Minority Identities and the Nation-state

Minority Identities and the Nation-state
Author: D. L. Sheth
Publisher:
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1999
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

In This Collection Leading Academics And Intellectuals Reflect Upon The Concept Of A Minority And Examine Minority Rights In A Historical And Comparative Political Perspective, Covering The Experiences Of Minorities In India, China, The Eastwhile Soviet Union And Bangladesh.

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India

Nation-state and Minority Rights in India
Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317751787

The blood-laden birth-pangs of the Indian "nation-state" undoubtedly had a bearing on the contentious issue of group rights for cultural minorities. Indeed, the trajectory of the concept ‘minority rights’ evolved amidst multiple conceptualizations, political posturing and violent mobilizations and outbursts. Accommodating minority groups posed a predicament for the fledgling "nation-state" of post-colonial India. This book compares and contrasts Muslim and Sikh communities in pre- and post-Partition India. Mapping the evolving discourse on minority rights, the author looks at the overlaps between the Constitutional and the majoritarian discourse being articulated in the public sphere and poses questions about the guaranteeing of minority rights. The book suggests that through historical ruptures and breaks , communities oscillate between being minorities and nations. Combining archival material with ethnographic fieldwork, it studies the identity groups and their vexed relationship to the ideas of nation and nationalism. It captures meanings attributed to otherwise politically loaded concepts such as nation, nation-state and minority rights in the everyday world of Muslims and Sikhs and thus tries to make sense of the patterns of accommodation, adaptation and contestation in the life-world. Successfully confronting and illuminating the challenge of reconciling representation and equality both for groups and within groups, this exploration of South Asian nationalisms and communal relations will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, in particular Sociology and Politics.

Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies

Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies
Author: Maya Shatzmiller
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780773528482

The movement of nation building in Islamic societies away from the secular or Pan-Arab models of the early twentieth century toward a variety of "nationalisms" was accompanied by growing antagonism between the Muslim majority and ethnic or religious minorities. The papers in Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies offer a comparative analysis of how these minorities developed their own distinctive identities within the modern Islamic nation-state. The essays focus on identity formation in five minority groups - Copts in Egypt, Baha'is and Christians in Pakistan, Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. While every minority community is distinctive, the experiences of each show that a state's authoritarian rule, uncompromising attitude towards expressions of particularism, and failure to offer tools for inclusion are all responsible for the politicization and radicalization of minority identities. The place of Islam in this process is complex: while its initial pluralistic role was transformed through the creation of the modern nation-state, the radicalization of society in turn radicalized and politicized minority identities. Minority groups, though at times possessing a measure of political autonomy, remain intensely vulnerable. Contributors include Juan R.I. Cole (University of Michigan), David L. Crawford (Fairfield University), Michael Gunter (Tennessee Technological University), Azzedine Layachi (St John's University), Richard C. Martin (Emory University), Paul S. Rowe (University of Western Ontario), Maya Shatzmiller (University of Western Ontario), Charles D. Smith (University of Arizona), Pieternella van Doorn-Harder (Valparaiso University), the late Linda S. Walbridge (University of Oklahoma), and M. Hakan Yavuz (University of Utah). Announcing the series: Studies in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict General Editors: Sid Noel and Richard Vernon, co-directors of University of Western Ontario's Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Research Group. Studies in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict is a series that examines the political dimensions of nationality in the contemporary world. The series includes both scholarly monographs and edited volumes which consider the varied sources and political expressions of national identities, the politics of multiple loyalty, the domestic and international effects of competing identities within a single state, and the causes of, and political responses to, conflict between ethnic and religious groups. The volumes are designed for use by university students, scholars and interested general readers.

Cultural Identity and the Nation-state

Cultural Identity and the Nation-state
Author: Carol Gould
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780847696772

In this collection, several distinguished political philosophers consider alternative models of the recognition of diverse cultures and the significance of cultural and national identity within democratic societies. The impact of this recognition for conceptions of citizenship and the supposed neutrality of the democratic state is examined, in the framework of economic and political globalization on the one hand, and the widespread assertion of cultural and ethnic differences on the other. The tension between the recognition of diverse cultures and universal frameworks of human rights is discussed, as are the idea of national self-determination and the new forms of democratic and civic institutions that may be required in order to deal with present political conflicts.

Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-state

Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-state
Author: Aviva Chomsky
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822322184

A social history of Central America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean that illustrates the importance of workers' actions in shaping national history.

Neither Settler nor Native

Neither Settler nor Native
Author: Mahmood Mamdani
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674987322

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities. In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan—the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence. Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this historical process. Mamdani rejects the “criminal” solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors—victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries—based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation.

Language and Minority Rights

Language and Minority Rights
Author: Stephen May
Publisher:
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN:

In this provocative and ground-breaking book, Stephen May argues for a non-essentialist understanding of language rights, while at the same time outlining why language rights, particularly for minority groups, are defensible and important, both academically and politically. May argues that the causes of many of the language-based conflicts in the world today lie with the nation-state and its preoccupation with establishing a 'common' language and culture via mass education. The solution, he suggests, is to rethink nation-states in more culturally and linguistically plural ways while avoiding, at the same time, essentialising the language-identity link.Language and Minority Rights - a benchmark volume in the field of language rights and language policy - is an outstanding interdisciplinary analysis which draws together debates on language from widely different academic fields, including the sociology of language, ethnicity and nationalism, sociolinguistics, social and political theory, education, history and law, illustrating these debates via a wealth of different national contexts and examples. It is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the sociology of language, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language policy and planning, sociology, politics, and education.

Nationalism and National Integration

Nationalism and National Integration
Author: Anthony Harold Birch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 1989
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0043201814

A concise and stimulating analysis of the theory of nationalism, and the theories, process and problems of national integration. Although nationalism is the most successful political ideology in human history, its achievement in getting the world's entire land surface divided between nation-states has led to considerable problems in integrating the ethnic and cultural minorities within these states.

Minority Nationalisms in South Asia

Minority Nationalisms in South Asia
Author: Tanweer Fazal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317966465

South Asia is the theatre of myriad experimentations with nationalisms of various kinds - religious, linguistic, religio-linguistic, composite, plural and exclusivist. In all the region’s major states, officially promulgated nationalism at various times has been fiercely contested by minority groups intent on preserving what they see as the pristine purity of their own cultural inheritance. This volume examines the perspective of minority identities as they negotiate their terms of co-existence, accommodation and adaptation with several other competing identities within the framework of the ‘nation state’ in South Asia. It examines three different kinds of minority articulations – cultural conclaves with real or fictitious attachments to an imaginary homeland, the identity problems of dispersed minorities with no territorial claims and the aspirations of indigenous communities, tribes or ethnicities. The essays in this volume offer a rich menu: the evolution of Naga nationalism, the construction of the territory-less Sylheti identity, the debates over Pashtun nationalism in Pakistan, the evolution of Muslim nationalism in Sri Lanka, the politics of religious minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the making of minority politics in India, and questions of Islam and nationalism in colonial India. It is an eclectic mix for students of nationalism, politics, modern history and anyone interested in the evolution of South Asia. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.