Showing papers on "Nation-building published in 2002"

Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of

Abstract: The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955-1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation- building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporate and academic practices inside universities, and the need for new strategies in a globalising environment, in which national policies are relativised but remain important. The crisis is exacerbated by Australia's location on the American 'periphery', associated with global vulnerability and fluctuating economic and cultural dependence. In response the primary strategy should not be to imitate American universities, a course of action which is likely to deliver modest returns, but to strengthen the academic identity and place-based identity of Australian institutions, enabling them to make a distinctive contribution to global higher education underpinned by a renewed partnership between nation and university.

Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of Australia

Abstract: The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955–1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation-building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporateand academic practices inside universities, andthe need for new strategies in a globalisingenvironment, in which national policies arerelativised but remain important. The crisis isexacerbated by Australia's location on theAmerican `periphery', associated with globalvulnerability and fluctuating economic andcultural dependence. In response the primarystrategy should not be to imitate Americanuniversities, a course of action which islikely to deliver modest returns, but tostrengthen the academic identity andplace-based identity of Australianinstitutions, enabling them to make adistinctive contribution to global highereducation underpinned by a renewed partnershipbetween nation and university.

History, memory and nation building in the post-Soviet colonial space

Abstract: The disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991 led to the de-colonization of the world’s last remaining empire. Taking this into account, this article seeks to argue two points. Firstly, many of the imperial policies imposed by the imperial core in the Soviet empire were similar in nature to those imposed by imperial powers in Ireland, Africa, and Asia. Secondly, the nation and state building policies of the postSoviet colonial states are therefore similar to those adopted in many other postcolonial states because they also seek to remove some—or all—of the inherited colonial legacies. A central aspect of overcoming this legacy is re-claiming the past from the framework imposed by the former imperial core and thereby creating, or reviving, a national historiography that helps to consolidate the new national state. All states, including those traditionally defined as lying in the “civic West,” have in the past—and continue to—use national historiography, myths, and legends as a component of their national identities. This article is divided into three parts. The first section discusses the Soviet imperial legacy and Soviet nationality policies as they were applied in historiography. The second section places this discussion within the theoretical literature of nationalism and historical myths, surveys the inherited legacies of Soviet colonial policies and discusses how post-colonial Soviet successor states are re-claiming their national historiography. The third section surveys the manner in which four of these post-Soviet colonial states—Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan—have dealt with the colonial legacy. In three cases they are reviving national historiography as one of the spheres of their state and nation building projects while in a fourth (Belarus) Russian/Soviet historiography is being maintained to buttress a pan-eastern Slavic ideology. In Moldova the comm unist victory in parliamentary elections in 2001 and election of communist leader Vladimir Voronin has led to the re

Postwar Political Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Spoils of Peace

Abstract: In postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), international and local captains maneuver to assert control and negotiate areas of collaboration. In each of the Croat and Bosniac areas of the Federation and in the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska (RS), the major political elements that took Bosnia into war now also enjoy the economic spoils in their geographical sectors. Central institutions remain weak in BiH, undermined by war entrepreneurs and patrimonial elites that interact with international organs and external capitalist institutions, adapting their clientism to externally imposed conditionalities. A pseudo international "protectorate" is operated through the executive management of the external actors: the Office of the High Representative (OHR) of the Peace Implementation Council; the United Nations; the missions of both the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU); the International Management Group (an EU-funded body that undertakes reconstruction evaluations) ; aid agencies; and international financial institutions (IFIs). They provide executive governance that reflects the values and norms of the powers that dominate the global economy. (1) For example, at the end of 2000, the OHR introduced wide-ranging laws and amendments concerning privatization, wages, and financial operations designed to maintain market reforms that would meet the demands of the IFIs for the privatization of public enterprises and socially owned assets. (2) Indeed, the external actors are drawn into micromanagement in their efforts to implement this vision because they encounter resistance and prevarication. (3) Obviously, the clientist and neoliberal mechanisms for managing investment, shares, and profits are dissimilar. But the normative assumptions of the external actors and the interests of domestic elites coincide in extracting profit from public goods and in fostering opportunities from privatization and discrimination against social ownership. In this there is common ground between in ternational and domestic parties as well as friction and resistance. There has been limited critical research on the political economy of war-torn societies or on the dysfunctional aspects of neoliberalism in peace building. (4) However, a critical theory perspective shows that the maneuvering and collaboration in BiH highlights not only contradictions in the practice of neoliberalism but also the limitations of a paradigm that configures society as an adjunct of the market. It contests the neoliberal discourse of norms that privilege global markets, the noninterventionist state, and the discounting of political and social dynamics. (5) Further, external micromanagement stems from seeing collapsed statist economies as the dysfunctional "other," and from attempts to modify the corporatist systems and "criminal" behavior of local war entrepreneurs. But the external actors juggle between nation building and diminishing the state as an economic actor by privatizing essential services and shifting responsibility for employment and welfare from the state to the individual. This has hardly alleviated a grim social and economic situation that differentiates markedly between participants in the entrepreneurial economy and the excluded poor, unemployed, and welfare dependent. In the first part of this analysis I present a snapshot of the BiH economy after six years of peace. I then examine the prewar and wartime aggrandisement of nationalists that carried over into the postwar settlements. In the next section I deal with the goals and basic mechanisms of the external "protectors" and the interaction of neoliberalism and clientism, with a particular focus on the privatization process. Finally, I contend that the neoliberal model is dysfunctional in providing the social protection that war-torn societies such as BiH lack. A Dire Economy In 2001, six years after Dayton, the economic situation was officially described as "dire. …

Ubu and Ubuntu: On the dialectics of apartheid and nation building

Abstract: Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a resurgence of cultural nationalism, presenting itself in the form of Ubuntu. Instead of developing democratic institutions and a viable democratic culture, an obsession with nation building has developed, the nature of which, and the strategies of exclusion that are employed to promote it, is contrary to the development of democracy. The continuities from cultural nationalist ideologies of the apartheid era into the post-apartheid present reveal this clearly. The nationalist ideology of Ubuntu glorifies an imagined past. With its emphasis on community values, it promotes an attitude of conformity. The ambivalent relationship between the process of truth and reconciliation and the project of nation building is also analysed in this article.

'Totem Polls': Indigenous Concepts and 'Free and Fair' Elections in East Timor

Abstract: The 2001 Constituent Assembly Elections, which have dictated the political outcome in East Timor, were classified by the international community as 'free and fair'. Yet, the winning party relied on manipulation of indigenous values, symbols and the history of the resistance fight. The event was, in this sense, a 'totem poll'. Rather than being a vehicle of popular will, the outcome of a Western-oriented electoral exercise has resulted in indigenous values of unitary and hierarchical political authority reinforcing a one-party state. With the president and the prime minister in opposition to each other, there are stark options of either one-party rule or violent political competition. This should question electoral assistance as the ultimate expression of popular participation and democratization. The focus of the international community has to shift from the electoral event to long-term assistance in nation building with full attention to paradigmatic differences between liberal-style democracy and local ...

Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construction

Abstract: An analysis of how public arguments centered on "the people" contribute to the complex process of nation building; At a time when national identity is a potent political force, Strategies of Remembrance sheds light on the relationships between economic, civic, cultural, and ethnic forms of nationalism, and on the interactions of nationalism in those forms with the politics of memory and the thetoric of democracy. Despite the broadly acknowledged fact that national identities are negotiated through discourse, concrete studies of the process are rare. By focusing on rejected public addresses, critically investigating reactions to those speeches, and examining what he calls "narrative omissions" - what politicians are constrained from saying in an official capacity - M. Lane Bruner elucidates the complex relationships between public speech and community building. Strategies of Remembrance visits Europe in the waning years of the Cold War, as manipulations of national identity functioned both to erase the painful memories of National Socialism and to promote West Germany's role as the vanguard of democratic capitalism - while Germans were characterized as the victims of the Second World War. Bruner looks at Russia prior to the adoption of a new constitution in 1993, when appeals to national identity functioned primarily to corruptly facilitate the transition from a centralized to a market economy while the Soviets and democracy were characterized as incompatible, Last, he turns to Quebec's attempt in 1995 to secede from Canada and explains how, after a narrow defeat, secessionist supporters shifted from ethnic and cultural to civic nationalism in a Quebec where historically secession had been justified to protect French Canadian culture. Together, Bruner's studies suggest the important role the fashioning of national identities will continue to play in the twenty-first century and the need for ongoing critiques of the rhetorical means employed.

Islam and nation building in Southeast Asia: Malaysia and Indonesia in comparative perspective

Abstract: The task of nation building has posed an enormous challenge for postcolonial Muslim leaders, especially for those committed to the creation of a nation based on Islamic rules, norms and visions. Conventional wisdom holds that the discrepancy between a "parochial" national framework -based on religion -and the modern reality of a nation-state framework is too great to be reconciled. The key issue here is how the Islamic rules of public organisation and governance can accommodate a multi-religious condition, one which is widespread in postcolonial nation-states. However, the role Islam plays in the nation -more specifically, in the process of nation building -differs strikingly across Muslim-majority countries. A variety of Islamic forces, across a wide range of ideological spectrums, strive for their visions of nationhood, both on ideological and institutional fronts. Some seek the creation of an "Islamic state": a state system based on the Islamic canons and tradition. Others adopt a less dogmatic app roach, seeking to establish a moral order inspired by Islamic principles. Yet whether they can do so, and to what extent, depends not on the irrevocable influence of doctrinal forms, but on country-specific patterns of civil and state organisation. Further, as Hefner suggests, "most show the strong impact of state-society interactions that have evolved over the course of several decades of national independence." (1)

Newspapers in Singapore: a mass ceremony in the imagining of the nation

Abstract: This discussion examines the ideology and practices of the mass daily press in Singapore within the socio-political context of ‘imagining’ the nation (Anderson, 1991). Most discussions see Singapore’s press as synonymous with the strict controls under which it operates; however, even this is rarely examined within the context of its interaction with the larger agenda of nation-building. Yet, when Brigadier General (BG) Lee Hsien Loong (then Trade and Industry Minister; Second Minister for Defence) outlined his mandate for the national press before members of the Singapore Press Club (Lee, 1988), he made it very clear that their primary purpose was to ‘contribute to nation building. Anyone endeavouring to do this and working towards these goals can hold his head high in the full confidence that his is an honourable profession’. There are three main parts to this discussion. In the first, I will establish the presence of the mass press in the daily lives of Singaporeans, and its position within the imagining of the nation. I will then unpack how specifically that position within the national agenda has been defined and practised. The last section focuses on the various forms of control on the press, and how the government’s intervention is conditioned by the socio-political and ideological climate of the nation.

An "Ancient" Landscape: European Ideals, Archaeology, and Nation Building in Early Modern Greece

Abstract: The role of archaeology in the creation of modern Greek national identity is a question that has drawn increasing attention in recent years. The most powerful national symbol may well be the Acropolis, an archaeological topos that was "constructed" in the course of the nineteenth century. This paper explores the early phase of the Acropolis purification program in the first decades of the nineteenth century. European approaches to classical antiquities were very influential during this formative stage. Of particular interest here is the interaction between foreign visitors and Athenian notables, especially the debates and discussions that accompanied the creation of the modern version of the archaeological landscape of the Acropolis. Accounts of Western travelers along with documents concerning the activities of the Greek-based Philomousos society offer a glimpse into the events and key players who set the process in motion. Recent archaeological discussions of landscape and site development in general provide the theoretical framework for this discussion.

Traditional Leadership and Democratisation in Southern Africa: A Comparative Study of Botswana, Namibia, and Southern Africa

Abstract: What are the impacts of ethnically based, traditional political institutions on democratic state and nation building in Southern Africa and how do heterogeneous sources of legitimacy affect the prospects of long term democratic regime consolidation? What are the impacts of "traditionalism" employed for purposes of party-political mobilisation? An indicator for the political influence of traditional leadership in Southern Africa is the fact, that a considerable number of democratically elected politicians in high office originate from aristocratic families, representing hereditary traditional leadership structures for centuries. This is evident for the charismatic founding President of the New South Africa, Nelson Mandela, as well as for his adversary, the Prime Minister-in-office, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The careful reconsideration of this "state behind the state" has been identified as crucial in this study to make any realistic assessments of the prospects for sustainable democratisation in Southern African countries in the near future.

The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine's Piedmont

Abstract: To the surprise of many, the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, and out of its ruins arose an independent Ukraine. This was a remarkable achievement, and one that owed much to activities in Galicia, as Paul Robert Magocsi reveals here. Magocsi begins with a brief historical survey of Galicia, where Ukrainian national and cultural interests have long flourished. His subsequent essays focus on the role played by Galicia during the nineteenth century, when Ukrainians were struggling for recognition as a distinct nationality. He places Galicia in the larger context of Ukrainian and eastern European politics, then follows with studies of the nuts and bolts of nation building - language, culture, ideology and so on. He also explores the influence of the Habsburg Empire in creating unique conditions for Ukraine's national and social revival, and considers the impact of both Habsburg and Soviet rule on the Ukrainian national psyche. This study provides a solid background for understanding nineteenth-century Galicia as the historic Piedmont of the Ukrainian national revival. It is essential reading for historians, public-policy makers, and all those interested in regional differentiation within Europe's second largest country - Ukraine.

Between the state and cultural zones: Nation building in Turkmenistan

Abstract: Turkmenistan has been in transition from dependence to independence and from socialism to market economy since 1991. Turkmen national identity is constructed within these unstable conditions . Following the declaration of independence, the process of nation building was initiated by President Saparmurat Turkmenbashi to Ž ll the identity vacuum and create a new homogenous Turkmen national identity. Turkmenbashi uses the term ‘national revival’ instead of ‘nation-building ’. The latter, however, deŽ nes the current situation in Turkmenistan better than the former since Turkmen national identity did not occur in modern understanding until the foundation of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924. Paradoxically, the Soviet Union was the initiator of Turkmen nation building. Following the establishment of Turkmenistan SSR, the ‘Turkmen nation’ met Stalin’s four criteria of nationhood: unity of language, territory, economy and historical culture. Turkmen nation building, however, was not consolidated in the Soviet era. During that period, the Turkmen nation continued to be ‘a tribal confederation rather than a modern nation’, mainly because of the persistence of endogamy and dialects between tribes. One of the main reasons of the remaining efŽ cacy of tribal identities vis-à-vis the national one was the internal contradiction of Soviet identity policies. Moscow, on the one hand, tried to create national identities in Central Asia to destroy overarching Islamic and Turkestani identities, while on the other, it aimed to create Homo Sovieticus, restricting national identities. In this regard, Moscow promoted Russian language and culture in Turkmenistan instead of authentic Turkmen values and prohibited nationalist studies and movements.

Dilemmas of state-led nation building in Ukraine

Abstract: Introduction: Debating the Assumption of State Led Nation-Building in Ukraine by Paul D'Anieri The Nation-building Project in Ukraine and Identity: Towards a Consensus by Taras Kuzio Rewriting and Rethinking: Contemporary Historiography and Nation-Building in Ukraine by Georgii Kasianov Culture and Cultural Politics in Ukraine: A Post-Colonial Perspective by Mykola Riabchuk Mass Attitudes and Ethnic Conflict in Ukraine by Craig A. Weller The Internal-External Nexus in the Formation of Ukrainian National Identity: The Case for Slavic Integration Region, Language, and Nationality: Rethinking Support in Ukraine for Maintaining Distance From Russia by Lowell W. Barrington Nation-Building in the Ukrainian Military by Andrew Fesiak Identity Construction and Education: The History of Ukraine in Soviet and Post-Soviet Schoolbooks by Jan G. Janmaat Conclusion: Regionalism and Nation-Building in a Divided Society by Nancy Popson Index

Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States

Abstract: Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States. By Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. Pp. xi, 279. Appendices. Cloth, $34.95.)Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early Republic examines the various rhetorical and composition practices available to educated women in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Co-authors Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen trace a shift from a "liberatory civic rhetoric" (1) of the early national period (which was public, often oratory, and focused on civic duty and effecting political change during the formative years of nation building), to the emergence of belletristic practices of the mid-nineteenth century (which were rooted in ideas about Romanticism and aesthetics and privileged the home as a neutral site of harmony and taste). Ultimately, Eldred and Mortensen suggest, the favoring of belletristic styles foreclosed possibilities for educated women to pursue active roles in matters of civic society and politics. As a result, although women gained unprecedented access to various educational institutions and played a leading role in the founding of female academies, seminaries, and normal schools in the first half of the nineteenth century, they lost opportunities to utilize that education through an "ungendered, unmonitored rhetorical agency" associated with liberatory civic rhetoric (144). In other words, the authors argue that more access to education and writing actually led to less power for women, due to a shift in rhetorical forms that domesticated and subdued women's voices. This is an intriguing argument and one that might be of much interest to historians had the authors succeeded in making a convincing case about the scope and implications associated with the emergence of belletristic practices.To trace this shift from civic rhetoric to belletrism, Imagined Rhetoric examines a variety of source materials, including textbooks, "schooling fictions" (viii), novels, and prescriptive literature. With the majority of their sources written and published by women, Eldred and Mortensen reveal that women were both producers and consumers of rhetorical strategies. Imagining Rhetoric begins its analysis in the early republic, when the goal of civic rhetoric was "to awaken the collective conscience of a new republic" (2). Chapters two and three examine various examples of rhetorical practices offered to early national women. Writings about women's education were marked by "competing discourses" of liberation and restraint (45). This tension was reflected, in particular, in male doubt and criticism about women's intellectual capacity and ambition. Fears of over-educated women, particularly the figure of the pedant, served as warnings that women should not try to compete with men professionally or politically.Although discouraged and excluded from seeking formal roles in government, writers such as Hannah Webster Foster and Judith Sargent Murray understood that neoclassical principles of rhetoric held potentially liberatory promise for women and consequently looked for alternate spaces of literary and personal expression. Foster imagined the boarding school as a space where civic rhetoric could guide the educational and literary pursuits of young women. Letter writing was another favored option, enabling women to continue practices of composition and education with like-minded friends. Murray, in turn, was involved in the effort to construct a nationalist standard of discourse and education, particularly through practices of composition rooted in a "commonplace" rhetoric (88) of accumulating, storing, and utilizing a vast collection of intellectual property. Both Murray and Foster found in liberatory civic rhetoric a means of expressing and articulating voices for women that held promise, potential, and purpose.Eldred and Mortensen argue that changes in rhetorical style and taste would alter how women's education was conceptualized and utilized to respond most effectively to the sweeping economic and political changes of the antebellum years. …

Nation building and the role of the university : a critical reflection

Abstract: The ongoing process of transformation in South African universities testifies to the enduring seriousness of the questions of meaning and purpose that universities face. The response to this situation often is in terms of transformation programmes that focus on the social role of the university, that is, on the meaning of the university as a social institution whose purpose is defined as meeting the needs of society. In South Africa, political and economic discourse has to a large extent perceived the social role of the university in terms of nation building. In this essay, I argue that such an understanding of the social role of the university is misdirected, and if allowed to guide educational transformation, damaging. Rather, I would argue that the basis for the university's service to society lies in its character as a community of reason. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.16(3) 2002: 11-17

Ethnicity and education: nation-building, state-formation, and the construction of the Israeli educational system

Abstract: The dissertation is about the ethnicisation of social relations in Israeli society and its reflection and manifestation in education. My main aim in this study is twofold: first, to offer a critical account of the development of ethnic relations in Israeli society and to examine the role ethnicity has played in the processes of nation-building and state-formation; and, second, to propose a history of the educational system in Israel which accounts for the role of education in creating and perpetuating ethnic identities. The first part of the dissertation consists of a critical reading of existing analyses of ethnicity in Israel. Its aim is to bring the state into the analysis of ethnic relations and demonstrate that such an approach is vital to the understanding of ethnic relations and identities. In the following part, I trace back the processes of nation-building and state-formation demonstrating how governments and major political actors became involved in the formation and re-production of ethnic boundaries within Israeli society. In these two parts, I am arguing against both functionalist and critical accounts of ethnicity in Israel, which tend to ‘essentialise’ ethnic categories and thus deny the political nature of ethnicity and its power as an organising basis for political action. In the third and major part of the dissertation, I seek to re-construct the history of the Israeli educational system within an understanding of ethnicity as a structural feature of state-society relations. This re-construction reveals how ‘ethnicity’ became an organising feature of this system since its inception as a Zionist national educational system in the early days of the Jewish colonisation of Palestine. Whereas the ‘national’ educational system was characteristically sectorial, non-European (mizrahi) Jews were denied the same autonomy that their European counterparts enjoyed. With the transition to statehood, and the massive influx of Jewish immigrants, the educational system was re-organised under the aegis of the state. Yet, it turned out, this new system retained the ‘old’ lines of division between Arabs and Jews, and between European and non-European Jews, thus imposing upon the latter the stigma of being ‘non-modern’ and ‘non-Zionist’. This re-emphasised ethnic boundaries, and entrenched ethnicity as a powerful basis for political action. In the 1960s, when the state engaged itself in reforming the educational system, making it compatible with the new needs of industrialisation and nationhood, ethnicity again played a critical role in legitimising state policies. ‘Integration’, that is, the de-segregation of the educational system, turned out to be nothing but a political token and, in fact, a means for entrenching ethnic boundaries and identities. The state, I argue, has thus been a crucial factor in perpetuating those ethnic images and realities, and hence a focus of ethnic discontent in the 1980s and 1990s.

Other Attractions in Vietnam

Abstract: This paper analyses the place of highland ethnic minorities in Vietnamese visual culture. For decades, artists have appropriated markers of ethnic difference in propaganda posters about national unity and progress. Vietnamese notions of ethnic groups draw on a historical trajectory that involves colonial racial classifications as well as the anti-colonial notion of 'the people'. The inclusion of ethnic minorities in official portrayals of the people draws on the historical conditions of nation building and an armed struggle for independence. Equally important, the visual appropriation of the markers of ethnic and national difference projects national progress through the mapping of backwardness on highland ethnic groups. The recent emergence of the same ethnic markers as an international tourist attraction draws on similar progressivist narratives, and the growing market in souvenirs recycles visual exercises in national unity as a just-discovered Other Vietnam.

Sexuality and biopower in Chile and Latin America

Abstract: This essay analyzes how elite and subaltern efforts to regulate gender, sexuality, and family, helped define the class and race contours of the nation. It examines the Chilean nation building process, which has generally been conceptualized in class terms, alongside other countries, where there is a denser historiography on race, to demonstrate that national identities were constructed on a common, racialized, discursive terrain. The reformist and populist alliances that emerged throughout Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s drew from newer scientific discourses of race and eugenics but also reworked racialized colonial and nineteenthcentury articulations of gender and citizenship.

Texas in the Confederacy : an experiment in nation building

Abstract: Historians examining the Confederacy have often assumed the existence of a monolithic South unified behind the politics and culture of slavery. In addition, they have argued for the emergence of a strong central state government in the Confederacy. In Texas in the Confederacy, Clayton E. Jewett challenges these assumptions by examining Texas politics, with an emphasis on the virtually neglected topic of the Texas legislature. In doing so, Jewett shows that an examination of state legislative activity during this period is essential to understanding Texas's relationship with the Indian tribes, the states in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and the Confederate government. Jewett explores the role of leadership and how statesmen understood and handled the apparent contradictions between the national interests of war and the need to protect property and individual liberty. He reveals that the dissemination of political power lay in the state legislature, where politicians united in an effort to protect commercial interests beyond the institution of slavery. This course of action transpired not only from Texas's development of an identity separate from that of other southern states, but also from Confederate neglect of Texas. This in turn served to undermine the formation of central state authority and directly contributed to the defeat of a southern nation and the war effort. By advancing the historiographical line of inquiry surrounding the critical issues of secession, military enlistment, cotton trading, economic production, and the legislative support for state institutions, Texas in the Confederacy addresses the perennial question of why the South lost the Civil War. It also provides an essential step in changing the direction of inquiry toward a deeper understanding of nationhood and how the South functioned during the Civil War.

Mountains as “lieux de mémoire”. Highland Values and Nation-Building in the Balkans

Abstract: National identities contain a spatial dimension not only in respect to presumed titles to specific territories, but also in the sense of ascribing important national values upon specific places. The collective memory of the nation, which is a central feature of its identity, is pinned onto spaces, as Pierre Nora has shown in his seminal work on the “lieux de memoire” in France. In the case of the Balkans, mountains are a particular important carrier of national myths and imagination. A strong current in Balkan national ideologies ascribes to mountains a special role for the assertion and preservation of national identity. Mountains are said to have served as shelters for national culture and ethnic purity, especially during Ottoman rule. There, in isolated communities, the people presumably could preserve their traditions and pass ethnic identity down to the generations which eventually won independence. A discursive link was established between the social consequences of the ecological features of mountains and national values. Mountaineers were said to have learnt endurance from the difficult environment they lived in. As roaming shepherds and traders they allegedly developed a staunch freedom-loving spirit which made them the champions of national liberation. A case in point is Jovan Cvijics admiration of the “Dinaric people” whom he described as the bearers of the genuine Serbian spirit. The eminent Inter-war Bulgarian historian Petar Mutafciev devoted a chapter of his Book for the Bulgarians to the role of the Balkan mountains (Stara planina) for Bulgarian national history. In Albania, the notion of ethnic purity and genuinely Albanian social institutions is associated with mountain communities. In Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, folk mythology is full with stories of rebel-mountaineers who allegedly fought the Ottomans and gave to the poor (hajduci, klephtes, hajduti). Mountaineers are contrasted with people from the lowlands who are said to have submitted to the alien occupiers and their corrupting ways of life. The paper analyses the role of mountains for national myths in the Balkans from a comparative perspective. Its examples come mainly from the Bulgarian and Albanian national imagination. In its final conclusion the paper highlights the tension that exists between discourses of self-Balkanisation in the region and of Western imaginations of the Balkans. Also in the Western discourse the connection between mountains and the allegedly typical Balkan identity is made. In the Romantic vision this was embodied in the notion of the “noble savage” who incessantly fought the Ottoman occupiers. In more recent times, however, a semantic shift took place and the same connection is now charged with negative associations. Mountains, war-like spirit and cruelty form a discursive chain in the Western imagination of the Balkans, such as shown during the Bosnian War.

The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence Of An American Nation

Abstract: The new reference series, "Landmark Events in U.S. History", uses both contributed essays from eminent scholars and excerpts of primary source documents with explanatory headnotes to focus on critical events in American political history and explain how it came about and why it continues to play such a vital role in the history and political evolution of the United States. The first three books in the series are "Marbury versus Madison", "The Louisiana Purchase", and "The Declaration of Independence". "The Louisiana Purchase" combines documents and analytical essays timed for the bicentennial year in 2003. This timely collection will explain: how and why the United States acquired the massive territory that more than doubled the size of the country; the profound social and political changes that came in the wake of thePurchase; its impact on such far reaching topics like the Constitution, slavery, federalism, political behavior, nation building, transportation, the media, and global affairs; and, how major historical figures like Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and James Madison, were influenced by the Purchase.

Internal Colonialism and the British Novel

Abstract: In the wake of recent studies of British national cultural formations and, increasingly, their relationship to colonial practices, the concept of internal colonialism has garnered increased attention Defined in Michael Hechter's seminal study as "the political incorporation of culturally distinct groups by the core," internal colonialism addresses the process by which, in the crucible of nation building and its organization of a competitive domestic economy, a national core expands, subsuming "peripheral" geographic zones1 This territorial annexation, however, also propels a political and cultural exclusion In Hechter's initial application of the concept to Britain's "Celtic periphery," he demonstrates the Anglo-British core's systematic economic underdevelopment of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland2 Often referred to as the "training ground" for the repressive practices of its overseas empire, Britain's internal colonies were subject to similar methods ofpolitical control and manoeuvres ofcultural suppression and appropriation3Attention to the political and cultural dynamics ofinternal colonialism has important implications for the ways in which we read eighteenth-century fiction, and a 1 Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The CeUicFringe in British NationalDevelopment (Berkeley: California University Press, 1975), p 32

In Search of a Nation: Nation Building in the New South Africa

Abstract: The author analyzes why the theoretical framework and the conceptual dynamic that animate the ANC-led project of nation building are deeply problematic.

Emerging Major Powers and the International System: Significance of the Indian View

Abstract: India?s new and contested status as a nuclear power, the scale of her arms purchases, her investment in missile technology and the huge deployment of ground troops on the western front against Pakistan are issues of immediate concern to her South Asian neighbours. Since tension feeds on tension, war in Afghanistan, terrorist attacks in Kolkata, Delhi, Jammu and Srinagar, mounting tension between India and Pakistan over the issue of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and the recent threat by General Pervez Musharraf to consider the first strike option as part of Pakistan?s strategic response to Indian mobilisation have contributed to the seriousness of the situation. The probability of the regional conflict escalating into large scale nuclear war, or weapons of mass destruction finding their way into the hands of non-state actors, have drawn world attention to South Asia, which has had visits in quick succession by political leaders and military delegations from the United States, UK, Germany, France, China and Russia. The paper, focused on India?s capacities, perceptions and institutional arrangements for the management of security, seeks to evaluate the significance of her status as an ?emerging? power for the security environment in Asia, and its implication for the international system. It analyses the main objective both empirically, and theoretically. The empirical aspect concerns the measurement of India?s economic and military resources according to the conventional indicators of power. These facts, based on experts? accounts, are supplemented by political and institutional factors which are significant for the estimation of the power of a country. In addition, the analysis seeks to juxtapose the views of observers and actors, and locate the strategic perception of the Indian voter, an important factor in her political landscape in view of her active democratic process. These factors of contemporary politics are to be seen in the larger context of India?s political and security culture, history, the structure of the political system. The issue of contextualisation needs to be understood in terms of its methodological implication at the outset, because, while all states are members of the international system, the use to which they put international politics varies from one context to another. Western nation states, products of a long process of nation building, industrialisation and state-formation, seek the promotion of national interest through their strategic initiatives. Post-colonial state-nations, engaged in the process of nation-creation, are more complex in their rhetoric. For these actors, international politics, in addition to being used as an instrument of national interest, also plays a symbolic role in the building of a national profile. The paper seeks to combine both the material and symbolic aspects of Indian policy in the concept of a security doctrine, one that can bring potential power into an effective focus, in the absence of which mere appurtenances of power like guns and ships are just that and not much more. Since the stability of the doctrine, in addition to its coherence is an important parameter of the significance of Indian power, the paper also takes into account the problems of implementation as well. Though there is considerable force to the argument that South Asian security is crucially contingent on the India-China-Pakistan triangle, India remains the biggest power in South Asia, and her significance, in terms of how India sees herself and how others see her, is a key consideration for regional politics. The need for a sophisticated methodological analysis arises paradoxically from the fact that India is a democratic state and an open society, both of which give a false sense of visibility to India?s security profile. Foreign observers, depending on their own national origin and the context, place their bets on predictions of India?s next move either as the ?regional bully? or the ?regional push-over?, and India, Janus-like, often proves both speculations to be right, appearing in the process to be either mystical-moral, or utterly devoid of principle or doctrine. The paper is in three parts. The first examines the state of play by ranking India with reference to her strategic resource endowments. The second part examines India?s strategic doctrine and the organigram of security, and evaluates her potential power in the light of her doctrine. The third part makes a prognosis of the challenging path ahead for India with reference to the unsolved problems concerning her national security. The conclusion reconsiders the main issue posed in the introduction in the light of the analysis undertaken here.

Public Folklore, Nation-Building, and Regional Others: Comparing Appalachian USA and North-East India

Abstract: This article argues that public folklore has a unique and important role to play in combating the reifying and fragmenting effects of economic globalisation, which is vitiating the fabric of public space. It suggests that there are different tasks for public folklore at different levels of public space-with particular concern for the points where local publics articulate into state, regional, national and international publics. A comparison of the cultural politics of the Appalachian region of the united States, with Arunachal Pradesh in North-East India, helps to draw out underlying macrostructural patterns. This article calls for participatory and cultural conservation projects to supplement more centralised venues. The central venues of public folklore in the past-festivals, archive, museum-can be supplemented and re-imagined within new missions to steward the civic and environmental commons

Turkey: Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation State

Abstract: Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation State, by Christopher Houston. New York: Berg, 2001. ix + 199 pages. Bibl. to p. 209. Index to p. 216. $23 paper. This book examines the interaction between the state and Islam, and Kurdish identity claims in Turkey. Although the study does not have a clear thesis, it poses a central question: can Islam and Islamic political consciousness truly unite Muslim Turks and Kurds? The author develops his answer to this question in the book's three sections. The first section looks at political Islam. Dealing with the volatile and exciting period of the 1990s, the author aptly maps the contours of the Islamic movement, capturing its diversity by utilizing everyday life as an entry point to explore the way in which Islamic groups shape the public sphere in Turkey. In its disaggregation of the Islamic movement in Turkey, this section is the best part of the book. It offers a detailed description of the growing pluralism of the Islamic movement, examining carnival, bourgeois, and liberal Islamism. The author does an excellent job in demonstrating the way in which shared Islamic idioms and practices are interpreted and put into practice in new Islamicized restaurants, coffee-shops, hotels and public parks. In a way, these new Muslims (explored in the writings of Nilufer Gole) create their own new Islamicized spaces. Houston focuses more on the Islamicized spaces than on the new Muslim actors who are engaging in bottom-up transformation of the society that is sensitive to local and national history. The second part of the book examines the state policies of nation building and the construction of Kurdish nationalism opposed to the state. Houston examines how Islam has been used by the Turkish state. Since the author's understanding of "Turkish" and "Turk" is very much as ethnic terms, however, he fails to see their religious, cultural and civic dimensions. For instance, in the Balkans, almost all Slavic and Albanian Muslims are called "Turks" and they always settle and assimilate into Turkish culture. So the concept of "Turk" should not be reduced to ethnicity. Moreover, being a Turk requires one to be a Muslim. Islamic identity, thus, has been the natural ally of Turkish nationalism. Islamism in Turkey, unlike in Arab countries, is very nationalistic as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman state and Turkey's uneasy relations with Europe and Russia. Since the early Turkish state was a modernizing and secularizing state, it did not tolerate any forms of difference, whether ethnic or religious. Thus, the state pursued a heavy-handed assimilation policy against the Kurds and Islamists. Yet, the same state tried to form a state-friendly form of Islam, known as state-Islam. The "fundamentalist" secularism of the state undermined shared Islamic identity and helped to politicize the Kurdish and Islamic identities. The Kurdish nationalists used the model of ethnic Turkish nationalism to fight back against the state. Since Kurdish nationalism is a "derivative" form of Turkish nationalism, one needs to unpack Turkish nationalism and its strategies to understand the Kurdish version. The Kurdish nationalists are indeed reverse Kemalists in terms of myth making and seeking to create a classless Kurdish society. …

Language, national integration and nigeria federation

Abstract: The position of this paper is that the lack of any true national integration in the country is traceable to the belief and conduct of the elite class represented in the various ethnic groups that make up Nigeria. The masses believe in their various elite classes to the level of misnomer, while the elite on the other hand use their position to consolidate their own gains. In addition, the government exercises power in an intentionally exclusive manner, with emphasis on the dominant and subordinate structures in the society. In a situation like this, the search for true unity and national integration would have no end. There is no loyalty to the nation any more, except complex ethnic or sectional loyalties. However, the opinion of this paper is that the beginning for the achievement of a true federation is to allow the political objectives, as enshrined in the constitution, to be the guiding principle of any government in this country. Failure to uphold and put into practice these constitutional provisions means that Nigeria would remain very much in the woods. (Humanities Review: 2002 2(1): 93-100)