Redefining the Nation: Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey

While Greek and Turkish nationalisms have followed diverse historical paths, they share several features. Following the model of Zimmer, this study explores how inclusive and exclusive boundary mechanisms have shaped Greek and Turkish national identity and which symbolic resources were utilized in these processes. It is argued that a shift from the use of voluntaristic to that of organic boundary mechanisms has characterized both Greek and Turkish nationalisms and influenced the definition of national ‘self’ and ‘other’. This study aims to track a pattern of historic-political conditions which favour a shift from voluntaristic towards organic models of defining the nation and discuss possible future trends.     

Knowledge production and the construction of ‘Africa(ns)’ in the Caribbean

Abstract

There is a considerable lack of awareness of the interrelated nature of human activities due to insufficient information. A community without relevant information or public sensitivity to participation, in fostering a sense of personal environmental responsibility and greater motivation towards achieving personal goals, becomes problematic. Using the poststructuralist theory, this article takes a qualitative approach to analyse discourses and people's reaction to an ‘insecure’ environment within South African communities. It examines organisations which provide support to empower communities through education in Cape Town. One assumption here is that people gain knowledge about themselves, their environment and others around them, if they are empowered. The focus thus is on educational schemes and activities that communities and organisations undertake to challenge, accept and negotiate their ideological positions. The inventiveness and responses of the organisations considered, through the local communities and pupils, are therefore significant as they enable an understanding of the challenges encountered in democratic South Africa, including the causes of xenophobia. Ultimately, the consequences of ignorance about one's environment are detrimental to both neighbouring communities and people at large. The local communities considered expressed this sentiment while implicating the government's role in depriving its people of vital socio-cultural and politico-economic information.     

‘Social Investment’ or Back to ‘Familism’: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Family and Care Policies in Italy and Spain

Family policies have traditionally been weak in Southern Europe. In the last two decades, however, and following a ‘catching up’ course, Spain has created new family programmes and expanded existing ones. Meanwhile, the picture for Italy during the years preceding the crisis is more of a ‘frozen landscape’. However, the diverging paths of the two countries in terms of policy reform in the years preceding the crisis do not place them in substantially different positions. The economic crisis and the austerity measures that followed have aggravated the weaknesses of family and care policies in both countries.     

The Worst Is Not over Yet: The Lives and Deaths of the ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ in Brazil's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper focuses on the politics of life and death in Bolsonaro's Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is argued that while this administration, and the president himself, have long supported violence against individuals and social groups they did not see as fully human, their response to the pandemic marked a public transition from valuing certain kinds of lives as opposed to others, to a general contempt for human lives. The paper explores this transition by discussing the reification of the economy to the detriment of the people who produce and consume.     

Norman Lindsay and the ‘Asianisation’ of the German Soldier in Australia during the First World War

Abstract

From the beginning of the First World War, atrocity stories about German depredations against Belgian civilians circulated throughout the Allied world. Caricatures of German soldiers rapidly degenerated into depictions of monstrous ‘Huns’ who were subhuman beasts, prone to acts of rapine and banditry. The most prominent producer of ‘Hun’ cartoons in Australia was artist Norman Lindsay, who published extensively throughout the war. Through an analysis of the antecedents of Lindsay’s monstrous ‘Hun’, this article will demonstrate that the rapid creation of the ‘Hun’ in Australia was made possible by the pre-existing racial caricatures of non-European people that were popular during this period. Chinese and Japanese people who were excluded from Australia by the White Australia policy were the previous targets of Norman Lindsay’s racial caricatures; as stories of German atrocities filtered into Australia, Lindsay transferred traits of Asians on to the German ‘Hun’, thus transforming him into the enemy ‘Other’. These traits were products of British imperial propaganda, and part of an ideology that asserted it was the job of the white man to civilise the barbaric coloured man. By ‘Asianising’ the German, Lindsay used a well understood language of racial caricature to reduce the German to the status of a barbarian. Race was therefore one of the central paradigms through which Australian propaganda operated.     

‘Unsatisfactory national identity’: School inspectors,education and national identity in interwar Latvia

Abstract

The trajectory of the school system in inter-war independent Latvia was a microcosm of the larger experiences of the state. The devastation of World War I and the battles that followed undermined seriously the capacity of the new state. The first post-war years were spent laboriously rebuilding from near abject ruin. After initial reonstruction passed, however, the dominant concerns became what was to be taught and how in Latvia's schools. The process of this debate and the at times conflicting, at times complimentary, demands of schoolteachers, school inspectors, local government officials, teachers, and students built a modern, effective school system. This school system reflected an inreasingly sophisticated pedagogy, a professionalism of schoolteachers, and impressive construction of schools.

The content of schools, however, was also severely contested. With the Depression of the early 1930s the opinions of some quarters of society became more emphatic in identifying a great crisis in society, a crisis that demanded more authoritarian action, a return to traditionalism, and increased importance on nationalist content. This trend supported and was supported by the Ulmanis regime, which considerably restructured the school system, the state, and society at large in the last half of the 1930s.

This article relies primarily on archival sources drawn most from school inspectors' reports and other officials within and around the Ministry of Education.     

Syria,Saudi Arabia,the U.A.E. and Qatar: the ‘sectarianization’ of the Syrian conflict and undermining of democratization in the region

Understanding the Syrian conflict only in terms of sectarian politics amounts to dismissing a very modern effort at emancipation within the context of the country’s populace fighting for its civil, political and economic rights, and in the process robs Syrians of their agency and diminishes their humanity. A closer look at events and political alignments in Syria reveals a more complex picture better understood through the lens of regimes’ desire to counteract the dissident and reformist dynamics that emerged with the Arab Spring. And while this paper is most certainly not minimizing the fact that the sectarian discourse and animosity, once activated, acquired its own dynamic, it underlines that this is not a case of so-called ancient sectarian rivalries emerging unprompted and of their own accord. As a result, the Syrian crisis and the regional ramifications of it can be appreciated as not simply identity politics writ large, but as an example of the authoritarian resilience paradigm in action. In making these arguments, this paper examines the interplay of the domestic and regional policies of three actors involved directly in the Syrian conflict: the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. (considered as a unitary actor within the context of the Syrian crisis), and Qatar.     

From AKP’s ‘Conservative Democracy’ to ‘Advanced Democracy’: Shifts and Challenges in the Debate on ‘Europe’

Abstract

Following the AKP’s victory in the 2002 general elections, ‘conservative democracy’ has emerged as a trademark in Turkish politics, focusing on cosmopolitanism and European integration. In the late 2000s, the party’s favourite notion was ‘advanced democracy’, this time underlining Turkey’s leadership claim in the region and displaying a more critical approach to ‘Europe’. In this paper, I aim to show how different narratives on ‘Europe’ emerged within the context of these empty signifiers. The paper claims that the difference in the two narratives on ‘Europe’ in two different periods does not point to a complete and fully fledged de-Europeanisation trend.     

Constitutionalism and federalism in the ‘future of Europe’ debate: the German dimension

This paper examines some of the constitutional aspects of the ‘Future of Europe’ reform process in the light of interactions between German and ‘European’ federalism. Many aspects of the traditions of German federalism and German post-war constitutionalism have been influential, if not to say formative, for the evolution of the EU. These aspects are set out as a frame for the paper, before more detailed analysis of the constitutional process and a particular focus on the division of competences. The constitutional outcome reveals clear German ‘fingerprints’, though that finding needs to be balanced by a recognition of the constitutional debate as multi-perspectival, involving all member states both separately and collectively.     

Reflecting on Social Movement Unionism in Hong Kong: The Case of the Dockworkers’ Strike in 2013

By analysing the 2013 Hong Kong dockworkers’ strike, this article explores how workers, precariously situated in the world’s freest economy, fight for decent wages with the support of civil society. It is argued that the trade union movement in Hong Kong, a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China, is a typical example of social movement unionism. It suggests that the rise of social movement unionism in Hong Kong was a practical strategy of social activists to support labour rights under the specific context of vulnerable structural power, weak institutional power, failed political unionism and a vibrant civil society. Social movement unionism has a “double-edged sword” effect on workers’ power: on the one hand, it has the potential to create societal power and strengthen associational power; on the other hand, it may compromise workers’ militancy and the possibility of stronger workplace bargaining power during workers’ struggle.     

The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism in Nineteenth-Century British Discourses: Visions of the Turk, ‘Young’ and ‘Old’

This article examines the evolving British perceptions of the Ottoman Empire from the onset of the Tanzimat to Abdülhamid II. The article aims to attest the emergence of a positive image of the ‘reforming Turk’ and the erosion of this positive assessment following the disillusionment with the achievements of Tanzimat. The article discusses the Christian dimensions of the positive and negative attitudes towards the Ottomans and ‘moral racism’ inherent in both the positive and negative assessments. The article ends with concluding that this reference framework from which the British discourses on the Ottomans derived had eclipsed with the demise of the British nineteenth-century political elite and culture in tandem with the waning of the Ottoman political culture and elite.     

The Return of ‘Social Europe’: Ideas and Positions of German Parties towards the Future of European Integration

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Eastern Europe since 1945. By Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993. £10 pb.

Revolution in East‐Central Europe. The Rise and Fall of Communism and the Cold War. By David S. Mason. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1992. £9.50 pb.

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Developments in Eastern European Politics. Edited by Stephen White, Judy Batt and Paul G. Lewis. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993. £11.99 pb.     

‘We’, ‘they’ and the ‘human’ in the middle: foreign interventions for ‘humanitarian reasons’ during the nineteenth century in Turkish historiography

This paper explores the way in which historiography produced in Turkey (or by Turkish scholars abroad) approaches foreign military/diplomatic interventions in the Ottoman Empire during the long nineteenth century. It focuses on three case studies where ‘humanitarian reasons’ formed the discursive basis/justification of such interventions. The author argues that when the distinction between victims and perpetrators, civilians and combatants, emerges as an interpretive dilemma in the debates of the historical period examined, similar interpretive and normative challenges are inherited by the historiographical accounts of it. The paper distinguishes two contrasting ways in which Turkish historiographical scholarship responds to such a dilemma. The first remains confined by the way Ottomans themselves viewed the world around them and uncritically reproduces rigid categories of selfhood and otherhood between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The second trajectory offers tools for understanding the conflicts behind the construction of the category of the human worth of international protection, and disentangles itself from the normative bind described above.     

From the Achaemenids to Somoni: national identity and iconicity in the landscape of Dushanbe’s capitol complex

This article focuses on the iconicity of contemporary Dushanbe’s capitol complex, with its state-sponsored architecture and memorial culture, part of the government of Tajikistan’s national identity construction. Dushanbe’s architecture post-independence is actant, a mnemonic and iconographical bridge between the present and favoured historical periods in a quest for national origins. A bricolage of historical symbols, including those of Achaemenid Iran and the early Islamic Samanids, is displayed here in a city with Soviet foundations. Together with pan-Iranian iconography is a desire by the government of Tajikistan for monumentality for its own sake. The capitol complex evokes the natural world, connected to a Central Asian conception of sacred space, suggesting an interlacing of power and religious authority. These monumental building projects are taking place against the backdrop of the destruction of Dushanbe’s ‘authentic’ Soviet architecture and built heritage in the capitol complex, itself a container for collective memory.     

Identity creation and the culture of contrition: Recasting ‘normality’ in the Berlin Republic

This paper considers transformations in the concept of national identity post‐unification. In particular, it is interested in examining the changed status of the NS past in contemporary formulations of national identity. Whilst during the Historikerstreit conservative thinkers predicated the plea for conventional patriotism upon a ‘normalisation’ or ‘reladvisation’ of the NS past, left‐liberal discourse based the case for a post‐national Verfassungspatriotismus upon the critical engagement with the NS period. The collapse of the Cold War political framework has profoundly altered the polarised discourse over the German past and during the 1990s the critical consciousness of National Socialism became a central tenet of contemporary formulations of national identity. The paper attempts to place the contemporary discourse on national identity within a broader historical context and to consider reasons for recent transformations in perceptions of the German national past.     

‘Heart-Beguiling Araby’ on the Frontier of Empire: Early Anglo-Arab Relations in Transjordan

In 1920 the British government of Palestine sent six officers to establish a British presence in Transjordan. Lacking military and financial support, they could not possibly control a country populated by more than 200,000 tribespeople, many of them members of powerful tribal confederacies. The key to explaining why the British chose this unorthodox way to takeover a new territory lies in the special attitude towards Arabia entertained by the British following World War One. British policy derived from an alleged cultural affinity between the British and the ‘Bedouin’, coupled with a colonial tradition of attributing British administrators with a ‘natural’ ability to rule over natives. These two myths gave the British an inflated belief in their ability to rule local society. Drawing on official reports, private papers and local accounts, this article shows that the British grossly misunderstood local conditions and could not deal with the tribal communities that frustrated their attempt to assert British influence.