Although research on the history of physical anthropology in Central and Southeastern Europe has increased significantly since the 1990s the impact race had on the discipline's conceptual maturity has yet to be fully addressed. Once physical anthropology is recognized as having preserved inter-war racial tropes within scientific discourses about national communities, new insights on how nationalism developed during the 1970s and 1980s will emerge, both in countries belonging to the communist East—Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, and in those belonging to the West—Austria and Greece. By looking at the relationship between race and physical anthropology in these countries after 1945 it becomes clear what enabled the recurrent themes of ethnic primordiality, racial continuity, and de-nationalizing of ethnic minorities not only to flourish during the 1980s but also to re-emerge overtly during political changes characterizing the last two decades.
Introduction
Whither race? Physical anthropology in post-1945 Central and Southeastern Europe
Marius Turda
Introduction
What can Transnational Studies offer the analysis of localized conflict and protest?
Nina Glick Schiller
After reviewing the strengths and limitations of Transnational Studies, including its methodological nationalism, this article calls for the field to develop a theory of power. A transnational theory of power allows us to set aside binaries such as internal/external, global/local, or structure/agency, when analyzing historical and contemporary social processes and conflicts. Previous and current scholarship on imperialism can contribute to this project by facilitating the examination of the role of finance capitalists and of states of unequal financial and military power. However, Transnational Studies also must assess the contestatory possibilities of transnational social movements. The articles in this special section contribute to the development of Transnational Studies by examining past and present transnational constructions of locality, identity, authenticity, and voice, within social fields of uneven power. The articles also illuminate the types of transnational practices, conflict, and struggle that emerge. v
Women’s Uprising in Poland
Embodied Claims between the Nation and Europe
Jennifer Ramme
In 2016 a legislative proposal introducing an abortion ban resulted in female mass mobilisations. The protests went along with frequent claims of Polish as well as European belonging. Next to this, creative appropriations of patriotic symbols related to national movements, fights and uprisings for independence and their transformation into a sign of female bodily sovereignty could be observed all over the country. The appearance of bodies needs to be looked at in relation to the concrete political context and conditions in which bodies materialise (Butler 2015). Bodies are in this sense always relational, but they also depend. The article argues that the constitution of ‘European bodies’ can serve to empower people exposed to and oppressed by nationalist biopolitics. In such cases a ‘European body’ might be constituted in distinction to the nation/nationalism and its claim of ownership on female bodies (the ‘national body’) and by performing multiple belongings extending national belonging.
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 90–93
Fascism as a style of life
Community life and violence in a neofascist movement in Italy
Maddalena Gretel Cammelli
” ( E. Gentile 2005: 35 ), a “revolutionary form of nationalism” ( Griffin 1991: xi ), a “new political style” ( Mosse 1975: 8 ) and a “cultural phenomenon” ( Sternhell et al. 1989: 444 ) in which violence is “a means to achieve the transformation of the
Finding a place in the world
Political subjectivities and the imagination of Iceland after the economic crash
Kristín Loftsdóttir
”. In Durrenberger and Pálsson, Gambling debt , 3 – 14 . Loftsdóttir , Kristín . 2015 . “ The exotic North: Gender, nationbranding and nationalism in Iceland ”. Nora—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 23 ( 4 ): 246 – 260 . Loftsdóttir
Introduction
Traces of Pan Africanism and African Nationalism in Africa Today
Denis Goldberg
African Unity had different reasons for that call at different times. It is also necessary to distinguish between concepts such as African Nationalism in the different countries or even regions and Pan-Africanism relating to the whole continent. Then there
Conjuring “the people”
The 2013 Babylution protests and desire for political transformation in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina
Larisa Kurtović
country (see Figure 1 ). Dubbed “the revolution that would unite Bosnia,” the protests were widely seen by international media and political analysts as the first real popular challenge to institutionalized ethnic nationalism, and a new sign of hope for
Drawing Stereotypes
Europe and East Asia in Russian Political Caricature, 1900–1905
Zachary Hoffman
the limits of Novoe vremia' s loyalty to the government during the Russo-Japanese War and Revolution of 1905, see Zachary Hoffman, “Subversive Patriotism: Aleksei Suvorin, Novoe Vremia , and Right-Wing Nationalism during the Russo-Japanese War,” Ab
Sexular practice
Notes on an ethnography of secularism
Oskar Verkaaik and Rachel Spronk
In Europe today, the most heated identity politics revolve around matters of sexuality and religion. In the context of “integration” debates that occur in different forms in various countries, sexuality has gained a new form of normativity, and new sexual sensitivities have replaced former ones. So far, scholarly discussions deal with these sensitivities in a deconstructivist and critical manner, denaturalizing discourses on culture, identity, and religion. However, these debates do not consider the experiences of people implicated in these debates, and their often emotional and political engagement in matters where sexuality and religion intersect. Joan Scott’s coinage of the term “sexularism” denotes a particular form of embodiment that is part of secularism in Europe today. Rather than studying the discourse of secularism, this article focuses on the practice of secularization; how do people fashion their daily lives concerning sexuality, religion and its intimate intersection?
Israel's wall and the logic of encystation
Sovereign exception or wild sovereignty?
Glenn Bowman
It seems vital, in the face of escalating Israeli expansionism in the Palestinian Territories and obstructionism in the "Peace Process," to theorize the cultural foundations of a process of containment and dispossession of Palestinians that can no longer convincingly be seen as mere strategy. Symptomatic of the Israeli state program is the "wall" (a.k.a., "the Security Fence" or the "Apartheid Wall") and its radical encroachment into territory designated as the grounds of a future Palestinian state. The following essay attempts an anthropological analysis of the concept of "border" in contemporary Israeli thought and practice, and, in so doing, assesses the impact of a limitless sovereignty on both an encompassed minority population and on international relations more generally.