Dharmo rakshati rakshitah : Hindutva movements in the UK

This article explores the relationship between Hindutva networks in the UK and the growth of Hindu nationalism in India since the 1980s. The article begins with a critique of ethnicity-based paradigms in sociological and anthropological disciplines and argues that they can share much epistemological space with ethnic and religious absolutist tendencies that have arisen in South Asian communities. It explores the ideological orientations that were required in the Hindutva movement to ‘make sense’ of Hindu migration and settlement in the West. Detailed discussions are presented of Hindutva views about the role of Hinduism in the global diaspora. The essay focuses on the structure and ideology of the Hindutva movement in the UK, tracing its origins to the patterns of indenture and early migration to east Africa, and looks at the impact of the Hindutva movement in the reorganization of youth and religious communities in the UK.     

Towards a redefinition of Jewish nationalism in Israel? The enigma of Shas

The electoral success of Shas, a mizrahi, religious political party in Israel is analysed with the help of the cultural division of labour model. Mizrahim (Jews originating in Muslim countries) are a semi-peripheral ethnic group in Israel, located between the dominant ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) and the Palestinians. While most mizrahim have been voting Likud for the past twenty-five years, increasingly the poorer among them have been shifting their vote to Shas. The key to Shas's success, where other efforts to organize mizrahi political parties have failed, is its integrative, rather than separatist, ideology. Shas seeks to replace secular Zionism with religious Judaism as the hegemonic ideology in Israeli society, and presents this as the remedy for both the socio-economic and the cultural grievances of its constituency. This integrative message, emphasizing the commonalities between mizrahim and ashkenazim, rather than their differences, is attractive to mizrahim because of their semi-peripheral position in the society.     

Surgery and national identity in late nineteenth-century Vienna

For historians of medicine, the professor Theodor Billroth of the University of Vienna was the leading European surgeon of the late nineteenth century and the personification of intervention by organ or body part removal. For social and political historians, he was a German nationalist whose book on medical education heralded the rise of anti-Semitism in the Austrian public sphere. This article brings together and critically reassesses these two hitherto separate accounts to show how, in a period of dramatic social and political change, Viennese surgery split into two camps. One, headed by Billroth, was characterized by an alliance with the German educational model, German nationalism leading to racial anti-Semitism and an experimental approach to the construction of surgical procedure, which heavily relied on the methods of pathological physiology. The other, which followed a long Austrian tradition, stood for a clinically oriented and strictly organized medical education that catered to an ethnically and socially diverse population and, simultaneously, for an anatomically oriented surgery, largely of the locomotor apparatus. This study shows how, in a major centre of medical education and capital of a multiethnic empire, surgical and national identities were forged together.     

Between votes and bullets. Conflicting ethnic identities in the Basque Country

With settlement of the Northern Irish conflict, the Basque Country hosts the most threatening nationalist conflict in the European Union. After the breakdown of the ceasefire late in 1999, a return of intensive and indiscriminate ETA violence has provoked a political and social crisis for Basque (and Spanish) society, and, according to all recent opinion polls, the issue of terrorism now ranks first among citizens' worries. This article focuses on the historical origins of the Basque conflict, its evolution during the Francoist dictatorship (1939–75), and the reasons for its continuity in the new political context of democracy. Special attention is paid to the attempt of kick-starting a peace process in 1998, comparison with the Northern Irish experience, and factors which contributed to the collapse of that attempt of peaceful accommodation. Finally, in the light of the most outstanding theoretical approaches towards the explanation of political violence in the Basque Country, several proposals for the necessary rethinking of this problem are presented.     

Numbering the nationalities: ethnic minorities in Norwegian population censuses 1845-1930

Between 1845 and 1930 the relatively small minority groups in Norway - the Samis and Kvens - were counted in Norwegian censuses on the basis of 'objective' criteria settled by the State's Central Bureau of Statistics. The censuses data supplied a foundation for the repressive policy towards minorities. But in identifying alien nationalities within the Norwegian borders, the census classifications also contributed in shaping the boundaries between the Norwegians and 'the others'. Especially the construction of mixed categories reveals substantial changes in this period. In the last part of the nineteenth century, their categorization was based mostly on language, and the distinctions that were made between Norwegians and minorities were largely cultural. The more pronounced race rhetoric of the interwar period re-shaped the concepts of nationalities and brought about a much greater emphasis on purely genealogical factors.     

The classics revisited

John Higham, STRANGERS IN THE LAND, PATTERNS IN AMERICAN NATIVISM, 1860–1925, 2nd ed., ‘Afterword’ by John Higham, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988, 431 pp., $30.00 and $10.00 (paper).     

Ethnocentrism and ideology*

Ethnic politics is a paradoxical phenomenon in France. While predominant French ideologies and institutional arrangements reinforce a ‘no ethnic politics’ model, there have been substantive challenges to this traditional model, including changes in state practices, and the political emergence of Franco‐Maghrebis and the immigrant association movement. Using the affaire des foulards [headscarves affair] of 1989 as a case‐study, the article seeks to clarify the ethnic politics paradox in France. I argue that the emergence and configuration of ethnic politics in France are being shaped by a series of constraints. These constraints are reflected in the ways in which the headscarves affair was created, defined, and managed. I suggest that the constraints are rooted not only in French ideologies and institutional arrangements, but also in the ‘nationalist logic’ of contemporary French immigration politics, the integrationist strategies of Franco‐Maghrebi groups, and the immigré perspective of the state and political community.     

DuBois the pan-Africanist and the development of African nationalism

While W.E.B. DuBois's importance as a political activist and writer is well-documented, a ‘DuBoisian’ political theory has proved illusory. I argue that the key to change and continuity in DuBois's work is his pan-Africanism, which he used to develop a broad theory of anti-colonial nationalism. This reading of his legacy emphasizes DuBois's singular role in shaping anti-colonial discourse in the postwar era, especially in Africa, as well as in theorizing African nationalism and the African diaspora. It also allows us to understand the contradiction of the early, liberal DuBois's views on race and his later preoccupation with Communism. I suggest that across both positions, DuBois's actual political arguments remained over-determined by his positionality within the colonial world, producing a set of anti-colonial arguments that while rooted in the economic exploitation of the colonies, appeal to liberal universalizing standards of progress and modernity.     

Economic crisis and national attitudes: experimental evidence from Spain

We argue that existing approaches to development, including the women in development [WID] and gender and development [GAD] perspectives, fall short in their treatment of culture, and that a new paradigm, which we term 'Women, Culture and Development' [WCD], represents a way forward. Linking the fields of feminist studies, cultural studies and critical development studies, a WCD framework highlights culture as lived experiences and structures of feeling, attends to the relationship between production and reproduction in women's lives, and centres women's agency and struggles. A multi-ethnic and multiracial feminist approach to development studies, and an explicit engagement with culture can shift economistic and overly structural analyses to highlight the experiences, identities, practices and representations of Third World women. We illustrate the potential of a WCD paradigm with discussions of the environment and sexuality, and conclude with a sketch of the future visions and political possibilities of this approach.