African Ethics and Online Communities: An Argument for a Virtual Communitarianism

A virtual community is generally described as a group of people with shared interests, ideas, and goals in a particular digital group or virtual platform. Virtual communities have become ubiquitous in recent times, and almost everyone belongs to one or multiple virtual communities. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated national lockdowns, has made virtual communities more essential and a necessary part of our daily lives, whether for work and business, educational purposes or keeping in touch with friends and family. Given these facts, how do we ensure that virtual communities become a true community qua community? We address this question by proposing and arguing for a ‘virtual communitarianism’—an online community that integrates essential features of traditional African communitarianism in its outlook and practice. The paper’s position is that virtual communitarianism can make for a strong ethical virtual community where members can demonstrate a strong sense of group solidarity, care and compassion towards each other. The inclusion of these virtues can bring members who often are farapart and help create a stronger community bond. This will ensure that the evolution of virtual communities does not happen without the integration of progressive African communitarian values.

Communication Strategies of Polish Exiles of the second half of the 19th Century (the example of Tara and Kurgan)

Diaspora studies penetrating into the Polish-Siberian theme since the late 1990s focused as a rule on the study of stable institutions, social organizations created by migrants for the preservation and development of ethnic community, and articulation of ethnic interests. However, such organizations among the Siberian Poles appeared only in the late XIX-early XX centuries. To understand the ethnic processes that took place among Polish migrants in the earlier period, the study of informal social ties of Polish migrants, various elements of group solidarity and communication systems becomes of paramount importance. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct, on the basis of office documentation and correspondence, the communication strategies of exiled participants in the revolts of the 1863-1864 on the example of two cities of Tobolsk province, namely, Kurgan and Tara. As a result of the study, we recorded the existence of a fraternity in Tara, covering most of the Poles who lived in the city. The self-organization of the exiles was facilitated by the presence of ready-made social structures – large traditional families and the system of communication between them that has developed at home. The emersion of the community in Kurgan was the result of the efforts of a group of exiled nobles who had a good education. In the conditions of a limited social status, and the absence of rich compatriots, the social value of this community turned out to be insufficient to become the center of attraction for Poles.

EXPERIENCES OF CLASSROOM TEACHERS TOWARDS INTERGROUP ATTITUDES AMONG TURKISH AND SYRIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: INTERGROUP ATTITUDES

In the current study, Turkish and Syrian primary school students’ intergroup attitudes were examined through the experiences of classroom teachers. The study was designed as a qualitative research. A semi-structured interview technique was used in order to gather detailed data from classroom teachers. The study group consists of 40 classroom teachers, 6 male, and 34 female. The qualitative data collected from teachers were analyzed through the thematic analysis technique. The study revealed that the most important factors that determine the attitudes and behaviors of host and immigrant students in the same classes are common language and communication, intergroup friendship, acceptance, exclusion, in-group solidarity, attitudes of teachers and families. In addition, it has been observed that studying in the same class with Turkish speaking students usually helps immigrant students to use the common language more effectively which, leads them to be less rejected and more accepted, along with the intergroup friendship rather than in-group solidarity. Finally, the study yields that teachers’ approaches and behaviors towards their immigrant students are very effective not only in enhancing intergroup contact, friendship, integration, and positive attitudes, but also increasing the immigrant students’ participation and academic success. Keywords Intergroup attitudes, intergroup contact, intergroup friendship, immigration, primary school

Ethnoreligious Conflict and Populism: Emotive Political Response in the Rohingya Conflict

The rise of populism in the twenty-first century has been marked by the use of religion and national identity as emotive mobilizing forces to increase in-group solidarity and demarcate the notional boundaries of communities. The process often leads to the exclusion of vulnerable ethnoreligious minorities and to increased violence against them. This article analyses the role of fear as a principal emotion in the context of ethnoreligious conflict with reference to the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar. The article is divided in three parts. Part one explores notions of collective fear with reference to religious and ethnic conflict. Part two illustrates how collective existential fear has fuelled populist religious infused responses to the Rohignya conflict leading to the latest mass exodus of 2017. The final part considers whether fear can be an instrument of construction rather than destruction, to help build bridges than destroy, to connect people than isolate them.

Metalinguistic tactics in the Hong Kong protest movement

This paper explores the metalinguistic tactics used by Hong Kong protesters in 2014 and 2019 and how they reflected and exploited a range of dominant ideologies about language in the city. These tactics are considered both in terms of their rhetorical utility in the “message war” between protesters and authorities, and their significance in the broader sociolinguistic context of Hong Kong. The analysis reveals how such tactics entailed both opportunities and risks, allowing protesters to create shareable discursive artifacts that spread quickly over social media and to promote in-group solidarity and distrust of their political opponents, but also limiting their ability to broaden the appeal of their messages to certain segments of the population and implicating them in upholding language ideologies that promote exclusion and marginalization.

Defence strategies in an online community of caregivers

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand caregivers’ discursive constructions and responses to their unwanted (family and social) role as resulting in exchanges on social media. Online group platforms are understood as particularly suitable for the expression of intimate feelings among adults, for meeting and exhibiting stigma issues, and for the circulation of information and support (Suler, 2004; McCormack, 2010; Pounds et al., 2018). Design/methodology/approach This paper draws from digital Conversation Analysis (Giles et al., 2015), and considers data after combining quantitative (corpus analysis) and qualitative methods, from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske et al., 2002) is used together with collocation analysis to understand categorisations, which ultimately result in a defence strategy (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017) to negotiate the Self and the Others (Tannen, 1992). Findings Considering that the digital environment allows a discursive negotiation of identities, data suggest that these interactions are expressions of membership construction, group solidarity and empowerment, that normalise and legitimise emotions with the ultimate goal of (self-)acceptance. Originality/value This study provides a basis for further research on caregivers’ self-positioning in power-relations with others.

Sectarianism without Sects

This book develops a theory of sectarianism and its relationship with communities of shared religion and with the emergence of imagined communities of this kind. Distinguishing between social sectarianism and political sectarianism, it discusses the relationship of political sectarianism to communities of religion as pre-existing social-historical entities. The main concern of the study, however, is to investigate how modern sectarianism invents imagined religious communities, or ta’ifas in Arabic. It does this by exploring sectarianism in various Arab countries. The book puts forward five theses. First, political sectarianism is a modern phenomenon. Second, an ‘imagined community of religion’ is a modern social imaginary based on the sectarian conceptualization of a religious or confessional affiliation as an identity shared by people who have never formed a community in practice within a vast imagined community, built on a selective reading of history and legend. Third, religious communities do not produce sectarianism, but sectarianism reproduces these communities as imagined communities. Fourth, power in modern authoritarian regimes is not attained by sectarian (Khaldunian) ‘asabiyya (group solidarity), but rather an authoritarian regime might use primordial ties to ensure loyalty and thereby produce sectarianism. Fifth, unlike a traditional community, an imagined community is not an ethical community.

The Factory Women

The Factory Women is a fictional account of four Italian immigrant women in Toronto, Ontario in the 1960s. Told from the second person point-of-view, the narrative aims to challenge readers to see the story through the main character’s eyes. The women presented in the story sew uniforms in a small workshop that they have dubbed “the factory.” One of the women, Marta, lost her husband to the Hoggs Hollow disaster, an actual historical event in which four Italian workers were killed while building a water main tunnel in Toronto.When a mysterious man begins working at “the factory” alongside the women, he tries to encourage them to join a worker’s union, much to the disapproval of the workroom supervisor.While Toronto Italians have largely assimilated into mainstream Canadian society, The Factory Women strives to remind members of the ethnic community of their conflicted past in an effort to exhort them to speak out against social injustice now. While many young Italian Canadians have led privileged lives, they must remember the experiences of their own ancestors and continue to fight for the equality of all Canadians. While centred on the Italian experience in Canada, The Factory Women aims to remind all people of the importance of group solidarity.

Jews and Frenchies: The White Ethnic Minority in the US Virgin Islands

Two white ethnic minorities, Jews and Frenchies, are rather unusual in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. The Jews arrived during the period of slavery and participated in the economic colonialism of islands, retaining a prominent position in the Virgin Islands. The Frenchies in St. Thomas arrived from St. Barths after slavery. These white minorities have expanded connections between friends and families as well as in their departed homeland and the Virgin Islands. Their strong religious beliefs and in-group solidarity allowed them to remain in the sociological and economic comfort zones of St. Thomas. In modern times, they have branched out from their insular zones and merged their mores and folkways and their peasant and professional ways, on their gradual terms, with those of other ethnic Virgin Islanders, bringing themselves closer to Virgin Islands society as evidenced by their younger generation.