Changing perception of homeland for the Kazakh diaspora

There is a sizable Kazakh diaspora living in Turkey and Europe. Since their initial migration, these Kazakhs have been involved in actions aiming to preserve their group's cultural and ethnic boundaries. By studying these actions and related discourses, this article seeks to explain how these groups formulated and reformulated their identities and loyalties in their host states over generations. Many Kazakhs in Turkey and Europe originally came from Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) and considered this area their homeland. However, Kazakhstan's independence in 1991 led to an important change in their homeland orientation and, after 1991, the activities of an increasing number of Kazakh diaspora organizations shifted toward Kazakhstan as the homeland. Therefore, this article focuses mainly on two periods: the period before and the period after Kazakhstan's independence. The fieldwork was conducted in Turkey, Germany, France, and the Netherlands and includes interviews with leaders of Kazakh diaspora organizations and other members of the diaspora.     

Why (most) Indonesian businesses fear the ASEAN Economic Community: struggling with Southeast Asia’s regional corporatism

By the end of 2015 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had ushered in a common market, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). However, the groups most affected by it – small businesses – were bypassed in the decision-making process. They are the victims of a selectively inclusive state corporatism which member countries have transferred from their domestic political system to the regional level. In this article I argue that the decision to create the AEC was promoted by ASEAN governments together with foreign economic and local corporate interests. This coalition was able to frame the AEC in a way that small businesses perceived it as a win-win scheme. Empirically the article focuses on Indonesia.     

Regionalism and African agency: negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policy makers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure–agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that, in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency, it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes.     

Coping with financial crises: explaining variety in regional arrangements

Financial regional arrangements vary across countries and change over time. Until recently, most economists and political scientists took the European model of monetary integration as the yardstick to which all other regional financial arrangements had to measure up in this article. It is argued that the Euro crisis provides an opportunity for scholars to adopt a different perspective that does not interpret the variety of financial arrangements merely as economic deficiencies caused by the incapacity or unwillingness of regions to follow the European model. Instead, the comparative study of monetary and financial regionalism has to account for the different factors that shape variations. These go from different levels of economic development, over regional political and economic preferences to historical processes which shape the institutional context and the constellation of interests and social forces. Such an approach, which integrates economic and political science approaches, de-centres the Euro model and opens up a new understanding of the global diversity of regional monetary and financial cooperation, and their potential to cope with financial crises.     

Women In the Cut of Danger: Female Subjectivity,Unregimented Masculinity and the Pleasure/Danger Symbiosis from the Gothic Romance to the Erotic Thriller

Abstract: Through a comparison between Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca and Susanna Moore's 1995 novel In the Cut, this article considers the extent to which Franco Moretti's theory of the inevitable dissolution of literary genres is true, with specific regard to the genre of the gothic romance. In evaluating both novels' treatment of female subjectivity, unregimented masculinity and the symbiotic relationship between sexual pleasure and mortal danger, this article investigates the degree to which a contemporary novel such as In the Cut, which is generally acknowledged to be an ‘erotic thriller’, is heavily indebted to the gothic romance and may therefore be interpreted as a continuation of this more traditional genre, and, conversely, the means through which Moore's novel exhibits an overt and defiant resistance to the gothic romance, thereby signifying the dissolution of this particular genre within twentieth-century women's writing.     

Discourses of Russian-speaking youth in Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan: Soviet legacies and responses to nation-building

ABSTRACT

Research into post-independence identity shifts among Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking minorities has outlined a number of possible pathways, such as diasporization, integrated national minority status and ethnic separatism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people in Almaty and Karaganda, I examine how Russian-speaking minorities identify with the state and imagine their place in a ‘soft’ or ‘hybrid’ post-Soviet authoritarian system. What is found is that Russian-speaking minorities largely accept their status beneath the Kazakh ‘elder brother’ and do not wish to identify as a ‘national minority’. Furthermore, they affirm passive loyalty to the political status quo while remaining disinterested in political representation. Russian-speaking minorities are also ambivalent towards Kazakh language promotion and anxious about the increasing presence of Kazakh-speakers in urban spaces. This article argues that two factors are central to these stances among Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking minorities: the persistence of Soviet legacies and the effects of state discourse and policy since 1991.     

民族问题的核心是国家认同问题

民族问题的核心是国家认同问题.多民族国家解决民族问题的核心任务是将国民对各自民族的忠诚转变为对国家的忠诚,在尊重多元的民族认同基础上建构国家认同.国家认同建没包括政治认同建设和文化认同建设.其中,文化认同建设是根本,稳固的文化认同可以消解政治认同危机时国家认同危机的程度."民族问题的核心是国家认同问题"的观点,要求我们解决民族问题的基本原则和制度安排必须及时同应国家一体化建构与民族文化多元发展的互动态势.     

时间维度下的文化安全分析

任何文化都存在于一定的时间中,文化安全在时间驱动下发生变化,时间因素对文化安全产生何种影响,它是否会侵蚀、威胁文化安全,文章围绕三个问题展开了递进的分析。首先,时间通过对社会结构的改变而对文化安全产生了显性的影响。时间结构和时间维度的变革,为社会结构和社会文化带来了一系列的影响和后果:文化的商品化和碎片化;人文主义衰微,文化的自主性受到威胁;时间问题带来了价值秩序的重构,短期性和即刻满足受到偏爱;文化失去批判能力,成为娱乐。其次,时间自身及其围绕它的变化对文化安全产生了的隐性但却是根本性的影响。在多变且不确定的情况下,行为主体对时间的感知和与之的关系都是疏离的,这种脱位意味着文化被从其扎根的环境中抽取出来,文化根基被削弱、文化空间减少,从而使文化失去发展自身的权利和能力,高度的变化性和不确定性过度磨损文化的再生产能力。最后,关于文化的能动性问题,即是否存在着文化对时间的反作用力。其结论是,文化是时间背后的"沉默的规范力量"。这样的认识能够帮助我们提高应对文化安全议题的自觉性,从文化之中寻求文化安全问题的解决办法。透过时间的视角,可以看到一定的文化的稳定性是文化安全的重要保障。在快速变化的现代社会中,文化安全议题尤显重要。     

Introduction to queer circuits: Critical performance and digital praxis

This introduction situates the articles making up this special issue within four thematic clouds, positing queer theorization as broadly relevant for critically engaging with computational technologies and culture. These sub-themes offer suggestions for future queer inquiry and praxis and reflect key terms in performance studies and queer theory that have undergone transformation with the ubiquity of digital technology.     

Nationalism as classification: suggestions for reformulating nationalism research

Instead of thinking about “national identity,” scholars of nationalism would do well to study nationalism as a process of classification, treating national conflict as disputes over nationalized categories. Disputes over national classification take various forms: patriots argue over which category applies, which categories exist, and which categories have which status. Techniques for imposing classificatory categories also deserve attention. The contributors to this themed issue of Nationalities Papers illustrate the power of analysis based on classification.