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Ali Mardan bey Topchibashov was a prominent politician, who played a crucial role in the history of Azerbaijan. One of the most striking personalities in the history of Azerbaijan, the founder of liberal ideas, and the first President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, he led the Muslim faction in the first Russian Duma and the Union of Muslims of Russia and was a central figure of the Caucasian aemigraes in Europe. This book analyses and presents the life of the first independent Azerbaijani political leaders. Based on extensive research from archives in Azerbaijan, France, Georgia, Russia (Moscow and Kazan) and the UK, some of which are newly accessible, it traces the political personality of Topchibashov as one of the largest Muslim leaders and founder of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, it offers insights into the history of the formation and creation of the national consciousness of the Russian Muslims and tracks the challenges in the national and religious policy of the Imperial administration of the Soviet Union. The author sheds light on the significant problems of the Russian Empire (nationalities specifically) and global movements such as the post-World War I settlement and the difficulties of the many non-Russian groups that declared independence after the Bolshevik rise of power. Filling a lacuna in modern Azerbaijan history, this book will be of interest to academics working on Russian, Soviet, South Caucasus and Central Asian History, in particular Russian Empire, Muslim nations, and nationalism in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

This thesis is interested in the relationship between media and national identies in divided Cyprus. It explores how the mainstream media constructed national identifications during a period of intense negotiations for peace settlement, known as "the Annan period", and the ways in which individual Greek-Cypriots perceive that they used ideas of the nation and national identifications during the said period. In doing so the thesis critically examines the development of media constructed national identities vis-à-vis hegemonic tropes used to explain identity in Cyprus and in particular the Cyprocentrist-Hellenocentrist antagonism. The thesis approaches national identities as processes of "imagining" which are not static perceptions of who one is but may change or be modified in time. Over the last 40 years in Cyprus, the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot communities have been locked in ongoing yet unsuccessful negotiations for a peace settlement. During most of the post-1974 period, the conflict has been a "calm" one. Focusing in particular on the Greek-Cypriot community, the thesis approaches negotiations as both routine and crisis news events. It foregrounds empirically how, in times of progress in the negotiations, the disputed settlement assumes a media epicentre of national identity discourses which draw and amplify more routinely prevalent national identity discourses. Based on a qualitative analysis and drawing on literature in nationalism and media studies, the thesis has uncovered the complex ways the "national" we was used during the period studied. It shows how media-projected norms of national conformity either closed or shifted the boundaries of we: on the one hand the us/ other binary homogenized opponents but also ourselves and on the other hand the boundaries of we opened up to include the other. The study confirms that neither Cyprocentrism nor Hellenocentrism, are static boundary formations of us and the other. By contrast, media discursive shifts between Hellenocentrism and Cyprocentrism, revealed that the confrontation between nation and state, as two antagonistic nationalistic codes, was not prominent in the said period. The study provides evidence however of exclusionary Cyprocentric constructions of identity premised primarily on uses of the state as a symbolic wall cementing the boundaries of we. In this regard, we explore constructions in the media of the Turkish-Cypriot community as an "absent/present" other as its interests and needs were tailored to project Greek-Cypriots' own wishes. Yet, the thesis highlights the dislocation of the master dichotomy of us vs. other in media representations during the events which followed the relaxation of bizonal movement restrictions in April 2003. Building on Greek-Cypriots' own accounts, the thesis concludes that, overall, national imaginings across and within communities become a "political prison" of the ethnic "other", who becomes an absent/present "other". But the community doing the "imagining" also tends to remain trapped within such conceptualisations: Participants of the study, about ten years after the referenda, understood the antagonism between Hellenocentrists and Cyprocentrists as being part of political elites' own struggles for power still many explained how they could not go beyond nationally instigated perceptions about the other or the conflict. Yet this "imprisonment" is neither static nor should it be taken for granted, as there are instances during which otherwise powerful national identifications may break down and unravel in different directions. Additionally, the study shows a novel meta-analysis of nationalism and national identities from the perspective of individuals and in this context we provide evidence of an identity "fatigue" which problematizes further ideas on the naturalization of national identity. Overall, the thesis in answering the central research questions guiding the study, puts forward a claim and an assumption for further investigation. The claim manifested is that Cyprocentrism and Hellenocentrism were not necessarily antithetical during the Annan Period. The assumption is that it is possible in the future, for exclusionary and inclusionary tendencies within Cypriotism to become antagonistic. The exclusionary form tends to focus on civic identity to exclude other communities, not necessarily the Turkish-Cypriots who are in a way often included in this imagining as their presence fortifies the sovereignty of the state. On the other hand, inclusionary Cypriotism, despite emphasizing Cypriotness, remains tolerant towards others. Nevertheless, emphasis on the state should be addressed in other contexts as not merely related to a "civic" identity but also a cultural one. ; Member of the committee (President): Professor Nicos Demertzis, Associate Professor Christopher Kyriakides, Associate Professor Nicos Trimikliniotis

The article is based on an analysis of four selected biographies of nationalist activists in Poland – taken from a larger sample of 30 biographical-narrative interviews conducted with members of organizations such as the All-Polish Youth, National Radical Camp, and National Rebirth of Poland (2011–2015). During the analysis of all of the collected interviews, three main biographical paths to the nationalist movement were distinguished: (a) an individual project (with two subtypes), (b) the influence of significant others, and (c) being 'found' by an organization. The paper explores four individuals' life stories – each representing one of the paths – and takes a closer look at all three main paths, including the role of family political orientation, circle of friends, and interests. The analysis shows that the Polish nationalist movement can be seen as a space that allows individuals to meet their various needs (the need to resist the political and social situation in the country; to express their values, discontent, and opinions; to maintain a feeling of doing something valuable and important; to carry out social work, promote patriotism, and to engage in educational activities). Moreover, when it comes to explanations of the growing popularity of nationalism nowadays, it can be said that the nationalist movement involves people who are dissatisfied with politics and looking for grassroots alternatives; feel endangered by cultural (liberal) changes; are seeking a return to tradition and Catholicism; and who are looking for stronger narratives (those opposed to liberalism and postmodernism).

AbstractThis article analyses the dynamics of official and unofficial religious nationalism in the Vietnamese border town of Lào Cai. In 1979 it was one of many Vietnamese towns that were reduced to rubble during the short but bloody war between Vietnam and China. The normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1991 allowed a booming border trade that let Lào Cai prosper, while the painful memory of this war continued to haunt the town and the daily experiences of its residents, both humans and gods. Since the Vietnamese state forbids any official remembrance of the war, Lào Cai residents have found a religious way to deal with their war memories that skilfully evades state control. By analysing narratives about the fate of the gods and goddesses that reign in the Father God Temple and the Mother Goddess Temple—two religious institutions located right next to the border—this article shows that it is in the symbolism of the supernatural that one can find memories of the war and of the changing social landscape of Lào Cai and reconstruct its history.

In the 1960s, the South Korean authoritarian anti-communist system, which had been established immediately after the liberation of Korea in 1945, was transformed into an anti-communist developmental dictatorship. The student movement for democracy erupted in the spring of 1960 (April 19 Revolution) and brought down the authoritarian Rhee Syngman regime. But Park Chung Hee, a military general and former officer of the Japanese Imperial Army, seized power in a military coup on 16 May 1961. He was later elected to the presidency on an agenda of modernisation in a "nationalist democracy". In 1965, despite strong student protests, he concluded a Treaty on Basic Relations with the country's former colonial ruler, Japan, and took Korea to war in Vietnam, in the process setting the stage for a constitutional amendment that foreshadowed the transformation of the "developmental state" into the following decade's "developmental dictatorship". The focus of this paper is on the ideological structure of the transitional era in which the revolution for democracy led to the establishment of an anti-communist developmental dictatorship as a result of the combined effect of various conditions of South Korean politics and the international Cold War in the 1960s. Modernisation, anti-communism, nationalism and democracy were its essential ideological elements, and the regime changes of that decade depended on changes in the priorities and interrelations among them.

In the 1960s, the South Korean authoritarian anti-communist system, which had been established immediately after the liberation of Korea in 1945, was transformed into an anti-communist developmental dictatorship. The student movement for democracy erupted in the spring of 1960 (April 19 Revolution) and brought down the authoritarian Rhee Syngman regime. But Park Chung Hee, a military general and former officer of the Japanese Imperial Army, seized power in a military coup on 16 May 1961. He was later elected to the presidency on an agenda of modernisation in a "nationalist democracy". In 1965, despite strong student protests, he concluded a Treaty on Basic Relations with the country's former colonial ruler, Japan, and took Korea to war in Vietnam, in the process setting the stage for a constitutional amendment that foreshadowed the transformation of the "developmental state" into the following decade's "developmental dictatorship". The focus of this paper is on the ideological structure of the transitional era in which the revolution for democracy led to the establishment of an anti-communist developmental dictatorship as a result of the combined effect of various conditions of South Korean politics and the international Cold War in the 1960s. Modernisation, anti-communism, nationalism and democracy were its essential ideological elements, and the regime changes of that decade depended on changes in the priorities and interrelations among them.

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the most influential scholars from Taiwan, Dong Jhy Hwang, considers the development of sociology of sport in Taiwan, the unique challenges in this context, and future issues brought by globalization as illustrated in the dynamics between ethnic and national identities in Taiwanese baseball. The trajectory of the field in Taiwan is traced to Japanese and American influences and to the early work of Jin-Song Chiu, Chungji Wang, and others; more recent development was characterized by resistance to outside influences. Three major challenges to sociology of sport are considered, originating from: (1) the influence of the natural and biological sciences, (2) the tenuous relationship with mainstream sociology, and (3) the need to grow a unique Taiwanese sociology of sport that is better engaged with mainstream sociology. These challenges have been embraced by the establishment of the Taiwan Society of Sport Sociology and its English language journal East Asian Sport Thoughts. Future issues at the nexus of nationalism, ethnic identities and inclusion, and globalization are considered in the case of the development of Taiwanese baseball; the increased consideration given to indigenous narratives and subjective positions of aboriginal ethnic groups suggests that the sociology of sport in Taiwan is increasingly using critical perspectives cognizant of the forces of globalization and the complexities of identities.

Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were "re-written," brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. "Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture." European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its "localization" through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own "imagined community" and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh-Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post-colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the "continuity" and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan.

As in the most parts of the world, India of today also is governed and determined by a socioeconomic order where the profit is privatized, while the cost is socialized. The world has been witnessing a vulgar polarization of wealth in favor of a few privileged with a vast majority of the populace getting pushed into the deeper ends of poverty and destitution. India is traversing this trajectory, more aggressively in the last couple of decades, since she opened up her economy to the forces of neo-liberalization. The worsening economic conditions would obviously trigger unrest and anger against those in power, and the ruling class in turn pre-empt the possibility of any such upraising by preoccupying the mass with emotionally charged divisive issues that pit them against one another. "Nationalism" has always been one of the most effective "emotional tools" in the hands of the rightist forces world over in the past in their efforts to ward off mass resistance, and now it is India's turn to endure the enactment of the same. While capitalism is tightly preserving the economic structure that enables amassment of wealth for a few, fascism in the hands of the ultra-nationalists is acting as its gatekeeper to ensure that dispossessed do not gatecrash, revolt, and thrash the capitalist castle. The privileged work overtime to divide the very forces that could form a threat to their economic fortunes and system of loot. This paper is a detailed commentary on how the above said process is currently operating and how it is weakening the democracy, diversity, and sustainable development in India.

AbstractObjectiveAlthough studies have linked Christian nationalist beliefs with greater emotional distress, little is known about the potential underlying mechanisms or subgroup variations. Informed by the strain‐struggles‐distress model and the concept of structural amplification, we tested whether religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles mediate and moderate the association between Christian nationalist beliefs and emotional distress.MethodsRegression models were conducted on national survey data collected in 2021 (n = 1704).ResultsResults suggested that respondents who reported stronger Christian nationalist beliefs also tended to report higher levels of R/S struggles, anger, and psychological distress. Mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of Christian nationalist beliefs on emotional distress through R/S struggles. Moderation analyses also indicated that the effects of Christian nationalist beliefs on emotional distress were amplified at higher levels of R/S struggles.ConclusionIn support of the strain‐struggles‐distress and structural amplification models, we find that the adverse emotional impacts Christian nationalism are explained and intensified by the cognitive vulnerabilities of R/S struggles.

Using Brazil as a case study, we examine ways in which radical right activists and leaders actively participate in world politics through religious nationalist narratives which operate on both national and transnational levels. We propose the existence of a particular subcategory of populist radical right (PRR) politics, which we call religious-populist radical right. Our argument is divided into three parts. First, we argue that religion provides ideational and material capabilities that have allowed the PRR to capture state institutions through elections. Second, we claim that once in power, the PRR's governing strategy is conducted through transnational culture wars with religious overtones. Third, we argue that the PRR establishes novel patterns of international alliances to advance their vision of a new world order based on independent ethno-religious communities. By exploring the entanglements between the PRR and religious nationalism, we conclude that religion provides the radical right with the ideas, means, and social power to transform both state forms and world orders.

AbstractScholars of nationalism generally acknowledge that what counts as 'a language' and what as 'a dialect' is determined by historical and political circumstance, that both notions are idealisations of linguistic practice rather than objective entities and that the reality of language is fuzzy and complex. However, they nevertheless continue to talk about (and analyse) 'linguistic entities' in the same way nationalists do: as homogenous, closed systems. Paralleling Brubaker's groupist language, this paper proposes the notion of totalising metalanguage to signify all ways of talking about linguistic phenomena that reify them into unproblematically existing objects. I analyse the historical development of dialectology in Croatia and Serbia from the 19th century until today to show how dubious linguistic taxonomies have been presented in the discourse as objectively existing linguistic entities. The paper invites scholars of nationalism to seek alternative approaches to the language‐dialect dichotomy than that offered by the outdated model of Joshua Fishman.