Search results for "Identity"

The dawn of the secular state? Heritage and identity in Swedish church and state debates 1920–1939

2015

This article provides a study of political positions concerning the role of religion in modern society in Sweden between 1920 and 1939. It aims to increase understanding of the Swedish secularization path, with special emphasis on issues related to heritage and national identity, by comparing the dominant perspectives on these issues in the Church of Sweden and in the Social Democratic Party during that period. It addresses how these positions have influenced policies during the period, as well as some of their implications for later path dependence. It explores relations between religious issues and the concept of national heritage, as well as how the fact that both were at that time commo…

Identity, nation‐state and football in Spain. the evolution of nationalist feelings in Spanish Football

2007

This essay shows the importance of the identity component in the development of Spanish football from its birth at the beginning of the twentieth century, when football was organized at a regional level, until the present time when football reflects the democratic and post‐national Spain created after the arrival of democracy in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The essay expounds the existence of four periods in the development of the nationalistic feelings with which Spanish football has been embodied: the pre‐national or regional period, the period of Spanish nationalization, the period of strengthening of peripheral nationalisms and the post‐national period. In order to explain…

The Sikh gurdwara in Finland: negotiating, maintaining and transmitting immigrants’ identities

2010

As recent studies suggest, religious institutions play a crucial role in shaping immigrants’ identities. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Helsinki, Finland among Sikh immigrants from Northern India, this article sets out to investigate the manner in which the gurdwara (Sikh temple) is involved in the process of negotiating, maintaining and transmitting immigrants’ identities. By means of mapping out and analyzing the gurdwara’s architectural as well as organizational structure, its foodways, and its role in transmitting religious as well as cultural traditions to Sikh youth, this article seeks to highlight the complex process underlying the (re‐)creation of immigrants’ identities in a dias…

Moral panic, moral regulation and essentialization of identities: Discursive struggle over unethical business practices in the Finnish national media

2013

The study sheds light on the language of moral panic and moral regulation in the Finnish news media over a 9-year period on the subject of cartels and cartel agreements. What makes the case particularly interesting is that the object of the most explicit moral panic was the introduction of new laws (leniency programmes) designed to regulate illegal cartel behaviour. The main argument is that the construction of both moral regulation and moral panic in news media takes place through essentializing discursive claims that contribute to national identity construction. The study contributes to current literature on moral panics as ideologico-discursive phenomena and throws some light on the powe…

Traditional Craft Skills in the Contemporary Latvian Rural Environment

2016

This article intends to give an insight into what place the traditional craft skills occupy in the contemporary Latvian rural environment, using as a point of observation the activities of the ‘Meet your Master!’ event, organised by the Latvian National Centre for Culture. The interest of both the society and the individuals in focusing on the traditional cultural heritage is encouraged by the desire for expressing their cultural identity in today's cosmopolitan world. The same motivation prompts the use of traditional knowledge in rural tourism, in the activities of individual manufacturers etc. Traditional skills are the basis for mutual interaction among the community members and a meani…

Politics with a human face: identity and experience in post-Soviet Europe

2019

Latvia's Architectural Heritage and its Protection 1880–1940

2006

Abstract The subject of this article is the protection of architectural monuments in present-day Latvia from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the year 1940. The intention here is to look at these activities as part of the process that shaped the national identity of the Baltic Germans, the Latvians, and of Latvia's Russians, each of whom were influential in economic, cultural and political issues in Latvia to varying degrees during the period. In accordance with the well-known historical background of the times, my account is divided into two parts, investigating how the modification of mentalities affected the preservation of historical buildings in the Baltic provinces from…

Translation and Bilingualism in Monica Ali’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Marginalized Identities

2012

This study, drawing upon contemporary theories in the field of migration, postcolonialism, and translation, offers an analysis of literary works by Monica Ali (of Bangladeshi origins) and Jhumpa Lahiri (of Bengali Indian parents). Ali and Lahiri epitomize second-generation immigrant literature, play with the linguistic concept of translating and interpreting as forms of hybrid connections, and are significant examples of how a text may become a space where multi-faceted identities co-habit in a process of deconstructing and reconstructing their own sense of emplacement in non-native places. Each immigrant text becomes a hybrid site, where second- and third generations of immigrant subjects …

Rural places versus naturalized spaces. The logic of knowledge and acknowledgement in protected heritage areas

2013

New policies on nature heritage reorganize and redefine space by introducing new concepts, practices, managers and recipients. The imposition of a neoliberal conservation model generates tensions and resistance in local communities. This process involves appropriations, real and discursive, and reinventions on identity and territory. In this paper, we present the tensions derived from a statutory designation affecting a small town located in the region of Camp de Turia, Valencia (Spain). The town has swiftly gone from an economy based on traditional models for the exploitation of forest and agricultural resources, to a process of natural environment patrimonilization (The Sierra Calderona N…

Bourdieu and Social Movements: Considering Identity Movements in terms of Field, Capital and Habitus

2013

This article examines the explanatory capacity of Pierre Bourdieu's work in relation to social movements and, in particular, identity movements. It aims to provide a theoretical framework drawing on Bourdieu's central concepts of field, capital and habitus. These concepts are viewed as providing a theoretical toolkit that can be applied to convincingly explain aspects of social movements that social movement theories, such as political process theory, resource mobilization theory and framing, acknowledge, but are not able to explain within a single theoretical framework. Identity movements are approached here in a way that relates them to the position agents/movements occupy in social space…