Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2109618
Alborz Ghandehari
{"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":"28 1","pages":"527 - 543"},"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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2109617
Brad Bierdz
{"title":"The ever-diminishing liminal space of being: the totalizing subjectification of being","authors":"Brad Bierdz","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2109617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2109617","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Within this article, I make multiple interconnected arguments around the idea of the subject, the process of subjectivization, the essentializing nature of most of our research processes in academia, the socializing of existence, the loss of ‘nature,’ and the obliteration of what Homi Bhabha has so accurately described as liminal space: a space where humans may escape the socializing processes of performance and existence that is demanded in spaces that dictate social aggrandizement. Building upon Foucault’s, Butler's, and Bey's conceptions of the subject and the processes of subjectivization, I will argue, coming from a postanarchist vantage, that the social’s machinations of subjection and subjectivization have undergone various kinds of evolutions throughout the later part of the twentieth century and even more in the last twenty years. For instance, using Homi Bhabha’s theorization of liminal space, I will then point to the ever-decreasing liminal spaces that humanity has to be human with each other outside of the social and scientific realm of study, policy, and existence as such. Ultimately, I will argue that modern all-pervasive systems of identification, particularly those found within realms of liberalistic research (while providing a commendable service in aiding our experiences within the social apparatuses around us – explicating them in various ways) continue/support the functioning of such social apparatuses that they may superficially want to tear down but unintentionally and from a place of power and influence continue the subjectivization of entire populations/groups/figments/folks/communities within tightly controlled spaces of reality always already defined as the social.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"513 - 526"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48980761","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-06-16DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2088489
Rebecca Scott
{"title":"‘Somehow, I don't see it for myself:' white identity politics and antirelationality in the US right’s response to covid-19","authors":"Rebecca Scott","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2088489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2088489","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The novel virus known as COVID-19 emerged in late 2019 and became a global pandemic in early 2020. The supposed origin of the virus in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China led to the deployment of anti-Chinese discourse in the Trump administration’s treatment of the virus. The pre-eminent protective health response, masking, quickly became defined as un-American and as a threat to freedom among Trump supporters. Drawing on public conversations in print and social media in spring 2020, the connections are traced between the US right-wing reaction to the global pandemic and the deep structures of whiteness as an antirelational identity in racial capitalism. This US right’s reaction to COVID-19, specifically the identification of the virus as Chinese and mask refusal, makes up part of a wider effort to reassert whiteness as central to American national identity. This ill-conceived response to the pandemic reveals how whiteness works through antirelational identity politics: i.e. racism, the denial of interconnection, and the refusal of efforts toward collective well-being.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"497 - 512"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46782980","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2086392
P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller
{"title":"Celebrity activism","authors":"P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2086392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2086392","url":null,"abstract":"Identifying as an ‘activist’ is akin to saying ‘I am an artist’, in that it is a foundational identity. The unspoken assumption is that an activist must ‘live the issue’ and demonstrate remorseless dedication via a comprehensive ‘alignment between personal identity and collective identity’ (Bobel, 2007). It generally refers to volunteer and professional campaigners, theorists, and analysts who oppose any or all of racism, misogyny, bigotry, war, economic inequality, and climate change. From Los Angeles to London, hipsters and the not-so-hip alike introduce themselves as ‘activists’. Their means of financial support and socio-cultural theories and practices are generally left undisclosed by this term, but it is understood axiomatically that they are not nationalistic, militaristic, sexist, or skeptical about climate change, and participate in progressive social movements. Celebrities are rather different from such common-or-garden activists. They are famous for being famous; creatures of marketing and carefully-directed gossip – fabulations of the culture industries. Activism is generally a hobby and a branding for them, rather than a thoroughgoing self-definition. In Hollywood, for example, agents select causes with which their charges might associate, based on image and status. An ‘A-lister’ is connected to different issues from someone trying to break through or fallen from the heights; straight men may be articulated to different organizations from feminist women. What do we find if we look at the main talent agencies? UTA’s ‘Culture and Leadership Division’ is dedicated to ‘thought leadership’ and ‘social impact’ (https://www.unitedtalent.com/ news/darnell-strom-to-lead-uta-culture-and-leadership/), while the ‘Politics department’ at ICM (currently subject to a potential merger with CAA) ‘works to form the connective tissue between talent and the political landscape by cultivating and seeking out opportunities that support and amplify what our clients are most passionate about.’ This is because ‘Creativity has the power to spark change’ (https://www.icmpartners.com/icm-politics/). CAA promises ‘limitless opportunities’ to ‘thought leaders who shape popular culture’ (https://www.caa.com/ about-us) and can ‘ignite and champion efforts to improve the world around us... to create positive social change,’ with environmentalism on the list (https://www.caa.com/socialresponsibility). WME lays claim to ‘one of the largest cultural footprints on Earth,’ enabling it to ‘influence perception and frame collective understanding... to shape and promote a better world’ through ‘Cause Consulting’ (https://www.wmeagency.com/responsibility/). Throughout, service to talent of course remains a lodestone – in this instance ‘advising clients in their philanthropic, social responsibility, and cause-making endeavors’ (https:// www.caa.com/social-impact). These activities are denounced by reactionaries as the left’s ‘grip on Hollywood’ (Ng, 2021). But here’s the deal","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"293 - 295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59728685","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2063115
Kealeboga Aiseng
{"title":"The emergence of isiZulu in Skeem Saam (2011): sociolinguistics factors and the politics of the ‘loss of ethnolinguistic pluralism’ at the SABC 1","authors":"Kealeboga Aiseng","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2063115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2063115","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate how an ecological understanding of polyglossia is used in the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) television channel, SABC 1 to maintain and create ethnolinguistic dominance. Key arguments this study will make are: (1) polyglossia is a language ideology masquerading as ethnolinguistic pluralism, (2) there is a loss of ethnolinguistic pluralism in SABC 1 because of the polyglot culture and its transmissions, (3) isiZulu is emerging as a language and cultural flare of the channel. This paper concluded that isiZulu’s presence is rising in a soap initially meant to be a Sepedi show. And this has negative consequences for language equality in the SABC.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"479 - 496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46871798","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2056438
Jasbinder S. Nijjar
{"title":"Racial warfare and the biopolitics of policing","authors":"Jasbinder S. Nijjar","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2056438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2056438","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the years since the landmark Macpherson Report (1999) recognised London’s Metropolitan Police as ‘institutionally racist’, senior police officers and politicians in Britain have regularly reduced racism in policing to a problem of the past. This article examines police as a state institution where the politics of racism not only persist but do so coterminous with those of war. In doing so, I argue that policing is a biopolitical institution, that deploys racism as a formal strategy of war in vigorous defence of Euro-modernity. I show how the legacy of the Macpherson Report speaks to post-racial logic, which interacts with liberal myths about policing as non-martial to obscure the police’s racialised and militarised makeup. Challenging this hegemonic framing, I analyse how anti-black and anti-Muslim racisms share common ground, by producing racially coded populations as enemies of revered Euro-modern hallmarks like law and order and national security. I contend that this deeply embedded othering of race as anti-modern rationalises the police’s martial credentials, thus making militarised policing a racialised endeavour. As such, I illustrate how police regulates race through biopolitical strategies of securitisation, pre-emption and disposability, to reveal racial police warfare as foundational to everyday socio-political life in Britain.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"441 - 457"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45191040","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-03-30DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2057291
Farid Asey
{"title":"The quiet purge: a qualitative exploration of sidelining, denigrating and dehumanizing racialized public servants in British Columbia","authors":"Farid Asey","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2057291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2057291","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article presents a qualitative exploration of racialized public servants’ lived experiences with workplace racial discrimination in British Columbia, Canada. Specifically, introducing the concept of the quiet purge as the theoretical framework that is used to make sense of data, this study examines experiences of participants with racist pressures at work that had the effect of side-lining and pushing them out to the peripheries of publicly funded workplaces. After detailing a variety of strategies used to recruit 25 non-White participants who worked in the public service and took part in this study, findings would be presented as cultural denigration, accent-mediated dehumanization, emotional fatiguing and precarity-breeding work assignment. In analyzing these findings, this article will conceptualize these racist pressures as the quiet purge, or stratifying mechanisms that were designed to peripheralize and marginalize racialized participants in their respective workplaces. Subsequently, the article will briefly discuss my observations of intersectionality and conclude that, considering the fact that some of the experiences that were recounted by participants describe incidents that were glaringly, unambiguously and blatantly racist – struggles that are often seen as the hallmarks of earlier times – workplace racial discrimination in Canada is alive and requires urgent research and policy attention.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"458 - 478"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43609972","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-03-28DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2054794
Malvika Sharma
{"title":"In search of a religion: the making of Dalit-Identity in Jammu and Kashmir, India","authors":"Malvika Sharma","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2054794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2054794","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Dalits in Poonch, a borderland district situated along the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, belong to the multi-religious Pahari-ethnic-group. The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 affected the community and displaced them across the cease-fire line – the boundary that bisected the erstwhile Poonch fiefdom and has since then stood as the de facto disputed border. Their displacement to the Poonch on the Indian side added another layer of marginality to an already stigmatised community (also referred to as Harijans/Bhangis) as the processes of their rehabilitation failed to rise above the narratives of exclusion and discrimination in a post-partition scenario. For the Dalits of Poonch, the journey has been different from the Dalits who have been subjected to oppression and exclusion elsewhere in India. The ethnic-Dalits in quest of ‘a religious identity’ where they can exist as an equal, have belonged within three different religious folds. Through an ethnographic inquiry, the research while exploring the lived experiences of Dalits here also looks at keeping in mind the role of partition and religion in the evolution of identities here. Besides the changing inter-community interactions between the Dalit community and dominant-caste groups in Poonch, the research analysis layers of marginality by looking at how one exists as a Dalit, living between and with multiple identities: religious identities, the larger Pahari-ethnic-identity, both of them at crossroads with the identity of being a borderlander, dwelling in a zone of conflict and dispute.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"417 - 436"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46441552","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}
Social IdentitiesPub Date : 2022-03-25DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2022.2034613
F. Neto
{"title":"Roma minority youth across cultural contexts taking a positive approach to research, policy, and practice","authors":"F. Neto","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2022.2034613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2022.2034613","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This review regards the book Roma Minority Youth Across Cultural Contexts Taking a Positive Approach to Research, Policy, and Practice edited by Profs. Radosveta Dimitrova, David L. Sam and Laura Ferrer-Wreder published at Oxford University Press. The book advances relevant research, theory, policy and practice within the Positive Youth Development (PYD) applied to Roma groups in a global perspective. This volume is particularly suited for the readership of Social Identities as a leading international journal for analysis on the role of ethnic and minority relations, ethnicity, immigration. Roma are among one of the most stigmatized and marginalized ethnic minority groups over the world. Roma are the largest at-risk ethnic minority in Europe traditionally suffering from social intolerance, exclusion, and poverty in addition to structured marginalization, segregation and access to resources. The volume provides a valuable source of interdisciplinary expertise with novel research findings and insights for readers interested in immigration, race, ethnicity, intercultural relations, sociology, social policy, anthropology, political science, international relations, geography, history, social psychology and cultural studies","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":"28 1","pages":"437 - 438"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44295521","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}