Alternative identity,alternative religion? Neo‐paganism and the Aryan myth in contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT. As in all post‐Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the subject of neo‐paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to ‘Slavic paganism’ and to Russia's ‘Aryan’ origin can be found in the public speeches of some politicians and intellectual figures. This article will attempt, in its first section, to depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neo‐pagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post‐Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion, historiography, and politics.     

冯夏威的自杀殉国与民族主义的社会动员

论文简述了冯夏威自杀殉国与1905年抵制美货运动的联系及其民族英雄形象塑造的过程和重要意义。1905年华侨冯夏威为抗议美国排华政策,在上海美国领事馆门口服毒自尽,奏响了抵制美货运动的序曲,并以民族英雄的形象贯穿运动始终。冯夏威的民族英雄形象是个体自塑与社会他塑的复合体。自杀殉国与遗书自述,完成了个体自塑的描摹;各方悼念与报道宣传,实现了社会他塑的目标。其自杀动机与反美抵制行为,契合了中国近代民族主义的发展潮流与认同需求,个人意志表达呈现出社会化、国家化、民族化的趋向。中国近代民族主义的急进发展,不仅为社会他塑提供了空间与动源,而且也认可了个体自塑的存在与价值。     

‘Here or nowhere is your America’: idealism,religion and nationalism

ABSTRACT

The argument focuses on a Victorian perception of spiritual crisis and its unanticipated relation to nationalism. This issue is analyzed in the context of the British Idealist movement for whom the roots of the crisis derived largely from a misleading transcendental understanding of religion. The Idealists re-conceptualized religion as immanent within a humanized incarnational understanding of Christ, which was in turn seen to be implicit in the everyday moral conduct of all humans. This latter idea had immediate social implications. Morality is seen to be rooted within institutions aspiring to achieve the common good. In this context, a specific ‘sense’ of nationalism is seen to embody this aspiration to the common good. There is an explicit distinction between forms of nationalism which facilitate, as against those which hinder, the common good. Thus, the Idealist immanent understanding of religion - configured through the common good - forms the intrinsic value substance to a unique understanding of nationalism.     

Market civilisation meets economic nationalism: the discourse of nation in Russia's modernisation

This article examines how the discourse of nation functions as a mechanism furthering the expansion of a neoliberal market civilisation in Russia. It contributes to discussions that have challenged the assumed mutual exclusivity of economic nationalism and neoliberalism. The article develops its argument in the context of the idea of contemporary international society as a market civilisation characterised by an adaptation to and adoption of neoliberal standards by states. The ongoing modernisation project in Russia illustrates the workings of such standards, as exemplified by the project for an innovation city in Skolkovo, in the Moscow metropolitan area. Building on an analysis of the Skolkovo debate, the article agues that there is no inherent contradiction between economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Rather, the nation is an important symbolic system that produces a cultural susceptibility to, and a discursive field for, the introduction of neoliberal standards of market civilisation in Russia.     

‘Faith in nation comes in different guises’1: modernist versions of religious nationalism2

ABSTRACT. Many scholars of nationalism seem to assume that religious nationalism is inherently and necessarily hostile to the secular nation‐state and to modern developments in general. The present paper challenges this conviction by drawing on recent debates among sociologists of religion, and it points to the existence of modernist versions of religious nationalism that acknowledge the legitimacy of the secular nation‐state and are generally sympathetic to modern developments. It examines one of the most prominent manifestations of this variety of nationalism, namely Protestant modernist nationalism. After a brief consideration of cases from nineteenth century Europe, the remainder of the paper focuses on the modernist religious nationalisms arising in post‐Cold War Eastern Europe, with a special focus on Slovenia.     

An interpretation of Finnish religious nationalism: the four topoi of theological depoliticisation

ABSTRACT. The topic of this article is the relation between ‘politicality’ and theology in the discourse of Finnish religious nationalism during the Winter War of 1939–40 and the Continuation War of 1941–44. I shall draw on the ideas of Kari Palonen and Anthony D. Smith in attempting to thematise theological depoliticisation as an intrinsic element of religious nationalism. Also, I will elaborate its political significance in the Finnish context, where the role of traditional religion in the general development of nationalist thought has been particularly important. The specific focus is on how prominent representatives of the Finnish clergy related to war and nationalist claims in general. My interpretation is that their arguments were drawn from what I call the topoi of theological depoliticisation, which, at the same time, rendered the discourse extremely political.     

“Much the more political of the two”: Mabel FitzGerald and the Irish revolution

This article offers an assessment of the career and ideology of the Irish republican and Cumann na mBan activist Mabel FitzGerald, née McConnell (1884–1958). From a staunchly Unionist Belfast Presbyterian family, Mabel converted to republicanism while an undergraduate in the early 1900s. In 1911 she eloped with Desmond FitzGerald, a Catholic poet. The couple became prominent nationalist activists, and participated in the Easter Rising. In 1922 Desmond, now a minister in the provisional government, supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty. This caused a rift with Mabel, who remained a republican. Although she chose not to separate from her husband, she retained her republican sympathies; there is evidence that she continued to offer aid to the anti-Treaty side. After the Civil War, Mabel and Desmond were reconciled, and she strongly revised her political views, eventually coming to regret the Irish separatist project. Mabel FitzGerald’s career offers insight into the nature of radicalisation among Irish nationalist activists, as well as providing an example of the competing loyalties of family and politics that frequently informed and constrained the actions of nationalist activists.     

Religion and nationalism: four approaches*

ABSTRACT. Building on recent literature, this article discusses four ways of studying the relationship between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The article concludes by reconsidering the much‐criticised understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.     

Between religion and nationalism in the Palestinian diaspora

This article examines Palestinian refugee articulations of the Palestinian homeland and struggle in relation to religion and nationalism. My contention is that the impact of Hamas's electoral victory in Palestine is visible within the discourse of Palestinians in Jordan. This discourse suggests a transformation of the meaning of Palestinian nationalism in which religion is taking an important albeit complex role in nationalism. Using the concept of intertwining, this article considers how Islam has been intertwined with Palestinian nationalism in ways that have privileged particular ideas about the national homeland and fight for liberation. While many suggest that Islamist politics is incompatible with nationalism, this article takes the local discourse of refugees and argues that Hamas and its supporters have yet to abandon the framework of nationalism, although certain tensions exist.     

近代俄国的历史观念与国族意识——以历史学家米留可夫为例

俄罗斯随历史发展成为领土辽阔的庞大国家。随时间与空间的延续,生活在其中的人竟然无法就国族文化得到共识。十九世纪的知识阶层独立于政权之外展开社会自发的国族论述。从早期斯拉夫派与西方派的国族本质辩论,到革命前政治意识型态之争,国家历史是知识分子最重要论述依据。历史学家应能发挥专业长才,贡献于审视国族文化,却又往往被视为与知识阶层隔绝。本文以莫斯科学派的米留可夫为例,探究历史学家的国族观念。米留可夫无法认同长期受浪漫主义唯心哲学主导的俄国社会思想,主张经验历史的重要,如此才能建立正确的历史知识,找到真正的国族文化。他希望用客观的方法替代过去以人类精神为主体的理论架构,因此为俄国历史学和国族论述添上了新的一页。     

Religion,secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country: a comparative approach

This article analyses the relationship between religion, secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country using a comparative approach. I will first outline the ethnic‐religious origin of these nationalist movements. Second, I will examine the extent to which the ‘new’ secular and violent nationalism (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and Front de Libération du Québec) that emerged in the 1960s was fuelled in its origin by a transfer of sacrality. Third, I will address an aspect that has led some theorists to view religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, in which nationalism is construed as a religion of blood sacrifice. Fourth, I will examine another aspect that leads to this view of religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, as the latter also provides a framework of transcendent meaning through an imaginary of continuity between the different generations. The article concludes with a series of general considerations on the relations between nationalism, secularisation and religion.     

Protestantism,nation and diaspora in Imperial Germany

This article examines the close connection between Protestantism and nationalism in Imperial Germany within a transnational context. In the years before 1914, the Prussian State Church in particular strengthened the legal and organisational framework for an increasing number of diaspora congregations to become attached. These acted as an important vehicle to embed the nationalist rhetoric produced within the Reich into emigrants' notions of belonging. Whilst previous scholarship has noted this connection in general, the article sheds more detailed light on the mechanics and structure, but also on the limits, of this process. Feedback processes from periphery to centre, in turn, had an impact on German national identity construction as that of a nation that was not confined to state borders. Applying a constructionist theoretical framework, the contested question of whether the heterogeneity of Germans abroad allows for the application of the diaspora concept is answered affirmatively.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.