Diaspora

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Smaro Kamboureli
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Global Flow ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Involuntary Displacement ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Double Origin

Diaspora as a concept and a particular phenomenon of migration has a double origin: etymologically, it comes from the Greek verb diaspeirein, meaning to scatter; historically, it refers to the dispersal of the Jews from their ancestral land after the destruction of the Second Temple in 586 bce. The term has been applied to the involuntary displacement of other peoples—for example, the African, Armenian, and Irish diasporas—but the Jewish diaspora has served as the principal paradigm of diasporic experience. Based on the Jewish “prototypical” case, the concept has been commonly defined as encompassing a collective identity shaped by the trauma that accompanies a group’s forced departure from its ancestral land and its emotional and material attachment to the origins that is sustained by the desire to return home or by symbolic manifestations of nostalgia. Although scholars have identified different kinds of diasporas—labor, trading, imperial diasporas—the term has maintained its emphasis on dislocation and loss, evoking at once the experience and politics of dispossession and ethnic identification. Since the second half of the 20th century, however, this understanding of diaspora has expanded to embrace a range of displaced communities—immigrants, migrants, exiles, refugees—and has thus come to be identified with global mobilities as an aftereffect of modernity. The malleability of the concept has given rise to many debates about its meaning, application, and methodology, especially since the late 1980s when diaspora began to attract systematic critical attention. The study of diaspora is generally characterized by both a centripetal and a centrifugal approach: the former, holding up the home nation as the ultimate reference point and thus viewing diasporas as distinct and cohesive entities, is concerned with demarcating the boundaries of the term by establishing categorical definitions and typologies; the latter, viewing diaspora as inhabiting an interstitial space in relation to the receiving nation and thus as a hybrid formation and social condition, is interested in diasporic subjectivity as a question of becoming. This opening up of the concept of diaspora, along with the increased global flow of people and parallel developments in other fields, has meant that, since the latter part of the 20th century, diaspora is examined in the adjacent contexts of globalization, postcolonialism, multiculturalism, transnationalism, and hybridity.

scholarly journals Politics of Ethnic Identity in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Barabantseva ◽  
David Tobin
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
National Model ◽  
National Survival ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Cultural Cohesion ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Territorial Unity

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), in the eyes of its leadership, has been perceived as a unitary multiethnic state (duo minzu guojia), comprised of the Han majority and fifty-five ethnic minorities. State propaganda routinely emphasizes the inseparability of the Han from other ethnic groups that have seamlessly cohered into one harmonious whole in the course of five thousand years of history. The “ethnic minorities” (shaoshu minzu) concept attained its meaning during the minority identification project (minzu shibie) of the mid-1950s shortly after the establishment of the PRC. Yet, the ideas and principles of the Chinese national model formalized through the ethnic identification project are informed by the centuries of the Chinese central state’s expansion and absorption of new territories and people into its domain. The articulation of the Chinese territorial and cultural borders went hand in hand with the development of new forms of categorization and demarcation of difference encountered as Chinese borders expanded. Prior to the Republican period (1911–1949), to be Chinese was a matter of accepting and converting into Confucian norms. According to the rules of the governing order of imperial China, tianxia, practicing the Confucian ritual and ethical principles was sufficient to become Chinese (huaren). In the period of China’s forced opening-up to the outside world in the mid- to late 1800s, the formulation of national principles was part of the process of negotiating what constituted China and who the Chinese people were. The concepts of ethnicity and nation developed at the intersections between Chinese state’s relations with its domestic Others and its turbulent interactions with the outside world. The themes of national survival, territorial unity, cultural cohesion, stability of borders, and the development of the Chinese nation into a strong modern state are closely related to the formation of the politics of ethnic and national identity.

3. History and heroes

2018 ◽  
pp. 46-82
Author(s):  
Ben Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Western Perspective

Seen from a Western perspective, the history of comparative literature can be divided into three categories: how European literatures have been compared inside Europe; how European literature has been compared with other cultures outside Europe; and how literatures outside Europe have been compared among themselves. ‘History and heroes’ explains how from the empire building of the 19th century, via the Jewish diaspora of the 20th century, to the postcolonial culture wars of the 21st century, the problems and prejudices of comparative literature have formed a cultural counterpart to the problems and prejudices of modernity. To understand its history, in this spirit, is to understand why it matters.

Psalms

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Breck Reid ◽  
Rebecca Poe Hays
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Literary Composition ◽  
Form Criticism

The location of a book in the canon gives the reader clues to the genre and interpretation of the book. The Jewish canon places the poetry of the book of Psalms as the introduction to the division of the bible known as the Ketubim (writings). The Christian canon(s) place the Psalter between Job and Proverbs, accenting the Psalms’ place among the wisdom texts. Scholarly consensus understands the Psalter as a collection of collections of sung poetic prayers that range over a wide period of authorship, provenance, and redaction. Associated with ongoing worship in Israel, most psalms were continually reapplied to new situations. The earliest psalms antedate the period when Israel and Judah were ruled by an indigenous king, the monarchy (1030–583 bce), and the latest are from the period defined by the cultural and political hegemony of Greece, the Hellenistic period (323–63 bce). The book of Psalms functioned as the prayer book of the second temple period (521 bce–66 ce) and the repository of poetic instruction. The first audience of the completed book is the emerging population of what was then the Persian province of Yehud during this period. Prior to the rise of form criticism in the early 20th century, scholarship focused on the Psalms as expressions of individual religious poets, much as Keats, Dickinson, or Countee Cullen. Form criticism, shaped by the work of Herman Gunkel, focused on the social location of the various literary genres in the cult, but this approach still viewed the Psalter as assemblage or medley without structure or order. During the mid-20th century a focus emerged with an interest in the “shape and shaping” of the Psalter. The rise of postmodernity has led some to pursue post-Gunkel approaches to the book of Psalms that attend to matters such as the poetic language and the relationship to other ancient Near Eastern poetry and imagery. While many scholars still utilize form-critical language to discuss the Psalter, they tend to examine each psalm as a distinct literary composition and product of Israel’s religious tradition rather than forcing them into specific genres and corresponding life settings.

Creating the Past: Schelling’s Ages of the World

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Welchman ◽  
Judith Norman
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Viewing Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hegelian Dialectic ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Creation ◽  
To Receive

AbstractF.W.J. Schelling’s Ages of the World has just begun to receive the critical attention it deserves as a contribution to the philosophy of history. Its most significant philosophical move is to pose the question of the origin of the past itself, asking what “caused” the past. Schelling treats the past not as a past present (something that used to be a ’now’ but no longer is) — but rather as an eternal past, a different dimension of time altogether, and one that was never a present ’now’. For Schelling, the past functions as the transcendental ground of the present, the true ’a priori’. Schelling’s account of the creation of this past takes the form of a theogeny: in order to exist, God needed to separate the past from the present. By grounding the creation of the past in a free decision of God, Schelling tries to conceptualize temporality so as to preserve the sort of radical contingency and authentic freedom that he considers essential features of history. In so doing, he opens up a way of viewing time that avoids the pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectic and anticipates some of the 20th century developments in phenomenology.

Racism As We Sense It Today

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1737-1742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Jose De Acosta ◽  
Opening Up

The research that I reported in the darker side of the renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995) was driven by my desire and need to understand the opening up of the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, its historical, theoretical, and political consequences. How was it that coexisting socioeconomic organizations like the Ottoman and Mughal sultanates as well as the incanate in the Andes and the tlahtoanate in the Valley of Mexico were either inferior or almost absent in the global historical picture of the time? I became aware, for example, that people in the Valley of Mexico living in the Aztec tlahtoanate, whether in conformity or dissenting, were compared—by the Spaniards—with the Jews. The comparison was twofold: on the one hand, the Indians and the Jews were dirty and untrustworthy people; on the other hand, the Indians in the New World may have been part of the Jewish diaspora. So, the comparison got in trouble, because Indians and Jews may have been the same people. The Jesuit priest José de Acosta, in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1589), asked whether the Indians descended from the Jews, addressing a question that was on everybody's mind. He dismissed the possibility of the connection, because the Jews had had a sophisticated writing system for a long time while the Indians were illiterate (in the Western sense of the word). Jews liked money, Acosta pointed out, while Indians were not even aware of it; and while Jews took circumcision seriously, Indians had no idea of it. Last but not least, if Indians were indeed of Jewish origin, they would not have forgotten the Messiah and their religion.

“Gather Your People”: Learning to Listen Intergenerationally in Settler-Indigenous Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 665-691
Author(s):  
Emily Beausoleil
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Politics ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Learning To Listen

Decolonization requires critical attention to settler logics that reinforce settler-colonialism, yet settler communities, as a rule, operate without a collective sense of identity and history. This article, provoked by Māori protocols of encounter, explores the necessity of developing a sense of collective identity as precursor to meeting in settler-Indigenous politics. It argues that the ability, desire, and experience of being unmarked as a social group—apparent in paradigmatic approaches to engaging social difference in settler communities—is at the heart of the particularity of settler group identity and also stands at the heart of countless failures to meet in settler-Indigenous politics. This essay thus seeks to mark the particular ground of this unmarkedness of settler identity in Western philosophies that set being unmarked as both ontology and ideal; the dominance of settler communities in places of settlement; and the willful forgetting of the colonial histories brought about by such dominance.

scholarly journals Traditions in the Discussions about the obrabotvane of Folklore in the Avtorski Pesni v Naroden Duh from Bulgaria

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lozanka Peycheva
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Rich History

The avtorski pesni v naroden duh (authored songs in folk spirit) are a modern and multifaceted phenomenon, which has accumulated a rich history in Bulgarian musical culture. This research presents the essential characteristics of these songs and a two-part typology (1. authorized/avtorizirani folk songs; 2. newly composed songs ‘in folk spirit’), which is based on both models of authorship (according to Michel Foucault, authorial function is manifested in two basic forms of authorship—plagiarism and appropriation). This study provides an overview of some of the thematic debates that attempt to resolve the inevitable contradictions and tensions surrounding songwriting in folk spirit. The avtorski pesni v naroden duh have attracted the critical attention of Bulgarian musicians and society and have been the subject of lively discussions, criticisms, and controversy in numerous publications from the first decades of the 20th century to the present. This survey offers different perspectives, opinions and arguments focused on one of the main discussion topics related to the creation and functioning of the avtorski pesni v naroden duh: pro and contra the obrabotvane (transformation, polishing, processing, cultivation) of folklore. This problem has been at the heart of intellectual discussions since the 1930s and during the 1950s–1980s. The critical discussion of the question pro and contra the obrabotvane of folklore, with its whole inconsistency, complexity and impossibility to be reduced to unambiguous answers, leads to sharp confrontations between the holders of different opinions.

Getting the Neighborhood Back

Neighborhood ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 36-59
Author(s):  
Emily Talen
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Garden Cities ◽  
Neighborhood Unit ◽  
And Control ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City ◽  
Opening Up

While the opening up of the city and the loss of neighborhood identity was not universally lamented, many planners, sociologists, and social reformers reacted to the decline by trying to plan the neighborhood back into existence. Essentially the response to industrial capitalism was to apportion cities into manageable units and subunits—segmented, patterned, sorted into equal-size circles, squares, or hexagons at regular intervals, nested into hierarchical arrangements, often with mathematical precision. The quest for order and control manifested as the neighborhood unit—an urban partitioning that even ancient cities had practiced. In the 19th century, garden cities, model villages, and other idealized units were the more immediate precursors of the 20th-century version: relatively self-contained neighborhoods that had access to services, social life, and nature.

A Look at the Yezidi Journey to Self-discovery and Ethnic Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Peter Nicolaus ◽  
Serkan Yuce
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
The One

Yezidi communities throughout the world are struggling with their collective identity; each at a varying and somewhat differing stage of self-discovery. While the present paper does seek to elaborate upon this journey for the Yezidis in Transcaucasia, Germany, Canada, and the USA, its main focus remains the analysis of the political developments in the Yezidi heartland of Northern Iraq. This is so that the reader may have a fuller picture of the catalysts spurring this Yezidi reimagining. On the one hand, you have the traditional Yezidi leadership caught within a complex series of client-patron relationships with Kurdish leaders: ethnic identification is leveraged for promises of influence and power. While, on the other hand, newly minted Yezidi military commanders, as well as grassroot figures and Yezidi NGOs, are trying to establish themselves as heads of a Yezidi community that is undeniably distinct from their Kurdish neighbours. This paper will further show that the withdrawal of the Kurdish Peshmerga in the face of the ISIS attack in 2014, the half-hearted responses of the regional Kurdish and Federal Iraqi governments, all coupled with the stalled return of Yezidi refugees contributed to a growing Yezidi movement to cement their identity, as well as satiate a growing urgency to define themselves as a distinct ethnoreligious entity.

Not with One Voice: An Explanation of Intragroup Variation in Nationalist Sentiment

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Gorenburg
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Minority Population ◽  
Ethnic Minority Population ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Bases ◽  
Key Factor

Support for nationalism among minorities in multiethnic countries has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years. Few of these studies, however, have delved into the social bases of support for nationalism within a particular ethnic group. Scholars who study nationalism usually assume that support for nationalism among the members of an ethnic group is either randomly distributed or identical for all members of the group. Both assumptions are implausible. This article seeks to show that support for nationalism among members of an ethnic group is neither constant nor random. Furthermore, it argues that the extent to which members of social subgroups within the ethnic group come to support nationalism is predictable and is based on a particular sequence of mobilization. This sequence depends on the extent to which members of each subgroup possess a sense of common collective identity and on the strength of their social ties with those who are at the forefront of the mobilization effort. Both of these factors in turn depend largely on the extent to which state institutions promote ethnic identification among the minority population and create links that increase the density of intragroup social ties. Ethnic institutions are thus the key factor in explaining the sequence by which social groups within an ethnic minority population come to support nationalism.

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