The marketization of multiculturalism: neoliberal restructuring and cultural difference in Australia

This article assesses the relationship between multiculturalism and neoliberalism, focusing on the Australian context. It analyses recent reforms concerning immigrant integration and cultural diversity, and argues that since the mid-1990s Australian multiculturalism has embodied three central components of state restructuring: heightened demands for sociocultural discipline and conformity; fiscal conservatism and the retrenchment of safety nets; and the promotion of economic competitiveness, flexibility and efficiency in global markets. In retracing the trajectory of Australian policy this analysis contributes to emerging literatures on multiculturalism, and the shifting nature of citizenship and government rationalities in the present neoliberal context. In addition to illuminating recent changes in Australia, its findings display significant import for countries facing similar dynamics.     

Cooperative culture: Reconciling equality and difference in a multicultural women's cooperative

Too often, cooperative behavior amongst women has been treated as an ascribed, rather than an achieved, interactional attribute. This paper discusses how women with different personalities, political and cultural backgrounds accomplish cooperation. An analysis of discussions that took place amongst a group of women who were trying to organize themselves into a worker cooperative suggests that interactional guidelines for co‐ops derived from the experiences of the largely white, middle‐class leftist groups who are trying to develop a critique of mainstream institutional talk and hegemonic interactional norms are problematic when used with more heterogeneous groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of study ing oppositional institutions, and a critique of theoretical understandings of culture which conflate sharing a culture with having the same culture.     

Re-Bordering the Nation: Neoliberalism and Racism in Rural Greece

Over the last several decades, rural Greek society has undergone rapid changes. In large part these changes are due to two interrelated developments: the integration of Greece into the European Union and the arrival of large numbers of Eastern European migrant laborers. Social organization in Greek villages has been influenced by global systems of production and exchange for hundreds of years, if not longer, but since the early 1980’s, with the accession of Greece into the European Union, these relations seem to have been altered in novel ways. As Greece has become integrated into the transnational and global markets through the E.U., social relations are increasingly shaped by a pervasive global trend toward neoliberalism, that is, by a new round of market liberalization that has in effect redefined the way that local communities and international markets interact. This change has had a profound effect on the ways that rural Greeks participate in international markets as both producers and consumers. A related development, in fact a by-product of neoliberal policies in the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe, is the introduction of large numbers of immigrant laborers into rural Greece, which has significantly altered rural labor markets and allowed for important changes in patterns of the social reproduction of labor. While these changes have been for the most part not of their own making, except perhaps in an indirect way, Greek agriculturalists are not hapless victims in these developments. Globalization has indeed brought changes to rural society, but not exactly in the ways that policy-makers or others with a “top -- down” perspective have imagined. During ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in several Greek villages between 2000 and 2004 I found that rural people have engaged these changes in the global political economy through an active process of adaptation, manipulation, resistance and accommodation. Here I will focus on changes in the mobilization of labor and the production of national identity, and the relationship between the two. I will argue that there has been a transformation in how national identities are being produced within the new configuration of nation and state that has important implications for understanding how inequality is structured and reproduced under global capitalism.     

Multicultural Washington,DC: the changing social and economic landscape of a post-industrial metropolis

This article, based on a case-study of Washington, DC, presents an historical-structuralist perspective on the social, political and economic forces that underlie contemporary patterns of US metropolitan inequality. Section one explores the unique history of the DC black population- the largest US urban concentration of African Americans until World War I. Section two discusses the ascendance of Washington, DC, as the international capital of the post World War II era. This period features the rapid expansion of white suburbia together with the growth and increasing concentration of African Americans in the urban core. Section three examines Washington, DC, as an exemplar of the US post-industrial metropolis. These distinguishing characteristics include the emerging 'multicultural majority' of the central city, widening urban/suburban socioeconomic 'divide', and profound shift in immigrant settlement patterns (from city to suburbia). The findings suggest that Washington, DC, may offer instructive insights into the future of multicultural relations in post-industrial US society.     

Flags and traitors: The advance of ethno-nationalism in the Turkish self-image

This paper examines a peculiar change in the Turkish self-image towards an ethno-nationalist discourse in the 2000s. In Turkish public life one may find various manifestations of a self-promoting ethnocentric world view alongside expressions of xenophobic feelings against the so-called enemies within and without. This study explores a certain transition from a modernist and secular self-image to an ethnocentric self-regard with reference to nationalist best sellers, TV series, public displays of slogans, and flagging incidents in the 2000s.     

Thermal legacies: transgenerational effects of temperature on growth in a vertebrate

Transgenerational plasticity (TGP), a generalisation of more widely studied maternal effects, occurs whenever environmental cues experienced by either parent prior to fertilisation results in a modification of offspring reaction norms. Such effects have been observed in many traits across many species. Despite enormous potential importance-particularly in an era of rapid climate change-TGP in thermal growth physiology has never been demonstrated for vertebrates. We provide the first evidence for thermal TGP in a vertebrate: given sufficient time, sheepshead minnows adaptively program their offspring for maximal growth at the present temperature. The change in growth over a single generation (c. 30%) exceeds the single-generation rate of adaptive evolution by an order of magnitude. If widespread, transgenerational effects on thermal performance may have important implications on physiology, ecology and contemporary evolution, and may significantly alter the extinction risk posed by changing climate.     

Toxic introns and parasitic intein in Coxiella burnetii: legacies of a promiscuous past

The genome of the obligate intracellular pathogen Coxiella burnetii contains a large number of selfish genetic elements, including two group I introns (Cbu.L1917 and Cbu.L1951) and an intervening sequence that interrupts the 23S rRNA gene, an intein (Cbu.DnaB) within dnaB and 29 insertion sequences. Here, we describe the ability of the intron-encoded RNAs (ribozymes) to retard bacterial growth rate (toxicity) and examine the functionality and phylogenetic history of Cbu.DnaB. When expressed in Escherichia coli, both introns repressed growth, with Cbu.L1917 being more inhibitory. Both ribozymes were found to associate with ribosomes of Coxiella and E. coli. In addition, ribozymes significantly reduced in vitro luciferase translation, again with Cbu.L1917 being more inhibitory. We analyzed the relative quantities of ribozymes and genomes throughout a 14-day growth cycle of C. burnetii and found that they were inversely correlated, suggesting that the ribozymes have a negative effect on Coxiella's growth. We determined possible sites for ribozyme associations with 23S rRNA that could explain the observed toxicities. Further research is needed to determine whether the introns are being positively selected because they promote bacterial persistence or whether they were fixed in the population due to genetic drift. The intein, Cbu.DnaB, is able to self-splice, leaving the host protein intact and presumably functional. Similar inteins have been found in two extremophilic bacteria (Alkalilimnicola ehrlichei and Halorhodospira halophila) that are distantly related to Coxiella, making it difficult to determine whether the intein was acquired by horizontal gene transfer or was vertically inherited from a common ancestor.     

Global mass violence: examining racial and gendered violence in the twilight of multiculturalism

This article examines three instances of mass violence for what they tell us about the inadequacies of post-racial and colourblind discourses in the US and Europe. I apply an intersectional analysis of the manifestoes that Anders Behring Breivik, Elliot Rodger and Dylann Roof leave in the wake of their horrific acts. These manifestoes, in their appropriation of rights discourses and desire for a white racial order, expose the ambivalent commitments to persons of colour evident in the current retreat of many Western states from multiculturalist ideals in favour of post-racial integration. These states now advocate policies of integration over previous emphases on multiculturalism and diversity, a move that reflects the growing popular promotion of national identity and nativist culture. I argue that such incidents of mass violence should be understood in relation to the political, social and cultural contexts that perpetuate and often legitimate xenophobia and gendered racism.     

Patterns of minority and majority identification in a multicultural society

There has been increasing investigation of the national and ethnic identification of minority populations in Western societies and how far they raise questions about the success or failure of multicultural societies. Much of the political and academic discussion has, however, been premised on two assumptions. First, that ethnic minority and national identification are mutually exclusive, and, second, that national identification forms an overarching majority identity that represents consensus values. In this paper, using a large-scale nationally representative UK survey with a varied set of identity questions, and drawing on an extension of Berry's acculturation framework, we empirically test these two assumptions. We find that, among minorities, strong British national and minority identities often coincide and are not on an opposing axis. We also find that adherence to a British national identity shows cleavages within the white majority population. We further identify variation in these patterns by generation and political orientation.     

Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: Inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity

This article discusses the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity, focusing on the Australian context. It argues that inclusive national identity can accommodate and support multiculturalism, and serve as an important source of cohesion and unity in ethnically and culturally diverse societies. However, a combative approach to national identity, as prevailed under the Howard government, threatens multicultural values. The article nevertheless concludes that it is necessary for supporters of multiculturalism to engage in ongoing debates about their respective national identities, rather than to vacate the field of national identity to others.     

Deceased‐directed donation: Considering the ethical permissibility in a multicultural setting

This paper explores the ethics of deceased‐directed donation (DDD) and brings a unique perspective to this issue—the relevance of providing family‐centered care and culturally sensitive care to deceased donors, potential recipients, and their families. The significance of providing family‐centered care is becoming increasingly prevalent, specifically in pediatric healthcare settings. Therefore, this topic is especially relevant to those working with and interested in pediatrics. As the world is becoming more diverse with globalization, assessing the cultural aspect of the ethics of DDD is increasingly salient. We provide a brief overview of DDD across the globe, review prominent arguments both for and against DDD, consider family‐centered and culturally specific considerations, and offer considerations for the development of a policy or guideline. We determine that the practice of DDD is ethically defensible in certain circumstances and congruent with providing both family‐centered and culturally sensitive care. Our analysis is relevant to any country with a diverse population and any healthcare provider or institution that operates under a framework of family‐centered care, such as those in pediatric hospitals.     

不同地区医院与其他公共服务领域融资模式借鉴与分析

在目前的医疗服务提供体系中,非营利性医院占据绝对主体地位,为提供基本医疗卫生服务、维护国民健康作出了巨大贡献。然而,近年来医院过分依赖业务收入的发展模式制约了医院的发展,也加重了整个社会的医疗费用负担。在医改新环境下如何理顺非营利性医院的融资机制,拓展筹资渠道,筹集足够的资金用以弥补成本,使医院可以更好地关注社会效益,回归公益性的本途,是政府需要重点思考的问题。     

Immigrants and the Basque nation: diversity as a new marker of identity

Basque nationalism is singled out in the literature as a case of minority nationalism that faces an ongoing struggle between those in support of a liberal-inclusive definition of the nation and those favouring an exclusive-racialist one. Nevertheless, Basque nationalist parties have been welcoming of immigration and have legislated to create a regional citizenship based on residence rather than ethnicity. This article argues that, at least in part, the ‘positive’ response of Basque nationalists to the immigration wave that began in the early 2000s is an attempt to strengthen national solidarity by contrasting Basque values of openness and tolerance against the restrictive nature of the reforms to the immigration law in Spain that were initiated in 2000. This argument challenges the notion that sub-state nationalists are hostile to immigration because of the threat diversity poses to the nationalist project.     

Alt-Right with the Hindu-right: long-distance nationalism and the perfection of Hindutva

In the 2016 US Presidential election, a small but vocal group of Hindu supporters of Donald Trump drew international media attention in India and the US for their political mobilizing for the Republican candidate. In this paper, I examine the political campaigns of “Hindus for Trump” and its affiliated groups to analyse the diverse ways in which these diasporic activists engage in and advance a number of distinct nationalist projects simultaneously. Tracing links between the “Hindus for Trump” platform, Hindutva ideology that seeks to redefine India as a Hindu nation, and the racist “alt-right” movement that forms the political base for President Trump in the US, I argue these diasporic activists enact a synergetic nationalism that has productive effects in both “home” and “host” countries. The result is the perfection of Hindutva on the global stage through the very activities that legitimize the isolationist xenophobia associated with the Trump administration.     

Problems in recognizing the self: a neuropsychological approach to the positive symptoms of schizophrenia

This article present a review of recent work on cognitive neuroscience approaches of schizophrenia. Some of the symptoms displayed by schizophrenic patients can be reconsidered within the framework of disorganization of well identified cognitive functions, like self-recognition. Neuroimaging techniques can reveal in these patients disruption of neural networks normally involved in such functions.     

Stories and Selves: Managing the Self through Problem Solving in School

This study examines how a curriculum that aimed to instill in students a way of solving their everyday social problems instead became a site for replaying students' understandings of solutions approved by teachers and thus was limited in shaping their subjectivities. We draw on research in the ethnography of speaking, particularly in school settings, to refine current anthropological interest in the Foucauldian notion of technologies of the self. As a result, we highlight the contextual quality of practices, such as problem solving, used to manage the self.     

Patriotic Appetites and Gnawing Hungers: Food and the Paradox of Nation-building in Uzbekistan

Nations reverberate with the conundrums of unity and difference. Studies of food provide an effective way to understand this paradox as food indexes both rituals of the nation as national cuisine yet links with myriad and variable performances as it is grown, cooked and eaten. National foods enhance ethnic nationality in newly independent, increasingly authoritarian Uzbekistan where the focus is on national cuisine in part because of deprivation, rather than abundance. National cuisine is vulnerable to differences within a nation, because in the shared and embodied practices surrounding food, people make emotion-based evaluations of the nation-state. Uzbek governmental policies result in poverty, limited food production, little global food, and repression of pure Islamic practices, regions, and minority ethnic groups.     

Left-wing politics,civil society and immigration in Italy: The case of Bologna

Immigration and multiculturalism are important and much debated questions in contemporary Europe. Whereas considerable scholarship has examined how political institutions and Right-wing organizations have responded to these questions, little research has focused on the Left. This article examines the multicultural politics of the latter by considering ethnographically the experience of Bologna, the showcase city of the Italian Left, in the second half of the 1990s. The Left is here examined in terms of ideology, party, public policy and civil society in the context of everyday governance and with special reference to the discourses and practices concerning a group of Rom refugees from the former Yugoslavia. This article argues that the mainstream Italian Left (in its civil societal as well as party and administrative components) is characterized by a politics that fails to “integrate” ethno-cultural recognition with material justice and that, partly because of such failure, contributes little to the “integration” of immigrants.     

Medical electricity and madness in the 18th century: the legacies of Benjamin Franklin and Jan Ingenhousz

Benjamin Franklin had at least two accidents that resulted in electricity passing through his brain. In addition, he witnessed a patient's similar accident and performed an experiment that showed how humans could endure shocks to the head without serious ill effects, other than amnesia. Jan Ingenhousz, Franklin's Dutch-born medical correspondent better known for his discovery of photosynthesis, also had a serious accident that sent electricity though his head and, in a letter to Franklin, he described how he felt unusually elated the next day. During the 1780s, Franklin and Ingenhousz encouraged leading French and English electrical "operators" to try shocking the heads of melancholic and other deranged patients in their wards. Although they did not state that they were responding to Ingenhousz's and Franklin's suggestions, Birch, Aldini, and Gale soon did precisely what Ingenhousz and Franklin had suggested. These practitioners did not appear to induce convulsions in their mentally ill patients, but they still reported notable successes.