The Magyar moustache: the faces of Hungarian state formation, 1867-1918

This paper outlines the history of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology and their role in the construction of the nation and Hungarian liberalism in the Dualist period (1867-1918). Affected by the specific socio-political conditions of this ethnically most diverse country of contemporary Europe, the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology diverge considerably from the models offered by the historiography in the British, French and German contexts. The paper argues that the pluralistic, cultural and strongly integrative ethnographic tradition that prevailed in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century did not notably wane and shift towards a biological, hierarchical and racialist thinking by the end of the First World War. Furthermore, Hungarian liberalism did not simply provide the milieu for these disciplines to flourish, but was itself partly the result of these disciplines' attempts to formulate the very concepts of ethnicity and race.     

Aryans reading Adorno: cyber-culture and twenty-firstcentury racism

This article examines the ways in which digital technology is being used in contemporary forms of racist culture within white nationalist movements. It argues that new types of racist culture are made possible in cyberspace. This both challenges popular conceptions of what 'The Racist' is supposed to look like and points the ways in which technological innovation is reinvigorating anti-Semitism and racisms that work in and through the boundaries of nation-states. It is argued that it is possible to situate racism and white nationalism at the centre of the so-called postmodern condition.     

Nationalism and the ‘idiocy’ of the countryside: The case of Serbia

The mobilization of the countryside has direct consequences for political discourse about national values and in times of social crisis, the ‘conservatism’ of the countryside has the potential to assume an aggressive, offensive posture. When rural mobilization is accompanied by religious revival, group loyalty and so‐called ‘traditional’ values are sacralized. When rural mobilization, ethnic mobilization, and religious revival occur simultaneously, it signifies that the society is undergoing profound destabilization. Examining the case of Serbia, this article argues that while Serbia is, in cultural and social terms, predominantly rural in character, Titoist Communism imposed the values of the city on that culture, while the 1987 coup by Slobodan Milosevic represented, among other things, the triumph of the countryside over the city in Serbia.

This article begins by characterizing the countryside in cultural terms, provides documentation of the importance of rural traditions in Serbian society, documents the rural character of the Serbian national movement, connecting its ideology and behaviour with populist appeals, and examines the contribution made by the Serbian Orthodox Church to the mobilization of the Serbian countryside.     

Two escape routes from the paradigm of monistic authenticity: post-imperialist and federal perspectives on plural and complex identities

Despite a recent explosion of works emphasizing the increasingly plural and complex character of identity, political and social elites' interpretations of identities have continued to be dominated by the paradigm of monistic authenticity. In the face of this resilience, theorists must say more about the formation, meaning and implications of plural and complex identities. They must provide social and political actors with a credible alternative language to make sense of the actual or potential plurality of their allegiances. This article aims at contributing to the task by relying on the complementary merits of two traditions that used to ignore each other: post-imperialism and federalism. First, we suggest that post-imperialism may provide a language for redefining communities and individual-community relationships in a pluralist way. Second, we argue that the language of federalism has a high – and neglected – potential to answer the political and normative questions raised by post-imperialism.     

British Serbs and long distance nationalism

This article explores long distance nationalism within the British Serbian community. Specifically, it focuses on the experience and identity of the children of the nationalist Serbs who fled Tito's Yugoslavia in 1945 and settled in Britain. The British Serbian community is a small one and the article does not make any great claims about its transnational political impact. But it does argue that the high level of national consciousness is best understood by reference to the term 'long distance nationalism'. The article looks at how a sense of being Serbian was acquired during childhood, a countervailing Yugoslav influence and the response to the nationalism and war of the last twelve years. The general finding is that a sense of the historic suffering but fortitude of the Serbs has given rise to strong support for the national cause. However, this response has been cut cross by a sense of loss of a society they had generally liked.     

Consuming the nation: Holidays,sports, and the production of collective belonging

The purpose of this article is to explain how Romanian and Hungarian university students in the ethnically mixed town of Cluj, Romania, experience and constitute collective national belonging at national holiday commemorations and international football competitions. Holidays and sports are important venues for the propagation of national, and sometimes nationalist, sensitivities. But neither the resurgence of nationalist politics in post-communist east Europe nor the nationalist inclinations of past generations of university students guarantee that the current generation will experience them – or themselves – in the same national terms. While much has been written about the production of holiday and sporting events, less has been said about the creative ways in which their audiences consume them. My aim in this study is to shift attention to the university students themselves and the modalities through which they constitute (and subvert) national cohesion through participation in (and avoidance of) holiday and sporting events.     

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.     

Hellenism and Jewish nationalism: ambivalence and its ancient roots

This essay sketches the ambivalent relationship of Hebraism and Hellenism from ancient times to the foundation of modern Israel. It analyses classical Greek influence on the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah) and modern Jewish nationalism, particularly as reflected in Hebrew literature. Greece's successful struggle for independence from Ottoman Turkey in the 1820s showed the early Zionists that an ancient nation could be resurrected. Also, the ancient Greek ideal of physical education, revived in nineteenth-century Europe, radically transformed both Christian and Jewish attitudes to the body, giving rise to two related movements, "muscular Christianity" and "muscular Judaism". As the assimilationist attempts of the Haskalah broke down in the late nineteenth century under the burden of anti-Semitism and European racial nationalism, "muscular Judaism" was incorporated into Zionism. Jewish nationalists largely rejected rabbinic spirituality, non-belligerence and the disdain for athleticism which had dominated Jewish life after Rome destroyed the Jewish state in 70 CE.     

Ethnicity and naturalization

This article examines whether or not ethnicity has an independent effect on the likelihood of immigrant naturalization using the Public Use Microdata Sample [PUMS] data from the 1980 US Census. Ethnic differences in the propensity to become naturalized US citizens were analysed among four panethnic groups and across thirty‐three major ethnic groups. The results point to the continuing significance of ethnicity in the naturalization process. However, the effect of ethnicity is not as strong as the effects of other structural factors. Three hypotheses that attempt to explain ethnic differences in the propensity for naturalization were also tested. The evidence lends strong support to the forced self‐protection hypothesis, but it provides no support for the discrimination hypothesis and the cultural differences hypothesis.     

Canada's pluralism in comparative perspective

Hans Kohn's definition of a more "liberal, civic Western" and "illiberal, ethnic Eastern" nationalism has been highly influential in providing a framework for our understanding of different types of nationalism. This article challenges the Kohn framework as idealized and argues that it did not reflect historical reality and is out of step with contemporary theories of nationalism. Its continued use also ignores the evolution from communist to civic states that has taken place in central-eastern Europe during the 1990s. The assumption that Western nation-states were always "civic" from their inception in the late eighteenth century is criticized and a different framework is proposed that sees Western states as only having become civic recently. In times of crisis (immigration, foreign wars, domestic secessionism, terrorism), the civic element of the state may continue to be overshadowed by ethnic particularist factors. The proportional composition of a country's ethnic particularism and civic universalism has always been in tension and dependent not on geography but on two factors: the historic stage of the evolution from ethnic to civic state and nationhood and the depth of democratic consolidation.