‘After the break’: re-conceptualizing ethnicity,national identity and ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ identities

Focusing on ethnic Chinese as cultural citizens of the nation, this paper examines national identity in the context of generational change. In so doing, it connects to colonialist conceptions of identity the dominant framework of ethnicity that operates in Malaysia. It argues that this framework allows for the nationalist imagining of ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ as ‘outsiders’. In probing the complex conceptual relationship between ethnicity, national identity and cultural citizenship, this article asks: How does ‘ethnicity’ enter into negotiations over the ‘national’ in the cultural realm? What are the notions of cultural difference and national otherness that operate in the negative dualisms by which nation and ethnicity are defined? How are these dualisms tied to notions of authenticity and cultural citizenship? Using the novel The Harmony Silk Factory by Malaysian author Tash Aw to address these questions, this paper argues the need to rethink current policies and narratives of ethnic and national identity in Malaysia.     

Nations and Tribes ‘Within’: Emerging Aboriginal ‘Nationalisms’ in Katherine

Throughout Australia, many Aboriginal responses to the legislative and administrative pressures of the native title regime have been couched in a nation‐building idiom expressed through legally incorporated Aboriginal associations. The membership criteria of these umbrella associations are often derived from definitions of the ‘tribe’ or ‘language group’. Yet, in a kind of Balkanisation, those who see themselves as marginalised to positions of uncertainty on the peripheries of the nation often seek to establish their own independent corporations on the basis of exclusive ties to specific areas of land within it, in search of greater recognition and in competition for scarce resources. In Katherine, in the Northern Territory of Australia, the administrative and legislative gaze of the State, particularly the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, brought into focus a Jawoyn ‘tribe’, soon to express itself in the idiom of nationhood, closely followed by a Wardaman ‘tribe’ and ‘nation’. More recently, a native title gaze has now brought into focus ‘new’ configurations of kindred clusters, apparently located on the ‘peripheries' of the Jawoyn and Wardaman nations, and named and valued them as Dagoman. This paper discusses the processes associated with an emerging, but seemingly already fragmenting, Dagoman nation. It argues that divergent and changing Aboriginal subjectivities disrupt what might be seen as mimetic processes as Aboriginal people employ strategies of transforming essentialist representations of their collective selves in changing conditions of possibility.     

‘Not anymore,not yet’: Australian–Hungarians rediscover the ‘old‐new’ Hungary

This article examines the return visits of Australian‐Hungarians to their homeland after 1989 and the different types of homecoming experiences after an extended period of separation. The focus of the paper is returnees’ perceptions of changes to Hungary or lack thereof. I analyse the distinction between the ‘desired/nostalgic past’, which Hungarian returnees nurtured during the decades of separation and expected to rediscover upon return, and the ‘disdained past’ of the Communist dictatorship, which they had fled and hoped never to encounter again. The findings demonstrate that people interpret both past and present in relation to hopes, expectations and disappointments situated within particular nationalist imaginaries, political projects and ideological prisms. This allows us to analyse the nexus between local, national and diasporic belonging through post‐socialist identities, orientations toward democracy and understandings of ‘nation’.     

The Nation‐State,Public Education,and the Logic of Migration: Chinese Students in Hungary

Public education remains the nation‐state's foremost instrument of forging citizens. But the emergence of ‘international education’, a system explicitly based on the ideology of globality and outside the purview of national curricula, provides a way to circumvent the citizen‐making machine. This article, based on fieldwork among Chinese secondary school students in Hungary, considers the interaction between ‘international education’ and transnational migrants in a nation‐state whose public education, as the state itself, has little interest in the ‘integration’ of non‐natives.     

Race and ethnicity in the construction of the nation in Spain: the case of the Maragatos

Nationalism and its counterpart, modernism, are projects that involve the attempt to homogenize and incorporate the masses through the creation of a majority identity that usually leads to the classification of certain deviant groups as ‘others’. In Spain, civic and ethnic nationalisms driven by the state have historically drawn on cultural and biological notions of ethnicity and race to construct a representation of the Maragatos as ‘cursed peoples’, while at the same time homogenizing and incorporating them into the nation in practice. By tracing a genealogy of the origins and evolution of the representations of Maragato otherness created during the Enlightenment era, the Franco dictatorship and the current super-modern period, this paper argues that representations of otherness significantly influence current research agendas and understandings of identity well beyond the disappearance of the actual subjects described as others.     

Der Einfluß von Objektart und früher Erfahrung auf die Diskriminationsleistungen von Haushühnern (Gallus domesticus)3

Main subject of the reported investigation is the question in which way the acquisition of a conditional discrimination is modified on the one hand by the kind of objects presented, on the other hand by early experience. 40 newly hatched chickens grew up either with all the wooden eggs or cubes used for training and test, or without these objects, or in a ‘natural’ (enriched) environment. The results prove an influence of the kind of objects — cubes are discriminated twice or three times as fast as wooden eggs — but no effects of the different environments on acquisition (number of trials for reaching learning criterion). Results are discussed under aspects of species-specific constraints on learning.     

‘Hip to be Irish’: ethnicity and Bourdieu's ‘Forms of Capital’

A ‘new Irish’ American ethnicity surfaced in the 1980s – according to a number of scholars and journalists – and is comprised of what some consider to be more ‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ Irish cultural attributes. Defining authentic and traditional Irishness is complicated, however, by the recent influx and highly visible forms of economic capital and media attention stemming from the Celtic Tiger – the surge of economic prosperity that began in Ireland in the 1990s – and the commercializing of Irish music and dance – such as Riverdance. In this paper, I propose, through my study involving Irish language enthusiasts, that this ‘new’ form of Irish ethnicity is more the result of rather than the reason for this surge in popularity. I use Pierre Bourdieu's ‘Forms of Capital’ in questioning the ‘new Irish’ American ethnicity, arguing instead that a deeply seated, less-visible reservoir of cultural and social capital form the basis for this perceived contemporary ethnicity.     

Thought in a vat: thinking through Annie Cattrell

This essay reflects on some aspects of the brain in a vat problem through a consideration of the work of the sculptor Annie Cattrell. Cattrell’s series of sculptures ‘Sense’ render in three dimensions MRI scans of different sensory functions in the human brain. These objects—which could be said to represent thought itself stilled and suspended in a transparent medium—make dramatically visible the doctrine of the localization of brain function. The essay argues that the brain in a vat problem in philosophy is an outcome of the same neural ‘mapping’ project as made Cattrell’s ‘thought in a vat’ possible. An interview with the artist reveals a moral dimension to her preoccupation with the localization of function. The article therefore goes on to consider the brain in a vat in the context of some of the history and ethics of the localizationist paradigm.     

Response to and transport of brood by workers of Tapinoma erraticum (Formicidae; Dolichoderinae) during nest disturbance

An attempt was made to describe the principle signals involved in the recognition of nymphs by Tapinoma workers. A behavioural measure, the way and extent to which workers transported different objects presented to them, was used to quantify this relationship. These objects were homo- or heterospecific nymphs, or different baits. Two types of test were generally used in such studies: retrieval — bringing back objects to the nest, and removal – transport of objects during displacement of the nest. The second type of test was used in this study. The results, in decreasing order of recognition were as follows. Tapinoma workers transport homospecific and Tetramorium nymphs at 100%. The smaller nymphs of Solenopsis impregnated with Tapinoma extract were transported at 77%. The nymphs of Solenopsis with their own odour were transported at 21%, paper impregnated. with Tapinoma extract at 12%, while ‘odourless’ Tapinoma nymphs and neutral paper were not transported at all. These results imply an intervention of both physical and chemical factors, the threshold significance of signals and their global implication depending on the test situation and its disturbing effect. They also depend on the nature of the different objects presented in combination; Tapinoma workers transport heterospecific brood much less readily in the presence of their own brood. The attractiveness of nymphs is not an all or none phenomenon. In a study of the adoption of homospecific nymphs from another nest, this gradation was apparent in the distribution of nymphs in the nest and their order of transport during removal tests; certain nymphs were left aside in the first 3 days of presentation, were amongst the last to be transported during removal, and then by the most active workers.The perception of the brood by the workers may thus occur at different levels: (1) Perception of a factor that may be vaguely defined as ‘transportable object’ in a removal test — with objects of type ‘nymph’ for example; (2) perception of the species; (3) perception of the colony. The worker ant during its life acquires a certain ‘knowledge’ of its own brood through familiarization, which expresses itself in terms of specific patterns of care for the brood, but this attention, although given preferentially to the brood, is not exclusive under stress.     

Nations: Old and new Comments on Anthony D. Smith's ‘The myth of the “Modern Nation” and the myths of nations’

Abstract

Do common ethnicity and ethnic solidarity constitute preconditions for the successful formation of modern nations? In response to Anthony Smith's contention to this effect, it is here argued that ethnic solidarity at a large‐enough scale to constitute a nation is a problematic notion. Solidarities beyond small local communities require ideological and political underpinning. Rather than being preconditions of nation‐formation, ethnic homogeneity and solidarity are often products of a stable history of state and nation formation. The failures of some modern nation‐states with diverse ethnic compositions are an indication of inadequacy of resources for achieving stable ‘governability’.     

Gender and ethnicity in the Zionist nation-building project: the case of Hannah Helena Thon

According to Nira Yuval-Davis some of the most important ways in which women are involved in national projects concern their capacity as biological and cultural reproducers of the nation and guardians of its boundaries. In this article I argue that Jewish women in Mandate Palestine not only guarded and reproduced national boundaries, but also redefined them. Middle-class women's organizations acted as agents of ‘nationalization’ and westernization among Mizrahi (lit. Oriental) Jewish communities, who were largely excluded from the imagined community of the nation by Ashkenazi Zionists. I explain the conjunction of gender and ethnicity in the Zionist nation-building project through the life and letters of journalist and social activist Hannah Helena Thon. Two main factors serve as an explanation: the countries from which the leaders of the organizations emerged and their traditions of social work; and the position of middle-class women in the Jewish social field.     

Notes on theorizing racism and other things

ABSTRACT

In the spirit of ‘furthering debate and reflection’ in this response to Theories of Race and Ethnicity, we consider here the pertinence of the theme of resistance that occupies particular chapters within the collection and that has been central to key works within the wider race critical scholarship. Yet, when the larger field of contemporary race study is considered, we also note that other contiguous concerns – including capitalism, religion, nation, and war – are key factors in thinking through racism. Here, we further elaborate on how future theorizations of race and ethnicity must engage with these domains.     

The cosmopolitics of flow and healing in north‐central Timor‐Leste

In north central Timor‐Leste, multi‐sensory ecological engagement is deeply entangled with conceptualisations of and approaches to people’s wellbeing. How people understand human health and wellbeing is closely related to how they understand nature or more particularly human/nature relations and distinctions across multiple timescales. Working through complex cosmopolitics and activated through cross‐temporal more‐than‐human ‘mutualities of being’, kinship networks are attuned to relational flows between ‘bodies’ and things. Rather than concentrating on the disjunctions created by the differences in the natures of beings or their ritual separation, this paper examines how relational flows between such ‘bodies’ and things open up cosmopolitical spaces for the creation and negotiation of intergenerational wellbeing.     

Transitions in Taste in Vietnam and the Diaspora

This paper argues that food and styles of eating have become the predominant markers of social change for the Vietnamese in both Vietnam and in the diaspora. In post‐socialist Vietnam the transition to a market economy has allowed for a huge growth in the number of restaurants and cafés, and in the north, a return to an earlier style of cooking. The intense interest and emphasis on food as embodied pleasure has meant that it has come to stand for the transition away from a heavily state‐controlled economy. The new configurations of family and friendship are being framed by newly available ways of ‘eating out’, which are both a means of social display and distinction as well as an indicator of the tensions between reform and festivity within an authoritarian nation‐state struggling to define itself in a globalising world. At the same time as food in Vietnam is undergoing rapid transformation so too has the Vietnamese diaspora generationally changed its eating patterns. Although there has been a focus in the literature on food in the diaspora that emphasises the nostalgic and recuperative elements of ‘migrant food’, I argue that food is the prime mechanism of intercultural engagement for each diasporic generation. For older Vietnamese, Vietnamese restaurants and barbecues have been the sites of interplay between cultural ‘tradition’ and innovation, and between Australianness and Vietnameseness, and these interstitial places continue to be important for younger Vietnamese. Within this established framework of cross‐cultural interaction, for Vietnamese youth, the social settings of ‘ethnic food’, eaten at home and shared with family, have been grafted onto a sociality of eating fast food. This melding together of both invention and convention, of transgression and ordinariness provides the background against which young people from migrant backgrounds are reinvigorating the social spaces of food consumption and in the process both re‐enchanting and destabilising the notion of migrant food.     

Improving Nelumbo nucifera genome assemblies using high‐resolution genetic maps and BioNano genome mapping reveals ancient chromosome rearrangements

Genetic and physical maps are powerful tools to anchor fragmented draft genome assemblies generated from next‐generation sequencing. Currently, two draft assemblies of Nelumbo nucifera, the genomes of ‘China Antique’ and ‘Chinese Tai‐zi’, have been released. However, there is presently no information on how the sequences are assembled into chromosomes in N. nucifera. The lack of physical maps and inadequate resolution of available genetic maps hindered the assembly of N. nucifera chromosomes. Here, a linkage map of N. nucifera containing 2371 bin markers [217 577 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)] was constructed using restriction‐site associated DNA sequencing data of 181 F₂ individuals and validated by adding 197 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Additionally, a BioNano optical map covering 86.20% of the ‘Chinese Tai‐zi’ genome was constructed. The draft assembly of ‘Chinese Tai‐zi’ was improved based on the BioNano optical map, showing an increase of the scaffold N50 from 0.989 to 1.48 Mb. Using a combination of multiple maps, 97.9% of the scaffolds in the ‘Chinese Tai‐zi’ draft assembly and 97.6% of the scaffolds in the ‘China Antique’ draft assembly were anchored into pseudo‐chromosomes, and the centromere regions along the pseudo‐chromosomes were identified. An evolutionary scenario was proposed to reach the modern N. nucifera karyotype from the seven ancestral eudicot chromosomes. The present study provides the highest‐resolution linkage map, the optical map and chromosome level genome assemblies for N. nucifera, which are valuable for the breeding and cultivation of N. nucifera and future studies of comparative and evolutionary genomics in angiosperms.     

High‐grading bias: subtle problems with assessing power of selected subsets of loci for population assignment

Recognition of the importance of cross‐validation (‘any technique or instance of assessing how the results of a statistical analysis will generalize to an independent dataset’; Wiktionary, en.wiktionary.org) is one reason that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires all investment products to carry some variation of the disclaimer, ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future results.’ Even a cursory examination of financial behaviour, however, demonstrates that this warning is regularly ignored, even by those who understand what an independent dataset is. In the natural sciences, an analogue to predicting future returns for an investment strategy is predicting power of a particular algorithm to perform with new data. Once again, the key to developing an unbiased assessment of future performance is through testing with independent data—that is, data that were in no way involved in developing the method in the first place. A ‘gold‐standard’ approach to cross‐validation is to divide the data into two parts, one used to develop the algorithm, the other used to test its performance. Because this approach substantially reduces the sample size that can be used in constructing the algorithm, researchers often try other variations of cross‐validation to accomplish the same ends. As illustrated by Anderson in this issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, however, not all attempts at cross‐validation produce the desired result. Anderson used simulated data to evaluate performance of several software programs designed to identify subsets of loci that can be effective for assigning individuals to population of origin based on multilocus genetic data. Such programs are likely to become increasingly popular as researchers seek ways to streamline routine analyses by focusing on small sets of loci that contain most of the desired signal. Anderson found that although some of the programs made an attempt at cross‐validation, all failed to meet the ‘gold standard’ of using truly independent data and therefore produced overly optimistic assessments of power of the selected set of loci—a phenomenon known as ‘high grading bias.’     

‘Shit Happens’: The Selling of Risk in Extreme Sport

This article details the particular commodification of those high‐risk, highadrenalin activities known collectively as ‘extreme sports’. A variety of commercial operators now offer relative sporting neophytes the chance to take part in mountaineering, snow boarding or canyonning adventures that are billed as being ‘high thrill, low risk’. It is the way in which the risk and danger involved in these activities is discursively managed that is of particular interest for this article. The argument developed is that in selling extremity through a range of primarily tourist‐oriented commercial avenues, the very real prospect of death and injury has been stripped from the activity itself. To elaborate this position, this article draws on several sporting disasters, including the much publicised, ill‐fated ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, and the Interlaken canyonning disaster of 1999, as well as the burgeoning literary and media genre—the made‐for‐Hollywood ‘adventure saga’.     

The making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain: conversations with British Muslim ‘elites’

The common nomenclature of ethnicity, race and colour has been found wanting in theorizing and dealing with the Muslim presence in Britain. This study of 24 prominent British Muslims – including political, policy and academic/intellectual ‘elite’ – explores the making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain. We explore this through three considerations: Muslimness as a ‘master status’; leadership and representation in relation to British Muslims; and the public performance of Muslimness during ‘key moments’.     

Nationalist Anxiety or the Fear of Losing Your Other

The nation of the nationalists is always conceived to be in crisis. There is always an other standing between them and ‘it’. ‘It’ is often the impossible goal of a ‘totally gratifying nation’. Within a psychoanalytic framework, gratifying this nation is perceived as a fantasy, an object-cause of desire (Lacan), that is, a practical impossibility that neverthless keeps the practitioner trying to reach it. Within such a framework the other standing between the nationalists and their goal becomes a necessary subjective construction which allows the conversion of the impossibility of the nationalist fantasy into deferred possibility. The crisis presented by nationalist thought as triggered by the presence of the other is in fact a mode of reproducing the nationalists' belief in themselves and their nation. The ‘real’ crisis is when nationalists ‘lose’ their other and are forced to face the impossibility of the desired nation. Such situations can be described as states of nationalist anxiety. This paper, based on research during the civil war in Lebanon, examines certain events where the Lebanese Christian Nationalists were faced with the threat of losing their Muslim other. The paper describes the states of anxiety generated by this ‘threat’ and the nature of the strategies the Christian militias deployed to bring their state of anxiety to an end.