Pub Date : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208042
Kishor K. Podh
The ‘ Social Construction of National Reality: Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong ’ is a comprehensive and insightful exploration of the complex relationships between national identity, power, and representation. Authors Fu-Lai Yu and Diana Kwan provide a nuanced analysis of how di ff erent actors, both within and outside of the territories in question, shape and contest how Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong are perceived and understood. The authors draw upon a range of sources, including interviews, media analysis, and political discourse, to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between di ff erent discursive frameworks and political realities. The authors leverages Peter Berger ’ s theory on the social construction of reality to explore the formation of national identity and the nation-building process and delve into how socialization through everyday life experiences cultivates ingroup and outgroup distinctions, separating nationals and non-nationals. By utilizing this theory, the authors aim to provide insight into the inter-national con fl icts, including the Taiwan Strait Crisis, Tibetan unrest, and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, that have arisen due to divergent national consciousnesses. At its core, this book critically examines how everyday experiences of power and representation are intertwined. Tony Fu-Lai Yu and Diana S. Kwan examine the construction of national identity through the lens of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger ’ s (1967) ‘ Social Construction Theory. ’ Yu and Kwan provide vivid insights into the nature of historical, ideological as well as political bases of the construction of national identities through an intersubjectivist approach, which is very compelling. They trace the historical origin of national identity in Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, including among the people of mainland China and analyze the historical as well as contemporary reasons that contribute to the construction of the national identity. The authors Yu and Kwan argue that national identities are constructed through the actions of individuals and institutions that have the power to shape
{"title":"Social Construction of National Reality: Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong","authors":"Kishor K. Podh","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208042","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘ Social Construction of National Reality: Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong ’ is a comprehensive and insightful exploration of the complex relationships between national identity, power, and representation. Authors Fu-Lai Yu and Diana Kwan provide a nuanced analysis of how di ff erent actors, both within and outside of the territories in question, shape and contest how Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong are perceived and understood. The authors draw upon a range of sources, including interviews, media analysis, and political discourse, to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between di ff erent discursive frameworks and political realities. The authors leverages Peter Berger ’ s theory on the social construction of reality to explore the formation of national identity and the nation-building process and delve into how socialization through everyday life experiences cultivates ingroup and outgroup distinctions, separating nationals and non-nationals. By utilizing this theory, the authors aim to provide insight into the inter-national con fl icts, including the Taiwan Strait Crisis, Tibetan unrest, and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, that have arisen due to divergent national consciousnesses. At its core, this book critically examines how everyday experiences of power and representation are intertwined. Tony Fu-Lai Yu and Diana S. Kwan examine the construction of national identity through the lens of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger ’ s (1967) ‘ Social Construction Theory. ’ Yu and Kwan provide vivid insights into the nature of historical, ideological as well as political bases of the construction of national identities through an intersubjectivist approach, which is very compelling. They trace the historical origin of national identity in Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, including among the people of mainland China and analyze the historical as well as contemporary reasons that contribute to the construction of the national identity. The authors Yu and Kwan argue that national identities are constructed through the actions of individuals and institutions that have the power to shape","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"237 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47453666","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208050
Laís Rodrigues
ABSTRACT Recently, the Latin American decolonial perspective has been receiving growing attention, not only in academia, but also in other social, political, and cultural spaces, including in Brazil. Among other debates, decolonial thinkers have brought to light the continuity of coloniality in different dimensions (particularly, even if not only) of Latin American realities, long after the territorial colonization was over. Therefore, by highlighting, debating, and theorizing on the colonialities of power, knowledge and being from a decolonial perspective, scholars have been unmasking the vast, violent, and oppressive consequences of Western, Eurocentric, modern, colonial, capitalist, racist and patriarchal paradigms, which still (even if with adaptations) dominate our multiple realities. Race is at the center of the continuity of coloniality and colonial heritage, imposing ontological and epistemological hierarchies that have caused the never-ending racialization, marginalization and suffering of most Latin Americans for centuries. Still, some debates and dimensions related to race could (and, as I will argue, should) be further explored within the decolonial perspective. In this paper, I would like to present whiteness studies and scholars as potential contributors to these debates in Latin America, further widening the decolonial gates, allowing us to better comprehend and critically analyze the many forms of continued coloniality and their violent, oppressive, and terrible consequences.
{"title":"We have to talk about whiteness: widening the decolonial gates*","authors":"Laís Rodrigues","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208050","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recently, the Latin American decolonial perspective has been receiving growing attention, not only in academia, but also in other social, political, and cultural spaces, including in Brazil. Among other debates, decolonial thinkers have brought to light the continuity of coloniality in different dimensions (particularly, even if not only) of Latin American realities, long after the territorial colonization was over. Therefore, by highlighting, debating, and theorizing on the colonialities of power, knowledge and being from a decolonial perspective, scholars have been unmasking the vast, violent, and oppressive consequences of Western, Eurocentric, modern, colonial, capitalist, racist and patriarchal paradigms, which still (even if with adaptations) dominate our multiple realities. Race is at the center of the continuity of coloniality and colonial heritage, imposing ontological and epistemological hierarchies that have caused the never-ending racialization, marginalization and suffering of most Latin Americans for centuries. Still, some debates and dimensions related to race could (and, as I will argue, should) be further explored within the decolonial perspective. In this paper, I would like to present whiteness studies and scholars as potential contributors to these debates in Latin America, further widening the decolonial gates, allowing us to better comprehend and critically analyze the many forms of continued coloniality and their violent, oppressive, and terrible consequences.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"148 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59728766","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208037
Hsin-Yi Yeh
ABSTRACT Investigating expectant mothers’ pregnancy in Taiwan, this paper examines prenatal ultrasound as an ongoing invention of its users in general and pregnant women in particular. Instead of being passive consumers, pregnant women actively invent and reconfigure prenatal ultrasound using flexible interpretation and strategic reinscription. There is an inevitably ambivalent technological experience of prenatal ultrasound across cultures. Whereas pregnant women are pleased and reassured to see their babies ‘on the screen,’ my analysis shows that, prenatal ultrasound as a passive diagnostic tool that cannot offer active treatment, and the fact that prenatal ultrasound helps to make up morality surrounding pregnancy, constitutes the main source of mothers-to-be’s negative technological experiences of prenatal ultrasound. Whereas prenatal ultrasound has been regarded as an indispensable and authoritative method of keeping users informed, adopting a hybrid approach, pregnant women still actively refer to local knowledge to understand their pregnancy.
{"title":"Technological experiences and end-users’ identification work – investigating expectant mothers’ prenatal ultrasound experiences and their reconfigurations","authors":"Hsin-Yi Yeh","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208037","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Investigating expectant mothers’ pregnancy in Taiwan, this paper examines prenatal ultrasound as an ongoing invention of its users in general and pregnant women in particular. Instead of being passive consumers, pregnant women actively invent and reconfigure prenatal ultrasound using flexible interpretation and strategic reinscription. There is an inevitably ambivalent technological experience of prenatal ultrasound across cultures. Whereas pregnant women are pleased and reassured to see their babies ‘on the screen,’ my analysis shows that, prenatal ultrasound as a passive diagnostic tool that cannot offer active treatment, and the fact that prenatal ultrasound helps to make up morality surrounding pregnancy, constitutes the main source of mothers-to-be’s negative technological experiences of prenatal ultrasound. Whereas prenatal ultrasound has been regarded as an indispensable and authoritative method of keeping users informed, adopting a hybrid approach, pregnant women still actively refer to local knowledge to understand their pregnancy.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"130 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49512457","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208067
Mante Vertelyte
ABSTRACT Posing the rhetorical question ‘Have we lost our sense of humour?’ this article analyses senses of racial humour through the use of affect theory. Despite the common use of the idiom ‘a sense of humour’ within everyday speech, there is a lack of social and cultural analysis of the senses that guide understandings of whether or not something is funny. Through the lens of affect theory, this article explores sensory experiences of humour, showing how senses of humour are both affective corporeal experiences – such as laughter – and an affective relational flow between and among bodies. Drawing on interview material gathered in diverse schools in Denmark, the article analyses how students negotiate the use of racial humour with particular focus on tonalities of humour and the affective stakes involved in laughter and unlaughter. The article argues that affect theory can help bridge a gap in the literature on humour, which either reduces humour to bodily, mental and cognitive predispositions, or to social and cultural functions.
{"title":"‘Have we lost our sense of humour?!’ Affective senses of racial joking in Danish schools","authors":"Mante Vertelyte","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208067","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Posing the rhetorical question ‘Have we lost our sense of humour?’ this article analyses senses of racial humour through the use of affect theory. Despite the common use of the idiom ‘a sense of humour’ within everyday speech, there is a lack of social and cultural analysis of the senses that guide understandings of whether or not something is funny. Through the lens of affect theory, this article explores sensory experiences of humour, showing how senses of humour are both affective corporeal experiences – such as laughter – and an affective relational flow between and among bodies. Drawing on interview material gathered in diverse schools in Denmark, the article analyses how students negotiate the use of racial humour with particular focus on tonalities of humour and the affective stakes involved in laughter and unlaughter. The article argues that affect theory can help bridge a gap in the literature on humour, which either reduces humour to bodily, mental and cognitive predispositions, or to social and cultural functions.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"205 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44773233","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208055
Shabnam S. Minz, Doreswamy
ABSTRACT English, initially being a language of imperial leaders and later of upper caste elites after independence, continues to remain an elitist language in India. Over the course of time and for various reasons, the need for English language learning has rapidly increased. English is also believed to promote social mobility for the people of backward communities. However, the history of social disparity in India has problematized the position of English in the country. On one hand English produces varied possibilities for economic growth and social change. On the other hand, its elitist and exclusively selective nature negatively impacts Indian society by alarming the public education sector which the most backward communities rely on even today. Even though someone from a backward community succeeds in learning English they would inevitably step into a more complex/hierarchical zone by positioning themselves in the complexity of a class structure.
{"title":"Strengths and limits of limitless English in India: a critical reflection on the relationship of English to a backward community","authors":"Shabnam S. Minz, Doreswamy","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208055","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT English, initially being a language of imperial leaders and later of upper caste elites after independence, continues to remain an elitist language in India. Over the course of time and for various reasons, the need for English language learning has rapidly increased. English is also believed to promote social mobility for the people of backward communities. However, the history of social disparity in India has problematized the position of English in the country. On one hand English produces varied possibilities for economic growth and social change. On the other hand, its elitist and exclusively selective nature negatively impacts Indian society by alarming the public education sector which the most backward communities rely on even today. Even though someone from a backward community succeeds in learning English they would inevitably step into a more complex/hierarchical zone by positioning themselves in the complexity of a class structure.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"171 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46925464","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2242184
P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller
For the Global North and many in the South, contemporary ‘technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self’ (Biagioli, 2009, p. 818). Consider these numbers: in 1965, fewer ‘than 12 materials were in wide use: wood, brick, iron, copper, gold, silver, and a few plastics’. Today, there is a comprehensive ‘materials basis to modern society’. The computer chip that enabled us to type this editorial contains more than sixty. New materials are taken as signs of progress. But the notion of endless growth and progress fails to acknowledge that unearthing these things is a drain on natural resources; we have a finite supply of the basic ingredients of modern material life; and potential substitutes rarely deliver equivalent quality (Graedel et al., 2015). The technology that relies on these materials is both a key index of modernity and its doom-laden consequence and portent – a bravura blend of reason and magic, of confidence and hubris. As befits a genealogy of ‘millenarianism, rationalism, and Christian redemption’ channelled through ‘monks, explorers, inventors, and... scientists’, technologies guarantee a present and a future that appear to be at once perfect and monstrous: life, liberty, happiness; death, enslavement, misery. Their ideological trappings offer transcendence via machinery rather than political-economic activity; but the machinery is always already obsolete and replaceable and has a saturnine side (Dinerstein, 2006, p. 569; Nye, 2006, p. 598). As Armand Mattelart explains, we are given ‘an eternal promise symbolizing a world that is better because it is united. From road and rail to information highways, this belief has been revived with each technological generation’ (2000, viii). Almost a century ago, Keynes suggested the near future would see a fifteen-hour work week, thanks to technology and compound interest (1963, pp. 358–73). But technologized societies always produce ‘unintended consequences’: good and bad, Pacific and violent, democratic and capitalist (Merton, 1936) through military, governmental, scholarly, and commercial desires and perversions. Whereas initial modernization by states was primarily concerned with establishing national power and accumulating and distributing wealth, developed modernity produces new, trans-territorial risks, beyond the scope of traditional governmental guarantees of collective security and affluence. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri graphically, and romantically, describe the subsequent exchange of knowledge through computers as ‘immaterial labour’ (2000, p. 286, 290–292). How right they were, in terms of propaganda, how wrong in terms of environmental and social relations. For example, a ‘new practice of piety’ emerges with each ‘new communications technology’ (Hunter, 1988, p. 220), in the contradictory, competitive form: love letters/critiques, fantasies/anxieties, and annunciations/denunciations remorselessly, repetitively accompany each media innovation
{"title":"Technology ideology","authors":"P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2242184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2242184","url":null,"abstract":"For the Global North and many in the South, contemporary ‘technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self’ (Biagioli, 2009, p. 818). Consider these numbers: in 1965, fewer ‘than 12 materials were in wide use: wood, brick, iron, copper, gold, silver, and a few plastics’. Today, there is a comprehensive ‘materials basis to modern society’. The computer chip that enabled us to type this editorial contains more than sixty. New materials are taken as signs of progress. But the notion of endless growth and progress fails to acknowledge that unearthing these things is a drain on natural resources; we have a finite supply of the basic ingredients of modern material life; and potential substitutes rarely deliver equivalent quality (Graedel et al., 2015). The technology that relies on these materials is both a key index of modernity and its doom-laden consequence and portent – a bravura blend of reason and magic, of confidence and hubris. As befits a genealogy of ‘millenarianism, rationalism, and Christian redemption’ channelled through ‘monks, explorers, inventors, and... scientists’, technologies guarantee a present and a future that appear to be at once perfect and monstrous: life, liberty, happiness; death, enslavement, misery. Their ideological trappings offer transcendence via machinery rather than political-economic activity; but the machinery is always already obsolete and replaceable and has a saturnine side (Dinerstein, 2006, p. 569; Nye, 2006, p. 598). As Armand Mattelart explains, we are given ‘an eternal promise symbolizing a world that is better because it is united. From road and rail to information highways, this belief has been revived with each technological generation’ (2000, viii). Almost a century ago, Keynes suggested the near future would see a fifteen-hour work week, thanks to technology and compound interest (1963, pp. 358–73). But technologized societies always produce ‘unintended consequences’: good and bad, Pacific and violent, democratic and capitalist (Merton, 1936) through military, governmental, scholarly, and commercial desires and perversions. Whereas initial modernization by states was primarily concerned with establishing national power and accumulating and distributing wealth, developed modernity produces new, trans-territorial risks, beyond the scope of traditional governmental guarantees of collective security and affluence. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri graphically, and romantically, describe the subsequent exchange of knowledge through computers as ‘immaterial labour’ (2000, p. 286, 290–292). How right they were, in terms of propaganda, how wrong in terms of environmental and social relations. For example, a ‘new practice of piety’ emerges with each ‘new communications technology’ (Hunter, 1988, p. 220), in the contradictory, competitive form: love letters/critiques, fantasies/anxieties, and annunciations/denunciations remorselessly, repetitively accompany each media innovation","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"127 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46575174","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208056
Hyacinth Udah
ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss findings of a qualitative research conducted among thirty participants on their lived experiences with anti-black racism and Othering, highlighting the lived reality of being becoming and being positioned as a racialized subject. Building on critical race, post-colonial, everyday racism, and Foucauldian theories, I link my analysis of participants’ experiences to Australia’s history and the legacy of past racist policies and immigration practices, making the case of black African vulnerability, exclusion, marginalization, and disadvantage. The findings provide empirical lens and frameworks to understand black African immigration and experiences in Australia and contribute to growing scholarship on the diasporic black African experiences. By focusing on black Africans, the article shows how skin color, alongside race, combines to reveal how the participants’ experience broadens our understanding of black Africans incorporation, identification, and inclusion in White settler colonial and dominated societies. In order to better improve outcomes for black Africans and transform society, I argue for tackling systemic anti-black racism and Othering practices by pursuing policies and practices that promote racial equity and create a more just and socially inclusive multicultural society, where all benefit and feel a sense of belonging.
{"title":"Anti-black racism and othering: an exploration of the lived experience of black Africans who live in Australia","authors":"Hyacinth Udah","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208056","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss findings of a qualitative research conducted among thirty participants on their lived experiences with anti-black racism and Othering, highlighting the lived reality of being becoming and being positioned as a racialized subject. Building on critical race, post-colonial, everyday racism, and Foucauldian theories, I link my analysis of participants’ experiences to Australia’s history and the legacy of past racist policies and immigration practices, making the case of black African vulnerability, exclusion, marginalization, and disadvantage. The findings provide empirical lens and frameworks to understand black African immigration and experiences in Australia and contribute to growing scholarship on the diasporic black African experiences. By focusing on black Africans, the article shows how skin color, alongside race, combines to reveal how the participants’ experience broadens our understanding of black Africans incorporation, identification, and inclusion in White settler colonial and dominated societies. In order to better improve outcomes for black Africans and transform society, I argue for tackling systemic anti-black racism and Othering practices by pursuing policies and practices that promote racial equity and create a more just and socially inclusive multicultural society, where all benefit and feel a sense of belonging.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"185 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46241636","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208069
Sitara Thobani
ABSTRACT This paper studies the religious and spatial politics of contemporary Hindu nationalism through an examination of the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, India, and the Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, UK. Whereas the Neasden Temple is celebrated as a diasporic accomplishment that testifies to British multiculturalism, the Ayodhya temple has been mired by controversy and marred in violence that has spanned decades. Despite these differences, both temples have acquired their specific symbolic, visual and material salience through a global circulation of ideas, goods, peoples and aesthetics. I trace this circulation to show how these two temples serve to concretize and embody a specific historical narrative of ‘the Hindu nation’ through their shared architectural forms, as well as through the shared processes of their material construction. My argument is that the symbolic, visual and material relationships these temples instantiate across multiple ‘national’ locations can be read as territorializing mythic formations of ‘the Hindu nation’ as a global entity. The transnational crossings that secure the local specificities entailed in the construction of these temples demonstrate how contemporary formations of ‘globality’ are produced by, and in turn become the conditions of possibility for, the transformation of contemporary Hindu nationalism into a global phenomenon.
{"title":"Mapping Hindutva’s coordinates: global formations of nationalist space","authors":"Sitara Thobani","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208069","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper studies the religious and spatial politics of contemporary Hindu nationalism through an examination of the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, India, and the Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, UK. Whereas the Neasden Temple is celebrated as a diasporic accomplishment that testifies to British multiculturalism, the Ayodhya temple has been mired by controversy and marred in violence that has spanned decades. Despite these differences, both temples have acquired their specific symbolic, visual and material salience through a global circulation of ideas, goods, peoples and aesthetics. I trace this circulation to show how these two temples serve to concretize and embody a specific historical narrative of ‘the Hindu nation’ through their shared architectural forms, as well as through the shared processes of their material construction. My argument is that the symbolic, visual and material relationships these temples instantiate across multiple ‘national’ locations can be read as territorializing mythic formations of ‘the Hindu nation’ as a global entity. The transnational crossings that secure the local specificities entailed in the construction of these temples demonstrate how contemporary formations of ‘globality’ are produced by, and in turn become the conditions of possibility for, the transformation of contemporary Hindu nationalism into a global phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"220 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45692425","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 : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2188183
Annalena Oppel
ABSTRACT This study explores the complex experiences of Black Tax in contemporary South Africa. It specifically seeks to understand whether Black Tax as a form of cultural re-interpretation of Ubuntu philosophy can be seen as a form of cultural emancipation or alienation. Black Tax is a colloquial term that describes experiences of family support in Southern Africa and thus in a highly unequal and formerly colonized context. By combining a theoretical lens of coloniality with omnivorousness, it draws out particular perspectives across the relationship between culture and power by drawing out three domains: ‘the traditional’, ‘the modern’, and ‘the navigation across’. The debate is informed by 26 essays written by South Africans on the subject matter. It highlights inequality as an internal conflict when navigating processes of emancipation and assimilation from African to Western values within the intimate space of family relationships. In that, it shows the lived reality and complexity when individuals negotiate their positionality, practice, and belonging. More broadly, it further proposes that contemporary political stances on capitalism and socialism remain colonial, thereby overlooking moral theories and philosophies from contexts of the global South.
{"title":"Black Tax and coloniality – re-interpretation, emancipation, and alienation","authors":"Annalena Oppel","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2188183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2188183","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study explores the complex experiences of Black Tax in contemporary South Africa. It specifically seeks to understand whether Black Tax as a form of cultural re-interpretation of Ubuntu philosophy can be seen as a form of cultural emancipation or alienation. Black Tax is a colloquial term that describes experiences of family support in Southern Africa and thus in a highly unequal and formerly colonized context. By combining a theoretical lens of coloniality with omnivorousness, it draws out particular perspectives across the relationship between culture and power by drawing out three domains: ‘the traditional’, ‘the modern’, and ‘the navigation across’. The debate is informed by 26 essays written by South Africans on the subject matter. It highlights inequality as an internal conflict when navigating processes of emancipation and assimilation from African to Western values within the intimate space of family relationships. In that, it shows the lived reality and complexity when individuals negotiate their positionality, practice, and belonging. More broadly, it further proposes that contemporary political stances on capitalism and socialism remain colonial, thereby overlooking moral theories and philosophies from contexts of the global South.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"29 1","pages":"44 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41881900","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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