How do ordinary people navigate the intense uncertainty of the onset of war? Different individuals mobilize in different ways—some flee, some pick up arms, and some support armed actors as civil war ...begins. Drawing on nearly two hundred in-depth interviews with participants and nonparticipants in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992–1993, Anastasia Shesterinina explores Abkhaz mobilization decisions during that conflict. Her fresh approach underscores the uncertain nature of the first days of the war when Georgian forces had a preponderance of manpower and arms. Mobilizing in Uncertainty demonstrates, in contrast to explanations that assume individuals know the risk involved in mobilization and make decisions based on that knowledge, that the Abkhaz anticipated risk in ways that were affected by their earlier experiences and by social networks at the time of mobilization. What Shesterinina uncovers is that to make sense of the violence, Abkhaz leaders, local authority figures, and others relied on shared understandings of the conflict and their roles in it—collective conflict identities—that they had developed before the war. As appeals traveled across society, people consolidated mobilization decisions within small groups of family and friends and based their actions on whom they understood to be threatened. Their decisions shaped how the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict unfolded and how people continued to mobilize during and after the war. Through this detailed analysis of Abkhaz mobilization from prewar to postwar, Mobilizing in Uncertainty sheds light on broader processes of violence, which have lasting effects on societies marked by intergroup conflict.
The language we use forms an important part of our sense of who we are – of our identity. This book outlines the relationship between our identity as members of groups – ethnic, national, religious ...and gender – and the language varieties important to each group. What is a language? What is a dialect? Are there such things as language 'rights'? Must every national group have its own unique language? How have languages, large and small, been used to spread religious ideas? Why have particular religious and linguistic 'markers' been so central, singly or in combination, to the ways in which we think about ourselves and others? Using a rich variety of examples, the book highlights the linkages among languages, dialects and identities, with special attention given to religious, ethnic and national allegiances.
Perçue aujourd'hui principalement comme arme de guerre, la pratique de la dissimulation identitaire (takiye) relève pourtant bien plus d'une pratique de la prudence orientée par la peur. Mais que ...dire de plus que des minoritaires, parce que mal vus par une majorité, cachent leur identité pour sauver leur vie ? Peut-être ceci : l'évidence voile paradoxalement l'importance structurale de la takiye. Cette dernière repose sur une disjonction entre vérité et image associée à une jouissance discrète de la différence, elle-même articulée à partir d'une logique de l'être et du paraître.
High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse ...working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Drawing on large-scale comparative surveys across nine sociopolitical contexts, we address the question when and why ethno-religious and city or national identities of European-born Muslims are in ...conflict. We argue that the sociopolitical context makes the difference between identity compatibility or conflict and that conflict arises from perceived discrimination and related negative feelings towards the national majority. Using multigroup structural equation modelling, we examine how Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in five European cities combine their civic membership of the city and country of residence—as common identities shared with the national majority—with distinct ethnic and religious identities. In all sociopolitical contexts, participants combined significant city and national identities with strong ethnic and religious identifications. Yet, identification patterns varied between contexts from conflict (negatively correlated minority and civic identities) over compartmentalization (zero correlations) to compatibility (positive correlations). Muslims who perceived more personal discrimination were more committed to their ethnic and religious identities while simultaneously dis-identifying from their country and city. Across cities, discrimination experiences and negative majority-group evaluations explained away identity conflict.
“Social sorting” is a concept used by Mason () to explain the process by which individuals' social identities grow increasingly aligned with a partisan identity, reducing social cross‐pressures on ...political behavior. Roccas and Brewer () have found that individuals who feel fewer cross‐pressures more strongly identify with their ingroups and are less tolerant of outgroups. Accordingly, we create “objective” and “subjective” measures of social sorting to help identify the mechanism by which individual partisans connect social sorting to partisanship in the CCES and a nonprobability Internet sample. As racial, religious, and ideological identities have cumulatively moved into greater alignment with Democratic and Republican identities in recent decades, American partisans have grown increasingly identified with their parties due to the psychological effects of identity alignment captured in objective and subjective sorting mechanisms. However, we find that this effect is more powerful among Republicans than among Democrats, due to the general social homogeneity of the Republican party. Contrary to the assessments of modern political punditry, Republicans are more susceptible to identity‐based politics.
International Relations and Identity examines the issue of collective political identity formation and expands the concept of the international beyond the notion of states.
Providing a dialogical ...approach to questions of identity and alterity in International Relations, the author considers how identity is formed, maintained and transformed in continuous processes with alterity. This innovative book seeks to broaden understanding of identity and difference by developing a process-based perspective. It shifts the attention from a dichotomising view of the international to the multiple ways by which identity and difference are related. It challenges traditional conceptions of the international and argues that it is constituted by the processes in which states and other actors participate and is more than a spatial dimension constituted by states.
Guillaume illustrates this complex theory with a detailed case study of how Japanese political community has formed, performed and transformed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in light of the questions of empire and multiculturalism.
International Relations and Identity will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, international relations theory and Japanese studies.
Xavier Guillaume is Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests include the political and social theory of international relations, the question of alterity and identity, critical security studies and citizenship.
1. Introduction 2. Toward Process IR: Identity/Alterity and IR Theory 3. A Dialogical Approach to the International 4. From Orthodoxy to Normalcy: Narrative Matrices in Modern Japan 5. Between Homogeneity and Heterogeneity: Politics of Alterity in Modern Japan 6. Conclusion: Unveiling the International
National borders and transnational forces have been central in
defining the meaning of race in the Americas. Race and
Transnationalism in the Americas examines the ways that race
and its ...categorization have functioned as organizing frameworks for
cultural, political, and social inclusion-and exclusion-in the
Americas. Because racial categories are invariably generated
through reference to the "other," the national community has been a
point of departure for understanding race as a concept. Yet this
book argues that transnational forces have fundamentally shaped
visions of racial difference and ideas of race and national
belonging throughout the Americas, from the late nineteenth century
to the present. Examining immigration exclusion, indigenous efforts
toward decolonization, government efforts to colonize, sport,
drugs, music, populism, and film, the authors examine the power and
limits of the transnational flow of ideas, people, and capital.
Spanning North America, Central America, South America, and the
Caribbean, the volume seeks to engage in broad debates about race,
citizenship, and national belonging in the Americas.
