Search results for "Polity"

Diaspora, Home-State Governance and Transnational Political Mobilisation: A Comparative Case Analysis of Ethiopia and Kenya’s State Policy Towards th…

2020

Aligned to studies that have established that state-diaspora engagement policies consist of a diversity of measures associated with different aims, this study provides a novel approach to such research. It involves investigating how leadership (through diaspora policies) is structured using language to ensure that the objectives of state-diaspora policies are persuasive enough to draw consensual support from the diaspora. Adopting a rhetorical analysis of multi-case data, this paper compares how the notion of diaspora is used within Ethiopia and Kenya’s state-diaspora policy documents and how their understanding of their diaspora shapes the actual political mobilisation of it. The paper dem…

National culture in post-apartheid Namibia: state-sponsored cultural festivals and their histories

2016

The file on operation “Priboi”: A re-assessment of the mass deportations of 1949

2002

Abstract Using information from documents found in the Russian State Military Archives, this article discusses the organization and execution of the Soviet mass deportations from the Baltic States in March 1949 — code-named Operation “Priboi” by the USSR MVD. These findings are presented for the first time in English, in the context both of established historiographical interpretations and recent literature on the deportations. The aim is to encourage a scholarly reassessment of Operation “Priboi” as a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet occupation regime, but supported by indigenous collaborators to a far greater degree than previously assumed.

Intellectuals, nationalism, and the arts

2007

In this article we argue that the role of intellectuals was essential (1) in the formation of Finnish cultural policy and (2) for the development of national cultural administration and public arts subsidy system in the country in the period leading up to the Second World War. The actions of the intellectuals can be considered as political choices in a contingent socio‐political realm, and arts as an essential part of the signifying system. In Finland, intellectuals remained active in the intertwining areas between the state and civil society. We highlight the impact of their actions especially through a study of archival materials obtained from the State Arts Boards. At these Boards, the i…

Heritage and Cultural Policy in France under the Fifth Republic

2003

International audience; In the French historical tradition, four approaches at least have been heavily exploited. One seminal study defines the concept longitudinally in terms of religion, the monarchy, the family, the nation, the administration and science. Another essay uses allegory in an attempt to penetrate the proclaimed, avowed or unspoken motives underlying the notion of heritage. Another work uses the criterion of restoration to determine when a historical monument falls into the category of heritage. Fourth, a recent ground-breaking treatise considers heritage in historical and archaeological practice as reflecting representations of citizenship and the nation. Our angle of attack…

“El Todo Poderoso nos ayude, para llegar a lo que deseamos”: homosexuality and Catholicism in Franco’s Spain (1954–1970)

2021

This article traces the constant struggle for control over representation between gay people and Francoist state agents. Gay narrations of self did not always involve a negation of Catholic dogma, ...

On Religious Issues in Contemporary Azerbaijan

2018

The structural tensions that exist in the religious dynamics between Shi‘its and Sunnis in Azerbaijan Republic has led the country’s government to establish a new institution to monitor and supervise the religious issues. This article not only aims to surface the tensions between the “State Committee for Religious Affairs” and the informal religious institutions, but also to show if the secular image of the Azerbaijani State has been affected by this tensions.

Biopolitics and Hegemony in Contemporary Russian Cultural Policy

2018

Since 2011, Russian ‘licensing civil society’ 1 has predominated through censorship and the restrictive regulation of arts and cultural societies. The current conservative project has turned artistic space into public space, indicating moral abuse and a threat to the spiritual health of the Russian nation. Consequently, the symbolic borders of human creativity and individual freedom in arts and cultural societies have been reduced to patriotism, nationalism and moral deductive functions of the state-approved program. This paper will explore Russian state cultural policy and argue that biopolitics is its mainstream strategy. It examines how the ensemble of sovereign and disciplinary power de…

The Sephardim of North Morocco, Zionism and Illegal Emigration to Israel Through the Spanish Cities of Ceuta and Melilla

2020

This text looks at the fluid intersection in the emergence and development of Zionism and the later Zionist-promoted emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel from what was the Spanish Protectorate zone in Morocco and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in the north of Sherifian state. This process has received less attention from scholars than similar events in the French zone. However, it has some particularities that merit specific attention. From the early years of contact between North Moroccan Jews and European Zionism, the strong cultural identity of the Sephardim in the region and the mobilization of a Spanish approach informed by philo-Sephardism marked an important difference wi…

The politics of space in Borana Oromo, Ethiopia: demographics, elections, identity and customary institutions

2010

This article addresses the protracted state of political violence in and around the Borana and Guji zones of Oromia region after the introduction of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia. To account for the persistence of the conflict, we must elaborate on the connections between ethnic identity, natural resource and customary institutions by introducing the notion of oprimary identityo. Since the turn of the millennium there is in Ethiopia a theoretically grounded attempt to co-opt customary institutions and elders into modern governance, particularly in the pastoral sector. Field-research focused on the interplay of customary and modern politics during two electoral events, the 2004 referendum or…