The Politics of Identity and Regional Integration – Updating Global Perspectives

Regional integration (RI) is an essential part of the discourse on the global economy, viewed often as a “stumbling block” or “building block.” However, little research exists that connects RI in the context of a politics of identity (PoI), which can be used to describe the evolving tensions between national sentiment and regional economic cooperation. This paper performs a Web of Science and Google Scholar review of 136 articles to determine how RI is discussed in the context of PoI. Our review demonstrated that the conceptual frameworks normally used to think about PoI are underexpressed in the context of RI. We discuss why this is the case and identify themes to illustrate the connection. We then suggest conceptual frameworks to enhance the discussion of PoI as it relates to RI, particularly as it relates to the teaching of RI across learning groups.

History, Memory and Legend: Contextualizing Joymoti Utsav in Assam

This paper traces the inception, emergence and relevance of the celebration of a historical figure of Assam – Joymoti – as the Joymoti Utsav (Joymoti Festival). With the first attested public celebration of the festival in Upper Assam in 1914, Joymoti Utsav was a landmark public celebration on multiple counts. Firstly, it created a feminist and nationalist consciousness in the region through its celebration of Joymoti – an Ahom princess; secondly, it marked public support to celebration of an ideal female figure whose qualities and character women were encouraged to aspire to; thirdly, it followed and also spearheaded a socio-cultural movement that found expression in literature and arts including the first Assamese movie Joymoti in 1934; fourthly, it brought together people and organizations in the making of a legacy that gave direction to the feminist movement in Assam thereby establishing it as a major socio-cultural feminist festival of Assam. This paper traces the emergence of this iconic festival in Upper Assam, its role in establishing feminist ideals, carving out a distinct regional history and nurturing national sentiment, its depiction in various literary genres of the 20th century and the current relevance of the festival in Assam. In doing so, the paper locates Joymoti Utsav in a socio-historical perspective in the context of Assam while crediting it with creating a feminist consciousness in the public discourse of early twentieth century Assam.

Re-Imagining Ireland’s Early Modern Past

Historians—Protestant and Catholic—associated with the Nation newspaper who were identified as members of Young Ireland constructed a romantic narrative of Ireland’s history in English verse that lauded heroes who had created an Irish nation by resisting English intrusion. This successful venture was designed to cultivate national sentiment among people with limited schooling. The more serious intellectual endeavour of Young Ireland was to sponsor a reasoned prose narrative of Ireland’s past to honour all—regardless of origin or denomination—who had fashioned an inclusive Irish nation. This proved less successful because it required their Catholic members to suppress memories of past injustice. Also, Catholic Church authorities, suspicious of the liberal agenda of Young Ireland, encouraged a counter-narrative that would dwell on past sufferings and celebrate those who had become martyrs for Catholicism rather than heroes of some imaginary Irish nation state.

SYMBOLIC VALUES AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE GRAND ETHIOPIAN RENAISSANCE DAM PROJECT IN ETHIOPIAN IDENTITY POLITICS

This paper attempts to show how the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) ’s economic and political gains could help develop a shared outlook to regulate Ethiopia’s opposing political trajectories, i.e., the ethnocentric and pan-Ethiopian nationalist camps. Presently, different ethnic-based “in-group and out-group” contrasting political discourses have dominated Ethiopian polity. The paper reviews and exposes relevant philosophical concepts, including “mirror identity,” primordial and instrumental conception of ethnicity. Notably, following Anderson’s (2006) line of thought, nationalism as a “cultural artefact” and expression of an “imagined community,” the paper argues that GERD could serve as a shared symbolic and developmental language to reshape Ethiopian national consciousness and imagination by improving the political and economic domains of the country. Accordingly, the GERD covertly or overtly helps reform the polity’s self-recognition mechanisms and circuitously re-approaches outstanding political differences by inspiring trust-based relations among major political actors. Ethnocentric motivations raise political questions such as secession, the right to linguistic and cultural recognition, economic equality, and political security and representation by using their respective ethnic lines as means of political mobilization. In current Ethiopia, political identities have been practically blended with ethnic identity. In this sense, as diverse ethnic groups exist, political borders sustain among the multiple ethnic-based nationalists and between pan-Ethiopian and ethnocentric actors. Thus, a comprehensive dialogue and constructive political cross-fertilization are required between various political actors, horizontally and vertically, among ethnocentric nationalists and the pan-Ethiopian advocates. In Ethiopia, the realization of internal political consensus requires an instantaneous remedial mechanism. Accordingly, the politically drawn antithetical ethnic demarcations and occasionally fabricated historical narratives have undeniably pushed politics into unfavourable conditions. That is why, as the paper maintains that developmental projects such as the GERD would have pertinent economic and political mechanisms to developing a national sentiment, which in turn symbolically facilitate national consensus among the major political actors. Hence, borrowing Fukuyama’s (2018) notion of “creedal national identity”, one could resonate that developmental projects can help realize symbolic worth by constructively enabling citizens to recognize their countries’ foundational ideals and elevating common factors. The present paper does not examine the GERD project’s external geopolitical and legal concerns concerning scope, although these topics are worth examining for further investigations.

The Bible as Cultural Translation

This chapter explores three aims of Mendelssohn’s Bible translation project: (1) strengthening Jewish national sentiment and halakhic practice, (2) invigorating German nationhood; and (3) fostering love and tolerance between German Jews and Christians. Mendelssohn aimed to strengthen Jewish national sentiment by revealing the beauty and rationality of the Bible. He sought to bolster halakhic practice by defending the Masoretic Text of the Bible and rabbinic interpretation. He aimed to invigorate German nationhood by using Bible translation to enrich the German language and contribute to a cosmopolitan vision of Germanness. By translating the Hebrew Bible into German, he sought to illustrate the translatability of religious truth thereby fostering tolerance and love between German Jews and Christians. Mendelssohn translated two main biblical texts-- the Pentateuch and the Psalms. His aims and exegetical methods in the two works are compared. The aims and methods of Mendelssohn’s Bible translations are also compared with two German Protestant translations with which he was familiar: Luther’s 1545 translation and the 1735 Radical Enlightenment Wertheim Bible of Johann Lorenz Schmidt. The claim that Luther’s translation is closer to the Hebrew original than Mendelssohn’s is refuted. Comparing Mendelssohn’s translation with Schmidt’s Wertheim Bible illustrates similarities and differences between Mendelssohn’s moderate religious rationalism and Schmidt’s radical religious rationalism.

Dilemma of National Narrative The Case for Building Domestic and Regional Narratives for CPEC

Building a national narrative on CPEC is appearing to be a daunting task for the government of Pakistan. Such a dilemma does not characterize Pakistan alone, but troubling policy issue peculiar to the BRI project as a whole. The Chinese-led mega projects have preyed on rival narratives since its initiation in 2013. Since the region is characterized by regional rivalries and interests of the major powers, it is plausible that such an ambitious project like BRI in general and particularly CPEC will continue to face the dilemma of narratives. To place the discussion in perspective, the paper is sectionalized into three parts. The first part theorizes narratives, it why, by who, for what, and whom. With the theoretical premise, the second part argues that Pakistan needs to strategize its CPEC narratives on two levels. Domestically, it requires a very cautious approach to define the national or state narrative. In the presence of multiple sub-nationalities, at the provincial level and relatively weaker broader national sentiment, it is crucial to develop a consensus with caution. At the external level, a regional narrative might be built with the help of like-minded states and by employing a strategy to bring most of the regional powers into the project of CPEC. The paper concludes that building narratives requires a joint effort by the ruling elite (political and intellectual), civil society, and media at the domestic level and also imperative for Pakistan to adopt a counter-narrative strategy through diplomatic channels, to generate mutually acceptable trans-regional counter-narratives against the propagandist agenda, bent at tarnishing CPEC.

The Forgotten Jihad under Japan: Muslim Reformism and the Promise of Indonesian Independence

In this article I seek to make sense of the apparent contradiction of a call for jihad made under the auspices of the Japanese empire during its occupation of Java from March 1942 to September 1945. Why was Mas Mansur (1896–1946), the Indonesian religious figure and national hero who made the call, so supportive of the Japanese military administration? And why is this act so seldom remembered? As I hope to explain, Japan had already figured in the reformist Muslim imagination as a patriotic anti-western model for decades, creating a constituency that was initially open to Japanese overtures framed around mobilising national sentiment. Equally some Japanese advocates of southern expansion had thought about such framings while downplaying their preferred vision for a Greater East Asia that would not include an independent Indonesia. How this collaboration played out, with the Japanese eventually conceding ground on Islamic terms to gain national bodies, is a story worth retelling. In so doing I stress that Indonesia – lying at the intersection of pan-Islamic and pan-Asian imaginaries – should figure more prominently in global studies of Japanese policies regarding Islam in Asia or yet anti-Westernism in general.

Question of Identity: Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle

Orhan Pamuk is a leading contemporary Turkish writer and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his novels he tackles certain universal themes, such as the search for a new identity, the conflict between East and West, the domination of Western culture and its impact on Turkish society, the spread of consumerism, feminism, the search for love and its vanity. Pamuk is influenced by the rich literary tradition of Turkey and at an equivalent time he is affected with the writers like Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Miller and plenty of others. As a postmodernist author, Orhan pamuk’s fiction echoes the priority for the identity of someone. This novel The White Castle is studied for the exploration of the Question of identity like what is real identity of the person. Pamuk himself has faced the perplexity of identity as he is suspect by media of revealing the national sentiment. The protagonist’s Hoja and the Venetian traveler are not happy with their gift identity and within the course of their life they assume a replacement identity.

National happiness index monitoring using Twitter for bilanguages

Nowadays, social media have become one of the most important methods of communication that provide a real-time and rich source of information, including sentiments. Understanding the population sentiment is a key goal for organisations and governments. In recent years, quite a lot of research has been done on sentiment analysis from social media. However, all the work in the state of the art is focused on a specific pre-defined subset of tweets, e.g. sentiment analysis via keywords search from tweets for relevant brands, products, services, events and so forth. Monitoring the general sentiment at national level through the whole social media stream is not done due to the challenges of filtering sentiment-irrelevant information, diversity of vocabulary usage in general tweets across topics causing low accuracy and the need for bilingual or multilingual models. This paper proposes a system for general population sentiment monitoring from a social media stream (Twitter), through comprehensive multi-level filters, and our proposed improved latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) (Wang et al. in ACM Trans Internet Technol 18(1):1–23, 2017; Wang and Al-Rubaie in Appl Soft Comput 33:250–262, 2015; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170293597A1/en) method for sentiment classification. Experiments show that our proposed improved LDA for sentiment analysis yields the best results, and also validate our proposed system for national sentiment monitoring in Abu Dhabi using twitter.