11. From Africa to Canada: Bordered Spaces, Border Crossings, and Imagined Communities

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Creese
Keyword(s):  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Border Crossings

“I’m just aware they’re labels”

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Smith
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Sexual Identification ◽  
Minority Ethnic ◽  
Divine Order

This article discusses fieldwork in two research projects on Buddhists in London. It explores issues involved in researching lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning and/or intersex (LGBTQI) Buddhists. It also considers issues around heterosexual identities in Buddhist communi-ties. In researching dynamics of gender and sexual identification of participants it was observed that at times participant narratives treated these identities for these axes of difference as provisional and contingent rather than essential, fixed and a basis for socio-political organization. This contrasts with much of the work on religion and sexuality in mainstream theistic traditions, where their LGBTQI members often argue a “reverse discourse” asserting their place in a “Divine Order” in which their sexual/gender identity is a key part of “who they are.” It is argued that theoretical approaches based on queer theorizing could be particularly applicable to research on Western Buddhist perspectives on gender and sexual identities. This is attributed to the anti-essentialist approach Buddhism takes to questions of subjectivity and identification and its non-hegemonic status in the West. Such queer theorizing would, however, need to acknowledge the constraints to “border crossings” between identity positions arising from oppressive forces from gender minoritization, class status, minority ethnic origin, and so on. It is also suggested that research on the heterosexual majority can elucidate ways in which faith communities are gendered, racialized and stratified by class.

All men and beasts, lions, eagles, quails… Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Representations of Nations and States in Slavic Сultural Discourse

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Scientific Conference ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
The South ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The book was compiled on the materials of the scientific conference “Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations of nations and states in the Slavic cultural discourse” (2019), held at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and devoted to the history of the nations’ personifications and generalized ethnic images in period of “imagined communities” formation. This process is reconstructing on verbal and visual sources and by methods of various disciplines. The historical evolution of such zoomorphic incarnations of nations as an Eagle (in the Polish patriotic poetry of the first third of the 19th cent), a Falcon (in the South Slavic and Czech cultures in the 19th cent), a Griffin (during the formation of the Cassubian ethnocultural identity) is considered. The animalistic national representations in the Estonian caricature of the interwar twenty years of the 20th cent., so as the functioning of the Bear’s allegory as a symbol of Russia in modern Russian souvenir products are analyzed. The originality of zoomorphic symbolism in Polish and Soviet cultures is shown оn the examples of para- and metaheraldic images in XXth cent. The transformation of the verbal and visual images of “Mother Russia” personifications in Russian Empire was reconstructed. The evolution of various allegories of ethnic “Self” and “Others” is presented by caricatures of 19th – 20th cent. in Slovenian periodic and in Russian “Satyricon” journal (1914–1918).

COVID-19 Certificates as a New Form of Mobility Control

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Jouni HÄKLI
Keyword(s):  
Air Traffic ◽  
Mobility Control ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Mobile Populations ◽  
Global Mobility ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
New Form ◽  
International Border

The global volume of travel has grown steadily for decades and hence the border closures and travel restrictions in response to COVID-19 have created an unforeseen impact on the number of international border crossings. In air traffic alone the data show a striking 75.6% decrease in the number of scheduled international passengers. We might hasten to think that the strict travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 crisis have in principle treated mobile populations equally – for once we have all been banned from travelling. We could even consider the recent initiatives to introduce “vaccination certificates” as a fair and democratic way to reintroduce safe international travelling. In reality, the idea of a COVID-19 certificate is but a new layer in the broader landscape of highly uneven global mobility where travellers’ citizenship and place of origin truly matter. This article discusses some of the major inequalities embedded in the global mobility regime and argues that the idea of the COVID-19 certificate as an equaliser remains completely disconnected from these underlying realities. To conclude, the article discusses problems related to uneven access to digital travel documents, such as the proposed COVID-19 certificate.

scholarly journals National, Regional, or Just Catholic?—Dilemmas of Church Art in a German–Polish Borderland. Upper Silesia, 1903–1953

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Jerzy Gorzelik
Keyword(s):  
Imagined Communities ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Sacred Art ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
God's Will ◽  
National Community ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Art Works ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
Church Art

The rise of nationalism threatened the integrity of the Catholic milieu in borderlands such as Prussian Upper Silesia. Facing this challenge, the ecclesiastical elite developed various strategies. This article presents interpretations of sacred art works from the first half of the 20th century, which reveal different approaches to national discourses expressed in iconographic programs. The spectrum of attitudes includes indifference, active counteraction to the progress of nationalism by promoting a different paradigm of building temporal imagined communities, acceptance of nationalistic metaphysics, which assumes the division of humanity into nations endowed with a unique personality, and a synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism, in which national loyalties are considered a Christian duty. The last position proved particularly expansive. Based on the primordialist concept of the nation and the historiosophical concept of Poland as a bulwark of Christianity, the Catholic-national ideology gained popularity among the pro-Polish clergy in the inter-war period. This was reflected in Church art works, which were to present Catholicism as the unchanging essence of the nation and the destiny of the latter resulting from God’s will. This strategy was designed to incorporate Catholic Slavophones into the national community. The adoption of a different concept of the nation by the pro-German priests associated with the Centre Party—with a stronger emphasis on the subjective criteria of national belonging—resulted in greater restraint in expressing national contents in sacred spaces.

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