{"title":"Engineering indigenous identity: the construction of an authentic Sámi","authors":"L. Zini","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2186846","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article wishes to contribute to the study of indigenous identity by focusing on the role of the modern industrial state of the nineteenth century as a powerful and enduring agent that ‘makes, owns, and uses’ indigenous identity through the application of targeted artificial ascriptions. These ascriptions are the result of processes of legal reclassification and mechanisms of legal othering and legal authentication, which remaps indigenous belonging and sense of self. To this end, the article steps away from the typologies of indigenous identity as being exclusively a product of ancestral ties, territoriality, group belonging, and self-identification – and thus indigenous agency. The essay problematizes these conceptualizations and looks at the indigenous Sámi people of Sweden as an illustration. A number of key legislations and documents are used to expose how the state in Sweden reconstructed the local indigenous population into a de jure bona fide, or authentic, Sámi. These legal reclassifications progressively transformed the Sámi people's customary rights to fit the state's narrative within a discourse of nineteenth century modern industrial state consolidation, resulting in the control, reduction, legal dissimilation and assimilation of the Sámi into the greater society and state project.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"5 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Identities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2186846","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHNIC STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article wishes to contribute to the study of indigenous identity by focusing on the role of the modern industrial state of the nineteenth century as a powerful and enduring agent that ‘makes, owns, and uses’ indigenous identity through the application of targeted artificial ascriptions. These ascriptions are the result of processes of legal reclassification and mechanisms of legal othering and legal authentication, which remaps indigenous belonging and sense of self. To this end, the article steps away from the typologies of indigenous identity as being exclusively a product of ancestral ties, territoriality, group belonging, and self-identification – and thus indigenous agency. The essay problematizes these conceptualizations and looks at the indigenous Sámi people of Sweden as an illustration. A number of key legislations and documents are used to expose how the state in Sweden reconstructed the local indigenous population into a de jure bona fide, or authentic, Sámi. These legal reclassifications progressively transformed the Sámi people's customary rights to fit the state's narrative within a discourse of nineteenth century modern industrial state consolidation, resulting in the control, reduction, legal dissimilation and assimilation of the Sámi into the greater society and state project.
期刊介绍:
Recent years have witnessed considerable worldwide changes concerning social identities such as race, nation and ethnicity, as well as the emergence of new forms of racism and nationalism as discriminatory exclusions. Social Identities aims to furnish an interdisciplinary and international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities. The journal is especially concerned to address these issues in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions. Social Identities is intended as a forum for contesting ideas and debates concerning the formations of, and transformations in, socially significant identities, their attendant forms of material exclusion and power.