Promising Generations: From Intergenerational Guilt to Ndi Umunyarwanda

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
Richard M. Benda
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Current Stage

Ndi Umunyarwanda is a relatively new concept, having surfaced in post-genocide political narrative in July 2013. There is little doubt however that this concept currently dominates Rwandan identity politics and is envisioned as the answer to almost all the historical ills that have befallen and divided Rwanda. In light of the currently predominant discourse on post-genocide Rwanda, Ndi Umunyarwanda could be perceived as a top-down process of social engineering if considered only from the perspective of the current stage of its political dissemination. However, approached from its inception stage as this essay does, It is a bottom-up phenomenon that originates from Youth Connekt Dialogues (YCD); a series of dialogues held between children of perpetrators, children (of) survivors and representatives of local and central governments. The essay offers a narrative analysis of this emergence of Ndi Umunyarwanda out of YCD. The argument proposed here is that change in post-genocide Rwanda happens in different stages and at different levels. A narrative examination of YCD and Ndi Umunyarwanda as sequentially related phenomena shows that individual and group-initiated changes at grassroots levels can and do shape the national metanarrative of post-genocide nation building.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

Dynamics of Species and Size Structures of Phytoplankton at Different Levels of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Effects in Experimental Conditions

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. Sakharova ◽  
I. Yu. Feniova ◽  
Z. I. Gorelysheva ◽  
M. Rzepecki ◽  
I. Kostshevska-Shlakovska ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Different Levels

A Conceptual Tool Kit

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-86
Author(s):  
James V. Wertsch
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Narrative Truth ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
The Difference

The chapter begins with a section on methods and forms of evidence that outlines the difference between top-down and bottom-up analyses of national memory and notes that the latter will be given more emphasis in this book than is the case in many studies of national identity and memory. The section also argues that by understanding how narrative tools can “co-author” individuals’ speaking and thinking, it is possible to avoid misguided notions of “primordialism” that are part of the rhetorical claims of nationalists. The next section examines the sense in which national memory is memory and argues for the need to focus on remembering individuals as members of groups. This involves a review of ideas from figures such as Maurice Halbwachs and Frederic Bartlett on collective and individual memory. This is followed by a section on “Flashbulb Memories as Memory in the Group,” which uses a body of literature in psychology to develop a conceptually grounded notion of national memory that includes the observation that Bartlett’s notion of schema underpins much of the entire discussion. The next section, on “symbolic mediation,” reviews the origins of this idea in the writings of several European and Russian scholars and goes into the case of literacy as an illustration as outlined in empirical studies by Luria and Vygotsky. It then poses an analogous line of reasoning for narratives as symbolic mediation. This includes a discussion of the “inner logic” of narrative tools, “narrative truth,” and two levels of narrative analysis (“specific narratives” and “narrative templates”).

scholarly journals Between “imagined” and “real” nation-building: identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rico Isaacs ◽  
Abel Polese
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Different Levels

Much of the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia offers a statist top-down approach which focuses on how the nation and nationhood is “imagined” by political elites. In this special issue the contributors provide an analysis which seeks to explore the process of nation-building in Central Asia by addressing the other side of the state-society relationship. The case studies in this collection examine the “grey zone” between “imagined” and “real” differences between state-led policies and discourses related to nationhood and identity and how they are received by different audiences at different levels (regional, national and international). The authors bring to the fore the contested nature of nation-building in Central Asia as well as focusing on new or less conventional analytical tools for the study of nation-building such as cinema, construction projects and elections. This article provides the introduction to the special issue and lays out the contribution the articles make to the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia. It also sets out the rationale and aims of the collection.

Motion metaphors in discourse construction

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-129
Author(s):  
Joaquín Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Discourse Representation Theory ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Text Structures ◽  
Different Levels

Motion metaphors occur at different levels, from prepositional phrases to discourse, including theoretical metaphors. After reviewing Relevance Theory as a bottom-up approach, and Cognitive Linguistics and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory as top-down ones, an integrated approach to metaphor in discourse construction is developed, based on a cognitive operation of connection of lower units into higher ones, similar to subsumption in the Lexical Constructional Model and to chunking in the Usage-Based Approach. In discourse construction, as the analysis of press and poetry examples show, either a motion metaphor may contribute to the discourse structure, or it may result from it. Discourses are packed into text structures; live discourse metaphors develop into text-type metaphors on their way to conventionalization. Metaphor and discourse construction are bottom-up processes, since they result from connection of lower units, but they are also top-down, based on properties of higher units, domains in metaphor and relations in discourse.

Belarusian Nationalism in the 2010s: a Case of Anti-Colonialism? Origins, Features and Outcomes of Ongoing ‘Soft Belarusianisation’

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
Anaïs Marin
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Type ◽  
Challenging Situation ◽  
Red Line

Abstract The past decade has seen the emergence of a new type of nationalism in Belarus, a process labelled as ‘soft Belarusianisation’. This trend differs from earlier, mostly top-down (elite-led) episodes of nation-building – the Belarusisation of the 1920s, the nationalists’ movement that followed perestroika, and the ‘Creole nationalism’ incarnated by A. Lukashenko since the mid-1990s. Instead, soft Belarusianisation seems to be a bottom-up process stemming mostly from civil society. It would be wrong to consider it as a traditional revivalist or genuinely grassroots phenomenon however. Yet it appears as an anti-colonialist process, one meant to avoid further assimilation of Belarusians within the Russian whole. Whereas signs of a timid national awakening appeared back in the early 2010s, two sets of factors contributed to shaping and accelerating soft Belarusianisation in recent years. First were exogenous drivers, notably Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Among the endogenous drivers is the Belarusian authorities’ benevolence towards soft Belarusianisation. Although they can exploit the rally-around-the-flag potential that the process entails for mobilising society in support of independence, the fact that soft Belarusianisation is perceived as anti-Russian in Russia proper creates a challenging situation for them. Should Belarusian nationalism overstep a red line, the likely consequences would be to put Belarusian sovereignty and national identity under a greater threat than it already is now.

Polycentricity of Linguistic Landscape and Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-312
Author(s):  
Aisulu Kulbayeva
Keyword(s):  
Language Ideology ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
Northern Kazakhstan ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Sign Type

This study illustrates a key existing challenge to realizing trilingualism as a major nation-building language ideology: the ideological polycentricity of multilingual signs—that is, the simultaneous orientation of multilingual signs to several authority centers. Combining diverse linguistic landscape (LL) methodologies such as code preferences (language choices and placement on a sign), indexical orders (patterns that index meta-messages), and polycentricity (a simultaneous orientation toward multiple centers), I examine how three state-approved languages (Kazakh, Russian, and English) are positioned on 346 state and private signs in a small town in northern Kazakhstan. The analysis reveals a range of indexical orders at the level of sign type: monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual sign types of horizontal, vertical, and centralized code combinations. At the level of signage group, bilingual Kazakh-Russian and trilingual Kazakh-Russian-English signs dominate in the top-down group, while monolingual Russian and bilingual Kazakh-Russian signs with centralized Russian dominate in the bottom-up group. The identified indexical orders indicate ideological polycentricity in town public signage, which presents a challenge for the nation-building process.

scholarly journals Neural markers of predictive coding under perceptual uncertainty revealed with Hierarchical Frequency Tagging

eLife ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Gordon ◽  
Roger Koenig-Robert ◽  
Naotsugu Tsuchiya ◽  
Jeroen JA van Boxtel ◽  
Jakob Hohwy
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Input ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Signal Integration ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Visual Hierarchy ◽  
Neural Markers ◽  
Different Levels

There is a growing understanding that both top-down and bottom-up signals underlie perception. But it is not known how these signals integrate with each other and how this depends on the perceived stimuli’s predictability. ‘Predictive coding’ theories describe this integration in terms of how well top-down predictions fit with bottom-up sensory input. Identifying neural markers for such signal integration is therefore essential for the study of perception and predictive coding theories. To achieve this, we combined EEG methods that preferentially tag different levels in the visual hierarchy. Importantly, we examined intermodulation components as a measure of integration between these signals. Our results link the different signals to core aspects of predictive coding, and suggest that top-down predictions indeed integrate with bottom-up signals in a manner that is modulated by the predictability of the sensory input, providing evidence for predictive coding and opening new avenues to studying such interactions in perception.

Dilemmas of Estonian nation building in the open media market / Probleme estnischer Nationsbildung im offenen Medienmarkt / L’édification de la nation et le libre marché des médias en Estonie: problèmes et défis

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Triin Vihalemm ◽  
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Media Market

Die Mediennutzung in Estland hat sich als resistent erwiesen gegen die Etablierung des Estnischen als gemeinsamer Sprache im öffentlichen Raum. Bis zum heutigen Tag nutzt die russischsprachige Minderheit Estlands meist Medien in russischer Sprache. Die Sprachgrenze zeigt sich auch in den Praktiken der inhaltlichen Wahl gruppenspezifischer Medien sowie auf staatlicher Ebene (Republik Estland vs. Russische Föderation). Somit ist die Informationssphäre nicht nur in sprachlich, sondern auch inhaltlich in unterschiedliche Subsysteme aufgeteilt.Qualitative Studien zeigen, dass verschiedene Bottom-up- und Top-down- Mechanismen diese zweisprachige und ideologisch heterogene Informationssphäre stets neu reproduzieren. Die sprachlich und politisch gespaltene öffentliche Informationssphäre sieht sich ständig dem Dilemma gegenüber, einerseits Zugang zu praktischen und ideologischen Informationen zu gewährleisten und andererseits die Nationalsprache zu etablieren. Die estnischen Machteliten versuchen beide, oft widersprüchlichen Ziele zu erreichen. Wir diskutieren diesbezügliche Strategien unter dem Gesichtspunkt sowohl sprachzentrierter Nationsbildung als auch der Vielfalt globalisierten Medienkonsums.

The Effectiveness of Human Rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-48
Author(s):  
Gráinne de Búrca
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Top Down ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
External Intervention ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Multiple Actors

This chapter surveys existing theories of the effectiveness of human rights, and notes that several prominent accounts have adopted either a ‘top down’ or a ‘bottom up’ theory of effectiveness, emphasizing either external intervention or grassroots mobilization as the primary motor of change. The experimentalist theory advanced in this chapter and throughout the book, however, argues that the effectiveness of much human rights law and advocacy comes neither primarily from top-down intervention nor primarily from bottom-up action but through the iterative interaction between multiple actors, norms and institutions situated at different levels within and outside the state. Building on an emerging scholarship from political scientists, anthropologists, and human rights practitioners, the chapter advances an experimentalist account of international human rights law and advocacy, and introduces the three case studies of human rights campaigns which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. The experimentalist account emphasizes the crucial importance of social mobilization and civil society activism, but argues that the interaction of domestic activism with international accountability institutions is particularly effective in promoting human rights.

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