The Art of Bracketing Empire Out and Creating Parallel Worlds: The Case of Late Persian Yehud

The goal of this article is to draw attention to a seemingly strange, generative pattern that, at times and under certain conditions, has shaped socially shared worlds of imagination among subordinate groups within imperial or hierarchically asymmetric structures of power, especially among “retainer” groups who saw themselves as a “cultural elite” of the subordinate group. I am referring to a generative pattern that in a significant number of such groups, across time and space, has led to constructions of worlds of imagination, and vicarious participation in them through readings or other social acts of imagination that involved “bracketing the empire out.” The article focuses on the world of the literati of late Persian Yehud/Judah, and especially the bracketing out of Ramat Rahel, the most obvious and monumental, explicit, imperial site in the province, but a number of various examples from diverse historical and geographical contexts are also brought to bear to make a point that this is a well-instantiated pattern. The article then concludes with a discussion of what was often gained by acts of imagination and memory involved in bracketing out “empire” and under which circumstances such acts tended to be historically likely.

STRUGGLE AGAINST HEGEMONY IN THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN AND THE KITE RUNNER

Novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain and The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini have similarities in describing struggle against hegemony. The term of “hegemony” is related to a domination of dominant group to subordinate group through agreement. In addition, this hegemony can also include physical violence to strengthen the domination. Meanwhile the term “Struggle” means that there are also resistances against the hegemony. These two novels were analyzed by comparative literature theory by Susan Basnett and Antoni Gramsci’s theory about hegemony. Focus of this research is how the writers describe hegemony and counter hegemony in social environment through literary work. This research aims to describe hegemony from dominant group to subordinate group in several kinds such as culture, ideology, intellectual and moral leadership, and state. This research also describes about several resistances, such as active, passive, and humanistic resistance. The result of this research is that there are similarities and differences of hegemony and counter hegemony based on state of factor of American and Afghanistan. The similarities can be found in the struggle, such as passive and humanistic resistance. Meanwhile for the difference in hegemony, the novel The Kite Runner includes physical hegemony through war and assassination. For the difference in struggle, The Kite Runner provide an active resistance toward a dominant group.Keywords: Hegemony; Counter Hegemony; Comparative Literature

Historical and Intergenerational Trauma: Indigenous Populations

Historical trauma originated with the social construction of subordinate group statuses through migration, annexation of land, and colonialism. The consequences of creating subordinate group statuses include genocide, segregation, and assimilation. Settler colonialism takes land with militaristic control, labels local inhabitants as deviant and inferior, then violently confines and oppresses the original occupants of the land. Confinement includes relocation, restriction of movement, settlement of lands required for sustenance, as well as confinement in orphanages, boarding schools, and prisons. Historical trauma includes suppression of language, culture, and religion with the threat of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Original inhabitant abuse often results in issues with health, mental health, substance abuse, and generational emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Culturally safe (engagement that respects identity) and trauma-informed social work practices acknowledge the systemic causes of disparities in groups experiencing marginalization and oppression and focus on healing and addressing systemic causes of disparities.

The neural basis of ideological differences in race categorization

Multiracial individuals are often categorized as members of their ‘socially subordinate’ racial group—a form of social discrimination termed hypodescent—with political conservatives more likely than liberals to show this bias. Although hypodescent has been linked to racial hierarchy preservation motives, it remains unclear how political ideology influences categorization: Do conservatives and liberals see, feel or think about mixed-race faces differently? Do they differ in sensitivity to Black prototypicality (i.e. skin tone darkness and Afrocentric features) or racial ambiguity (i.e. categorization difficulty) of Black/White mixed-race faces? To help answer these questions, we collected a politically diverse sample of White participants and had them categorize mixed-race faces as Black or White during functional neuroimaging. We found that conservatism was related to greater anterior insula activity to racially ambiguous faces, and this pattern of brain activation mediated conservatives' use of hypodescent. This demonstrates that conservatives' greater sensitivity to racial ambiguity (rather than Black prototypicality) gives rise to greater categorization of mixed-race individuals into the socially subordinate group and tentatively suggests that conservatives may differ from liberals in their affective reactions to mixed-race faces. Implications for the study of race categorization and political psychology are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.

Othering, Alienation and Establishment

This article examines the relationship between religion and the state, focusing on cases of establishment in which one religion is formally recognized. Arguing that religious establishment is wrong if it causes some citizens to feel alienated, we reject the criticism that feelings of alienation are too subjective a foundation for a robust normative case about establishment. We base our argument on an account of collective identities, which may have an ‘inside’ but are also subject to a process of othering in which a dominant group imposes an identity on a subordinate group. The establishment of a religion may contribute to othering, and the othered group may consequently be alienated from the state. However, since establishment does not always cause alienation, it is necessary to seek evidence and engage in a dialogue in order to understand a group’s own account of its experience of its situation.

Obcokrajowcy w kulturze flamenco: problem negocjacji tożsamości

Artykuł traktuje o cudzoziemcach pragnących zostać profesjonalnymi tancerzami flamenco w Sewilli i o związanych z tym pragnieniem wyzwaniach tożsamościowych, przed jakimi stają. Obcokrajowcy stanowią zasadniczą większość w sewilskich szkołach tańca i to dzięki nim szkoły te mogą istnieć. Decydując się na dłuższy pobyt w Sewilli, wkraczają oni w transkulturowe pole wymiany, przez co zostają wpisani w relacje władzy – podporządkowania i dominacji. Ich sytuację oraz relacje zachodzące w sewilskiej przestrzeni bardzo dobrze opisują kategorie transkulturacji/transkulturowości oraz tożsamości transkulturowej. Cudzoziemcy pragnący zaistnieć w profesjonalnym świecie flamenco w Sewilli czy szerzej w Hiszpanii konstruują swoją tożsamość, negocjując poszczególne jej elementy. W tekście omówione zostały trzy z nich: ekspresja, ruch i ciało. Są czynnikami autodefiniującymi oraz elementami decydującymi o wykluczeniu i/lub „dyskryminacji” ze strony autochtonów i zagranicznych widzów. Foreigners in Flamenco Culture: the Problem of Identity Negotiation The research problem presented in this text is the negotiation of transcultural identity as exemplified by foreigners enrolled in flamenco dance schools in Seville who are or aspire to be professional flamenco dancers and compete on the Spanish labour market in the flamenco industry. Foreigners are a definite majority at Seville’s dance schools, whose existence depends on them. By deciding to spend a prolonged period of time in Seville, they enter a field of transcultural exchange and become involved in power relations of subordination and domination. Being a subordinate group, foreigners need to negotiate their place in the flamenco community on an ongoing basis. Their situation and relations developing in Seville are well-described through the categories of transculturation/transculturality and transcultural identity. Foreigners wishing to engage in the professional world of flamenco in Seville or, more broadly, in Spain, construct their identity by negotiating its individual elements. Three of them are discussed in the text: expression, movement and body. They are self-defining factors and elements that determine the exclusion and/or “discrimination” of indigenous people and foreign viewers.

Group living facilitates the evolution of duets in barbets

The duets of birds have intrigued biologists for a long time, yet much remains unknown about the evolution of these striking collective displays. This is partly because previous studies on duet evolution have been biased to songbirds and neglected other bird groups. In songbirds, the absence of migration has been found to predict the occurrence of duetting, indirectlysupporting the idea that duet communication is linked with pair bonding. Here, we used phylogenetic comparative analyses in a sedentary clade of non-songbirds, the barbets (Capitonidae), to reveal new correlates of duet evolution. We found (i) that duets evolved several times independently in different barbet lineages and (ii) that duetting evolved in association with group living (i.e. the presence of helpers or non-breeding adults during the breeding period), but not with sexual monochromatism or habitat type. Our findings are consistent with a duet function in mate guarding and dominance against subordinate group members as well as joint territory defence. Altogether, the results highlight the importance of the social environment for the evolution of collective signalling.

EVEN THOUGH WE HAD MANY TRIBES, BUT I AM INDONESIA: VALIDATION OF DUAL IDENTITY SCALE

Dual identity has an assumption that subordinate group identity (e.g., ethnic and tribe identity) and superordinate group identity (e.g., national identity) can be simultaneously activated. The dual identity concept is important to examine in Indonesia as the country of thousands of tribes. As an initial step, we should adapt and evaluate a dual identity scale so that later it will become a catalyst for future study on the exploration of the association of dual identity and other factors. This study aims to adapt and evaluate the dual identity scale on the Indonesian sample. We tested the measurement through two collecting data, with 775 of total participants (data 1= 338 participants and data 2= 473 participants). The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We found that the dual identity scale had a good fit model and had satisfactory validity and reliability. The validity and reliability of data 2 are better than data 1. In the data 2, each item of items used ‘tribe’ as a form of subordinate identity to replace ‘ethnic’ in the measurement of the data 1. In data 1, this scale had a significant correlation with ethnic and national identity. The result of EFA and CFA proved that the scale is unidimensional (having one factor) and robust to use in the Indonesian sample. The study also found that the use of ‘tribe’ can explain subordinate identity better than "ethnic" on the scale. This study contributes to a practical implication for using the dual identity scale in Indonesia.