‘A Puppet,Even Though He Probably Doesn't Know So’: Racial Identity and the Eisenhower Administration's Encounter with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab Nationalist Movement

This article demonstrates that US beliefs concerning racial identity guided the Eisenhower administration's encounter with Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Arab nationalism during the 1950s. It establishes that US texts propagated certain racial-identity assumptions about Arab peoples. The most important of these included the assertions that Arab peoples were irrational and easily manipulated or deceived. Policy-makers utilised these beliefs to explain and contextualise Arab actions, especially those of Egypt and its Arab nationalist government. Officials within the Eisenhower administration believed that Arab irrationality prompted Egyptian leaders to adopt a neutralist position in the cold war. The assumption that Arabs were susceptible to deception and manipulation convinced policy-makers that this position was unacceptable. The Soviets would ultimately, they believed, prey upon Arab manipulability and subjugate Egypt, the Arab nationalist movement, and the entire Middle East. These concerns made the Eisenhower administration's decision to contain Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Arab nationalist movement seem logical and necessary.     

Team Arab: al‐Jazeera and the flagging of everyday Arabism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The linking of living rooms across state borders by al‐Jazeera and other pan‐Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a ‘new Arabism’ that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the ‘hot’ Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al‐Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation‐states within a given ‘Arab arena’ of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a ‘supranationalism’, not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of ‘everyday nationalism’ by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of ‘banal nationalism’ in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.     

Vulnerability and nationalism: the support for the war against Iraq in five established states

ABSTRACT. This essay attempts to shed light on why aggressive ideas gain support within established western states. To do that it attempts to answer the question why the armed conflict against Iraq received such varied support during the first four months of 2003 within the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Spain. A comparative study indicates that the justifications for the armed conflict must be endorsed in the national identities of the particular states. If not, either the justifications or national identities have to be modified. The dominant elite emerge as essential to this process, as does the public experience of vulnerability. It appears that the war against Iraq received such varied support because the initial definitions of national identities endorsed the justifications for the war to different degrees, the dominant elites promoted different opinions and the people experienced different degrees of vulnerability.     

Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.     

海湾战争与土耳其中东外交政策评析

20世纪40年代以来土耳其奉行亲西方,尤其是亲美的一边倒外交政策,土耳其中东外交服务于其西方战略,长期以中立和不介入为主要特征。20世纪90年代世界政治格局的变化使得土耳其必须重新调整其中东外交政策,海湾战争为土耳其重新实践其外交政策提供了机遇,土耳其在中东开始采取积极、主动的新型外交政策。海湾战争成为土耳其中东外交的分水岭。海湾战争中,土耳其积极介入中东事务的政策与土耳其亲西方的外交政策恰好吻合;伊拉克战争则表明土耳其中东外交与其亲西方外交之间的不协调性。     

Passionately internationalist: Fred Halliday and nationalism studies

The aim of this academic obituary is to briefly consider Fred Halliday's (1946‐2010) contribution to nationalism studies. The article will first discuss Halliday's understanding of nationalism, which he defines as a set of ideas that asserts that the world is divided into distinct peoples with a particular history and various entitlements, and his position in the theoretical debate on nationalism. It will then focus on Halliday's combat with the ethical doctrine of nationalism, more specifically the tension between the moral claims of the latter and what he loosely terms Enlightenment principles. The article will conclude by a brief discussion of Halliday's political commitments and his internationalism.     

Gender,nationalism, exclusion: the reintegration process of female survivors of the Armenian genocide

ABSTRACT. This essay focuses on the process of ‘rebuilding’ the Armenian nation in the newly constituted states of the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq) in the immediate aftermath of World War I. These efforts were centred on the two largest sectors of the population to have survived the Catastrophe, orphans and familyless (or widowed) women. The essay examines the ideology of ‘national reconstruction’ and some of its internal contradictions. It pays particular attention to both Armenian women who married Muslims during the deportations and the children born of these marriages, as well as to Armenians who turned to prostitution to survive in the complex conditions prevailing in this period. The author makes use of extensive, previously neglected archival material: for example, correspondence by some of the principal actors, reports written during the process of locating and rounding up Armenian orphans, and documents that shed light on life within the walls of orphanages and women's shelters. The author assembled this archival material in Paris, Beirut, Aleppo, and Cairo, after surveying the contents of various archives.     

复兴党民族主义原初理论初探

复兴党民族主义原初理论是中东民族主义的重要组成部分,它在塑造叙利亚和伊拉克地区政治体系、区域经济结构、民族文化格局过程中发挥了举足轻重的作用。原初理论的基本主张是"统一"、"自由"和"社会主义"。作为一种影响深远的民族主义,原初理论对阿拉伯民族的思想、文化、价值观念及生活方式等都产生了深刻的影响。但是,原初理论本身是一个具有多重结构和功能的复合体,加之在中东特有的政治文化环境中存在许多变量,因而在复兴党政治实践中,也出现一些背离或扭曲原初理论的做法。     

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT. New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?     

Nationalism studies between methodological nationalism and orientalism: an alternative approach illustrated with the case of El Greco in Toledo,Spain

Methodological nationalism is still dominant in nationalism studies. When studying the construction of national identities, scholars generally limit their study to the borders of one nation‐state, while only paying attention to members of that particular nation. Implicitly, foreign actors and influences are left out of the picture. I will challenge this methodological nationalism with a case study, which demonstrates that the place of Toledo within the Spanish national imagination, and more particularly that of El Greco, the most important representative of the city's artistic heritage, was largely determined by foreigners. During the nineteenth century, El Greco was rediscovered primarily by foreign scholars and artists. Moreover, it would be the rise of international tourism in the early twentieth century that convinced Toledans to adopt El Greco as the city's main artistic icon. This case, thus, clearly shows that in nationalism studies methodological nationalism can be avoided by also including foreign actors.     

Competing models of nationalism: an analysis of memorial ceremonies in schools

ABSTRACT. By analysing school memorial ceremonies in Israel, this article demonstrates how dominant groups in Israeli society (upper‐ and middle‐class, secular, educated Jews of European origin) exploit their historical monopoly over the Israeli warrior ethos in order to retreat from their unconditional commitment to the state and the military, which stands at the very core of traditional ‘heroic nationalism’. Nonetheless, despite their withdrawal from the military ethos, analysis of the school ceremonies shows that rather than distancing themselves from the national collective, they are promoting a different kind of nationalism – one that I term ‘traumatic nationalism’. This model departs from the warrior ethos and places mourning and a feeling of victimhood at its centre. Thus, through the arena of education, the dominant groups – which mark out the global as their sphere of action – promote a model of nationalism that meets the demands of the post‐national discourse.     

Illusions of care: Iraqi students between the Ba’thist State and the Stasi in socialist East Germany, 1958–89

For four decades, Iraqi students came to the German Democratic Republic for education, political refuge, or to burnish their credentials. In 1969, Iraq opened diplomatic relations with the GDR, simultaneously extending its persecution of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) into East Germany by means of a complex bureaucratic apparatus of diplomatic organs, security services and student organisations. While ICP members were eventually protected by the Stasi, this entangled them in a system that offered care at the cost of obedience. The on-going campaign against ICP students ultimately played an outsized role in undermining the relationship between the SED and the Iraqi Ba’th.     

Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson

My article replies to Allen Carlson's critique of the existing literature on Chinese nationalism (Carlson's article was published in Volume 15, issue 1 of Nations and Nationalism, 2009). I address Carlson's criticisms and proceed to evaluate his proposal to move away from an allegedly unhelpful focus on nationalism towards the allegedly more illuminating framework of national identity construction. My approach to the existing literature on Chinese nationalism acknowledges efforts made within it at grappling with issues of theory and definition and builds on this acknowledgement to operate a selective appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I argue that while some of the problems identified by Carlson do indeed plague the literature, his advocacy of abandoning nationalism as a focus of research is unwarranted. There is continuing validity in using nationalism as a lens for understanding how China sees its place in the world.