Force-feeding and Mapuche Autonomy: Performing collective rights in individual prison cells in Chile

In August 2010, the decision was taken to feed thirty-two Mapuche prisoners spread throughout prisons in Chile's southern regions intravenously and against their will. Imprisoned Mapuche activists had in the years previous turned to the hunger strike to protest their conviction under anti-terror legislation and the conditions of their incarceration, and the Chilean government eventually responded by force-feeding or threatening to force-feed starving inmates. This paper examines the performativity of the confrontation between prisoners refusing food and the authorities seeking to feed them against their expressed wishes. It analyzes how the strategy of self-starvation and the debate about the hunger strikers' right to make choices about their own bodies enabled starving prisoners to embody the broader struggle for Mapuche autonomy. The distinction between the individual and the collective eroded as the debate moved between, and overlapped, international conventions on the ethical treatment of prisoners and the rights of indigenous peoples. As a result, the collective struggle of the Mapuche people was performed in individual prisons cells, as the Chilean penal system emerged as an important new front line in a centuries-old conflict.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">Grand Dérangement</Emphasis> to Acadiana: History and Identity in the Landscape of South Louisiana

Acadian expulsion from Nova Scotia and subsequent settlement in south Louisiana during the late eighteenth century have inspired numerous studies since the 1970s concerning their history, cultural practices, and ethnic identity. The transformative landscape of south Louisiana is the milieu where actions, experiences, and perception interconnect with collective memory and historical consciousness in the production of Cajun identity. The resulting historical narratives and commemorations constitute a heritage landscape known as Acadiana, where monuments, memorials, historic sites, and parks reaffirm and reproduce this identity. An historical archaeology of Acadiana, including a recent investigation of the Amand Broussard homesite, offers a unique opportunity for cultural analysis and historical critique.     

A tale of three cities: negotiating ethnic identity and acculturation in northwest China

Through extensive interviews with Hui, Han, Dongxiang, and Tibetan migrants and participant observation in northwest China between 2013 and 2015, we examine how the negotiation of ethnic identity influences acculturation strategies in three cultural contexts by scrutinizing the three operational aspects of ethnic identity: perceptions, affections, and behaviors. We argue that the ethnic identity is negotiated at both the group and individual levels as a relation of dialectical unification in regard to fixity and fluidity. At the group level, ethnic identity is relatively fixed and rigid and is perceived by most of the group members as the social norms which normalize ethnic behavior collectively. At the individual level, on the other hand, ethnic identity can be highly flowing and contested from one individual to another. Han identity is generally self-perceived as unmarked, porous, situated, and sometimes even vacuous. Han migrants’ acculturation is more dependent on the cultural context of the host society. Hui and Dongxiang migrants show a strong attachment and affective bonds to their ethnic identity, which is largely based on religious identity. Although Tibetan migrants perceive a complex, place-based identity related to their religion, the grassland, their traditional ways of living, and their language, a Tibetan identity seems to be difficult to fulfill given their economic vulnerability and the contradictions between retaining traditions and being Sinicized in the city.     

‘Terra Straniera’: migration and transnationalism in Italy,Canada and Argentina

This article examines the post-war migration experiences of Italian Campani to Argentina and Canada. It employs oral testimonies as well as written sources from three different countries to reflect upon the concept of transnationalism as a useful theoretical tool, and to reflect upon its use in understanding the development of ethnic identity. While observing the transnational space of Italian communities in the Americas, the article seeks to understand the ways in which transnationalism took hold in everyday life, exploring its presence in the ways in which Campani used language, food and music to negotiate their own ethnic identities.     

Minangkabau Migration: Developing an Ethnic Identity in a Multicultural Society

The ambiguity which often surrounds the definition of ethnic identity stems from its wide ranging utility in humanistic studies. The breadth and flexibility of meaning attached to ethnic identity assists in uncovering the diversity of issues which relate to migrants' everyday experiences, expectations and aspirations. This paper seeks to establish how a relatively recent group of migrants to Australia, the Minangkabau from West Sumatra, Indonesia, develop and maintain their sense of ethnic identity during the migration process and in their everyday lives. A framework is developed which places the development of ethnic identity into a wider social context by examining links with the country of origin, involvement in the host community and the home environment.     

Imperial Expansion, Ethnic Change, and Ceramic Traditions in The Southern Chad Basin: A Terminal Nineteenth-Century Pottery Assemblage from Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria

In the course of an archaeological project in the southern Chad Basin of Nigeria, excavations were conducted at several deeply stratified mound sites that date from the Late Neolithic to the Late Iron Age. As a way to complement the ceramic sequence obtained so far and to link it with today's pottery tradition, a small excavation was conducted at a site that dates to the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century A.D. A pottery assemblage was discovered that shows obvious links to today's tradition but notable breaks with those of the nineteenth century and earlier. This break in decoration style and technique is interpreted as an archaeologically visible expression of changing ethnic identity. This ethnic change and the associated spread of the ceramic tradition can be linked with the expansion of the sphere of power of the Kanem-Borno Empire into the area south of Lake Chad after the sixteenth century A.D.     

More than a photo: Germans from Russia remember their familial relationships

Most narrators of the Dakota Memories Oral History Project (DMOHP), the children and grandchildren of ethnic German immigrants from Russia, reminisce a great deal about their family relationships -- grandparent-grandchild relationships, parent-child relationships, and sibling-sibling relationships. They share memories of their grandmothers baking them delicious dough dishes, of their fathers making them labor endlessly in the fields, and of their siblings coaxing them into mischief. Through these relationships, Germans from Russia not only learned about their ethnic group's identity, but they also reshaped it into a new identity, blending their past with their present. Within the context of family relationships, these German Russian descendants forged a new identity rooted in their ethnic heritage and history, but serviceable to new, American-born generations.     

Discourse on migration and ethnic identity: interviews with professionals in Hong Kong

"This paper has revealed a complex set of relationships between migration, place and ethnic identity [in Hong Kong]. On the one hand, ethnic identity is shaped by the places where people have lived, particularly the places where they have spent the early years of their life; on the other [hand], places--being the context for socialization--provide the milieux where people learn who and what they are and how to act...." The authors note that "while legislation clearly regulates levels of immigration, international migration is also self-regulated by potential migrants in relation to interpretations of their ethnic identities and their perceptions of 'other' places."     

Reconfigurations of Place and Ethnicity: Positionings,Performances and Politics of Relocated Banabans in Fiji

Spatial belonging and ethnic identity among the Banabans resettled on Rabi Island in Fiji are the product of historically and culturally specific articulations and transformations. Such reconfigurations of place and ethnicity, based mainly on enmeshments between the Banabans' new island home, Rabi, and their island of origin in the Central Pacific, Banaba, have let them position themselves as an autonomous community living out a diaspora existence. Central to this identity politics of positioning are ethnic performances in which neo‐traditional enactments are deployed to produce embodied knowledge of Banaban existence and to communicate such knowledge to a wider world. We argue that the Banabans of Fiji, caught in a post‐colonial environment of ethnic‐nationalist discourses and practices, make strategic use of such ethnic performances to affirm and advance, both internally and externally, their own politics of spatial and ethnic positioning on Rabi.     

Across the Pacific: Transnational Context in the Japanese Plantation Workers’ Cemetery in Pāhala,Hawai’i

For nearly a century, immigration researchers have focused on immigrant adjustment largely in terms of relationships in/to the host country. More recently, some have used the concept of transnationalism to understand how ties with places beyond the host country impact immigrants’ experiences. The diversity of Hawai’i’s immigrant labor force in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the associated ethnic/national hierarchy on the sugar plantations created a situation where the global status of workers’ homelands impacted their daily experiences and survival strategies. This paper examines the effects of transnational political context on the expression of ethnic/national identity on gravestones in the Japanese plantation workers’ cemetery in Pāhala, Hawai’i. Results of the gravestone analysis indicate that expressions of ethnic/national identity in the cemetery co-varied with the fluctuation of Japan’s status on the global stage, suggesting that immigrant workers’ status was continually affected by homeland politics, and that immigrants were therefore strategic in deploying their ethnic/national identity locally.     

Heritage and ethnic identity: preserving Chinese cemeteries in the United States

This paper critically examines the role of ethnic community in the process of heritage management and preservation. Drawing on two heritage projects dedicated to historic Chinese American cemeteries – the nineteenth-century Chinese Memorial Shrine in Los Angeles, California and Concordia Chinese Cemetery located in El Paso, Texas – this study examines how heritage serves as a central referent in constructing a collective identity that gives continuity and political unity to an ethnic community. Heritage preservation, as a practice connecting the past and present, provides us with insight not only into the historic meanings attached to heritage, but also the contemporary values and ideologies of communities with regard to their efforts in interpreting the past. This paper highlights the relationship between identity politics and heritage, suggesting that heritage becomes a vital means of identity formation which helps articulate cultural traditions in the face of a dominant national culture that essentialises ethnic pasts.     

族群认同、族群认同的发展及测定与研究方法

认同研究是社会心理学研究的一个重要领域,近十多年来,社会心理学家把社会认同理论运用于少数民族心理学研究,取得了一系列的研究成果。族群认同涉及到民族心理学研究的方方面面,成为民族心理学研究的核心问题。族群关系,族群文化适应,族群之间的偏见、歧视和冲突,都与族群认同的发展有关。本文综述西方学者近年来对族群认同、族群认同发展、族群认同测定等方面的研究在理论和方法上的新进展,旨在对我国的民族心理学研究提供某种借鉴。     

Ideological others and national identifications in contemporary Poland

Sexual minorities in Poland are excluded from the traditional understanding of “Polishness” premised on conservative, Catholic values. This article examines how ethnic Polish citizens who identify as non‐heteronormative navigate their relationship to “Polishness” at a moment of heightened nationalism. Through 31 interviews with Polish sexual minorities, I show that while national identification is a struggle for some sexual minorities, others work to reframe what “Polishness” means to them. I argue for further research examining the ways that stigmatised members of the ethnic majority—what I term ideological others—understand and navigate their relationship to national identity. The study contributes to the literature on everyday nationhood and national identity by attending to national identification among stigmatised members of the ethnic majority.     

Serbian Gypsy Narrative: Between Preferred and True Identity

This paper discusses the narration of a Serbian Gypsy who adoptedSerbian ethnic identity. Still today in Serbia, Gypsy cultureremains in the oral form. Their narratives tell as much abouttheir present as about their past. Several themes underlyingthe discussion about Gypsy ethnic flexibility are explored:their position in relation to non-Gypsies, the way they perceiveit; varying attitudes about ethnicity within Gypsy communitiesin contrast with personal experiences of a Gypsy who adoptedSerbian identity; and the evolving nature of Gypsy identities.     

城市少数民族社区地方认同的消解与重构

在城市空间生产与再生产过程中,城市少数民族社区空间形态及功能的重大改变,需通过地方重构以维系少数民族地方特色及文化传承。开封善义堂回族社区案例研究发现,城市少数民族社区的地方形成以及地方认同建构,依赖于自身独特的居住环境及文化传统。少数民族社区由聚居转变为散居的地方变迁,对居民的地方感知及地方归属感具有重要影响。集中代表地方意义的独特空间,有助于地方及认同的重构。城市少数民族社区中被赋予特殊意义的空间,对地方的建构及文化的传承具有关键作用。     

What can and cannot be willed: how politicians talk about national identity and immigrants

The ethnic‐civic framework remains widely used in nationalism research. However, in the context of European immigrant integration politics, where almost all ‘nation talk’ is occurring in civic and liberal registers, the framework has a hard time identifying how conceptions of national identity brought forth in political debate differ in their exclusionary potential. This leads some to the conclusion that national identity is losing explanatory power. Building on the insights of Oliver Zimmer, I argue that we may find a different picture if we treat cultural content and logic of boundary construction – two parameters conflated in the ethnic‐civic framework – as two distinct analytical levels. The framework I propose focuses on an individual and collective dimension of logic of boundary construction that together constitute the inclusionary/exclusionary core of national identity. The framework is tested on the political debate on immigrant integration in Denmark and Norway in selected years. Indeed, the framework enables us to move beyond the widespread idea that Danish politicians subscribe to an ethnic conception of the nation, while Norwegian political thought is somewhere in between an ethnic and civic conception. The true difference is that Danish politicians, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, do not acknowledge the collective self‐understanding as an object of political action.     

越南华裔在美国的生存与适应

根据散落于相关研究文献和数据中有关越南华裔的资料,对1975年以后华裔逃离越南并定居美国的历史过程、生活适应、地位获得和族群认同等方面的大致状况作一个梳理,旨在加强越南华裔问题研究。结果表明,两次移民潮中,抵达美国的越南华裔难民约30-50万人,寻找亲人、取得族裔社区的支持和族裔聚居区的形成成为应对政府分散安置政策的方案;文化适应与经济成就落后于越南裔,但近20多年来取得了一些值得称道的成就;其族群认同建构于以共同的原居住地、居住国为背景和多元文化的基础之上。结论是,越南华裔还没有完全融入其他美国华裔之中,而是形成了一个既认同于美国华裔、又与越南裔有一定联系的相对独立的华人“次族群”。     

Ethnic/National Identity Incrimination in and through Social Constructionism

Social constructionism, and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory in particular, are well-known for their anti-essentialist understanding of identity. Hence these discourses have theoretically been utilized for understanding social identity construction and for deconstructing identities. However, I claim that social constructionism and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory may have the as yet non-theorized operation of detecting and combating wholesale indictments of identities. This operation helps us diagnose how ethnic identity and affect become incriminated as supposedly inextricably intertwined with racism, chauvinism and related pathologies. Yet interestingly, instead of unveiling and critiquing the new hegemony of blanket indictment of ethnic identity/affect, social constructionism and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory have been used to incriminate identity as such. The present article interprets Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory against the grain to chastise the tendency to declare ethnic identity/affect as the new enemy. It shows how such new, hegemonic incrimination aspires to fill the empty signifier of peaceful coexistence with otherness, yet runs the risk of effacing otherness. The article concludes with an example of a reconstructive alternative.     

Old Wine in New Bottles: The Utility of Data Reanalysis in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The authors reconstruct processes of ethnic identification among residents of rural northeast China from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth through an analysis of naming behavior. They apply discrete-time event-history techniques to individual life histories compiled from longitudinal, nominative household-register data from state farms in what is now Liaoning Province to identify the individual and household circumstances associated with the adaptation of Han or Manchu names, focusing on the role of heredity and status. Ethnic identification in late imperial northeast China was potentially fluid. Many residents were descended from migrants from Shandong who became hereditary tenants on state land administered by a system of Manchu government known as the Eight Banners. As banner people, or qiren, these residents could legitimately claim to be Manchu. As descendants of Shandong migrants, they could also claim to be Han. They could express their choice of ethnic identity through their choice of names not just for their children but also for themselves. Names not only express ethnic self-identification, but their registration by state authorities in the analyzed data also implies official recognition and legitimacy. The authors' results demonstrate that ethnic identity was not hereditary but subject to individual and family choice.     

Estonian Swedish Ethnic Survival – Examples from Nuckö in the Interwar Period

Abstract

A long-term perspective is important in studies of ethnic groups and their opportunities for survival. This case study deals with the Swedish population in Nuckö (Noarootsi), Estonia, during the interwar period. Even though the Swedish population declined as a whole, some villages succeeded in maintaining their Swedish affiliation. Settlement patterns and varying opportunities to own land are important factors behind these differences. The Estonian–Swedish cultural awakening in the interwar period made it easier for people to show their Swedish ethnic identity more openly. Inhabitants in villages that already at the end of the nineteenth century had a large proportion of Estonians in their population, reacted more positively to the state's request that people change their surname as part of the assimilation policy of the 1930s. Even though people in some villages chose to register a change in ethnic status, a change of surname, and even changed their use of language, they may nonetheless have remained committed to their former Swedish ethnicity on a private level. It is crucial to combine different kinds of data, such as church records, censuses and interviews, in order to illustrate the complexities of ethnic identity from a variety of different angles.