One of the most relevant aspects of contemporary political life in Nepal is the rise of ethnic minorities. From the early 1990s, the movement for democracy started campaigning against Hindu Monarchic autocracy for the lifting of the ban on political parties, the recognition of multiculturalism and freedom of religion. Many things have changed since then: a Maoist-led insurgency and a new people's movement have managed to topple the monarchy and to transform the Himalayan country into a republic. As a reaction to the state-enforced Hinduization of the people, supporting the caste system and maintaining the power in the hands of high caste Hindus, many groups are now campaigning to revive their local cultures and traditions. Religion is one of the key areas of confrontation, and the struggle for secularism has created space for the revival of the religious traditions of marginalized groups.
One of the most relevant aspects of contemporary political life in Nepal is the rise of ethnic minorities. From the early 1990s, the movement for democracy started campaigning against Hindu Monarchic autocracy for the lifting of the ban on political parties, the recognition of multiculturalism and freedom of religion. Many things have changed since then: a Maoist-led insurgency and a new people's movement have managed to topple the monarchy and to transform the Himalayan country into a republic. As a reaction to the state-enforced Hinduization of the people, supporting the caste system and maintaining the power in the hands of high caste Hindus, many groups are now campaigning to revive their local cultures and traditions. Religion is one of the key areas of confrontation, and the struggle for secularism has created space for the revival of the religious traditions of marginalized groups.
Using political demonstrations as sites of analysis, this thesis explores popular understandings of diasporic identities within a Canadian multiculturalism framework and second generation Sri Lankan Tamil's (SLT) (re)negotiations of these constructions in forming and informing their identities. Through the use of critical discourse analysis and in-depth interviews I argue that popular constructions of diasporic identities and Canadian national identity as understood within a multiculturalism framework is not entirely in concurrence with diasporic minorities' identity constructions. The divergences that emerge amongst the discourses demonstrate a need for a more nuanced conceptualization of Canadian multiculturalism and citizenship which should incorporate the idea of transnational political and cultural practices. The current understanding of multiculturalism is still premised on the nation state model in which diasporic identities are seen in juxtaposition to the Canadian national identity. Moving towards a global framework allows for the incorporation of these forms of identities.
Background: Occupational safety and health issues are closely associated with the wellbeing and survival of every worker and family, as well as of society as a whole. It is a type of typical public issue and requires cooperative governance among different governing subjects. Methods: According to the questionnaire investigation on 2179 subjects with different identities, the research explored the willingness to pay (WTP) for occupational safety and health and the degree of attention, with different identities, through the difference analysis and descriptive statistical analysis. The research studied the relationship between public attention and WTP through the methods of cross-analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. Results: (1) The public show a disregard attitude to occupational safety and health. (2) The public expect the government to fund and solve occupational safety and health problems rather than for themselves to pay directly. (3) Over 50% of questionnaire respondents defined occupational safety and health problems as being classified into two categories, namely, &ldquo ; no attention&mdash ; government payment&rdquo ; or &ldquo ; no attention&mdash ; refusal of individual payment&rdquo ; according to the analysis. (4) The level of attention paid to occupational safety and health can significantly predict the individual income WTP, item WTP, subject WTP, and event WTP. Conclusions: This research aimed to outline the implications for the governance of occupational safety and health.
This chapter examines aspects of the history of sport in Quebec, from its origins as a series of anglo-elite gentlemanly pastimes to its place as a vector for national affirmation among francophones and others in the province. The chapter shows that sport has been implicated in the turbulent political culture of Quebec since the mid-nineteenth century. Sport has been a site where the interests of Quebec's First Nations, Anglophone, francophone, and immigrant communities have been articulated – sometimes in consensus, sometimes in conflict. Sport reflects the complex ethnic history and cultural present of the province. In Quebec, sport is at once a catalyst, a proxy, and a mirror for the national question.
Social stratification or the widening of income gap between the rich and the poor becomes a serious predicament whenever Asian countries experience rapid urbanization and industrialization. The author explores the urbanization of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and the vulnerable groups created by its processes, notably, a new urban poor sector comprised of spontaneous immigrant groups. Vulnerable groups, defined as "individuals or households who have unstable lives", account for the swelling urban population, high crime incidence and social unrest. A thorough study of these groups could positively transform government policies and the public mind-set toward them. Four conditions are described as vulnerability factors: 1) weak policies of the leading party and the government, 2)problems in the household, 3) risk and sudden changes, and 4) lack of social capital. To measure social poverty, the concep.s of vulnerability and vulnerable groups are introduced as a quid pro quo of the quantitative indicator poverty line (Pl). Urbanization, through the conversion of agricultural lands into industrial and commercial zones, alters the job structure of the rural sector. Rural farmers struggle to adjust to new social circumstances. Moreover, the poor are disenfranchised of their rights to affect the government's decision-making process. The phenomenon of "virtual urban planning" emerges, as huge urban projects remain unfulfilled because of social impediments.
The study revisits the issue of identity and examines it within the political dispensation of the country during and after the recent elections in Zimbabwe. It is the assumption of the study that people shift identities and systematically switch between various political identities in an endeavour to position themselves strategically in different situations. In Zimbabwe, politics is not only about leadership and service delivery; it is about one's life chances, access to resources and even access to basic needs. Being identified by any particular political identity determines the opportunities and options available to an individual. The study also takes aboard an analysis of the most common indicators of identity in an attempt to uncover the politics of belongingness in Zimbabwe's political climate. Issues of dress and language are analysed to understand their contribution to Zimbabwean political identities. Case studies were largely drawn from Masvingo province with occasional reference to other parts of the country. Identities are crucial determinants in both macro and micro-politics characterizing resource distribution in Zimbabwe. Politics is crucial in resource distribution, and service delivery as supported by various examples which point to the politicization of resource distribution. Being labelled the Other, has implications on inclusion and exclusion in resource allocation.
National identities are social phenomena with concrete&mdash ; both political and social&mdash ; effects in society, but a fundamental part of their constitution takes place through narratives about the collective. The existence of collective identities thus depends on drawing boundaries between the collective &lsquo ; we&rsquo ; and the &lsquo ; others&rsquo ; as well as on disseminating coherent ideas about the fundamental identity of the we-group. These narratives thus constitute a privileged object for investigating how collective identities are constructed and legitimised in a discourse that places the collective in time, that is, with a coherent and logical narrative about the past and a trustworthy projection into the future. This article defends, first, the concept of the &lsquo ; master narrative&rsquo ; as a useful analytical category for investigating how national history is constructed, and, second, the concepts of &lsquo ; sites of memory&rsquo ; and &lsquo ; Vergangenheitsbewä ; ltigung&rsquo ; as means of accessing this narrative. These concepts represent instances of creation and rewriting, respectively, of the narrative and are thus useful tools for analysing how a sense of connectedness with the community through time is created: that is, how a sense of continuity with certain distant epochs is conveyed, and how, on the other hand, a sense of discontinuity with other periods is favoured.
In her vital 2003 work, Imagine Otherwise , Kandace Chuh argues for an intervention in Asian American studies using a transnational analytic. As globalization increases in the twenty-first century, the continued movement of peoples, capital, and cultures across the Pacific Rim in myriad forms ranging from traditional immigration to new global digital networks demonstrates the importance of continuing the use of a transnational paradigm in Asian American studies. Moreover, within this specifically transpacific framework, this study specifically focuses on the role of visual culture, in the form of the global circulation of film and film images. As Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy have argued for African American cultural identity, it is within this global circuit of film that minority communities and individuals have constructed their myriad cultural identities. Thus, this study considers the ways in which Asian American minority subjects interact within this transpacific network of global circulation of film. In other words, this project sits squarely at this intersection of these three theoretical strands: the transpacific, the role of visual culture, and the creation of an Asian American identity. Specifically, this study explores the various ways in which different works film and literature articulate both the realities and possibilities of new transpacific identities constructed within this web of global economic, political, and cultural exchanges. Moreover, in thinking about the role of movies and film is to also think about the distance between the spectacular nature of filmic imagery and the everyday lived reality of minority subjects. Furthermore, filmic imagery, especially the Hollywood film product that is the subject of this study, is often highly ideological, offering imagery and representations that both reflect and establish white hegemonic power and control. To this end, the novels of Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters , The Gangster of Love , and Dream Jungle serve to establish a paradigm for the relationship between film and its spectacular nature and the individual living in her quotidian reality. Thus, the different works in this study offer different ways in which individual identities are created both because of, and often in spite of, the spectacular constructions of Asians and Asian Americans.
Most of contemporary individual and social identities (constructed with societal, cultural and technological resources) are radically autonomous, nomadic and virtual - i.e. they are de-traditionalized, open to negotiation and not based on a single interpretation of a tradition. Identizations can be recycled - elements of former identities are being re-used in constructing later ones or identities emerging in one context can be implanted in another or hybridised - a nation state as a model for socio-political identity is a case in point (and so is its recent crisis). Values, political, cultural and social identities - elective identities of "nomads of the present", often emerging out of new social movements or informal networks - play an important role in determining choices of information codes, images and identities. Theories of clashes of civilizations and of fundamentalists versus modernists should be seen against the background of increasingly complex and successful attempts at global governance and increasing criticism of the ideologies of status quo. They may testify to the success of globalization instead of demonstrating its failure. The rise of religious fundamentalism and the emergence of network types of organization contribute to further acceleration of identization processes. "Girotondi della liberta" in Berlusconi's Italy and radical re-evaluation of cosmopolitanism as a family of images of representation are cases of emergent identizations with unclear but potentially critical political implications.
Ghana's current image of peace and stability is worthy of attention. Compared with its neighbours, Ghana seems to be going through a period of relative stability. Nevertheless the periodic flaring up of conflicts into serious violence has become a source of worry. The paper is an account of the emergence of particular identities and inequalities and their role in promoting instability, conflict and violence. The paper analysed the different elements of the Ghanaian political economy which encourage or discourage particular patterns of peaceful co-existence and conflict. Understanding the emergence and dynamics of certain identities in any place is complicated by a number of factors. Analysts who consider identities such as ethnicity to be primordial are correct in that identities are not simple to assume and discard. Inequalities tend to arise principally out of differences in economic development and to some extent endowment in natural resources. A glaring pattern of inequality in Ghana manifests itself in the North-South dichotomy in development. A number of studies have emphasized the broad disparity between the North and the South of the country in terms of levels of economic development and the general quality of life resulting in the relative backwardness of Northern Ghana in relation to Southern Ghana. Whereas this major divide has never generated conflict in Ghana, it is possible to identify different categories of continuous conflict, some of it violent. These includes inter-ethnic conflicts, mostly centred on control over land and other resources and sovereignty issues; intra ethnic conflicts around land ownership, competing uses of land and the siting of institutions and services, but mostly about chieftaincy succession; and conflicts between state institutions, such as the police and communities, over policing and law and order issues arising from communal conflicts and inter-personal disputes. Although such conflicts are in general similar to other conflicts that arise in the sub-region, it can be ...
Science instruction has largely avoided engaging students in political issues. Recent scholarship is drawing attention to the ways in which students' political identities influence science learning and the need for science learning that engages with students' political beliefs and values. In this Current Insights, I explore emerging work that provides a launching point for research and teaching at the intersection of political and science learning.
International audience ; The decision to go to war by the government of the day is assumed to be a decision taken on behalf of all citizens of the nation, conceived as a collective united by a harmony of interests. Yet in the case of the Iraq War, there is clearly no unified voice of support from the British people. There is division between the state and its citizens, and the latter also reflect the multilayered identities of an increasingly multicultural society. How do individuals displaying multilayered identities relate politically, socially and culturally to the abstract, unified idea of Britishness, and how does this impact upon perceptions concerning the legitimacy of state action?
Social impacts associated with new telecommunication innovations greatly affect both globalisation and territorial identities. Apparently contradictory trends bring with them elements of rapid social change and political uncertainty. This chapter reflects on the conjunction of both dimensions of the local and the global, and carries out a prescription of the progressive consolidation of a new cosmopolitan localism. A theoretical review of the concept of multiple identities precedes a subsequent discussion on the effects of globalisation, the extension of market values, and the relative loss of power by the nation states. Subsequently, the focus is set on the growing role played by the global mesocommunities. These can be small nation-states within regional supranational blocks, stateless minority nations, sub-state regions and large conurbations, and seem to be better equipped to maximise developments related to global action and local identities. References made to the European Union context seek to illustrate how the interaction of the processes of bottom-up transnationalisation and top-down devolution of powers have made possible a more effective access of civil society to multi-level decision-making. The new cosmopolitan localism translates into a growing adjustment between the particular and the general in the gradual development of Europeanisation. ; Peer reviewed
In the first section of this chapter a conceptual review of ideas and theoretical assumptions is presented. Ethnoterritoriality, collective identities and the territorial accommodation in plural societies are among the concepts analysed. In the second section, a reflection on the implications of globalization, the extension of market values and the relative loss of power and influence by the nation-state is put forward. The last section of this article focuses on the growing role played by those meso-level communities in Europe which have been able to make the general and the particular compatible. This development seems to be in line with a trend towards what can be labeled as a new cosmopolitan localism. ; Peer reviewed
