{"title":"Redrawing symbolic boundaries after Maidan: identity strategies among Russian-speaking Ukrainians","authors":"Olena Nedozhogina","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2019.1642862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2019.1642862","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the context of conflict between Ukraine and Russia and increasing polarisation, symbolic boundaries between the two spaces are shifting. Here I investigated the themes and strategies of border-construction between the concepts of ‘Ukrainianness’ and ‘Russianness’ through everyday acts of communication of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The article utilises materials of 14 in-depth interviews with Russian speakers from various Ukrainian regions (2018). The results show that the polarisation and hardening of borders between Ukraine and Russia prompted two responses: acceptance vs. negotiation/denial. The underlying tension behind opposing border-narratives was caused by the competition between ethnic and civic elements for the dominance in the national identity discourse.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"277 - 295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2019.1642862","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43508319","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}
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"A. Makarychev, Triin Vihalemm","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2020.1858773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1858773","url":null,"abstract":"Political analysis is replete with multiple vindications of the importance of informationladen dimension to the conflictual interactions between Russia and its European neighbors. However, academic conceptualizations vary in content and look more diverse. Some scholars prefer to categorize the issue under consideration as part of the fake news phenomenon (Tandoc et al., 2018) and deploy it in a wider scholarly debate on post-truth society. Others are more sympathetic with using the concept of hybrid warfare and the ensuing weaponization of information (Dash, 2019), which was instrumental in the appearance of a new field of study at the intersection of Russia’s compatriot policy and security studies (Pigman, 2019). A more neutral concept of information disorder (Wardle, 2018) includes deliberate spread of disinformation, intentionally inaccurate posts and comments, and manufactured forms of online solidarity. Anyhow, regardless of varied academic qualifications, the Habermasian ideal of communicative power seemed to turn into its opposite – miscommunication, disinformation, propaganda, and various manipulative techniques. Despite the lack of consensual approaches, the ongoing debate raises a number of important questions – for example, ‘whether the Internet can be home to a new form of political realm?’ (Smith, 2015, p. 241). Again, answers vary. Some scholars point to geopolitics as a relevant academic frame for discussing the proliferation of biased and fabricated information (Barthel & Bürkner, 2019) that might ‘shake the legitimacy of the neoliberal international order’ (Gerbaudo, 2018, p. 746). Others accentuate the biopolitical facets of the debate with their ‘anti-political thrust meant to lock people into their bodies as discriminatory and classificatory identities, thus disqualifying people from the political realm on account of the body’ (Smith, 2015, p. 250). Another key element of de-politicization is a phenomenon dubbed neutrollization, ‘a radical intervention to preserve “politics without telos”’, bent on a strategy of ‘producing meaninglessness’ and thus ‘precluding the very possibility of meaning’, and ‘eroding willingness to contribute to online political debate’ (Kurowska & Reshetnikov, 2018, p. 346). In particular, this approach can be used as an explanatory factor for the global phenomenon of populism. However, the academic narratives in this realm still suffer from excessive overgeneralization, which is particularly unfortunate when it comes to discussing measures of countering Russian politics of disinformation. In fact, Russia’s subjectivity in this political sphere is quite lucid and well documented (Orttung & Nelson, 2018; Mejias & Vokuev, 2017; Pomerantsev, 2015); disagreements concern only modalities of interference – direct (Kremlin-controlled) or indirect (outsourced to proxies), mass-scale with lavish centralized","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"217 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2020.1858773","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42681701","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}
{"title":"A very un-English predicament: ‘The White Slave Traffic’ and the construction of national identity in the suffragist and socialist movements’ coverage of the 1912 Criminal Law Amendment Bill","authors":"Rachael Attwood","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2021.1895096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2021.1895096","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The measure promoted as England's first law against sex trafficking, the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, journeyed through Parliament in 1912. Amid mounting extra-parliamentary protest over votes for women, workers' rights, and Home Rule for Ireland, the country's suffrage and socialist groups chose to engage with the somewhat ancillary Bill and the issue of trafficking (or ‘white slavery' as it was popularly known) through the powerful medium of their periodicals. They did so largely because they saw the value to their wider campaigns of using trafficking - a phenomenon often cast by reformers as involving the sexual exploitation of working-class women - to forge connections (or highlight disjunctures) between the suffragist and socialist movements. Ideas of race, national identity, and empire attached to configurations of ‘slavery' were central to their rhetoric, and to the links the groups made between trafficking and the political emancipation they sought. These ideas give a valuable insight into influential representations of trafficking in 1912 and the campaign against ‘white slavery' during what was a fundamental, transnational moment in the history of trafficking. They also illuminate suffragist and socialist rhetoric of the day, and the conflicting ideas of ‘Englishness’ therein. This article strives to unlock some of these insights.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"24 1","pages":"217 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2021.1895096","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60006942","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}
Anna-Maria Plautz, Leonie Hasenauer, I. Jelen, Peter Čede, Ernst Steinicke
{"title":"Symbolic ethnicity, cultural and linguistic landscape: remnants of ‘Little Europe’ in the Valcanale (Northeast Italy)","authors":"Anna-Maria Plautz, Leonie Hasenauer, I. Jelen, Peter Čede, Ernst Steinicke","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2021.1894109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2021.1894109","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigates ‘Little Europe’, the rural, mountainous Italian region of the quadrilingual Valcanale, bordering Austria and Slovenia. The combined analysis of cultural landscape, linguistic landscape (LL) and symbolic ethnicity provides a new concept to examine multilingual regions. In this once Austrian valley, where German was the official language before WWI, Italian now dominates over minority languages, as exemplified by official signs. However, elements of the area's cultural and linguistic landscape reveal unexpected linguistic practices and visible, locatable artefacts of the Valcanale's ethnolinguistic heritage, which we assume to play a key role in the preservation of symbolic ethnicity.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"24 1","pages":"121 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2021.1894109","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41321704","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}
{"title":"The political choices and outlooks of the Estonian Swedish national minority, 1917–1920","authors":"M. Kuldkepp","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2021.1873930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873930","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Estonian Swedish national awakening did not start until the turn of the twentieth century, but by the 1917 Russian February Revolution, it was well underway. This article studies Estonian Swedish political choices and outlooks in the period that followed: 1917–1923. As Estonia went through tumultuous political changes, the leadership of the Swedish minority faced the task of formulating and carrying out a political strategy that would safeguard their national interests. This article discusses how they did it, while also asking why the strength and influence of Estonian Swedish politics soon began to decline despite earlier remarkable successes.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"409 - 431"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873930","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47571609","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}
{"title":"The Polish-Ukrainian Bulletin in Piłsudski’s Poland — or, how to create space for dialogue and build trust in an authoritarian state","authors":"Stephan Stach","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2020.1830266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1830266","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historical works on Polish-Ukrainian relations in the interwar period mostly concern conflict history. The Polish-Ukrainian Bulletin, the subject of this article, was published from 1932 with the intention of contributing to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. In Poland, under the authoritarian regime of Józef Piłsudski, the journal created a space for a relatively free debate on common questions and helped to build mutual trust across national divisions. Around the journal, networks of Polish and Ukrainian political and social activists emerged. These networks played a crucial role in the conclusion of the Polish-Ukrainian Normalization Agreement of 1935.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"369 - 389"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2020.1830266","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47820798","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}
{"title":"‘Faith and work for King and Country!’ Nationalization and covert Romanianization through the youth organization Straja Țării (1934–1940)","authors":"A. Filipovici","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2020.1813698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1813698","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigates the youth organization Straja Țării, created by King Carol II of Romania in the second interwar decade. The research will consider two levels of analyses: the organizational and ideological dimensions of Straja Țării within the national project of unification (1); the relation of the Jewish youth to Straja Țării (2). Although Straja included youngsters from ages 7 to 18, I will focus mainly on adolescents (above the age of 14), because they were a distinct instrumental group for radical political movements. The paper’s main argument is that by being packed in the formula of nation-building and strengthening, Straja Țării was rather an ineffective organization which served as a tool to consolidate the king’s power at both the internal and external level. In relation to ethnic minorities, Straja oscillated between recklessness, assimilation, and rejection, lacking any mechanism for integrating non-Romanians.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"349 - 367"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2020.1813698","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45648770","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}
{"title":"Rejection, accommodation, disillusion: the responses of Magyar intellectuals to the unification of Transylvania with Romania","authors":"G. Motta","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2021.1873929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873929","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study examines the role of minority identity strategies in Transylvania within the context of competing nationalisms. The case of Magyar communities perfectly illustrates the great complexity of many contested regions after WWI. On the one hand, a substantial number of Transylvanian Hungarians maintained a solid connection with the official revisionist aims of the Hungarian government and showed a fierce and violent refusal to accept the end of historical Hungary. On the other, a minority of Transylvanian Hungarians tried to assume a different perspective of the past and develop new strategies of integration, focusing on the multicultural legacy of Transylvania in order to renew the cultural milieu of the community and offer new responses to changed conditions. This article conducts a historical examination of these responses, analyzing the interwar cultural experience of Magyar intellectuals in relation to categories such as minority rights, regionalism, or national indifference. It concludes that it was not exactly indifference that characterized the fight for the defence of minority rights or ideas such as Transylvanism. This, it is also argued, failed in providing an alternative representation of Transylvanian history and multiculturalism, and was thus unable to break the monopoly of nationalist imaginary.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"391 - 407"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873929","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49516356","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}
{"title":"Formulating Germanness in the Banat: ‘Minority making’ among the Swabians from Dualist Hungary to interwar Romania","authors":"C. Wendt","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2020.1810651","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1810651","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the shaping of a dominant discourse on Germanness among the Banat Swabians, a German-speaking minority community, over a long period of upheaval. Particularly following WWI, debates over what it meant to be German gained significance as a means of political contestation and a way of mobilizing the Swabian community vis-à-vis the Romanian state. While appeals to belonging within a broader German nation were popularized, the symbols developed to convey this affiliation showed particular local and regional understandings of Banat Swabian Germanness—a trend that only began to change in the 1930s, as these symbols were appropriated by new challengers.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"325 - 347"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2020.1810651","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42032910","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}
{"title":"Nation-building and mass schooling of ethnic minorities on the Romanian and Soviet peripheries (1918–1940): a comparative study of Bessarabia and Transnistria","authors":"Petru Negură","doi":"10.1080/14608944.2021.1873931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873931","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The paper examines the local responses to mass schooling in the rural areas of Romanian Bessarabia and Soviet Transnistria (1918–1940). Both Romania and the USSR aimed at deeply transforming the local populations. Romania implemented schooling to assimilate ethnic minorities within the model of a nationalizing state, while the USSR adopted an inconsistent nationalizing policy, determinedly imposing compulsory education for all children. The resistance to schooling among ethnic minorities was less intense in Transnistria than in Bessarabia. In both cases, the state authorities abandoned, in the late 1930s, the schooling in minority languages for the benefit of the titular nationalities. Trial registration: Netherlands National Trial Register identifier: ntr-.","PeriodicalId":45917,"journal":{"name":"NATIONAL IDENTITIES","volume":"23 1","pages":"433 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14608944.2021.1873931","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45066570","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}