Comparative Ethnic Studies

Asupra omului văzut ca entitate dinamică cu tendinţe de perfecţionare (intelectuală, socială, economică) acţionează concomitent o serie de rituri cu valenţe diverse, uneori chiar contrare. Astfel, integrarea într-un nou context nu se produce brusc, ci doar printr-o succesiune de rituri ce separă treptat individul de vechiul context şi altă serie de rituri ce îl agregă mereu într-o altă poziţie. Aceste rituri acţionează cu intensităţi diferite raportat la un anume moment temporal. Dacă imediat după ieşirea dintr-un cadru iniţial riturile de segregare sunt predominate şi intense, cu timpul au loc integrări temporare, iar riturile de acceptare se manifestă din ce în ce mai puternic. Apare astfel evident pe de o parte, o interferenţă a riturilor de trecere, iar pe de altă parte, o interferenţă a riturilor de trecere cu alte categorii de rituri.

The recent scholarship of civil rights historians and ethnic studies scholars have troubled the notion that appeals to a “common oppression” as “people of color” can unify multiracial coalitions.  Rather, they have built their analysis around the concept of “differential racialization,” which emphasizes the unique experiences that racial groups have with white supremacy: slavery and its afterlife, settler colonialism, and foreigner/enemy racialization.  While distinct racial experiences should not be conflated, we also know that that communities of color do not live in isolation.  With this later point in mind, this article examines an understudied history of black and Filipino labor solidarity in the Pacific Northwest.  Specifically, my analysis centers the Alaska Cannery Worker Association (ACWA), a group of Filipino and other non-white white cannery workers in Alaska that formed in the summer of 1973.  While they were a product of a long history of Filipino labor radicalism on the West Coast, they drew upon the resources and strategies of militant black workers in Seattle’s building trades.  To illustrate the fluid exchange of resources, people, and ideas between these laboring populations, I focus on two distinct, but overlapping “organic intellectual traditions” that informed the ACWA, “blues epistemology” and “manong knowledge.”  In doing so, this paper offers a new framework for the study of multiracial social movement: racial cross-fertilization.  That is, the ways in which the lived experiences and ideas of seemingly distinct racial groups shape one another.

Background: The persistently high prevalence of girl-child marriage remains a public health and developmental concern in Nigeria. Despite global campaign against the practice and policy efforts by Nigerian government, the prevalence remains unabated. This study investigates the prevalence and the influence of ethnicity and religious affiliation on the girl-child marriage among female adolescents in Nigeria. Methods: Data of 7804 girls aged 15-19 years extracted from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey were used. Ethnic groups were classified into five: major Northern ethnic group (Hausa/Fulani); Northern ethnic minorities; two major Southern ethnic groups (Yoruba and Igbo), and Southern ethnic minorities. The prevalence of girl-child marriage was determined for the five ethnic groups and individually for each ethnic minority group. Relationships between ethnicity and religious affiliation on girl-child marriage were explored using Cox proportional hazard regression models, adjusting for residence, education and wealth quintile. Results: Child marriage was higher for the Northern majority ethnic group of Hausa/Fulani (54.8%) compared to the two major Southern ethnic groups (3.0-3.6%) and aggregated Northern ethnic minorities (25.7%) and Southern minorities (5.9%). However, overall, the less known Northern ethnic minority groups of Kambari (74.9%) and Fulfude (73.8%) recorded the highest prevalence. Compared to the major Southern ethnic group of Yoruba, the adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) of child marriage was significantly higher for Northern ethnic minorities (AHR = 2.50; 95% C.I. = 1.59-3.95) and Northern major ethnicity (AHR = 3.67, 95% C.I. = 2.33-5.77). No significant difference was recorded among Southern ethnic groups. Girls affiliated to other religions (Muslim and traditionalist) had higher childmarriage risks compared to Christians (AHR = 2.10; 95% C.I. = 1.54-2.86). Conclusion: Ethnicity and religion have independent associations with girl-child marriage in Nigeria; interventions must address culturally-laden social norms that vary by ethnic groups as well as religious-related beliefs.

This introductory essay considers the critical purchase of “relationality” in current scholarly debates in Comparative Ethnic Studies and Comparative Literature. It foregrounds Blackness and/as incommensurability as they are treated in these fields' distinct and overlapping institutional locations, historical developments, and epistemic investments.

Background The persistently high prevalence of girl-child marriage remains a public health and developmental concern in Nigeria. Despite global campaign against the practice and policy efforts by Nigerian government, the prevalence remains unabated. This study investigates the prevalence and the influence of ethnicity and religious affiliation on the girl-child marriage among female adolescents in Nigeria. Methods Data of 7804 girls aged 15–19 years extracted from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey were used. Ethnic groups were classified into five: major Northern ethnic group (Hausa/Fulani); Northern ethnic minorities; two major Southern ethnic groups (Yoruba and Igbo), and Southern ethnic minorities. The prevalence of girl-child marriage was determined for the five ethnic groups and individually for each ethnic minority group. Relationships between ethnicity and religious affiliation on girl-child marriage were explored using Cox proportional hazard regression models, ...

Collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire is a much-debated issue that has drawn a lot of attention over the years. The current paper attempts a critical assessment of the hitherto main lines of thinking about Byzantine identity, focussing on the period between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. By proposing an alternative view on source material based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, I argue that a conceptualization of the collective identity of this medieval imperial social order with its constantly fluctuating geopolitical and cultural boundaries needs to be disconnected from essentialist and reifying views on perennial ethnicity as well as from the modern phenomenon of the nation-state.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

Dos suizos, dos libros, una única obsesión: la explotación del “oro negro” de la selva amazónica, en la época del auge cauchero en el Oriente de Bolivia. Con apenas unos meses de diferencia, Franz Ritz y Ernst Leutenegger trabajaron en la misma barraca gomera durante la primera década del siglo XX, y ambos publicaron luego sus recuerdos en su país natal. Son estos relatos que, traducidos por primera vez al español, nos propone descubrir aquí Lorena Córdoba. La mirada más entusiasta de Ritz y la visión más melancólica de Leutenegger evocan ambas tópicos de la fiebre cauchera en la selva boliviana: la dura vida en las barracas; la ley del más fuerte en un mundo donde el Estado está ausente; los enganches tramposos, las deudas hereditarias, la explotación de los indígenas. Sin embargo, estos relatos permiten ir más allá de los clichés y matizar en gran parte las visiones en blanco y negro sobre esta época crucial para la economía boliviana, la paulatina incorporación del Oriente al país y el destino también de los pueblos indígenas amazónicos. Con su lectura, la Historia gana en humanidad, en matices enriquecedores, en profundidad y credibilidad.

Çok uluslu ve çok dinli/mezhepli imparatorlukların 19. yüzyılda kendi varlıklarına tehdit olarak gördüğü farklı etnik ve dinî unsurlara yönelik uyguladığı yaygın siyasî pratiklerden biri, söz konusu grupları sürgün veya tehcir yoluyla zorla yerinden etmek ve bu unsurları kendi varlıklarına tehdit teşkil etmeyecek sayısal bir düzeye indirmekti. Tehcir ve yeniden yerleştirme siyasaları aynı zamanda bu yüzyıldaki hâkim ideolojik paradigma olan etnik homojenleştirme ethos’uyla paralellik arz ediyordu. Bu politikalar modern devlet kurumlarının istatistik ve etnografya gibi modern bilimin sunduğu yeni imkânlardan yararlanarak ürettiği etnisite mühendisliği çerçevesinde gerçekleştirildi. Burada esas gaye hâkim etnik kimliğe yönelik tehdit unsuru teşkil eden diğer etno-dinsel topluluklar üzerinde kontrol mekanizmaları kurarak bu toplulukları “yönetilebilir” ve “ehlîleştirilebilir” hâle dönüştürmekti. Aynı zamanda bu, devletlerin sınırlarının net çizgilerle belirlenmesi siyasasını da tamamlayıcı nitelikteydi.

The 1983 manuscript published in "Calendars in Mesoamerica and Peru: Native American computations of time". Aveni, Anthony F. & Brotherston, Gordon, eds., BAR International Series 174, Oxford from the 1982 manuscript presented both at the 44th International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, England in 1982 and the American Astronomical Society in Boston, January 1983.  This research article is the only scholarly study that provides an independent proof that the Grolier Codex must be a genuine pre-Columbian codex – because it contains key iconographic and other data that could not have been known to a potential fabricator in the mid-1960s when the Codex was found.  One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. The author also demonstrates his discovery that the previously labeled pages 10 and 11 of the Codex are actually two parts of the same page "10".

This 1983 version of the manuscript has publisher introduced typographical errors. Please see the original 1982 manuscript (click "LINK" on this paper listing) for the complete version or follow the link below: 

http://www.academia.edu/7908428/The_Grolier_Codex_A_Preliminary_Report_on_the_Content_and_Authenticity_of_a_Thirteenth-Century_Maya_Venus_Almanac_1982_

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Grolier Codex.

Abstract: Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop's expressive forms are being used as the raw materials of everyday life by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to what many regard as one of the most stylistically prolific, politically charged, and racially ...

In 2009, just prior to her death, Argentine revolutionary folk singer Mercedes Sosa chose to give concerts in Israel. These appearances were consistent with her increasingly public Zionism, staged through singing Israeli nationalist songs in Hebrew and her repeated defiance of Pales- tinian civil society’s 2005 call for a cultural boycott—actions that garnered her the title of “Israelis’ favorite” folk singer, according to Haaretz (Reuters 2009). In a speech in Israel in 2008, Sosa declared her allegiance to Israel in unequivocal terms: “I am going to repeat this over and over again. I love this country [Israel]. Don’t talk to me about other countries. I love Israel. I am interested in this country” (“Mercedes Sosa Habla en Israel” 2008).

This essay treats the case of Sosa as part of a larger study of the affective economies of postrevolutionary loss and disappointment and the contemporaneous consolidation of new regimes of racial terror in the transfer from the “Cold War” to the “War on Terror.” I theorize the devastating emotional and politi- cal consequences of thwarted revolutionary dreams of the 1960s–1970s, and the subsequent forms of recolonization (and in this case Zionism as a settler colonial project) that flourish in their stead. Sosa’s case emblemizes the ways that once-radical subjects come to be hailed into the production of new racial Others; it illustrates how Zionism serves as a mechanism for organizing unresolved grief and “disappeared” dreams of justice amid the “low-intensity violences” that limn a neoliberal “peace." This becomes particularly pernicious, I contend, in the absence of collectively inhabited ideologies of justice through which survivors of state violence might redirect the very visions of revolution for which they were once so brutally punished.

Параўноўваецца вынаходніцтва этнаграфічных рэгіёнаў Беларусі і Літвы як інструментаў навуковай класіфікацыі і інтэрпрэтацыі тэрытарыяльных варыянтаў этнічнай культуры. Паказана выключная важнасць сацыяльна рэлевантных маркераў тэрытарыяльнай ідэнтычнасці/адрознасці для паспяховага канструявання этнаграфічнага рэгіёна як у навуковым, так і ў шырокім публічным дыскурсах. На прыкладзе гістарычнай Віленшчыны прадэманстравана, якім чынам у выніку дзяржаўна-тэрытарыяльных змен адбываецца інтэграцыя ў нацыянальныя праекты этнаграфічных рэгіёнаў этнічна неаднастайных памежных тэрыторый. Ключавыя словы: этнічная культура, навуковая класіфікацыя, этнаграфічны рэгіён, катэгарыза-цыя, ідэнтыфікацыя, Беларусь, Літва, кампаратывістыка.

The invention of ethnographic regions of Belarus and Lithuania as tools of scientific classification and interpretation of territorial variants of ethnic culture is compared. The exceptional importance of socially relevant markers of territorial identity / difference for the successful construction of an ethnographic region in both scientific and broad public discourse is shown. The example of the historical Vilnius region demonstrates how ethnically heterogeneous border areas are integrated into national projects of ethnographic regions as a result of state and
territorial changes.

In social terms Arab American Christians lie both inside and outside the category of ‘white’ by race. Seemingly ‘white’ via their religious affiliation with the majority and non-white through their Arab and Middle Eastern backgrounds, at times they have access to privilege and power, and at other times face discrimination as non-white and foreign. In this study, there was a connection between those who identified as white, age, and residence in the wealthy suburbs of Virginia and Maryland. The younger generation of professionals who live in the city of Washington DC, as well as activists and academics, tended to be more ambiguous about their own perceived whiteness. Women and men faced differing challenges from prevailing stereotypes of Arabs and gendered expectations of race. The term ‘Ancient Christian’ was used to denote a non-Muslim identity and claim an original Christianity located in the Middle East.

20. yüzyılın başlarında ulusçu düşüncenin eyleme dönüşmesiyle yeni bir dünya düzeni kurulmuştur. Bu yeni düzende, tarihe şekil veren büyük imparatorluklar yerlerini kendi içlerinden çıkan ulus-devletlere bırakmak zorunda kalmıştır. Yüzyıl başındaki bu değişim Rusya halkları için sadece yönetim biçimiyle sınırlı kalan bir başkalaşımdan ibaret olmuştur. Nitekim imparatorluk ortadan kaldırılmış, fakat beklenen ulus-devletler ortaya çıkmamış, daha doğrusu Bolşevikler böyle bir duruma müsaade etmemiştir. Bu halklar ancak yüzyılın sonunda Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasıyla bağımsızlıklarını elde edebilmişlerdir. Sovyet halkları arasında yer alan Türkdilli halklar geç elde ettikleri bu bağımsızlıklarının meşruiyetini pekiştirmek amacıyla ulusun ve devletin biricikliğine atıfta bulunan toprak, bayrak, dil, tarih ve benzeri objeleri ulusçuluk temelinde yeniden dizayn etmişlerdir. Bu çerçevede siyasal tercihini ulus-devlet anlayışından yana yapan Azerbaycan, ulusçu bir anlayışla tarihine ve kimliğine yeni bir şekil vermeye başlamıştır. Fakat bu süreç bağımsızlık sonrasının siyasi çalkantılarına paralel olarak geliştiğinden Azerbaycan ulusal tarih yazımı kalıcı bir biçim alamamıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Azerbaycan, ulus-devlet, tarih yazımı, ulusal tarih, ulusal kimlik.

At the beginning of the 20 th century, as the nationalist thinking turned into action a new world order emerged. In this new world order, great empires had to leave their autonomy to the nation-states, which arose within those empires. This conversion taking place at the beginning of the century was only a rebellion for Russian nations, which is limited to a change of regime. As a matter of fact the empires were destroyed, but the expected nation states did not emerge, or more precisely the Bolsheviks did not allow them to do so. These nations could only gain their independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the century. In order to consolidate the legitimacy of their delayed independence, the Turkish speaking nations among the Soviet communities redesigned the concepts of land, flag, language, history and similar elements that refer to the uniqueness of the nation and the state, on the basis of nationalism. In this respect, Azerbaijan, which made its political choice in favor of being a nation-state, started to redesign its history and identity with a national perspective. However, since this process developed in line with political upheaval, the national historiography of Azerbaijan could not adopt a permanent shape.

This article examines the Lawndale Choir in light of U.S.-Mennonite denominational politics surrounding race during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The choir formed around 1970 at Lawndale Mennonite Church, a congregation that began in 1934 as a mission for ethnic Mexicans in Chicago. In the context of heightened denominational tensions surrounding the church’s relationship to its minority members, and in contrast to the newly released Mennonite Hymnal (1969), the choir’s performances made urban, Latina/o Mennonite musical identities audible to the broader church. Yet they also invited their audiences into a unity that transcended traditional boundaries of ethnic, racial, and religious identity. Drawing heavily on the popular music of the day, the choir’s performances implicitly critiqued formulations of Mennonite identity that looked for legitimacy in European historical roots and that presupposed a border between Mennonite religious practice and the secular world.

This article situates the reception of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan within a comparative North American context, tracing the divergence and conver- gence of US and Canadian racial discourses in the canonization of Obasan in Asian American and Canadian literary studies. Through a consideration of how the novel both affirms the oppositional politics of Asian American literary studies and the fragmented nationalism of Canadian literary studies, this article argues that the politics of reception, appropriation and recogni- tion that underwrite the text’s cross-border canonization are prefigured by the text’s own engagement with passing and recognition. While Obasan’s blurring of Japanese Canadian and First Nations experiences can be read as a critique of Canadian racialization and the presumed universalization of US racial formations, such representational strategies are not immune to the colonizing gestures that inform the text’s inclusion in Asian American and Canadian literary studies.

[This paper was written for an Anthropology course on citizenship and displacement in the 2nd year of my PhD program.]
The Hispanic population has been the largest minority group in the United States since around the year 2000. This diverse population is continuing to grow and is estimated to make up over 25% of the U.S. population by 2050,  or around 106 million people. However, the growing size and influence of the Hispanic American community in the United States is not matched by a growing awareness of or interest in the Hispanic American community by most Arab countries in the Middle East. Despite the fact that the diverse Hispanic American challenges could easily serve as sites of parallel human and civil rights claim-making for the Palestinian struggle, Hispanic American narratives are often ignored as a potential site of discursive comparisons. This paper explores potential reasons for this lack of "reciprocal solidarity," hypothesizing that media portrayals and education both play a role in this.

Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-) and Mab Segrest (1949-) are white
middle-class lesbians that both came of age during the classical
phase of the Civil Rights Movement in rural Alabama.
Today, they are considered influential figures in feminist and
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) literary
movements and recognized as important activists in late
twentieth-century feminist, LGBTQ, and anti-racist political
struggles. Examining Pratt’s Rebellion: Essays, 1980-1991 (1991)
and Segrest’s Memoir of a Race Traitor (1994), I argue that
both texts deconstruct the sociopolitical dynamics and ideologies
that inform the inculcation of white middle-class southern
womanhood specifically and hegemonic white southern culture
generally through performing a form of anti-racist praxis
that I call geospatial critique. This term addresses how Pratt
and Segrest mine spaces that they occupy for histories of
struggle, paying specific attention to how white settler-colonialism
and chattel slavery produced particular epistemologies
of race, class, gender, and sexuality that continue to influence
social identities and practices in the present. Initially developed
during Pratt and Segrest’s collaboration on Feminary, a
lesbian-feminist journal located in Durham, North Carolina,
between 1978 and 1982, geospatial critique, I suggest, is a direct
response to or a way of undoing the racial training that
was part of the production of whiteness in the south from the
turn to the first half of the twentieth century.

Canadian immigration politics and policymaking are striking. Canadian admission targets have steadily increased since the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, regardless of the party in power and despite the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to the less welcoming attitudes of publics in other industrialized democracies, Canadians have enthusiastically supported expansive immigration policies. Elite and popular support for Canada’s official multiculturalism policy also runs counter to trends in other states. The articles in this special issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies explore the factors underlying Canada’s distinctive approach to immigration, pointing out some important limits and attendant tensions in the ‘Canadian model.’ Canadians’ embrace of immigration and multiculturalism is based on important qualifications. Taken together, these qualifications raise questions about the scope and extent of Canadian exceptionalism. They also help us understand what, if anything, other countries can borrow from Canada and the likely trajectory of Canadian immigration policy moving forward.