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2005 to 1938: Lifting Social Groups Out of the Landscape

Mike Savage

in Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method

This chapter traces the relations between technology, change, and identity in Great Britain from 1938 to 2005, through a focus on the role of the social sciences in eliciting and shaping cultural ... More

This chapter traces the relations between technology, change, and identity in Great Britain from 1938 to 2005, through a focus on the role of the social sciences in eliciting and shaping cultural idioms of change and attachment in the post-war period. It discusses the ‘quiet revolution’ in which early social scientists helped generate a new relationship to the enchanted landscape that broke from literary, Wordsworthian motifs of rural romanticism. The chapter contrasts the contemporary capacity of significant numbers of people to electively belong, to evoke an enchanted landscape, saturated with personal aesthetic and moral markers, with the more functional and pragmatic accounts articulated by respondents in earlier periods.Less

Reconsidering Nationality: Poland

in Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations

This chapter defines the dominant idioms of Polishness for every specific configuration of an imagined community, which allows us to draw an analytical model of the Polish national imagination of the ... More

This chapter defines the dominant idioms of Polishness for every specific configuration of an imagined community, which allows us to draw an analytical model of the Polish national imagination of the 1830s–1840s. By analyzing the language intellectuals used when speaking about Polishness, that is, the variety of cultural and political idioms, it shows how intellectuals imagined and represented Polish nationality, how inclusive it was, and whether it depended on different ideological stances.Less

Navigating through the Web of Social Relations

in Quest for Harmony: The Moso Traditions of Sexual Union and Family Life.

This chapter discusses the myriad of social relations among the Moso. It begins with the cultural idioms that the Moso use to recognize and differentiate people in their web of social relations. ... More

This chapter discusses the myriad of social relations among the Moso. It begins with the cultural idioms that the Moso use to recognize and differentiate people in their web of social relations. Then, it describes how the noncontractual and nonobligatory tisese can sometimes, through the “child recognition ritual,” become a portal for reaching beyond the household and descent group to forge alliance. This chapter also examines the significance of that ritual at the psychological, social, and cultural levels. It delineates household, descent, and line of consanguinity as the three dimensions of social affiliation among the Moso, and illustrates how they interact with each other in real life. To further examine the three dimensions and their social significance, this chapter ends by depicting the household dynamics with detailed actual examples.Less

Homeland Insecurity: How Immigrant Muslims Naturalize America in Islam

Mucahit Bilici

in Finding Mecca in America: How Islam Is Becoming an American Religion

This chapter focuses on the difficulty some Muslims have in seeing America as a homeland. It first discusses the concept of home and what it means to feel at home. It then considers the cultural ... More

This chapter focuses on the difficulty some Muslims have in seeing America as a homeland. It first discusses the concept of home and what it means to feel at home. It then considers the cultural idioms or topoi with which early Muslim immigrants and Muslims in the early stages of their immigration made sense of their presence in America. This diasporic moment and vocabulary changed over time as exposure and interaction led to a more nuanced understanding. There are also crucial juridical tools by which Muslims religiously interpret America and produce an articulation of America as “home.” The fundamental question that this chapter answers is: how do Muslims naturalize the United States in Islam?Less

Rahmat: The Dilemmas of a “Perfect” Pashtun

Andrea Chiovenda

in Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan

The chapter revolves around Rahmat, a young man, father of two, who lives in a rural village on the border with Pakistan. His case is different from the previous ones in that he embodies apparently ... More

The chapter revolves around Rahmat, a young man, father of two, who lives in a rural village on the border with Pakistan. His case is different from the previous ones in that he embodies apparently all the characteristics that would be expected from an appropriate Pashtun masculinity. He is in fact a well-known and respected figure in his district. Under the surface, however, lies the conflicted personal history of a man who straddled the geographical border of the two countries to engage in drug trafficking and production, and who secretly longs to escape elsewhere to regain the sense of an ideal masculinity, of which he feels he was metaphorically robbed by the distortions of a war-ravaged social context. The sense of responsibility to embody the features of the “perfect” Pashtun man clashes with the inability to do so in the “right” way, due to the perceived degeneration of modern life in Afghanistan.Less

Introduction

Andrea Chiovenda

in Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan

The chapter lays the theoretical and epistemological foundations on which the ethnographic analysis contained in the subsequent chapters is based. It explores how a particular kind of psychoanalytic ... More

The chapter lays the theoretical and epistemological foundations on which the ethnographic analysis contained in the subsequent chapters is based. It explores how a particular kind of psychoanalytic approach and practice (intersubjective and relational) can be successfully utilized in ethnographic research to investigate the subjectivity of the ethnographer’s informants. It delves into the perspective from which masculinity is looked at in the book—that is, as a “cultural turf” onto which broader, personal psychological dynamics are played out. It then describes the methodology with which the research was carried out, which amounts to a “clinical ethnography,” characterized by long-term interview sessions with a select group of informants. Finally, it provides a rationale for the choice of such a methodological approach, by highlighting the intimate contiguity between the analyst’s and the ethnographer’s work in the field.Less

Baryalay: Between Cultural and Personal Representational Worlds

Andrea Chiovenda

in Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan

This chapter follows Baryalay, a college-educated man in his early thirties who hails from, and still lives in, a volatile rural village in Nangarhar province, marred by the conflict between the ... More

This chapter follows Baryalay, a college-educated man in his early thirties who hails from, and still lives in, a volatile rural village in Nangarhar province, marred by the conflict between the insurgent Taliban, the Islamic State, and the Afghan government. The chapter introduces the concept of self-representation, as the locus where different, even conflicting, self-images and subjective states find coherence and eventually lead to the “illusion” of the unity of the self. Baryalay in fact has to struggle between his concurrent identifications as a pacha (a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad), and as a Pashtun, which hold at times contrasting social requirements in terms of appropriate masculinity. Additionally, via the analysis of the personal experiences that Baryalay had in a geographical area of intense violent conflict and intimate danger, the chapter also elaborates on the way in which forty years of continuous war have considerably changed the understanding and performance of masculinity among Pashtun men.Less

Malayu Antecedents

Leonard Y. Andaya

in Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka

This chapter discusses how the Malayu were one of the earliest and most influential groups in the Straits of Melaka. As an ethnonym, “Malayu” initially referred to the communities living in southeast ... More

This chapter discusses how the Malayu were one of the earliest and most influential groups in the Straits of Melaka. As an ethnonym, “Malayu” initially referred to the communities living in southeast Sumatra and later came to include those settled along both coasts and in the central and northern interior areas of the island. However, most studies overlook an emerging culture in the northern portion of the Straits of Melaka that formed the antecedents of Malayu culture. The settlements in northern Sumatra and in the Isthmus of Kra and the Malay Peninsula were part of an extensive network of communities, named the “Sea of Malayu.” The chapter explores this exchange network, depicting how the long and profitable interaction within this common “sea” produced a shared cultural idiom that helped shape Malayu identity.Less