‘Rocking the nation’: the popular culture of neo‐nationalism

The aim of this paper is to understand contemporary forms of nationalism in a socio‐political context in which neo‐nationalism has obtained a dominant role not just in politics but in public discourse and in the cultural field as well. It investigates the emergence of a particular music scene in the beginning of the 21^st century, shaped by rock bands and performers and supported by far‐right political actors, which has made the ‘national’ imagination emotionally and ideologically appealing to a considerable part of Hungarian society and first of all to young people.     

Time‐bubbles of nationalism: dynamics of solidarity ritual in lived time

The growth of modern nationalism can be attributed to structural causes, especially the growth of the strong bureaucratic state that penetrates society, creating cultural uniformity and national identity. But structurally based nationalism need not be very intense, or constant; even when institutionalised in periodic formal rituals, it can be routine, low in emotion – even boring. We need to explain sudden upsurges in popular nationalism, but also their persistence and fading in medium‐length periods of time. Nationalist surges are connected with geopolitical rises and falls in the power‐prestige of states: strong and expanding states absorb smaller particularistic identities into a prestigious whole; weaker and defeated states suffer delegitimation of the dominant nationality and fragment in sudden upsurges of localising nationalities. Passing from macro‐patterns to micro‐sociological mechanisms, conflict producing solidarity is a key mechanism: dramatic events focus widespread attention and assemble crowds into spontaneous ‘natural rituals’ – mass‐participation interaction rituals, as distinct from formal rituals. Evidence from public assemblies and the display of national symbols following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11) shows an intense period of three months, then gradual return to normal internal divisions by around six months. Spontaneous rituals of national solidarity are produced not only by external conflict but by internal uprisings, where an emotional upsurge of national identity is used to legitimate insurgent crowds and discredit regimes. Although participants experience momentary feelings of historic shifts, conflict‐mobilised national solidarity lives in a 3–6‐month time‐bubble, and needs to institutionalise its successes rapidly to have long‐term effects.     

‘They have to abide by our laws … and stuff’: ethnonationalism masquerading as civic nationalism

The long established distinction between civic nationalism and ethnonationalism is useful heuristically to understand different dimensions of nationalism and perhaps track a movement from ethnic forms to civic allegiances, though some have challenged its empirical veracity and others question the normative implications of such a distinction. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the two are elided in everyday discourses about migrants in Australia. We argue suspicion of cultural difference, identified more than three decades ago as the new racism, has given way to talk of the need for migrants to ‘follow the law’. This serves rhetorically to reinforce the notion that migrants, often implied to overlap with the category ‘Muslims’, are insisting on breaking the law and/or changing it and are therefore culturally incompatible with a modern liberal democracy. We argue that since ethnic nationalism, like racism, is out of favour normatively, ethnic nationalist arguments are now superficially concealed beneath the acceptable language of civic nationalism. The manner in which this occurs is mapped discursively using data from a corpus of twenty seven focus groups conducted around Australia.     

‘Buy and promote the national cause’: consumption,class formation and nationalism in Mandate Palestinian society1

ABSTRACT. This article deals with patterns of consumption and of advertisement, as a field for the analysis of two major processes in the Palestinian society of Mandate Palestine: the growth of an urban middle class and the consolidation of the Palestinian national movement. The advertisements, sampled from the popular daily paper Filastin, analysed in the context of political and economic events, highlight the complex interplay between nationalism and class formation, and the contradictory tensions between the two processes. A smaller sampling in al‐Difa' points to similar, though not identical, trends. This analysis also highlights new dimensions of the Jewish–Arab conflict by drawing attention to the semi‐private sphere of consumption which appears to have been less segregated than the more often studied political and economic spheres.     

‘Oh motherland I pledge to thee …’: a study into nationalism,gender and the representation of an imagined family within national anthems

In this paper, we argue that beyond understanding nations as imagined communities, the metaphor of an ‘imagined family’ or ‘filial community’ is a more useful concept towards understanding links between gender and nationhood as family relations in four ways: (1) providing a clear, hierarchical structure; (2) prescribing social roles and responsibilities; (3) being linked to positive affective connotations; and (4) reifying social phenomena as biologically determined. In order to empirically substantiate our claim, we will explore the prevalence and use of family metaphors in a key symbol of nationhood discourses. Through a qualitative analysis of national anthems as ‘mnemonics of national identity’, we demonstrate the widespread presence of family metaphors, discussing how they reproduce ideas of family and gender. Finally, we discuss how the ‘imagined family’ as present in anthems and other forms of national representation could inform future studies of nationalism and national politics.     

The politics of ‘forgetting’ as poetics of belonging: between Greek self‐narration and reappraisal (Michaniona, 2000/3)

ABSTRACT. The repressive mechanisms of collective memory have received due attention in the social sciences, with scholars examining the ethics of remembering and forgetting and their political implications. This study focuses on episodes that took place in a Northern Greek town in 2000 and 2003, when an Albanian student was twice denied the right to hold the Greek flag during a commemorative national parade. It is argued that this line of action against the student, representative of Greek attitudes towards immigrants in Greece, asserted the locality's participation in the Greek ‘imagined community’. This was made possible through a process of ‘forgetting’ the locality's history and the analogies this presents with the experience of contemporary immigration. Questioning the ethical implications of this collective decision, the article links regional micro‐politics to nationalist discourses that originate in the European project itself.     

The strange case of ‘John Black’ and ‘Mr Hyde’: constructing migrating Jamaicans as (un)worthy nationals

This paper examines how migrating Jamaicans were constructed as ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ of Jamaican diasporic membership in the early years of statehood, to demonstrate the role of nationalist cultural repertoires in constructing particular diasporic imaginaries. I conduct a discourse analysis of Jamaica's national newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, between 1962 and 1966, a period encompassing crucial transitions in Jamaican migration movements and from colony to statehood. I argue that tropes of respectability present in Afro‐creole nationalist ideology form the cultural repertoires used to distinguish migrants' actions as worthy or unworthy of national membership. These distinctions specify who ‘counts’ as part of the diaspora and how migrants of different social positions may claim and articulate their membership.     

‘If the miners had been Mexican…’ The Chilean mine rescue as Mexican ‘politics machine’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The operation in October 2010 to rescue 33 miners trapped in the San José mine near Copiapó, Chile, which culminated in a technologically and emotionally dramatic rescue after 69 days of captivity and the expenditure of at least 10 million dollars, captured the world's attention. The story acted as a kind of ‘accidental Olympics’, evoking national sentiment and global communitas, and offering more than a billion people the chance to peek into the lives of the miners and their families. But responses to the rescue were not the same everywhere. This article examines responses in Mexico. Whereas elsewhere the story's appeal lay in its capacity to be presented as a ‘politics‐free zone’, this seemed to be less the case in Mexico. Some Mexican publics, at least, were relatively immune to the apolitical ‘inspiration’ offered by the media and enthusiastically taken up elsewhere. This is because many Mexicans see a painful contrast between circumstances in their country and those in Chile. This sense of contrast manifested itself not only in a lower degree of ‘buy‐in’ to the feel‐good aspect of the story in Mexico, but also in a surge of ill‐feeling and protest against the Mexican government, and in a telling spate of jokes that did the rounds in October and November, which were disseminated on Twitter and YouTube and reported in television and print media. The jokes followed the formula: ‘If the [Chilean] miners had been Mexican…’ and drew on strains of social and political satire with a long history in Mexico.     

‘Bongo Bongo’ and reconfiguring the ‘other’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Fear of immigration has brought about a shift in UK politics. In this new climate, diversity is no longer welcome and the Home Office's message is clear: ‘go home or face arrest’. This editorial addresses the overlap between legal and ethnic categories in this politics of alterity and argues that what is at stake in these debates is nothing less than the reconfiguration of a fit‐and‐proper UK citizen.     

The ethno‐religious ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the ascendancy of communism in post‐war Poland (1945–50)

ABSTRACT. This paper differentiates between centrifugal and centripetal aspects of ethno‐nationalism to help account for the ascendancy of communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Poland. It argues that the directing of social antipathy to defined out‐groups allowed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) to manage social anger and that the Roman Catholic Church's ethno‐religious agenda was aligned with the PPR's ethno‐nationalist policy. Furthermore, it is contended that the Church's toleration of hostile actions directed at minority communities supported the PPR's management of social anger. The paper concludes that the Church, despite its manifest intentions and contrary to contemporary perceptions, played a role in the PPR's achievement of hegemony.     

‘The Manager in Distress’: Reaction to the Impeachment of Henry Dundas, 1805–7

Impeachments have long since ceased to be a feature of British politics. Much scholarly attention has been given to past impeachments, particularly the unsuccessful prosecution of Warren Hastings. Little consideration, however, has been given to the last such case, the impeachment of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, from 1805 to 1807. The Melville scandal held the interest of the country until the middle of 1806, when it was diverted by naval battles. Although generally neglected by historians of the period, the Melville affair was a significant event in the course of then‐contemporary British politics, and of wider society. Examination of the reactions to the attempted impeachment can illuminate a number of developing themes and concerns within both elite circles and in the wider political nation. These include dislike of patronage and the Pittite ‘system’, anti‐Scottish bias, and advocacy of financial and parliamentary reform. Moreover, it helped to revive the radical movement both in parliament and out of doors. While the affair may not have been as significant as the later Mrs Clarke and Queen Caroline scandals, the reactions to it were generally comparable. In fact, reactions to the attempted impeachment presaged reactions to these later events. The issues and passions stirred forth by the proceedings will be shown to have significantly contributed to the revival of a dynamic national political atmosphere which itself enabled and fuelled those reactions.     

FOCUS: The Scapula Representation could be the Key: A Further Contribution to the ‘Klasies Pattern’ Debate

Past discussion on the unusual skeletal part representations at Klasies River Mouth is briefly summarized. Recent discussion in this journal, regarding the “Klasies Pattern”, has focused upon the differential destruction of small and large bovid bone epiphyses by carnivore ravaging and density-mediated attrition. Bartram & Marean (1999) argue, from ethnoarchaeological study and consideration of other archaeological sites, that, unless shaft fragments are painstakingly identified, the upper limb bone epiphyses of large bovids will be seriously under-represented. They therefore suggest that the “Klasies Pattern” is likely to be artefact of taphonomic and analytical processes. Klein, Cruz-Uribe & Milo (1999) replied with a defence of the analytical procedures employed during the original Klasies River Mouth analysis. They also state that there was very little evidence of carnivore ravaging at Klasies River Mouth. In this paper, it is pointed out that Bartram & Marean's (1999) study only considered the humerus, radius, femur, tibia and metapodia. However, in the “Klasies Pattern” it is the scapula that is most notably abundant in the small bovid classes and most notably scarce in the large bovid classes. It is argued that, from the study of bone mineral densities and Brain's (1981) carnivore ravaging experiment, there is no reason to expect a differentially greater taphonomic destruction of large bovid scapulae. In fact, exactly the reverse may be true. It is therefore argued that at least this aspect of the “Klasies Pattern” must be considered to represent human differential bone transport, rather than an artefact of taphonomic processes.     

Looking ‘The Gift’ in the mouth: Russia as donor (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

While the Soviet Union was a significant donor of international development aid, since the 1990s, a generation of Russians has experienced the subject position of ‘recipient’ in the global political economy. However, following its G8 presidency in 2006, Russia officially signalled its intention to (re‐)emerge as an aid donor. Should the Russian government's efforts to join the global community of donors be understood as a defence mechanism against what Mauss called the ‘wounding’ experience of being treated as a perpetual recipient? International development aid is seen here as a cultural phenomenon whose underlying assumptions are both challenged and affirmed by the arrival of ‘emerging donors’ such as Russia.     

The Sky Canopy Gap Irradiance (SCANGIR) Model: a technique for the estimation of ‘effective gap’ solar radiation regimes in closed-canopy forests

There is now widespread consensus among researchers that treefall gaps play a key role in the structure and function of closed-canopy forests, such as rain forests, with virtually all canopy tree species requiring growth in a gap to reach maturity. Until recently many believed that latitude and the size of treefall gaps were the main factors determining the availability of solar radiation in gaps and associated microclimates and vegetation dynamics. However, if solar radiation availability is the main limiting resource in such forests, then studies of gap dynamics need to take into account the other factors affecting the penetration and distribution of direct and diffuse irradiance within gaps. As a consequence, this is the first attempt to develop a universal model for the estimation of ‘effective gap’ solar radiation regimes that, along with latitude and gap size, incorporates factors such as slope angle, slope aspect, height of surrounding vegetation, sky conditions and daily and seasonal variation in the position of the sun. Results of three computer simulations are presented to demonstrate how latitude, topography and sky conditions affect solar radiation availability beneath circular canopy gaps of various configurations. Finally, the implications of these simulations for forest regeneration, reforestation and forest management are discussed.     

The ‘Society’ at Bora Ceremonies: A Manifestation of a Body of Traditional Law and Custom in Aboriginal Australia relevant to Native Title Case Law

Anthropologists working on native title cases in Australia are commonly asked to identify the Aboriginal ‘society’ that holds the body of laws and customs that confer land ownership rights on certain groups of people. In this paper I investigate how the early documentation of bora initiation ceremonies is relevant to understanding contemporary Aboriginal societies and the normative laws and customs that give rise to rights and interests in land. The vast ethnographic oeuvre of R.H. Mathews (1841–1918) includes detailed documentation of bora gatherings, which allows the reconstruction of the wider social reaches of people's networks in the lower Darling Downs of eastern Australia, and can in turn be understood as the ‘society’ so often sought in current native title case law.     

The body weight of AL 288-1 (‘Lucy’): A new approach using estimates of skeletal length and the body mass index

A method of estimating the body mass of hominids by use of the skeletal length and physique index is described. The body mass indices (BMI) of female humans and female chimpanzees are known and this permits an estimate of the probable BMI for the female common ancestor and thus for female morphs intermediate between the common ancestor and modern humans. AL288-1 (‘Lucy’) probably had a BMI of about 22.3 kg m⁻² and for a height of 105cm this yields a body weight estimate of about 25 kg. Body weight estimates of 28–29 kg would imply a body mass index similar to female chimps and are improbable. These conclusions will be compromised if the chimp–gorilla–homo phylogenetic relationship proves to be a trichotomy rather than a chimp–homo dichotomy.     

‘Get me out of here’: Bail hearings of people indefinitely detained for immigration purposes (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article is based on observation of 66 applications for bail brought by men detained indefinitely for immigration purposes. It argues that although the research is incomplete – the full stories of the applicants could not be known, neither the Home Office Presenting Officers nor the Immigration Judges could be ‘shadowed’ or even interviewed, court records are not public – there is value in doing ‘observation’ without ‘participation’ of institutions which act in the name of the public. This research shows that the outcomes of bail applications are not, as the public might imagine, always fair and unequivocal. All too often, they look like ‘the luck of the draw’, bringing the institution and its presiding officers into disrepute. The article illustrates this point using ‘dialogues’ from two bail hearings where the same applicant appeared before two different judges, with very different outcomes.     

The new face of development: The ‘bottom of the pyramid’ entrepreneurs (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In recent years, ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) initiatives – from Grameen Phone Ladies and Solar Sister, to Women First and Living Goods – have captured increasing attention, not only in corporate boardrooms where the desire for untapped revenue streams looms large, but also in the arenas of development policy and practice, where entrepreneurship is celebrated as a way to repurpose ‘informal’ and/or ‘subsistence’ workers through new forms of private sector engagement. Based on fieldwork with BoP schemes in Bangladesh and South Africa, and cases drawn from other regions, this paper explores how development is outsourced through the figure of the BoP entrepreneur, the ‘poor’ woman who travels door‐to‐door delivering a range of branded manufactured goods across the ‘retail black spots’ of developing countries. These women are actively converted into entrepreneurial subjects through a set of ideological and material practices that aim to produce and hone the requisite traits of industry, market discipline and entrepreneurial distinction to succeed in global business; subject positions that can bring tangible rewards to those who successfully assume them. However, the process of outsourcing development to a reservoir of ‘informal labour’ unsettles BoP claims of ‘inclusive capitalism’, as an ethos of meritocracy and individual responsibility not only deflects the responsibility for development onto the poor themselves, but remakes their subjectivities in service to global brands.