(Re)placing the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese as “Mek Awang”: Making Chinatown and Heritagising the Peranakan Identities in Kuala Terengganu

In 2017, the Terengganu Chinese Peranakan Association (TCPA) withdrew its participation in the 4th Annual Terengganu Peranakan Festival (TPF) organised by the Terengganu Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCCI) because of a dispute over the combined term “Mek Awang”. To TCPA members, Mek Awang is a derogatory term, which the Malays used to refer to someone as being “soft”, effeminate, or a cross-dresser. However, TCCCI has appropriated the term Mek Awang and used it as a brand name to promote the festival, and to highlight the “uniqueness” of the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese community. This case is an example of how local cultural terms or practices have been readapted to suit tourism interests. Tourism is often accused of reinventing culture for capital ventures. Consequently, many academics and social critics have come to regard official national heritage sites and heritage tourism with scepticism and disdain. Combining ethnographic data from our in-depth interviews with the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese and our participant observation during the festival, we argue that the dispute over Mek Awang is not only a simple change in reference, but is also an indication of a deeper contemporary global process that affects ethnic minorities and their identities. We conclude that various attempts to commodify the peranakan experiences and culture in Terengganu as well as the intention to place the peranakan as a marketable heritage in Chinatown can be interpreted as attempts to replace a heterogeneous community with a homogeneous, uniform, genetic and identifiable ethnic category with a Peranakan1 (with capital “P”) identity.

Semantic content of the terms “Russian Muslims”, “Ethnic Muslims” and “Ethnic Neophytes” in the study of the phenomenon of “Religious Conversion” from a theologian’s perspective

The article is an attempt of theoretical comprehension of certain aspects of socio-psychological research, the results of which we presented in “Minbar” № 1, 2021. The study included tasks on understanding the reasons for Islam adoption by women in regions with Muslim minority, to identify the features of their adaptation to a new religious identity and to maintain the specifics and to form the solutions to the problems occurred. The ambiguity of certain terms encountered by us in the study of religious conversion prompted us to write this article.In the first part of the article we considered the phenomenon of “religious conversion” from the perspectives of various scientific disciplines. Further, the terms often used in the study of religious conversion were analyzed and also their correctness, based on both compliances with the standards developed by D. S. Lotte and acceptance by believers, was assessed. In the second part of the article the semantic content of the terms “Russian Muslims” and “Ethnic Muslims” was corrected. We also proposed a new term – “Ethnic Neophytes” – to distinguish Muslims who are usually ascribed to a new and separate ethnic category being neophytes in fact, which can easily be proved by the fact of their families’ complete separation from religion in the second and further generations.As a theologian specialist the author pays attention to the fact that in theological studies one of the standards of term applying should be the acceptance of the term by the believers of the very denomination where the term refers. Thus, the different term systems are acceptable for different theological studies within the field of diverse religions.

Vloga reformacije v slovenski etnogenezi: Etnična kolektivna identiteta na premici zgodovine dolgega trajanja ▪︎ The Role of the Reformation in Slovene Ethnogenesis: Collective Ethnic Identity in Long-Term History

Although the Reformation in both Europe and Slovenia was primarily of a religious nature, its long-term impact on Slovenes is much more visible in their collective ethnic than religious identity. While the sovereign Counter-Reformation abolished Protestantism in the Inner Austrian lands between 1598 and 1628, the Catholic Revival used certain achievements of the movement in its own pursuits. For the further development of Slovenes as an ethnic community, especially four Reformation creations are important: 1) the linguistic norm, 2) the concept of the Slovene church, 3) the myth of the chosen ethnicity and 4) a topos about the great extent of the “Slavic”/Slovene language. In accordance with the ethnosymbolist paradigm, the discussion therefore estimates that in the second half of the 16th century Slovenes developed from an ethnic category into an ethnic network. The Slovene language, which was sporadically written from the end of the first millennium onwards, was finally consolidated as a literary language in 1550 with the first two books published by Primož Trubar. The Protestant literary work reached its peak in 1584, when a translation of the Bible by Jurij Dalmatin and a grammar by Adam Bohorič were published. The concept of the “Slovene church”, which is supposed to unite the entire Slovene-speaking Christian community, was also conceived by Trubar. He presented his idea for the first time in 1555 and completed it in his Cerkovna ordninga (“the Church Order”) from 1564. Although the conceptual programme was not established in the church administration, it significantly influenced the mindset of both Protestant and later Catholic writers in the 17th and 18th centuries. The emergence of the Slovene myth of the chosen ethnicity, which is based on a sentence from the Letter of Paul to the Romans: “and every tongue will praise God” (Romans 14:11), also dates back to the Reformation and as a maxim connects the key literary creations of this period. In addition, Protestant writers relied on the humanistic tradition of emphasizing the great extent of the “Slavic” language, which in fact served to increase the importance of Slovene. This topos was first introduced to Slovene grammars by Bohorič and represents a somewhat later entry of Slovenes into the “(inter)national competition for national honor”, which emerged in Europe during the humanism.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Status in a Medical Licensing Educational Resource: a Systematic, Mixed-Methods Analysis

Background Medical students preparing for the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) Exam frequently use the UWorld Step 2 CK Question Bank (QBank). Over 90% of medical students use UWorld QBanks to prepare for at least one USMLE. Although several questions in the QBank mention race, ethnicity, or immigration status, their contributions to the QBank remain underexamined. Objective We conducted a systematic, mixed-methods content analysis to assess whether and how disease conditions might be racialized throughout this popular medical education resource. Design We screened 3537 questions in the QBank between May 28 and August 11, 2020, for mentions of race, ethnicity, or immigration status. We performed multinomial logistic regression to assess the likelihood of each racial/ethnic category occurring in either the question stem, answer explanation, or both. We used an inductive technique for codebook development and determined code frequencies. Main Measures We reviewed the frequency and distribution of race or ethnicity in question stems, answer choices, and answer explanations; assessed associations between disease conditions and racial and ethnic categories; and identified whether and how these associations correspond to race-, ethnicity-, or migration-based care. Results References to Black race occurred most frequently, followed by Asian, White, and Latinx groups. Mentions of race/ethnicity varied significantly by location in the question: Asian race had 6.40 times greater odds of occurring in the answer explanation only (95% CI 1.19–34.49; p < 0.031) and White race had 9.88 times greater odds of occurring only in the question stem (95% CI 2.56–38.08; p < 0.001). Qualitative analyses suggest frequent associations between disease conditions and racial, ethnic, and immigration categories, which often carry implicit or explicit biological and genetic explanations. Conclusions Our analysis reveals patterns of race-based disease associations that have potential for systematic harm, including promoting incorrect race-based associations and upholding cultural conventions of White bodies as normative.

A Hidden Community: Justifying the Inclusion of Roma As an Ethnic Identity in the 2021 Scottish Census

This article investigates the invisibility of Roma communities within Scottish census ethnic monitoring categories and broader empirical data. Consistent negative stereotyping as well as systematic oppression within social policy, dominant discourses, and data collection processes excludes Roma from participatorycitizenship. This article identifies precise forms of marginality and invisibility within official government data – permeated through social and education policy – that thereby limit the effective targeting of resources to marginalized communities. Specifically, the article argues that omitting Roma as an ethnic category from past data gathering processes limits understanding of the commonalities and differences within and amongScottish communities, rendering entire populations invisible within broader empirical data and therefore restricting both identification of needs and effective resource allocation. Thus, the article presents a timely argument for the inclusion of Roma as an ethnic category in the 2021 Scottish census, while addressingissues within the census approach to data collection – including the impending digitization of the process. Through discussing and advancing the case for the inclusion of Romani communities in the 2021 Scottish Census, the paper also seeks to establish the current social context by chronicling the history of Romanimigration and marginalization within Europe.

Competing Nationality Politics Targeting German Communities at the Hungarian-Romanian Border Zone after the Great War

In my study, I focus on the events that took place in the short period after the Great War ended (1918) and before the consolidation of Romanian power in the Hungarian-Romanian Border Commission (1922) from the point of view of the artificially created ethnic category: the Satu Mare Swabians or Sathmar Swabians. The historiography related to the “ethnographic” aspects of these events have appeared multiple times and in several contexts and forms in the years since. However, the question of ethnicity has not arisen in relation to the population of German descent, but rather in relation to the Hungarian-speaking Greek Catholic communities of Romanian and Rusyn/Ruthenian origin who were treated by the Romanian side as Magyarized Romanians. Following this example, the Romanians later began to collect data on the Magyarized Germans, which they then presented to the Border Commission. Germans living in the territory witnessed a strong competition between identity politics and discourse supported by rival Hungarian and Romanian states. One of the key features of this rivalry was the intensive propaganda activity promoted by both the Romanian and the Hungarian authorities to gain territories to the detriment of the other.

The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood

The chapter assesses the systematic violence inflicted on Jews in Nazi Germany and on Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. What was arguably novel about the twentieth-century phase in the long history of the brutality that human beings have periodically shown to each other was the ideological prominence that was repeatedly given to the spurious idea of “race” as a legitimating basis for systematic violence. The approximately 6 million Jews who were slaughtered in the Holocaust or Shoah, and the 800,000 to 1 million Tutsi and Hutu who were killed in Rwanda in 1994, died because they belonged to an ethnic category whose very existence was deemed to threaten the health and even survival of the nation to which they belonged. Indeed, ideas of racial difference played a more prominent part in the history of collective human violence than in previous centuries. It is also undeniable that the churches in many cases proved receptive to such ideas to an extent that poses uncomfortable questions for Christian theology. For Christians, what is doubly disturbing about the unprecedented scale and rate of ethnic killing in these two cases is the seeming impotence of their faith to resist the destructive power of racial hatred. Ultimately, the two holocausts—in Nazi Germany and in Rwanda—both tell a depressing story of widespread, though never total, capitulation by churches and Christian leaders to the insidious attractions of racial ideology, and of the habitual silence or inaction of many Christians in the face of observed atrocities.

Citizenship and Surveys: Group Conflict and Nationality-of-Interviewer Effects in Arab Public Opinion Data

More research than ever before uses public opinion data to investigate society and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Ethnic identities are widely theorized to mediate many of the political attitudes and behaviors that MENA surveys commonly seek to measure, but, to date, no research has systematically investigated how the observable ethnic category(s) of the interviewer may influence participation and answers given in Middle East surveys. Here we measure the impact of one highly salient and outwardly observable ascriptive attribute of interviewers—nationality—using data from an original survey experiment conducted in the Arab Gulf state of Qatar. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework and utilizing an innovative nonparametric matching technique, we estimate treatment effects on both nonresponse error and measurement error. We find that Qatari nationals are more likely to begin and finish a survey, and respond to questions, when interviewed by a fellow national. Qataris also edit their answers to sensitive questions relating to the unequal status of citizens and noncitizens, reporting views that are more exclusionary and less positive toward out-group members, when the interviewer is a conational. The findings have direct implications for consumers and producers of a growing number of surveys conducted inside and outside the Arab world, where migration and conflict have made respondent-interviewer mismatches along national and other ethnic dimensions more salient and more common.

Multi-ethnic Macao: from global village to migrant metropolis

Purpose In the past 20 years, Macao has experienced phenomenal economic growth driven by the liberalization of its casino sector. This growth has been enabled by massive influxes of foreign capital and migrant labor that have dramatically altered the city’s ethnic landscape. In this paper, the author examines the demographic changes Macao has experienced as a result of the casino boom, and situates the city’s current economic growth and ethnic diversification within its long history as a multi-ethnic city. Design/methodology/approach Building on Nancy Foner’s notion of “contexts of settlement,” the study draws on census materials, policy statements, newspaper articles and ethnographic materials to examine how changing ideologies of globalization help shape the categories through which ethnic diversity itself is conceptualized. Findings The paper has three main findings. First, despite the Macao government’s multicultural rhetoric, its labor and residency policies that prevent migrant workers from settling in Macao may paradoxically serve to maintain the ethnic status quo ante. Second, the new contexts of settlement engendered by Macao’s casino globalization may be amplifying fissures within the ethnic category “Chinese.” And third, discourses of globalization, regulations on immigration, and classificatory systems governing ethnic diversity that were instituted under Portuguese rule have both helped shape these new contexts and been reworked in the process. Originality/value As the processes of urbanization, economic integration and transnational migration continue to accelerate throughout East Asia, the goal of creating inclusive, equitable multi-ethnic urban societies will require closer examination of the relationship between particular modes and ideologies of “global” engagement, patterns of and policies toward migration and the concepts and categories through which diversity is measured. This approach to understanding multi-ethnic Macao may serve as an example.