The state,identity politics and ethnic boundaries in Afghanistan: The case of Sunni Hazaras

In recent years, a growing number of activists in Afghanistan have been proactively self-identifying as Sunni Hazaras. The trend demonstrates an important shift that illuminates how ethnic boundaries may change and evolve in response to elite politics and state policies in Afghanistan. Many of the communities that are the subjects of new collective identity discourses share important commonalities, including shared belief in a common origin, with the Shi'a Hazaras. However, because the Shi'a Hazaras were persecuted and marginalised under successive regimes in Afghanistan, it was not common for these communities to publicly identify as Hazaras. Instead, they tended to identify with local identity categories such as those based on places of origin or as Tajiks because, like most Tajiks, they speak Dari and practise Sunni Islam. This article contributes to understanding these dynamics through a detailed examination of the National Council of the Sunni Hazaras of Afghanistan. Taking a social constructivist approach, it develops an argument that emphasises an interactive process between state formation and top-down programmes of national identity construction and bottom-up resistance by groups that appropriate and articulate ethnic and other forms of ethnic identities to demand political representation and symbolic recognition.     

景颇族传统宗教仪式空间生产的现代性困境研究

少数民族传统宗教与族群历史、文化认同一脉相通，其仪式的强化实践素来为众人认可，透过仪式表象触及深层次的意识结构已成学界共识。研究传统宗教仪式的空间生产不仅对解析其背后的意识形态运动具有指导价值，也能为有关宗教、文化部门提供管控参考。文章从列斐伏尔的空间生产理论入手，探究地处边疆山区的景颇族传统宗教仪式在面对外来宗教的空间解构、现代性引发的空间变迁、族群内部的话语争夺及旅游空间介入调控等背景下，其相应的主体实践及力量博弈，厘清空间生产的主次困境和作用机理，以传统宗教有益价值为导向，引导仪式空间生产朝凝聚族群、强化团结的目标靠拢。     

In Search of an Invisible Culture in David Plante’s American Ghosts and Robert Cormier’s Fade

David Plante’s American Ghosts (2005) and Robert Cormier’s Fade (1988), autobiographical narratives about growing up in southern New England in French Catholic neighborhoods called Little Canadas, both employ the trope of invisibility to convey the ethnic community’s lack of presence, agency, or permanence within an englobing American culture that progressively erodes the foundations of its cultural otherness. Both texts hinge upon cultural erasure. In Plante’s memoir, in which he seeks to gain access to his cultural past, his childhood self is haunted by the ghosts of his Indian forebears and his adult self, by the ghosts of his parish. These supernatural beings who shuttle between absence and presence signal the loss of cultural memory and identity that assimilation engenders. Cormier’s novel chronicles the effects of invisibility on three “faders” representing first-, second-, and third-generation French Canadians in New England. A metaphor for the progressive loss of ancestral heritage in the adopted land, Fade offers a portrait of the gradual disintegration of Frenchtown from its heyday in the 1930s to its dissolution in the 1960s.     

DETERMINANTS OF IMMIGRANTS’ ENTRY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP IN THREE NORDIC CAPITAL CITY REGIONS

The extent of homeownership among immigrants may be seen as an indicator of integration and as a determinant of ethnic residential segregation. Studies have shown differences in the determinants of homeownership between immigrants and natives, indicating that variation in homeownership is not only a function of differences in economic resources. These studies have largely focused on Anglo‐American contexts, using mostly cross‐sectional data. We apply survival analysis methods to analyse the determinants of entry to homeownership in the capital regions of three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – utilizing longitudinal individual‐level register‐based datasets. We find that differences in entry to homeownership between natives and different immigrant groups cannot be explained by differences in socio‐economic background factors. We also find differences in the effects of these factors. Effects of income are generally weaker among non‐Western immigrants and immigrants are less responsive to changes in household composition. The share of non‐Western immigrants in the neighbourhood is only weakly related to entry to homeownership, while immigrants and natives living in public rental housing tend to be slightly less inclined to move to homeownership. Weaker income effects among immigrants, weak effects of ethnic segregation and the importance of the public rental sector differentiate our results from earlier findings. Weaker income effects may indicate that uncertainty about the future also affects middle‐income immigrants. Differences between the three contexts in housing markets and policies do not seem to matter much, although the results indicate that difficult access to the private rental sector may push immigrants to homeownership.     

ETHNIC SEGREGATION DURING PUBLIC AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS: A STUDY USING MOBILE PHONE DATA

This paper contains an analysis of ethnic differences in activity locations during public and national holidays. Holidays relate to identity, and the celebration of holidays can be a very important part of acculturation processes and are therefore relevant to ethnic integration policies. We study the out‐of‐home nonemployment activity locations of 12,500 respondents in Estonia, using mobile phone positioning data. The results show that during holidays, ethnic segregation, measured using an index of dissimilarity, is significantly higher than it is on regular days, especially outside the capital city. The type of holiday, such as whether it is a national or international holiday, has a particular effect on people's spatial behaviour. On Estonian public holidays, Estonians are more likely to leave Tallinn than Russian speakers. There are 77 per cent more Estonians and 33 per cent more Russian speakers outside the capital than on non‐holidays. The paper depicts different temporal layers of segregation, which also indicates different integration potential in leisure spaces under various time frames.     

In the Long ‘Run’: Kanak Stockmen,the Cattle Frontier and Colonial Power Relations in New Caledonia, 1870–1988

ABSTRACT For more than a century, from the 1870s to the 1980s, stockmen were important intermediaries and figures of power and influence in the construction, maintenance and renewal of the colonial order in New Caledonia. Social relations between Kanak and settlers working in the cattle ‘runs’ permitted a unique form of mobility spanning the frontier. The relations developed between chiefs and cattle farmers are central to the processes by which certain administrative chieftaincies emerged in the late‐nineteenth century, and by which Kanak entered the ‘political’ sphere in the second half of the twentieth century. With reference to the locality of Koné, this article traces the political alliances fashioned between Kanak stockmen and their employers in the context of colonisation, rebellion, evangelisation, post‐war political emancipation, local development and, finally, the struggle between supporters and opponents of independence in the 1980s.     

PLACE BRANDING GOES TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: THE CASE OF PSEUDO‐SWEDISH ANDERSONVILLE

As the centre of Swedish immigration to the United States, Chicago developed several neighbourhoods with a strong Swedish presence. However, the only Swedish neighbourhood that remains is Andersonville, although few Swedes continue to reside there today – it has become a “pseudo‐ethnic” neighbourhood. Drawing from interviews with neighbourhood activists, commercial, and political interests, as well as fieldwork focused on the ethno‐visual markers of the neighbourhood, we analyse attempts of these actors to commodify ethnicity at the neighbourhood level. The process of actively using a Swedish identity in Andersonville involves the use of branding, a marketing concept used by places to promote themselves. This article investigates branding on the neighbourhood level, and also the role of ethnicity in the branding process. Brand managers struggle to maintain the Swedishness of the Andersonville neighbourhood as demographic and economic forces threaten to weaken the Swedish brand.