Belonging 2.015

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-124
Author(s):  
Ken R. Crane

The year 2015 saw historic levels of refugee movements out of Syria, Iraq, and North Africa to Europe, which coincided chronologically with terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. The Republican presidential nomination campaign singled out refugees from Syria and Iraq as existential threats, and the “Islamophobia Industry” mainstreamed an anti-Muslim discourse in the presidential primary, naming Arab refugees as a potential fifth column, leading to the passage of the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act (HR 4038). The seismic sociopolitical shifts of 2015 shaped the experience of belonging among Iraqi refugee youths. Iraqi youths employed multiple strategies in confronting the disturbing ways in which they were being profiled in the public arena. One important strategy was in calling attention to a counternarrative—the proactive and positive ways that the local Muslim and Arab community was reaching out across cultural and religious barriers to mobilize against hate.

1982 ◽  
Vol 37 (12) ◽  
pp. 1403-1404
Author(s):  
Richard Reardon
Keyword(s):  

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-211
Author(s):  
James Crossley

Using the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as a test case, this article illustrates some of the important ways in which the Bible is understood and consumed and how it has continued to survive in an age of neoliberalism and postmodernity. It is clear that instant recognition of the Bible-as-artefact, multiple repackaging and pithy biblical phrases, combined with a popular nationalism, provide distinctive strands of this understanding and survival. It is also clear that the KJV is seen as a key part of a proud English cultural heritage and tied in with traditions of democracy and tolerance, despite having next to nothing to do with either. Anything potentially problematic for Western liberal discourse (e.g. calling outsiders “dogs,” smashing babies heads against rocks, Hades-fire for the rich, killing heretics, using the Bible to convert and colonize, etc.) is effectively removed, or even encouraged to be removed, from such discussions of the KJV and the Bible in the public arena. In other words, this is a decaffeinated Bible that has been colonized by, and has adapted to, Western liberal capitalism.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter presents an account of the San Bernardino band as the public facade of that workhouse. The image of children who had been picked up from the streets, disciplined, and taught to play an instrument as they marched across the city in uniform helped broadcast the message that the municipal institutions of social aid were contributing to the regeneration of society. This image contrasted with the regime of discipline and punishment inside the workhouse and thus helped to legitimize the workhouse’s public image. The privatization of social aid from the 1850s meant that the San Bernardino band engaged with a growing range of institutions and social groups and carried out an equally broad range of social services. It was thus able to serve as the extension through which Madrid’s authorities could gain greater intimacy with certain population sectors, particularly with the working classes.


Author(s):  
Richard Moyle

The Samoan Mau nationalistic movement of the 1920s, which led eventually to Independence in 1962, was characterized by group songs many of which were fervent in their support for traditional leadership and scathing in their condemnation of the then New Zealand administration. In the year 2000 copies of Mau songs recorded some fifty years earlier were among musical items repatriated to Samoa to public acclaim and national radio playback, but within a few weeks they were banned from further broadcast. The ban acknowledged singing as a socially powerful tool for local politics, since the broadcasts transformed songs as cultural artifacts to singing as social assertion, returning into the public arena a range of political views that many Samoans had preferred to keep private.


Author(s):  
Patrícia Rossini ◽  
Jennifer Stromer-Galley ◽  
Ania Korsunska

Abstract While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 312-324
Author(s):  
Ryszard Piotrowski

The system of governance in contemporary Poland is founded mainly on a negative narrative of distrust. That narrative brought to power the country’s present scaremongering rulers. They continue feeding the public with frightening stories of an influx of refugees, threats of war and terrorist attacks, evils of globalisation and a loss of cultural identity to foreign ways of life. A balance between distrust of rulers and trust in them is part of democracy’s constitutional identity. Those currently in power sow distrust in liberal democracy and its values – they violate the constitution, stir up distrust of elites, and make attempts at bringing the judiciary to heelwhile staging judges bashing propaganda campaigns. Distrust of European law and European institutions is part and parcel of this process. The negative narrative weakens and threatens to disenfranchise civil society, blurring the line between law and lawlessness. It also weakens those in power.


1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Bradley

This paper argues that Celtic Football Club has played a central organising role in establishing a common identity for Catholics of Irish descent in Scotland. Concentrating on evidence taken from discourse in the public media, it draws attention to reactions to this identity by other population groups. Such responses, which are frequently ferocious in the degree of rejection they express, highlight the effects of Celtic's role. It provides a public arena within which Irishness can be expressed; at the same time, it draws fire from hostile elements in the social setting. Tensions within the Irish community about their common identity may in part be responses to these reactions.


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