Positive and Negative Self-Esteem Among Ethnic Minority Early Adolescents: Social and Cultural Sources and Threats

This paper uses data from a large-scale study (N = 1070) of Turkish and Moroccan early adolescents in the Netherlands. In it, it was found that a distinction between positive and negative self-esteem as 2 relatively independent dimensions of global self-esteem could be made. Other results were that ethnic identification and family integrity as an individual tendency toward collectivism turned out to be positively related to positive self-esteem. On the other hand, peer discrimination and intergenerational discrepancies in attitude toward Dutch cultural practices appeared to be related to lowered positive self-esteem and enhanced negative self-esteem. These relationships were similar for both groups of participants. However, the Moroccans had higher positive self-esteem and lower negative self-esteem. Furthermore, the Moroccans identified more strongly with their ethnic group and reported more intergenerational cultural discrepancies, whereas the Turks experienced more discrimination and valued family integrity more. It is concluded that, in addition to the differential resources and threats, the examination of these 2 dimensions of self-esteem can improve our understanding of the development of self-evaluation by ethnic minority youth.     

充分利用民族传统体育资源加快少数民族地区学校体育课程改革

西部大开发与新一轮的课程改革,给少数民族地区体育教育的发展提供了有利的条件.针对这些有利条件,本文提出了加快少数民族地区学校体育课程改革的发展及对策.     

生存环境与历史时期华南少数民族生理心态的形成发展

本文主要从生态环境的角度,对历史时期华南少数民族体质生理及民族心态的形成特征进行了探讨,从一个侧面说明了民族体质生理及民族心理心态的演变发展,不仅是人类社会进化的结果,生态环境在这个过程中也起了重要的作用。     

美国对欠发达地区经济开发的金融支持及启示

美国为了开发欠发达地区采取了一系列的金融支持措施。通过这些金融支持措施的实施，美国欠发达地区的经济开发取得了显著的效果，实现了区域经济的协调发展。美国金融支持的成功经验为我国加快少数民族与民族地区的经济社会发展提供了重要的启示。     

试论少数民族基本文化权利的界定

文化权利在国际人权体系中构成特定的类别,其中的一个重要方面就是少数人群体(包括少数民族)保持其传统生活方式的权利(《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》第27条),本文将其称为少数民族基本文化权利。少数民族的文化自由包含于少数民族的基本文化权利之中,少数民族的基本文化权利又包含于集体文化权利之中。由于少数民族传统生活方式是少数民族传统文化的核心,因而少数民族保持其传统生活方式的权利应成为少数民族文化权利的核心,即少数民族基本文化权利。     

The bridge that divides: local perceptions of the connected state in the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan–China borderlands

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought profound changes to the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang. In eastern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, present-day weaknesses in territorial control of the post-Soviet state’s edges are directly wedded to borderlanders’ memories of Soviet-era practices of bordering, perceived locally as both systemically stronger and cognitively more beneficial to local lifeworlds than contemporary ‘Chinese penetration’. Across the border in Xinjiang, a formerly distant state has been brought into borderlanders’ locales and inscribed into everyday lifeworlds through novel manifestations of the state, which significantly affect cross-border interaction. By comparing how borderlanders on both sides of this frontier themselves choose to characterize border processes between ‘their’ states in the initial two decades of connections to Xinjiang, I explore how and why Kyrgyz and Tajik/Pamiri borderlanders voice strong opinions about what it is they feel has changed in these administrative-territorial homelands. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on both sides of this frontier, I argue that the gradual bridging of this formerly sealed border has led to neither the development of a new trans-frontier identity nor locally established trans-frontier networks but, instead, reconfirmed borders between China and Central Asia.     

Bottom-up peacekeeping in southern Kyrgyzstan: how local actors managed to prevent the spread of violence from Osh/Jalal-Abad to Aravan,June 2010

In the aftermath of the June 2010 violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, much scholarly attention has focused on its causes. However, observers have taken little notice of the fact that while such urban areas as Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon were caught up in violence, some towns in southern Kyrgyzstan that were close to the conflict sites and had considerable conflict potential had managed to avoid the violence. Thus, while the question, “What were the causes of the June 2010 violence?” is important, we have few answers to the question, “Why did the conflict break out in some places but not others with similar conflict potential?” Located in the theoretical literature on “the local turn” within peacekeeping studies, this article is based on extensive empirical fieldwork to explore the local and micro-level dimensions of peacekeeping. It seeks to understand why and how local leaders and residents in some places in southern Kyrgyzstan managed to prevent the deadly clashes associated with Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon. The main focus of the project is on Aravan, a town with a mixed ethnic population where residents managed to avert interethnic clashes during the June 2010 unrest. The answers to the question of why violence did not occur can yield important lessons for conflict management not only for southern Kyrgyzstan, but also for the entire Central Asian region.     

Language territorial regimes in multilingual ethnic territorial autonomies

Ethnic territorial autonomy (ETA) is an institutional way to ensure simultaneously the integrity of the state and the rights of ethnic minorities through preferential policies in certain ethnically sensitive spheres. Language preferential policies differ greatly across multilingual ETAs and can be analyzed through the concept of “language territorial regime” (LTR). In this paper, we examine LTRs along two dimensions: (1) the scope of state regulation of language use and (2) the way language rights are perceived and used. The first considers the depth and universality of state regulation of language use – “strong” or “weak.” The second concerns whether the community’s approach to language rights is symbolic or pragmatic. The combination of these two dimensions allows the categorization of LTRs into four main classes: “strong parting-regime,” “strong pooling-regime,” “weak pooling-regime,” and “weak parting-regime.” A comparison of South Tyrol, Vojvodina, and Wales allows conceptualizing LTR as a system of de jure institutional arrangements of linguistic issues and practice of self-organization and perpetuation of multilingual communities.     

Securing the nuclear nation

In 1946, in the Southern Urals, construction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics first plutonium plant fell to the GULAG-Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD). The chief officers in charge of the program – Lavrentii Beria, Sergei Kruglov, and Ivan Tkachenko – had been pivotal figures in the deportation and political and ethnic cleansing of territories retaken from Axis forces during WWII. These men were charged with building a nuclear weapons complex to defend the Soviet Union from the American nuclear monopoly. In part thanks to the criminalization and deportation of ethnic minorities, Gulag territories grew crowded with foreign nationals and ethnic minorities in the postwar years. The NKVD generals were appalled to find that masses of forced laborers employed at the plutonium construction site were members of enemy nations. Beria issued orders to cleanse the ranks of foreign enemies, but construction managers could not spare a single healthy body as they raced to complete their deadlines. To solve this problem, they created two zones: an interior, affluent zone for plutonium workers made up almost exclusively of Russians; and anterior zones of prisoners, soldiers, ex-cons, and local farmers, many of whom were non-Russian. The selective quality of Soviet “nuclearity” meant that many people who were exposed to the plant's secret plutonium disasters were ethnic minorities, people whose exposures went unrecorded or under-recorded because of their invisibility and low social value.     

“Serbs” in Bela krajina: a (deliberately) forgotten minority?

There are three constitutionally recognized national/ethnic minorities in Slovenia: the Italians, the Hungarians and the Roma. In addition, there are other ethnic groups that could perhaps be considered as “autochthonous” national minorities in line with Slovenia's understanding of this concept. Among them is a small community of “Serbs” – the successors of the Uskoks living in Bela krajina, a border region of Slovenia. In this article we present results of a field research that focused on the following question: Can the “Serb” community in Bela krajina be considered a national minority? On the basis of the objective facts, it could be said that the “Serbs” in four Bela krajina villages are a potential national minority, but with regard to their modest social vitality and the fact that they do not express their desire for minority status, the realization of special minority protection is questionable.