“Clamoring Blood”: The Materiality of Belonging in Modern Ainu Identity

The tension between silence and vocalization, embrace and rejection, of Ainu ancestry has been a key factor in negotiating Ainu subjectivity since Ainu territories were colonized in 1869. As early as 1799, expressions of Ainu ethnicity were alternately cloaked and exaggerated as Japan vacillated between assimilation and segregation policies in eastern Hokkaido Ainu communities. Officially recognized as Japan's indigenous peoples in 2008, Ainu subjectivity has become increasingly politicized as the state and other stakeholders seek to define Ainu ethnicity for future legislation. Today Ainu belonging is frequently gauged by bodily metaphors of a vocalized blood. Cultural sensibility and blood are often conflated in Ainu discourses of identity: Ainu revivalists report that a sensation of “clamoring blood” (J: chi ga sawagu) inspires them to revisit ancestral memories and begin fashioning Ainu identities. Historically, intra-Ainu relations were not bound to blood but instead embodied in material expressions, such as invisible cords for women and crest-like emblems for men, symbols that enabled flexibility where needed. Since the twentieth century, the hyper focus on blood raises the specter of colonially imposed rhetorics of eugenics, assimilation policies, and specifically, the problem of race. Relatedness in the Ainu community is not exclusively defined by “consanguineal relations”; rather, a long history of adopting ethnic Japanese children and non-Ainu into Ainu families renders complex the question of identity. This article assesses how immutable notions of racial difference intersect with self-determination and current articulations of Ainu identity.     

Reading twentieth century urban black cultural movements through popular periodicals: a case study of the Harlem Renaissance and South Africa’s Sophiatown

There exists a long history of debate among scholars in the humanities and social sciences regarding the potential of literature and popular culture to be socially transformative and to generate collective identities that empower a community. This transformative power of literature and popular culture, particularly in terms of the value granted to oppressed peoples seeking expression or catharsis, represents perhaps the truest value of cultural production. Its long-term contributions to the resilience of racially oppressed communities both in the USA and worldwide cannot be overstated. In Sophiatown and during the Harlem Renaissance, two periodicals, Drum and The Crisis, allowed black writers and readers alike to share in the formation of new modes of identity that spoke back in a firm voice to the long-standard stereotypes of blackness that permeated white-dominated popular culture. In both South Africa and Harlem, these publications gave voice to a distinctly black and urban culture, resisting notions of the “tribal” or “plantation” black subject. These movements were historically significant both within the study of black culture and literature and within the trajectory of socially transformative political movements.     

‘Hold that Pose!’ Photography and kabuki in Kitano Takeshi's Kikujiro

This article examines Kitano Takeshi's film Kikujiro (Kikujirō no Natsu, 1999) from two directions: first, as an as an experiment in moving versus still photography, and second, as an exploration of time, memory and Japanese identity. I argue that it is in Kitano's cinematic use of elements from the kabuki drama that the two aspects come together. Kitano plays upon the conventions of both kabuki and film media to highlight the significance of the ‘still shot’ as it functions in human memory. By presenting moments of the story in the format of a child's photograph album, Kitano is able to explore ideas of ‘adult’ and ‘child’ as equally arbitrary constructions. Throughout Kikujiro, Kitano draws on a rich tradition of film, drama and television convention in order to explore the idea of where identity comes from – does it come from the past, the present, or do we make it up ourselves? Kitano places emphasis on the still mie pose to heighten emotion and draw attention to the present moment. By contrasting this method against that of photography, Kitano juxtaposes past and present modes of expression, enabling him to interrogate notions of time and the supposed timelessness of art. Finally, Kitano's critical use of the past locates identity not in some distant, unobtainable myth of the nation, but in the lived experience of each individual as a human being.     

Birthplaces,migration and identity in the 2001 census for Ukraine

Ukraine used to be one of the most ethnically mixed Soviet republics due to a high level of immigration, mostly from other parts of the Soviet Union. This article uses the sample of households available at IPUMS International to study the information about birthplaces, migration and marriage partners in recently released microdata from the 2001 census. Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 a large emigration surplus and ethnic estrangement have turned the country into a place with a lower degree of internal migration and ethnic intermarriage. With the exception of the capital Kiev, there was relatively little interchange of migrants between the eastern, Russian-dominated regions and the western regions. The highest degree of intermarriage was among people with at least one partner born abroad, most often in Russia. There is evidence of an elite of migrants from Russia to the Russia-oriented south-eastern provinces, who may feel especially threatened by the Ukrainian nationalistic takeover of power which happened after the Maidan insurrection.     

当代文论精神症候与文化空间拓展

在东西方文化冲突日益严重的今天,全球化语境中的中国文化精神和身份立场问题,成为汉语文学的重要问题,其基本症候表征为“六多六少”:线性时间观多而境界空间观少、西方话语踪迹多而中国身份少、解构话语多而建构精神少、大众消费话语多而注重文化精品少、热衷于非文学多而关注汉语文化圈的文学少、肉身意义关注多而知识个体的立场关注少。我们应该在中西文论对话基础上,坚持发现东方与文化输出,坚持人类只有在体用之争方面,走向人类之体、世界之用。     

“农民工”的身份界定及法律保护

“农民工”是中国特定的体制下对进城务工农民身份的一种描述。“农民工”是一个充满歧视性的概念,“农民工”身份的构建和认同使“农民工”群体成为了社会中的边缘人,从而阻碍了他们的权利实现与自身发展。“农民工”问题要获得真正解决,就要从根本上淡化并消除对“农民工”这种矛盾身份的定位,并在社会生活中赋予其“产业工人”的身份,从而改变“农民工”的弱势地位,保护其合法权益。     

刍议非法获取、传播身份信息罪

非法获取、传播他人身份信息资料的行为给当事人的人身、财产带来极大的安全隐患。为有效地惩治此类犯罪．节约社会成本．建议刑法对非法获取他人身份信息资料的行为予以规制,具体在刑法第280条第三款后面增设一条非法获取、传播身份信息罪,并将刑法修正案（五）的相关内容并入此处,作为条款之一。非法获取、传播身份信息罪是指窃取、收买或者非法传播他人身份信息资料,数量较大的行为,该罪的主体为一般主体,侵犯的客体为身份信息资料管理秩序和他人的合法权益．犯罪对象为他人重要的身份信息。本罪的客观方面表现为行为人实施了非法获取、传播他人身份信息资料．数量较大的行为．行为方式主要包括窃取、收买或者非法传播。非法提供、持有和收集他人身份信息资料的不构成本罪．必要时可由治安管理处罚法予以调整。本罪的主观方面为故意,即明知自己的行为会对身份信息资料管理秩序和当事人合法利益带来损害而仍决意为之。     

Evaluating expertise in forensic anthropology

The medicolegal system relies on the ability of experts and non-experts alike to make judgments about expertise and use those judgments to reach consequential decisions. Given the lack of standard criteria, mandatory certification, or licensure for establishing expertise required to practice forensic anthropology and testify as an expert witness, we sought to understand how individuals assess and identify expertise in forensic anthropology by using a social science tool called the Imitation Game. This tool assesses immersion in a specific area of study via discourse, with the premise that some individuals lacking expertise themselves imitate or attempt to pass as experts. For this project we recruited volunteers with varying expertise in forensic anthropology to participate in interviews which asked questions about the practice and structure of the discipline. Those interviews were transcribed, anonymized, and evaluated by other recruited individuals with varying expertise in forensic anthropology. Results found that judges who were experts in forensic anthropology performed better than non-expert judges in determining who was not an expert in forensic anthropology based on their anonymized responses; however, nearly half of the non-experts were still able to pass as experts in forensic anthropology. The difficulties in assessing expertise based on discourse interactions demonstrates the value and need for well-defined credentials and mandatory certification to practice forensic anthropology. This study demonstrates that accurately identifying expertise in forensic anthropology may be challenging for both experts and non-experts, especially when relying solely on interactional expertise rather than formal assessments of competency which directly elucidate contributory expertise.     

中国古代身份信息管理初探

中国历代王朝都建立了户籍管理制度。在户籍登记中包含了身份信息的内容,如姓名、住址、相貌、职业等。统治者通过定期的登记与核实、严密的社区基层组织的管理、严厉的惩罚制度来保证登记信息的真实准确。古代社会借助官府的户籍登记信息、基层组织管理者、连坐制相纠相察,实现对人口的验证、查询。但古代静态的人口管理模式无法应对人口流动的社会趋势,身份信息管理常有失灵状况。     

Deadly Words: State Power and the Entanglement of Speech and Violence in Hate Crime

Any analysis of hate crime that attempts to separate speech from action, language from violence, faces epistemological difficulties that limit the range of conversations about laws responding to identity-based injury in the United States. Active debates have raged over the implications of bias crime sentence enhancement laws for the protection of ‘freespeech’, thus addressing the inextricability of language and meaning from hate crime. Those in favor of legal responses to identity-based injury tend toward essentialist claims which assume the stability of identity and of meanings inherent in words or actions. Those opposed assert the impossibility of codifying the meaning of words or actions in the law, and/or they worry about the reification of (victimized) identities accompanying bias crime statutes. This article argues that the focus on language and speech in these debates simultaneously enables an evasion of discussion about the law's response to bias-related violence, and misleadingly assumes too much stability in the functions of law and the nature of state power. Interviews conducted by the author with individuals involved in a 1992 racist hate crime are used to show the diverse elements of state power suffusing the incident and its aftermath. An analysis of the crime's investigation and prosecution under a Maryland hate crime statute suggests that law enforcement officers are primarily using hate crime laws as public relations tools in a fight against community perceptions that they are themselves bigots. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.