Suchergebnisse

IT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY CLEAR THAT THERE ARE NEGATIVE AS WELL AS POSITIVE ASPECTS TO THE NATION-BUILDING PROCESS IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICA. MAJOR PROBLEMS SUCH AS POVERTY AND ILLITERACY ARE STAGGERING, AND THEY OFTEN ARE ONLY EXARCERBATED BY THE POLICIES OF THE ELITIST POST-COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS THAT IN SO MANY INSTANCES DISCOURAGE NATION-WIDE INTEREST AND INVOLVEMENT.

Im Verhältnis von Staat und internationaler Organisation spielt die im Staat dominante Kultur, ihre Traditionen, ihre Entwicklung, ihre Interpretation und politische Präsenz eine fördernde, hemmende oder handlungsorientierende Rolle. In der Außenpolitik wird jedoch die kulturelle Konstitution häufig übergangen, denn im Vordergrund stehen immer noch die üblichen klassischen Kriterien wie Staatsgrenze, Staatsvolk, Staatsgewalt und internationale Anerkennung. Von internationalen Organisationen wie der EU oder der WTO werden inzwischen entsprechende Kriterien eines "modernen Staates" für eine Mitgliedschaft vorausgesetzt. Dennoch bedürfen sowohl in der innerstaatlichen Ordnung des Staates als auch in den internationalen Beziehungen die aufgelisteten Faktoren des "modernen Staates" einer jeweiligen Konkretisierung, um sie als effiziente Stabilisierungsbedingungen einschätzen zu können. Dazu gehören zum Beispiel in der EU die Überprüfungsberichte zur Entwicklung der Beitrittsbedingungen von Beitrittskandidaten. Der Autor arbeitet in seinem Beitrag einige aus kulturellen Gegebenheiten resultierende Erschwernisse für die staatliche und internationale Ordnung heraus, die in der Regel bei solchen Beitrittsverhandlungen gar nicht thematisiert werden. Er weist ferner darauf hin, dass Nation-Building und internationale Organisation ohne Rücksichtnahme auf die jeweiligen kulturellen Grundlagen und die Fragen der Akkulturation nicht gelingen können. (ICI2)

"The presupposition that Muslim-majority regions of India had to be incorporated into the newly established Muslim state in 1947, constituted key point Pakistan's international narrative, and incessantly cast a shadow on its official discourse. The two-nation theory, used by the proponents of Pakistan's inception as a nation building political concept, artificially projected the Indian Muslims as a monolithic group, irrespective of their origin, social belonging, historical heritage, etc. This ideologically rooted discourse heralded future tensions within Pakistan and provided framework for Pakistan's persistent pretension of acting as defender of Kashmiri Muslims rights. Pakistan's stance on Kashmir, is unalterably based on key twelve components, which exemplify the India-centric components of its geostrategic objectives.
In the aftermath of Bangladesh inception, Pakistani policymakers reinforced their determination to maintain and justify the ideological relevance of the two-nation theory and to combine it with security-dilemma vis-à-vis India. The chapter investigates the campaigns of authoritarianism and Islamization, fundamentally transforming Pakistan, which were introduced primarily by General Zia ul-Haq's military regime, their impact on Pakistan's socio-political transformations and its stance on Kashmir."

The article investigates nation-building trajectories and civic identity formation in Eastern Europe. The indicated processes in Eastern European states are notably different from those in the Western part of Europe. They are hindered by the specific historical development of these countries and by a set of local characteristics in particular. Quite often, there are such obstacles as unresolved ethnic conflicts and non-involvement of minorities in the building of common political and public practices within the state. The paper aims at assessing the current situation, evaluating international and interethnic regulation practices in the region and their efficiency, working out criteria of a civic nation formation in Eastern European countries. This is, first of all, a question of sociocultural and political consolidation. Social activism and civic participation are also significant factors. Finally, the very nature of nationalism and the use of the "alien image" in relation to other ethnic groups within the state are important. On this basis, the article proposes a typology of the countries according to the stage of a civic identity formation, and assesses possible future developments. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation [grant № 15-18-00021 "Regulating interethnic relations and managing ethnic and social conflicts in the contemporary world: the resource potential of civic identity (a comparative political analysis)"]. The research was conducted at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO).

This open access book discusses the relationship between periodicals, tourism, and nation-building in Mexico. It enquires into how magazines, a staple form of the promotional apparatus of tourism since its inception, articulated an imaginative geography of Mexico at a time when that industry became a critical means of economic recovery and political stability after the Revolution. Notwithstanding their vogue, popularity, reach, and close affiliations to commerce and state over several decades, magazines have not received any sustained critical attention in the scholarship on that period. This book aims to redress that oversight. It argues that illustrated magazines like Mexican Folkways (1925–1937) and Mexico This Month (1955–1971) offer rich and compelling materials in that regard, not only as unique tools for interrogating the ramifications of tourism on the country's reconstruction, but as autonomous objects of study that form a vital if complex part of Mexico's visual culture.

The increasing tensions between Islamists and the political leadership in Indonesia and Malaysia reveal that the relationship between religion and state has not yet been definitively settled in either state. The ongoing sociopolitical struggles over the relationship between Islam and national identity in both countries are also a result of their very different nation-building processes. To understand the current dynamics, it is necessary to analyze the specific ways in which Islam was incorporated in the constitutions of both countries after independence and how nation-building was directed by their respective political elites. Whereas Malaysia tried to build a nation based on the coexistence of different ethnic/religious groups, Indonesia meanwhile adopted an assimilationist approach — in which members of every ethnic/religious group were to be absorbed into one overarching nation. Due, not least, to these historical reasons, we can now observe a growing tendency toward dissatisfaction with the results of the nation-building processes among the Muslim communities in both of these countries.

The Lyons Inquiry into Local Government has introduced the English local government community to the concept of 'place-shaping'. Place-shaping refers to the new role for local governments in promoting the well-being of communities and citizens. The processes of place-shaping are remarkably similar to the processes of nation-building. This paper uses Stein Rokkan's thinking on nation-building in Western Europe to analyse place-shaping. It focuses on the penetration and standardisation processes and underlines the importance of integrating peripheries, defining boundaries, and creating identities. In essence, it is argued that place-shaping is really about the repolitisation of English local authorities.

Kazakhstan, the last emerging independent state from the former Soviet Union, inherited multiple challenges of having to build a new state and nation, while engaged in the painful economic and political transformation. Since independence was declared in 1991, diversity and tolerance have been officially at the heart of Kazakhstan's national identity. Nevertheless, building a single nation in the country of two large ethnic groups (Russians and Kazakhs), with the reversed proportion of the language proficiency – as there are more ethnic Kazakhs but more Russian-speakers in the country – has been an ambivalent and controversial process. Constructing a nation in a primordial sense in this multi-ethnic country might well prove to be a mission impossible. Another option is promotion of the idea of a civic nation based on carefully drafted and consciously adapted multicultural policies. The existence, implementation, and success of such policies are contingent on several factors, including historical, demographic, and social ones. Some are linked to expedient political and economic strategies, however, and their further development would entail democratization of the political system in Kazakhstan. It seems that in Kazakhstan, inter-ethnic tensions have been alleviated by the fact that two major ethnic groups have not been, by and large, in direct confrontation and are balancing each other in the managed tradeoffs. So far, the dynamically developing society might be able to accommodate the interests of major ethnic groups but all the proposed solutions are inconclusive. The focus of this paper is on the bi-lingual and multicultural constellation and cultural and language policy pathways in Kazakhstan, as analyzed through the lenses of several models available in the respective literature on post-communist nation-building. The paper's the methodology explores systematic historical and cultural interpretations and comparative intercultural-institutional analysis.

The scientific article is devoted to current issues - the study of the development of nation-building and the unique model of interethnic and interfaith relations in Kazakhstan.Aim. To propose a periodization of the main stages of transformational and socio-political processes of nation-building in the Republic of Kazakhstan, at each of which the corresponding regulatory legal acts of their legitimization were adopted.Tasks. To analyze the periods of development of nation-building, changes in the sphere of interethnic relations in the republic over the years of independence, in accordance with the constitutional reform approved in a popular referendum on June 5, 2022. Conduct a political analysis of the transformation into the socio-political practice of the fundamental principle of the Basic Law of the country — "public harmony" and in general in the regulation of interethnic relations.Methods. To substantiate the results of the study, a variety of scientific methods were used, reflecting the peculiarities of the development of national development. Taking into account the specifics of ethno-political and integration processes in the social and regional context, determining their nature, comparative analysis, prolegomens, communication platforms and social networks were used. The methods of crowdsourcing, forsyth, road map are widely used.Results. The management of ethno-professional processes is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of the functioning of the State and the tasks of society. The competent definition of problem areas allows for the development of preventive measures and the avoidance of both inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic tensions and the minimization of negative impact on the development of State and religious relations. The proposed recommendations will improve the mechanisms and tools of ethno-political management in State national policy, consolidate the model of social harmony and national unity in political documents and legislative practice.Conclusions. The effective Kazakh model of ethno-confessional harmony is based on two main components: popular representation as a reflection of the political integration of Kazakhstanis and coverage of the entire spectrum of legal ethnicities and confessions in socio-political processes. The creation and activities of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, during the years of independence, as a key socio-political structure in national politics, acts as an instrument of direct democracy and is, in fact, a people's representation.

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.