Suchergebnisse

Bibliography: 201-215. ; This study considers the process of constructing a new South African national identity in the political discourse of the 'new' right-wing during the transitional period between 1990 and 1994. It is concerned with how speakers for the "new" Nationalist Party who were implicated in the production of national identity within the framework of an apartheid ideology discursively construct and reconstruct national identity during this period of transition. The focus is on key political speeches and interviews given by party leader F. W. De Klerk. National identity is approached from a social psychological perspective and the study argues for a theory of identity as discursively produced within a specific historical context and relations of power. Texts are analysed using a discourse analytic approach. The analysis considers the interpretative resources and discursive practices deployed in the constructive process. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical construction of the discourse and the argumentative context within which versions of identity are produced. An interpretative link is made between the results of this analysis and the positioning of speakers within ideology and relations of power. The analysis shows how the 'new' social category produced in this right-wing discourse is rooted in earlier representations of identity and is constructed to maintain earlier divisions and relations. Old and entrenched constructions of national identity, based in ethnicity, remain present in attempts to redefine an inclusive South African identity. A function of this construction is to speak to the right-wing as part of a strategy to manage negotiations.

Based on three years of fieldwork in Zhanli, a remote Kam Village in Guizhou Province, Wang and Jiang explore the complex dynamics between the discursive practices of the local government and the villagers in relation to the reconstruction of Kam identity in response to social change, particularly the rise of rural tourism. China's profound demographic and socio-economic transformation has intensified the dominance of Han culture and language and seriously challenged the traditional cultures in ethnic minority areas. The authors draw on multiple empirical sources, including in-depth interviews with Kam villagers and local officials, field observations, media discourse, local archives and government documents. They present an engaging account of the significant compromises that government and villagers have made in relation to ethnic identity in the name of economic development, and of the tensions and struggles that characterise the ongoing process of ethnic identity reconstruction. Students and researchers in sociolinguistics, ethnography, and discourse studies, especially those with an interest in Chinese discourse, and everyone interested in issues around ethnicity (minzu) issues in China, will find this book a valuable resource.

AbstractThe Republic of Armenia is for the most part an ethnically homogenous country. According to the 2011 census, the share of ethnic minorities is about 1.9 percent of the population, comprising eleven registered minorities and at least two additional groups, namely the Udi and Tat refugee minorities. This article examines the different values that ethnic minorities of Armenia assign to language in the process of identity construction. Despite their cultural and religious diversity, the ethnic minorities of Armenia have a feature in common: none of the groups originates from the territory of the present-day Republic of Armenia, and in each instance immigration occurred under Tsarist or Soviet rule. Various social and historical factors related to migration condition the relevance of language for individual ethnic minorities. In some cases, these factors also influence collective self-perception in a way that is inconsistent with actual language practices and actual linguistic competence. The present article is descriptive in nature and aims at characterizing the role that language plays in identity construction by minority groups within a predominantly mono-ethnic country.

Debates regarding intersectionality have been widely held in the U.K. and elsewhere for over a decade. However, the value of intersectionality has been questioned as researchers struggle to analyse intersectionality-in-practice. That is, how and why social identities connect in the ways that they do in the everyday lives of women and men. In this paper I argue that the concepts of 'performativity' and 'ontological complicity' offer a useful way of exploring the articulation of identities. I specifically draw on empirical research about the experiences of British Asian female footballers, to signal how their particular identities articulate in and through the spaces of women's football. I argue that by playing-up some identity dispositions and concomitantly playing-down others, British Asian females are able to negotiate inclusion within the spaces of women's football. However, this does not mean that they automatically become valued insiders. At other times, and in other spaces, their marginalisation from within the game is clear. I suggest that considering the intersectional plays of identity captures the complex and nuanced operation of discrimination, which is often rendered invisible in women's football.

"In the current historical moment borders have taken on heightened material and symbolic significance, shaping identities and the social and political landscape. "Borders"--defined broadly to include territorial dividing lines as well as sociocultural boundaries--have become increasingly salient sites of struggle over social belonging and cultural and material resources. How do contemporary activists navigate and challenge these borders? What meanings do they ascribe to different social, cultural and political boundaries, and how do these meanings shape the strategies in which they engage? Moreover, how do these social movements confront internal borders based on the differences that emerge within social change initiatives? Border Politics, edited by Nancy A. Naples and Jennifer Bickham Mendez, explores these important questions through eleven carefully selected case studies situated in geographic contexts around the globe. By conceptualizing struggles over identity, social belonging and exclusion as extensions of border politics, the authors capture the complex ways in which geographic, cultural, and symbolic dividing lines are blurred and transcended, but also fortified and redrawn. This volume notably places right-wing and social justice initiatives in the same analytical frame to identify patterns that span the political spectrum. Border Politics offers a lens through which to understand borders as sites of diverse struggles, as well as the strategies and practices used by diverse social movements in today's globally interconnected world. Contributors: Phillip Ayoub, Renata Blumberg, Yvonne Braun, Moon Charania, Michael Dreiling, Jennifer Johnson, Jesse Klein, Andrej Kurnik, Sarah Maddison, Duncan McDuie-Ra, Jennifer Bickham Mendez, Nancy A. Naples, David Paternotte, Maple Razsa, Raphi Rechitsky, Kyle Rogers, Deana Rohlinger, Cristina Sanidad, Meera Sehgal, Tara Stamm, Michelle Te;llez"--

This two-part investigation evaluated four different explanations potentially governing theory on deprecating speech: social identity, expectancy violation, complexity-extremity, and desensitization. To test the descriptive and predictive usefulness of the first three theories, 614 participants made attributions of the perceived harm of actual racist slurs targeted at African, Asian, or Hispanic Americans. The results pointed to social identity as the most powerful theoretical construct to explain perceptions of racist speech. Although social identity concerns predicted participants' responses better than the two competing explanations, a second study further examined the complexity-extremity and desensitization theories. A sample of 36 Asian Americans demonstrated that previous exposure (low vs. high) mediated participants' perceptions of harm and levels of desensitization. Intergroup perceptions of racist speech seemingly derive from both social identity processes and previous experience. The study concludes with a discussion of the legal implications for hate speech.

Developed democracies in Europe and elsewhere are experiencing an unprecedented influx of culturally diverse immigrants and asylum seekers into their national communities. For the study of political psychology, a critical issue is how the pattern of ethnic group relations affects process of identity formation and change and, derivatively, the pattern of public support for a range of public policies with implications for social inclusion and equality. While there has been extensive commentary on the issue of multiculturalism both in America and abroad, the specific question of how the perceived threat of heightened immigrant diversity on the normative content of national identity (that is, the question of "who are we") has only recently begun to receive systematic attention in the scholarly literature.Multiculturalism has both a purely demographic and a political meaning. The politics of diversity also refers to specific policies governments enact in order to either encourage or discourage cultural pluralism. The specific policies at issue typically refer to the representation and recognition of minority groups and may encompass affirmative action, language policies, border control, access to welfare state programs, and citizenship laws. Debate has raged for years among political philosophers of multiculturalism over the desirability of such policies. Some suggest that government policies devoted to "cultural recognition" and minority group representation ease political tensions in these increasingly diverse communities and promote national loyalty. Others suggest the reverse: government attempts to promote cultural recognition through multiculturalism policy harden barriers among groups, foster prejudice and hostility to immigration, and erode the overall sense of national attachment in a country. This debate, too, has only now begun to receive rigorous empirical scrutiny.The present study examines three main questions: first, how can we think about what the social boundaries of the national community might be, and why do they matter? Are narrower, more bounded notions of the nation in-group related to mass preferences onimmigration, immigrants, and cultural diversity more generally? More centrally, this study examines how immigrant diversity and policies of cultural recognition shape mainstream citizens' conceptions of normative national identity. Is it indeed the case that ethnic diversity and political multiculturalism undermine social harmony, by provoking - via cultural threat - the desire among mainstream citizens to adhere to a more "ascriptive" and exclusionary definition of who truly belongs on their soil? Finally, I go to the heart of the philosophical debates on cultural recognition, by asking whether immigrants' allegiance to the nation is in indeed undermined in "multicultural" nations. Are they less willing to participate in the political process? Do they have less faith in the political system and governing institutions? Are they less trusting and/or socially engaged?Merging aggregate level economic and demographic measures with cross-national public opinion data, I argue that mass publics do indeed seem to have reacted to increased levels of immigrant diversity by constraining their notion of who truly belongs to the national community along more "ethnic" lines. Furthermore, this backlash has been heightened in the countries that have more fully committed themselves to cultural recognition, versus those that have favored minority integration; this finding provides empirical support for many of the philosophical critiques of multiculturalism that have emerged vociferously in recent years. On the other hand, immigrants themselves appear to benefit from political multiculturalism, all else equal; they exhibit higher levels of satisfaction with politics and politicians in their adoptive nation, and perceive substantially less discrimination against them along ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious lines.

The last of Bernard Shaw's "Irish" plays, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman (1921), raises the same concerns over colonialism, nationalism, and identity explored in John Bull's Other Island (1904) and O'Flaherty V.C.: A Recruiting Pamphlet (1915) but does so from outside his preferred dramatic style, theatrical Realism. In this proto-Absurdist experiment, Shaw invents an Ireland in which differences of religion, class, and politics are moot; in 3000 A.D., age is the only category of social distinction. Experimenting with dramaturgical form and eschewing mimetic scenic design, Shaw utilizes Ireland's mythic wildness and the transformational effect of its climate as an affective element of the play's argument. Through Shaw's treatment of space, this future Ireland with its inherently Irish inhabitants becomes the utopic home to a superior race that portends a life beyond the oppressive British/Irish and later intra-national binary partisan reality of post-WWI and pre-Free State Ireland.

AbstractThis article deals with the 2002–2005 controversy over faith-based arbitration tribunals in Ontario. It seeks to contribute to the existing literature on the question by looking at new empirical sources. The analysis focuses specifically on the public discourse of social actors who opposed the creation of arbitration tribunals for Christians, Jews and Muslims. The majority of those who opposed arbitration tribunals did not formulate their position in terms of an opposition between religion and feminist values. Rather, they focused their arguments on the danger of Islam, which they perceived as an oppressive and alien religion. The controversy over religious arbitration becomes a way to claim a Western, secular and Judeo-Christian Canadian identity. From this perspective, the Ontarian controversy can be likened to European debates on Islam that have emerged over the last decade (e.g. caricatures of Muhammad in Denmark, minarets in Switzerland and the burqa ban in Belgium).