Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2112662
C. Cmielewski
ABSTRACT Art can assist in exposure to difference, which may in turn open up spaces for dialogue between differences. This capacity to encourage and intervene necessarily operates at various levels and spheres and, in the arts, requires creative leadership. Creative leaders are those artists, recognised by their peers and public as artists who generate new developments in creative content to explore diversity. It is predominantly artists of non-English speaking background (‘NESB’) who bear the burden to generate the opportunities as the main producers of content that interacts with multicultural Australia. I am cautious to place sole responsibility onto the minorised and underpaid multicultural artist to transform Australian society. However, their creative leadership roles show that their work and processes can produce new narratives towards intercultural dialogues. Many ‘NESB’ artists adopt this mantle by undertaking new creative production with the potential to transform the symbols within society. This paper explores the ways in which social and creative symbols are re-negotiated through the work of two Australian performance artists. Writer and director Shakthi Shakthidharan; and dancer and choreographer, Annalouise Paul exemplify how artists from diverse backgrounds increase the level of culturally diverse creative production. They make meaning through the contestations and negotiations of multicultural Australia.
{"title":"Intercultural creative expression in two Australian performance works – Counting and Cracking and Mother Tongue","authors":"C. Cmielewski","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2112662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2112662","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Art can assist in exposure to difference, which may in turn open up spaces for dialogue between differences. This capacity to encourage and intervene necessarily operates at various levels and spheres and, in the arts, requires creative leadership. Creative leaders are those artists, recognised by their peers and public as artists who generate new developments in creative content to explore diversity. It is predominantly artists of non-English speaking background (‘NESB’) who bear the burden to generate the opportunities as the main producers of content that interacts with multicultural Australia. I am cautious to place sole responsibility onto the minorised and underpaid multicultural artist to transform Australian society. However, their creative leadership roles show that their work and processes can produce new narratives towards intercultural dialogues. Many ‘NESB’ artists adopt this mantle by undertaking new creative production with the potential to transform the symbols within society. This paper explores the ways in which social and creative symbols are re-negotiated through the work of two Australian performance artists. Writer and director Shakthi Shakthidharan; and dancer and choreographer, Annalouise Paul exemplify how artists from diverse backgrounds increase the level of culturally diverse creative production. They make meaning through the contestations and negotiations of multicultural Australia.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45223071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2186572
Tob Y Miller, P. Ahluwalia
, genetic engineering and editing, brain chips, neuroscience, and medical enhancement. Issues of state regulation, democratic participation, religion, gender, disability, sexuality, reproduction, competition, and race
{"title":"Making up humans","authors":"Tob Y Miller, P. Ahluwalia","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2186572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2186572","url":null,"abstract":", genetic engineering and editing, brain chips, neuroscience, and medical enhancement. Issues of state regulation, democratic participation, religion, gender, disability, sexuality, reproduction, competition, and race","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47830873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2114892
A. Del Bono
ABSTRACT In a progressively urbanized world, the modes of governamentality adopted by city administrations increasingly focus on the adoption of strategic functions. Environmental safeguard, circular economy, and urban innovation, for instance, have been referred to, in the case of the Italian city of Prato, as the city’s orientation ‘towards the future’. Some of the ambitious projects that have characterized the recently adopted governance model of Prato relate in fact to urban forestation, connectivity, the realization of more public space and the application of ‘creativity’ as a driving force for urban development. Significantly, too, representations of Prato (as of today one of the most studied examples of migration from China to Europe) have been tied to images of a conflictual multiculturalism and to the liminal spaces of social relations within which Chineseness has often been relegated. In this article, I use secondary data and first-handedly retrieved information through qualitative methods to describe how the recent place branding project promoted by the municipality based on the concept of ‘creativity’ has particularly targeted a neighborhood named Macrolotto Zero, marked by decades of migration from China. In doing so, I discuss how the formulation and application of the place brand have generated frictions between stakeholders, as well as new transcultural alliances. These speak to the challenges of achieving a condition of living with difference in the city and provide a still-underexplored platform from which city-making processes and social identities can be analyzed.
{"title":"More than ‘creative’: analyzing place branding strategies and Chinese migration in the City of Prato, Italy","authors":"A. Del Bono","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2114892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2114892","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In a progressively urbanized world, the modes of governamentality adopted by city administrations increasingly focus on the adoption of strategic functions. Environmental safeguard, circular economy, and urban innovation, for instance, have been referred to, in the case of the Italian city of Prato, as the city’s orientation ‘towards the future’. Some of the ambitious projects that have characterized the recently adopted governance model of Prato relate in fact to urban forestation, connectivity, the realization of more public space and the application of ‘creativity’ as a driving force for urban development. Significantly, too, representations of Prato (as of today one of the most studied examples of migration from China to Europe) have been tied to images of a conflictual multiculturalism and to the liminal spaces of social relations within which Chineseness has often been relegated. In this article, I use secondary data and first-handedly retrieved information through qualitative methods to describe how the recent place branding project promoted by the municipality based on the concept of ‘creativity’ has particularly targeted a neighborhood named Macrolotto Zero, marked by decades of migration from China. In doing so, I discuss how the formulation and application of the place brand have generated frictions between stakeholders, as well as new transcultural alliances. These speak to the challenges of achieving a condition of living with difference in the city and provide a still-underexplored platform from which city-making processes and social identities can be analyzed.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44711961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2131512
H. Tam, Dinh Phuong Linh
ABSTRACT By century XX, the Central Highlands was being the traditional residence of indigenous ethnic minorities. In 1858, the French colonialists established plantations of industrial crops all over the area, which ended up forming the first wave of the Kinh people's migration to the Central Highlands. In 1957, the Republic of Vietnam government created the second wave of Kinh emigration to the Central Highlands through the Land Development Program. In the period 1965–1975, the violent escalation of the Vietnam War prompted the 3rd wave of war refugees migrating to the Central Highlands. The 4th wave (1976–1989) was the result of the efforts of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to redistribute human resources throughout the country, in which a large part of the population from the plains was moved to the Central Highlands to build new economic zones. By early 1990s, with the worldwide ‘coffee boom’ and the legal recognition of private economic sector, the wave of free migration to the Central Highlands to plant coffee trees exploded - this was the 5th wave. The continuum of the above five waves of migration has completely changed the population and land ownership structure of the Central Highlands as well as brought great alterations to the socio-economic life of this region. While investigating such changes, our article seeks to provides a comprehensive explanation on the process in which the Kinh gained their dominance on the Central Highlands over the five waves of their migration to the plateau.
{"title":"How minor immigrants became the dominants: the case of the Kinh people migrating to the Central Highlands, Vietnam in the twentieth century","authors":"H. Tam, Dinh Phuong Linh","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2131512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2131512","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT By century XX, the Central Highlands was being the traditional residence of indigenous ethnic minorities. In 1858, the French colonialists established plantations of industrial crops all over the area, which ended up forming the first wave of the Kinh people's migration to the Central Highlands. In 1957, the Republic of Vietnam government created the second wave of Kinh emigration to the Central Highlands through the Land Development Program. In the period 1965–1975, the violent escalation of the Vietnam War prompted the 3rd wave of war refugees migrating to the Central Highlands. The 4th wave (1976–1989) was the result of the efforts of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to redistribute human resources throughout the country, in which a large part of the population from the plains was moved to the Central Highlands to build new economic zones. By early 1990s, with the worldwide ‘coffee boom’ and the legal recognition of private economic sector, the wave of free migration to the Central Highlands to plant coffee trees exploded - this was the 5th wave. The continuum of the above five waves of migration has completely changed the population and land ownership structure of the Central Highlands as well as brought great alterations to the socio-economic life of this region. While investigating such changes, our article seeks to provides a comprehensive explanation on the process in which the Kinh gained their dominance on the Central Highlands over the five waves of their migration to the plateau.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44259675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2139235
Md Reza Habib
ABSTRACT Bangladesh hosts over a million Rohingya on humanitarian grounds and offers them food and shelter. The Rohingya compete with the local community for access to economic and environmental resources and public services. I analyse this competition and conflict using conflict theory, which is a sociological perspective on social conflict. I argue that while the Rohingya are unquestionably marginalized, so is the local community, who are citizens and have the right to life and livelihood. I find that the presence of the Rohingya constrains the poor local community’s already limited access and that leads to conflicts on various issues such as access to inadequate public services, local and economic activities such as labour markets and environmental resources, and there is an emerging problem of safety and security that they are facing. We can understand this as a type of resource conflict which emerges within the south-south forced migration, statelessness, and refugee-hood context between the citizens and the refugees, as countries in the Global South, such as Bangladesh, generally lack the resources and capacity to govern people.
{"title":"A conceptual analysis of the Rohingya–host community conflict over scarce resources in Bangladesh","authors":"Md Reza Habib","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2139235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2139235","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Bangladesh hosts over a million Rohingya on humanitarian grounds and offers them food and shelter. The Rohingya compete with the local community for access to economic and environmental resources and public services. I analyse this competition and conflict using conflict theory, which is a sociological perspective on social conflict. I argue that while the Rohingya are unquestionably marginalized, so is the local community, who are citizens and have the right to life and livelihood. I find that the presence of the Rohingya constrains the poor local community’s already limited access and that leads to conflicts on various issues such as access to inadequate public services, local and economic activities such as labour markets and environmental resources, and there is an emerging problem of safety and security that they are facing. We can understand this as a type of resource conflict which emerges within the south-south forced migration, statelessness, and refugee-hood context between the citizens and the refugees, as countries in the Global South, such as Bangladesh, generally lack the resources and capacity to govern people.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43148948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2118701
C. Campanioni
ABSTRACT How have migrants and other displaced and internally excluded persons used dissimulation and self-forgery in service of mobility? How can we read an aesthetics of disappearance as more than just an aesthetical choice but as a source of activism? Following Jacques Rancière [The politics of aesthetics (G. Rockhill. Trans.). Continuum. (Original Work Published in, 2000)], I understand that such aesthetic acts are capable of creating ‘new modes of sense perception’ and, in doing so, produce alternative forms of political subjectivity. In this essay, I compare migrant self-representations and creative tactics of camouflage, mimicry, and dissembling with public practices, while looking at the extraterritorial space of the makeshift camp as a paradigm for preserving invisibility and anonymity. And yet, it is not just that aesthetic acts have the potential to produce novel forms of political subjectivity, as Rancière understood, but that, in order for the latter to be true, the equation needs to be reversed: political subjects must first be recognized as aesthetic subjects. As I place the multimedia work of Cold War East German artist Cornelia Schleime in conversation with the contemporary glitch art – drawings, paintings, video – of Kon Trubkovich, who was born in Moscow and left, at age eleven, following the Chernobyl disaster, I argue that to reorient the terms of visibility, it becomes necessary for subject-producers to stage the gaze that would otherwise objectify them.
{"title":"Documenting disappearance: self-forgery and dissimulation as a means of mobility","authors":"C. Campanioni","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2118701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2118701","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How have migrants and other displaced and internally excluded persons used dissimulation and self-forgery in service of mobility? How can we read an aesthetics of disappearance as more than just an aesthetical choice but as a source of activism? Following Jacques Rancière [The politics of aesthetics (G. Rockhill. Trans.). Continuum. (Original Work Published in, 2000)], I understand that such aesthetic acts are capable of creating ‘new modes of sense perception’ and, in doing so, produce alternative forms of political subjectivity. In this essay, I compare migrant self-representations and creative tactics of camouflage, mimicry, and dissembling with public practices, while looking at the extraterritorial space of the makeshift camp as a paradigm for preserving invisibility and anonymity. And yet, it is not just that aesthetic acts have the potential to produce novel forms of political subjectivity, as Rancière understood, but that, in order for the latter to be true, the equation needs to be reversed: political subjects must first be recognized as aesthetic subjects. As I place the multimedia work of Cold War East German artist Cornelia Schleime in conversation with the contemporary glitch art – drawings, paintings, video – of Kon Trubkovich, who was born in Moscow and left, at age eleven, following the Chernobyl disaster, I argue that to reorient the terms of visibility, it becomes necessary for subject-producers to stage the gaze that would otherwise objectify them.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48104375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2114893
Thi Le
ABSTRACT COVID-19 appeared in Vietnam in January 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the new strain of Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) around the globe on 1-3-2020. From 1-4-2020, Vietnam introduced social distancing to prevent the spread of the disease in society, affecting every social class, including ‘internal' migrant workers who were often formerly farmers. This paper reports on research evaluating the impact of the pandemic on the internal migrant ‘reserve army of labour' now working in industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Internal migrant workers make up the majority of employees, at 70% to 85.5% and this article offers a chance to evaluate Marxist categories of work, along with the point of view of the systems and social network approaches, to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts production activities at IPs & EPZs. The paper asks how management of workplaces in the face of the pandemic imposed coping strategies affecting levels of employment and lives of migrant workers at EPZs and IPs. Looking especially at migrant workers' strategies in facing the challenges of the pandemic, the use of Marx’s “floating, latent and stagnant” categories of the “reserve army of labour” is reconsidered on the basis of information from available statistical data and from detailed interviews and observations in the Project “Improving the effectiveness of dialogue and collective bargaining in private enterprise and foreign directed investment enterprises in HCMC” under a grant from the Ho Chi Minh City Science and Technology Development Fund, 2020-22 - HCMFOSTED.
{"title":"Reserve army of Ho Chi Minh City: migrant workers in the Ho Chi Minh City's industrial parks and processing export zones under the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Thi Le","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2114893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2114893","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT COVID-19 appeared in Vietnam in January 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the new strain of Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) around the globe on 1-3-2020. From 1-4-2020, Vietnam introduced social distancing to prevent the spread of the disease in society, affecting every social class, including ‘internal' migrant workers who were often formerly farmers. This paper reports on research evaluating the impact of the pandemic on the internal migrant ‘reserve army of labour' now working in industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Internal migrant workers make up the majority of employees, at 70% to 85.5% and this article offers a chance to evaluate Marxist categories of work, along with the point of view of the systems and social network approaches, to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts production activities at IPs & EPZs. The paper asks how management of workplaces in the face of the pandemic imposed coping strategies affecting levels of employment and lives of migrant workers at EPZs and IPs. Looking especially at migrant workers' strategies in facing the challenges of the pandemic, the use of Marx’s “floating, latent and stagnant” categories of the “reserve army of labour” is reconsidered on the basis of information from available statistical data and from detailed interviews and observations in the Project “Improving the effectiveness of dialogue and collective bargaining in private enterprise and foreign directed investment enterprises in HCMC” under a grant from the Ho Chi Minh City Science and Technology Development Fund, 2020-22 - HCMFOSTED.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43357255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2145038
P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller
It used to be said that economics and foreign affairs (the latter to a lesser extent) were the crucial psephological factors in democracies. They continue to matter, and can have determining effects. But other elements have become central as well. And a series of remarkable plebiscites and elections in the recent past has been contested with direct reference to social identities. Thinking back to 2016 plebiscites, the vote against peace in Colombia—albeit a narrow one, and with a minority of voters participating—was partially about evangelical Protestantism’s obsessions with sex. Hence the remarkable sight during the campaign of men and women from vastly separate racial, geographical, and class formations linking arms in large demonstrations to denounce feminism and LGBT rights. That same year, the British vote against Brexit was tied to nostalgia for imperialism. In the contemporary moment, in 2022, the success of the far right in Italy is again related to sexual obsessions, blended this time with racial ones. The vote against the new draft constitution in Chile was, inter alia, connected to similar concerns, namely marriage equality and indigenous rights. The collapse of Swedish social democracy was animated by anti-Muslim rhetoric. Such trends are paradoxically tied to longstanding demands from formerly new, now rather middle-aged, social movements, notably those linked to the environment, gender, and race. For those themes have been reanimated by reactionary social movements, both venerable and emergent. Right-wing activists have learnt from ‘our’ side’s doctrines of direct action, exemplified by their January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol and claims about threats to cultural/social identity, per “The Great Replacement.” Such movements are closely tied to patriarchal monotheism, lack of faith in democracy, cynicism re the state, profound nationalism, doctrines of white supremacy (and anxiety), a loathing of difference, terror in the face of immigration—and the use of spectacle. Six decades ago, Tom Lehrer sang of how the left clung onto culture in the face of defeat. Looking back to the Spanish Civil War and the Lincoln Brigade’s part in what proved to be a futile struggle against Francisco Franco’s fascism, Lehrer drolly noted in troping “Venga Jaleo” that “he may have won all the battles,” but “We had all the good songs” (Lehrer, 1965). That emphasis on spectacle became even more relevant with the stress on cultural politics and identity that came with the soixante-huitards and les événements, feminism, civil rights, anti-globalization protests, and Occupy. Today, the angry populist right has picked up on spectacle. It chants, it dresses outrageously, it cocks a snook at authority, and it opposes globalization and representative politics. Progressive tools of resistance have been seized and used against their origins. The new politics of spectacle, dominated by the right, produces uncomfortable echoes of popular resistance to tradition an
{"title":"Voting for Identity","authors":"P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2145038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2145038","url":null,"abstract":"It used to be said that economics and foreign affairs (the latter to a lesser extent) were the crucial psephological factors in democracies. They continue to matter, and can have determining effects. But other elements have become central as well. And a series of remarkable plebiscites and elections in the recent past has been contested with direct reference to social identities. Thinking back to 2016 plebiscites, the vote against peace in Colombia—albeit a narrow one, and with a minority of voters participating—was partially about evangelical Protestantism’s obsessions with sex. Hence the remarkable sight during the campaign of men and women from vastly separate racial, geographical, and class formations linking arms in large demonstrations to denounce feminism and LGBT rights. That same year, the British vote against Brexit was tied to nostalgia for imperialism. In the contemporary moment, in 2022, the success of the far right in Italy is again related to sexual obsessions, blended this time with racial ones. The vote against the new draft constitution in Chile was, inter alia, connected to similar concerns, namely marriage equality and indigenous rights. The collapse of Swedish social democracy was animated by anti-Muslim rhetoric. Such trends are paradoxically tied to longstanding demands from formerly new, now rather middle-aged, social movements, notably those linked to the environment, gender, and race. For those themes have been reanimated by reactionary social movements, both venerable and emergent. Right-wing activists have learnt from ‘our’ side’s doctrines of direct action, exemplified by their January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol and claims about threats to cultural/social identity, per “The Great Replacement.” Such movements are closely tied to patriarchal monotheism, lack of faith in democracy, cynicism re the state, profound nationalism, doctrines of white supremacy (and anxiety), a loathing of difference, terror in the face of immigration—and the use of spectacle. Six decades ago, Tom Lehrer sang of how the left clung onto culture in the face of defeat. Looking back to the Spanish Civil War and the Lincoln Brigade’s part in what proved to be a futile struggle against Francisco Franco’s fascism, Lehrer drolly noted in troping “Venga Jaleo” that “he may have won all the battles,” but “We had all the good songs” (Lehrer, 1965). That emphasis on spectacle became even more relevant with the stress on cultural politics and identity that came with the soixante-huitards and les événements, feminism, civil rights, anti-globalization protests, and Occupy. Today, the angry populist right has picked up on spectacle. It chants, it dresses outrageously, it cocks a snook at authority, and it opposes globalization and representative politics. Progressive tools of resistance have been seized and used against their origins. The new politics of spectacle, dominated by the right, produces uncomfortable echoes of popular resistance to tradition an","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46237408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2109618
Alborz Ghandehari
ABSTRACT This article explores a transnational oral history project on migrant justice which I developed in collaboration with refugee organizers in Greece and students in my course ‘Borders and Migration’ at the University of Utah. In the project, US-based and Greece-based im/migrant communities exchange oral histories with each other on their struggles and experiences. I argue that this exchange shed light on avenues for building internationalist solidarity among migrant justice movements worldwide. The project made visible some common ‘roots of uprooting,’ namely the ways in which structures of capitalism and imperialism have uprooted disparate peoples from their homelands. I thus argue that freedom of movement and freedom from uprooting emerge as twin struggles in these oral histories. I then explore the ways that both sides of the exchange underscored that community need not be defined by citizenship papers or lack thereof, by (militarized) national borders, or by people’s particular ethnic identity. Rather, participants spoke to each other of steadfastly building strong, meaningful communities based on mutual aid despite their presence being deemed illegal or otherwise illegitimate. These included a direct-action squat by refugees of a vacant hotel in Athens as well as other forms of community building by DACAmented youth on the project’s US side. I ultimately argue that these acts help light the way to a world not based on profit and its tendency to displace people, but rather based on sharing resources in solidarity. The latter roots people together instead of uprooting them from homes and from one another.
{"title":"The roots of uprooting: migrant oral history and internationalist solidarity","authors":"Alborz Ghandehari","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2109618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2109618","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores a transnational oral history project on migrant justice which I developed in collaboration with refugee organizers in Greece and students in my course ‘Borders and Migration’ at the University of Utah. In the project, US-based and Greece-based im/migrant communities exchange oral histories with each other on their struggles and experiences. I argue that this exchange shed light on avenues for building internationalist solidarity among migrant justice movements worldwide. The project made visible some common ‘roots of uprooting,’ namely the ways in which structures of capitalism and imperialism have uprooted disparate peoples from their homelands. I thus argue that freedom of movement and freedom from uprooting emerge as twin struggles in these oral histories. I then explore the ways that both sides of the exchange underscored that community need not be defined by citizenship papers or lack thereof, by (militarized) national borders, or by people’s particular ethnic identity. Rather, participants spoke to each other of steadfastly building strong, meaningful communities based on mutual aid despite their presence being deemed illegal or otherwise illegitimate. These included a direct-action squat by refugees of a vacant hotel in Athens as well as other forms of community building by DACAmented youth on the project’s US side. I ultimately argue that these acts help light the way to a world not based on profit and its tendency to displace people, but rather based on sharing resources in solidarity. The latter roots people together instead of uprooting them from homes and from one another.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45476469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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