Repackaging national identity: Cool Japan and the resilience of Japanese identity narratives

‘Cool Japan’ is an instance of Japanese government's nation branding exercise as part of its soft power projection in which the unique selling point is identified as Japanese national identity. In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cool Japan and Japanese national identity and highlight a tension in the construction. Cool Japan is about emphasizing Japan's attractiveness for public diplomacy, while the top-down nature of the branding undermines the imagery that the branding is designed to convey. I show that policy elites resolve this tension by invoking the traditional Japanese identity narratives that construct Japan into both a non-Western and an un-Asian entity, reproducing the myth of Japanese uniqueness. I argue that the elite narratives surrounding Cool Japan readily replicate the language reminiscent of prewar identity construction. Despite the contemporary popularity of manga and anime, the purported ‘coolness’ of these products are framed within older constructions of Japanese Self that can trace their pedigree back to the nineteenth century. Using the minutes of committee meetings, policy documents, as well as media interviews given by policy- and business elites, I show that Cool Japan is effectively a twenty first century rendition of the familiar Japanese identity construction.     

The Soviet and the Post-Soviet: Street Names and National Discourse in Almaty

Abstract

While discussing Kazakhstan's post-Soviet identity, scholars treat ‘Kazakhisation’ as a given, and the substance of the process of developing such an identity is usually ignored. This article gives an insight into this process by analysing the politics of street names in Almaty and its relation to collective memory in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. It is argued that the so-called ‘Kazakhisation’ of the country has been shaped primarily by the Soviet legacy, and it is in no sense pursuing the elimination of the Soviet past, or moving essentially anti-Russian lines. In fact, the post-Soviet discourse of the Kazakh nation is not a rupture but a continuation of Soviet discourses.     

Identity and world order in India’s post-Cold War foreign policy discourse

This article examines the dominant conception of world order in India’s post-Cold War foreign policy discourse. Drawing on a poststructuralist, discourse-theoretical framework, I argue that the discourse uses foreign policy and world order as sites for the (re-)production of India’s identity by placing India into a system of differences that constitutes ‘what India is’. The article shows that India’s foreign policy discourse frames world order in accordance with India’s own national experiences and thus seeks to upheave India’s identity to a position from where it can represent the universal: a global political community. This notion of Indian Exceptionalism constitutes the affective dimension of the discourse that obscures the absence of an extra-discursive foundation on which national identities could be grounded by endowing the Self with an imaginary essence and seemingly unique qualities.     

Affective economies: Eastleigh's metalogistics,urban anxieties and the mapping of diasporic city life

Abstract

In this essay, we trace the national and religious anxieties that emerge with the influx of Somali refugees and capital investments into the Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh. More specifically, we look at how the ambiguity of Somali identity [citizen/refugee] in Kenya renders ineffective the state's attempt to police the circulation of the ‘Somali body’ and capital and how this becomes part of a quest for certitude that manifests itself in security discourse on the ‘Somali threat’ on one hand and a national/religious discourse on authentic Kenyanness. Through a reading of affective and moral economies, we illustrate how ‘Somali driven development’ and presence in Eastleigh, rather than act a source of national and religious anxieties can be seen as an opportunity to re-negotiate and re-evaluate both national and urban senses of community.     

Russia–Kazakhstan Relations in the Early Post-Soviet Era: Explaining the Roots of Cooperation

Abstract

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan was faced with domestic conditions that made cooperation with Russia rational. Kazakhstan inherited a large ethnic Russian population and a severe economic depression. These conditions affected other countries emerging from the Soviet Union, but only Belarus matched Kazakhstan’s level of strategic cooperation with Russia. President Nursultan Nazarbaev’s dominance of Kazakhstan’s national security agenda offers a partial explanation for the cooperation, but we still need to ask what makes him different from the leaders of other post-Soviet countries that faced the same conditions. Kazakhstan’s pattern of historical development provides the key to understanding the cooperation. The timing of the country’s contact and experiences with the Russian-led empires led to a ‘dominant ally’ image of Russia that continues to decide the two countries’ relationship to the present day.     

‘My Poor People,Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Although Islam is described as a fundamental aspect of Kyrgyz national identity, its theological aspects are generally elided in nationalist discourse. However, as Islam becomes more prominent in Kyrgyz society, anxieties about ‘Arabisation’ and the weakening of national traditions permeate popular and political discourse. These anxieties operate simultaneously in the national and religious registers, suggesting the extent to which theological beliefs inform national identity, even in secular states. Examining a recent controversy over veiling in Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that theology is both linked to nationality and also a site of contestation over the terms of nationalism itself.     

Russian-speaking Belarusian Nationalism: An Ethnolinguistic Identity Without a Language?

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.     

Prisoners' Wives in Post-Soviet Russia: ‘For my Husband I am Pining!’

The identity of a prisoner's wife is often a shameful societal stigma. Yet Russia's unique history of imprisonment has provided an unusually positive trope for women who have to come to terms with their partners' incarceration: the ‘Decembrist wife’ (dekabristka). This trope originated in the aftermath of the 1825 ‘Decembrist’ uprising—the first anti-monarchist revolt in modern Russian history. A handful of wives of the perpetrators voluntarily joined their husbands in Siberian exile and, in leaving behind families and comforts, created a precedent to be glorified for future generations. Upheld in Russian national mythology as a model of the exemplary wife, the dekabristka identity lives on. This paper examines its enduring power and significance in contemporary Russia.     

Hungary and the European Union: The political implications of societal security promotion

Hungary's constitutional commitment to support kin-nationals beyond its borders (nation policy) has been a central feature of its post-1989 foreign policy and highlights a particularly important national security concern—the societal security of national identity, culture, language and tradition. This article examines Hungary's societal security concerns and the policy methods it utilises, including its EU membership and the promotion of minority rights at the European level, to help combat these concerns. It is suggested that Hungary has found it somewhat difficult to balance its societal security policy objective with internal economic demands on its welfare system and its external foreign policy objective to maintain good neighbourly relations. This article also notes that Hungary's attempts to Europeanise, or rather ‘EU-ise’, minority and ethnic rights issues as a means to enhance societal security for the Hungarian nation has certain political consequences for the EU. This suggests that societal security provision is an issue that cannot be overlooked when trying to understand the longer-term implications of EU eastern enlargement.     

Denial and Distancing in Discourses of Development: shadow of the ‘Third World’ in New Zealand

Abstract

Anxieties about development in New Zealand show up in a deep-rooted fear of the ‘Third World’ in the country. We examine how the term ‘Third World’ is deployed in media discourses in economic, social and environmental contexts and how this deployment results in a ‘discursive distancing’ from anything associated with the ‘Third World’. Such distancing demonstrates a fragile national identity that struggles with the contradictions between the nation's desire to be part of the ‘First World’ of global capitalism and the growing disparities in health and wealth within it. The shadow of the ‘Third World’ prevents New Zealand from confronting the realities of its own inequities, which in turn comes in the way of a sound development agenda.     

A genealogy of EU discourses and practices of deliberative governance: Beyond states and markets?

The article offers a genealogy of ‘deliberative governance’ in the EU—an important contemporary discourse and practice of ‘throughput legitimacy’ within that setting. It focuses on three key episodes: the late 1990s ‘Governance’ reports of the European Commission's in‐house think‐tank, the Forward Studies Unit (FSU); the Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance; and the EU's ‘Open Method of Coordination’, which emerged in the 1990s and was widely studied in the early and mid‐2000s. The genealogy serves to highlight the particular intellectual lineages and political contingencies associated with such a discourse and in so doing points to its exclusive potential in both theory and practice. In particular, the article argues that it excludes, on the one hand, those championing the enduring sociological and normative importance of the nation state and an associated representative majoritarianism and, on the other hand, those (excessively) critical of a functionalist, neoliberal, market‐making status quo.     

National in Form,Putinist in Content: Minority Institutions ‘Outside Politics’

Abstract

Over the past three decades, Russia has developed a set of institutions for the management of ethno-linguistic diversity based on the principle of ‘national cultural autonomy’. This article examines the positioning of these institutions within Russian society, arguing that while state-endorsed discourses locate them within the culture sphere—treated as distinct from political processes—there is in fact an interpenetration of ‘politics’ and ‘culture’. The article identifies why these institutions position themselves within the ‘cultural sphere’ while also supporting the country’s meta-narratives on inter-ethnic tolerance and, effectively, the political status quo. Soviet legacies of inter-ethnic relations continue to be socially embedded, yet within this framework some dissenting voices are also discerned.     

‘For you were strangers’: Jewish ritual,black musics,and commemorative politics in Tel Aviv’s Refugee Seder

ABSTRACT

Each Passover since 2009, hundreds of East African asylum seekers and Israeli activists have gathered for ‘Refugee Seder’, a public event to support Sudanese and Eritrean communities in Israel. Featuring a ceremonial seder meal, storytelling, speeches, and a dance party, Refugee Seder draws on age-old Jewish rituals and contemporary global black pop musics to symbolize Africans as members of the Israeli national collective. This article explores Refugee Seder’s modified commemorative practices, which engage dual narratives of Jewish nationalism and cultural cosmopolitanism. I show how seder rituals enable African participants to temporarily embody a Jewish spiritual identity, and how black pop musics help publicly reframe Africans’ ‘blackness’ as a cultural asset instead of a political liability. Ultimately, I argue that Refugee Seder distills larger ideologies of identity and belonging that are deeply rooted in Israeli collective consciousness, and which shape the trajectories of ‘refugee issue’ politics and policy-making.     

Diversity in Daugavpils: Unpacking Identity and Cultural Engagement among Minority School Youth in Eastern Latvia

Abstract

Studies of minority ‘integration’ often focus heavily on group boundaries of ethnicity, language and identity. This essay challenges these conventional approaches in Latvia by examining individuals’ quotidian, lived experiences and how these transcend common analytical boundaries. Using the Daugavpils region as a case study, I explore Russian speaker and Latvian participation in events explicitly linked with ‘ethnic’ Latvian cultural identity. I argue, by adopting multifaceted analytical measures of identities, ethnicity and belonging, new perspectives on banal integration and minority engagement within national culture emerge. Individuals engage with each other and with ‘national’ identity and culture in complex ways. Young ‘Russian speakers’ are often more integrated with their ethnic Latvian peers than the extant literature suggests, both civically and in Latvia’s cultural sphere, as consumers and producers of Latvian ‘national’ identity.     

The Concepts of State and Society in Defining Russia’s Domestic Political Unity: A Research Note

Abstract

Vladimir Putin’s long period in power has so far raised scant discussion about the political concepts that underpin real state and societal unity, and especially about the domestic political implications of these concepts. Despite this, key concepts of his political regime, such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign democracy’, have frequently been used in Russian political discourse. This essay examines the way the current Russian administration has used concepts that stress strong societal unity, and the creation of a stable state and societal unity to support the development of real functioning dynamics in the society. It charts the shift from ‘sovereign democracy’ to ‘sovereignty’ around 2011–2012 as a key discursive concept in moving towards a more isolationist international stand and consolidating Putin’s power by emphasising Russia’s unique political tradition, which requires a strong leader as the basis of national unity and to ensure Russian sovereignty.     

Where Do I Belong? Narratives of Rodina among Russian-speaking Youth in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This essay engages critically with the personal narratives of rodina (home, motherland) among Russian-speaking youth in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. It is argued that the concept of rodina as an important locus of belonging cannot be imbued with a single meaning; instead, it is characterised by internal conflicts and variations. Supported by empirical material, the essay moves beyond the confines of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ to illustrate the different ways in which Russian speakers frame their perception of rodina, and how such narratives can influence the construction of self- and community-identification.     

The Precariat: a view from the South

The term ‘precariat’—a precarious proletariat—has achieved considerable prominence in recent years and is probably now ripe for critical deconstruction. It also needs to be situated in terms of a genealogy that includes the marginality debates of the 1960s, the later informal sector problematic and the ‘social exclusion’ optic that became dominant in the 1980s. I will argue that the concept is highly questionable both as an adequate sociology of work in the North and insofar as it elides the experience of the South in an openly Eurocentric manner. In terms of political discourse I think we should avoid the language of ‘dangerous class’, as deployed by Guy Standing to situate workers politically in the policy world as though frightening the ruling classes was a strategy for transformation.     

Media Discourse and the Quality of Democracy in Serbia after Milošević

Abstract

The article examines the quality of democracy in Serbia via the quantitative analysis of media discourse. It reveals robust competition, participation and accountability in the first decade after regime change, followed by major recent decline, thus showing that expert assessments from influential indices of democracy underrated democratic quality in the former period and overrated it later. Also revealed are the advantages of complementing expert assessments with those based on media discourse. The content analysis examined 1,921 coded items from print and electronic media coverage of major political conflicts at strategic points in the country’s democratisation.     

The Ukrainian–Russian Linguistic Dyad and its Impact on National Identity in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay asks what place language holds in the composition of Ukrainian national identity and whether the use of Ukrainian and Russian across Ukraine indicates a split in identity. Despite acknowledging the potential of these two languages to generate political cleavages, the essay shows that language controversies have not necessarily impeded the population’s attachment and loyalty to the Ukrainian state. Moreover, the increasingly civic nature of Ukrainian national identity—particularly since Euromaidan—appears to be an important factor that allows people to speak Russian and still identify strongly with the Ukrainian nation.