Breaching Boundaries in Muslim and Christian Tourism from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mirjam Lücking
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Symbolic Boundaries ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Cultural Boundary ◽  
Boundary Making

Abstract Studies on tourism and pilgrimage show that spatial mobility, including transregional travel, mostly confirms and strengthens tourists’ and pilgrims’ social identities and symbolic boundaries between Self and Other. However, in guided religious package tours from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine, experiences with spatial boundaries do affect the Muslim and Christian pilgrims, adding more nuances to socio-cultural boundary-making. This complex making and breaching of boundaries relates to inner-Indonesian religious dynamics. Among both Muslim and Christian Indonesians, references to the Middle East express not only transregional solidarity but also multifarious orientations in inter and intra-religious relations within Indonesia. Among Indonesian Muslims, some orthodox Muslims’ orientations towards the Middle East as the birthplace of Islam are contested but also combined with indigenous Islamic traditions. Similar to these intra-Muslim frictions, members of Indonesia's Christian minority experience fissures in the expressions of local and global Christian identities. This article analyses how symbolic, social, and spatial boundaries are maintained and breached in transregional tourism from Indonesia to the Middle East.

scholarly journals ‘They Eat Potatoes, I Eat Rice’: Symbolic Boundary Making and Space in Neighbour Relations

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Van Eijk
Keyword(s):  
Personal Information ◽  
Spatial Proximity ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Symbolic Boundaries ◽  
Personal Privacy ◽  
Social Mixing ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Close Spatial Proximity ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Symbolic Boundary

This article examines ‘neighbouring’ as the setting in which cross-category relations develop and symbolic boundaries are constructed. The study is based on thirty in-depth interviews with residents living in a multi-ethnic and a mono-ethnic neighbourhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The findings challenge the hoped-for outcomes of social mixing in neighbourhoods, as well as the view that boundary making is something inherent to multi-ethnic neighbourhoods only. Neighbour relations are often setting-specific (relations are interchangeable, scripted and bounded, and passively maintained), which is relevant for understanding the spatiality of neighbouring and the limited exchange of personal information between neighbours. Because neighbouring involves the balancing of personal privacy and close spatial proximity, the exchange of personal information is limited, while spatial proximity ensures easy access to observable (through seeing, hearing and smelling) categorical markers that signify class, ethnicity, lifestyle, etc. In this way, neighbour interaction reconstructs symbolic boundaries rather than breaking them down.

Social Identity

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Mikkola
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Identity Crises ◽  
Philosophical Debates

Many political struggles for emancipation seemingly presuppose identity politics: a form of political mobilization based on social kind membership, where some shared experiences or traits delimit “belonging.” This is because social and political philosophers typically hold that contemporary injustices such as oppression and discrimination are structural, systematic, and social. In being structural, they have their causes in norms, habits, symbolic meanings, and assumptions unquestionably embedded in and underlying institutional and social arrangements. In being systematic, social injustices exist throughout a society and usually over a period of time, so that societal institutions come to form interlocking webs that maintain and reinforce injustices experienced. And in being social, contemporary injustices are grounded in socially salient self- and other-directed identifications, where such identifications typically fix social group membership. Social injustice is not incidental and individual but targets members of certain groups due to their group membership: typically, due to individuals’ gender/sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, and/or class. Elucidating the nature of social identities then appears to be necessary in order to understand contemporary social injustices. We may face oppression due to membership in a collective, where others impose such membership upon us; or we may personally and voluntarily identify with an oppressed collective for which we seek political recognition. Thus, the expression “social identity” can denote either a group-based or an individual phenomenon, which needs disambiguating. We can ask on what basis are, for example, all women as women bound together (what constitutes their collective kind identity)? Or is gender identity essential to a person qua that person (are certain social classifications part of our individual identity)? Additionally, there are different modes by which social identifications and identity formation can take place: this may be voluntary (we choose certain identifications), or ascriptive (certain identities are attributed to us by others). However, elucidating particular social identities is riddled with difficulties, and this has generated various so-called identity crises. Identity politics presumes the existence of social kinds founded on some category-wide common traits or experiences. But as many have argued, no such transcultural/transhistorical commonality exists because our axes of identity (gender, race, ability, class) are intertwined and inseparable. In an attempt to unlock this impasse, the past few decades have witnessed lively philosophical debates about the nature of social identity more generally, and about the character of particular social identities.

scholarly journals "Sister Akua, they say you should dance": negotiating roles in participant observation

1970 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Graveling
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Core ◽  
Participant Observer ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Southern Ghana

Relationships, and specifically the relationship between the fieldworker and the research subjects, are at the core of the process of all anthropological and ethnographic research and to a very large extent determine the outcomes of the research. In addressing the question of how far a participant observer should attempt to "become" a member of the group she is studying, we must also recognise the complexity of individual and social identities assumed or attributed to her. When the distinction between aspects of "self" and "other" is blurred, the fieldworker can be simultaneously (but not fully) "insider" and "outsider" in different facets of her identity and in different relationships. Drawing on experiences of recent ethnographic fieldwork among members of churches in a village in southern Ghana, this paper explores aspects of identity that contribute to this ambivalent status of the fieldworker. It considers the extent to which the researcher has control over her research roles and the implications of this in terms of access, acceptance, data collection, and obligations and responsibilities of the researcher to her informants.

scholarly journals Precarity, hospitality and the becoming of a subject that matters: A study of Syrian refugees in Lebanese tented settlements

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062110261
Author(s):  
Lotta Hultin ◽  
Lucas D. Introna ◽  
Markus Balázs Göransson ◽  
Magnus Mähring
Keyword(s):  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Digital Home ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Home Cooking

How is it possible to gain a sense that you have a voice and that your life matters when you have lost everything and live your life as a ‘displaced person’ in extreme precarity? We explore this question by examining the mundane everyday organizing practices of Syrian refugees living in tented settlements in Lebanon. Contrasting traditional empirical settings within organization studies where an already placed and mattering subject can be assumed, our context provides an opportunity to reveal how relations of recognition and mattering become constituted, and how subjects in precarious settings become enacted as such. Specifically, drawing on theories on the relational enactment of self and other, we show how material-discursive boundary-making and invitational practices—organizing a home, cooking and eating, and organizing a digital ‘home’—function to enact relational host/guest subject positions. We also disclose how these guest/host relationalities create the conditions of possibility for the enactment of a subject that matters, and for the despair enacted in everyday precarious life to transform into ‘undefeated despair’.

scholarly journals Music and collective identities

Muzikologija ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Biljana Milanovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Identities ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Music Representation ◽  
Methodological Aspects

This paper presents some introductory observations on the ways in which the opposition between the modern and post-modern understanding of social identities can be overcome in the context of musicology. It is based on the consideration of identities as dynamic and changeable categories, as well as on the importance of the relation between individual and collective positionings, on the complexities of the multiple identifications and on the understanding of music as a social construction of identity. Due attention is paid to basic theoretical and methodological aspects in the interdisciplinary analysis of ?self? and ?other?. In music, the problems of self-presentation appropriation, difference, power, control, authenticity, hybridity, as well as other issues that blur the boundaries between musicology, ethnomusicology and the studies of popular music, are made relevant by these interdisciplinary terms. Both the modern and post-modern understanding of identity can first be placed in the context of the binary questions: ?How to construct the identity and maintain it?? and ?How to avoid the construction of the fixed identity and thus leave the door open for the possibility of change??. It seems that the deconstruction of these opposite approaches has now grown in importance. This paper focuses especially on that kind of theorizing about music and socio-cultural identities. The views of Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, that older and recent models of music representation are not ?either/or? categories but rather complement each other, are especially singled out. These authors show by numerous examples that music can invariably both reflect existing identities and construct new ones. They conclude that possible shortcomings, such as the danger of essentialism in the earlier approach, and of later reductionism, could be avoided by carefully using the homology and process models of music representation. Their typology of music articulation of a socio-cultural identity, however, leaves the opposition between ?real? and ?imagined? intact. The theoretic analysis of other disciplines leads us to conclusion that these categories were the result of different images, whose opposite poles existed in the contrary approaches of ?realism? and ?radical constructivism?. In this context, the analysis of Milan Subotic in the field of social theory is singled out as a ?middle-way? position between these opposite sides. This approach in musicology could be most helpful in keeping an equal distance from both ?imagination? and ?reality?. Where society is concerned, reality is, after all, imagined. However, this invention is certainly not an arbitrary one, but rather an effort to label social processes as a social reality, from the perspective of the ?longue dur?e?. Therefore, it is especially important to maintain an historical approach in the study of music, something that is often lacking in post-modern narratives. Since the relation between collective identities and music is a complex and diverse subject, theoretical and methodological approaches must be further developed in the context of separate and specific topics of research. Finally, musicology itself is a construct of musical representation in the performative processes and praxis of music. In that respect, the reconciliation between the antagonisms highlighted in this paper could be achieved in the concurrence of historical narrative and contemporary critique.

scholarly journals Migration, Identity, and Social Mobility among Iraqis in Egypt

Refuge ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Pascucci
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Forced Displacement ◽  
Research Project

Based on a small-scale qualitative research project with Iraqis living in 6th of October City, one of Cairo’s satellite cities, the paper explores the role shifting social identities play in Iraqis’ experience of migration and forced displacement. In doing so, it focuses on three major themes emerging from the ethnographic material. First, it discusses the relation between social change in the homeland and other dimensions of Iraqis’ belonging, particularly ethnoreligious sectarianism. Secondly, it analyzes the role education and work play in the strategies refugees employ to resist dispossession, as well as in the practices through which other categories of Iraqi migrants rewrite their social identities. Finally, Iraqis’ relation with Egyptian society is briefly explored. The findings are discussed in relation to existing literature about social and political change in post-2003 Iraq, but also in contemporary Egypt. In doing so, I hope to contribute to re-embed the study of Iraqi migration within the Middle East in its historical and socio-political context, moving beyond policy-driven approaches.

‘The Russians are back’: Symbolic boundaries and cultural trauma in immigration from the former Soviet Union to the Czech Republic

Ethnicities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radka Klvaňová
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Symbolic Boundaries ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims

This study contributes to the literature on migration and the construction of the symbolic boundaries of belonging. It explores the neglected topic of the role of collective memory and, in particular, cultural trauma, in the processes of negotiation of the symbolic boundaries between immigrants and the native-born. It does so by studying the case of post-Cold War immigration from three countries of the former Soviet Union—Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia—to the Czech Republic, focusing on immigrants’ experiences of being assigned responsibility for “1968,” the Warsaw Treaty Troops’ military intervention into Czechoslovakia and its subsequent occupation by the Soviet army. Analysis of the narratives of immigrants about their everyday encounters with Czechs advances the understanding of symbolic boundary-making processes by identifying two types of responses the immigrants employ for contesting the stigma of the perpetrators imposed on them in the Czech immigration context. The first involves “differentiation,” which aims at redrawing the symbolic boundaries between perpetrators and victims. The second response involves “individualization,” in which immigrants completely dissociate from the past acts of violence of the Soviet regime. This study offers insight into the micro-politics of nation-building in Central and Eastern Europe.

Life in the Khans: The Venetians in Early Ottoman Aleppo

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-155
Author(s):  
Michele Lamprakos
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Commercial Building ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Building Type ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The City ◽  
Merchant Community

In the second half of the fifteenth century, Aleppo became increasingly important as a center of the Levant trade. The Venetian merchant community grew, and the consulate was eventually transferred there. The Venetians’ base of operations was the khan, a commercial building type that can be found in various forms across the Mediterranean and the Middle East. How did the khan accommodate the day-to-day life of Venetians in Aleppo—and how did it mediate their relationships with local authorities, merchants, and residents? This essay explores these questions through a study of khans used by Venetians in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It shows that they utilized a network of khans that extended throughout the city. Khans were highly adaptable structures, and Venetians used them for multiple purposes, including trade, lodging, socializing, worship, and diplomacy. The portrait of Venetian life that emerges from this study provides an interesting micro-history. It also sheds light on the wider process of cultural reception and translation: how a group of foreigners makes the exotic familiar, and how this impacts notions of self and other.


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