Virtual Library

As India consolidates an aggressive model of economic development, indigenous tribal people known as adivasis continue to be overrepresented among the country’s poor. Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India, with a total population of more than 100 million people who speak more than three hundred different languages. Although their historical presence is acknowledged by the state and they are lauded as a part of India’s ethnic identity today, their poverty has been compounded by the suppression of their cultural heritage and lifestyle.

In Adivasi Art and Activism, Alice Tilche draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted in rural western India to chart changes in adivasi aesthetics, home life, attire, food, and ideas of religiosity that have emerged from negotiation with the homogenizing forces of Hinduization, development, and globalization in the twenty-first century. She documents curatorial projects located not only in museums and art institutions, but in the realms of the home, the body, and the landscape. Adivasi Art and Activism raises vital questions about preservation and curation of indigenous material and provides an astute critique of the aesthetics and politics of Hindu nationalism.

The article examines the limitations of methodological nationalism in the studies of social memory through a case study of memory of Stalinist repression in Belarus. It analyses how various social agencies – national and local activists, religious organisations, and international foundations – use the memory of repression for constructing post‐Soviet Belarusian identity by embedding their national representations in larger transnational frameworks. Drawing on the concept of ‘internal globalisation’, this article develops the idea of ‘internal transnationalism’ that suggests the importance of wider transnational configurations for the definition of nation. Internalized transnationalism does not make a national memory concept less nation‐centred, but it affects the choice of its cultural, political and civilizational framing. In contrast to methodological cosmopolitanism that implies rediscovering of the national as an internalized global, methodological transnationalism emphasizes the multiplicity of co‐existing transnational networks that can be invoked by social actors in their national mnemonic agenda. Using the case of the Kurapaty memorial site the article analyses how multiple framings of memory representations – the Belarusian national memory, liberal anti‐communist memory, contesting memories, such as Polish, Baltic and Jewish – compete and juxtapose in the space of social memory of political repression.

German and Italian fascist armies in the Second World War treated the Jews quite differently. Jews who fell into the hands of the German army ended up in concentration camps; none of those taken by the Italians suffered the same fate. Yet the protectors of the Jews were no philo-Semites, nor were they (often) great respecters of human life. Some of those same officers had sanctioned savage atrocities against Ethiopians and Arabs in the years before the war. Jonathan Steinberg uses this remarkable and poignant story to unravel the motives and forces underpinning both Fascism and Nazism. As a renowned historian of both Germany and Italy, he is uniquely placed to answer the underlying question; why?

This paper addresses the recognition in cosmopolitan debate of a possible disjuncture between the normative ideal of cosmopolitanism and its realization in practice. Taking as its focus the potential conflict between human rights commitments and national concern about immigration control, it reflects on a series of legal challenges to UK government attempts to withdraw support from asylum seekers who do not claim on entry into the country. Set in the context of socio-legal theory, these cases are analysed for signs of a ‘national’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ paradigm in judicial interpretation, and considered as a possible instance of reflexive judgment, espoused as a feature of cosmopolitanism.

Although the Japanese empire rapidly dissolved following the end of World War II, the memories, mourning, and trauma of the nation's imperial exploits continue to haunt Korea, China, and Taiwan. In Anti-Japan Leo T. S. Ching traces the complex dynamics that shape persisting negative attitudes toward Japan throughout East Asia. Drawing on a mix of literature, film, testimonies, and popular culture, Ching shows how anti-Japanism stems from the failed efforts at decolonization and reconciliation, the Cold War and the ongoing U.S. military presence, and shifting geopolitical and economic conditions in the region. At the same time, pro-Japan sentiments in Taiwan reveal a Taiwanese desire to recoup that which was lost after the Japanese empire fell. Anti-Japanism, Ching contends, is less about Japan itself than it is about the real and imagined relationships between it and China, Korea, and Taiwan. Advocating for forms of healing that do not depend on state-based diplomacy, Ching suggests that reconciliation requires that Japan acknowledge and take responsibility for its imperial history.

War, defeat, and the collapse of empire in 1945 touched every aspect of postwar Japanese society, profoundly shaping how the Japanese would reconstruct national identity and reengage with the peoples of Asia. While “America” offered a vision of re-genesis after cataclysmic ruin, “Asia” exposed the traumata of perpetration and the torment of ethnic responsibility. Obscured in the shadows of a resurgent postwar Japan lurked a postimperial specter whose haunting presence both complicated and confounded the spiritual rehabilitation of the nation.

Asia and Postwar Japan examines Japanese deimperialization from 1945 until the early twenty-first century. It focuses on the thought and activism of progressive activists and intellectuals as they struggled to overcome rigid preconceptions about “Asia,” as they grappled with the implications of postimperial responsibility, and as they forged new regional solidarities and Asian imaginaries. Simon Avenell reveals the critical importance of Asia in postwar Japanese thought, activism, and politics—Asia as a symbolic geography, Asia as a space for grassroots engagement, and ultimately, Asia as an aporia of identity and the source of a new politics of hope.

This article explores the effects of the legalization of international human rights on citizens and non-citizens within states. Adopting a sociological approach to rights it becomes clear that, even in Europe, the cosmopolitanization of law is not necessarily resulting in greater equality and justice. In fact, ‘actually existing’ cosmopolitan citizenship is characterized by a proliferation of status groups that concretize new forms of inequality, including those of super-citizens, marginal citizens, quasi-citizens, sub-citizens and un-citizens. Far from inaugurating a new era of genuinely universal human rights, in some cases cosmopolitan law may even contribute to the creation of conditions in which fundamental human rights are violated.

As important aspects of purported tendencies toward globalization and pluralization, recent immigration waves and the resulting presence of culturally different ethnic minorities are often seen as fundamentally challenging liberal nation‐states and traditional models of citizenship. According to this perspective, migrants and ethnic minorities contribute through their claims making both to the external erosion of sovereignty (the postnational challenge), and to the internal cultural differentiation of liberal nation‐states (the multicultural challenge). In contrast, alternative theoretical approaches have emphasized the continuing relevance of the nation‐state in the processes of inclusion and exclusion of minorities. From these three perspectives on citizenship (postnational, multicultural, and national) a set of hypotheses is derived and tested with data on the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in two European countries, Britain and Germany, for the period 1990–95. The data show very little support for the postnational approach, mixed results regarding the multicultural model, and strong support for the continuing relevance of national models of citizenship. Counter to claims that national modes of migrant incorporation have become insignificant, the evidence shows that migrant claims making is still forged in the image of a particular nation‐state.

What happens when Chinese American youths travel to mainland China in search of their ancestral roots, only to realize that in many ways they still feel out of place, or when mainland Chinese realize that the lives of the Chinese abroad may not be as good as they had imagined? By considering programs designed to facilitate interactions between overseas Chinese and their ancestral homelands, Andrea Louie highlights how these programs not only create opportunities for new connections but also reveal the disjunctures that now separate Chinese Americans from China and mainland Chinese from the Chinese abroad.

Louie focuses on “In Search of Roots,” a program that takes young Chinese American adults of Cantonese descent to visit their ancestral villages in China’s Guangdong province. Through ethnographic interviews and observation, Louie examines the experiences of Chinese Americans both during village visits in China and following their participation in the program, which she herself took part in as an intern and researcher. She presents a vivid portrait of two populations who, though connected through family ties generations back, are meeting for the first time in the context of a rapidly changing contemporary China. Louie situates the participants’ and hosts’ shifting understandings of China and Chineseness within the context of transnational flows of people, media, goods, and money; China’s political and economic policies; and the racial and cultural politics of the United States.

Professor Roberts examines the relationship between antisemitism and the practices of citizenship in a colonial context. She focuses on the experience of Algerian Jews and their evolving identity as citizens as they competed with the other populations in the colony, including newly naturalised non-French settlers and Algerian Muslims, for control over the scarce resources of the colonial state. The author argues that this resulted in antisemitic violence and hotly contested debates over the nature of French identity and rights of citizenship. Tracing the ambiguities and tensions that Algerian Jews faced, the book shows that antisemitism was not coherent or stable but changed in response to influences within Algeria, and from metropolitan France, Europe and the Middle East. Written for a wide audience, this title contributes to several fields including Jewish history, colonial and empire studies, antisemitism within municipal politics, and citizenship, and adds to current debates on transnationalism and globalization