Constructing Ethnic Diversity as a Security Threat: What it Means to Russia’s Minorities

This article analyses the Russian government’s securitisation of inter-ethnic relations, and national minorities’ responses to such processes. While Russia’s securitising dynamics have been linked to threats associated with ethnic groups (perceived as) culturally distant from the Russian majority (such as non-Slavic and Muslim minorities), this article argues that securitisation can affect all of Russia’s national minorities (including Slavic and well-integrated communities). Through the analysis of the securitisation of three, partly converging, spheres of domestic politics (civil society, migration, and minority issues) the article highlights forms of (in)security impacting upon national minorities with reference to their experience of securitisation and format of their civic engagement. The article contributes to research exploring the relationship between security and minority studies, through a bottom-up perspective focusing on national minorities’ experience of securitisation. It employs empirical data based on semi-structured interviews with minority representatives held in 2015–2016 in six locations in the Russian Federation.

Entre universalisme et particularisme: la résistance du code alimentaire dans L’ingratitude de Ying Chen et Mon cœur à l’étroit de Marie NDiaye

Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist, die Funktionalisierung des alimentären Codes in Marie NDiayes Mon cœur à l’étroit und Ying Chens L’ingratitude in ihrer Vielschichtigkeit aufzuzeigen. Einer klassischen Definition des Realismus zufolge galt der alimentäre Code als einer jener Codes, die effektvoll im Sinne eines „effet de réel“ wirken, indem sie Alltagsleben und material culture evozieren (Auerbach 1982: 458). Gerade in transkulturellen Erzählungen der Gegenwart erweisen sich Speisen und Esssitten als effektvolle Identitäts-Marker, die das Partikulare einer spezifischen Kultur – in der Regel einer ‚fremden‘, ‚exotischen‘ Kultur vor dem Hintergrund eines Gastlandes des globalen Westens – zum Ausdruck bringen. Kulturelle Konflikte – zwischen einem ‚westlichen‘ und einem ‚östlichen‘ Lebensstil in L’ingratitude; zwischen weitaus weniger klar definierten, doch auf soziokulturelle und nationale Identitäten verweisenden Lebensstilen in Mon cœur à l’étroit – scheinen sich auch in den beiden vorliegenden Werken in Speisen und Mahlzeiten geradezu zu reifizieren. Bei näherer Betrachtung erweist sich die alimentäre Codierung jedoch als vielschichtig und widersprüchlich, greift sie doch einerseits auf partikulare Identitätsmarker, andererseits auf archetypische Symbolisierungen zurück. Im Fall von Ying Chens Roman scheint hier ein Konflikt zwischen einem Bestreben nach Vermittlung des ‚Anderen‘ und der stereotypisierenden Anpassung an okzidentale Erzählmuster auf. Im Fall Marie NDiayes verhindert die Überdeterminiertheit der Nahrungsmotive eine psychoanalytische oder postkoloniale Lesart nach herkömmlichen Deutungsmustern. Als fruchtbarer erweist sich eine intersektionale Lektüre. Dennoch widerstrebt NDiayes Erzähltechnik der Rückführung auf eine kohärente Lesart. Was von dieser enigmatischen Autorposture zu halten ist, ist in der NDiaye-Forschung höchst umstritten. Von radikalen Vertretern der Critical Race Studies wird der Autorin colour-blindness vorgeworfen. Ich möchte für eine differenzierte Lesart plädieren, die die Problematik des universalistischen Anspruchs anerkennt, zugleich aber auch den Viktimismus der minority studies und das Beharren auf Partikularität problematisiert.

Minority Actorness Through a Non-Europeanised Policy Area

By bringing together the literatures on Europeanisation and minority studies, this article illustrates the centrality of actors representing national minorities as a key to understand Europeanisation of minority politics today. Minority politics is becoming Europeanised indeed, however, not in the ways commonly expected. And although the EU repeatedly fails to develop a clear minority policy, an actor-centred approach adopted in this study helps to reveal how minority actors extend their political strategies to the European level through different channels and how they exploit various opportunities stemming from European-level politics. Jacquot and Woll’s concept of ‘usages of Europe’ not only enables us to trace how actors multiply channels and arenas of participation, but it also helps to spot the emergence of tactics of experimentation with European-level norms and rules, contributing to an acquisition of new roles among minority actors and supporting an actorness formation among those active. As the actors engage in criticising EU institutions, they develop tactics of responsibilising which in turn affects their minority agendas and the actors themselves. In this respect, this study contributes to developing the weakly studied literature about minority agency and Europeanisation.

Japanese Merchants Diaspora in the 17th Century into Southeast Asia

This study aimed to investigate the Japanese Diaspora in the 17th century into Southeast Asia. This article discussed critically the motives, process, and the effect of Japanese diaspora in the Southeast Asia. Reseacher utilized historical method with descriptive approach. The process being performed namely heuristics, critism, interpretation, and historiography. Japanese history regarding abroad migration is an interesting issue between scholars who studied migration, anthropology, and minority studies over the decades. Edo period in Japan is one of the most studied field for many scholars for Japanese studies, since it shaped the characteristic of Japanese culture until today. Trade of Japan is significant part of its economical development since the pre-modern era. In the 17th century, Japan established a solid trade network with Southeast Asia regions, namely Siam, Malacca, Cambodia, Vietnam and Manila. The emerge of maritime trade with Southeast Asia encouraged Japanese merchants to travel and create settlements in some regions. The Japanese diaspora was encouraged with vermillion seal trade which allowed them to do journey overseas and settled in some places, which eventually increased the number of Japanese merchants in the Southeast Asia. However, after the Sakoku policy there was restriction of trade relation ehich prohibited overseas maritime trade, except for China and Dutch. Sakoku policy caused Japanese merchants who stayed overseas could not return for many years, then they settled themselves as Japanese communities known as Nihon Machi in some places within Southeast Asia. History of early modern Japan between the 16th and 19th century provides a broader narratives of global history as it was surrounded by intense global interaction.

Representation and resistance: A qualitative study of narratives of Deaf cultural identity

This qualitative study examines narratives of identity among deaf adults in Denmark who were raised within the Bilingual–Bicultural programme of education. At a time of threat to sign language and the Deaf community, the study explores the distinctiveness of a minority cultural identity rooted in sign language and elaborated through Deaf norms and values. Applying the social psychological theories of social identity and social representations, the analysis shows that while Deaf identity is developed through and against forces of marginalisation and the medicalising system of representation that cochlear implants reify, it both celebrates Deaf culture and embraces cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. The findings run against existing models of deaf identity that posit discrete Deaf (immersive) and bicultural identities. They also disclose the importance of studies of social identity that retrieve the theory’s original emphasis on cultural systems and context to explain identities and intergroup dynamics. Finally, the study has resonances for disability and other minority studies and movements that seek to pay attention to socially creative processes of critiquing normativity and enlarging understandings of culture and identity.

Introduction

In addition to providing an overview of the existing scholarship on the Muslims and Turks in Bulgaria, the introduction presents the subject of this book. The book follows the history of the Muslims in Bulgaria (mostly Turks but also Pomaks, Tatars, and Roma) in the first crucial decades after the establishment of modern Bulgaria on former Ottoman territories. More specifically, it focuses on the activities of a movement for cultural reform and its efforts to reshape local Muslim society, a phenomenon neglected by scholarship so far. The book seeks to bring out the history of Bulgaria’s Muslims from the confines of “minority studies,” and put it in a new framework of inquiry, while underscoring how the community also remained a part of the Ottoman world.

Paving the Way for a Lebanese National Narrative: Empathy at the Armenian Genocide Orphans’ Aram Bezikian Museum in Lebanon

The chapter proposes a discourse analysis of the Armenian Genocide Orphans’ Aram Bezikian Museum (Lebanon) through the lens of minority studies. The museum embraces the identity of Lebanese-Armenians and primarily highlights the legacy of the genocide orphans. The text explores how the identity of the Armenian minority is negotiated within the Lebanese context by examining some of the region’s historical and socio-political components. The museum discourse is then analysed by recounting the permanent exhibition’s storyline and its scenography symbolism. Finally, the paper evaluates the museum’s success in creating dialogue spaces by studying its audience. It becomes evident, throughout the investigation, that the museum not only raises awareness on the significance of the Armenian Genocide, but also strives to make its audience reflect upon questions of identities, and leaves the space open for interpretive, moral and spiritual considerations and enquiries raised by historical war crimes and differences within a society.

Réévaluer le conflit diglossique en Corse: apports et dépassements de la sociolinguistique du conflit

This article attempts to establish the important links between Corsican sociolinguistics and Catalan sociolinguistics. To this end, it returns to the main characteristics of Catalan sociolinguistics through the notion of “diglossia” and “language conflict” it generates, notions that have largely fed minority studies. Moreover, the terms of the famous Catalan dilemma are clearly stated by the substitution of the dominated language or its normalization as inevitable outcomes of linguistic conflict. The reflection tries to establish the parallels between the various situations and the passage from the Catalan elaboration of a conceptual tooling in a situation of domination to the Corsican sociolinguistic and political fields. Finally, we propose to re-evaluate the initial Catalan conceptual framework in order to better adapt it to the Corsican situation, notably by showing some limits of this framework in terms of diglossic polarities and representations.