The study of everyday ethnicity emphasizes the importance of seeking the perspectives of the masses regarding processes of ethnic identity formation and ethnic boundary maintenance. In contrast to elite-centered approaches, everyday ethnicity attempts to understand how ethnicity is constructed from the bottom-up. However, seeking the everyday presents researchers with a number of distinct challenges. Prevalent among these obstacles is a tendency of non-elite respondents to direct scholars to elite authorities when responding to questions about ethnic identity, claiming they lack expertise or qualifications to speak on the subject. This epistemic deference toward elite sources may be particularly acute in ethno-religious communities, where the hierarchies of religious orders may reinforce the gulf of “knowledge” between clergy and lay believers. This article examines the problem of epistemic deference through a case study of everyday ethnicity in urban Hui Muslim communities in China. Drawing on data collected over the course of 152 interviews and numerous ethnographic observations conducted in four cities in China (Beijing, Jinan, Yinchuan, and Xining) between July 2015 and July 2016, the article illustrates the challenges posed by epistemic deference to field researchers in religious communities.

The cult of death and the celebration of martyrdom lay at the core of interwar fascist movements across the European continent. However, it was in the Romanian Legionary Movement (also known as the Iron Guard) that these were articulated into a full-fledged ideology of thanatic ultranationalism. In this article, I examine the spectacular fascist necropolitics staged as state-sponsored funeral performances during the short-lived National Legionary State (September 14, 1940–February 14, 1941). A detailed description of the massive campaign of exhumations and reburials of the so-called “legionary martyrs” carried out during this short time span, culminating with the grandiose ceremony organized for the reburial of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on November 30, 1940, provides insight into the legionary thanatic worldview and ritual praxis. It also sheds light on the movement’s politics of commemoration, death, and afterlife and shows how these were embedded into a religious framework underpinned by theological concepts such as heroic martyrdom, vicarious atonement, and collective redemption.

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested — “hyphenated” — with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy — an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other.

Today's pictures of Belgrade are not much different from late-nineteenth-century descriptions: messy streets, uncompleted infrastructure projects, lack of coordinated urban plans and strategies. No doubt all of this shows that the weak Serbian society never raised sufficient funds to invest in a glamorous-looking capital city. The most frequent excuse to justify the poor-looking conditions of the national capital has been found in the nation's struggle to fulfill an uncompleted project for national unification. For more than two centuries, the modern Serbian elite has remained unsatisfied with current national boundaries. This paper will address the question of how those unfulfilled national aspirations can be detected in the urban fabric of Belgrade.

American citizens have had over two hundred years to judge the differences between liberty and license, but for Russians freedom of expression is a new, heady, unsettling experience. Glasnost has not only permitted them to print liberal, democratic sentiments, but opened up a Pandora's Box of suppressed anger and frustration at what many Russians consider the systematic destruction of their culture during the Soviet period. An ugly side to this eruption of patriotic outrage has resulted in the public expression of violent hostility to the tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the Soviet population who are Jewish. It is in this context that Ogonek's sophisticated handling of certain unsavory aspects of the Russian nationalist movement deserves special attention. Under the guidance of its chief editor, Vitalii Korotich, the weekly magazine has not limited its coverage to such neo-Nazi organizations as Pamyat (Memory) and “Otechestvo” (Fatherland), but focussed attention also on the important role in fomenting antisemitism being played by certain prominent members of an immensely important but little known organization, the Russian Republic Writers' Union. Ogonek has handled both sources of antisemitism with the traditional weapons of democratic pluralism: exposure to public scrutiny, and deflation through satire and ridicule.

The following paragraphs are not intended to give a review of theories of nation building. Rather their aim is to highlight the most salient features of the modernist and primordialist position on nation formation. The central assumptions of a couple of influential theories will serve only as an illustration of these features and are supposed to help the reader obtain a clearer picture of the two positions, without the pretension to compare or contrast different theories of nation formation. The first step, however, will be an effort to give an exact assessment of the context of the modernist‘-primordialist dichotomy.

Developments in Serbia's democratic consolidation over the past six years have been both ongoing and progressive. Yet the establishment of a widely shared and collectively accepted political culture that has departed from the ethnocentric and euroskeptic narratives of the Milošević era remains incomplete. Additionally, the failure by Serbian socio-political elites in appropriating alternative narratives of Serbian history and culture that demonstrate a tradition of shared values and identities with other European communities has stymied public acceptance of Serbia's European integration and public trust among its leaders. This paper argues that Serbian socio-political elites can appropriate narratives and symbols of Serbian collective identity that have been either sidelined or neglected by previously established ethnocentric narratives, and ascribe new systems of meaning and codes of behavior that qualify European liberal democratic values. I argue that a plentiful reservoir of democratic capital can be found in the histories of Serbian communities in Vojvodina over the past three centuries, and the urban cosmopolitanism of Belgrade from the late 1860s up to the present period.

On the north wall of Cracow's Church of the Annunciation (better known as the Carmelite Church at Piaski) hangs a long-ignored inscription. A simple stone tablet unprotected from the elements, its words have faded over the past century. One must strain to make out its cryptic message: “On September 11, 1883, Polish villagers gathered in Cracow solemnly celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the relief of Vienna by John Sobieski, in remembrance of which this stone has been funded.”

This article considers in detail the choosing of a language for the liturgy and sermons in Roman Catholic parishes in Belarus. The choice of the Belarusian language is part of a deliberate nation-building policy by the Catholic Church. Moreover, a whole network of local peculiarities, historical stereotypes, and political attitudes is concealed beneath the unified cover of a preference for the use of the Belarusian language. Based on interviews with clergy and religious activists, the article shows that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly works out compromise solutions that allow it to adapt to the pressures of the state and believers going through a process of contradictory and conflicting nation-building.

Homelands are an integral component of nationalism. This recognition notwithstanding, the lines nationalism draws on the globe have received much less systematic attention than the lines drawn between in-groups and out-groups. This article argues that homelands, precisely because they are so central to nationalism, should be more consistently integrated into scholarship on international conflict, among other outcomes. We begin by detailing what homelands are, why they matter, and some suggested mechanisms for how they impact outcomes of interest. The next section considers the choices scholars make about identifying homelands, including the particular measurement strategy and the level of analysis used. Here, we highlight recent advances that enable the measurement and analysis of homelands in ways consistent with both constructivist insights about the possibility of variation in the homeland’s extent (both over time and within populations) and with positivist analysis. We conclude by sketching out future directions for research on homelands and nationalism.

This article focuses on the role of textbooks in the construction of national identity by analyzing state-approved versions of national identity and history in Kazakhstan. By doing so, this project seeks to highlight what understanding of identity prevails in the history textbooks of Kazakhstan, what narratives regarding the key historic events are promoted, particularly with respect to the Dzhungar wars, annexation of Kazakh Khanate by the Russian Empire, and the Soviet era. Finally, this article compares the main narratives in the textbooks published in Kazakh and Russian languages to illustrate differences and various understandings of identity in the two linguistic realms of Kazakhstan. The article argues that Kazakhstan’s textbooks combine new, independence-focused narratives with the old approaches and partial reproduction of the Soviet symbolic discourse.

Scholars of American identity have typically concluded that Americans more widely endorse civic values than ascriptive ones in surveys, though IATs suggest that there are robust associations between race and American identity. In addition to this apparent contradiction, these studies share similar methodological limitations: the discrepancy between reported attitudes and real-world behavior. Though these methods are well-cited in the wider literature, attitudes are often conflated to be synonymous with behavior in American identity scholarship. I argue that it is necessary to study how Americans conceive of their national identity in different situational contexts. Using the complementary techniques of semi-structured interviewing and qualitative vignettes, I explore and compare the ways in which 10 American graduate students make sense of their national identity in a series of abstract and concrete settings. Results of a multi-method text analysis approach demonstrate that: 1) there are a multitude of components not currently being discussed or measured; 2) the invocation of American identity components depends on their setting; 3) the ways in which components are characterized are just as important as their invocation; and 4) the difficulty expressed by participants to define a singular American identity underscores the continued salience of the multiple traditions thesis.

This article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has once again brought borders to the center of attention, as journalists, authorities, and scholars have grappled with the pandemic. The coronavirus outbreak, which began in late 2019 and early 2020 has caused tremendous personal, economic, and social upheaval. As many states decided to pursue the national interests and to close their borders to prevent the spread of the virus, this decision had major consequences for residents in border regions, for whom border crossing is an everyday practice. The article aims at exploring the discourse on the rebordering experience as constructed by local authorities and residents of two twin towns, one on the Polish-Czech (Cieszyn-Český Těšín) and one on the Polish-German (Słubice-Frankfurt/Oder) border. By applying a Discursive Historical Approach, we identified four main discursive strands which deployed diverse imaginaries.

Situated at the interplay between ethnic politics, migration, border, and security studies, this contribution analyzes processes of securitization of borders in South Tyrol, an Italian province bordering Austria and Switzerland with a German- and Ladin-speaking population and a past of ethnic tensions. South Tyrol is considered a model for fostering peaceful interethnic relations thanks to a complex power-sharing system. However, the arrival of migrants from foreign countries and the more recent influx of asylum seekers have revitalized debates around the borders between South Tyrol/Italy and Austria and among South Tyrolean linguistic groups. The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought further complexity to the issue. I use the concept of securitization—the process through which an issue is considered as an existential threat requiring exceptional measures—in order to understand why and how borders become exclusionary and restrictive, shaping dynamics of othering. With this framework, the article explores how South Tyrolean borders have been subjected to (de)securitizing and resecuritizing moves in discourses and practices. In this way, I shed new light on debates on the articulation of borders and interethnic relations that are occurring due to recent international migration, consolidation of nationalist agendas, and the current pandemic.

The sheer enormity of Soviet losses at the hands of German forces during the Second World War staggers the mind. During the immediate post-war period, Stalin did not want the West to know just how badly the Soviet Union had been mauled or the fact that far more Soviet soldiers had died than German ones (up to three times as many); consequently, the Soviets clamed that the total number of dead was 7 million, while Western estimates were between 10 and 15 million Soviet dead. It was only during the Khrushchev era that the true scale of the disaster was revealed and the more accurate figure of 20 million dead was generally accepted. Of these, only half were soldiers. The rest were at least 10 million civilians, including 2 million who died as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. The death toll has more recently been put at 25, 27 and even 30 million, though I suspect the latter figures also take into consideration the decline in birth rates. In April 2009 Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev appointed yet another commission to give a final accounting of Soviet losses.

Three full brothers were building a city,

Three full brothers, three Mrljavcevices:

The first brother was King Vukasin,

The second was Voivode Ugljesa,

The third was Mrljavcevic Gojko;

They were building Skadar on the Bojana,

They were building for full three years,

For three years with three hundred masons,

But they could not lay the fundament,

Much less raise up the turreted city:

What the masons built by the day

The highland oread destroyed by night.

Upon the dawn of the fourth year,

The oread cried from the mountain:

“Do not torment yourself, King Vukasin,

Torment yourself and waste your treasure;

You cannot, O king, lay the fundament,

Much less raise up the turreted city,

Until you find two kindred names,

Until you find Stoja and Stojan,

One a sister and the other brother,

And wall them up in the fundament,

So that the fundament will be maintained,

So that you will build your turreted city.”

[From a Serbian epic song “The Building of Skadar,” quoted by Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia, p. 406.]

Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tudjman's announcement on 12 January 1995 that, as of 31 March, he was withdrawing Croatia's “hospitality” to the 12,000-person U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), stationed in strategic locations on its territory, was a calculated gamble. As subsequent events showed, the risk was not as great as it first appeared. The departure of the UNPROFOR buffer force seemed, on the one hand, to expose Croatia and its army, the HV, to a resumption of hostilities with the rebel Serb forces of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) and their Serbian allies in Bosnia (RS—Republika Srpska) and, possibly, the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro). The UNPROFOR presence had largely kept such hostilities in check since early 1992, and the outcome of their resumption was at best uncertain.

This paper explores the development of the German minority community in Postcommunist Poland, focusing specifically upon the Opole Silesia voivodship. I argue that the minority's successful engagement within democratic fora at all spatial scales allowed the minority to voice its concerns and secure funds to develop its community infrastructure. However, as the 1990s progressed, the minority's ability to manipulate a politics of scale declined as the policy objectives of key allies were achieved or reformulated. Furthermore, the changing contours of the minority–majority relationship within Poland have exposed significant cleavages within the minority, bringing into question the continued relevance of the German minority political party for the constituency it claims to represent.

In their rapidity and chaotic character, the changes Kazakstan is experiencing create a kind of kaleidoscope. The very act of creating a state was both dramatic and unexpected. In the course of five years, referendums and changes of constitution and parliament have occurred. This calls for an attempt to etch the general line of development: whence, how and whither is the society of Kazakstan going. Such a broad approach proceeds necessarily from the premise that the modern world consists of a dense network of interrelations, into which all societies and peoples on the planet are drawn. This article examines the problem of the modern geopolitical self-determination of Kazakstan from the point of view of the Steppe and of its contribution to political traditions of the world.