Ethnicities

This article contributes to the growing debate on intersectionality by proposing a theoretical framing which attends to different levels of analysis in terms of what is being referred to (social categories or concrete social relations); societal arenas of investigation; and historicity (processes and outcomes). It discusses questions of social ontology, categories, groupings and more concrete social relations relating to boundaries and hierarchies in social life. The article presents a particular analytical sensitivity which attends to the dialogical nature of social relations, the centrality of power and social hierarchy, and the importance of locating these within spatial and temporal contexts.

Given the historical nature of the Obama presidency, this paper qualitatively examines whether black men and women believe the Obamas can change low marriage rates among blacks in America. By using a marital–political–cultural change framework as our foundation, this exploratory study examined the written responses of 17 blacks between the ages of 23 and 61 years to two questions. (1) “Do you believe that President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have the ability to change low marriage rates among blacks in the United States?” (2) “In what ways can President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama change low marriage rates among blacks in the United States?” Qualitative analyses of the data resulted in four delineated themes: (1) the inability of the Obamas to change the importance of marriage; (2) the inability of the Obamas to change marital motivations and stability; (3) the ability of the Obamas to change low marriage rates among blacks through positive interactions; and (4) the ability of the Obamas to change low marriage rates among blacks as a positive model for marriage. Supporting qualitative data are presented in connection with each theme. Policy implications for black marriage are also discussed.

In recent times we have witnessed a growth in the number of groups who are calling for cultural recognition on the basis of a putative discrete ethnicity. In this article we examine one such group, the ‘Ulster-Scots’ in Northern Ireland. We examine how this group metaphorically conceptualize their identity within their internal press media output, specifically the monthly publication The Ulster-Scot. Drawing on the conceptual metaphor approach of Lakoff and Johnson, which argues that metaphors are central to how we define and understand our everyday world, we examine the discursive construction of an Ulster-Scots collective identity and history through an analysis of the metaphors employed. We argue that a focus on the use of conceptual metaphors within discourses of ethnicity provides a valuable insight into ethnic self-understanding at a given point in time, and that, consequently, this approach is a valuable addition to the analytic repertoire for researchers concerned with issues of emergent ethnicity and the construction ethnic identities in general.

There is much to be commended in Habermas’s suggestions for the relaxation of the constraints on public liberalism and the idealized norms of deliberative democratic debate in his proposals for the introduction of new institutional spaces that will facilitate the engagement between what he calls ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ citizens in his writings on ‘post-secular’ societies. The article examines the parallels between Habermas’s proposed democratic innovations, which will facilitate the introduction of ‘situated knowledges’ through proposing what I.M. Young would call ‘communicative leveling’, within the context of criticisms of secularism, public realism and the critiques of the idealized norms of deliberative democracy. However, it will be suggested here that there is also a certain convergence between Habermas’s theoretical interventions and the ‘instrumental engagement’ of governments with minority religious communities in the post-9/11 context.

Many western European states are adopting integration and naturalization policies that focus on the practices, values and identities of citizenship. On this background, and given the combined crisis of multiculturalism and decline of old-school ethno-nationalism, it has been argued that national, cultural–ideological distinctiveness matters less for what is traditionally the heartland of national sovereignty and identity. A comparison of three citizenship/integration trajectories – Germany, Great Britain and Denmark – suggests that the thesis of liberal convergence must be qualified. Although occurring in civic and liberal registers, national citizenship policies still reflect continuities, and path-dependent reactions to such continuities, of culturally bounded nation states. Germany’s development reflects a republican normalization, facilitated by reunification, but also a distinct liberal and political culturalism and discourse of membership, which grows out of the country’s post-war nationhood. The British critique of multiculturalism is more a re-balancing whose concepts represent the continuity of a weak, non-state-oriented citizenship. And Denmark’s development represents a civic–egalitarian nationalism, embedded in the welfare state, which was never challenged, but recently politicized with Muslim immigration.

The discursive positioning of Muslims as a ‘security threat’ or ‘enemy within’, in government policies and the media, has cast young Muslim men in particular as criminalized anti-citizens. Meanwhile, since the inception of the Afghanistan campaign, the soldier has become increasingly prominent as a figure of militarized citizenship in the public sphere. This article juxtaposes accounts from Pakistani Muslim youth in the West Midlands with those of soldiers and family members involved with the Hero Net online community, attending to the notion of cultural citizenship – namely, the everyday subjective experience of national belonging beyond its legal–political aspects. Our research suggests that, for both groups, mindful critique or dissent are central to the process through which individuals are brought into being in relation to the nation-state. However, we demonstrate that formations of cultural citizenship in Britain continue to be informed by the logics of race and orientalism. The article offers insights into how gendered and racialized formations of citizenship conjoin with imperialism and militarization.