Search Results

After an introduction by the editor this book presents fifteen studies from across Europe, including the eastern part, many of them comparative across countries. The chapters are arranged in four parts. The first focuses particularly on local and national elections, and the second part on broader questions of political integration, especially among women and youth. Part three looks out how institutions, Muslim and local or national, can facilitate and contribute to directing the particular ways in which political integration can be channelled or hindered. Finally, the fourth part investigates two examples of political activism which challenge accumulated political practices.

This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising. This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the European Convention of Human Rights and its highly acclaimed judicial tribunal in Strasbourg is the extensive obligations of the contracting states to give effect to its judgments. This book explores the processes of domestic execution of the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments and seeks to understand the variable patterns of implementation within and across states. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective into the multifaceted ways in which the Strasbourg Court's judgments influence and at times transform human rights standards, laws and policies at the national level. Eight country-based case studies focus on various areas of law and policy to examine how national authorities implement the ECtHR's judgments, as well as whether state compliance with these influences legal and policy change in the direction of expanding rights. A number of the contributions also explore how marginalised individuals, civil society and minority actors strategically take recourse in Strasbourg to challenge state laws, policies and practices. These bottom-up dynamics influencing the domestic implementation of human rights are virtually unexplored in the scholarly literature. What is the impact of the ECtHR's case law on the legal norms, institutional structures and policies of national states that participate in it± Do national authorities implement the adverse ECtHR's rulings, and what factors facilitate, or conversely restrict implementation± Does social, legal and political mobilisation affect the domestic implementation of the ECtHR's judgments, as well as their potential to exert broader influence over policy and democratic reforms±

More Than Just Black delves into the experiences of second generation Nigerian adults in the United States and Britain, examining how race, ethnicity, and class (both parental and individual) affect their identities and assimilation trajectories. I pay particular attention to how their relations with their proximal hosts, African Americans in the United States and Black Caribbeans in Britain, affect how they identify. I conclude that the Nigerian second generation have more in common with fellow immigrants than they do with their proximal hosts. OR Focusing on questions of identity, More Than Just Black examines the nature of second generation Nigerians incorporation in the United States and Britain. I investigate how, in combination, race, ethnicity, and class (both parental and individual) affect the identity formation process and assimilation trajectories of the adult second generation of Nigerian ancestry in both countries. I find that despite living in countries where people are categorized by race and where race and racial categorization still hold great social and political power, the Nigerian second generation in both countries are not defined through the prism of race. They have formed a nuanced identity that balances race, a Nigerian ethnicity (which includes an achievement orientation akin to “model minority” groups), a pan-African identity, and, depending on structure of national identity and perceptions of thoroughness in redressing past ethnoracial traumas, identification with the country of destination.

In the interwar Eastern Mediterranean, European colonial modes of establishing land claims and controlling populations converged with a recent Ottoman past featuring desperate and violent efforts at nationalization and an increasingly empowered Zionist settler colonialism. States of Separation explores how this confluence produced a series of internationally supported plans to move “minority” communities in, around, and out of the newly constituted states of Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. Under the aegis of the new League of Nations and the British and French mandate governments, and often over the protests of those on the ground slated for displacement, these three states saw multiple efforts to remove entire communities, resettle populations, and redraw maps along ethnic lines. These efforts to create ethnically and religiously homogenous national enclaves out of a highly pluralistic political and cultural landscape constituted a massive demographic experiment that carried lasting political and social consequences for the twentieth-century Middle East and for the international order.

This book examines the treatment of cultural and religious diversity - indigenous and immigrant - on both sides of the Irish border in order to analyse the current state of tolerance, and the kinds of policies that may support integration while respecting diversity. While it is sometimes argued that in contemporary societies we need to go ‘beyond tolerance’ to more positive recognition, new and continuing tensions and conflicts among groups suggest that there may still be a role for tolerance. The first set of chapters focus on the spheres of education, civic life and politics, including chapters on specific groups (e.g. travellers, immigrants), as well as the communal divisions in Northern Ireland. Later chapters reflect on the Irish experience of diversity, and assess the extent to which the conceptual approaches and discourses employed to deal with it are comparable between the jurisdictions of the Republic and Northern Ireland. Finally the book considers the implications for what constitutes the most appropriate approach to diversity - whether this should ideally be in terms of tolerance and mutual accommodation, of recognition, or transformative reconciliation. This is the first book to address the issue of tolerance across the broad sweep of different kinds of religious and cultural diversity in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

This book deals with military defeat and national catastrophe, and their implications for society. When the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912, few Ottomans anticipated that it would prove to be a watershed moment for the Empire, ending in atrocities, ignominy, national catastrophe, and the loss of its remaining provinces in the Balkans. Defeat at the hands of an alliance of Balkan states comprising Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro created deep national trauma and led to bitter soul-searching, giving rise to a so-called “Culture of Defeat” in which condemnation, exclusion of the non-Muslim minorities, criticism over the project of Ottomanism, and calls for national rejuvenation prevailed in a way clearly at odds with the reformist discourse which followed the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. This book discusses some of the different visual and written products of the defeat, published in Ottoman local languages (Turkish, Arabic and Ladino), with the aim of understanding the experience of defeat–how it was perceived, analyzed and commemorated by different sectors in Ottoman society–to show that it is key to understanding the decisions and actions of the Ottoman political elite during the subsequent World War One and the early decades of the Turkish Republic.

Islam in Indonesia maps the debates between progressive and reactionary Muslims in Indonesia since the regime change of 1998 and the start of a democratization process in the world’s largest Muslim nation state. Conceived as an intellectual history or history of ideas, this book situates these debates in Indonesia’s political context of the last fifteen years; it identifies and charts the genealogies of the different interlocutors; individual intellectuals and activists, institutions and outlets, which shape the discursive formations articulating the issues at hand. Organized around the concepts of secularism, pluralism and liberalism which were condemned in a fatwa issued by the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars in 2005, the discussion revolves around debates on Islamic statehood, Democracy, Islamic law, freedom of religion, religious minorities and human rights. It highlights the creative adaptation to the Indonesian situation of ideas originating in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world and in Western thought. These ideas have received far less scholarly attention than reactionary Islamism, Islamic extremism and violent political Islam. As alternatives to the ideologically loaded terms secularism, pluralism and liberalism, the book’s conclusion offers secularity, toleration, liberty and freethinking as more accurate alternatives.

Panda Nation links the emergence of the giant panda as a national symbol to the development of nature protection in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), 1949-present. The panda’s transformation into a national treasure exemplifies China’s efforts to distinguish itself as a nation through government-directed science and popular nationalism. Examining this process enhances our understanding of the intersection of policy, science, and the public. Tracing the panda’s iconic rise offers a striking reflection of China’s recent and dramatic ascent in global status. The significant role the giant panda played in the advancement of nature protection policy during the PRC era reveals a striking tension between scientific inquiry and a nationalism particular to Chinese communist ideology. Sichuan’s initial response to the central government’s 1962 directive to protect precious species was to set aside land as reserves for the giant panda. This domestic initiative during a time of extreme isolation, following the Sino-Soviet schism and preceding China’s efforts to reestablish ties with western industrialized nations, forces us to acknowledge that nature played a more complex role in Chinese communist theory and history than is commonly recognized. An examination of the creation of the Wanglang Nature Reserve deepens our understanding of the ways that central government policies incorporated local concerns, Baima minority people, and environmental factors as they were implemented on the ground. This study of the ways that giant pandas have been portrayed and used with respect to national image and diplomacy deepens our understanding of China’s approach in its efforts to reengage with the international community during the 20th century and beyond.

In the light of the escalation of sectarian tensions during and after Mubarak’s reign, the predicament of the Arab world’s largest religious minority, the Copts, has come to the forefront. This book poses such questions as why there has been a mass exodus of Copts from Egypt, and how this relates to other religious minorities in the Arab region; why it is that sectarian violence increased during and after the 2011 Revolution, which epitomized the highest degree of national unity since 1919; and how the new configuration of power has influenced the extent to which a vision of a political order is being based on the principles of inclusive democracy. The book examines the relations among the state, the Church, Coptic citizenry, and political and civil society against the backdrop of the increasing diversification of actors, the change of political leadership in the country, protest and mobilization within Coptic communities, and the transformations occurring in the region. An informative historical background is provided, and new fieldwork and statistical data inform a thoughtful exploration of what it takes to build an inclusive democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt.