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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Defining The Other, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce Jun 2015

Defining The Other, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

G. W. F. Hegel said: “Everything is what is not.” Throughout human history, we find a continuous struggle to define the other, the foreigner, the unknown, the opposite of we or I. And, as the quote from Hegel indicates, what they are, that we are not, helps define the frontiers of personal and group identity.


Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin Apr 2014

Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

This paper explores the construction of knowledge in Kenya in the context and aftermath of colonialism and underdevelopment. Those communities that were politically and economically marginalized in Coast Province over the past century were also displaced in terms of academic opportunities, resulting in fewer social science scholars from Mijikenda and other non-Swahili communities in both Kenyan and diaspora universities. Underdevelopment studies in Africa and Kenya are briefly reviewed, and the colonial history of asymmetric social relations at coastal Kenya is traced. Finally, key debates over identity and history are examined within this context and shown to be exacerbated by diasporic …


Religion And Nationalism: Four Approaches, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2011

Religion And Nationalism: Four Approaches, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

Building on recent literature, this paper discusses four ways of studying the relation between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism - its origin, its power, or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The paper concludes by reconsidering the much-criticized understanding of nationalism as a …


The Priesthood Of Nationalism In Egypt: Duty, Authority, Autonomy, Benjamin Geer Dec 2011

The Priesthood Of Nationalism In Egypt: Duty, Authority, Autonomy, Benjamin Geer

Benjamin Geer

This thesis considers the effects of nationalism on the autonomy of intellectuals in Egypt. I argue that nationalism limits intellectuals’ ability to challenge social hierarchies, political authority and economic inequality, and that it has been more readily used to legitimise new forms of domination in competition with old ones. I analyse similarities between religion and nationalism, using the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu together with cognitive linguistics. Focusing mainly on the similarities between priests and nationalist intellectuals, and secondarily between prophets and charismatic nationalist political leaders, I show that nationalism and religion are based on relatively similar concepts, which lend …


Nationalism, Ethnicity, And Modernity, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2010

Nationalism, Ethnicity, And Modernity, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.


Economic Crisis, Nationalism, And Politicized Ethnicity, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2010

Economic Crisis, Nationalism, And Politicized Ethnicity, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.


Nationalizing States Revisited: Projects And Processes Of Nationalization In Post-Soviet States, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2010

Nationalizing States Revisited: Projects And Processes Of Nationalization In Post-Soviet States, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This paper analyzes Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan as nationalizing states, focusing on four domains: ethnopolitical demography, language repertories and practices, the polity, and the economy. Nationalizing discourse has figured centrally in these and other “post-multinational” contexts. But nationalizing projects and processes have differed substantially across cases. Where ethnonational boundaries have been strong, quasi-racial, and intergenerationally persistent, as in Kazakhstan, nationalization (notwithstanding inclusive official rhetoric) has served primarily to strengthen and empower the titular nation. Where ethnonational and linguistic boundaries have been blurred and permeable, as in Ukraine, nationalization has worked primarily to reshape cultural practices, loyalties, and identities, thereby …


Charles Tilly As A Theorist Of Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2009

Charles Tilly As A Theorist Of Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This paper considers Charles Tilly as an important but underappreciated theorist of nationalism. Tilly’s theory of nationalism emerged from the “bellicist” strand of his earlier work on state-formation and later incorporated a concern with performance, stories, and cultural modeling. Yet despite the turn to culture in Tilly’s later work, his theory of nationalism remained state-centered, materialist, and instrumentalist—a source of both its power and its limitations.


Prophets And Priests Of The Nation: Naguib Mahfouz’S Karnak Café And The 1967 Crisis In Egypt, Benjamin Geer Oct 2009

Prophets And Priests Of The Nation: Naguib Mahfouz’S Karnak Café And The 1967 Crisis In Egypt, Benjamin Geer

Benjamin Geer

Similarities between religion and nationalism are well known but not well understood. They can be explained by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory in order to consider symbolic interests and the strategies employed to advance them. In both religion and nationalism, the “strategy of the prophets” relies on charisma while the “strategy of the priests” relies on cultural capital. In 20th-century Egypt, nationalism permitted intellectuals whose cultural capital was mainly secular, such as Naguib Mahfouz, to become “priests of the nation” in order to compete with the ʿulamaʾ for prestige and influence. However, it severely limited their autonomy, particularly after …


National Homogenization And Ethnic Reproduction On The European Periphery, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2008

National Homogenization And Ethnic Reproduction On The European Periphery, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.


Ethnicity, Race, And Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker Dec 2008

Ethnicity, Race, And Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This article traces the contours of a comparative, global, crossdisciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race, and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation. It then reviews a set of diverse yet related efforts to study the way ethnicity, race, and nation work in social, cultural, and political life without treating ethnic groups, races, or nations as substantial entities, or even taking such groups as units of analysis at all.


Refugee Camps In The Palestinian And Sahrawi National Liberation Movements: A Comparative Perspective, Randa Farah Dec 2007

Refugee Camps In The Palestinian And Sahrawi National Liberation Movements: A Comparative Perspective, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

Drawing on ethnographic field research, this analysis compares the evolution of refugee camps as incubators of political organization and repositories of collective memory for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Sahrawi refugees of the Western Sahara. While recognizing the significant differences between the historical and geopolitical contexts of the two groups and their national movements (the PLO and Polisario, respectively), the author examines the Palestinian and Sahrawi projects of national consciousness formation and institution-building, concluding that Palestinian camps are “mapped” in relation to the past, while political organization in Sahrawi camps evidences a forward-looking vision.


Beyond 'Identity', Rogers Brubaker, Frederick Cooper Dec 1999

Beyond 'Identity', Rogers Brubaker, Frederick Cooper

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.