Identity and otherness among the Ese Ejja of Northern Bolivia

This paper explores the construction of self-identity in relation to others in a Bolivian Amazonian society, through the ambivalent attitudes the Ese Ejja people display towards mestizo and white Bolivians. I argue that the Ese Ejja's ambivalence reflects the mutable, contextualand r elationalnature ofidentity, understood as self-image. The relationship described is characterised by self-abasement on the part of the Ese Ejja. This is partly attributable to historical, economic and political factors, but is also consistent with the indigenous strategy of avoiding direct confrontation with dangerous entities. Moreover, it is suggested that this stance towards powerful foreigners can also be read in terms of indigenous socio-cosmological notions of otherness and of Other-becoming, and of the Ese Ejja's own sense of being in history.     

‘I Have Māori in Me’: Shades of Commitment and Negotiation of Subjectivity in an Aotearoa/New Zealand School

ABSTRACT

Based on ethnographic fieldwork (1997–1998) at a secondary school with a Māori?English bilingual unit in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article examines two different ways students with Māori ancestry identified themselves contextually: those in the bilingual unit identified themselves mostly as being Māori, while those in mainstream classes identified themselves mostly as Pākehā (white New Zealander) but occasionally as being Pākehā but having Māori in them. Existing analytical frameworks, such as symbolic ethnicity (Gans 1999) or citizenship (Ong 2003), fail to capture the contextual and dialogic display of these different shades of identification practices. Applying the notion of commitment and its disavowal proposed by Doerr for this special issue (2013), this article analyses these two identification practices as a proactive commitment and a hedging commitment linked to institutional belonging to the bilingual unit and mainstream classes, respectively, and to the wider cultural politics of the official yet tokenistic biculturalism of Aotearoa/New Zealand.     

Patterns and determinants of immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada and their source country

This study examines the relative distribution of immigrants who have: strong sense of belonging to both Canada and the source country; strong sense of belonging to Canada only; strong sense of belonging to the source country only; and weak sense of belonging to Canada and the source country. It further examines four sets of determinants of these acculturation profiles, including source-country socio-economic and cultural characteristics, immigrant entry status, post-migration experience, and demographic characteristics. Using a large national representative sample of 7,000 immigrants in Canada from over 100 countries, this study finds that the overwhelming majority of immigrants have a strong sense of belonging to Canada with or without a strong sense of belonging to their source country. Source-country attributes are as important as immigrant entry status and post-migration experience in affecting immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada and their source country.     

Denying biological parenthood: fosterage in Northern Benin

Among the Baatombu in Northern Benin, child fosterage is not an exception in crisis situations, but the common upbringing pattern: until some years ago, most of the Baatombu children did not grow up with their biological parents, but were fostered by social parents. There is a strong attitude of shame related to biological parenthood and an attempt to deny it. Young children are given to paternal or maternal relatives in order to stay with them until their marriage. This involves the transfer of all parental duties and rights to the social parents. Every gesture and practice of demonstrating property rights over one's biological child is therefore a definite breach of norms. Schooling, urbanization, and modernization also trigger off a transformation process. Particularly in the urban context, new forms of social parenthood, such as tutorship and temporary arrangements, have been developed. However, they have clear links to the old frame of ideas and norms.     

On the origin of human tumors

Summary A proposal is made to extend the commitment theory of cellular aging to the process of tumorigenesis. Indirect data are cited in support of a scheme whereby human tumors arise from a small number of unique cells which are termed “uncommitted.” The process of tumorigenesis as described is both multistep and reversible.     

Language Learning and the Politics of Belonging: Sudanese Women Refugees Becoming and Being"American"

In this article, I explore the complicated relationship between ideologies of language and language learning, discourses of immigration and belonging, and the actual lived experiences of individual language learners. The analysis demonstrates how questions of educational access, economic stability, and social membership are all influenced by a range of social, political, and historical factors, particularly for recently arrived immigrants and refugees from war-torn African contexts.     

Analysis of rhizobial endosymbionts of Vicia,Lathyrus and Trifolium species used to maintain mountain firewalls in Sierra Nevada National Park (South Spain)

Forest fires lead to the annual disappearance of many natural formations that require the creation of firewall areas. They can be maintained by enriching their pastures with attractive plants for grazing livestock, mainly legumes, which have a high protein content and low dependence on N fertilizers due to their ability to establish nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with rhizobia. In this study, the rhizobia isolated from the nodules of six legumes from the genera Vicia, Lathyrus and Trifolium were analysed in a firewall zone established in Lanjarón (Granada) close to the Sierra Nevada National Park (Spain). The results showed a high genetic diversity of the isolated strains that had 3, 16, 14 and 13 different types of rrs, recA, atpD and glnII genes, respectively. All strains were phylogenetically close to the species from the Rhizobium leguminosarum group, although they were not identified as any of them. The isolated strains belonged to the symbiovars viciae and trifolii but high phylogenetic diversity was found within both symbiovars, since there were 16 and 14 nodC gene types, respectively. Some of these strains clustered with strains isolated in other countries and continents, but others formed atpD, recA, glnII and nodC clusters and lineages only found to date in this study.     

Class,race – and place: immigrants’ self-perceptions on inclusion,belonging and opportunities in Stockholm and Barcelona

Based on eighty-one in-depth interviews with immigrants and stakeholders performed in Stockholm and Barcelona, this article examines whether the relationship to place can mitigate the negative effects of rejection that racialized immigrants and minorities perceive from the ethnic majority society. The immigrant respondents’ perceptions and lived experiences of exclusion and discrimination lend support to the argument that it is necessary to link race and class in order to understand the particular “immigrant disadvantage,” but also reflect how attachment to the city or neighbourhood where they live can contribute to a sense of belonging: the respondents overall feel more included in Barcelona, where every day interethnic contacts are more frequent than in Stockholm.     

“Where are you from?” Racialization,belonging and identity among second-generation African-Canadians

This paper explores how the query “where are you from” is central to processes of racialization in Canada, and how such encounters shape identities and belonging among second-generation African-Canadians. The study is based on qualitative interviews with young men and women whose parents migrated from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, who are racialized as black, and who grew up in metro Vancouver. Although the second-generation embodies the usual markings of local accents and place-based knowledge, other residents frequently question their origins in the belief they cannot be local. These interactions make it clear that the presence of a black body is seen as out of place rather than at home and shapes negotiation of identities as Canadian, African and black.     

葱属植物物种生物学研究：Ⅰ.葱属6种材料的核型研究

分析了葱属(Allium L.)5个种6个居群的细胞学特征。这些种是太白韭(A.prattii C.H.Wright apud Forb.et Hemsl.),该种包括两个居群(Ⅰ、Ⅱ)。居群Ⅰ:K(2n)=2x=16=9m+1m(SAT)+4sm+2st,居群Ⅱ:K(2n)=2x=16=10m+5sm+1sm(SAT);天蒜(A.PaePalanthoides Airy-Shaw):K(2n)=2x=16=14m+2sm+3B;多叶韭(A.Plurifoliatum Rendle):K(2n)=2x=16=14m+2sm+1B;合被韭(A.tubiflorum Rendle):K(2n)=2x=16=12m+2m(SAT)+2sm;峨眉韭(A.omeiense Z.Y.Zhu):K(2n)=2x=22=2m+18sm+2T(SAT)。所研究的6批材料均为二倍体,除合被韭的核型为“1A”型,蛾眉韭的核型为“3A”型外,其余4批材料的核型均为“2A”型。其中峨眉韭和多叶韭的染色体数目为首次报道,天蒜和多叶韭的细胞中首次发现B染色体,并对其相互关系进行了探讨。     

Racial boundaries,stigma, and the re-emergence of “always being foreigners”: Iranians and the refugee crisis in Germany

The 2015 refugee crisis is at the center of public and political discourse across Europe, especially among nations that have accepted refugees. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and 48 in-depth interviews conducted in 2011 and 2016 with Iranians in Hamburg, Germany, this paper considers how the refugee crisis impacts the racial boundaries between Germans and immigrant communities. It details how the crisis has made ethnic nationalism, Islamophobia, anti-foreigner prejudice and racism more pronounced and salient throughout Germany. The interviews demonstrate that this climate affects Iranians in several ways: they cite feeling more threat and stigma, as well as experiences of marginality, perpetual foreignness, and discrimination. This research contributes to sociological scholarship on migration and race by examining how critical international events influence and shape processes of racialization, identity and belonging, and social boundaries and hierarchies.     

‘They Have Our Culture’: Negotiating Migration in Belgian–Ethiopian Transnational Adoption

Migration studies have so far largely failed to include transnational adoption and left the study of this phenomenon to other disciplines, such as kinship and family studies. This article aims at bridging this disciplinary divide. By looking through the lens of transnational adoption, it explores the ideological values that bolster the discourse on immigrants. Furthermore, it investigates how the migratory movement of adoptees is being negotiated in the intimate realm of the family and how the conceptualization of adoptees as immigrants/non-immigrants can be empowering or rather constraining. By doing so, the article aims both to further our understanding and theorization of the experiences and dynamics of transnational adoption and advance our insight in questions of migration and belonging in society more generally.