Prejudice in the former Soviet Union

Research in the United States and Europe has focused on the prejudice of majority groups towards minority groups, the implication somehow being that majority groups were more prejudiced than minority groups. In the former Soviet Union, ethnic environments were more complex; the same ethnic group could be a majority in one region but a minority in others. Using a sample of 1,459 first‐ and fourth‐year university students from eight regions of the former USSR, this study focuses on Russian, Tatar and Ukrainian respondents (n = 821) to test the hypothesis that the status of an ethnic group (majority/minority) or in‐group bias explains members’ prejudice. According to in‐group bias, all ethnic groups are equally prejudiced, minority and majority alike, whereas group status posits that groups in a majority position are more prejudiced. Findings show that group status has greater impact on prejudice than does in‐group bias. This applies, however, only to Russians. Interpretations of the findings rest on Soviet history and the rise of nationalism during the breakup of the Soviet Union.     

Participatory destigmatization strategies among Palestinian citizens,Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahi Jews in Israel

Abstract

This study examines how members of minority groups in Israel cope with stigmatization in everyday life. It focuses on working-class members of three minority groups: Palestinian Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel, Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin) and Ethiopian Jews. It reveals the use of racial, ethnic and national markers in daily processes of social inclusion and exclusion in one sociopolitical context. Palestinians, a group with a fixed external identity and a limited sphere of participation, were found to use the language of race and racism when describing stigmatizing encounters. Ethiopian Jews, the most phenotypically marked group, strictly avoided this language. For their part, Mizrahi Jews perceived the very discussion of stigmatization as stigmatizing, while often using ‘contingent detachment’ to distance themselves from negative group identities. Despite differences between the communities and the powerful role of the state in establishing symbolic and social boundaries, members of all three groups expressed their intention to achieve or retain avenues for participation in the larger society.     

The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members

We aim to provide one explanation for why the link between contact and prejudice is consistently less strong for minority group members than it is for majority group members. Specifically, we propose a “wallpaper effect” such that contact works to increase minority group members'' positivity towards majority groups when they live in areas densely populated with other minority group members. Conversely, we suggest that when minority group members live in neighborhoods patterned with majority group faces (as is so often the case), contact will be less transformative. We test this assumption using a large sample of both New Zealander minority (Māori; N = 925) and majority (European; N = 3805) group members. In line with predictions, Māori who lived in minority dense neighborhoods showed the traditional association between contact and increased warmth towards New Zealander Europeans. This relationship, however, was weak or non-existent when they lived in primarily European neighborhoods. Contact effects in majority group members were unaffected by neighborhood composition. The interaction held when controlling for, and was not explained by: gender, income, experiences of harm, cognitions of race-based rejection, or realistic threat. We provide the first evidence to suggest that when it comes to minority group members'' intergroup attitudes, contact with majority group members may be a relatively ineffective predictor unless the “wallpaper” of their lives is minority-dense.     

The use of the 'borderline' category in the reporting of cervical cytopathology in the UK: results of a survey conducted under the aegis of the British Society for Clinical Cytology

Objective: To determine how the ‘borderline’ category was used by cytopathologists in the UK when reporting cervical smears. Methods: A questionnaire was sent by email to members of the British Society for Clinical Cytology. Results: There is wide variation in the use of the ‘borderline’ category in the UK but the majority of respondents (77.6%) used it when reporting smears that were either on the borderline between negative and low grade squamous dyskaryosis (‘borderline ?low grade’), or on the borderline between negative and high grade squamous dyskaryosis (‘borderline ?high grade’), or on the borderline between negative and glandular dyskaryosis ‘borderline ?glandular dyskaryosis’). A significant minority (15.7%), however, did not use ‘borderline’ when reporting smears that showed an abnormality that was possibly high grade squamous dyskaryosis. A majority (79.1%) of respondents thought that it would be useful to have separate reporting categories for ‘borderline ?low grade’ and ‘borderline ?high grade’. Conclusions: There is diversity in the use of the category ‘borderline’ in the UK. The proposed revised BSCC terminology with separate categories for borderline ?low grade, borderline ?high grades and borderline ? glandular dyskaryosis reflects the opinion of the majority of respondents to the questionnaire.     

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.     

Masters of hybridity: how activists reconstructed Nepali society

This article discusses the changes that activists have brought to Nepali society in relation to two key elements of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT): (1) its account of modernity and (2) its radical downplaying of human agency. ANT, contrary to the way it tends to be understood, deserves to be seen, at least in Latour's treatment, as a major theory of modernity. As such, it is important and enlightening, even though its attack on human agency – at least when discussing activism – is unhelpful. On this point Ian Hacking's notion of ‘making up people’ provides a better guide. The main example explored is the new kinds of ethnic identity that have achieved state recognition and become politically influential in Nepal over the last thirty years. The case of one ethnic and religious activist, Dr Keshabman Shakya, is used to illustrate the argument. Based on notions of human rights, rather similar processes of ‘making up people’ have also occurred with other minority groups, most strikingly in the case of the ‘third gender’, a context in which Nepal is famously ‘progressive’ compared to other nation-states in the region.     

Transgressing community: the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

Abstract

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK – a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain – to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about ‘Muslim community’ in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the ‘war on terror’. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.     

Civil society and healing: Theorizing women's social activism in post-soviet Ukraine

This article suggests a new tack on ‘NGO-graphy’ by setting up a dialogue between medical anthropological theories and the existing literature on postsocialist civil societies. Using data from Ukraine, I integrate recent critiques of ‘civil society’ discourses with an ethnographic investigation of the ambiguous personal transformations that social activism has generated for some women NGO leaders. The article asserts that, by applying the insights of critical-interpretive medical anthropology to the study of postsocialism, we can better track the dynamics of political, social, and personal change through which institutions are created, meaning-making surrounding self and society is negotiated, and powerful discourses are wielded to assert and contest the social worth of persons and groups.     

The intolerance of a tolerant people: Ethnic relations in Denmark

The Danes have traditionally seen themselves as an enlightened and tolerant people, regarding with contempt those who, like many white Americans or South Africans, hold negative attitudes towards ethnic or racial minorities. This positive self‐image was confirmed during World War II when in an impressive rescue operation almost all Danish Jews (the only sizeable minority group in Denmark at the time) were helped to safety in neutral Sweden. During the 1960s and 1970s Danish society ‐ until then one of the most homogeneous societies in Europe ‐ became increasingly more heterogeneous through the influx of economic migrants ‐ ‘foreign workers’ ‐ mainly from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. For the first time the Danes have had to deal with ethnic minorities whose culture, language, religion and physical appearance differ significantly from the majority's. On the basis of a comprehensive attitude survey, it appears that the Danes today are less tolerant towards ‘foreign workers’ than might have been expected on the basis of their past record. This article considers whether this intolerance can be explained in terms of (1) the structure of present‐day Danish society; (2) the general characteristics of the respondents (age, gender, etc.), or (3) the social and cultural characteristics of the new minorities. It is suggested that ethnic prejudice exists latently even in apparently tolerant societies and tends to surface when a ‘suitable’ target group becomes available.     

Political mobilization of a regional minority: Han Chinese settlers in Xinjiang

The tumultuous events of summer 2009 have brought Uighur protests and minority mobilization in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to the forefront. But this focus overlooks similar protests organized by various groups of Han Chinese settlers over the years. This paper contributes to the body of literature on minority mobilization and ethnic relations in Xinjiang by illustrating how the political mobilization of a group that is simultaneously a national majority and a regional minority differs substantially from ‘traditional’ minority mobilization. Reviewing the main instances of Han Chinese political mobilization since the XUAR was created in 1955, I argue that two factors are particularly important in enabling their mobilization: the Han Chinese's subjective perception of discrimination and their close ethnic ties to the state. This paper concludes with a discussion on the presence of a cycle of protests between Han settlers and the Uighurs in Xinjiang.     

Ravens (Corvus corax corax L.) in the British landscape: a thousand years of ecological biogeography in place-names

Abstract Aim To investigate the information content of place‐names regarding the habits, habitat and biogeography of ravens in Britain over the past millennium. Location England, Scotland and Wales. Methods Linguistic and ecological analysis of over 400 British place‐names that have a putative ‘raven’ derivation. Results Most of the ‘raven’ place‐names are Old English in origin. Some of these (a minority), however, derive from personal names. The derivations of most names reflect landscape rather than man‐made features; the majority relating to high, craggy ground or coastal features, a minority to wooded situations or human habitations. In lowland Scotland and the Scottish borders the colloquial name corbie dominates ‘raven’ place‐names, perhaps reflecting French influence. In the Highlands and the Western Isles the Gaelic fitheach and its derivatives are predominant. Relatively fewer place‐names that have ‘raven’ roots have been educed in other parts of the Celtic West, i.e. Wales and Cornwall (only one traced in the latter). Main conclusions Comparison of the geographical distribution of ‘raven’‐derived place‐names with the present‐day distribution of the species in Britain reveals the extent of the contraction in the raven's range to the West over historical time, most notably during theprevious two centuries, associated with changed land‐management practices in particular.     

How ‘The Urge to Kill’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">Feels</Emphasis>: Articulations of Emic ‘Appetitive Aggression’ Experiences Among Former Forcefully Recruited Children and Youth in the Acholi Region of Northern Uganda

Based on 10 months of fieldwork in the Acholi region of northern Uganda among youth and adults who were forcefully recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) during the war, this article provides qualitative details to research on ‘appetitive aggression.’ Through two case-stories the article unfolds first person articulations of how ‘appetitive aggression’ is experienced as ‘the urge to kill’ and how it relates to the emic Acholi spiritual concept of ‘cen’; a local Luo expression used to describe places and human beings possessed by evil spirits. The analysis illuminates what the individual and social implications of ‘the urge to kill’ and ‘cen’ entail for two Acholi men; first in a militia and then in a civil post-war context. The analysis then relates these findings to soldier experiences across cultures and time periods. While our analysis supports the findings in ‘appetitive aggression’ studies that appetitive aggression serves as a resilient protective factor against developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this study documents that once the former forcefully recruited return to civilian life, ‘appetitive aggression’ and ‘the urge to kill’ precipitate individual and at times lethal social and moral complications in a fragile post-war community. Thus, the article argues that appetitive aggression and the emic perceptions and experiences of it among the local population are essential to consider in studies, processes and programs targeting demobilization, rehabilitation, reconciliation and re-integration.     

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.     

Uncivil society: the politics of HIV activism in Pakistan

This article presents an ethnography of the Association of the People Living with HIV in Pakistan, established under the auspices of UNAIDS, international NGOs, and the government's AIDS control department as an attempt to strengthen ‘civil society’. It was initially run by formerly marginalized HIV‐positive leaders of community‐based organizations (CBOs), until a young university‐educated HIV‐positive man from America was selected as its national co‐ordinator. One of the ways in which this new entrant undermined the dominance of long‐established leaders of the ‘PLHIV’ (People Living with HIV) sector was to democratize the Association by attempting to hold country‐wide elections among HIV‐positive people and de‐linking the Association from the CBOs. The resulting tug of war between the pioneers of HIV activism and a privileged newcomer with a savvy agenda revealed the politics of community, the importance of numbers, the ideal of democracy, and the breaking down of monopolies. This article explores how the Association became a site of contested claims instead of serving its envisaged purpose of bringing HIV‐positive people together on a common platform and agenda for a shared good. I argue that the recent literature that examines the activism of HIV‐positive people in terms of ‘biological citizenship’, or their organizations as spaces where people are subjectivated as ‘therapeutic citizens’ with a potential for world‐wide solidarity, must be reconsidered in light of the local histories and sociologies of HIV, and would benefit from a greater appreciation of the activists’ moral complexity.     

Historical differences in the political experiences of American blacks and white ethnics: Revisiting an unresolved controversy

Influenced by the revival of white ethnicity, a number of scholars began to re‐examine the historical experience of various white ethnic groups by the late sixties and early seventies. A common theme emerges from their historical analysis ‐ the argument that both white ethnics and Blacks faced similar problems adapting to American life resulting from discrimination by the White Anglo‐Saxon Protestant [WASP] mainstream: Many students of the Black experience took issue with this reinterpretation of American history, arguing that Blacks had a subordinate relationship to white society which produced a unique pattern of discrimination. Although scholars on both sides of this controversy have made their positions clear and have provided some supporting evidence, the controversy nevertheless remains unresolved because of the absence of systematic and comparative historical data on Blacks and white ethnics in the same study. The present study attempts to resolve partially this controversy by examining the political experiences of Blacks and three white ethnic groups ‐ Irish, Jews and Italians ‐ during their period of first entry into politics, a period that can greatly influence group political empowerment. The resources each group possessed, and the context and timing of the group's interaction with dominant political elites provide the focus for analysis. The ‘Black exceptional‐ism’ thesis finds strong support in the study. White ethnics were better endowed with relevant resources and experienced much less resistance from the dominant WASP elites than did Blacks. Of great significance was the fact that Blacks were forced to participate in a continuous politics of seeking basic citizenship rights, while white ethnic groups could take their citizenship rights for granted after the early years of immigration to America. Little support was uncovered for the ‘ethno‐racial umbrella’ thesis, which argues for treating race, religion and nationality as part of the same theoretical and policy universe.     

Make Afrikaners great again! National populism,democracy and the new white minority politics in post-apartheid South Africa

This article on national populism in South Africa brings a view from the South to scholarship overwhelmingly concentrated on the north Atlantic and European world. While in white majority contexts, national populism seeks to capture formal political power, the white minority’s lack of political leverage in post-apartheid South Africa sees an assertion of white autonomy emerge in the civil society arena. The article examines the discursive strategies of the Solidarity Movement, a broad-based social movement which claims to represent the white minority, particularly white Afrikaans-speakers, amid black majority rule. It shows how through a reinvention of the past, recasting of race, and reformulation of nationalist narratives by neoliberal logics the Movement discursively undermines black majority rule, and seeks to create spaces in which white privilege, power and identities are maintained. These findings provide new insights into the relation between populism and democracy, and hold important lessons for the increasingly multicultural global North.     

Implicit and Explicit Illusory Correlation as a Function of Political Ideology

Research has demonstrated that people who embrace different ideological orientations often show differences at the level of basic cognitive processes. For instance, conservatives (vs. liberals) display an automatic selective attention for negative (vs. positive) stimuli, and tend to more easily form illusory correlations between negative information and minority groups. In the present work, we further explored this latter effect by examining whether it only involves the formation of explicit attitudes or it extends to implicit attitudes. To this end, following the typical illusory correlation paradigm, participants were presented with members of two numerically different groups (majority and minority) each performing either a positive or negative behaviour. Negative behaviors were relatively infrequent, and the proportion of positive and negative behaviors within each group was the same. Next, explicit and implicit (i.e., IAT-measured) attitudes were assessed. Results showed that conservatives (vs. liberals) displayed stronger explicit as well as implicit illusory correlations effects, forming more negative attitudes toward the minority (vs. majority) group at both the explicit and implicit level.     

Marriage and family formation among the white and ethnic minority populations in Britain

Recent UK Labour Force Survey data are used to investigate marriage and family formation among the white and ethnic minority populations in Britain. The different age‐sex structures of the white and ethnic minority groups are analysed and the increasing number of UK‐born or ‘second‐generation’ persons identified. Large differentials are seen between ethnic minority groups in the propensity to cohabit, marry and experience marital disruption. Average spousal age differences and the propensity to form interethnic unions are also distinctive. Resulting patterns of family and household composition are described. In particular, the data suggest important divergences between individuals of Indian and those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic origin, such that we cannot talk about the demography of the South Asian population as a whole. Comparisons of marriage patterns among ‘first‐’ and ‘second‐generation’ individuals within each ethnic group suggest some assimilation in marriage patterns among the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations towards those of the white population.     

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.     

The origin and early evolution of birds

Birds evolved from and are phylogenetically recognized as members of the theropod dinosaurs; their first known member is the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx, now represented by seven skeletons and a feather, and their closest known non-avian relatives are the dromaeosaurid theropods such as Deinonychus. Bird flight is widely thought to have evolved from the trees down, but Archaeopteryx and its outgroups show no obvious arboreal or tree-climbing characters, and its wing planform and wing loading do not resemble those of gliders. The ancestors of birds were bipedal, terrestrial, agile, cursorial and carnivorous or omnivorous. Apart from a perching foot and some skeletal fusions, a great many characters that are usually considered ‘avian’ (e.g. the furcula, the elongated forearm, the laterally flexing wrist and apparently feathers) evolved in non-avian theropods for reasons unrelated to birds or to flight. Soon after Archaeopteryx, avian features such as the pygostyle, fusion of the carpometacarpus, and elongated curved pedal claws with a reversed, fully descended and opposable hallux, indicate improved flying ability and arboreal habits. In the further evolution of birds, characters related to the flight apparatus phylogenetically preceded those related to the rest of the skeleton and skull. Mesozoic birds are more diverse and numerous than thought previously and the most diverse known group of Cretaceous birds, the Enantiornithes, was not even recognized until 1981. The vast majority of Mesozoic bird groups have no Tertiary records: Enantiornithes, Hesperornithiformes, Ichthyornithiformes and several other lineages disappeared by the end of the Cretaceous. By that time, a few Linnean ‘Orders’ of extant birds had appeared, but none of these taxa belongs to extant ‘families’, and it is not until the Paleocene or (in most cases) the Eocene that the majority of extant bird ‘Orders’ are known in the fossil record. There is no evidence for a major or mass extinction of birds at the end of the Cretaceous, nor for a sudden ‘bottleneck’ in diversity that fostered the early Tertiary origination of living bird ‘Orders’.