When the COVID-19 virus broke out in China, foreign observers speculated whether the Chinese leadership was facing its ‘Chernobyl Moment’. China’s leadership, however, defied foreign expectations... Show moreWhen the COVID-19 virus broke out in China, foreign observers speculated whether the Chinese leadership was facing its ‘Chernobyl Moment’. China’s leadership, however, defied foreign expectations about its ostensibly floundering legitimacy and instead turned the crisis into a national success story. This article explores the role that digital media played in cementing this success, specifically how various actors mobilized nationalist sentiments and discourses on the online video-sharing platform Bilibili. By focusing on visual discourses, online commentaries, and the affordances of the digital platform, the article analyses the role that ‘hip’ and youthful content played in the authorities’ attempts to guiding online audiences to rally around the flag. The results of these efforts were viral villages of community sentiment that created strong incentives for conformity, and in which the official party line was able to reverberate with pop-culture memes and popular nationalism. Show less
This article explores how competing actors established, spread, and challenged visual representations of the Chinese nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It asks: how do official gatekeepers of... Show moreThis article explores how competing actors established, spread, and challenged visual representations of the Chinese nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It asks: how do official gatekeepers of meaning in China imbue their visual construction of a crisis-hit nation with pathos?; and what happens when their critics utilize the resulting repertoire of visual cues for their own ends? To answer these questions, the article first examines the visual libraries of nationalism and national crisis from which Chinese propaganda drew during the COVID-19 outbreak. It then analyses the struggles that ensued over such representations, specifically the use of national flags and the sentiments they elicit. The analysis traces representations of the flag of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from an initial satirical portrayal in a Danish broadsheet to the angry Chinese backlashes that followed on social media, and it shows how the tensions over such portrayals became part of a meme war over the sovereignty of Hong Kong. The analysis shows how representations of the nation can become a matter of existential anxieties during a time of crisis, especially in highly networked communication environments where authoritative official actors and their supporters are no longer in control of the symbols they established as part of their ‘emotional governance’. Show less
This dissertation examines how the Serbs as a nation deal with the past through the prism of the 1915 Serbian Army retreat across Montenegro and Albania in the wake of the invasion of Serbia in... Show moreThis dissertation examines how the Serbs as a nation deal with the past through the prism of the 1915 Serbian Army retreat across Montenegro and Albania in the wake of the invasion of Serbia in October 1915. We investigate the remembrance of this iconic event as a symptom of Serbian mythologized self-perception. The Retreat today is a canonised memory symbolising Serbian heroism and sacrifice. The First World War and the Retreat are experienced as specific and personal. Any attempted introduction of alternative views of the Serbian role in the First World War are rejected as hostile revisionism. The Serbian government has used the centenary commemorations to distract the Serbian public from the more recent unexamined past — Serbia’s role in the wars of the Yugoslav succession of the 1990s. This commemorative opportunism has been termed in the thesis as historical frame switching —framing current political events within arguably irrelevant historical contexts mostly in order to present an image of biased and unjust treatment of Serbs by the West. Further, politically loaded commemorations are analysed alongside grassroot events and ceremonies that memorialise the War and the Retreat. The latter are recognised as fictive kinships of remembrance, as previously characterised by Jay Winter. Show less
Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth... Show moreBefore 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth century, Palestinian music evolved as a reflection of the social, cultural, and political evolution of Palestinians. Palestinian music-making evolved exponentially resulting in the expansion of various folk tunes into shaʿbī songs, the creation of the Palestinian qaṣīda song genre, new compositions of instrumental music for traditional and Western music formations, the establishment of choirs and children music programing, and active engagement in composing in the styles of the dominant Egyptian genres of the time as well as muwashshaḥāt.In 1948, the vast majority of Palestinians were displaced, and musicians found themselves at the frontier of implementing new political and cultural visions in the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the continuation of the musical narrative in the West Bank did not seem attainable. By the early 1950s, Palestinian musicians and intellectuals developed a vocabulary that reflected the topography, scenery, culture, dialects, and history of al-Mashriq, one that is independent of Egypt’s. Their input, intuition, experience, and convictions of various Palestinian musicians helped to make the music scene in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan what they are today. Show less
Nationalism, as an ideology coupling self-conscious peoples to fixed territories, is often seen as emerging from European historical developments, also in postcolonial countries outside Europe.... Show moreNationalism, as an ideology coupling self-conscious peoples to fixed territories, is often seen as emerging from European historical developments, also in postcolonial countries outside Europe. André van Dokkum’s Nationalism and Territoriality in Barue and Mozambique shows that this view is not universally true. The precolonial Kingdom of Barue in what is now Mozambique showed characteristics generally associated with nationalism, giving the country great resilience against colonial encroachment. Postcolonial Mozambique, on the other hand, has so far not succeeded in creating national coherence. The former anti-colonial organization and now party in power Frelimo has always stressed national unity, but only under its own guidance, paradoxically producing disunity. Show less
Search engines play a vital role in positioning, organizing, and disseminating knowledge in China. Although there is a growing interest in China’s search engines, relatively few researches... Show moreSearch engines play a vital role in positioning, organizing, and disseminating knowledge in China. Although there is a growing interest in China’s search engines, relatively few researches systematically examine their role involving nationalism. In order to address the research gap, this article compares the top thirty search results,from Baidu, 360 Search, Sogou Search, and Google regarding the “Meng Wanzhou Incident” while focusing on the overlap, ranking, and bias patterns. Furthermore, this study also analyses the differences between Wikipedia and China’s online encyclopedias concerning the “Meng Wanzhou Incident” in terms of content, structure, sources, and their main arguments. This article finds: 1) Chinese search engines favor their own services, thereby offering a unique and selective content bias; 2) Chinese search engines and online encyclopedias only provide Chinese sources that provide national biased knowledge, which raises search bias concerns; and 3) Chinese online encyclopedias offer a strong one-sided argument that is positive to China. Overall, this study finds that China’s search engines service the Chinese government’s self-interest by rendering overly biased social realities; moreover, they produce a logic of “imagined communities” to promote and stimulate feelings of nationalism. Show less
By way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, this article explores how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a... Show moreBy way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, this article explores how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a vision geared towards political action outside of the colonial legal order. This represented a radical departure from Muslim politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century where liberalism—while circulating around ideas of mysticism and moral community – remained largely the domain of polite petititoning. By piecing together the legal micro-his-tory of the Shahidganj mosque dispute and by mapping native responses to colonial law, I show how Indian Muslims, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, located and shaped their political identity by moving beyond colonial prescriptions of legal pacts based on interests. Show less
This study focuses on the issue of a “moral crisis” which was a widely discussed topic among the Ottoman intelligentsia. Moving on from the common view that the “moral crisis” reached a peak... Show moreThis study focuses on the issue of a “moral crisis” which was a widely discussed topic among the Ottoman intelligentsia. Moving on from the common view that the “moral crisis” reached a peak during the First World War, this study investigates how morality was related to the war and the preconditions that created the perception of a crisis in morality. The study argues that morality was a contested space among the intellectuals and explains how rival ideologies set forth their political positions depending on differing understandings of morality. For the state, on the other hand, moral decline became a matter of national security during the war. The study demonstrates how wartime rivalries were reflected in the cultural sphere through morality discourses. In public opinion and political circles, immorality was generally considered a social problem that had been imported from European countries. At the social level, the study focuses on family, women, and morality related crimes with an emphasis on the impact of war on traditional family order. The dissertation sheds a light on the place of morality in lawmaking processes, the ideas of reform and progress, and plans for a new society. Show less
La belleza no conoce fronteras y lo mismo ocurre con el arte. Sin embargo, el arte ha sido categorizado sobre todo por nacionalidad. El impacto del nacionalismo sobre el arte se puede estudiar... Show moreLa belleza no conoce fronteras y lo mismo ocurre con el arte. Sin embargo, el arte ha sido categorizado sobre todo por nacionalidad. El impacto del nacionalismo sobre el arte se puede estudiar perfectamente a través del caso de El Greco. Era un pintor del siglo XVI, había nacido en Creta, tuvo su educación en Venecia y solamente cuando tenía unos 35 años llegó a España para producir casi todas sus obras maestras en la ciudad de Toledo. Artistas, escritores y historiadores de arte en Francia y Alemania empezaban a redescubrir este singular pintor durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, definiéndole sobre todo como un artista esencialmente español. Esta reinterpretación nacionalista de su obra culminó en la biografía que Manuel Bartolomé Cossío publicó de El Greco en 1908. En este capítulo hacemos un análisis detallado de la interpretación nacionalista de Cossío, que en el fondo era el paso definitivo para hacer entrar el pintor manierista en el canon del arte español Show less
La belleza no conoce fronteras y lo mismo ocurre con el arte. Sin embargo, el arte ha sido categorizado sobre todo por nacionalidad. El impacto del nacionalismo sobre el arte se puede estudiar... Show moreLa belleza no conoce fronteras y lo mismo ocurre con el arte. Sin embargo, el arte ha sido categorizado sobre todo por nacionalidad. El impacto del nacionalismo sobre el arte se puede estudiar perfectamente a través del caso de El Greco. Era un pintor del siglo XVI, había nacido en Creta, tuvo su educación en Venecia y solamente cuando tenía unos 35 años llegó a España para producir casi todas sus obras maestras en la ciudad de Toledo. Artistas, escritores y historiadores de arte en Francia y Alemania empezaban a redescubrir este singular pintor durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, definiéndole sobre todo como un artista esencialmente español. Esta reinterpretación nacionalista de su obra culminó en la biografía que Manuel Bartolomé Cossío publicó de El Greco en 1908. En este capítulo hacemos un análisis detallado de la interpretación nacionalista de Cossío, que en el fondo era el paso definitivo para hacer entrar el pintor manierista en el canon del arte español Show less
This article examines policies and ideas of European settlement in Africa through the lens of imperial rhetoric and nationalist imaginations in Portugal during the first decades of Salazar’s... Show moreThis article examines policies and ideas of European settlement in Africa through the lens of imperial rhetoric and nationalist imaginations in Portugal during the first decades of Salazar’s dictatorship. Even though European settlement in Africa was under discussion since Brazil’s independence, the debate was invigorated in the 1930s. This article will place the renewed interest within the wider context of transnational migration, world economic crisis and inter-European competition for colonial dominance before the Second World War. Although European settlement was perceived as necessary both in terms of domestic social regulation and international competition at the time, state-sponsored settlements in Portuguese Africa were not a reality until the worldwide process of decolonization had started. On the contrary, not only did Portuguese political elites not invest in settlement schemes, but they actually adopted measures to curb migration to the colonies up until 1945, contradicting their imperialist rhetoric at home. The author argues that the contradiction between rhetoric and practice needs to be analysed in light of the growing desire to intensify control over space and people in European settlements in Africa. Barriers to block undesirable migrants from the metropole were only one part of the process of forcing an idealized vision of Portugal and Portugueseness into reality in both the colonies and the metropole. This article concludes that policies and ideas of European Settlement cannot be dissociated from the anti-urban rhetoric and anti-modernizing agenda of Estado Novo.Show less
The corpus of the Ottoman Turkish literary utopias is little known. It has not received its due share of attention in Ottoman Turkish literary history, and many works of this kind have sunken... Show moreThe corpus of the Ottoman Turkish literary utopias is little known. It has not received its due share of attention in Ottoman Turkish literary history, and many works of this kind have sunken into oblivion. The present dissertation aims at unearthing these works and at performing a comprehensive examination of this corpus which furnishes valuable insight into the Ottoman Turkish political, cultural, and literary history in the 19th and 20th centuries. It also demonstrates that the Balkan War of 1912-1913 represents a significant rupture in the trajectory of this literature. This dissertation argues that the catastrophic defeat suffered by the Ottomans in the Balkan War, along with its tragic consequences, produced profound shock and trauma in the Ottoman Turkish public and intelligentsia. The state’s teetering on the brink of collapse transformed and radicalized political and ideological positions on the country’s future. At the same time, this extreme setback transformed literature as well, assigning to it the mission of narrativizing this trauma and envisioning a future for Turkey. Accordingly, in the period following the Balkan War, many utopian works were produced in Ottoman Turkish literature, and some of these works have been helpful in the creation of new categories of identity. Show less
This present dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus. Furthermore, it demonstrates how... Show moreThis present dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus. Furthermore, it demonstrates how political parties in both states used – and often maintained – the unsettled and contentious legal positioning of Cyprus in order to reinforce their own political prowess domestically and vis-à-vis one another. In so doing, the thesis traces how socialist and left-leaning parties in Greece and Turkey developed into nationalist ones, and their relation with nationalism in general, adopting ideologies that in effect claimed Cyprus as their own. After presenting a lengthy and analytical account of the Greek and Turkish legal socialist parties and their political agenda, focusing not only on Cyprus but in domestic and international affairs also, the study moves with an explorative contrast and comparisons between the two parties. In five comparative chapters, the study aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning within their own capitals. Show less
Kurdish dengbêjs are singer-poets who are trained in singing and telling stories. For a long time, the dengbêjs and their art were suppressed and forgotten, and only recently did they return into... Show moreKurdish dengbêjs are singer-poets who are trained in singing and telling stories. For a long time, the dengbêjs and their art were suppressed and forgotten, and only recently did they return into public life. Today the dengbêjs are seen as guardians of Kurdish history and culture. This vision tells much about recent socio-political developments and should be understood in the context of the evolving story of Kurdish nationalism. The dengbêjs and their songs create a Kurdish home set within the landscape of Turkey and the surrounding (nation-)states. Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the political landscape of the Kurdistan region was marked by conflict and turmoil that greatly affected the lives of millions of people. The art the dengbêjs, and the negotiation about what it means to be a dengbêj today, reflect this difficult history. From a theoretical perspective the dissertation gives an ethnographic account of narrative. The variety of narratives circulating in a society at a particular time and place are presented and analyzed. The narratives do not only tell us a story about Kurdish society in Turkey, but also about the larger global stories of modernity, nationalism, and Orientalism. This gives the study a wider relevance. Show less
This study discusses the transformation from a colonial into a national economy in Indonesia and Vietnam. It focuses on two intertwined processes of economic decolonization and reconstruction in... Show moreThis study discusses the transformation from a colonial into a national economy in Indonesia and Vietnam. It focuses on two intertwined processes of economic decolonization and reconstruction in the two countries after the Second World War, paying special attention to political and institutional factors involved in these processes. The study demonstrates that, although differences in the political situations resulted in the adoption of divergent strategies, Indonesia and Vietnam were in fact pursuing similar long-term goals, namely: attaining a national independent economy. The Indonesian government was determined to get rid of the economic legacy of Dutch colonialism by placing the whole economy under the strong state control and ownership, in accordance with the spirit of Guided Democracy and Guided Economy in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. This effort resembled much the socialist transformation of North Vietnam in the 1950s and the various means by which the government of South Vietnam concentrated economic power in its hands during the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Show less
The study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought. It attempts to understand and illustrate what the notion of the Arab means for... Show moreThe study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought. It attempts to understand and illustrate what the notion of the Arab means for Iranians and how Arabs are portrayed and by examining how they depicted, It describes why they depicted in modern time in such a way, linking this portrayal to a range of ideologies in modern Iran. In doing this research, the researcher has limited his analysis to a certain body of fiction and non-fiction texts. he has selected writings produced by prominent Iranian authors of a variety of ideological affiliations, including literary works such as short stories, novels, historical stories and works published in academic or semi-academic journals, as well as some works in the field of historiography, all of which were written in Persian by Iranian writers between the 1850s and the 1950s. In a broader sense, the study offers an analytical model for the understanding of the Iranian notions of Self and Other in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It investigates the ethnic and racial attitudes of a number of Iranian writers and thinkers toward Arabs, contributing to an understanding of the way in which the Iranian identity has been shaped in modern times. Show less
