Nationalism

This essay seeks to examine in parts, the ostensible absence of women’s political participation, particularly in peace processes in Africa. The essay will draw experiences and examples from a couple of African countries to argue that women’s continuous absence in peace discourses is as a result of political stereotypes, backed by patriarchal norms and masculinity tendencies which usually epitomises maleness to the ‘knower’, ‘protector’, ‘powerful’, ‘leader’.

Therefore in instances were women are able to actively participate on equal capacities like their male counterparts, it goes against and threatens the constructed patriarchal systems and its flair of hegemony.

If politics is ultimately about our deepest fears and desires rather than about, say, tax policy or better health care, then what place is there for a Left whose raison d’être will always be tied to improving the economic fortunes of the least fortunate? One answer is to begin to outline an “economics of meaning,” where economic or class critiques are a means to channel anger, create meaning, and build solidarity rather than to implement better policy outcomes (although, of course, policy changes would be good on their own, for moral rather than necessarily electoral reasons). This requires changing standard conceptions of what elections are for and what it means to win.

L Foran, 'Who’s Afraid of the Irish Language? The National-Philosophical Possibilities of a Lost Tongue' in C Fischer and A Mahon  (eds) "Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland" (Routledge, 2019) pp.230-245

Ireland is an unusual post-colonial country in that few of its citizens speak its original language as their first tongue. On a daily basis just 1.7 percent of Irish residents speak Irish, whereas 12 % speak a language other than Irish or English.  What does this mean?  It would be crass to suggest that national or cultural identity rests only on the ability to speak one’s language, but it would be equally facile to pretend that the loss of a national language has no impact on one’s identity. Why did the (already small) number of Irish speakers rapidly decline with Irish independence from British rule? Why has a de jure bilingual state produced a de facto monolingual population?  And, more importantly what are the consequences of this situation: what does being Irish without Irish mean? 

Jacques Derrida describes nationalism as a ‘philosopheme’ and one that cannot be separated from questions of linguistic identity.  In this paper I draw on the work of Derrida and Barbara Cassin to describe the connection between nationalism, language and philosophy. I then go on to examine the role of the Irish language in imaginings of Irish identity and nationalism. I argue that Ireland’s strange and disjointed relationship to its own tongue provides hope for the most hospitable kind of nationalism and the most philosophical kind of identity.

La monarquía sobrevivió al siglo de las revoluciones por su gran capacidad de adaptación a los cambios políticos, sociales y culturales. Especialmente importante fue su vertiente de representación política en términos nacionales, algo respaldado desde la teoría por su habilidad de unificar social, territorial y culturalmente a la nación. Este artículo analiza cómo utilizó la monarquía la moda para representar en un sentido integrador un Estado multinacional, asumiendo la función política que el liberalismo decimonónico le encomendó. Igualmente definió su posición en el sistema político y cultural posrevolucionario pensando su figura entre la excepcionalidad y cotidianeidad y en un discurso de género de un alcance progresivamente mayor. De esta forma, demostraremos que la monarquía participó activamente en el juego político y cultural a través del control de unos mecanismos de definición, de unos espacios de representación y de unos símbolos de identidad.

The article calls into question the understanding of the Kočevska (Gottschee) area as a “German language island”. Through examples of the use of different languages before the Second World War, it shows a different –multilingual or multicultural– image of this region. The author draws data from historical and archival sources, as well as from a survey that she conducted among Gottscheers (“Gottschee Germans”) living in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Canada. Keywords: Gottschee, Gottscheers, Gottschee Germans, multilingualism, nationalism, linguistically mixed regions, linguistic islands, national identity

This article explores the evaluation of norms and principles of an intelligible referendum question (RQ) from Québec's biased formula in 1980 until the clearly constructed wording of the question for independence referendum held in Scotland in 2014. In this text, for the purpose of evaluation of whether a formula was biased or intelligible, the criteria introduced recently by the Electoral Commission in the UK were employed. Specifically, it means that the RQ shall be clear and simple, to the point, unambiguous, neutral and avoid misleading voters. Apart from biased RQs in 1980 and 1995 in Québec referendums, the following six referendums on independence were carefully selected for the investigation. Secessions and attempted secessions in the European context are represented by the cases of Montenegro, Catalonia, and Scotland, while the post-colonial secessionist units from larger states apply for Eritrea, East Timor and South Sudan. The findings were surprising in several aspects. First, liberal-democracies in the West totally failed to formulate intelligible RQs when they were constructed unilaterally by secessionists. On the contrary, if the RQ was formulated under international supervision, the formula submitted to voters was far more intelligible, also in most post-colonial cases. There is no evidence of a strong impact of principles linked to a clear and intelligible RQ evaluated in Canada and in the UK on the formulation of a concrete RQ on independence.

Publicado como introducción a Javier Moreno Luzón (ed.), Construir España. Nacionalismo español y procesos de nacionalización, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007, pp. 13-24. En una célebre frase de 1979, el intelectual valenciano y catalán Joan Fuster afirmaba que, "en plan de broma, podríamos decir que España-no el estado, la 'ideología'-es una invención de don Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo". Fuster, con una evidente intención provocadora-lo que Pierre Vilar llamó "su inimitable capacidad panfletaria"-, venía en realidad a denunciar la presencia de un españolismo rampante no sólo en las derechas sino también en las izquierdas españolas. Lo mismo le daban los herederos de la dictadura franquista que los socialdemócratas o los comunistas. No obstante, y por encima de sus objetivos políticos inmediatos, aquel panfleto señalaba la enorme importancia de un tema apenas estudiado, el nacionalismo español, y la necesidad de abordarlo desde perspectivas múltiples y rigurosas. A su juicio, había que desentrañar la historia del concepto de España y de las ideas españolistas en sus distintas versiones, así como la dinámica de sus relaciones con el catalanismo y su interiorización por parte de los españoles, atendiendo tanto a los discursos más elaborados como a la cultura popular. Hoy, casi treinta años más tarde, pocos compartirían las premisas filomarxistas y pan-catalanas de Fuster. Pero éste tampoco podría detectar tantas carencias, porque los historiadores se han empleado a fondo en tareas como las que él recomendaba y las polémicas sobre el nacionalismo español y la nacionalización de los españoles ocupan ya un lugar preeminente en la historiografía 1. El Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales acogió, en mayo de 2006, un coloquio internacional sobre estos asuntos al que fueron invitados diversos especialistas con un fin fundamental: que sometieran a discusión los resultados de investigaciones en marcha. Vaya por delante nuestro agradecimiento a quienes participaron en ese foro, tanto a los ponentes como a los comentaristas que moderaron los debates: José Álvarez Junco, Andrés de Blas Guerrero, Carolyn P. Boyd y Alfonso Botti. Este libro es el fruto de la revisión, a la luz de aquellas sesiones, de las ponencias presentadas entonces. Ya es el segundo de estas características, después del que dirigió Carolyn P. Boyd y se publicó hace unos meses bajo el título Religión y política en la España

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

Following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, the Macedonian name issue became the most prominent topic on the Greek political agenda, catalysing an exceptional political confrontation and contributing to the realignment of political parties and eventually to government change. Analysing the political discourse and public debate on the issue from January 2018 until the July 2019 national elections, as well as opinion polls and electoral results, the paper explores the conditions leading to the escalation of political polarisation on the left/right axis, at the expense of smaller centrist parties. It is argued that political antagonism was built on the previous political cleavage (although the populist/anti-populism axis was now reversed). However, by mobilising the public’s emotions around an alleged ‘national threat’, the polarisation around the Macedonian name issue proved to be far more successful for the Greek right than for the left.

Interracial sex mattered to the British colonial state in West Africa. In Crossing the Color Line, Carina E. Ray goes beyond this fact to reveal how Gold Coasters—their social practices, interests, and anxieties—shaped and defined these powerfully charged relations across racial lines. The interplay between African and European perspectives and practices, argues Ray, transformed these relationships into key sites for consolidating colonial rule and for contesting its racial and gendered hierarchies of power.

With rigorous methodology and innovative analyses, Ray brings Ghana and Britain into a single analytic frame by examining cases in both locales. Intimate relations between black men and white women in Britain’s port cities emerge as an influential part of the history of interracial sex and empire in ways that are connected to rather than eclipsed by relations between European men and African women in the colony.

Based on rich archival evidence and original interviews, the book moves across different registers, shifting from the micropolitics of individual disciplinary cases against colonial officers who “kept” local women to transatlantic networks of family, empire, and anticolonial resistance. In this way, Ray cuts to the heart of how interracial sex became a source of colonial anxiety and nationalist agitation during the first half of the twentieth century.

This article undertakes a historiographical review of the composer Sebastián Raval as a case study illuminating the influence of ideology on the shaping of history and the perpetuation of established views. The portrayal of Raval as an arrogant Spaniard originated in his participation in two musical contests celebrated in Rome and Palermo. Whereas this characteristic was mainly understood as a stereotypical description in the Early Modern period, the influence of nationalism in the nineteenth century led to it becoming an objectionable personal flaw. This was enough to start a process of vilifying the composer in which the assessment of his professional stature outweighed the actual analysis of his music.

This thesis comparatively analyzes the roles played by the exchangee associations, whose numbers have increased gradually in the last decades in Turkey, and the refugee associations, which have a deep-rooted history in Greece, in the construction of their respective nationalist narratives. Taking from the 1922-23 Forced Migration/Population Exchange discourses used in both countries, the study begins with a historical discussion and aims at introducing how these discourses are reproduced by the refugee associations in Greece and the exchangee associations in Turkey. In this regard, the official statements of the associations, the events organized by them and the semi-structured interviews conducted with their members (both in Greece and Turkey) are examined and under the light of the obtained results, three main hypotheses are tested. In order to conduct this research, a modernist nationalist approach is taken as a starting point, and particularly the assumptions of Michael Billig's banal nationalism are employed to construct the framework of the thesis. It is hoped that these findings will fill a void in the International Relations and Political Science literature on the role of the two understudied actors, i.e., the refugee and exchangee associations, as well as to contribute to the refugee/exchangee research in both countries.

Avram Galante (Abraham Galante) is a significant name to mention as he had intensive studies on Turkish nationalism. He is an exemplary Jewish Turkish nationalist of the Republic years with his service as a scientist, academician, writer, journalist and deputy. he legitimized the nationalist policies of Turkey in the early-Republican era by specifying the requirements of the Turkish Jewish and other minorities for their journey of Turkification and especially justifying why language and education are so important. This study reveals the relation between language and nationalism in the works of Galante who considered language as an inevitable role in building of a nation-state, and discusses its place in the axis of nationalism theories. He supported Turkish nationalism in a realistic and conscious way. Galante’s objective of “the rise of Turkey and Turkishness” is a clear indicator. The perspective of Galante and his contemporaries mainly focus on education and language unity. The fact that Galante excludes ethnic features from the debate is an indication of his tendency towards cultural nationalism.
Key Words: Avram Galante, Jewish Community, Turkish Nationalism, Language, Early Republican Period

Focusing on the pivotal 1917–1919 conjuncture in Russia and Ukraine, this paper analyzes the efforts of the divided Jewish nationalist intelligentsia to disseminate new forms of Jewish culture to a mass audience, the reception of these efforts in the former Tsarist empire’s variegated Jewish population, and the intelligentsia’s parallel exploration of other forms of cultural formation less dependent on popular support. Comparing the cultural programs of Hebraism and Yiddishism, it demonstrates important parallels in their cultural visions and highlights their shared belief in the possibility of implanting a secularist, aestheticist intelligentsia culture in the whole of “the nation.” The paper reconstructs both substantial forms of popular openness to this culture and its sociocultural weaknesses. Finally, it examines experiments made by the intelligentsia with alternative routes to cultural transformation: suppression of popular culture, non-market cultural arrangements, cultural revolution through education, and the uses of the state. The paper seeks a fuller understanding both of the roots of interwar cultural programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the Jewish nationalist intelligentsia’s underlying conception of “culture,” its own authority, and the evolving relationship between these conceptions and the realities of East European Jewish social, cultural, and political life from the 1890s onward.

Those who work with topics related to Modern Greek identity usually start discussing these issues by quoting the famous Georgios Gemistos Pletho (c.1360-1454): we, over whom you rule and hold sway, are Hellenes by genos (γένος), as is witnessed by our language and ancestral education. Although Woodhouse thought of Pletho as the last of the Hellenes, others prefer to denounce him the last of the Byzantines and the first and foremost Modern Greek. During the 14th and 15th centuries, a number of influential intellectuals in the Eastern Roman Empire preferred the term Hellene (Ἓλλην) to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). According to the prevalent view of modern scholarship, the shift should not be interpreted only as a statement of proto-national identity, but also as the outcome of growing archaism. As Vryonis pointed out, the historian Critoboulos used to call the Balkan nations with their archaic names: Byzantines became “Hellenes,” Albanians became “Illyrians,” etc. Chalkokondyles followed in the same path. Furthermore, in order to lament the decline of their Empire, byzantine intellectuals tended to compare their sad present to the glory of ancient Greece. Besides archaism, proto-nationalism and Hellenism, I suggest that a careful reading of the sources would lead us to reappraise the ways 15th century intellectuals perceived identity. Whilst I do not accept Vakalopoulos’ views on diachronic Hellenic identity, I support that, in the 15th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to create an identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. Moreover, Laiou’s definition of Greek identity as a resultant of language, history, tradition and interests does not cover the case of 15th century Byzantine philosophers, since the latter strived to enrich and enlarge Greek identity with additional elements. It is worth noting that those philosophers who fled to Italy deliberately chose to describe themselves as
Greeks (Greci/Γραικοί) or Hellenes (Ἓλληνες) and not as Romans (Ρωμιοί/Ρωμαῖοι), according to the Byzantine official terminology. During the 15th century a major shift occurred in the Byzantine intelligentsia and its prominent members revisited matters of identity. In this paper, I attempt to scrutinize the ways Byzantine philosophers of the 15th century,
who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and in Italy, perceived identity and otherness. In my research, I include not only Greek, but also Latin sources, since their works is written in both languages.

A sequel to the groundbreaking volume Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, the present volume examines in depth interactions between Western racial constructions of East Asians and local constructions of race and their outcomes in modern times. Focusing on China, Japan and the two Koreas, it also analyzes the close ties between race, racism and nationalism, as well as the links race has had with gender and lineage in the region. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this insightful and engaging 23-chapter volume offers a sweeping overview and analysis of racial constructions and racism in modern and contemporary East Asia that is unsurpassed in previous scholarship.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Conventions
Preface

1. Introduction: The Synthesis of Foreign and Indigenous Constructions of Race in Modern East Asia and Its Actual Operation, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
I. Antecedents: A Detailed Examination of Early Western Racial Constructions of East Asians
II. Interactions: The Fusion of European and Asian Constructions of Race
III. Nationalism: Interactions between Race and Ethnic Nationalism in East Asia
IV. Gender and Lineage: The Impact of Domestic and Foreign Racial Constructions

PART I: ANTECEDENTS
2. East Asians in the Linnaean Taxonomy: Sources and Implications of a Racial Image, Rotem Kowner and Christina Skott
The Linnaean Revolution and View of Humankind
Sources of Linnaeus’ Racial Perspective on East Asians
The Essence of Asia: Swedish Views of China
Swedish Reports and Linnaeus’ Revision of His Human Taxonomy
Linnaeus’ Legacy and the Unfolding Racial View of East Asians
3. Constructing Racial Theories on East Asians as a Transnational “Western” Enterprise, 1750-1850, Walter Demel
The Founding Fathers of Racial Theories: Linnaeus, Buffon, Kant and Camper
The Second Generation: Multiple Directions
4. The ‘Races’ of East Asia in Nineteenth-Century European Encyclopaedias, Georg Lehner
Classifying the Peoples of Asia
The Encyclopedias' Main Sources for Remarks on the “Races” of East Asia
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans: Descriptions of East Asian peoples
Stereotypes of East Asians in General Knowledge
Visual Representations of Race in Works of General Knowledge
Concluding Remarks
5. The Racial Image of the Japanese in the Western Press Published in Japan, 1861-1881, Olavi K. Fält
Background
The Oldest People on Earth
The Shining Japanese Race
Weak and Inferior Race
Praising the Endeavors of a Poor Race
Conclusion

PART II: INTERACTIONS
6. The Propagation of Racial Thought in Nineteenth-Century China, Daniel Barth
The Background: Imperial China and the “Other”
Stage I (1846-1851): Marques and Wei Yuan
Stage II (1851-1855): Hobson and Muirhead
Stage III (1855-1872): The Self-Strengthening Movement
Stage IV (1872-1892): John Fryer and the Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine
Conclusion: Chinese Intellectuals, Social Darwinism and Race
7. Learning from the South: Japan's Racial Construction of Southern Chinese, 1895-1941, Huei-Ying Kuo
The South Seas as Japan’s Backyard, 1895-1914
Japan's Expansion into the Southern Chinese Networks, 1914-1928
Chinese Anti-Japanese Nationalism and Japanese Discourses on South Seas Chinese, 1928-1936
Southern Chinese as Non-Han Races, 1936-1941
Conclusions
8. “The Great Question of the World Today”: Britain, the Dominions, East Asian Immigration and the Threat of Race War, 1905-11, Antony Best
Immigration and “the Awakening of Asia”
The Prophets of Race War
Critics of White Solidarity
Finessing the Racial Divide
Conclusions
9. “Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia”: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia, Stefan Hübner
Sportive Citizenship Training in the Philippines
Chinese Cooperation and Acceptance of American-Style Modernization
Japanese Resistance and its Defeat by American Style Modernization
Conclusion
10. Racism under Negotiation: The Japanese Race in the Nazi-German Perspective, Gerhard Krebs
Early Nazi Views on the Japanese Racial Position
Becoming More Aryan
The Problem with the Japanese in the Nazi Worldview
Continuing Mutual Mistrust
The End
11. Discourses of Race and Racism in Modern Korea, 1890s-1945 , Vladimir Tikhonov
Race and Its Uncertainties
The Emergence of Race Theories in Modern Korea: One of the Logics of the “Civilized World”
“Race” and “Ethnic Nation” in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
Conclusion: Race as a Path to Modernist Self-assertion?
12. The United States Arrives: Racialization and Racism in Post-1945 South Korea, Nadia Y. Kim
Contextual Background: America Marches In and Mass Mediates
The American Military, Whiteness, and Imperialist Racial Formation
American Mass Media, White Heroes, and Counter-Hegemony
Blackness and Imperialist Racial Formation
Racism and Invisibility in Korean “America”
Concluding Remarks
13. A Post-Communist Coexistence in Northeast Asia? Mutual Racial Attitudes among Russians and Indigenous Peoples of Siberia, David Lewis
Discrimination against Siberian Peoples as an Outcome of Racial Prejudice
The Origin and Legacy of Russian Attitudes to Asians
Racial Attitudes among Indigenous Siberian Peoples
The Communist Model of Racial Modus Vivendi
The Impact of Prolonged Racism on Indigenous Siberian Peoples
Marriage as an Anti-Racist Means in a Multi-Racial Society

PART III: NATIONALISM
14. Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-American Racial Perceptions of the Korean War, Lü Xun
Descendants of the Mongolian Hordes: American Perceptions of the Chinese
The Ambitious Wolf: Chinese Perceptions of Americans
The Mirrored Self: A Nation-State in the Making
15. Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Racialized Chinese Nationalism, Yinghong Cheng
Gangtai Patriotic Songs: A “Colored” Political Genre of Pop Music
A Tacit Collaboration between the Party-State and Capitalist Cultural Producers in Hong Kong and Taiwan
The Interaction between Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Chinese Popular Nationalism
Analyses
Concluding Remarks
16. Japanese as Both a “Race” and a “Non-Race”: The Politics of Jinshu and Minzoku and the Depoliticization of Japaneseness, Yuko Kawai
The Historical Trajectories of Jinshu and Minzoku
Being a “Race” and a “Non-Race” in Present-day Japan: An Empirical Study
Conclusions and Implications
17. Ethnic Nationalism in Postwar Japan: Nihonjinron and Its Racial Facets, Rotem Kowner and Harumi Befu
Premises of Nihonjinron
Nihonjinron as a Manifestation of Japanese Nationalism
Nihonjinron and Its Concern with Origin, Blood and Racial Hierarchy
The Impact of Race-Related Tenets on Everyday Life
Functions of Ethnic Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
Concluding Remarks
18. Ethnic Nationalism and Internationalism in the North Korean Worldview, Tatiana Gabroussenko
The Soviet Discourse of the Outside World: Conditional Internationalism
The North Korean Worldview in the “Soviet Era”: Echoing the Soviet Paradigm
Mono-Ethnicity as a Special Korean Virtue: The Evolution of the North Korean World Vision under the Influence of Juche
North Korean Propaganda about Foreigners from Inclusive and Alienating Perspectives
Conclusion

PART IV: GENDER AND LINEAGE
19. In the Name of the Master: Race, Nationalism and Masculinity in Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, Kai-man Chang
From Anti-imperialist Nationalism to Cultural Nationalism
Masculinities That Matter
Conclusion
20. Sexualized Racism, Gender and Nationalism: The Case of Japan’s Sexual Enslavement of Korean “Comfort Women”, Bang-soon Yoon
Korean “Comfort Women”: Drawn in as Substitutes
The Nature of Victimization
Colonial Policies and the Mobilization of Korean Women
Treatment of Korean “Comfort Women”
Lives under Sexual Slavery
Nationalism, Gender and Sexual Violence
Conclusion
21. “The Guilt Feeling That You Exist”: War, Racism and Indisch-Japanese Identity Formation, Aya Ezawa
Power, Discourse, and “Mixed Blood”
The Indisch and the Dutch East Indies
The Indisch Community under Japanese Occupation
Indisch-Japanese Relationships
Indisch-Japanese Descendants
Conclusion
22. ‘The “Amerasian” Knot: Transpacific Crossings of “GI Babies” from Korea to the United States, W. Taejin Hwang
“An Act of Both Humanity and Patriotism”: The Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982
“Confucius’ Outcasts”: The Korean Amerasian “Plight”
Inter-country Adoption of Korean “GI Babies”
Living as a “Mixed-Blood Child” (Honhyeola) in Cold War Korea
“Half-American Also is American”: Towards Migration
Conclusion and Postscript

PART V: CONCLUSIONS
23. The Essence and Mechanisms of Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
The East Asian Contribution to the Study of Race and Racism
East Asia’s Role within the Rise of Racial Theory and the Resulting Hybridity
Sources and Manifestations of Racism
The Close Links between Racism and Nationalism
The Role of Gender and Lineage in Constructions of Race and Racism
East Asia and the Future of Race and Racism
Contributors
Bibliography
Index

This paper explores changing representations of the nation in 19th and 21st century Serbia and Croatia. I analyse how the changed structural conditions influence different visualisation strategies of a nation over long periods of time. More specifically I attempt to show how the dominant 19th century visual representations of nationhood in Croatia and Serbia were centred on violent images: representations of battlefields, personal sacrifices, national martyrdom, large-scale forced migrations of the nation, the past military glories of medieval kingdoms, and the production of maps depicting more expansive future states. In contrast to this mode of representation, the imagery of 21st century nationalist tends to focus on the nation’s international achievements in the fields of economy, science, technology, art and sports. Whereas the 19th century was saturated with violent images of the nation, in the 21st century such representations are less visible. On the surface this significant visual shift would indicate that nationalism was a far more influential force in 19th Serbian and Croatian societies than is the case today. However I argue that the opposite is the case: the changing representations of the nation in fact reflect a greater organisational and ideological penetration of nationalism in present-day Serbia and Croatia. While in the 19th century violent images of the past largely served as a didactic tool for the socialisation of mostly peasant, and thus nationally ambiguous populations, in the 21st century there is no need to perform such a role, as most citizens are already highly nationalised. Instead the visualisation of national success in sports or science and the relative absence of violent images reflect the organisational and ideological strength of nationalism in both cases.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

Glocal Spirituality:  Consumerism and Heritage in Puerto Rican Brujería
With the recent intensification of the circulation of ritual experts and commodities, folk religions such as Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing) have entered a transnational arena of ritual experimentation and eclecticism. Concomitantly, the politics of identity, operating at local-political and global-commercial stages, propel the search for origins and the production of essential identities, leading to the revitalization and orthodoxy of folk religions as well as their folklorization, following a local—though globally pervasive—heritage discourse.  Why glocal spirituality? My main argument is that both these forces—the actual insertion into global circulations that promote a high degree of ritual eclecticism and the local demand for an essential Puerto Rican national identity that promote orthodoxy—work in tandem creating a complex set of conditions for ritual practice and meaning.
How can these apparently contradictory processes be theorized within folklore studies? From a historic-pragmatic perspective to ritual and through an intimate ethnographic account that traces the encounters between practitioners, clients and suppliers of ritual goods, I will show how these two processes work in tandem. That is, without an a-priori public recognition of brujos (witch-healers) as repositories of Puerto Rican wisdom (in the context of the unresolved neocolonial political status of the island), the fame and celebrity that enabled the open incorporation of African based rituals, of bureaucratic gestures and interventions, and transnational religious commodities could not have been viable. Critics of the culture industry and consumerism tend to suggest that commercial forces inherently taint the authenticity of culture, and in this case would taint the spiritual effectiveness of brujería. For practitioners and clients, however, material and spiritual progress not only are not at odds but also are intimately connected. Indeed, practitioners are driven by the attainment of “blessings”—defined by material success as well as spiritual power—which presume the spirituality of commodities and the thinghood of spirituality. Especially in a world guided by capitalist modes of production and the sensuous insatiable consumption of life styles and self-images, brujos and their clients take advantage of the opportunities opened up by multiculturalism and identity politics. They openly expand the pantheon of spirits as well as their ritual expertise, protected by the idiom of heritage—yet outside of its constraints, showing that more than endangered species they are active participants in these glocal forces, speaking to them in their own particular modern yet spiritual idiom.

The monograph dedicated to the analysis of the politics of history in Ukraine, 'Eastern Europe', and 'Western Europe' in the 1980s - 2010s. Rich empirical material, detailed analysis of roles and performances of state (President, government, local governing bodies, and non-governmental) actors (NGOs, political parties, media, historians),

מאמר זה בוחן את המושג רפובליקניזם, בפרט אל מול המושג לאומיות, ומסיק שישראל זקוקה לתודעה רפובליקנית אך כזו המחזקת את הלאומיות ולא באה תחתיה.
חלקו הראשון של מאמר זה (סעיפים א-ג) מתאר את ליבת העמדה הרפובליקנית ואת הגרסאות השונות לה זכתה במחקר ובהגות הנאו-רפובליקנית בעשורים האחרונים. עיון זה מלמד שהעמדה הרפובליקנית איננה בהכרח חלופה ללאומיות ובגרסאות מסוימות שלה היא אף השלמה נדרשת עבורה.
בחלקו השני (סעיפים ד-ה) המאמר בוחן את את היתכנותו של רפובליקניזם לאומי מתוך המסורת היהודית ומתוך המחשבה הציונית. הוא מתאר את קיומם של יסודות רפובליקניים במחשבה היהודית אך גם מבהיר מדוע נדרש מאמץ פרשני וחינוכי לשם הטמעתם בחשיבה הישראלית.
חלקו השלישי של המאמר (סעיפים ו-ז) מנתח את השימוש הכושל בשיח על רפובליקניזם סביב הדיון על לימודי האזרחות בישראל, וכן בוחן את המשמעות המיטיבה האפשרית של תודעה רפובליקנית עבור מיעוטים במדינת לאום ובפרט עבור ערביי ישראל.