Collective Identity and Political Engagement

Author(s):  
Bernd Simon
2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Léonie Marin

This article analyzes mediated claims by the Kanak, from the written press to the Internet. It focusses on the transformation of the social discourses of this people in their struggle for power in a context of censorship. Considering the “before” and “after” of the Internet, this research seeks to elucidate forms of resistance involving cultural, social and political interests. The individualization of expression made possible by the Internet produces new forms of political engagement, and the resulting actions are part of a quest for visibility that changes collective identity affiliations. Thus, the emergence of Kanak claims into the public sphere does not really challenge the balance of power, but rather questions identity issues made manifest by various forms of political engagement.Cet article analyse les revendications médiatisées kanakes, des médias écrits à internet, et met l’accent sur les transformations des discours sociaux du peuple dans sa lutte pour le pouvoir, dans un contexte de censure. Inscrit dans un double mouvement entre l’« avant » et l’« après » internet, cette recherche peut ainsi saisir les formes de résistance qui impliquent des participations culturelles, sociales et politiques. L’individualisation de la prise de parole engendre de nouvelles formes d’engagement politique et les actions qui en découlent s’inscrivent dans une recherche de visibilité, notamment par une modification des affiliations collectives identitaires. Ainsi, l’irruption des revendications médiatisées kanakes dans la sphère publique ne relève peut-être pas réellement d’une remise en cause fondamentale du pouvoir, mais plutôt d’enjeux identitaires qui se manifestent par différentes formes d’engagement politique.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110194
Author(s):  
Marcel Roman ◽  
Hannah Walker ◽  
Matt Barreto

Prior research suggests social ties with undocumented immigrants among Latinxs may increase political engagement despite constraints undocumented social networks may introduce. We build on prior research and find across six surveys of Latinxs that social ties with undocumented immigrants are reliably associated with collective, identity expressive activities such as protesting, but not activities where immigration may not be immediately relevant, such as voting. Moreover, we assess a series of mechanisms to resolve the puzzle of heightened participation despite constraints. Consistent with prior research at the intersection of anti-immigrant threat and Social Identity Theory, we find Latinxs with strong ethnic identification are more likely to engage in political protest in the presence of social ties with undocumented immigrants, whereas weak identifiers disengage. We rule out alternative mechanisms that could link undocumented social ties with participation including political efficacy, a sense of injustice, linked fate, acculturation, outgroup perceptions of immigration status, partisan identity, conducive opportunity structures, and prosociality. Our contribution suggests the reason social ties with undocumented immigrants are not necessarily a hindrance to political engagement among Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics is because they can draw from identitarian resources to overcome participatory constraints.


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Allison Lewis Di Leone ◽  
Joyce Wang ◽  
Nancy Kressin ◽  
Dawne Vogt
Keyword(s):  

Afghanistan ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-67
Author(s):  
Nile Green

This essay forms a case study of the transnational dimensions of Afghanistan's modern intellectual history through a focus on the practice of history. It traces the development of Afghan historical writing between around 1880 and 1940, with an emphasis on the revolutionary historiographical transformations of the 1930s. Prior to this decade, Afghan historians broadly continued the dynastic and genealogical traditions of the Persianate tarikh (‘chronicle’). After discussing several such texts, the focus turns to the new intellectuals associated with the Kabul Literary Society (Anjuman-i Adabi-yi Kabul) in its role as a crossroads for the importation and adaptation of European intellectual disciplines. Drawing on Anglophone and Francophone scholarship in their Dari-Persian publications, the Society's historians forged radically new conceptions of collective identity by adapting European linguistic and archaeological methods. An examination of the writings of two such historians, Ya‘qub Hasan Khan and Ahmad ‘Ali Kuhzad, documents the subsequent rise of the new historical ideology of Aryanism by which Afghanistan and its peoples were linked to the ancient Aryans and their homeland of Bactria qua Aryana.


Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
Michelle Ann Abate ◽  
Sarah Bradford Fletcher

Since its release in 1963, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are has been viewed from a psychological perspective as a literary representation of children's inner emotional struggles. This essay challenges that common critical assessment. We make a case that Sendak's classic picturebook was also influenced by the turbulent era of the 1960s in general and the nation's rapidly escalating military involvement in Vietnam in particular. Our alternative reading of Sendak's text reveals a variety of both visual and verbal elements that recall the conflict in South East Asia and considers the significance of the book's geo-political engagement.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document