, intending it as a defense of democracy against fascism. The defeat of Austrian socialism and the collapse of Central European democracies were the major experiences informing his analysis. But The Open Society quickly became, with Popper’s full support, a charter of Atlantic Cold War liberalism. His philosophy of science, exemplified best in Logik der Forschung, went through a similar transformation. 2 To be sure, it is commonly debated in the context of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle; but the circle’s emigration and the postwar triumph of analytic philosophy in the Anglo-American academy transformed positivism, too, into an Atlantic philosophy. The “fugue of exile’s disruptions” severed the thread connecting Popper to Austria. 3Yet Popper was the foremost philosopher to carry the progressive Viennese legacy into the postwar era. In his critiques of the Vienna Circle and Red Vienna he confronted the philosophical and political problems of Viennese late enlightenment [End Page 711] and the interwar crises of scientific reason and Central European democracy. Refashioning the fin-de-siècle progressive legacy, he drew novel visions of liberal science and politics, imagining utopian scientific and political communities that were engaged in the pursuit of truth and reform. He made critical debate the acid test of political and scientific rationality, the center of a new liberalism. Establishing a free public sphere as the sine qua non of the Open Society, he innovated on a familiar liberal motif, shared by thinkers as different as Kant, De Staël, Guizot, Mill, and Habermas.In The Open Society Popper also wrote the political platform of the postwar Social-Democratic Consensus that legislated for the welfare state and mobilized against Communism. During World War II he opted for a liberal-socialist alliance that would contain postwar Central European fascism. Instead, his “Popular Front” platform proved adaptable to postwar anti-Communism. He made a few naïve pronouncements on deterrence and the free world during the Cold War. 4 They reflect badly on his political philosophy. Yet disentangled from its Cold War associations, his liberalism contains an abiding cosmopolitan vision for an age that is looking beyond the nation-state. His cosmopolitanism originated as a solution to dilemmas of ethnic identity faced by the assimilated-Jewish Viennese intelligentsia. His Open Society expressed their dream of integration into a community that discounted religion, ethnicity, and nationality. 5 He refused to give up on cosmopolitanism in the bipolar world when Machtpolitik seemed the order of the day. Almost alone among postwar liberals, he retained a belief in an international legal order and challenged national self-determination. His vision has regained relevance today. Cosmopolitanism and critical debate provide a starting-point for renegotiating liberal dilemmas.“My theory of knowledge, my philosophy of science and my political philosophy are original only in their interdependence,” stated Popper in a 1976 interview. 6 His epistemology has major political and scientific significance. Well before cultural studies began deconstructing science, Popper countered philosophers’ and scientists’ claims of expertise. There is no philosophical method. Every person is a problem-solver, and so every person is a philosopher. “Science is nothing but enlightened and responsible common sense—common sense broadened by imaginative critical thinking.” 7 Demystifying science, he never gave up on the growth of knowledge. He conceived of science as an unending quest for uncertain but growing knowledge. A non-foundationist, [End Page 712] he insisted that objectivity meant intersubjectivity. Rationality was a product of critical debate. In today’s intellectual world, devoid of certainty, where systems of knowledge and identities have been thrown into flux, Popper’s unique synthesis of contingency, convention, and change with logical certainty, objectivity, and tradition suggests a promising direction in the... (shrink)

Leopolis in Latin, Lemberg in German, Lwów in Polish, Lviv in Ukrainian, this city located in the historic province of Eastern Galicia (Galizien, Galicja, Halychyna) has a history marked by the successive conquests of the region by imperial powers. Founded in the 13 th century by Prince Danylo of Galicia as a fortress against the Tatar and Mongol invasions of the period, then bequeathed to his son Lev (Leo) who built it into the city which bears his name, in the (...) 14th century it came under rule of the kings of Poland for the next 400 years or more, emerging as a major centre of the Polish-Lithuanian union. Its multi-ethnic make-up was nevertheless established very early on, like that of most Central-European cities, as a consequence of coming under the ‘Magdeburg rights’ legal system in 1352. Through this development, the city attracted a large number of immigrants of diverse origins (Germans, Czechs, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Tatars, Moldavians and Saracens, both merchants and artisans, who established themselves in their own ethnic quarters in various parts of the city). They had been invited there by King Casimir the Great who was anxious to develop prosperous urban centres in Poland. It was also this ‘German law’ status (jus teutonicum) that set the city apart from its hinterland, populated by Ruthenian peasants and a Polish petty nobility. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to incorporate trans‐national actors and institutions into citizenship theory both theoretically and empirically. We analyze three cases of recognition movements promoting gender, ethnic/minority and indigenous rights. Using one societal context, Sweden, we map the processes and mechanisms of power and agency (boundary‐making and brokering) that shape how trans‐national institutions and actors offer new forms of leverage politics to recognition movements as well as constrain their agency. These mechanisms of power are formalized in a (...) model showing the multi‐level effects of leverage politics on recognition movements. Our three cases of recognition politics demonstrate the increasingly complex links between actors in policy communities across regional, national, European and international levels. They also reveal the processes implicit in our model: that policy imports are reframed when translated into specific national political cultures; and more broadly, that national citizenship frames of membership and inclusion are not easily dislodged. (shrink)

abstract: Evidence from the Pali texts suggests that the Buddha opposed judging people on the grounds of their place of birth, their ethnic identity, or their skin color. In practice, however, Buddhist traditions have not been and are not free of such judgments. This article illustrates this through a case study of Buddhism in colonial and postcolonial Ceylon, with particular reference to the Aryan theory. It argues that the language of race and nation that emerged among Buddhists in this (...) context was influenced by three factors: the academic work of European linguists and ethnographers; Christian missionary representations of Buddhism; and readings of Pali texts that attributed the term ariya (noble, good, pure) to Buddhist communities. The article first examines the concept of ariya (Pali; Sanskrit: ārya ) in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. It then surveys the discourse in colonial Ceylon on the term "Aryan," including the involvement of Christian leaders and the Buddhist internalization of the discourse in the context of Christian missionary activity, as seen particularly in the writings of the Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864–1933). Another strand in the discourse is then isolated, namely the "othering" of the minority, "Dravidian" Tamils in colonial Ceylon, and the consequences of this in the postcolonial period. Finally, the article asks whether this case study can offer insights into the fault lines within Buddhist cultures, and indeed, Christian cultures, that could give rise to racism. (shrink)

Based on materials collected during a fieldwork in Barnaul (Siberia, Russia) in 2001–2004, the article explores two provincial academic discourses that are focused on issues of Russian national identity. Ethnohistories of trauma address Russia’s current problems through the constant re-writing of the country’s past in order to demonstrate the non-Russian character of its national and state institutions. In the second discourse, ethno-vitalism, the struggle over constructing and interpreting the nation’s memory of the past is replaced with a similar struggle over (...) constructing and interpreting perceptions of the nation’s current experience. Produced by professional intelligentsia, these frameworks and discourses provide a useful link to understanding imaginary constructions of the national belonging in a situation where more positive ways of inventing traditions and imagining communities are unavailable or discredited. (shrink)

In a well-known way, Husserl's foundation of phenomenology as a transcendental discipline aspires to universal essences, but collapses back to a form of Euro-centrism. While Žižek's description of the phenomenology of the subject follows the Husserlian line in that the subject is a transcendental structure of experience, it is intended to be interpreted in a materialist sense: there is no Big Other. This materialist twist to the philosophy of the subject is supposed to eliminate two traditional phenomenological dead-ends: the Husserlian (...) mistake of colonialism masquerading as universalism and the post-phenomenological mistake of not being able to take an existential and political stand seriously enough. These mistakes are overcome through the notion of a materialist act that is able to reorganize the given boundaries of a situation. However, as Žižek limits his phenomenology of the act to a communicative transaction between subjects, he is quite close to the Husserlian mistake of promoting European values as universal. This can be seen in a number of conceptual knots that figure in Žižek's work. First, like Husserl, Žižek is unable to satisfactorily bridge the divide between transcendental knowledge and positive science. Second, the Žižekian analysis of the necessary political action against multiculturalist capitalism emphatically belittles the role of local and ethnic identities as revolutionary forces. Correspondingly, the belief in the revolutionary potential of the psychoanalytically and philosophically enlightened subject is over-optimistic. Third, the phenomenology of the act in an unfortunate way describes the transcendental aspect of an authentic act, thus unnecessarily mystifying the essentially mundane and subject-less nature of revolutionary acts. (shrink)

Based on materials collected during a fieldwork in Barnaul (Siberia, Russia) in 2001–2004, the article explores two provincial academic discourses that are focused on issues of Russian national identity. Ethnohistories of trauma address Russia’s current problems through the constant re-writing of the country’s past in order to demonstrate the non-Russian character of its national and state institutions. In the second discourse, ethno-vitalism, the struggle over constructing and interpreting the nation’s memory of the past is replaced with a similar struggle over (...) constructing and interpreting perceptions of the nation’s current experience. Produced by professional intelligentsia, these frameworks and discourses provide a useful link to understanding imaginary constructions of the national belonging in a situation where more positive ways of inventing traditions and imagining communities are unavailable or discredited. (shrink)

Cultural norms and values, as well as historical, social, and legal contexts shape the public uses and expressions of particular emotions, including anger. In the settler states of Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, indigenous peoples and those who came later negotiate the unfinished business of empire. Their exchanges are framed in terms of ethnic identity and difference. It is argued here that anger plays a significant part in the legal and political processes of claim, denial, and response through (...) which these differences are articulated and transacted. This article examines situations where people whose very naming is a product of European thought engage in the struggles of decolonization. The very different occasions and forms of anger over justice claims described illustrate the extent to which meanings are not shared in these societies. (shrink)

The work analyzes the results of a pilot socio-cultural study of the Tuvan diaspora of the city of Abakan, conducted by researchers of the N.F. Katanov Khakass State University. The results of the study describe the social structure of the analyzed ethnic group, the level of interaction between members, the reasons for moving to another national region, as well as the activity of socio-cultural attitudes. In addition, atten­tion is focused on the level of expression of the ethnic identity (...) of representatives of the Tuvan diaspora, which, as a result of the study, is characterized as increased. The author also comes to the conclusion that the ethnic identity of the analyzed group passes into the category of intersubjectivity and is not subjective. (shrink)

England, known as “the empire without sun settling down” and being among the final winners of the World War I (1914-1918), had one of the heaviest defeats of its history against the Ottoman Empire in the Kut al-Amara, which happened on 29 April 1916 close to Baghdad. Following the defeat of Kut al-Amara, which was the most important war trauma for England during the World War I, the Turks and Germans, as winner side of the battle were evaluated by British (...) prisoners from military, political, cultural and socio-psychological aspects in their memories. Content analysis method is used in the article for qualitative evalution of the data related to the Turkish and German image reflected in the memories of British prisoners after the siege of Kut al-Amara. The alliance between Turks and Germans is regarded as contrast in terms of important elements as national and ethnic identity, language, religion and culture in the main sources of the research as My Compain by Charles Townshend, Besieged in Kut and After by Barber, A Kut Prisoner by Bishop, In Kut and Captivity with the Sixth Indian Division by Sandes, The Secrets of a Kuttite by Mousley which occationally use exaggerated language and the subjective information due to the impact of traumatic defeat.Summary: Being a heroic epic in the war history of Turkey, Kūt al-‘Amāra has been the subject of very fewer researches until recently, despite its importance in Turkey’s history. This argument is supported by the fact that the memoirs by Ottoman soldiers related to the WWI, which also encompass information about Kūt al-‘Amāra, were published half a century after the war at the earliest. Unlike the records of Turkish soldiers participating in Kūt al-‘Amāra, the memoirs and the war diaries of British soldiers were published shortly after the war, as early as possible, between the years of 1918-1921. The authors of these memoirs and war diaries informed the public on the reasons for the defeat of Kūt al-‘Amāra on the one hand, and on the other hand created the Ottoman and Turkish image which was concidered differently in the British society in terms of culture and civilization. They also strengthened this image over that of German’s, with whom they shared many common values despite the fact that they represented the opposite fronts of the war.It is worthy mentioning that the role of the Ottoman army in the victory of Kūt al-‘Amāra was highly underestimated by the memoirs of the British prisoners. According to the authors, it is not the Turkish army that has achieved real victories over the British, but Germany’s support, notably General von der Goltz, the great strategist of Europe. The effects of bad weather conditions and geographical situation are also emphasized among the reasons of the defeat of Kūt al-‘Amāra. Consequently, the success of the Turkish army in the victory of Kūt al-‘Amāra was ignored, except for the role of Halil Pasha. The image of an army that knows the trench and defence techniques well, but fails to attack is one of the prominent evaluations in the memoirs related to the Turkish military characteristics.The British prisoners of war, who evaluate the Turkish and German image through the economic and political situation, draw a very desperate picture of the situation of the Turks in the mentioned areas. According to this image, corruption and bribery prevails at every stage of the Turkish government. The Turks are unable to repay their dept to Germany, which dominates the economy of the country completely. According to these records, besides ordinary people, the army is also facing great difficulties in meeting basic requirements. To convert the Ottoman Empire into their own property and keep the Turks under their control in military, economic and political spheres, the Germans lend a high amount of money.On the basis of Turkish soldiers encountered in Kūt al-‘Amāra, the British prisoners characterizes the Turks as physically large, hard and strong-bodied people. The authors also note that the Turks are not as cold-blooded, calm and obedient as they seem at first sight, rather they become rude people when they get angry. Another feature that British prisoners evaluate as a potential of the Turks, is their childish spirit. In as much as they are happy with small things and can be offended by small things. According to the memoirs, the Germans should not be allowed to benefit from these characteristics of the Turks, but the British should take the advantage of their potential power.The moral characteristics of the Turks and the Germans are among the most emphasized subjects. Written in exceptional time such as war, sometimes the diaries include exaggerated and sentimental phrases related to the moral attitudes enemy soldiers exhibited during siege, as well as captivity. Turks are regarded as negligent and careless rather than cruel or ruthless. They owe these characteristics to their Eastern identity, which is different from the Europeans having virtues such as task responsibility and diligence. The moral characteristic of the Turks regarding the duty, responsibility and kindness is evaluated comparatively with the civilized and humanistic behaviors of the Germans towards the prisoners. Being Europeans, the Germans often come to the fore because of their more polite treatment towards the British prisoners. Although the Germans as an enemy fought against the British on the front, they were kind to them in the Ottoman territories as the only civilized people among the barbarian peoples of the East.The Turks and the Germans are compared in the field of education, as well as other areas of development. The authors emphasize that the education level of the Turks is very low; Armenian and Greek subjects of the Empire are its brain and financial resources, which is the reason why the Turks are anxious about them. The Germans have the superiority in both transportation and communication technology in the Ottoman territories. One of the reasons they had a huge investment on the Ottoman territories is the Berlin-Istanbul-Baghdad-Basra railway. The British prisoners give details on the German communication technology they encountered during both the battle and the captivity days in Anatolia. In addition to the transport and communication technology, they also record much German-made military equipment, from weapons to maps.Evaluating the Turks and the Germans as opposites, the British prisoners draw an image for the latter, with whom they share a common cultural legacy, as a fully equipped enemy in terms of technology and strategy on the front, and the civilized Europeans characterized with their virtue in non-war situations. On the contrary, the Turks are described as a strong defender and daredevil soldiers on the front line, but strategically weak on the front. In terms of duties and responsibilities, the Turkish soldiers are presented with negligent and irresponsible approach towards their prisoners. The images of the Turks and the Germans, which are compared by the British prisoners, are often based on their Eastern and Western identity. The Turks symbolize the East with economic, political and cultural backwardness, yet quite the contrary, the Germans symbolize the West in terms of development, modernity and civilization. The British prisoners sometimes used exaggerated expressions in their approaches regarding both sides, as well as different details in terms of information and interpretation about the same event, due to the trauma of defeat. (shrink)

In recent times, African states have experienced multiple challenges. The most disturbing one is the inability to evolve a sustainable culture of dialogue that is suitable for the mitigation of ethnic conflicts in contemporary Africa. It is this failure that has generated many other problems in other spheres. These problems, in concert, have made the socio-political space largely that of frustration, despair and disappointment. This accounts for the social design of unhealthy alliances and the basis for the affirmation of (...) parochial primordial frivolities at the detriment of a trans-national identity. But why have the affirmation of these primordial alliances and its attendant conflicts remain daunting, intricate and resilient, in spite of the several attempts by scholars to mitigate it? This paper argues that extant discourse of the above concern fails because it ignores the value of the conditions for the practical realisation of agreement in situations of conflict. The attempt here is to explore indigenous mediation strategies especially from the traditional Igbo speaking people in South-Eastern Nigeria in arriving at trans-national identity in Africa, which will be inclusive other than the divisive structure that has exclusive character in extant discourse. This paper, therefore, will employ the analytic-descriptive method to interrogate the above in a manner many scholars are wont to ignore. Hence, it is expected that this paper will initiate a perspective that will challenge extant interpretation of the conditions of dialogue and consequently human solidarity in African States. (shrink)

Social identity is a factor that is associated with well-being and community participation. Some studies have shown that ethnic identity goes along with empowerment, and that interaction between the two leads to greater indices of well-being and community participation. However, other works suggest a contextual circumstance (i.e., perceiving one’s own group as a minority and/or being discriminated) may condition the nature of these relations. By means of a cross-sectional study, we analyzed the relations of social identification (or identity fusion) (...) and collective psychological empowerment with personal well-being, social well-being and community participation in a sample of Basques. A total of 748 Basques participated (63.1% women; ageM= 39.28;SD= 12.13). Individuals who were highly identified or fused with Basque speakers and who were highly empowered showed higher indices of well-being (both personal and social) and of community participation than non-fused individuals with low empowerment. The results also suggest that social identification (or identity fusion) offsets the negative effects of perceiving the group as a linguistic minority. Collective psychological empowerment proved to be an especially relevant factor that needs to continue to be explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Discourses of Jewish Identity in Twentieth-Century FranceEllen S. FineDiscourses of Jewish Identity in Twentieth-Century France, edited by Alan Astro; Yale French Studies 265pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, $17.00.Ever since France became the first European country to grant Jews equal rights as citizens with the enactment of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1791, the question of identity has been a central preoccupation of French (...) Jews. Their emancipation brought about assimilation to the universalist principles of the French Republic and led them to detach themselves from their own traditions, generating conflicting emotions about what it meant for a Jew to be French. The topic of French-Jewish identity has been reflected upon by writers ranging from Sartre, Memmi, and Misrahi to Levinas and Finkielkraut, none of whose discourses are included in this volume but whose ideas are discussed in Seth Wolitz’s pertinent article, “Imagining the Jew in France: From 1945 to the Present.”Divided into two main sections, “Literary Texts” and “Cultural Contexts,” this collection contains articles written by authors not familiar to English speaking readers. They are excellently translated, mainly by the editor, Alan Astro. In his introductory essay, Astro notes that his aim is to portray the cultural and ethnic diversity of French Jews of different origins and to show their part in the formation of Jewish identity. The focus is on how French Jews feel about their own identity, and not on how others see them.The first section, “Literary Texts,” represents a variety of genres, generally fiction. Over half of the thirteen texts date from the 1970s to the present, and are mostly personal narratives, anecdotal in nature. The tone often conveys “a certain humor or self-irony,” described by Rachel Ertel in her essay, “A Minority Literature” (in the second section) as identifiable traits of a Jewish work.With no logical sequence to the presentation of the texts, a multiplicity of perspectives is clearly the objective. For example, Bernard Frank, whose ancestors have lived in France since the Revolution, feels “as French as anyone else,” yet recognizes that Jews are different, “because they’ve been made to be different.” Wolf Wieviorka in 1936 exalts his “noble pedigree,” being a naturalized French citizen; he was later murdered by the Nazis.North African Jews who emigrated to Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s, studied sociologically by Michel Abitbol, are portrayed in Gil Ben Aych’s novel, The Chant of Being (Algerian), and in Paula Jacques’s novel, Aunt Carlotta’s Legacy (Egyptian). Jews of Eastern European descent are depicted in the short stories by Cyrille Fleischman, one of which recounts how a Sorbonne professor of sixteenth-century French literature renounces his eminent career and like his father, opens up a delicatessen in the Jewish quarter of the Marais, thus returning to his roots. Henri Raczymow returns imaginatively to a pre-war Poland in Tales of Exile and Forgetfulness, recreating in French the intonations of Yiddish, the language of his grandparents who died in the Holocaust. In an [End Page 378] outstanding essay, “Memory Shot Through With Holes,” Raczymow articulates urgent questions posed by the second generation: “By what right could I speak, I who was not a victim, survivor or witness?”If the first section is multicultural, the second, “Cultural Contexts,” is interdisciplinary. Annette Wieviorka (granddaughter of Wolf Wieviorka) studies accounts by survivors, revealing the impact of Vichy’s imposing a Jewish identity on its citizens. Wieviorka also evokes the importance of the Six-Day War which compelled assimilated French Jews to proclaim their Jewish allegiance, a pivotal event transforming their sense of identity.Other significant contributions are Gérard Haddad’s exploration of the importance of Judaism in the life and work of Jacques Lacan, an outsider who seemed more concerned with Jewish identity than his fellow psychoanalysts. Ora Avni analyzes Patrick Modiano’s repudiation of his Jewish patrimony in his seminal novel, La Place de l’étoile. Elizabeth de Fontenay comments on how the quant-à-soi (“keeping to oneself”), the reserve characteristic of the French, becomes the quant-à-nous (“ourselves”) for the French Jew who is linked to a community beyond the... (shrink)

This paper starts with questioning the traditional approach to the so-called intercultural communication. Most students of intercultural communication, it seems, use the categories characterising a cultural or ethnic identity, such as Western, Indian, European, Aboriginal and the like, as parameters by reference to which some distinctive phenomena observed in conversational materials should be explained. Even though they may apply these categories correctly, they do not take into account the relevancy of these categories in each interaction.The aim of this paper (...) is to demonstrate that being a Japanese is achieved interactively and that interculturality of intercultural communication is constituted in and through the actual course of the interaction. In the analysis of interviews conducted with foreign students in Japan, it can be seen that the interviewer and the interviewee had to keep on coordinating their conduct throughout the development of their interaction in order that they could be a Japanese and a foreigner relevantly. In this way, what, in the studies of intercultural communication, is presupposed to be simply given, that is, the fact of a person being a Japanese or the like, is shown to be analysable and investigable as an interactive phenomenon in its own right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Maimonides and the Rise and Fall of the Sabians:Explaining Mosaic Laws and the Limits of Scholarship Jonathan Elukin The Koran mentions the Sabi'un three times (II 6-2, V 69, XXII 17). "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabi'un—whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is right—shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing (...) to fear or to regret." This language is repeated in the second citation. The third appearance is slightly different: "As for true believers, the Jews, the Sabi'un, the Christians, the Magians, and the pagans, Allah will judge them on the Day of Resurrection. He bears witness to all things." 1 Early Islamic commentators often disagreed on the identity of the Sabi'un, and the confusion continued throughout the medieval Islamic period. 2 The term Sabi'un was applied by some early Koranic commentators to the survivors of an ancient Jewish-Christian sect, the Elchasites in southern Iraq. 3 One minority group of ethnic Arab "pagans" with a hellenized elite in Harran, in Arabia, also took the Koranic name Sabian in the third/ninth century to claim the status of a "people of the book" and therefore avoid persecution. It is this group that some later Muslims identified as Sabi'. 4 The scholarly consensus now suggests that [End Page 619] the term Sabian refers to some kind of Gnostic identity that can encompass "the disciples of Judeo-Christian baptizing sects... and, on the other, Harranian astrolators, the last representatives of decadent Greco-Roman paganism." 5The mysterious Sabians would play a key role in attempts by early modern European scholars to understand the origins of the Mosaic legislation. It was through Maimonides, the great twelfth-century Jewish scholar, that the Sabians were transmitted to Christian scholars. By the seventeenth century, the Sabians of Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed had become a fixture in how scholars understood or at least debated the history of the origins of Mosaic law. Increasingly perceived as a diffuse paganism rather than a specific ethnic identity or subsumed by the more tangible reality of Egypt, Sabianism drifted to the margins of scholarship by the end of the Enlightenment. During the nineteenth century the Sabians became superfluous to scholarly efforts to understand the origins of Israelite monotheism. This study is an attempt to understand the growth of the enthusiasm for the Sabians by early modern scholars and then its precipitous decline. In a large degree it was the nature of the evidence itself regarding the Sabians that shaped and ultimately undermined the survival of the Sabians in European thinking. Still, both Christian and Jewish scholars well into the twentieth century lived with the ghosts of the Sabians as they sought to explain otherwise mysterious Mosaic commandments.In the Guide Maimonides argued that the sacrificial system legislated by Moses was an example of God's mercy. It would have been impossible for the Israelites to abandon suddenly the style of idolatrous worship learned in Egypt, and so Moses crafted the sacrificial system gradually to replace false gods with the true God. Maimonides still needed to explain the particular details and reasons for the sacrifices and the other ritual laws. 6 To that end he claimed to have read various texts, particularly the so-called Nabataen Agriculture, which purported to describe Abraham's education among and flight from the Sabians as well as a summary of the practices of the Sabians. 7 (The Sabians had made one brief appearance before Maimonides's discussion in the Guide; the tenth-century Karaite Jew, Qirqisani, declared in his Kitab al anwar, "the modern Christian philosophers assert that the laws of the Torah were given to the Children of Israel only because of God's wrath; and that they [Israel] have chosen these laws for themselves only on account of their resemblance to the laws of the Sabians, which was due to the fact that they became... (shrink)

This inquiry examines various philosophical conceptions of identity and the clash between different identity narratives in the history of philosophy. The main goal of this paper is to show how the European philosophical idea of identity was developed. This paper explores the emergence of European philosophical identity narratives, which have shaped the ideas of justice, truth and community in Europe. It studies the foundational identity narratives that underlie the contested idea of a shared European heritage in law and culture, such (...) as the ideas of equality, tolerance, rule of law, pluralism and the rejection of totalitarianism, and their relevance for current debates on philosophical ideas of self and identity. Identity is an open process. It is a dynamic hermeneutic category, which is constantly reinterpreted and reinvented. There are various philosophical traditions of Cogito – some of them perceive it as foundation of all knowledge and some of them perceive it as a mere illusion. In all these philosophical perspectives, the self is understood only through interpretation. The self is constituted as a narrative, as a text. Understanding oneself means understanding oneself in front of a text. The self is reinterpreted all over again only in light of narratives provided by culture. The task of hermeneutics is not only understanding of a subject, but also rethinking the subject. (shrink)