scholarly journals "Re-Imagining" the Homeland? Languages and National Belonging in Ukrainian Diasporas since the Euromaidan

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Ivan Kozachenko

From the first days of the Euromaidan protests, Ukrainian diasporas around the globe took an active part in supporting democratic change in Ukraine. These diasporic communities actively used social media to “represent” their national identity, to promote their visions of Ukraine’s past and future, and to network and coordinate their actions. This paper argues that the events of the Euromaidan made Ukrainian diasporas in Western countries “re-invent” and “re-imagine” their national belonging. In these processes historical memory, language, and regional identifications play a crucial part within the continuum between conservative ethnonationalist identities and “civic” ones that try to accommodate the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Ukraine in the diasporic setting. This study reveals that “civic” identity elements became more visible across Ukrainian diasporas, but that Russian aggression somewhat haltered the acceptance of diversity and reinforced previously existing conservative sentiments.

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Kozachenko

The ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine was preceded by pro-Russian uprisings in major cities in the east and south of the country. These uprisings, sometimes referred to as the “Russian Spring,” were a reaction to the success of the Euromaidan, which ousted President Viktor Ianukovych. The downfall of his pro-Russian regime, coupled with aggressive propaganda, created an outrage that culminated in thousands of protesters taking to the streets. Their demands were justified by distinct “imaginings” of Ukraine’s and Russia’s national identities. The Anti-Maidan—a pro-Russian movement—actively utilized social media in order to promote its vision of Ukraine’s future, past, and present. This paper investigates articulations of national belonging by the Anti-Maidan. Its findings reveal that the Anti-Maidan’s national “imagination” is represented by a bricolage of Soviet and Slavic symbols and advocates non-progressive changes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-621
Author(s):  
Faedah M. Totah

AbstractThe camp and the city are both important for understanding the relationship between space and identity in the refugee experience of exile. In the Palestinian example, the camp has emerged as a potent symbol in the narrative of exile although only a third of refugees registered with UNRWA live in camps. Moreover, the city and urban refugees remain missing in most of the scholarship on the Palestinian experience with space, exile, and identity. Furthermore, there is little attention to how refugees understand the concept of the city and camp in their daily life. This article examines how Palestinian urban refugees in the Old City of Damascus conceptualized the relationship between the camp and the city. It illustrates how the concept of the camp remained necessary for the construction of their collective national identity while in Syria. However, the city was essential in the articulation of individual desires and establishing social distinction from other refugees. Thus, during a protracted exile it is in the interstice between the city and the camp, where most urban refugees in the Old City situated themselves, that informed their national belonging and personal aspirations.


2001 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Webster

“In Malaya,” theDaily Mailnoted in 1953, “three and a half years of danger have given the planters time to convert their previously pleasant homes into miniature fortresses, with sandbag parapets, wire entanglements, and searchlights.” The image of the home as fortress and a juxtaposition of the domestic with menace and terror were central to British media representations of colonial wars in Malaya and Kenya in the 1950s. The repertoire of imagery deployed in theDaily Mailfor the “miniature fortress” in Malaya was extended to Kenya, where the newspaper noted wire over domestic windows, guns beside wine glasses, the charming hostess in her black silk dress with “an automatic pistol hanging at her hip.” Such images of English domesticity threatened by an alien other were also central to immigration discourse in the 1950s and 1960s. In the context of the decline of British colonial rule after 1945, representations of the empire and its legacy—resistance to colonial rule in empire and “immigrants” in the metropolis—increasingly converged on a common theme: the violation of domestic sanctuaries.Colonial wars of the late 1940s and 1950s have received little attention in literatures on national identity in early postwar Britain, but the articulation of racial difference through immigration discourse, and its significance in redefining the postimperial British national community has been widely recognized. As Chris Waters has suggested in his work on discourses of race and nation between 1947 and 1963, these years saw questions of race become central to questions of national belonging.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Tamir Sorek

This article reexamines my argument published in 2007 regarding the apolitical character of Arab soccer fans in Israel. Until recently, explicit political protest and expressions of Palestinian national identity have remained outside the stadium. For most Arab fans, soccer was an opportunity to display common ground with Jewish citizens. Displaying Palestinian nationalism was considered to be endangering the potential for rapprochement. However, over the past decade the barriers that blocked political protest from entering the stadium have been ruptured. Several interrelated factors are suggested as explanations for this shift: multiple cycles of escalated violence in the region, a wave of anti-Arab legislation, the globalization of fan culture, the model of a politicized soccer fan provided during the Arab Spring, and the emergence of social media.


The article discusses the problem of the identity of the population in the conflict zone in the Donbas. It is possible to speak about the existing civic identity if the person realizes his or her belonging to the state, whose citizen he or she is by status, all the attributes of statehood acquire valuable significance, and the “territory of life” shared with other fellow citizens is perceived as the Motherland. The authorities of the DPR and the LPR force citizens on their territory to abandon the identity of a citizen of Ukraine and to acquire the identity of their quasi-republics. For the success of the Ukrainian troops, it is important that the population of the territory where hostilities take place, identify themselves with Ukraine, consider themselves Ukrainians. This is the main task of identity politics. It is emphasized that in the conditions of a shortage of Ukrainian identity among the population in the area of hostilities, it is necessary to help stimulate the formation (strengthening) of such an identity. In identity politics identity management is important. In the conflict zone in the Donbas, civilian identities of the parties in hostile relations compete. It is argued that the desire to influence the identity of the residents of Donbass in order to form a certain identity among them is part of a hybrid war. If the residents in the combat zone have a shortage of Ukrainian identity, then it is necessary to promote the strengthening or formation of such an identity. Identity enforcement techniques can be propaganda, informational, economic, as well as violent, with the use of weapons. One of the methods of struggle for identity is the work of civil society structures, including volunteers. One of the means of implementation of identity politics is an appeal to historical memory. In the management of identity, discursive practices, events of a cultural, scientific, and sporting nature are important. Of great importance for determining identity is the line of demarcation, when the checkpoint divides the territory into “its” and “other”. The location of a person on the one or the other side of the roadblock improves the personality and relevant life practices. The conclusion is formulated that the success of the struggle for the identity of a Ukrainian citizen among the residents of Donbass will help resolve the armed conflict in the east of our country.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariluz Congosto

The incorporation of digital sources from online social media into historical research brings great opportunities, although it is not without technological challenges. The huge amount of information that can be obtained from these platforms obliges us to resort to the use of quantitative methodologies in which algorithms have special relevance, especially regarding network analysis and data mining. The Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain on the social network Twitter will be analysed in this article. An open-code tool called T-Hoarder was used; it is based on objectivity, transparency and knowledge-sharing. It has been in use since 2012.


Author(s):  
Ilya N. Zuev ◽  
◽  
Igor L. Musukhranov ◽  
Ekaterina G. Romanova ◽  
◽  
...  

The development of Altai dance is closely related to the history of the Altai people. Modern Altai people, like other Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia, have not preserved traditional dances in the form in which they were performed in everyday life. The reason for this was that the art of dance has a spatially – temporal character and it is difficult to record it. It is necessary in the analysis of folk dance to use the instrumentation of all fields of art science, to apply a systemic and interdisciplinary approach. It is in this that the authors see a further research horizon. In modern conditions, when the self-consciousness of each people increases, choreographic art, as part of the spiritual culture of the people, responds to all the events of life. The relevance of this study is due to the modern trend of the revival of the national and cultural heritage of the Altai Republic. One of the pressing problems of modern choreography, its theoretical understanding, is the study of the origins of folk stage dance. The fact that lacunae exist in this area of historical and cultural knowledge is evidenced by the lack of textbooks, incomplete complexes of educational and methodological literature. Choreographers, both in the educational process and in staging practice, are faced with the need for a clear theoretical design, the development of a scientific apparatus in this matter. In folk dance, closely connected with the life and life of the people, the peculiarities of its character, feelings, temperament, manner of artistic thinking are especially pronounced, that is, a kind of “choreographic portrait of the nation” is created. Folk dance, plastically expresses ethnic historical experience, is a kind of artistic embodiment of the historical memory of the nation, and thus affects the strengthening of national identity. The importance of the theoretical understanding of folklore in the development of choreography (as in musical or decorative art) is difficult to overestimate. He is a source of ideas, expressive means, often becomes an aesthetic standard in the creative activities of the modern choreographer. The national identity of the dance culture of the people is connected with the stable historical community of language, territory, economic life, psychological warehouse, culture of life, customs and traditions. National art bears both the originality of what it reflects and how it reflects. All this is reflected in folk dance, affects the nature of plastic. From here, the dances of one people are not similar to those of another, and even one ethnic group, divided geographically, dances differ. For example, Russian folk dance has common features characteristic of Russian dance in general, but at the same time it also has bright regional features. Dance culture in geographically distant territories varies in character, manner of performance, and originality of drawing, and subject matter. The main difficulty in studying this issue is the difficulty of “translating” the plastic language into speech discourse. Hence the difficulty in fixing and writing the description of choreography. There may be discrepancies and misinterpretations of the records of researchers of the past due to the lack of an agreed methodology and categorical apparatus.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-49
Author(s):  
Victoria V. Anohina

The article analyzes the socio-cultural risks of the modernization of Belarusian society as well as the opportunities to minimize these through communication mechanisms of cultural tradition. Since in the postmodern conditions social transformation takes the form of a “reflexive” modernization, its inherent risks should be considered as closely linked with globalization of culture, in particular, with glocalization, pluralization of social identity, hybridization of cultural traditions, fragmentation of the “lifeworld” and of the nation’s historical memory. The author considers various levels of the structure of cultural tradition, paying special attention to the national mentality as its basic layer. The goal of this paper is to show how the specific features of Belarusian mentality become sources of risk and to reveal the role of cultural traditions in preventing or reducing such risks. Analyzing different strategies for constructing the national identity, the author defines the vulnerabilities involved. It argues that the formation of modern forms of national identity in Belarusian society is due to interaction of at least two identification models: the “strong” and “weak” ones. By analyzing the specifics of the “strong” national identity of Belarusians, the author notes that its poles – the nationalist and the patriotic ones – are largely compatible and do not respond to the most urgent challenges. On the contrary, the model of a “weak” identity has a high capacity to adapt to the conditions of “reflexive” modernization. This model is implemented in the process of constructing a pluralistic civic identity of Belarusians, but it has potential risks, especially in conditions of geopolitical turbulence and external pressure on Belarusian society. A reflexive attitude to the past is considered a possibility to minimize such risks, to avoid or to limit potential adverse impacts of social mobilization or national identity construction. It is emphasized that discussions about the past should be carried out in the form of a dialogue that meets the rules and requirements of communicative rationality.


2018 ◽  
pp. 193-272
Author(s):  
Michèle Lamont ◽  
Graziella Moraes Silva ◽  
Jessica S. Welburn ◽  
Joshua Guetzkow ◽  
Nissim Mizrachi ◽  
...  

This chapter examines the experiences and responses of Arab Palestinians, Ethiopian Jews, and Mizrahi Jews in Israel to stigmatization and discrimination. It first explains the historical and socioeconomic context for the three groups, taking into account the legacy of Zionism that shapes their experiences, the status of Arab Palestinians in the Jewish polity, and questions of ethno-national identity, exclusion, and inclusion affecting Mizrahim and Ethiopians in Israel. It then provides an overview of the Tel Aviv–Jaffa metropolitan area, the research site, before discussing the role of national belonging, race, and ethnicity in the formation of groupness among the respondents, with emphasis on self-identification and group boundaries. It also analyzes the groups' experiences of stigmatization and discrimination, and especially assault on worth, before concluding with an assessment of their reactions to such incidents as well as their views about the best ways to deal with social exclusion.


Author(s):  
Lauren Banko

By the latter half of the 1920s and the early 1930s, British and Arab misunderstandings of each other's intentions with respect to identity and citizenship status encouraged even stronger claims by the Arabs to the bundle of rights that they felt entitled to in accordance with their own particular understandings of nationality and citizenship. This chapter ties the discussions of citizenship that circulated in the territory from 1918 through the mid-1930s to the projects of belonging that the nationalists, populists, and the Arabic press attended to and actively worked towards. The active engagement of the press and social groups in political actions with the aim of changing mandate institutions fostered a new vocabulary of rights, political, and civic identity and citizenship belonging in the years just before the start of the Palestine Revolt in 1936. The chapter frames certain discourses on citizenship and national identity as more dominant and others as more subaltern during the latter half of the 1920s and 1930s. The chapter includes a case study of the Palestinian Arab Istiqlal (Independence) Party, whose policies aimed to redefine citizenship and access to rights under the mandate.


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