Positive regard for difference without identity

The contact hypothesis has been the go-to social psychology concept for promoting better relations between unequal social groups since its inception in the context of ‘racial’ de-segregation in the USA. The idea that contact between groups reduces prejudice has been applied to a range of dominant / subordinate social groups such as ethnic groups, homo/heterosexuals, cis and trans people. This chapter will question whether the aims and premises of contact theory are still useful in the context of increasingly subtle and systemic biases and inequalities, and whether and how it might be usefully extended to relations between more complex identities than simple pre-defined oppositional ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. To do so, it considers some examples of intergroup othering using case studies pertaining to backlashes against gender, sexual and ethnic diversity in the contemporary Australian context. This chapter proposes the fruitful combination of queer ethics, post-tolerance political theory and the social psychology concept of ‘allophilia’ (love for the other) to move towards fostering ‘positive regard’ as an alternative way to tackle prejudice. It suggests that queer ethics can lend a convincing strategy here, which I call ‘reading queerly’, that is, being able to approach an other with an openness that neither homogenises nor subordinates difference.

Agents of peace: place, identity and peacebuilding

This chapter provides a new account of identity and practices of agents in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding. It investigates how place, habitus, and fields of interaction alongside the performative roles shape the identity of agents and their socialization in practice. To explore the relation between the agents’ presence and their impact on peacebuilding, this paper bypasses the exclusionary dichotomies between local/international and liberal/indigenous agents, and develops a typology of six types of agents horizontally arranged around their insideness and outsideness towards a particular conflict-affected place. Using human geography and critical hermeneutics, this paper categorises ‘agents of peace’ in six different types: existential insiders, subjective insiders, empathetic insiders, behavioural insiders, objective outsiders, and existential outsiders. The core argument of this article is that the differentiation of agents around the geographical and performance towards a particular place facilitates the exploration of pluralist forms of agency and a more nuanced understanding of dynamics in post-conflict societies. An expanded and plural view of agents captures better the fields of interaction and hybridization, agential knowledge and narratives, modes of governance, and various everyday practices that enable or inhibit sustainable peace.

Co-constituting Fijian identity: the role of constitutions in Fijian national identity

This chapter focuses on the role that constitutions play in national identity, particularly in states that are recently independent and constrained by a colonial legacy. It uses Fiji as a case study, exploring how British colonialism influenced conceptions of Fijian national identity in the constitutional texts of 1970, 1990 and 1997. The chapter explores the indigenous ethno-nationalist ideals that underpinned these constitutions, which led to the privileging of indigenous Fijian identity within the wider national identity. However, in 2013, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama introduced a new constitution which shifted away from previous ethno-nationalist underpinnings towards a more inclusive national identity through the promotion of a civic nationalist agenda. In doing so, Bainimarama’s goal of reducing ethnic conflict has seen a constitutional re-imagining of Fijian identity, which includes the introduction of new national symbols, and a new electoral system, alongside equal citizenry clauses within the Constitution. This study offers a unique insight into power and identity within post-colonial island states.

The queer common: resisting the public at Gezi Park and beyond

Millions of people across Turkey protested police violence, state totalitarianism, urban gentrification, and a host of other concerns during the Gezi Park protests in late May 2013. The protests merged with Gay Pride Istanbul and fundamentally changed queer and trans peoples’ relationships with the Turkish public. This chapter establishes “the queer common” as the sexualized lines of flight which destabilise the normal ways queers are governed – a concept for understanding queer resistance against the state. The chapter argues that the state and other institutions manipulate the public to assert one acceptable model of heteronormative belonging. This assemblage (which brings together the police, the family, Sunni Islam, media and other institutions) naturalises Turkish citizenship. The chapter draws on interviews with queer activists to explore queer resistance at Gezi, challenges to ‘normalised’ Turkish identity, and the renegotiation of the state’s production of violence against queer and trans people.

Sweden, military intervention and the loss of memory

Within the space of roughly two decades, Sweden has changed from a neutral country to one that is currently engaged in a range of activities and practices that are far removed from the definition of neutrality. Its engagement with NATO, contribution of forces to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya, and its role as a leading framework nation in the emergent EU Battle Groups suggest at first glance the shifting demands of global security practices. The rationale of the move away from traditional state-centric security, however, obscures a more complex picture. In this chapter, we investigate specific aspects of these changes in relation to Swedish security policy, specifically robust forms of military intervention. We argue that rather than reflecting global security practices, deeper endogenous processes are at work. Significantly, such engagements are part of disembedding norms around neutrality and revising public and elite memory of Sweden as a neutral state. By focusing on identity and memory, we posit that Sweden’s current military engagements are concerned with rewriting identity and with a view to making new memories (or a ‘memory bank’) of wartime experiences. This has played a crucial part in not only justifying and naturalizing specific practices and actions, but also reconstituting identity in the process.

Right(s) from the ground up: internal displacement, the urban periphery and belonging to the city

Often overlooked, internal displacement affects millions around the globe. Colombia’s protracted conflict, which has internally displaced approximately six million people (IDMC 2015a, 2015b), has embedded social exclusion and violence as features of everyday life for many Colombians who find themselves living in informal settlements on the urban periphery. Increasingly, connections between urban exclusion, insecurity and poverty can be read as a ‘violent’ failure of citizenship (Koonings and Kruijt 2007, 12) that negates the lived experience of those on the margins. This chapter contends that despite this negation those who struggle to survive make claims of the right to belong to (and in) the city through placing their bodies in public spaces as well as finding new articulations of place and belonging amongst the complexities of the everyday. Through exploring these acts this chapter asks how the internally displaced challenge established notions of the right to the city and are prompting alternative articulations of belonging.

A space for identity: the case of Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians

This chapter examines a segment of Palestinians who were granted citizenship in Lebanon through a process of tawtin, a naturalization strategy underpinned by notions of national belonging and identity. It draws upon interviews and observations with naturalized citizens and refugees to illustrate and reveal patterns of citizenship practice that challenge national discourses of tawtin, and suggest the emergence of a paradigm that posits citizenship-as-rights, and not identity. Despite the dichotomous discourse that posits Palestinian identity in dialectic to citizenship, naturalized Palestinians constructed dynamic spaces for both to exist, somewhat harmoniously. Despite the globalization of human rights and the rise of universal personhood, access to rights remains inextricably bound and dependent upon access to citizenship. Analyses of citizenship practice remains, for the most part, conscripted to frameworks that posit citizenship-as identity on the one hand, and the subsequent emergence of citizenship-as-rights on the other. Belying these existing frameworks is a negotiation and re-negotiation of citizenship by individuals that inherently challenges them from within. This necessitates a paradigmatic shift from the top-down lens within which tawtin of Palestinians in Lebanon is presented, towards a bottom-up approach that explores the individuals’ agency in its conceptualization.

Pollution and purity: caste-based discrimination and the mobilisation of Dalit sameness

Since the late 1990s, Dalit (‘Untouchable’) activists have sought to respond to and contest caste-based discrimination by significantly expanding the scope of Dalit sameness. The idea of a shared, expansive Dalit identity beyond local or national contexts has allowed both for a global layer of activism to develop and for formerly disparate groups or communities to affiliate themselves with the cause against casteist perceptions of pollution, hierarchy and status. Consequently, Dalit identity to some—especially Indian activists long committed to its realisation and relevance—turns into an increasingly ambiguous and evasive subject position, while others relate to it is a novel, enabling nodal point for communal belonging and for contesting entrenched forms of marginalisation. In sum, these developments, nonetheless, equal acts of opposition and resistance. Drawing on interviews with Dalit activists in India, Nepal and the UK, the chapter explores how the above reformulation of Dalit sameness, on the one hand, affects the possibility to speak of a singular envisioning of transcending casteism and, on the other, destabilises established certainties regarding what pollution and purity signify.

Gendered identities in peacebuilding: an analysis of post-2006 Timor-Leste

In 2006 and 2007, Timor-Leste experienced a violent political crisis, mostly centred in the capital Dili, which led to a renewed UN peacekeeping presence. While the catalyst for the crisis was the spill-over of tensions within and between Timor-Leste’s security institutions – the national police force (PNTL) and the national defence force (F-FDTL) – there was significant impact on the broader population, resulting in over 100,000 internally displaced and the widespread destruction of property. However, the subsequent UN peacebuilding activities and policy outcomes all took on a male-centric focus, especially via the focus given to Timor-Leste’s security institutions. Although a number of women worked to alleviate the societal tensions that had been exposed as a result of the crisis, they were excluded from high-level negotiations. Several theorists have suggested that despite women’s complex and highly differentiated roles in conflict and peacebuilding, they are often essentialized as victims, limiting the remit of their recognised contributions. The approach to gender work undertaken in Timor-Leste from 2006 can be understood through two theoretical frameworks: the connection between the ‘gendering’ of women, or assigning essentialist roles to women as part of being ‘gender aware’; and the victim-narrative that dominated institutional policy discussions on gender and women in post-crisis Timor-Leste.

Australian foreign policy and the vernacular of national belonging

Across the 1990s, a ‘culture war’ raged between Australian Prime Ministers Keating and Howard. At its crux, their discursive battles reflected divergent and competing conceptions of Australian nationhood, and Australia’s place in the world. For Keating, Australia’s future and interests resided in a comprehensive engagement with Asia. For Howard, Australia’s identity was situated firmly within the Anglo-sphere. This chapter examines how such articulations of national identity related to foreign policy during the Keating and Howard governments. Through an exploration of foreign policy language, it will illuminate the efforts made by Australian governments to link foreign policy objectives with particular conceptions of Australian national identity. Specifically, this chapter will highlight the deliberate attempts by Keating and then by Howard to fuse elements of their foreign and domestic agendas in pursuit of a vision that took in very particular and radically different conceptions of Australian identity. It aims to pose important questions about what Australian foreign policy language might reveal about contested notions of national identity, and following that, how foreign policy can be understood as part of a political project to define what it means to be Australian.