The Multiple Meanings of Jewish Genes

This article addresses contemporary social challenges created by new genetic research on Jews and by Jews, and its implications for the meanings of Jewish identity, on both the individual and the collective levels. The article begins with a brief overview of selective genetic studies of Jewish populations and the controversies they have generated. It continues with an examination of the emerging field of Jewish genetic demography, which employs genetic tests to identify lineages, claim kin, and support Jewish historical and political claims. Here the article explores how Jewish genetic demographers interpret genetic studies to reinforce oral tradition and Biblical prophecy about the origins of the Jews and their experience in the Diaspora. This research is then juxtaposed with debates that emerge from contemporary rabbinic deliberations over the appropriate uses of new reproductive technologies, debates that, contrary to the assertions of Jewish genetic demographers, suggest genes are believed to possess limited ability to confer or create Jewishness in the traditional rabbinic imagination. In the final section of this article, a debate is staged about contemporary biomedical practices that allow for the exchange and transfer of body parts and bodily substances, as a strategy for challenging genetic notions of Jewish identity.     

Feminist identifications across the ethnic-national divide: Jewish and Palestinian students in Israel

This study explores young Israeli Jewish and Palestinian women’s gender ideology and their readiness to endorse the label ‘feminist’. Using data from a large-scale survey among students in the northern periphery of Israel, we found that feminism has become a source of identification for both Jewish and Palestinian young women in Israel, and that Palestinians are more inclined to endorse the self-label ‘feminist’ than Jews. We also found that each group invests the term with different meanings. Jewish students who identify as feminists tend to hold a relatively egalitarian gender ideology whereas Palestinian students who are more readily inclined to identify as feminists hold a more conservative gender ideology. These findings challenge both the liberal-modernistic perspective that perceives a correlation between feminist saliency and egalitarian gender ideology and the post-colonial perspective’s expectation that women from ethnic/racial minority groups will be disinclined to identify as feminists.     

Multiple identifications and the dialogical self: urban Maori youngsters and the cultural renaissance

The renaissance of Maori culture and tradition has played a significant role in the political campaigns of New Zealand's indigenous population over the past few decades. At the same time, however, it has brought to light that many Maori youngsters are unable to construct a cultural identity in terms of the discourses of culture and tradition that dominate the political arena. This article analyses the experience of urban Maori youngsters in ceremonial settings ( marae ) by examining the question of how they mediate different representations of their cultural identity within the self. It demonstrates that many young Maori people are engaged in a psychological dialogue between, on the one hand, the classic model for a Maori identity that prescribes them to embrace traditional culture and, on the other hand, their personal identification as outcasts in daily practices of New Zealand society.     

Towards understanding: antisemitism and the contested uses and meanings of ‘Yid’ in English football

This article addresses an omission in the currently brief body of work on antisemitism in football and contributes to and advances wider sociological debates in the sub-disciplines of race and ethnicity, religion, linguistics and sport. The article examines antisemitic discourse in English football and in doing so, explains the different uses and meanings of ‘Yid’ in the vernacular culture of fans. While many conceive of ‘Yid’ as an ethnic epithet, fans of Tottenham Hotspur – Gentiles and Jews – have appropriated and embraced the term, using it to deflect the antisemitic abuse they are targeted with due to their ‘Jewish identity’. The study maps the contested uses of ‘Yid’ on a continuum to explain and demarcate between the nuanced forms of antisemitism in football. It makes central the cultural context in which ‘Yid’ is used, together with the intent underpinning its use, since epithets and slurs are not simply determined by their lexical form.     

Obviousness: the unexpected benefit of phenotypic dissimilarity

Ethnoraciality research consistently purports that phenotypic similarity to a reference majority benefits individual identification with a group; a notion reinforced by social identity theory. I present a counterpoint to this supposition. In-depth interviews with 101 white, black, Asian, Latino/a, and multiracial Jewish converts in three metropolitan areas show that converts who least resemble Jewish phenotypic stereotypes attain a sense of belonging within Jewishness most easily. Converts who are phenotypically similar to a Jewish prototype are tempted to pass as Jewish by birth, and those who engage in passing experience sustained anxiousness about being outsiders. Converts who are phenotypically dissimilar from the prototype do not see passing as an option, and thus bypass equivalently-sustained anxiousness and immediately work toward attaining a sense of belonging. Departing from the literature’s expectations, this case suggests that, when it releases pressure to fit a group prototype, obvious phenotypic dissimilarity can have a beneficial identificational effect.     

Does education ‘trump’ nationality? Boundary-drawing practices among highly educated migrants from Turkey

Inspired by a super-diversity approach, this paper seeks to explore the influence of the ‘ethnic hierarchy’ of ‘old’ minority groups over the way ‘new’ migrants from Turkey negotiate their interaction in the daily life in three settings: Amsterdam, London and Barcelona. By focusing on highly educated migrants from Turkey who by virtue of their country of origin or religion are positioned at the bottom of ‘ethnic hierarchies’, it strives to understand the significance of these different sources of diversity in daily interaction. Applying boundary-drawing strategies developed for ethnic boundaries, this paper argues that education does not necessarily ‘trump’ nationality, but allows for substantial claims of difference. New migrants from Turkey carve out a space for themselves by on the one hand homogenizing Turkish or other Muslim communities through attributing ‘unwanted’ behaviours and on the other re-defining the boundaries of their individual identity with emphasis on different sources of diversity.     

Ethnic identity on display: West Indian youth and the creation of ethnic boundaries in high school

The black immigrant population in New York City has grown exponentially since 1990, such that West Indians now compose the majority of the black population in several neighbourhoods. This article examines how this ethnic density manifests among youth in high school, and how it has influenced ethnic identity formation among second-generation West Indians. My findings are based on twenty-four interviews and eight months of participant observation in two Brooklyn high schools from 2003 to 2004. The results show that in both schools, Caribbean island identities have become a ‘cool’ commodity within peer groups. Further, although it was important to express pride in one's island identity, these young people often blurred their national origin boundaries by drawing on Jamaican popular culture as way of projecting a unified ‘West Indian identity’. The research also uncovers evidence of a de-stigmatization of Haitianness as a way to incorporate them as cultural insiders into the larger Caribbean collective.     

‘Playing’ at the ethnic boundary: strategic boundary making/unmaking among ethnic Chinese groups in Australia

The sociological literature has constructed a systematic typology of ‘modes’ and ‘means’ of strategic ethnic boundary making/unmaking. Through exploring different strategies, scholars illustrate the processes and contexts of boundary expansion or contraction. Other scholars also distinguish ethnic elements and ‘moral' values attached to certain ethnicities but not to others. This paper acknowledges dynamic boundary making/unmaking and moral aspects of ethnicity, while exploring the different degrees to which national and pan-national identity nest within each other among ethnic Chinese groups, as well as how ethnic boundary becomes a field where people ‘play' in their everyday interactions. Based on participant observations and in-depth interviews from two pan-Chinese worksites in Australia, the paper argues that different interpretations of ethnic identity as well as how different identities (national and pan-national) are nested give people room to ‘play' at the ethnic boundary and result in different outcomes. This paper also shows that people can cross the ethnic boundary (between Taiwanese/Hong Kongese and PRC-Chinese) without expanding/contracting the existing categories or ‘repositioning/transvaluing' their ethnic statuses.     

Beyond Chinese groupism: Chinese Australians between assimilation,multiculturalism and diaspora

This essay argues that the tension between ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ identity is not contingent, but structurally embedded in the workings of the contemporary nation state. Through an analysis of ‘the Chinese’ in ‘Australia’ it aims to demonstrate that seemingly unambiguous concepts such as assimilation (the ethnic is absorbed by the national), multiculturalism (the ethnic coexists with the national) and diaspora (the ethnic transcends the national) cannot capture the diverse difficulties, ambivalences and failures of identification, belonging and political agency experienced by Chinese Australians. A more satisfactory analysis requires a questioning of the groupness of ‘the Chinese’ (as well as ‘the Australians’) and overcoming conceptual groupism (Brubaker): the tendency to take discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous and externally bounded groups as basic constituents of social life. Instead a more processual and flexible understanding is proposed, where the relationship between ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ identity is one of constant evolution and mutual entanglement.     

Ethnicity and class identity: The case of French‐ and English‐speaking Canadians*

This study addresses the racial and religious contexts of identity formation among Lebanese immigrants to the United States of America and Somali immigrants to Canada. Each enters with a different racial status: Lebanese as white; Somalis as black/visible minority. Ethnographic interviews explore the strategies of adaptation and identity development within these groups. Specifically, we compare and contrast the Lebanese and Somali experience through an analysis of ethnic relations in the country of origin, the conditions of immigration, and through accounts of their encounters and identity negotiation with the host society. We demonstrate the strategies each group implements to negotiate both race and religion in identity development. Our findings reveal that each group attempts to make their religious identity evident, however, Somali immigrants must negotiate the effects of ‘othering’ processes with both race and religion, while Lebanese immigrants build a religious identity from privileges afforded to them by virtue of their white racial status.     

The Production of Tradition and Culture in the Japanese Wedding Enterprise

In this article I examine the production of culture in the contemporary commercial Japanese wedding. This is analyzed in relation to the theoretical discourse of ‘the invention of tradition’. However, while this ‘invention’ is usually related to political motivations, I discuss the invention of tradition and of culture for economic motivations. I offer a broader perspective of tradition and culture and show how flexible these two may be as they are manufactured, played with or imagined. The contemporary wedding consists of both ‘traditional-Japanese’ and ‘Western’ inventions. These are regarded here as cultural constructs which both play a significant role in the construction of contemporary Japanese cultural identity.     

‘Make-up’: Personhood through the lens of biotechnology

This paper looks through the ethnographic lens of ‘new reproductive and genetic technologies’ (NRGT) at the idiom of ‘make-up’ in English understandings of personhood and relatedness. In the kinship thinking of interest here, persons are both ‘made’ and ‘made-up’. There are both unpredictable and inevitable elements in the way in which people ‘turn-out’ and their character or personality is meant to be idiosyncratic, lumpy and unique. The paper draws on the way in which residents of a town in the north of England explore possibilities presented by NRGT in ways that make explicit their understandings of personal identity, interpersonal relatedness and communal belonging. The paper attempts to integrate the quotidian and personal narratives of residents with broader social and economic changes occurring in their town.     

New Poland's old dilemma: The Polish minority of Lithuania

This article seeks to explore the growing problem posed by the Slav/Polish ethnic minority in Lithuania and attempts to place this conflict in the general context of twentieth‐century East European ethnic conflicts. Particular attention is given to explaining the unique historical circumstances that produced this ethnically transitional area between the Byelorus, Polish and Lithuanian societies where throughout their history, the representatives of these ethnic groups as well as a large Jewish community and many other smaller ethnic groups have cohabited together as an intertwined mixture. However, with the spread of the idea of a single ethnic dominated national state, the transitional area in southwestern Lithuania ‐ as well as similar ethnically transitional areas elsewhere in eastern Europe ‐ were destined to be liquidated. Such areas could be liquidated either through some kind of enforceable dispersal of the now ‘undesirable’ ethnic groups from the region or through a state‐driven programme which would impose a new national identity on the ethnic groups involved. With Lithuania being much too weak a society to enforce the dispersal of its Slav minority, and with its élites determined to transform it into a single ethnic dominated national state, the only remaining option was a state policy of ‘Lithuanization’ of the Slav minority. The Slavs’ resistance to such a policy spurred on the growth of ethnic conflict in Lithuania and threatened to spill over into neighbouring countries. This article explores the regional ramifications of this ethnic conflict.     

The ambiguities of political opportunity: political claims-making of Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City

Abstract

How, and as what, are immigrant minorities incorporated into the political process? A set of prominent approaches focus on the political opportunity structure that immigrants encounter. Although promising in many aspects, these approaches fail to consider the internal heterogeneity of both immigrant populations and opportunity structures. This is partly a result of taking ethnic groups rather than political entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis and of not disaggregating the political context properly. I show how Russian-Jewish immigrant political entrepreneurs in New York City used very different strategies of ethnic mobilization, each emphasizing a different ethnic cleavage: one making claims in the name of Russians, the other downplaying Russianness and highlighting the Jewish identity dimension. Both strategies had good chances at success thus illustrating that political opportunity structures may encourage different claims-making strategies at the same time. Ethno-political entrepreneurs navigate complex political landscapes that are ex-ante only partially transparent.     

Stonhet and Yelotop: Body Images,Physical Markers and Definitions of Ethnic Boundaries in Papua New Guinea

The Wampar of Papua New Guinea are an ethnic group with contested boundaries and a strong ethnic identity and consciousness. Since their first contact with White missionaries, government officials and anthropologists, body images have changed and become more important. ‘Foreign’ migrants from other PNG provinces are now coming in great numbers into Wampar territory, where they find wealthy Wampar make good marriage partners. From peaceful relations with ‘foreigners’ in the 1960s and 1970s, the situation has changed to the extent that Wampar now have plans for driving men from other ethnic groups out of their territory. Within two generations, ideas of changeable cultural otherness have developed into stereotypes of unchangeable bodily differences. In this paper, I describe (1) changes in the perception of foreigners, and in the definition of ‘foreigner’ itself, (2) body images of the Wampar, and (3) conditions for these changes.     

Belonging to the nation: generational change,identity and the Chinese diaspora

This study reviews developments in the ethnic and national identity of the descendants of migrants, taking ethnic Chinese as a case study. Our core question is why, in spite of debates worldwide about identity, exclusion and rights, do minority communities continue to suffer discrimination and attacks? This question is asked in view of the growing incidence in recent years of ‘racial’ conflicts between majority and minority communities and among minorities, in both developed and developing countries. The study examines national identity from the perspective of migrants' descendants, whose national identity may be more rooted than is often thought. Concepts such as ‘new ethnicities’, ‘cultural fluidity’, and ‘new’ and ‘multiple’ identities feature in this examination. These concepts highlight identity changes across generations and the need to challenge and reinterpret the meaning of ‘nation’ and to review problems with policy initiatives designed to promote nation-building in multi-ethnic societies.     

Indigenous in the city: the politics of urban Mapuche identity in Chile

In this article, I analyse how urban Mapuche indigenous organizations in Chile conduct politics, both externally in relation to the state and internally in relation to other Mapuches. I suggest that the state creates the context for their politics through enacting centuries of policies that put Mapuche identity ‘under siege’. My analysis shows that urban Mapuche organizations respond to this context in three central ways. Some organizations refuse the moniker ‘urban’ and are temporarily urban. Others embrace their urbanity and are adamantly urban. Still others try to overcome the rural-urban divide to become reconciled urban. Each of these strategies deploys ideas of authenticity in different ways, opening possibilities for different kinds of political alliances. My research argues that when the stakes are high for claiming a racial or ethnic identity, choosing which aspects of identity on which to base political demands has profound political consequences.     

Maori “bird calls” or “whistles”

This article examines the discourse attendant upon ‘old’ places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's ‘vanishing’ tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertions about the typicality of ‘old’ places and their uniqueness. Finally, the article shows how alongside a debate about such communities as repositories of tradition, there is a discussion about their feudal legacy, social control and political conservatism.     

‘I don't want to see it’: decoupling ethnicity and class from social structure in Jewish Israeli high schools

Social inequality in Israel's education system has often been analysed with top-down structural models. This study inquires, instead, how students understand their position in the stratified structure of opportunities at school. Our quantitative and qualitative data, gathered in Jewish high schools in Israel, indicate that, despite clear ethno-class distribution in academic tracking, students reject the logic of identity politics and consider ‘free will’ to be the main factor determining tracking. In light of the Jewish-Israeli national identity, which rejects class and ethnic divides, the reference point for the system of classification at school shifts to the autonomous individual. Our findings show that students use consumerist and psychological discourses to dismantle ethno-class identities and depoliticize the classification system at school.     

United and Divided: Christianity,Tradition and Identity in Two South Coast Papua New Guinea Villages

The Motu and the Hula, two south coast Papua New Guinea societies, are linguistically related, have similar social organisation and were economically linked before European colonisation. They were both introduced to Christianity by the London Missionary Society in the late 19th century, and each appeared to incorporate the new religion into their social life and thought quickly and unproblematically. More than a century later, however, generalities about the similar adoption of Christianity by the Motu and the Hula are no longer possible. Nor are generalities about the engagement with Christianity within one or the other group, as individual Motu and Hula villages have unique histories. In this regard, while Christianity has now arguably become part of putative tradition among the Motu, some Hula are experiencing conflict between Christianity and their sense of tradition. In particular, while in the Motu village of Pari Christian virtues are appealed to as part of Pari's conception of itself as a ‘traditional’ Motu village, the situation in the Hula village of Irupara is more or less the contrary. Many people in Irupara are now lamenting ‘tradition’ as something lost, a forgotten essence destroyed or replaced by Christianity. Based on fieldwork in both villages, this paper discusses some differences in their engagement with Christianity and compares contemporary perceptions of religion, tradition and identity in both societies, informing a commentary on notions of tradition and anthropological representations of the Melanesian experience of Christianity.