The Effects of Interethnic Contact on Ethnic Identity: Evidence from Latvia

A specialist on interethnic conflict investigates Russians and Latvians in post-Soviet Latvia to specify the conditions under which ethnic groups converge and diverge. The relationship between contact and identity is examined through the use of several kinds of demographic data, including data on school choice, mixed marriages, changes in registered "nationality," and emigration. The analysis is used to consider the effects of interethnic contact on ethnic identity and the issue of ethnic identity and change.     

Rein Taagepera: The vanguard of the Baltic thinking class

This article constructs a picture of change and stasis in cultures of gender in Latvia and theorizes the effect of these gender cultures on practices of family formation in the early post-communist period. Drawing in particular on women's perspectives, it offers an analysis grounded in gender and culture of the decline of marriage and the rise of non-marital births. The work argues that a narrative of male ‘marriageability’ has evolved as a component of feminine gender culture and offers one possible lens for analyzing post-communist demographic changes. While this research focuses on Latvia, the demographic trends noted have also characterized neighboring states.     

The New Dynamic of Blockbuster Exhibitions: The Case of Brazilian Museums

Many European and North American museums have increasingly adapted to the new communication era. They have opened up a new cultural flux and attract millions of visitors each year. In Brazil, we have observed in recent years the acceptance of new temporary and international exhibits. What is the meaning of the new exhibiting strategies, since the most important and traditional national museums still face stagnation? Can they be considered as part of a process of democratisation and reflexivity or accused of capitulating to the consumer society? This article proposes to analyse the production, diffusion and reception of recent Brazilian exhibitions. This analysis will be carried out in relation to the hierarchy of norms, values and practices present in Brazilian society.     

Todos somos indígenas: Towards a New Language of National Political Identity

One of the most striking aspects of ‘Red October’ was the central role played by indigenous groups and their leaders who were largely able to set the agenda of protest. This paper explores how the concept of indigeneity as a mobilising concept has moved from the periphery of the political arena to centre stage. Two indigenous leaders played significant roles: whereas the political rhetoric of Felipe Quispe is exclusionary and particularistic, Evo Morales's rhetoric is inclusive and broad. Indigenous identity as articulated by indigenous leaders is contrasted to the identities expressed by rural people and raises the question of how indigeneity is defined and by whom.     

Re‐articulating Identity: The Shifting Landscape of Indigenous Politics and Power on the Ecuadorian Coast

The Levantamiento Indígena of 1990 was a defining moment in the advancement of indigenous politics in Ecuador. Following the uprising of 1990, scholars have paid close attention to the politics of identity and indigenous representation in Ecuador with the main focus being placed on the highland and Amazonian regions of the country. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ecuador's Manabí province, this article provides preliminary insight into the growth of an indigenous discourse on the Ecuadorian coast. I focus on the process of re‐indigenisation in the coastal community of Macaboa. This research is significant because while a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to indigenous movements in Ecuador's highland and Amazonian regions, indigenous politics on the coast have gone largely unnoticed. The case outlined in this article is emblematic of the shifting nature of identity and the way in which ethnic discourses are increasingly being adopted by marginalised groups in their attempts to negotiate with the state.     

Looking from South Africa to the World: A Story of Identity for our Times

The article is a consideration of the question of identity in South Africa, and also in a global context. Just as South Africa has looked to the world in order to understand its place, so too the world might look to South Africa to illuminate patterns less immediately visible elsewhere. Far from being unrepresentative in the apartheid period, South Africa was the ‘state of exception’ that incarnated and concentrated global realities; equally in the current era the reciprocal relations between the South African and the global evoke haunting concerns. The article begins with a consideration of the ‘classic’ generation of anti-apartheid activists, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bram Fischer, as they fashioned a new sense of South African identity. Yet it goes on to consider what happens when the classic period is over, and older definitions and oppositions are no longer available. Here the navigations of fiction, both in South Africa and elsewhere, become significant, and the article examines the work of writers from Gordimer, Coetzee and Ndebele, to Caryl Phillips and W. G. Sebald. It ends with a contemplation of the current period, nearly twenty years after the democratic transition in South Africa. In the era of the Marikana massacre and other pressing developments, both music and fiction open up some of the ambiguities and obligations. Drawing on Agamben, I suggest the intrinsic mutuality of the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ in establishing a more promising—and challenging—sense of belonging and identity both in South Africa and the world.     

The titularization of Latvian secondary schools: The historical legacy of Soviet policy implementation

Abstract

Few would deny that the Soviet occupation has had an effect on post-restoration policy making and implementation in Latvia. Indeed, many commentators of post-Soviet politics insist that we must come to terms with the Soviet to understand the post-Soviet. In our view, the effects of the Soviet legacy on the policy process are clearly apparent in post-restoration Latvia, specifically in the area of language education policy. This article argues that both Soviet and post-Soviet policy making and implementation can be characterized in three ways: duplicity, a Soviet ethos, and “professionalization”. In what follows, we first engage with the Soviet policy process in general and the 1958–59 education reforms specifically. Based on interviews with education professionals, teachers and parents, we then analyze Latvian education laws and their implementation in 2004, highlighting the legacy of Soviet governance.     

The Institutional Roots of Anti-Corruption Policies: Comparing the Three Baltic States

The idea to establish Independent Anti-Corruption Agencies (IACAs) first appeared on the international agenda in the late 1990s, and has since become a powerful subject for discourse. Responses to this idea have varied among the Baltic states. We ask why and compare the development of Baltic strategies and institutions. Our discussion focuses on how national political systems, perceptions of and discourse surrounding corruption, and external pressures on domestic structures have influenced the initial institutional choice. The resulting policies look very much alike, despite their differing points of departure.     

Indigeneity in the Air: The Case of Chinchero Airport in Cusco,Peru

This article problematises ‘indigeneity’ by looking at the various disruptions, conflicts and fractures that the recent sale of the land for the construction of the new Cusco international airport in Chinchero, Peru, has triggered locally. In addition to examining the erosion of the peasant community model that emerged from the 1969 agrarian reform, it explores the formation of new social groupings in a context of tourism and neoliberal development. The discussion highlights the role of tourism-related, large-scale infrastructure in the production of new identity politics that challenges fixed and preconceived ideas about ‘the indigenous’ in the Andes.     

Sino-Japanese Energy Security and Regional Stability: The Case of the East China Sea Gas Exploration

The Sino-Japanese dispute over the East China Sea maritime resources was triggered by the unsettled maritime boundary and the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. The dispute has been ascribed by many to intensified competition between China and Japan over energy supply. However this article attributes the fundamental cause of the conflict to power politics and political distrust, which are deemed to have the key role in preventing the two governments from finding a solution. The article analyses the origin and the causes responsible for the Sino-Japanese dispute over the East China Sea gas exploration, and then proceeds to investigate the diplomatic dialogues to reveal the key obstacles in the process.

Imposing Identity against Social Catastrophes. The Strategies of (Re)Generation of Meaning of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Argentina)

This article explores the processes of definition, construction and social management of collective identity in situations of social catastrophe such as that defined in the Southern Cone of Latin America following the grave human rights violations that occurred in the 1970s, especially those deriving from the forced disappearance of persons. This form of repression creates deep wounds in the social fabric affected and, besides this, produces what could be called a ‘catastrophe’, that is, a permanent confusion of the mechanisms of social construction of meaning and subjectivity within which one lives. In this case, the catastrophe affects several collective goods and, principally, the social bases of modern identity construction. In order to manage these catastrophes, the subjects that inhabit the social spaces formed around them – in this case those who live in the field of the detained–disappeared – develop very different strategies, with the most widespread in the Argentinean case being what I will call the ‘narrative of meaning’. This is a hard and conservative strategy that confronts the catastrophe of identity by employing identity constructions supported on old narratives of the family and biological heritage. This article is dedicated to an analysis of this socially successfully strategy and studies the form it adopts in the work of constructing identity of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.     

The use of oral data on life and thought in independent Latvia: A proposal for research

This article provides both historical and ethnographic views of Eastern religion in Lithuania. The historical component is an examination of the evolution of Lithuanian interest in Eastern religions from nineteenth-century studies of Indo-European comparative linguistics and mythology, which linked pre-Christian Lithuanian religion with India and Hinduism, to increasing literary, scholarly and popular interest in India and Asia in the twentieth century, before, during and after Soviet occupation. The ethnographic aspect utilizes fieldwork and interviews to examine three Eastern-inspired religious movements, (Pagan) Romuva, (Hindu) Krishna Consciousness, and (Buddhist) Diamond Way, demonstrating three different adaptations of Eastern religion in Lithuania.     

Millions of Small Battles: The Peronist Resistance in Argentina

This article studies the working‐class clandestine political organisation known as the Peronist resistance. Created after Argentine President Juan Perón was overthrown in 1955, the resistance movement was much more than a reaction to the limitations imposed on the organisation of unions. It signalled the birth of a new paradigm of political and cultural resistance firmly anchored in the household and the neighbourhood. Looking into the cultural dimensions of violence, the study shows how violence functioned as a creative force, producing transformations in political agency and cultural practices that reached into the Peronist household and shaped mourning rituals and the politics of martyrdom.     

The cultural baggage of Khorezmian identity: traditional forms of singing and dancing in Khorezm and in Tashkent

After Uzbekistan gained its independence from Soviet rule, important political and economic changes took place. The mobility of the population has since then increased drastically and created new spaces for the negotiation of social identities as well as new strategies for identity politics among the culturally and regionally diverse population of Uzbekistan. This article aims to contribute to the discussions on social identity and its ‘contents’ in the light of migration processes. The main argument centres on the importance of what Barth called the ‘cultural stuff’ of social identities when maintaining boundaries during identification processes. The analysis focuses specifically on certain singing and dancing practices of Khorezmians. It shows how these practices survive, but are also transformed in the context of Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, where people from different regions reside together and are engaged in performing and presenting their own group identity in reference to ‘others’.     

A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of 'Anglo' and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US–Mexico Border

In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, 'Anglos' and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential 'others'. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo‐Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an 'Anglo' farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that 'Anglo' hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including 'Mexicanisation') and patron‐client relations entailing 'benevolent' paternalism. I show how the concept of 'Anglo' is a contested identity constructed through interactions between Mexicans and Euroamericans. Through this study of border crossings in situations of asymmetrical power relations, I advocate a 'complicit' anthropology that presents competing ethnic groups in their full complexity rather than as stereotypes or caricatures of their 'others.'     

The Messiness of Everyday Life: Exploring Key Themes in Latin American Citizenship Studies Introduction

This section seeks to provide a brief theoretical framework for the study of citizenship in Latin America by focusing on two characteristics which are of relevance to the essays collected here: belonging and political agency. It then goes on to discuss some key themes which emerge from a reading of the collected articles: methodology; civilisation and deviation; citizenship as the organisation of subordinate inclusion; popular ideas of citizenship as 'fairness'; role of public performance in defining political relationships.     

The civilised Self and the barbaric Other: ex-rebels making sense of sexual violence in the DR Congo

This article addresses discourses on gender and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Based on discussions with 101 ex-combatants, we examine how former FDLR members make sense of sexual violence by studying prevailing gendered images of Self and Other. This analysis of potential perpetrators' mindset is part of the puzzle to find preventive measures. The findings demonstrate that ex-combatants attribute overwhelming power to biological ‘givens’ such as ‘urges’, ‘basic needs’ and ‘domination’ in their interpretation of sexuality. They also differentiate themselves from out-groups - enemy fighters and other nationals, especially Congolese - by attributing the latter with lower degrees of restraint. These insights demonstrate that a process of Othering is at work at the intersection of sex-gender-nation within the Congolese warscape, which complicates existing knowledge of sexual violence. The findings also suggest that the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of sexual violence in war needs to place the notion of intersectionality central stage.     

From the Port of Ventspils to Great Courland Bay: The Couronian Colony on Tobago in Past and Present

In the seventeenth century, Duke Jakob Kettler of Courland embraced the mercantile theories of his age and engaged in overseas colonialism. After several aborted attempts, the Courlanders managed to establish a settlement on Tobago in 1654 only to lose it to the Dutch five years later. European competitors and indigenous resistance frustrated the Duke’s attempts to regain control over the colony. Despite its limited scope and success, the Couronian colonization of Tobago left a strong impact on the historical imagination. This paper aims to document the traces and remembrances of Duke Jakob’s Caribbean endeavor on Tobago as well as in Latvia.     

传媒监察力——以澳门报刊为例的分析

传媒监察力体现了在社会运行中传媒与政府的互动关系 ,传媒对政府的有力监察有助于一个社会的良性发展。本文选取了澳门报刊作为案例 ,通过对其回归前后监察力状况的分析 ,讨论了传媒监察力不足的原因 ,并展望了它的前景。     

中国-东盟自由贸易区争端解决机制之探讨--以比较研究为视角

建立行之有效的争端解决机制是区域经济组织有效运作的保证.本文通过对欧盟、北美自由贸易区、东盟自由贸易区三大区域性经济组织各具代表性的争端解决模式与中国-东盟自由贸易区的争端解决机制进行比较研究,探讨中国-东盟自由贸易区争端解决机制的性质、特点.