Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 

About: Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Nationalism & National identity. It has an ISSN identifier of 1473-8481. Over the lifetime, 490 publications have been published receiving 3317 citations.

Sectarianism as Counter‐Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring

Abstract: Saudi Arabia is a wealthy oil producing country with a small population not exceeding twenty-five million, one third of which are foreigners. The authoritarian Al-Saud ruling family has controlled the country since 1932 (Al-Rasheed 2010). Historically, the Saudi rentier state used economic largesse in return for loyalty to the regime (Gause 1994; Luciani and Beblawi 1987). Yet the literature on the rentier state does not highlight other strategies that are often deployed to gain loyalty and force the population into submission. Sectarianism as a regime strategy is often ignored in the literature on the rentier state especially in countries where there is religious diversity. In response to the Arab Spring, sectarianism became a Saudi pre-emptive counter-revolutionary strategy that exaggerates religious difference and hatred and prevents the development of national non-sectarian politics. Through religious discourse and practices, sectarianism in the Saudi context involves not only politicising religious differences, but also creating a rift between the majority Sunnis and the Shia minority. At the political level, the rift means that Sunnis and Shia are unable to create joint platforms for political mobilisation. Neither essentialist arguments about the resilience of sects nor historical references to seventh-century Sunni–Shia battles over the Caliphate (Nasr 2007) can explain the persistence of antagonism and lack of common political platforms among Sunnis and Shia in a country like Saudi Arabia. Sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shia can never be understood without taking into account the role played by an agency much more powerful than the sects themselves, namely the authoritarian regime. In addition to massive oil rents, the Saudi regime has at its disposal a potent religious ideology, commonly known as Wahhabism, that is renowned for its historical rejection of the Shia as a legitimate Islamic community (Steinberg 2001).

‘Two Ukraines’ Reconsidered: The End of Ukrainian Ambivalence?

Abstract: The 2014 Russo-Ukrainian war, euphemistically called the ‘Ukraine crisis’, has largely confirmed, on certain accounts, a dramatic split of the country and people's loyalties between the proverbial ‘East’ and ‘West’, between the ‘Eurasian’ and ‘European’ ways of development epitomized by Russia and the European Union. By other accounts, however, it has proved that the Ukrainian nation is much more united than many experts and policymakers expected, and that the public support for the Russian invasion, beyond the occupied regions of Donbas and Crimea, is close to nil. This article does not deny that Ukraine is divided in many respects but argues that the main – and indeed the only important – divide is not between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, or Russophones and Ukrainophones, or the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. The main fault line is ideological – between two different types of Ukrainian identity: non/anti-Soviet and post/neo-Soviet, ‘European’ and ‘East Slavonic’. All other factors, such as ethnicity, language, region, income, education, or age, correlate to a different degree with the main one. However divisive those factors might be, the external threat to the nation makes them largely irrelevant, bringing instead to the fore the crucial issue of values epitomized in two different types of Ukrainian identity.

A Tale of Two Crises: Migration and Terrorism after the Paris Attacks

Abstract: This paper argues that the figure of the migrant has come to be seen as a potential terrorist in the West, under the condition of a double, but completely opposed, set of crises internal to the nation-state. The refugee crisis in Europe can no longer be understood as separate from the crisis of terrorism after the Paris attacks on 13 November 2015. In fact, the two crises were never really separate in the nationalist imaginary to begin with. The difference is that, with such a quick shift of attention between crises, we now see what was only implicit in the European response to the Syrian refugees has now become explicit in the response to the tragic attacks in Paris: that migration is understood to be a form of barbarian warfare that threatens the European Union.

Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

Abstract: The article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.