Trends in migrant and ethnic minority voting in Australia: findings from the Australian election study

A review of the research literature on migrant voting in Australia shows that the “ethnic vote” has almost disappeared now that migrants tend to vote in a similar way to the rest of the population according to traditional class cleavages. In addition, it is argued that migrants in Australia predominantly reside in safe Labor seats that are represented by cabinet or shadow cabinet ministers. As such their group-based interests are often neglected by the major parties. Using findings from the ABS census and the 1993–2013 AES, this article re-examines whether there is a migrant vote, and if so, the extent to which migrant voting patterns have changed since the 1990s when the migrant and ethnic vote reached its peak. This study reveals patterns of migrant voting among certain birthplace subgroups that are more volatile than in previous decades but at the same time distinctive.     

Digital Unbounding of the Polling Booth: Ethnography in Small Places

This article discusses how a small place – the polling booth – can be bounded as an ethnographic site with reference to the political and democratic event that it is supposed to facilitate. Concerns about the socio-material bounding of the booth form the main empirical case – a debate, which recently occurred in Denmark when the government proposed to digitalise voting. Digitalisation here became a controversy because of the potential illicit influences that computer experts argued would enter the polling booth and challenge the secrecy and the privacy of the vote, the transparency of the electoral process, and thus the electoral enactment of democracy itself. In this way the polling booth potentially works as an ethnographic entry point for following shifts in contemporary debates.     

用DNA内在分子电荷来探测DNA

随着生命科学的发展,DNA的标记和检测已经成为关键的瓶颈技术。利用DNA内在的分子电荷,并结合半导体传感器技术,可以对DNA分子电荷状态进行快速检测,为基因诊断开辟全新的技术途径。     

Immigration and the election of Donald Trump: why the sociology of migration left us unprepared … and why we should not have been surprised

Donald Trump began his campaign for the US Presidency by emphasizing the supposed dangers of immigration, a theme that he then rode to victory in November 2016 won the 2016 US Presidential election. This paper asks whether the sociology of migration can illuminate the sources of Trump’s success and after quickly reviewing the key contributions concludes not. Insight, rather, is to be found by understanding the ways in which population movements across state boundaries are a source of both international integration and national dis-integration, producing conflicts over the number, characteristics, and rights of immigrants from which liberal societies can find no escape.     

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.     

Tribal hands and minority votes: ethnicity,regionalism and elections in Iran

Ethnic politics is a serious domestic challenge in Iran. Non-Persian communities are mobilizing to claim their rights and to demand representation in a system that activists claim is biased against minorities and the peripheral regions. Yet the inner workings of contemporary Iranian ethnic politics are largely understudied. This article explores recent evolutions in the role that ethnicity, regionalism and tribalism plays in Iranian domestic politics. It focuses on how these interconnected factors figured in the 2013 presidential and local council elections in Iran in a particular province that has a history of ethnic tensions. Incidentally, these elections brought Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric, to power as president. Among his electoral promises was to end the securitization of the minority issue. This article illustrates some of the barriers to a transformative ethnic politics – barriers that political leaders will have to overcome to enact real change.     

Voter Integrity,Trust and the Promise of Digital Technologies: Biometric Voter Registration in Solomon Islands

Drawing on the anthropology of technology, this article examines the introduction of a digital biometric voter registration for Solomon Islands 2014 national election. Four perspectives on biometric voting are brought into dialogue: (1) the technological particularities, strengths and shortcomings of biometric voting registration (BVR), (2) a global and international embrace of the technology for its perceived ‘universal’ tendency to secure identities, (3) efforts by the Solomon Islands state to showcase its political stability by means of BVR and (4) the ways village-based voters come to understand, interpret and re-imagine BVR as political technology. We show how, within the ethnographic context of North Malaita, debates surrounding BVR reveal a continued distrust and uncertainty in North Malaitans’ relationship with the Solomon Islands state and its representatives. Within the context of this uncertainty BVR is re-imagined as technology that aids voter integrity within rather than beyond patronage networks.