Memories of Nations and States: Institutional History and National Identity in Post-Soviet Eurasia

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rawi Abdelal
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Societal Consensus

The national identities of post-Soviet societies profoundly influenced the politics and economics of Eurasia during the 1990s. These identities varied along two distinct but related dimensions: their content and contestation. Nationalist movements throughout post-Soviet Eurasia invoked their nations in support of specific purposes, which frequently cast Russia as the nation's most important “other” and the state from which autonomy and security must be sought. Nationalists therefore offered specific proposals for the content of their societies’ collective identities. But not everyone in these societies shared the priorities of their nationalist movements. Indeed, the international relations among post-Soviet states often revolved around one central question: did post-Soviet societies and politicians agree with their nationalists or not? The former Communists played a decisive role in contesting the content of national identity. One of the defining differences among post-Soviet states during the 1990s was the political and ideological relationship in each one between the formerly Communist elites and the nationalists—whether the former Communists marginalized the nationalists, arrested them, coopted them, bargained with them, or even tried to become like them. These different relationships revealed different degrees and kinds of societal consensus about national identity after Soviet rule.

scholarly journals Citizen Strangers: Identity Labelling and Discourse in the French Mandatory Syria, 1920–1932

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Victoria Abrahamyan
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
Key Events

This article explores the roles played by Armenian refugees in the politics of identity in Mandatory Syria by examining how their arrival shaped the discourses of inclusion and exclusion. It does so by analysing three key events: the Armenians’ access to citizenship and voting rights (1924–1925), the Great Syrian Revolt (1925–1927), and the arrival of new Armenian refugees (1929–1930) – during which a ‘Syrian’ identity was gradually confirmed against the Armenian newcomers. Making use of discursive narratives by Syrian and Armenian political parties, media outlets and pamphlets, the article demonstrates that the discourse against the Armenian refugees played a decisive role for both hosting and incoming communities to construct mutually excluding national identities. If the Arab nationalists used the anti-Armenian discourse as an opportunity to define a ‘Syrian’ national identity closely identified with Islam and Arabness, similarly, it was used by the Armenian political elite to mobilise Armenian refugees.

Standard Albanian — linguistic controversy in post-Communist Albania

2006 ◽  
Vol 2006 (178) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xhevat Lloshi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
National Identities ◽  
National Standard ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Language Question ◽  
Good Standard

AbstractThe status of Albanian as a national standard has become a matter of serious debate. In 1972 Standard Albanian (SA) was adopted in public communications and in schools. But after the political changes in Albania in 1991–1992 the language question was reopened, calling into question the SA. The roots of the present-day debate are to be found in the dialectal division of Albanian, the historical establishment of a number of written varieties, and the standardization achieved during the years of the Communist regime. This article describes how Standard Albanian was established and the recent developments. For the future it poses the question: Will there be one Albanian national identity, or two Albanian national identities? The answer is that Albanians already have a good standard language, though with many problems, of course, and much work needs to be done for its enrichment and improvement, but Albanians have no need to create a new standard, or to undergo a glosso-ectomy.

Political rhetoric and discursive framing of national identity in Croatia’s commemorative culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 858-881
Author(s):  
Tamara Banjeglav
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Military Operation ◽  
Over Time

Abstract The topic of this paper is framing of collective, national identities in commemorative speeches. It identifies abstract conceptions of Croatian national identity articulated by political elites during commemorative practices and examines what patterns are used for their linguistic expression. The questions that are posed are how Croatian nation and national identity are framed in discourse and whether constructs of national identity are formed depending on the context and on the party political affiliation of the speaker. However, the aim is also to track potential changes in elite narratives over time. The analysis is based on a corpus of commemorative speeches delivered by Croatia’s political elites on the occasion of celebration of the Croatian army victory in a military operation. The main focus is on the conceptual and linguistic analysis of the collective identities and sociocultural concepts in the staged communication during commemoration rituals.

‘Reading’ the Cinema of Zhang Yimou: Between the Chinese and the Global

Ícone ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Armida De la Garza
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Chinese Identity ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Film Viewing ◽  
Point Of Departure

How are national identities transformed? If they are mostly narratives of belonging to a community of history and destiny to which people subscribe, those boundarymaking procedures that constitute the political field by instituting difference can provide a tentative answer to this question. This paper is concerned with one such cultural practice, namely film viewing. Globalisation, a boundary-blurring practice, has been the backdrop against which transformations in national identity are often discussed, either bemoaned as cultural imperialism or celebrated as ongoing hybridisation. This piece of research took Zhang Yimou’s controversial film “Hero” as a point of departure, and asked groups of Chinese audiences how they understood the Chinese identity it conveys. Although it is still a work in progress, provisional results are reported below.

The political theory and institutional history of states systems

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Berridge
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The books which are the subject of this article1 lie squarely (if a little uneasily on the part of Northedge) in the so-called ‘classical‘ tradition of scholarship in International Relations. This tradition eschews both the attempt to explain international politics by aping the methodology of the natural sciences and any interest in saying something of general import about the process of foreign policy formulation. Rather, it finds its “less ephemeral centre” in the rules and institutions which are shared by states and approaches the study of these rules and institutions in a manner at once philosophical and historical. Furthermore, against the cardboard lances of the ‘transnationalists’ it clutches a sturdy shield to the state, insisting that the state has been in the recent past and will remain for the foreseeable future, the principal “centre of initiative” in world politics. In short, this tradition consists in an overriding concern with the political theory and institutional history of the ‘states-system’.

Stalinism and Russian and Ukrainian national identities

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taras Kuzio
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
The State ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Russian State

This article is the first comparative study of the policies taken by Russian and Ukrainian émigré’s, governments and intellectuals towards the legacy of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The article analyses how these differing approaches have contributed to diverging national identities in Russia and Ukraine which preceded, and were reinforced by, the 2014 crisis in their relations and war between both countries. Stalinization was not a central question for Russian émigrés and was supported by 50 out of 69 years of the USSR and since 2000 by the Russian state. Ukrainian émigrés were more influential and the state actively supported de-Stalinization over the majority of 25 years of independent statehood that integrated de-Stalinisation with national identity and since 2015, de-communization.

Multiculturalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasar Meer
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Core ◽  
National Question ◽  
Multicultural Citizenship ◽  
Future Status

The purpose of this chapter is to locate the discussion about Muslims in Scotland in relation to questions of national identity and multicultural citizenship. While the former has certainly been a prominent feature of public and policy debate, the latter has largely been overshadowed by constitutional questions raised by devolution and the referenda on independence. This means that, while we have undoubtedly progressed since MacEwen (1980) characterised the treatment of ‘race-relations’ in Scotland as a matter either of ‘ignorance or apathy’, the issue of where ethnic, racial and religious minorities rest in the contemporary landscape remains unsettled. One of the core arguments of this chapter is that these issues are all interrelated, and that the present and future status of Muslims in Scotland is tied up with wider debates about the ‘national question’. Hitherto, however, study of national identity in Scotland has often (though not always) been discussed in relation to the national identities of England, Wales and Britain as a whole.

The Use and Misuse of Religious Language: Zionism and the Palestinians

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Title Deed ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Question

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine-Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal ‘title deed’ to the land of Palestine signed by God.

The Tribal Impact on Political Stability in Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Abdu Mukhtar Musa
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Third World ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Cultural Structure

As in most Arab and Third World countries, the tribal structure is an anthropological reality and a sociological particularity in Sudan. Despite development and modernity aspects in many major cities and urban areas in Sudan, the tribe and the tribal structure still maintain their status as a psychological and cultural structure that frames patterns of behavior, including the political behavior, and influence the political process. This situation has largely increased in the last three decades under the rule of the Islamic Movement in Sudan, because of the tribe politicization and the ethnicization of politics, as this research reveals. This research is based on an essential hypothesis that the politicization of tribalism is one of the main reasons for the tribal conflict escalation in Sudan. It discusses a central question: Who is responsible for the tribal conflicts in Sudan?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document