City and nation in cultural perspective: Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Ruth Glynn
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World Cities ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Complementary Study

This Special Issue explores how cultural production and practice understand and articulate the changing relationship between city and nation, in the light of globalization and the increasing freedom of cities to build, brand and promote themselves independent of the nation state. The Introduction maps the scholarship pertaining to cultural engagements with city and nation, highlighting their separation into two distinct spheres. It reviews the existing scholarship on city‐nation relations in the field of urban studies (where discussion has centred on the emergence of ‘world cities’ and their implications for nation states) and in urban history. It locates in Vivian Bickford-Smith’s work on cities and nationalism in South Africa a rich source of inspiration for the volume’s complementary study of the role played by cultural production and practice in articulating, shaping and negotiating understandings of city and nation in contemporary Europe. It closes with an overview of the contributing articles.

scholarly journals La arteria cultural del cuerpo estatal: el campo de las Bellas Artes en la construcción del Estado liberal español (1833-1874)

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 245
Author(s):  
Ainhoa Gilarranz Ibáñez
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
State Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Weak Structure

Resumen: A partir de la década de los 90, un conjunto de historiadores reabrió el debate sobre la construcción del estado-nación con miradas que fluctuaban entre una estructura fuerte o débil de los estados europeos. El giro cultural en la historia contemporánea introdujo nuevos puntos de vista que podrían resumirse en un estudio “desde abajo” de la construcción estatal, en el que los imaginarios, las identidades y el individuo eran el principal corpus analítico. Continuando con esta línea, las siguientes páginas profundizan en las posibilidades que la mirada cultural ofrece en el estudio de un proceso histórico tan complejo. En concreto, cómo observar el campo artístico, fraccionado en sus instituciones, universos simbólicos y agentes, se podrían iluminar algunas de las sombras de la construcción del Estado-nación decimonónico.Palabras clave: Estado liberal, siglo XIX, historia cultural, arte.Abstract: In the 1990s, a group of historians reopened the debate on the building of nation states. Perspectives swung between a strong or a weak structure for European states. This cultural wave in contemporary history introduced new viewpoints that can now be summarised in a “bottom up” analysis of state building. Continuing with this line of thought, this work explores the possibilities opened up by adopting a cultural perspective of such a complex historical process. Specifically, how observing the artistic field, with its lines dividing institutions, symbolic universes and agents, could shed new light on nineteenth-century nation-state building.Key words: liberal State, 19th century, Cultural history, art.

Global Environmental Change and the Nation State

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Biermann ◽  
Klaus Dingwerth
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental

This article outlines the theoretical problematique and some empirical knowledge regarding the impacts of global environmental change on the nation state; thereby it also introduces this special issue of Global Environmental Politics. We argue that global environmental change decreases the capacity of nation states to fulfill their definitional functions without the cooperation of other states. The added stress due to environmental change also increases the demand for adaptive capacities of nation states, which further diminishes their resources to fulfill other core functions. Based on an overview of the complex interplay between global environmental change and the nation state, we focus on the various ways in which the nation state may mitigate, or adapt to, the impacts of global environmental change, including horizontal diffusionism and vertical institutionalism. In summarizing the other contributions to this special issue, we further argue that a reconsideration of key theoretical concepts such as sovereignty, agency, and multilevel governance is required in order to improve our understanding of the complexities of global environmental governance.

scholarly journals Mass Violence and the Kurds: Introduction to the Special Issue

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ayhan Işık ◽  
Ugur Ümit Üngör
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Population Policies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Modern Mass

The Kurds’ experience with modern mass violence is long and complex. Whereas Kurds lived under the Kurdish Emirates for centuries in pre-national conditions in the Ottoman and Persian empires, the advent of nationalism and colonialism in the Middle East radically changed the situation. World War I was a watershed for most ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, such as the Kurds, and some political minorities such as Armenians and Assyrians suffered genocide – including at the hands of Kurds. Moreover, the post-Ottoman order precluded the Kurds from building a nation-state of their own. Kurds were either relegated to cultural and political subordination under the Turkish and Persian nation states, or a precarious existence under alternative orders (colonialism in Syria and Iraq, and communism in the Soviet Union). The nation-state system changed the pre-national, Ottoman imperial order with culturally heterogeneous territories into a system of nation-states which began to produce nationalist homogenisation by virtue of various forms of population policies.

Apartheid Aesthetics and Insignificant Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.

scholarly journals Exemplary Ethical Communities. A New Concept for a Livable Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5582
Author(s):  
Daniele Conversi
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental

This article argues that we need to look at living examples provided by non-state communities in various regions of the world that are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the maintenance of the Earth’s optimal thermal balance. These fully sustainable communities have been living outside the mainstream for centuries, even millennia, providing examples in the global struggle against the degradation of social–ecological systems. They have all, to varying degrees, embraced simple forms of living that make them ‘exemplary ethical communities’ (EECs)—human communities with a track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge and the capacity to survive outside the capitalist market and nation-state system. The article proceeds in three steps: First, it condenses a large body of research on the limits of the existing nation-state system and its accompanying ideology, nationalism, identifying this institutional–ideological complex as the major obstacle to tackling climate change. Second, alternative social formations that could offer viable micro-level and micro-scale alternatives are suggested. These are unlikely to identify with existing nation-states as they often form distinct types of social communities. Taking examples from hunter-gatherer societies and simple-living religious groups, it is shown how the protection and maintenance of these EECs could become the keystone in the struggle for survival of humankind and other forms of life. Finally, further investigation is called for, into how researchers can come forward with more examples of actually existing communities that might provide pathways to sustainability and resistance to the looming global environmental catastrophe.

Ethnicity as inclusion and exclusion

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1262-1269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Baskerville ◽  
Kerry Jacobs ◽  
Vassili Joannides de Lautour ◽  
Jeff Sissons
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Culture Theory ◽  
Grid And Group ◽  
Group Culture ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose Accounting research has struggled with how ethnicity is to be understood in relation to concepts such as nation and nationality and how ethnicity may impact on accounting and auditing practices, behaviours, education and professional values. These themes are explored and developed in the papers presented in this special issue. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to explore the contrasting theoretical and methodological approaches reflected by the papers in the issue. Design/methodology/approach This is a reflective and analytical paper which explores how notions of ethnicity are conceived and operationalised in accounting research. The authors identified two distinctive analytic ordering processes evident within this AAAJ Special issue: Mary Douglas’ scheme of Grid and Group and the Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of field, capital and habitus. Findings The “Grid and Group” Culture Theory with Bourdieu’s theoretical tools evident in the papers provide powerful tools to explore the relationship between ethnicity and accounting both conceptually and empirically, suggesting that ethnicity can be deployed to reveal and challenge institutionalised racism. This paper highlights the potential to integrate elements of the “Grid and Group” Culture Theory and Bourdieu’s theoretical tools. The issue of ethnicity and the relationship between ethnicity and accounting should be more fruitfully explored in future. Research limitations/implications The authors acknowledge the challenges and limitations of discussing the issue of ethnicity from any particular cultural perspective and recognise the implicit dominance of White Anglo centric perspectives within accounting research. Originality/value The papers presented in the special issue illustrate that the issue of ethnicity is complex and difficult to operationalise. This paper highlights the potential to move beyond the ad hoc application of theoretical and methodological concepts to operationalise coherent concepts which challenge and extend the authors’ understanding of accounting as a social and contextual practice. But to achieve this it is necessary to more clearly integrate theory, methodology, method and critique.

International Human Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Future of Chieftaincy in Ghana

Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abamfo Atiemo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Customary Practices

AbstractA revolutionary development that resulted from Africa's experience of colonialism was the emergence of the nation-state made up of previously separate ethnic states. By the end of the colonial period the rulers of these ethnic states — the chiefs — had lost most of their real political and judicial powers to the political leaders of the new nation-states. But in spite of the loss of effective political power the chiefs continued to wield moral influence over members of their ethnic groups. The limited reach of the nation-state in the post-colonial era has also meant a dependence on the chiefs, in many cases, for aspects of local governance. This, for example, is the case of Ghana. However, in the modern context of religious pluralism the intimate bond between the chiefs and the traditional religion exacerbates tension in situations of conflict between people's loyalty to the traditional state and their religious commitment. In some cases, chiefs invoke customary laws in attempt to enforce sanctions against individuals who refuse to observe certain customary practices for religious reasons. But this has implications for the human rights of citizens. This article discusses the implications of this situation for the future of chieftaincy as well as prospects for the protection of the human rights of citizens who for religious reasons choose to stay away from certain communal customary practices.

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