Popular Magazines and the Making of a Nation: The Healthy Baby Contest Organized by The Young Companion in 1926–27

The Young Companion, an important representative of Republican Shanghai’s popular magazines, organized a Healthy Baby Contest from August 1926 to March 1927. Though its slogan, “Strong babies promise strong people, strong people guarantee a strong nation” expressed a nationalistic spirit, this contest was rather a commercial activity organized by a popular magazine and its commercial sponsor exploiting nationalistic discourse. Such an integration of nationalistic discourse and commercial interests profoundly influenced mass culture and ultimately promoted China’s modernization and its development as a nation. With this contest as an example, this paper sheds light on the relationship between popular journals and the making of a nation.     

毛泽东与中华民族的伟大复兴

同评价中国近现代一切历史人物一样,毛泽东的历史地位也要以他为中华民族的伟大复兴所做的贡献来衡量。毛泽东对中华民族伟大复兴的第一个历史贡献是带领中国人民推翻了三座大山,建立了中华人民共和国,从而为民族振兴提供了政治保障;第二个历史贡献是成功地进行了三大改造,在中国确立了社会主义制度,从而奠定了中国一切进步和发展的基础;第三个历史贡献是毛泽东对中国如何建设社会主义进行了最初的探索,为我国的建设奠定了初步的、坚实的物质基础。同所有人一样,毛泽东也有缺点有错误,对此我们应历史地、客观地看待。     

An unholy alliance: Swiss citizenship between local legal tradition,federal laissez-faire,and ethno-national rejection of foreigners 1848–1933

This article traces the development of the federal structure of Swiss citizenship between the founding of the federal state in 1848 and the entrenchment of a restrictive naturalisation and establishment policy in the interwar period. Considering the difficult integration of foreign residents through naturalisation in the past and present in Switzerland, the author examines the causes for the granting and refusal of Swiss citizenship. She shows that the development of and arrangements for access to Swiss citizenship cannot be reduced only to notions about the Swiss nation or national interests. They are the result of a permanent process of political negotiation and coordination between the federation, cantons and local authorities; owing to its importance in social assistance matters, local citizenship constituted an impediment to naturalisation until well into the twentieth century. In contrast, the federation and certain cantons like Zurich, Basle and Geneva had sought since the 1880s to reduce the strongly increasing number of foreign residents by liberalising naturalisation. The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to these endeavours. With the rise of a ‘new right’ since 1900, the setting up of the Central Office of the Foreign Police in 1917, and the institutionalisation of the authorities' ‘fight against foreign infiltration’, Swiss nationality law became ethnicised. Cultural ‘assimilation’ into the ‘particularity of Swiss society’ was now regarded as a precondition for becoming a Swiss citizen. The new federal rejection of foreigners thus joined with the traditionally restrictive policy of local authorities in an unholy alliance that began to breach only in the 1980s.     

Soviet rule,nation and film: the Kyrgyz ‘Wonder’ years

ABSTRACT. What happens if a community is encouraged to imagine itself visually when its political vessel is a modernising nation‐state within a multinational communist federation? Cinematic works, in their distillation of time and space, contribute to the kinds of imaginings that sustain nation‐states. How this cultural technology reflected and promoted nation‐building in the Soviet era is the subject of this article. It explores how the tensions within the diktat ‘national in form, socialist in content’ played out in practice in the Soviet cultural landscape of 1960s Kyrgyz film, dubbed by Soviet critics as a ‘wonder’.     

Keeping the Network out of view: Mining,Distinctions and Exclusion in Melanesia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the ‘property effects’ surrounding competition over access to mining benefits in Papua New Guinea. Under conditions of rapid social change engendered by large scale resource extraction, Lihirian islanders have increasingly recalibrated their social networks, manifest through shifting notions of sociality and obligation, and ownership strategies that seek to limit other people's claims to wealth. These local changes are paralleled by larger and more paradoxical processes: although the state uses the mining project to consolidate itself, Lihirians have consistently challenged the state through their attempts to appropriate the mine for their own ends. By keeping the multiple layers of their social networks out of view, Lihirians deny the connections that can provide others with access to benefits. In considering the strategic responses to the inequalities, discontents and inconsistencies of life in modern Papua New Guinea, it becomes apparent that questions of property are simultaneously questions about identity and belonging.     

Creating meanings and traps: competing interpretations of the idea of nation in the debates of Russian Slavophiles and Westernisers in the 1840s

To use Benedict Anderson's metaphor, there are different ways to ‘imagine’ the nation. This means that in the same community there might be various competing interpretations of ‘an idea of nation’. They contribute to some kind of ‘repertoire of meanings’, to which participants of nationalist discourses consciously or unconsciously appeal. If so, it is useful to explore the process of shaping and interaction of competing interpretations of ‘an idea of nation’, resulting in (terminal) domination of particular cohesions of meanings in the public discourses. This article offers a case study of the debates between Russian Slavophiles and Westernisers in the 1840s that are treated as the controversy between two distinct models of ‘an idea of nation’, the conservative-traditionalist and the liberal-progressivist. This distinction, familiar for many countries, was especially evident in Russia with regard to the problem of the preservation of ‘the national self’ in the context of ‘catch-up’ modernisation which took a significant place amongst the complex of issues that shaped the nationalist ‘repertoire of meanings’.     

Nationalists rejecting statehood: Three case studies from Wales,Catalonia, and Slovakia

While many nationalism theorists define nationalism in terms of the desire for an independent state, empirical study shows that many nationalists make demands that not only fall short of statehood, but explicitly abjure claims to political independence. We document non‐state‐seeking nationalism with three case studies: Welsh national politics in the decades before the First World War, Catalan national politics related to the 2006 Status law, and Slovak national politics in response to Magyarization at the time of the 1867 Settlement. The phenomenon of non‐state‐seeking nationalism calls into question the utility of initial definitions in nationalism studies. Instead of imposing definitions by fiat, we argue that nationalism theorists should analyze the explicit or implicit definitions of historical actors.     

The nation as the cradle of nationalism and patriotism

This paper argues against dismissing as ‘populist nationalism’ every positive view of one's nation and ignoring patriotism as its antithesis. The European nation exists in two senses: as a large ‘social group’, a community of real people, and as an abstract community of cultural values promoted by intellectual elites grounded in a humanities‐based education. The widespread prejudice that condemns every positive expression of one's relationship to the nation has proved counterproductive because it has prompted ever stronger spontaneous reactions in the form of primitive nationalistic egoism. This has weakened the commitment people feel towards their nation and the humanistic potential that the nation possesses as a cultural community of values. Consequently, anti‐national European intellectual elites bear some responsibility – along with those preaching neoliberal individualism – for the success of populist demagogues and the decline in patriotic values. Given the state of education today, a revival of humanist culture for national elites seems impossible, making the continued rise of primitive nationalism appear unstoppable.     

现代中华民族观念的形成——以清末民国时期中学中国历史教科书为中心

现代意义的中华民族观念开始形成于1930年代."中华民族"一词在清末出现时,主要有三种表述:一是指中国境内独立的各民族,二是指以汉族为主体的集合,三是指汉族.清末对中华民族的认识,经历了一个由"汉、蒙、满并列"到"汉族"的变化,各族间的关系主要表述为斗争和冲突.民国成立后,中华民族为"各民族总体"的含义被重视,民族关系表述上,有"民族一元说"和"民族同化说"等方式,强调中国各民族起源上的一致性和外族与汉族的同化.1930年代后,"民族融合"成为主要表述方式,注重中国各民族历史上的融合以及现实中的平等关系,他们互相影响,共同创造了中国的历史和文化,"中华民族"成为全民族的认同.现代中华民族观念的形成过程同时也是中国民族认识的变化过程.     

Demography,diversity and nativism in contemporary Africa: evidence from Uganda

ABSTRACT. The relationship between population growth, ethnic diversity and conflict in the developing world is little understood but highly relevant to a large number of countries. In order to understand this relationship, I focus on a case study of local conflict in the district of Kibaale in western Uganda. Uganda's unusually high population growth rate and high level of ethnic diversity are often seen to have led to communal violence in Kibaale. Yet I claim that while this conflict was indeed sparked by population growth and resultant internal migration, it has nothing to do with ethnic diversity per se. Rather, the conflict in Kibaale has much more to do with nativism and the salience of claims to indigeneity at the local level. Kibaale may thus prove something of a warning sign for other parts of Uganda and other developing countries with similar high population growth and little success in nation‐building.