美国宗教民族主义的历史省察

宗教民族主义是指一个国家的民族宗教与民族主义结合在一起并为民族利益服务。美国宗教民族主义是美国政治制度的力量源泉,它使美国的国际行为神圣化。在美国民族形成过程中,宗教曾起到民族整合的作用,美国依靠宗教皈依来自世界各地的移民,同时,也利用宗教捧除其他化对美国的冲击;在美国领土扩张过程中,宗教理念推动了美国的西进运动和海外扩张;在国际难民解救问题上,美国政府和宗教界人士以宗教关怀为手段体现美国政府在国际上的作用和地位;在20世纪的美国外交中,美国利用宗教积极参加反对共产主义运动,成为反共十字军中的重要成员。美国的历史就是宗教与民族主义相互融合、相互配合、相互作用的历史。     

流行的群体"暴力":以"杀手"游戏为中心

"杀手"是近年最流行的成人集体游戏之一,引来如《新周刊》等各类报刊以及包括三大门户网站--新浪、搜狐和网易--在内的诸网络媒体的广泛关注和报道。中国人民大学的沙莲香、郭星华两位教授从社会学、传媒学、伦理学与心理学的角度认识到这一游戏的价值,进行了初步的探讨。然而,作为当代都市民俗的"杀手"游戏似乎并没有进入民俗学特别是游戏学学者的考察视野。本文仅是一个抛砖引玉的     

Ethnic and Religious Violence in South China: The Hakka-Tiandihui Uprising of 1802

In 1802 the second major Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society) uprising erupted in the mountains of Huizhou prefecture near Canton.Before it was suppressed over a year later,the disturbances came to involve several tens of thousands of people and nearly a quarter of Guangdong province.This study,which is based on extant historical sources and fieldwork,takes an interdisciplinary approach,combining the methodologies of history,anthropology,and folklore.The areas where the uprising occurred were predominantly Hakka,an ethnic Chinese minority who came into conflict with the earlier settlers,known as the Punti.As violence escalated,both sides organized their own paramilitary units:Hakka formed Tiandihui groups and Punti formed Ox Head Societies.Significantly too,the Tiandihui groups in Huizhou belonged to a much wider network of secret society and sectarian organizations that spread across the Hakka heartland on the Jiangxi,Fujian,and Guangdong border.This article addresses key issues concerning the social,political,and religious contexts and motivations of this Hakka-led uprising.     

Racism and Nationalism

Abstract. The article seeks to define the relationship between nationalism and racism in modem times. First, it defines racism as one of the principal nineteenth-century ideologies, sharply focused and centred upon the human body itself as its most potent symbol. Then it discusses nationalism as a much more loosely constructed faith which made alliances with most nineteenth-century ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism. When nationalism allied itself with racism it made racism operative -for example, within the integral nationalist movements from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. The article discusses how this alliance came about, and its consequences. It concludes that racism was never an indispensable element of nationalism. Moreover, it was not merely a form of discrimination, but a determinate way of looking at men and women which presented a total picture of the world. If nationalism made racism a reality, racism came to dominate nationalism once an alliance between the two movements had been consummated.     

Nationalism and Historicity

Abstract. In this article the nation is shown to be a historical subject. As such, it is constructed and constantly reconstructed by discursive practices of power and knowledge. The author argues that the symbiotic interlinkage between nationalism and the organising knowledge principle of historicity, is an example of a power practice in the modern state. Throughout the article, it is shown that this practice is produced by interaction between the institutionally represented, sovereign or objective state and intellectual knowledge and its institutionalisation within the state as an academy, which acquires sovereignty in the production of objective truth. This peculiar discursive representation of making what really is personal interactions and struggles into official institutions has managed to produce the subject of the historical nation. The empirical case of Sweden is briefly discussed. During the age of great power, an exclusivist discourse of noble genealogical distinction of the ‘Goths’ was established. In modem Sweden, this genealogical myth is transformed to a popular national myth of exclusivity, a myth with great power potentials in the ‘national projects’ of modem politics.     

Nationalism and the Internet*

ABSTRACT. The territorial integrity of nations is often taken as the premise for a functioning, unifying national identity. Yet, the economic and technological developments of recent decades have made it necessary to question this assumption. It can no longer be taken for granted that the people who identify with a given nation inhabit the same space, nor can it be assumed that cultural homogenisation takes place at the level of the nation through mass media. When the Internet appeared, many social scientists and commentators predicted that it would threaten the cultural integrity of nations; that the non‐territorial character of the Internet would lead to fragmentation and unprecedented cultural differentiation, making it difficult, eventually impossible, to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, myths and so on. Although it is too early to draw any conclusions regarding the long‐term effects of the Internet, experiences so far suggest that such predictions were mistaken. In fact, nations thrive in cyberspace, and the Internet has in the space of only a few years become a key technology for keeping nations (and other abstract communities) together. Nations which have lost their territory (such as Afrikaner‐led South Africa), nations which are for political reasons dispersed (such as Tamil Sri Lanka or Kurdistan), nations with large temporary overseas diasporas (such as Scandinavian countries, with their large communities in Spain during winter), or nations where many citizens work abroad temporarily or permanently (such as India or Caribbean island‐states), appear in many sites on the Internet – from online newspapers and magazines to semi‐official information sites and ‘virtual community’ homepages. In a ‘global era’ of movement and deterritorialisation, the Internet is used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities.