scholarly journals Understanding the Complexity of Identity in Yehud and the Classroom

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wiliams
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Multiple Groups

This paper focuses on the lesson plan for discussing Ezra-Nehemiah and Persian Period Yehud. Class readings provide a helpful framework for looking at the complex identities within the classroom and learning about the diversity of identity and thought in Yehud. Primary and secondary sources illustrate that multiple forces shape identity A class activity allows students to recognize and address the complexity of identity and the power relations that undergird identity formation. Students then engage the biblical text and discuss not only the complexities of identity in Yehud but also the dynamic processes of imperialization and decolonization. Specifically, students begin to see how the text reflects multiple groups, interests and perspectives, sometimes in competition. Students also consider the issue of intermarriage in both Ezra and Nehemiah. Students often return to discussions of their own experiences of bilingualism, ethnic differences, race, and their mothers’ and grandmothers’ influences on their own education.

Polish Ethnic Minority in Belarus and Lithuania: Politics, Institutions, and Identities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Monika Frėjutė-Rakauskienė ◽  
Olga Sasunkevich ◽  
Kristina Šliavaitė
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Analysis Data ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Cross Case Analysis ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
State Schools

Abstract This article analyzes how institutions influence the process of identity formation within the Polish minority communities in Belarus and Lithuania. We focus on ways that the identities of people who consider themselves Poles in Belarus and Lithuania are targeted by institutions like the state, schools, and nongovernmental organizations. We aim to shed light on how these processes are shaped by institutional settings and broader political contexts. The authors take a bottom-up approach to institutions and look at how members of the Polish communities in the two neighboring countries conceptualize the role of various institutions—NGOs, schools, Karta Polaka (the Polish Card)—to shape their sense of ethnic belonging. The article is built on a cross-case analysis. Data for the Lithuanian and Belarusian cases, consisting of interviews and secondary sources, were collected independently and then reread in light of a common research question. Through our analysis, we show differences and similarities in how analogous institutions function on the two sides of the border and elaborate on the reasons why these differences occur and what role state policy and supranational regulations play in the process.

Ontological Counter-securitization in Asymmetric Power Relations: Lessons from Israel

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 932-956
Author(s):  
Amal Jamal
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Asymmetric Power ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Ontological Dimension ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Analytical Category

Abstract This article seeks to enhance the understanding of ontological counter-securitization and the constitution of securitized subjects in the context of asymmetrical power relations. It builds on the available critique of the conceptualization of counter-securitization and the differentiation between physical and ontological securitization in order to facilitate a better understanding of the identity formation of securitized subjects as resistance. It argues that whereas the current literature deals with the differentiation between physical and ontological dimensions of securitization and recently with the meaning of counter-securitization, nonetheless the treatment of the later as a resistance is limited. It remains in the realm of the physical dimensions of securitization, rendering ontological ones unaddressed. The article argues that ontological counter-securitization emerges as an analytical category when the mismatch between the physical and ontological securitization policies is utilized as a structural opportunity for resisting asymmetrical power relations. The article exemplifies its theoretical arguments through exploring the complicated securitization policies of Israel toward its Palestinian citizens and the resistance of the latter to such policies. It argues that despite the fact that the Israeli physical and ontological securitization of its Palestinian citizens have not matched, they have been constructed as complementary and therefore have not been morally justifiable. This lack of moral justifiability has had repercussions on the legitimacy of the securitization policy, leading to the rise of the securitized subject as a securitizing agency that is able to practice counter-securitization. Since the power relations between the state and its Palestinian citizens has been asymmetrical, the latter limited their counter-securitization to the ontological dimension, manifested through politicizing their indigenous identity. The conceptualization of politicizing indigeneity as an ontological counter-securitization strategy of resistance has not been addressed in the available literature on securitization theory. Thus, exploring its analytical merits is a central goal of this article.

scholarly journals Distant places in children’s everyday activities: Multiple worlds in an Australian preschool

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsuzsa Millei
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Global Flows ◽  
Multiple Worlds ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Abstract Global flows and their geopolitical power relations powerfully shape the environments in which children lead their everyday lives. Children’s images, imaginations and ideas of distant places are part of these global flows and the everyday activities children perform in preschool. Research explores how through curricula young children are moulded into global and cosmopolitan citizens and how children make sense of distant places through globally circulating ideas, images and imaginations. How these ideas, images and imaginations form an unproblematised part of young children’s everyday preschool activities and identity formation has been much less explored, if at all. I use Massey’s (2005) concept of a ‘global sense of place’ in my analysis of ethnographic data collected in an Australian preschool to explore how children produce global qualities of preschool places and form and perform identities by relating to distant places. I pay special attention to how place, objects and children become entangled, and to the sensory aspects of their emplaced experiences, as distant spatialities embed in and as children’s bodies inhabit the preschool place. To conclude, I call for critical pedagogies to engage with children’s use of these constructions to draw similarities or contrast aspects of distant places and self, potentially reproducing global power relations by fixing representations of places and through uncritically enacting stereotypes.

scholarly journals “So, it is about how negative it is?!” Understanding researcher/researched interactions as relations between intersectional social positions

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sune Qvotrup Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Minority Men ◽  
Powerful Mechanism ◽  
Insight Into

The article argues that interactions in qualitative interviews and ethnography can be analyzed as relations between intersectional social positions. It draws attention to the importance of class and geographical location in such analysis. It further argues that such interactions work through typifications, that they have a power dimension and that they entail processes of identity formation. The identities being offered through these processes can, however, be negotiated or resisted. The article then analyses such interactions as they were experienced in two research projects the author participated in: His PhD project about young marginalized ethnic minority men, and the collective project INTERLOC which focused on the interplay between gender, class, ethnicity and ‘race’ in an underprivileged Danish suburb. It is demonstrated that relationality influences the assumptions research participants have about the researcher. It is also demonstrated that the research encounter entails powerful mechanism of identity formation. The informants, however, sometimes resist these processes resulting in blurred and unstable, sometimes antagonistic, power relations. It is finally argued that analyses of such interactions can provide central insight into the subject studied.

scholarly journals Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and statelessness: An interview with Craig Calhoun

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barzoo Eliassi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
The Right ◽  
Diasporic Identities

This interview with Professor Craig Calhoun expands on issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to the question of statelessness. Since the 1990s, Calhoun has worked on nationalism, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. For Calhoun, nations still matter despite post-national and cosmopolitan elaboration and repudiation of so-called parochial and provincialised identities like nation or national identity and citizenship. In this interview, Calhoun dis-cusses the material, political and cultural situations of the Kurds in the Middle East and the role of Kurdish nationalism in the context of statelessness. Calhoun finds class-based understanding of inequalities between the Kurds and their dominant others in the Middle East as problematic and incomplete since the cultural, political and material inequalities are intimately interlinked in rendering the Kurds to a subordinated position in the states they inhabit. The interview also engages with diasporic identities and examines how countries of residence can impinge on the identity formation of diasporas and how they obstruct or facilitate migrants translating their citizenship status into the right to have rights (Arendt). An important issue that Calhoun discusses is that there are both asymmetrical power relations between dominated (Kurdish) and dominating nationalisms (Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian) and within the same nationalisms.

New Perspectives on the Return from Exile and Persian-Period Yehud

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-169
Author(s):  
Mary Joan Winn Leith
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Text ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Early Form ◽  
International Context ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Canonical Status

Biblical scholars today recognize the long Persian period (550–332 bce) as the time when an early form of the biblical text approached canonical status. Yhwh religion—at least in its elite form—evolved from a tradition largely based on temple and kingship into one framed by control of a sacred text. While the title of this essay could imply that only Yehud (Judea) is of relevance to Yhwh religion and the historical books of the Bible, this period should be understood in international terms. New textual evidence for previously unknown Yahwist communities in Babylonia and Idumea are a case in point. Elites in Yhwh-worshiping communities situated across the Persian Empire from Egypt to Persia, and not just in Yehud or Shomron (Samaria), communicated with each other. The biblical books written or set in the Persian period developed within this international context, one that included debate over claims to be the true “Israel.”

Some Critical Notes on Sri Lankan Muslim Religious Identity Formation, Conservatism, and Violent Extremism

2022 ◽  
pp. 002190962110696
Author(s):  
A.R.M. Imtiyaz ◽  
Amjad Mohamed Saleem
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Eastern Province ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Violent Extremism

A new wave of attacks by Sinhala-Buddhist extremist elements against the Muslim community in Sri Lanka started following the brutal end of the ethnic civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sinhala-Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka security forces in 2009. Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in 2019 by some Muslims polarized Sri Lanka and contributed to the compromise of the country’s security. Sri Lankan Muslims often claim they are a peaceful community and thus have no serious interests in violent mobilization. But the evidence would basically contradict Muslims’ claim of a peace-loving community. The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks did not take place in any vacuum. This paper will situate some key developments in the violent mobilization of Sri Lanka during the war against the LTTE. The primary goal of such an attempt is to read the growing religious conservative and violent trends among Muslims between 1977 and 2009. In understanding the growing religious conservative trends, an understanding is attempted to situate a later propensity for violence within the community that would manifest itself with the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. Interviews were conducted with members of the Islamic Dawah organizations and Muslim youth who were formerly associated with violent groups in the Eastern Province to understand the ground reality. The period of 1977–2009 is important as the rise of religious conservatist influences in Sri Lanka mirrors the global transnational influences of Iran and Middle East Petro Dollars, especially Saudi Arabia. The article draws mainly on secondary sources. But to gain a better understanding of the ground reality, we spoke to a few Eastern Muslims between July 2016 and September 2021 at regular intervals.

Sunni–Shi’a Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-216
Author(s):  
Fanar Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sunni Islam ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This chapter examines the overlooked role of demographics in sectarian identity formation and sectarian relations in the modern Arab world up to 2003. It will be argued that the demographic imbalance has created minoritarian and majoritarian outlooks. These can sometimes operate in contradictory ways between the various dimensions of sectarian identity – a national minority that is nevertheless part of a transnational majority for example. Demographics have helped shape power relations between sect-centric actors particularly at the transnational and doctrinal dimensions where mainstream conceptions of global Islam tend to be Sunni-inflected. The chapter will demonstrate the profound implications this has had for how sectarian identities are imagined and instrumentalized. In doing so, this chapter will concentrate on the extremes of sectarian polemics and sectarian ecumenism (as opposed to the more common norm of mundane coexistence and sectarian irrelevance). Finally, the role of demographics in state–sect relations and the role that the nation-state has played in minoritization, majoritization and securitization of sectarian identities will be examined. Specifically, it will look at the normativity of Sunni Islam; the often-counterproductive side-effects of state-sanctioned sect-blindness; the securitization of sectarian plurality and of sectarian outgroups; and the intersection of Arab-Iranian rivalry with state-sect relations.

scholarly journals IDENTITY, STATE, AND TRADITION: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-399
Author(s):  
Ankita Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
The State ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Gradual Process

Purpose of the Study: This research endeavors to highlight the complex notion of ‘identity’ and the process of identity formation that involves complex socio-political dynamics that need to be located within the larger socio-cultural spectrum. Methodology: The study is based upon a socio-political and socio-anthropological analysis of the questions of identity, state, tradition, and culture. It has been carried out using relevant theories and concepts borrowed chiefly from the available literature on political sociology and anthropology. It is based on a theorization of the concept of identity as a societal construct and its dynamic relationship with not only the state but also people’s traditional beliefs and practices. Main Findings: Based upon secondary sources, the results of the study showed that ‘identity’ as a social construct is based on various conflicts and contestations centering around people’s diverse identities at one and the same time. Identity politics plays a crucial role in the context of the state machinery, which is not a static entity. It is very much affected by the changes taking place within society, which, in itself, is representative of diversity and heterogeneity. People’s traditional beliefs and practices also play a significant role in the formation of identities through institutions recognized as “traditional.” They play an important role in reflecting the changing power relations in society through the instrument of law. Applications of this Study: Both formal state laws and community-backed laws are indispensable in our society because they function within a particular social context that is responsible for the gradual process of internalization of the law and legal processes among people. This, in turn, gets reflected in the formation of various social identities among different groups and communities of people. Novelty/Originality of this study: This research builds a model to understand the different ways in which institutions recognized as “traditional” create new identities or reinforce the already existing ones vis-à-vis the different stages of political development in a society.

English as a lingua franca in the Asian context

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chit Cheung Matthew Sung
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Asian Context

The global phenomenon of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has gained a great deal of attention among applied linguists in recent years. With English serving an increasingly important role as a lingua franca in the Asian context, this special issue aims to explore ELF in Asia through the lens of identity. It critically explores issues and concerns surrounding ELF and identity formation from an Asian perspective by investigating ELF communication involving Asian speakers of English and examining their voices and experiences which have been under-represented in the ELF literature. Building upon a small but growing body of literature on ELF and identity, this special issue brings together articles that examine different aspects of identity formation in ELF communication in several Asian contexts, addressing an array of issues including how identities are constructed and negotiated in lingua franca settings and how different aspects of identities are shaped by linguistic and socio-cultural norms of various ELF contexts and by complex interactions of power relations, language attitudes and ideologies.

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