Religious nationalists and women's activists have transformed India over the past century. They debated the idea of India under colonial rule, shaped the constitutional structure of Indian democracy, and questioned the legitimacy of the postcolonial consensus, as they politicized one dimension of identity. Using a historical comparative approach, the book argues that external events, activist agency in strategizing, and the political economy of transnational networks explain the relative success and failure of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women's movement rather than the ideological claims each movement makes. By focusing on how particular activist strategies lead to increased levels of public support, it shows how it is these strategies rather than the ideologies of Hindutva and feminism that mobilize people. Both of these social movements have had decades of great power and influence, and decades of relative irrelevance, and both challenge postcolonial India's secular settlement - its division of public and private. The book goes on to highlight new insights into the inner dynamics of each movement by showing how the same strategies - grassroots education, electoral mobilization, media management, donor cultivation - lead to similarly positive results. Bringing together the study of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women's movement, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Religion, Gender Studies, and South Asian Politics.

The growing debate over British national identity, and the place of "Englishness" within it, raises crucial questions about multiculturalism, postimperial culture and identity, and the past and future histories of globalization. However, discussions of Englishness have too often been limited by insular conceptions of national literature, culture, and history, which serve to erase or marginalize the colonial and postcolonial locations in which British national identity has been articulated. This volume breaks new ground by drawing together a range of disciplinary approaches in order to resituate the relationship between British national identity and Englishness within a global framework. Ranging from the literature and history of empire to analyses of contemporary culture, postcolonial writing, political rhetoric, and postimperial memory after 9/11, this collection demonstrates that far from being parochial or self-involved, the question of Englishness offers an important avenue for thinking about the politics of national identity in our postcolonial and globalized world.

The book explores the politics of the most important Irish nationalist leader of his generation, and one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century Ireland: the Nobel Peace Prize winner, John Hume. Given his central role in the reformulation of Irish nationalist ideology, and the vital part which he played in drawing violent republicanism into democratic politics, the book shows Hume to be one of the chief architects of the Northern Ireland peace process, and a key figure in the making of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. At the same time, it considers Hume's failure in what he stated to be his foremost political objective: the conciliation of the two communities in Northern Ireland. The book is essential reading for specialists on Irish history and politics, but will also be of interest to academics and practitioners working in other regions of political and ethnic conflict. In addition, it will appeal to readers seeking to understand the crucial role played by Hume modernising Irish nationalist thinking, and bringing peace to Northern Ireland. -- .

Since the end of the Cold War many new countries have been created, and several new wars have broken out, resulting in new forms of politics and government for which Cold War paradigms are inadequate. Using extensive exhibits, this book provides a comparative framework for understanding governance in today's world. The author selects 100 countries as worthy of greater investigation, highlighting 50 of them as prone to ethnic-based problems and 33 as beset by violent domestic conflict, and provides a comparative political analysis of their governing structures.

The 100 countries covered are spread equitably across five geographical zones--Europe, Islamic Zone, Africa, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Dividing the 100 selected states into polity types, the author studies five civilian polities encompassing 50 states and five military polities embracing another 50 states. The volume relates polity types to the ethnic and military challenges facing them and analyzes the phenomena of nationalism and militarism. In addition to numerous tables and other exhibits, the author uses Formats of Analysis for the orderly display of comparative data on states of particular polity types. This study provides the student of comparative politics with analytic and conceptual tools to understand governance in the post-Cold War world. The work is a worthy addition to the literature of comparative political analysis.

A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance Over the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large. Modi managed to seduce a substantial number of citizens by promising them development and polarizing the electorate along ethno-religious lines. Both facets of this national-populism found expression in a highly personalized political style as Modi related directly to the voters through all kinds of channels of communication in order to saturate the public space. Drawing on original interviews conducted across India, Christophe Jaffrelot shows how Modi's government has moved India toward a new form of democracy, an ethnic democracy that equates the majoritarian community with the nation and relegates Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens who are harassed by vigilante groups. He discusses how the promotion of Hindu nationalism has resulted in attacks against secularists, intellectuals, universities, and NGOs. Jaffrelot explains how the political system of India has acquired authoritarian features for other reasons, too. Eager to govern not only in New Delhi, but also in the states, the government has centralized power at the expense of federalism and undermined institutions that were part of the checks and balances, including India's Supreme Court. Modi's India is a sobering account of how a once-vibrant democracy can go wrong when a government backed by popular consent suppresses dissent while growing increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious minorities.

This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization.

The Baltic States examines the struggles of the Baltic peoples for national self-determination. It is divided into two parts. Part one explores their nationalist awakening, how the realization of national self-determination during the inter-war years of independent statehood manifested itself, and the impact that fifty years of subsequent incorporation into the Soviet Union has had on Baltic politics and national cultures. Part two examines the nationalist reawakening in the late 1980s, the re-establishment of Baltic national self-governance in 1990-91 and the problems that these countries now face as sovereign entities.

Provides conceptual insights that put the reader in a position to come to grips intellectually with the complex weave of Chinese nationalist sentiment today and in the future.

Advancing a Different Modernism analyzes a long-ignored but formative aspect of modern architecture and art. By examining selective buildings by the Catalan architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner (1850-1923) and by the Slovenian designer Joze Plecnik (1872-1957), the book reveals the fundamental political and ideological conservatism that helped shape modernism's history and purpose. This study thus revises the dominant view of modernism as a union of progressive forms and progressive politics. Instead, this innovative volume promotes a nuanced and critical consideration of how architecture was creatively employed to advance radically new forms and methods, while simultaneously consolidating an essentially conservative nationalist self-image.

Presenting a study of regime transition, political transformation, and the challenges that faced the post-Communist republics of Central Asia on independence, this book focuses on the process of transition in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the obstacles that these newly-independent states are facing in the post-Communist period. The book analyses how in the early stages of their independence, the governments of Central Asia declared that they would build democratic states, but that in practice, they demonstrated that they are more inclined towards authoritarianism. With the declaration of independence, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, like many other former Soviet national republics, were faced with the issues of nationalism, ethnicity, identity and territorial delimitation. This book looks at how the discourse of patrimonial nationalism in post-Communist Tajikistan and Uzbekistan has been the elites' strategy to address all these issues: to maintain the stateness of their respective countries; to preserve the unity of their nation; to fill the ideological void of post-Communism; to prevent the rise of Islam; and to legitimize their authoritarian practice. Arguing against the claim that the Central Asian states have undergone divergent paths of transition, the book discusses how they are in fact all authoritarian, although exhibiting different degrees of authoritarianism. This book provides a useful contribution to studies on Central Asian Politics and International Relations.

"Only unity saves the Serbs" is the famous call for unity in the Serb nationalist doctrine. But even though this doctrine was ideologically adhered to by most of the Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia, disunity characterized Serb politics during the Yugoslav disintegration and war. Nationalism was contested and nationalist claims to homogeneity did not reflect the reality of Serb politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Serb politics and challenges widespread assumptions regarding the Yugoslav conflict and war. It finds that although Slobodan Milosevic played a highly significant role, he was not always able to control the local Serb leaders. Moreover, it adds to the emerging evidence of the lack of importance of popular attitudes; hardline dominance was generally based on the control of economic and coercive resources rather than on elites successfully "playing the ethnic card." It moves beyond an assumption of automatic ethnic outbidding and thus contributes toward a better understanding of intra-ethnic rivalry in other cases such as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, Nagorno-Karabakh and Rwanda.

Since the late 1980s, many East Asian countries have become more multicultural, a process marked by increased democracy and pluralism despite the continuing influence of nationalism, which has forced these countries in the region to re-envision their nations. Many such countries have had to reconsider their constitutional make-up, their terms of citizenship and the ideal of social harmony. This has resulted in new immigration and border-control policies and the revisiting of laws regarding labor policies, sociopolitical discrimination, and socioeconomic welfare. This book explores new perspectives, concepts, and theories that are socially relevant, culturally suitable, and normatively attractive in the East Asia context. It not only outlines the particular experiences of nation, citizenship, and nationalism in East Asian countries but also places them within the wider theoretical context. The contributors look at how nationalism under the force of multiculturalism, or vice versa, affects East Asian societies including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong differently. The key themes are: Democracy and equality; Confucianism's relationship with nationalism, cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism; China's use of its political institutions to initiate and sustain nationalism; the impact of globalization on nationalism in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan; the role of democracy in reinvigorating indigenous cultures in Taiwan.

Since 2010 Greece has been experiencing the longest period of austerity and economic downturn in its recent history. Economic changes may be happening more rapidly and be more visible than the cultural effects of the crisis which are likely to take longer to become visible, however in recent times, both at home and abroad, the Greek arts scene has been discussed mainly in terms of the crisis. While there is no shortage of accounts of Greece's economic crisis by financial and political analysts, the cultural impact of austerity has yet to be properly addressed. This book analyses hitherto uncharted cultural aspects of the Greek economic crisis by exploring the connections between austerity and culture. Covering literary, artistic and visual representations of the crisis, it includes a range of chapters focusing on different aspects of the cultural politics of austerity such as the uses of history and archaeology, the brain drain and the Greek diaspora, Greek cinema, museums, music festivals, street art and literature as well as manifestations of how the crisis has led Greeks to rethink or question cultural discourses and conceptions of identity.

What shapes the cultural, political and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe's periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region's youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vojvodina, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities.

Raffaella A. Del Sarto examines the creation of Israel's neo-revisionist consensus about security threats and regional order, which took hold of Israeli politics and society after 2000 and persists today. The failed Oslo peace process and the trauma of the Second Palestinian Intifada triggered this shift to the right; conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah and the inflammatory rhetoric of Iranian President Ahmadinejad additionally contributed to the creation of a general sense of being under siege. While Israel faces real security threats, Israeli governments have engaged in the politics of insecurity, promoting and amplifying a sense of besiegement. Lively political debate has been replaced by a general acceptance of the no-compromise approach to security and the Palestinians. The neo-revisionist right, represented by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud, has turned Israel away from the peace process and pushes maximalist territorial ambitions. But they have failed to offer a vision for an end to conflict, and there has been little debate about whether or not the hardline policies toward the region are counterproductive. Del Sarto explains this disappearance of dissent and examines the costs of Israel's policies. She concludes that Israel's feeling of being under siege has become entrenched, a two-state solution with the Palestinians is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future, and Israel's international isolation is likely to increase. Del Sarto's analysis of this tense political situation will interest scholars and students of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Middle East Studies, and International Relations.

Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism examines how real and literary islands have helped to shape the idea of the nation in a postcolonial world. Through an analysis of a variety of texts ranging from literature to prison correspondence to tourist questionnaires it exposes the ways in which nationalism relies on fictions of insularity and intactness, which the island and island tourism appear to provide. The island space seems to offer the ideal replica of the nation, and tourist practices promise the liberation of leisure, the gaze, and mobility. However, the very reliance on the constantly shifting and eroding island form exposes an anxiety about boundaries and limits on the part of the postcolonial nation. In appropriating island tourism, the new nation tends to recapitulate the failures and crises of the colonial nation before it. Starting with the first literary tourist, Robinson Crusoe, Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism goes on to show how authors such as JM Coetzee, Romesh Gunesekera, and Julian Barnes have explored the outlines and implications of islandness. It argues that each text expresses a profound discomfort with national form by undoing the form of the island through a variety of narrative strategies and rhetorical manoeuvres. By throwing the category of the island into crisis, these texts let uncertainties about the postcolonial nation and its violent practices emerge as doubt in the narratives themselves. Finally, in its selection of texts that shuttle between South Africa, Great Britain, and Sri Lanka, equalizing the former colonial metropole and its outposts, it offers an alternative disciplinary mapping of current postcolonial writing.

This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of 'making the nation' by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of 'postcolonial citizenship'. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups 'more national' and others less so - and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the 'West' and its 'others'. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.

In Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam, Lahouari Addi attempts to assess the history and political legacy of radical Arab nationalism to show that it contained the seeds of its own destruction. While the revolutionary regimes promised economic and social development and sought the unity of Arab nations, they did not account for social transformations, such as freedom of speech, that would eventually lead to their decline. But while radical Arab nationalism fell apart, authoritarian populism did not disappear. Today it is expressed by political Islam that aims to achieve the kind of social justice radical Arab nationalism once promised. Addi creatively links the past and present while also raising questions about the future of Arab countries. Is political Islam the heir of radical Arab nationalism? If political Islam succeeds, will it face the same challenges faced by radical Arab nationalism? Will it be able to implement modernity? The future of Arab countries, Addi writes, depends on this crucial issue. It is published in collaboration with Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.

Ideas of Englishness, and of the English nation, have become a matter of renewed interest in recent years as a result of threats to the integrity of the United Kingdom and the perceived rise of that unusual thing, English nationalism. Interrogating the idea of an English nation, and of how that might compare with other concepts of nationhood, this book enquires into the origins of English national identity, partly by questioning the assumption of its long-standing existence. It investigates the role of the British empire - the largest empire in world history - in the creation of English and British identities, and the results of its disappearance. Considering the 'myths of the English' - the ideas and images that the English and others have constructed about their history and their sense of themselves as a people - the distinctiveness of English social thought (in comparison with that of other nations), the relationship between English and British identity and the relationship of Englishness to Europe, this wide-ranging, comparative and historical approach to understanding the particular nature of Englishness and English national identity, will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural studies and history with interests in English and British national identity and debates about England's future place in the United Kingdom.

Under Stalin's totalitarian leadership of the USSR, Soviet national identities with historical narratives were constructed. These constructions envisaged how nationalities should see their imaginary common past, and millions of people defined themselves according to them. This book explains how and by whom these national histories were constructed and focuses on the crucial episode in the construction of national identities of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan from 1936 and 1945. A unique comparative study of three different case studies, this book reveals different aims and methods of nation construction, despite the existence of one-party rule and a single overarching official ideology. The study is based on work in the often overlooked archives in the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. By looking at different examples within the Soviet context, the author contributes to and often challenges current scholarship on Soviet nationality policies and Stalinist nation-building projects. He also brings a new viewpoint to the debate on whether the Soviet period was a project of developmentalist modernization or merely a renewed 'Russian empire'. The book concludes that the local agents in the countries concerned had a sincere belief in socialism-especially as a project of modernism and development-and, at the same time, were strongly attached to their national identities. Claiming that local communist party officials and historians played a leading role in the construction of national narratives, this book will be of interest to historians and political scientists interested in the history of the Soviet Union and contemporary Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Ethno-national conflict is one of the central issues of modern politics. Despite the emergence of approaches to managing it, from nation-building to territorial autonomy, in recent years, the application of these approaches has been uneven. Old conflicts persist and new ones continually emerge. The authors of this book contend that what is needed to drive forward the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management is a more nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism. The book addresses this issue by linking theories of ethnicity and nationalism to theories of conflict management. Its contributors share a common goal of demonstrating that a nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism can beneficially inform conflict management in theory and practice. To do so, they analyse both hot and cold conflict zones, as well as cases that have been important in the development of the most widely-used conflict management models. The book is aimed at those interested in the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management as well as the study of ethnicity and nationalism. It is well-suited for undergraduate and advanced research students, experts and policy-makers. This book was originally published as a special issue of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.

This interdisciplinary collection considers public and popular history within a global framework, seeking to understand considerations of local, domestic histories and the ways they interact with broader discourses. Grounded in particular local and national situations, the book addresses the issues associated with popular history in a globalised cultural world, such as: how the study of popular history might work in the future; new ways in which the terms 'popular' and 'public' might inform one another and nuance scholarship; transnational, intercultural models of 'pastness'; cultural translatability; and the demand for high-quality work on new technologies and history. A wide range of international contributors consider a broad selection of locale and media, from American television and Canadian heritage to the representation of history in contemporary Chinese culture. They consider the way in which the study of public or popular texts invoke multiple historiographies, and demonstrate our need to think about public and popular aspects of the past in new, 'emerging' locales, such as China, Eastern Europe and South America. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Rethinking History.

How a controversial biblical tale of conquest and genocide became a founding story of modern Israel No biblical text has been more central to the politics of modern Israel than the book of Joshua. Named after a military leader who became the successor to Moses, it depicts the march of the ancient Israelites into Canaan, describing how they subjugated and massacred the indigenous peoples. The Joshua Generation examines the book's centrality to the Israeli occupation today, revealing why nationalist longing and social reality are tragically out of sync in the Promised Land. Though the book of Joshua was largely ignored and reviled by diaspora Jews, the leaders of modern Israel have invoked it to promote national cohesion. Critics of occupation, meanwhile, have denounced it as a book that celebrates genocide. Rachel Havrelock looks at the composition of Joshua, showing how it reflected the fractious nature of ancient Israelite society and a desire to unify the populace under a strong monarchy. She describes how David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, convened a study group at his home in the late 1950s, where generals, politicians, and professors reformulated the story of Israel's founding in the language of Joshua. Havrelock traces how Ben-Gurion used a brutal tale of conquest to unite an immigrant population of Jews of different ethnicities and backgrounds, casting modern Israelis and Palestinians as latter-day Israelites and Canaanites. Providing an alternative reading of Joshua, The Joshua Generation finds evidence of a decentralized society composed of tribes, clans, and woman-run households, one with relevance to today when diverse peoples share the dwindling resources of a scarred land.

This book explores the life and poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) in the context of European national literature between the French Revolution and World War I, showing how he helped create a modern Hebrew national culture, spurring the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The author begins with Bialik’s background in the Tsarist Empire, contextualizing Jewish powerlessness in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. As European anti-Semitism grew, Bialik emerged at the vanguard of a modern Hebrew national movement, building on ancient biblical and rabbinic tradition and speaking to Jewish concerns in neo-prophetic poems, love poems, poems for children, and folk poems. This book makes accessible a broad but representative selection of Bialik’s poetry in translation. Alongside this, a variety of national poets are considered from across Europe, including Solomos in Greece, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Njegoš in Serbia, Petőfi in Hungary, and Yeats in Ireland. Aberbach argues that Bialik as Jewish national poet cannot be understood except in the dual context of ancient Jewish nationalism and modern European nationalism, both political and cultural. Written in clear and accessible prose, this book will interest those studying modern European nationalism, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, and anti-Semitism.

Bulmer Hobson (1883-1969) abandoned the pacifism of his Ulster Quaker roots to become a key leader in the Irish nationalist movement in the period leading up to the 1916 Easter Rising. Sidelined at a critical time and maligned by some republican colleagues, Hobson has not been the subject of a published study until now. This book outlines and assesses Hobson's nationalist career in the period 1900-16, exploring his contributions to the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Sinn Fein movement, Na Fianna Eireann and the Irish Volunteers. It also examines his lesser-known activities as a publisher, civil servant and economic propagandist in the years after the Rising. As the only study on Bulmer Hobson this book will be of interest to historians and political scientists specializing in twentieth-century Ireland and the Irish revolution, Irish Studies scholars, and students of these disciplines. It will also appeal to the general reader with an interest in the history of the Irish revolution.