Painting between the lines: the Cape Verdean community of Colonial Dakar, 1920–1945

From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, Cape Verdean immigrants to Dakar, colonial capital of French West Africa, became a small but important community in terms of significance in both the urban economy and the colonial framework of race and identity. They occupied important labor niches valuable to the colonizer such as painting and domestic work and attached those fields to a unique identity to which only they belonged. Able to capitalize on the ambiguity inherent to colonial race and identity policies, Cape Verdeans bridged categories common to state policies – particularly “foreign” and “native” – in ways not adequately captured by the concept of intermediaries often employed in examinations of immigrant populations to West Africa. Their insertion in Dakar reveals the permeability of such colonial concepts as well as the opportunities immigrants made in town.     

Shifting linkages in ethnic mobilization: the case of RMDSZ and the Hungarians in Transylvania

The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has been the most stable actor in the Romanian party system over the past two decades. However, in this article, we argue that beyond this apparent stability, the linkages between RMDSZ and its voters have undergone a gradual, yet significant shift. The ethnic block voting of Transylvanian Hungarians was closely connected to the concept of a self-standing and parallel “Minority Society,” and to the practices of institution building that the minority elites engaged in in the early 1990s. However, since its first participation in the Romanian government in 1996, RMDSZ has gradually departed from this strategy, a phenomenon that was also closely connected to a process of elite change within the organization. The present RMDSZ leadership puts less and less emphasis on policy programs that could reinforce the institutional system of the minority; consequently, it is unable (and unwilling) to organizationally integrate the community activists of the minority society who previously had played a key role in the process of (electoral) mobilization. At the rhetorical level, RMDSZ did not abandon the goal of building a parallel Hungarian minority society, but in its linkages to the Hungarian electorate, clientelistic exchanges have become predominant.     

The mioritic nation – an alternative approach to Moldovan national identity

Moldova has been widely argued to be a failed nation-building project, with two national identity discourses coexisting within Moldovan society and amongst Moldovan elites: Romanianism and Moldovanism. Challenging the dominance of these discourses in the literature, this article argues that in spite of its absence from the nationalism debate in Moldova, the ballad Miori?a is a key element for the Moldovan articulation of national identity. The analysis employs a discursive approach focused on language as a constituting phenomenon and draws from Miori?a's appeal to the grass roots level, its banality in day-to-day life, and, more importantly, its promotion by Moldovan cultural elites. This latter part focuses specifically on the writings of novelist Ion Dru??. Dru?? places Miori?a at the very center of his construction of Moldovan national identity. He highlights its links with Moldovan history, culture, religious thinking, and geographical space, both reproducing a structure similar to the two national identity discourses, Romanianism and Moldovanism, and building on their similarities. But more importantly, Dru??'s representation of national identity sheds light on the possibility of an all-encompassing Moldovan identity, overcoming the existing cleavage, and a series of mechanisms that can be employed to achieve this.     

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global political economy

This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas expressed particularly in the form of networks, which themselves have become a feature of contemporary global political economy. In other words, the Silk Roads vision is more of a ‘spatial fix’ than a geopolitical manoeuvre.     

Setos' way to manage identities and well-being: shame and pride,opposition and openness

The paper examines how the tiny ethno-cultural group of Setos constructs its identity in the multicultural context. The study examines the validity of three acculturation models and tests earlier findings on the relationship between identity and well-being. The results suggest that Setos have clearly adopted a multicultural identity strategy while not merging different identities, and that they have managed to separate the material well-being from the pride of their identity. Despite its small size and peripheral location, the Setos' way to preserve their identity in a constantly changing context is an interesting lesson for other indigenous groups, and also for bigger neighbors.     

Securitization,history, and identity: some conceptual clarifications and examples from politics of Finnish war history

This article shows how we can use the securitization framework to study extreme history politics. Securitization refers to a speech act or discursive process in which an actor makes a claim that some referent object, deemed worthy of survival, is existentially threatened. If successful, securitization justifies the use of extraordinary measures to counter the threat. After introducing the concept of securitization in detail, the article presents three ways in which history and securitization can be connected: history can serve as a facilitating condition of securitization; history can be explicitly used to strengthen a securitizing move; or history, or a particular interpretation of it, can be the referent object of securitization. The second half of the article is devoted to a discussion on the role of history in the securitization of national identities. Historical myths are the standard building blocks of national identities; challenging these myths can be presented as threats to the survival of the nation. The article also discusses potential forms of resistance against securitization of history/national identities. Illustrative examples from the political use of WWII history in Finland will be used to show the practical consequences of various conceptual choices.     

Humanism in the autobiographies of Edward Said and Nelson Mandela: memory as action

This paper discusses the concept of memory as a form of humanist activism in the autobiographies of Nelson Mandela and Edward Said. Mandela and Said were chosen because they dedicated their lives to the cause of freedom in South Africa and Palestine. Their engagement with the political causes of their countries turned into a concern with worldwide struggles for human rights and racial equality. While Mandela emerged as a vital force against apartheid in South Africa, Said was a well-known and influential Palestinian critic and intellectual whose writings tackle the Palestinian struggle for justice within the worldwide experience of imperialism and its binary oppositions of white/black, male/female, superior/inferior. I argue that these autobiographies bear witness to the plight of Black South Africans and Palestinians as both a shared memory resistant to erasure and a call for justice. Mandela and Said used their personal memories and life stories to construct a public reading of the meanings of the events that shaped them. Here I focus on the concept of humanist and political activity in the two autobiographies.     

周礼是怎样形成的

周礼是在继承殷礼的基础上,在周初政治、经济以及文化条件制约之下,在平衡各种政治势力的权力和利益的基础上诞生.采用韦伯的立场、观点和方法进行相关分析.     

实体经济发展中产业工人思想政治引领的实践路径探索——基于全国12家企业、6所职业院校的调查

目前我国经济已经进入高质量发展阶段,需要建设现代化经济体系、振兴实体经济,而产业工人队伍是振兴实体经济,支撑中国制造、中国创造的重要基础.本研究基于12家企业以及6所职业院校的调研情况,发现当前产业工人在思想上存在职业自豪感不强、主人翁意识淡薄、学技能动力不足、建功新时代着力点不清等问题.这些问题产生的原因主要是产业工...     

成汉政权及其族属

成汉政权是由南方的少数民族贝宗人所建,李氏宗族是成汉政权历代统治者的主体为期共45年,其势力范围除西南地区外还达到了西北的甘肃境内。与两晋之际出现的众多地方政权相比较,成汉政权和它们都同属于割据性质的地方政权,但却有着自己的诸多的特点:建立政权的时间最早;南部唯一的地方政权;实行武装割据,但并未断绝与中央王朝的关系;关注社会稳定;大规模移民。