Muslims in Europe: Managing Multiple Identities and Learning Shared Citizenship

Abstract

This article offers a tour d'horizon of the new Muslim communities formed in western Europe in the last forty years, now numbering some 13 million. After some idiosyncratic, historic notes, a summary ethnic, socio-economic and demographic profile is given, followed by a suggested four phase development cycle. The differential incorporation of Muslims in public and civic life turns on a consideration of a number of factors: the presence of at least three different models for managing diversity within western Europe, as well as the institutional space accorded to "religion" in public life across Europe. Muslims are not presented as passive victims of exclusion but social actors carving out space for a distinctive "identity politics." Within the various Muslim communities a debate is taking place on whether or not they should participate in electoral politics - the contours of this debate are drawn. Attention is also drawn to inter-generational tensions and the issue of "radicalization" amongst sections of the Muslims educated and socialised in the West. The article concludes by reflecting on the whether the churches can act as an antidote to far right politics and "religious nationalism."     

Alternative Complexities: The Archaeology of Pastoral Nomadic States

Almost a century of systematic anthropological research on pastoral nomads has produced significant data and theory for understanding these mobile societies. Substantially less attention has been devoted to complex sociopolitical organization among pastoral nomadic groups and, in particular, to the large-scale polities referred to as nomadic confederations, states, or sometimes empires. This article reviews established ideas for how and why complex organization emerged among nomadic groups and then considers these ideas in the context of recent archaeological theory on statehood and new material evidence for pastoral nomadic prehistory. Revised conceptions of both the state and the nomad suggest that pastoral nomadic polities represent alternative forms of complex organization that were different from classic Old World states but still quite complex in unexpected ways. These organizational differences resulted from the mobile and flexible politics practiced among herding peoples and gave rise to regional polities based on spatial networking, distributed authority, and innovations in transport and exchange.     

Building Identities: The Architecture of the Persona

We often approach architecture to deal with people’s social identities, as these structures are often the products of communal efforts or institutionalized orders. Nonetheless, we sometimes observe a discrepancy in the architectural homogeneity and the diversity of personalized practices brought forth by architecture. Hence, the built environment possesses often unexplored possibilities to prospect personal identities and biographies. In this paper I intend to scrutinize the role of built structures in the architecture of the persona. From the vantage point of Singularized Archaeology I aim at disentangling a quintessential Icelandic passageway house from the seventeenth century. Doing so, I turn the focus away from the standard debate on form and function of architectural design towards the variety of interpretive possibilities incorporated in the archaeological structures themselves, the building materials, the building processes as well as the relationality of the material assemblages that compose the architecture.     

喀纳斯 游牧者的山林

景观特征：喀纳斯有很多唯一,这里是中国唯一和四国接壤的自然保护区,是中国唯一的北冰洋水系——布尔津河的发源地,喀纳斯湖周围还是我国唯一的南西伯利亚区系动植物分布区,生长有西伯利亚区系的落叶松、红松、云杉、冷杉等珍贵树种和众多的桦树林,已知有83科298属798种。     

Taboos of Tibetan Nomadic Tribes

ＴａｂｏｏｓｏｆＴｉｂｅｔａｎＮｏｍａｄｉｃＴｒｉｂｅｓＡＯＨＯＮＧＴｉｂｅｔａｎｆｏｌｋｌｏｒｅｉｎｃｌｕｄｅｓｖａｒｉｏｕｓｋｉｎｄｓｏｆｃｅｌｅｂｒａｔｉｏｎｓ,ｓａｃｒｉｆｉｃｉａｌＯｆｆｅｒｉｎｇｓ,ａｎｄｗｅｄｄｉｎｇａｎｄｆｕｎｅｒａｌ...     

The right to be heard: Citizenship and language

In this paper we address the importance and contestation of language in terms of citizenship and the development of political communities by focusing on the example of a minority language – British Sign Language. Language is crucial to debates about citizenship and belonging because the State has to rely on language for its very functioning, indeed political practice itself is a form of communicative action. For individuals language is deeply implicated in their ability to claim and maintain their rights and in their affective connections with others and sense of identification. The paper therefore begins by identifying that Deaf people's legal entitlements (e.g. to vote) are an abstract form of citizenship because as sign language users they have difficulties understanding both political and wider civil institutions and practices, and so lack the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship in a substantive sense. We then go onto consider citizenship in the broader sense of how groups are included or situated in the public sphere, and in doing so to consider the extent to which Deaf people might be understood to have a liveable place in an oral society. The final section examines how the sense of injustice which flows from Deaf people's experiences of marginalisation in the public realm means that they are developing alternative forms of political commitment predicated on non-state spaces of belonging – where they can live their language – at both local and transnational scales. The paper concludes by reflecting on the notion of differentiated citizenship and the implications of Deaf people's claims to language rights.     

The construction of Israeli Citizenship Law: Intertwining political philosophies

Because of the significance attached to it, the Knesset passed the 1950 Law of Return in an unprecedentedly short time, but it took two more years to pass the Citizenship Law. The official protocols regarding the legislation of Israel’s Citizenship Law illuminate the main concerns of the drafters. The goal of the emerging national citizenship regime was not just to promote Jewish immigration but to establish a modern state that prohibited dual citizenship, accepted naturalizations, prevented statelessness, and granted equal citizenship to women. These policies are accumulations of countless opinions, values, interests, and ideas, each with different conceptions of citizenship and nationhood.     

Athens: Citizenship and democracy

The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens. By Philip Brook Manville (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), xiv + 265 pp., $17.95/£14.95 paper.

Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War. By Barry S. Strauss (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), xv + 283 pp., $16.95/ £12.95 paper.