Multiculturalism as a New Form of Nationalism?

What is often described today as neo‐nationalism or nationalist populism today arguably looks like the old nationalism. What is emerging as genuinely new are the identity‐based nationalisms of the centre left, sometimes called “liberal nationalism” or “progressive patriotism.” I offer my own contribution to the latter, which may be called “multicultural nationalism.” I argue that multiculturalism is a mode of integration that does not just emphasise the centrality of minority group identities but argues that integration is incomplete without remaking national identity so that all can have a sense of belonging to it. This multiculturalist approach to national belonging has some relation to liberal nationalism. It, however, makes not just individual rights but minority accommodation a feature of acceptable nationalism. Moreover, accommodation here particularly includes ethno‐religious groups in ways that are difficult for radical regimes of secularism. For these reasons, multicultural nationalism unites the concerns of some of those currently sympathetic to majoritarian nationalism and those who are prodiversity and minority accommodationist in the way that liberal nationalism (with its emphasis on individualism and majoritarianism) does not. It therefore represents the political idea and tendency most likely to offer a feasible alternative rallying point to monocultural nationalism.     

The Anthropology of Islam as “AppliedAnthropology”

Thomas R. Berger. Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. Vols. 1 &; 2. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977. xxvii +213 pp. and xxii+ 268 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography, and appendices. Each volume is $5.00 (paper) in Canada and $6.00 outside of Canada.

Johanna Brand. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash. Toronto: James Lorimer &; Co., 1978. 171 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, chronology. $6.95, paper.

James Burke. Paper Tomahawks: From Red Tape to Red Power. Winnipeg: Queenston House, 1976. 406 pp. $2.95, paper.

Harold Cardinal. The Rebirth of Canada's Indians. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1977. 222 pp. $9.95 (cloth) and $4.95, paper.

Robin Fisher. Contact and Conflict: Indian‐European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977. xvii+ 250 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, and index. $18.00, cloth.

Cornelius J. Jaenen. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French‐Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: McClelland &; Stewart, 1976. 207 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. $10.00, cloth.

Martin O'Malley. The Past and Future Land: An Account of the Berger Inquiry Into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1976. xiv +280 pp. Map and Index. $15.00, cloth, and $4.95, paper.

Frederick W. Rowe. Extinction: The Beothuks of Newfoundland. Toronto: McGraw‐Hill Ryerson, 1977. 166 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $10.95, cloth.

Joan Ryan. Wall of Words. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1979. 190 pp. $4.95, paper.

John Snow. These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places: The Story of the Stoney Indians. Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1977. xiv + 185 pp. Illustrations, maps, references, appendix, and index. $12.95, cloth.

David H. Stymeist. Ethics and Indians: Social Relations in a Northwest Ontario Town. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1975. viii+ 98 pp. Tables and references. $8.95, cloth and $3.95, paper.

Peter Such. Vanished Peoples: The Archaic, Dorset and Beothuk People of Newfoundland. Toronto: NC Press, 1978. 94 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, glossary, index. $12.95, cloth and 55.95, paper.

Marc‐Adelard Tremblay, ed. Les facettes de l'identité Amérindienne ! The Patterns of “Amerindian” Identity. Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1976. xiv ‐ 317 pp. Bibliographies, panelists and sponsors. $16.50, paper.

Mel Watkins, ed. Dene Nation: The Colony Within. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. xii+ 189 pp. Map and references. $4.95, paper.

George Woodcock. The Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1977. 223 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index. $17.95, cloth.     

Arm’s-length funding of the arts as an expression of laissez-faire

While questions continue to be raised over the continuation, nature and mechanisms of arms’-length funding for the arts, its theoretical foundations within a wider social and economic context remain under-explored. This article argues that the principle on which the arm’s-length relationship is constructed is defined by the concept of laissez-faire. It is this that sets rules for how the public and private spheres interact within a liberal and individualistic society. By this argument, providing public subsidy to the arts is a compensating act integral to the operation of a free-market economy and ensures the autonomy of individual artists, even while producing public benefits.     

European Corridors as Carriers of Dynamic Agglomeration Externalities?

Transport corridors are viewed as a promising way forward in European Union (EU) transport policy, assumed to contribute positively to regional economic development. However, the validity of this assumption is not evident. The aim of this paper is to empirically test whether agglomeration economies in European transport corridor regions are positively related to indicators of regional economic development compared to regions outside the scope of corridors. The results build on the notion that the type of agglomeration economy in combination with the structure of the economy matters for prospects of structural economic growth in different regions. In this way, the analysis not only contributes to enhancing the empirical scrutiny of the corridor concept in EU transport policy, but also provides new insights into how corridors contribute to regional economic growth. We find only limited evidence for a corridor effect across European regions on productivity and employment growth externalities. Instead, we find a large degree of spatial heterogeneity interacting with corridors—a heterogeneity that has been little recognized in EU policies. We suggest that recent attention to place-based development strategies may accord well with the kinds of agglomeration effects related to corridor development observed in this study.     

George eliot as a type of European intellectual∗

The article examines the developments that made the legend of an Asian migration into Europe part of mainstream historiography during the eighteenth century. It was believed that the Norse god Odin was in fact a historical person, who had migrated from Asia to with the north of Europe with his tribe. The significance of this legend to how medieval poetry was received and debated in England has received little attention. The study falls into three sections. The first will trace the significance of the Odin migration legend in discovering Germanic cultural origins. The second section examines the impact of the legend on philological studies, primarily in establishing a new category: the Gothic (i.e. Teutonic/Germanic) poetic tradition. The final section will focus on the debate between two of the most important eighteenth-century pioneers of vernacular poetic tradition: Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton. Their discussion over whether the Asian foundation of Germanic (and thereby English) tradition had paved the way for later Arabian influences is instructive, as it shows how Eastern “others” were negotiated in the discovery of cultural and national roots.     

The nation as an artichoke? A critique of ethnosymbolist interpretations of nationalism*

Abstract. The aim of this article is to offer a critique of ethnosymbolism in the light of recent approaches to nations and nationalism. The article will engage with ethnosymbolist interpretations on three different levels. Since ethnosymbolists present their approach as an attempt to revise the modernist analysis from within, it will first address their critique of modernism. It will then assess the analytical contributions of ethnosymbolism, focusing in particular on four issues: the antiquity of nations and national feelings, the importance of the past for the present and the related issue of the role of elites in nation‐formation, the notorious issue of resonance and the plurality of ethnic pasts. Finally, it will question the normative implications of ethnosymbolism and conclude that ethnosymbolism is more an attempt to resuscitate nationalism than to explain it.     

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger as a Philosopher of Time**

When Hans-Jörg Rheinberger proposed the concept of epistemic things, he drew inspiration from the art historian George Kubler, who had considered the aesthetic object as resulting from problem-solving processes in The Shape of Time (1962). Kubler also demonstrated that a sequence of objects could retrace the progress that led to a solution that was afterwards accepted as the most classical. Parallel to Kubler, Rheinberger demonstrates how temporally extended activities of experimentation are condensed in the object, revealing the moments of innovation that lead to it. In the history of science as well as in art history, various trajectories can thus be grasped in the materially given. Rheinberger conceives of an object as a network of heterogeneous time strings. However, these are manifold: they cannot be thought of as making up a homogeneous temporality encompassing all the others as a temporal container and synchronizing them within it. Since the discovery of the Anthropocene, we no longer separate natural from cultural time, and no hegemonic historical narrative can be taken as unifying all the others. Historical epistemology as proposed by Rheinberger will be read as a contribution to constructing new models of natural as well as of cultural time.     

The United Nations as the ‘Parliament of Man’

Abstract

Paul Kennedy. The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations. Toronto, ON: HarperCollins, 2006. Pp. xvii, 361. $36.95 (CDN); Ronald St John Macdonald and Douglas M. Johnston, eds. Towards World Constitutionalism: Issues in the Legal Ordering of the World Community. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp. xviii, 968. €235.00; $317.00 (US); S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong. Human Security and the UN: A Critical History. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 346. $35.00 (US), paper; David M. Malone. The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 398. $59.95 (CDN); Michael J. Matheson. Council Unbound: The Growth of UN Decision Making on Conflict and Postconflict Issues after the Gold War. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 422. $19.95 (US), paper; Ramesh Thakur. The United Nations, Peace, and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 388. $32.99 (US), paper.     

The ‘Social Construction’ of David Schneider as ‘A Giant of Anthropology’

David Schneider is widely regarded as one of the great anthropologists of our times. This article questions this opinion. First it shows that his fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap evidences ethnographic insensitivity, particularly on the matter of an alleged ignorance of physiological paternity, thus calling into question his supposed concern with getting at native understandings. The alleged ignorance forms the ethnographic basis for his later critique of established kinship studies. This, plus his ignorance of lexical marking, invalidates the critique. Even worse is his study of American kinship and its related theory of culture, both consisting mostly of top-of-the-head impressions unrelated to specific operations.     

Herodotus’ Use of Aeschylus’ Persae as a Source for the Battle of Salamis

Herodotus demonstrably used Aeschylus’ Persae at various points in his account of the battle of Salamis. The author argues that Herodotus relied on the Persae far more heavily and in far more places than commonly admitted owing to Herodotus’ thoroughgoing interpretation and revision of his source. Tracing such interpretation and revision reveals much about Herodotus as an historian; moreover, the demonstrable use of a written source (which Herodotus, in fact, never mentions) raises additional questions about the extent of Herodotus’ reliance upon written sources elsewhere.     

The firm as citizen? Social responsibility of business in Australia

A model of corporate citizenship is advanced with the help of research on United Kingdom business responses to mass unemployment. This model suggests the need to review our theories of the firm and to widen assumptions about the political role of business. Australian findings, both of the institutionalisation of social responsibility in some large firms and of the emergence of a new sort of business community organisation, fit the citizenship model. Explanations and implications of the findings are considered.     

Jews as pagans? Polemical definitions of identity in Visigothic Spain

A conciliar canon from Visigothic Spain relates that Jewish parents, who had been baptized by force, were trying to save their children from baptism, relying on the help of Christian neighbours, who lent them their own children for a second baptism. According to the wording of the canon, Jewish parents thereby illicitly retained their children as 'pagans'. This very peculiar, 'extremist' terminology served as a rhetorical tool to denigrate Judaism, putting it on a par with idolatry, superstition, supposedly primitive religion and backward, rural culture. This rhetorical strategy was used to construct a negative Jewish identity, which in turn served to strengthen a new concept of Gothic identity propagated ever since the conversion of the Visigoths to catholicism. Catholic Goths are presented both as the heirs of christianized Roman culture (which included the acceptance and transformation of catholic anti-Judaism), and as the champions of historical progress, allegedly overcoming different kinds of pre-Christian, 'barbarian' religion.     

The Temple as a Symbol of Hindu Identity in America?

For overseas Hindu communities, the temple became an important symbol of ethnic regrouping. From the indentured expatriates of sugar colonies of the colonial era through the recent, highly educated, Asian Indian immigrants to America, the Hindu temple has served as a place of worship and, even more importantly, as a symbol of heightened cultural identity. Although the role of the temple in the Hindu regrouping in the diaspora has been previously examined, this paper reexamines this process in America in light of new data. Preliminary results indicate that the Hindu temple is not only an important religious focus for American Hindus, but also has generated links between Indian and expatriate Hindus in new ways. In fact, vigorous temple building activity among all Hindu diasporic communities could lead to a renaissance in temple building and possibly in Hinduism itself. We examine the Hindu temple as a component of the Hindu regrouping process in the postindustrial American context.     

The Apotheosis of White Men?: A Reexamination of Beliefs about Europeans as Ancestral Spirits

Criticisms of work on cargo beliefs argue it supports paternalistic colonial projections and patronizes Melanesians. But researchers continue to hear Melanesians asserting that Europeans communicate with ancestral spirits. Such assertions are part of a dynamic religious tradition responding to troubling times. Some have cast cargo beliefs as naive ‐ if rational ‐ attempts to understand bewildering changes. Such work fails to capture the innovative, discriminating tenor of cargo beliefs as a religious ideology that adherents manipulate to address their own needs. Case material comes from the Bumbita Arapesh, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.