The Construction of Turkey’s Circassians as a Docile Minority

The 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games revived memories related to the Circassians’ forced migration from their Caucasus homeland into the Ottoman Empire after 150 years. In that year, I conducted a considerable oral history project to understand the collective memories of Circassians in Turkey. The main focus of this study is, however, the social construction of the Circassian minority in Turkey. I examine their oral historical narratives related to their immigration, reception and resettlement, and instrumentalization. It is as important to place emphasis on the protected, multiplied and renewed sociocultural values of Circassians as it is to confront the history. I will examine the relationship between their diasporic identity and minority identity as well as their preferences in identity reproduction.

Self-Minoritization

This article looks at the process through which the Ibadi Mzabi community in the Algerian desert “minoritized” itself during the colonial period, leading into the 1948 elections to represent the Mzab Valley on the newly created Algerian Assembly. This representation legally and effectively incorporated the Mzab into French Algeria and ended its special status as a French protectorate. Mzabi self-minoritization, Ghazal argues, was a process of performative differentiation based on a sectarian identity. It was initiated by the colonized and negotiated with the colonizer, emerging at the intersection of colonialism and the institutionalization of political representation in colonial Algeria. Ghazal defines this process as self-minoritization to attribute a proactive role for, and more agency to, the colonized in claiming a “minority” identity and negotiating a special status within the colonial order.

Chained Multimediator Model of Sexual Orientation Disclosure, Sexual Minority Stigma, Sexual Minority Identity, Social Support, and Resilience among YMSMs

Introduction: This study aimed to investigate sexual orientation disclosure and mental health among young men who have sex with men (YMSMs). To this end, we constructed a chained multimediator model of sexual minority stigma, sexual minority identity, social support, and resilience, with the moderator of sexual orientation disclosure. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 345 YMSMs in Nanning, China. Univariate analysis was used to evaluate factors associated with sexual orientation disclosure. Sexual minority stigma was used to predict identity, with social support as the step 1 mediator and resilience as the step 2 mediator. Sexual minority identity was analyzed using a chained moderated mediation model; sexual orientation disclosure was included as a moderator in all models to control its confounding effect. Results: The average age of YMSMs was 20.0 ± 1.3 years. Univariate analysis indicated that YMSMs who disclosed sexual orientation may have experienced less stigma (15.49 ± 3.02 vs 16.21 ± 2.74), obtained more social support (65.98 ± 11.18 vs 63.19 ± 11.13), had strong psychological resilience (37.40 ± 8.57 vs 35.39 ± 7.73), and had a more positive self-identity (104.12 ± 21.10 vs 95.35 ± 16.67); differences between subgroups were statistically significant (p < 0.05). Sexual minority stigma, perceived stigma, and enacted stigma were significantly associated with social support and resilience. The association between sexual minority stigma and sexual minority identity was significantly mediated by social support (indirect effect [95% CI] = −3.307 [−4.782, −1.907]). Resilience significantly mediated the same association for identity (−2.544 [−4.052, −1.114]). The chained relationship from sexual minority stigma to social support, resilience, and identity was also significant, with an indirect effect of −0.404 [−0.621, −0.249]. Conclusion: Among YMSMs in China, sexual minority stigma affects sexual minority identity through social support and resilience. Given the psychological effects of stigma, social support and resilience must be considered to better promote positive self-identity and mental health among YMSMs.

“Who should we hate today?”: Notes from an illiberal laboratory

Similarly to other ethnofuturistic movements (e.g. Afrofuturism, Blaccelerationism, Sinofuturism, Gulf-Futurism, Baltic Ethnofuturism) Hungarofuturism is an experiment in identity-poetical imagination, based on a radically ironic exaggeration of minority identity. As opposed to notions of Hungarianness currently hegemonic in Hungary, this is an alternative concept of what it means to be Hungarian, the discovery of a post-Hungarianism. The Hungarofuturist reprogramming of the hegemonic “nation-machine” does not create organic knowledge and narratives, but anachronisms, phantom-like events in which the incompatibility of the various elements hybridizes history and the cosmos until the very moment of “overidentification” (Slavoj Žižek). One of the primary examples of Hungarofuturist “overidentification” is best demonstrated in the example of hijacking and appropriating the most common pseudo-myth of the esoteric subcultures of the Hungarian far-right: Hungarians—as the so-called “chosen ones”—originating from outer space, namely from the Sirius star system. One of the primary aims of this article is to decipher, hijack, and deweaponize the core of this conspiracy theory, thus demonstrating how Hungarofuturist’s ways of (counter-) narrative-making are capable of deconstructing the phantoms of 1 This essay is partially based on our following previous texts: “Hungarofuturist Manifesto”, in Technologie und das Unheimliche, 2017; “Terraforming PostHungarianness”, WUK, 2020; “Parapolitik der Außerirdischen Interessen”, Kunst und Kirche, 2021. ethnographic authenticity promoted not only by FIDESZ, but by contemporary nationalist political agendas all over the world.

Gender, Sexuality, and Psychological Theories of Youth Development

Gender and sexual identity play a significant role in the lives of developing youth. The developments of gender and sexual identities are shaped by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, biological, cognitive, and social elements. It is crucial to consider that gender and sexual minority individuals face additional complexities in the two processes of gender identity and sexual identity development. Cisgender identity development is most commonly understood with the help of early cognitive and social theories, although biological components play a part as well. Specifically, the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg, Sandra Bem, Alfred Bandura, and David Buss have made significant contributions to the understanding of cisgender identity development. Modern transgender identity development models are helpful in exploring transgender identity formation with the most popular being the Transgender Emergence Model founded by Arlene Lev. Similar to cisgender identity development, heterosexual identity development is typically understood with the help of early psychosocial theories, namely that of Erik Erikson. Sexual minority identity development is often comprehended using stage models and life-span models. Sexual minority stage models build off the work of Erik Erikson, with one of the most popular being the Cass Model of Gay and Lesbian Identity Development. Offering more flexibility than stage models and allowing for fluid sexual identity, life-span models, like the D’Augelli model, are often more popular choices for modern exploration of sexual minority identity development. As both sexual and gender identity spectrums are continuing to expand, there also comes a need for an exploration of the relationship between sexual and gender identity development, particularly among sexual minority populations.

Looking to the Past to Survive the Future: The Hungarian Minority in Slovakia

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. With reference to the Hungarian minority’s overarching concern over its declining population in Slovakia, this article reveals how different elements of the past are activated, remembered, and renegotiated to ensure the minority’s cultural survival. Using elite interviews, party documents, and a detailed analysis of two local newspaper archives in Hungarian, I unpack how memory and politics interact in the post-EU accession period. First, I uncover how political and civil society actors use acts of commemoration as a conduit to circulate certain narratives of the Hungarian minority identity. Through remembering historic Hungarian leaders and events, elites affirm and construct the minority identity, thus enabling its cultural reproduction. The Habsburg and Austro-Hungarian Monarchy period is referred to most frequently with the celebration of national heroes. Events spanning the twentieth century are generally mourned as painful and detrimental for the Hungarian minority. While the acts of commemoration are “soft” measures to ensure cultural survival, Hungarian political actors also desire “hard” guarantees through institutional measures, best encapsulated by their desire for autonomy arrangements. However, the Slovak nation’s own past of claiming autonomy and their eventual secession from Czechoslovakia in 1939 conditions the cultural rules around language and the appropriate vocabulary that Hungarian elites can use. Consequently, Hungarian minority elites appropriate the past strategically in two ways. They readjust their tactics through using different vocabulary to claim autonomy and second, they pursue policy reforms across areas such as education and regional development, thus making the de facto possibility of autonomy more palatable to their Slovak counterparts.