Nationalism & Conflict

Jugoszlávia dezintegrációját követően az újonnan függetlenedett államokban egyre gyakoribbá váltak az
etnikai alapon szerveződő összetűzések. A Macedóniában kialakult két fegyveres konfliktus esetében a lakosság közel egyötödét alkotó albán kisebbség szerepe pedig aligha hanyagolható el. A 2001-es kvázi polgárháborús helyzet és az ohridi keretegyezmény nemzeti jogrendbe való átültetése, valamint a 2015-ös
politikai válság és kumanovói összecsapások ugyanis az állam és a Balkán-félsziget újbóli destabilizációjával fenyegettek.

Kutatásom során a két fegyveres konfliktust hasonlítom össze az államban élő albán kisebbség szemszögéből. Hipotézisem szerint mindkét válság során aktív szerepet játszottak; jóllehet míg a 2001-es eseményeket alapvetően etnikai összetűzések sorozataként könyvelhetjük el, addig a 2015-ös történések során a politikai krízishelyzetbe jutott macedón kormánypárt a „nacionalista kártyát” feltételezhetőleg csak hangulatkeltés céljából játszotta ki annak érdekében, hogy a közvéleményt az albánok ellen hangolja.

[From the introduction].
The Reb gong Vale  is a densely populated high-altitude agricultural oasis that runs north-to-south for approximately twenty kilometers through the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, surrounded by barren pastoral hills that rise to rocky snow-capped peaks. The majority of the vale's residents self-identify as Tibetan, but this population contains considerable diversity along religious, sectarian, and linguistic lines. We explore how the linguistic diversity of the region might have been maintained despite communities sharing a common identity, being engaged in inter-communal ritual networks, sharing common trade and pilgrimage sites, and living in close proximity in the absence of geographical barriers. Given their contiguity and interconnectedness, what enabled certain communities to remain distinct from nearby populations? Under such circumstances, how did relatively small communities maintain distinct languages? What prevented them from being linguistically assimilated into the Tibetan population?

Invited by Auburn University to give a public lecture soon after 911, the talk traced the history of the word “equality” from the time of slave-owner Jefferson drafting the Declaration of Independence to Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" arguing for the equality of all Americans irrespective of colour.

The Quran advocates equality; only piety distinguishes one from the other: "O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may ˹get to˺ know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware" [Quran 49:13].

Hence, the talk argued that after 911, in a unipolar world with the United States' defence spending almost half of global military expenditures,, “equality” ought to encompass Americans and non-Americans; i.e. the equality of all humankind. In other words, the mission of The U.S. Department of State that “leads America’s foreign policy through diplomacy, advocacy, and assistance by advancing the interests of the American people, their safety and economic prosperity” ought to take into account the interests of Non-Americans, their safety and economic prosperity. If not, Foreign Affairs decisions flowing from 911 were in the danger of succumbing to hubris.

Note: The text in the the poster, other than Title & Abstract, was provided by Auburn University, Alabama.

In retrospect, the talk, sponsored by the Breeden Eminent Scholar Fund and the College of Liberal Arts,  is dedicated to the memory of my host Dr. David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Daniel Breeden Eminent Scholar at Auburn University February 22, 1930 – March 15, 2021. I will always treasure his endorsement.

The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits."""

Economic growth and private sector development have been sluggish in China’s western regions, where ethnic minorities make up a sizeable part of the population. In the northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the state maintains a steady presence in the small but growing urban private sector, largely populated by Han-owned firms and entrepreneurs. A small group of minority Uyghur entrepreneurs have positioned themselves in markets where they hold a cultural and linguistic advantage, particularly in trade with neighbouring Central Asia and the production of Muslim foods. However, clustering in similar industries and markets limits the growth of Uyghur businesses in the private sector where they have little presence. To understand how these new entrepreneurs adapt to this environment, and their move toward ‘modern’ business practices, this thesis analyses the characteristics of Uyghur entrepreneurs and their role as ‘agents of development’ in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi.

Since the institution of China’s national economic reforms, Uyghurs have progressively engaged in traditional merchant and ‘bazaar’ economic activities, generally outside the registered, firm-type private sector. In Urumqi, the majority of new Uyghur entrepreneurs are disadvantaged in operating firms by a lack of management experience, skilled employees and start-up capital, so that they primarily rely on resources within the Uyghur community for support. Entrepreneurs who seek to modernise their business and ‘break out’ of traditional Uyghur market niches tend to broaden their networks outside the Uyghur ethnic group. Social networks with larger Han firms and government officials allow better access to resources and financing for Uyghur entrepreneurs. In this way, the shift to ‘modern’ business practices entails cooperation and networking with the majority Han, rather than within the Uyghur community alone.

This thesis presents Urumqi’s Uyghur entrepreneurs, traditionally operating on the fringe of the private sector, as agents of social change through business modernisation and cooperation with Han. In Xinjiang, where economic development is often conflated with the state and increasing numbers of Han migrants, Uyghur entrepreneurs are engaging in the market and contributing to the development of Uyghur society as a whole. This thesis demonstrates how these new entrepreneurs integrate into the Han-dominated private sector and thus participate in development in Xinjiang.

Irredentism has threatened global security since the emergence of the modern nation, which is founded on the ideals of sovereignty, territorial integrity, equality, peaceful coexistence and so forth. It has and will continue to play a very significant role in the contemporary global politics as long as the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity serves as the foundation of international relation and the anti-expansionist campaign took centre stage in global politics.

The dichotomy between China’s claim to respect, protect and promote Tibetan culture in the education system and its actual practice of alienating Tibetans from their linguistic and cultural heritage and identity through a vigorous imposition of Chinese curricula under its Han-Chinese nationalist agenda has only resulted in a failure to achieve the kind of domination it seeks over the Tibetan people.

"Like all multi-lingual computing, Arabic computing is now firmly in the domain of Unicode. Unicode is an industrial protocol with the status of international agreement. It is designed to encode the elements of all known script systems in such a way that they become interchangeable between programs and operating systems. Its implementation is well underway.

Unicode eliminates the need to tamper with fonts to get special characters, but it is not a font. For legible text on screen and paper, Unicode depends on compatible fonts with the required characters, where necessary with additional dedicated font technology."

The Chinese provinces are a crazy patchwork quilt of languages and dialects, where the histories of migrations and cultural enclaves, the tides of influence from empire and commerce, the sperm trails that follow rivers and railway lines ... are recorded in a tangle of codes that no one has yet made a serious attempt to untangle. Note that these comments are obviously informal, not a part of systematic research. Chinese scholars themselves are now (2013) taking a much more thorough interest in dialects than was the case even in 2000.

The results of the 2010 federal elections in Belgium show a growing divide between the French-speaking south (Wallonia) and the Dutch-speaking north (Flanders) of the country. In the north, the Flemish nationalist party New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) achieved a landslide victory with its campaign for complete political autonomy for Flanders. Never in the history of Belgium has Flemish nationalism been politically stronger than today. A secession of Flanders from Belgium is no longer considered an unimaginable scenario. The N-VA has its roots in the “Flemish Movement,” a collective term for a plurality of people and organizations that have pushed for greater Flemish autonomy since Belgium achieved independence in 1830. This article presents an analysis of this movement, its ideology, goals, achievements and relevance to the current political crisis.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The purpose-The main motive of the study is to understand the narrative of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath as an expansion and critique of its thematic core 'Vande Mataram'. Design/Methodology/Approach-The Divine personification of a Nation as a Matrabhumi (the one which nurtures), Punyabhumi (the Holy Land) and Dharmabhumi (the one with righteous conduct) inspires fear in us, a fear which will not dissociate us, but an awestruck attraction which is beyond our mortal being. The mother as a divine Shakti, Goddess Durga is Vrihad, grand but we as Santan are the part of the Bharat-Mata, who in the past was Jagaddhatri, Protectress of the world, wonderful, perfect, and rich. In contemporary nuances of present-day politics, we as readers can see the mother has become an idol of Goddess Kali, in the haunt of a wild beast, enveloped in darkness, full of blackness and gloom, one who is stripped of all and therefore naked. Wearing our sins and vices in the garland of a skull as an ornament, where the whole country is a burial ground and she tramples her god under her feet. The divine personified mother now will turn into goddess Durga, ten armed radiants in the light of the early sun, laughing and extending her ten arms towards the ten regions. The song Vande Mataram features as the manifesto of the Sanyasi group where words of its verses are rich in adjectives that praise every aspect of the country and emphasizes idolizing her as Goddess reincarnate. Findings-Anandamath is a text that is enthralled with the resonance of Vande Mataram in every character. As a post text, it is largely discussed in the context of history and politics but its narrative unfolds itself in three further aspects, namely Semiotics, Discursive, and Aesthetic. Research Implications-The paper offers an insight into a semantic reverberation of Indian unconscious and traditional conventional context which gives an organic and a particular cultural perspective to the song Vande Mataram. Anandamath traverses the shift from the wilderness of nature to the refinement of culture. Wish for History is foregrounded in the novel to give us the idea of the nation that may not have been established. Bankim Chandra alludes to the imagined persona to give us a wish for a possible history, giving us a license with the factual history. The paper aims to analyze the historicality of the novel that juggles through the 'imagined' and 'lived' of the author. There is an overlapping of ideas and contradictions in the ideology of the novel because it is writing from contested political terrain. This paper attempts to study the problematics of depraved masses and natives who are fighting for the contested 'nation' space' in times of famines and crises. The idea of Punyaland is vitiated (and thus the 'unmaking' of a nation) and this is carried in the novel through language, metaphors, and discourse. The disintegration of family metaphorically hints at the fragmentation of the bigger structure, since family is the basic unit of a larger system, the nation too is in chaos. The Study reflects the effacement of the self, the annihilation of oneself in a given national space. Thus the writer foregrounds a formation of a spiritual nation from the threshold of Damphati Dharma (Language of household) through linguistic and cultural otherness.

""During the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe came close to a violent break-up similar to that in neighboring Moldova, which witnessed a violent secession of the Transdniestria region. Numerous elections, including the hotly contested 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, and surveys of public opinion showed significant regional divisions in these post-Soviet countries. Western parts of Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Muslim Crimean Tatars, were vocal supporters of independence, nationalist, and pro-Western parties and politicians. In contrast, Eastern regions, as well as the Orthodox Turkic-speaking Gagauz, consistently expressed pro-Russian and pro-Communist political orientations. Which factors ? historical legacies, religion, economy, ethnicity, or political leadership ? could explain these divisions? Why was Ukraine able to avoid a violent break-up, in contrast to Moldova?
This is the first book to offer a systematic and comparative analysis of the regional political divisions in post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. The study examines voting behavior and political attitudes in two groups of regions: those which were under Russian, Ottoman, and Soviet rule; and those which were under Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule until World War I or World War II. This book attributes the regional political divisions to the differences in historical experience. This study helps us to better understand regional cleavages and conflicts, not only in Ukraine and Moldova, but also in other cleft countries.""

Using the example of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian coastal region and drawing from large and new source material, Péter Techet shows a Catholic Church in which conflicts are rooted in the social interests of marginalized groups. The narrative of a Habsburg monarchy that has been falling apart by nationalism is thus called into question. Especially in the present time, when national and religious issues are again increasingly polarizing in Europe, the study makes an important contribution to understanding nationally and religiously (mis)understood conflict situations.

This paper analyzes the involvement of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Nazi genocide during World War II in Ukraine. The issue of the political rehabilitation of these organizations became one of the central political issues in this post-Soviet state. The research question is whether leaders and members of the Bandera faction of the OUN (OUN-B) and the UPA were involved in the Nazi-led genocide. This article devotes particular attention to Volhynia where the UPA was established by the OUN-B in 1943. The study analyzes the biographies of 329 OUN-B and UPA leaders and documents concerning the OUN-B and the UPA, local police, and Nazi mass executions of Jews, Ukrainians, and Poles from the State Archive of the Volyn Region, the State Archive of the Rivne Region, the Archive of the State Security Service of Ukraine in the Volyn Region, the Archive of the State Security Service of Ukraine, the National Archives in the US, and other archives. This paper shows that large proportions of leaders and members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army served in various police and militia formations, collaborated with security and intelligence agencies of Nazi Germany, and took part in the Nazi genocide, primarily in assisting roles during mass executions of Jews in the first two years of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.

This paper analyzes the mass-murder of Poles in Volhynia in Western Ukraine during World War II. The mass murder of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Stepan Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) during the Nazi occupation of Volhynia in 1943 became an important political issue in Poland and Ukraine after the collapse of communism. Previous studies by Polish, Ukrainian, and Western researchers offered different and often divergent theories of this historical event. It is often presented in Ukraine as a mutual Ukrainian-Polish conflict. In contrast, in Poland, the mass murder of Poles in Volhynia is often characterized as genocide. A research question is whether this was a Ukrainian-Polish conflict, ethnic cleansing or genocide. This study analyzes a variety of archival documents, historical studies, and eyewitness accounts. It offers an estimate of Polish casualties derived from analysis of OUN-UPA, Polish, and Soviet, and sources and demographic data. This study concludes that the mass murder of the Polish minority in Volhynia by the OUN-B, the UPA, and their security service (SB) represented not a mutual Ukrainian-Polish conflict or genocide of Poles but that it was a part of ethnic cleansing.

This study analyzes policies and public attitudes concerning the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) after the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. The issue of the political rehabilitation of these nationalist organizations, which relied on terrorism and were involved in Nazi genocide and ethnic cleansing of Poles during World War Two, became one of central political issues in this post-Soviet state. The question is which factors determine attitudes towards the OUN and the UPA in contemporary Ukraine. The hypothesis is that regional factors are the main determinants of the public opinion concerning these organizations. This paper uses analysis of historical studies and archival data to examine policies and controversies concerning the OUN and the UPA. It employs comparative and regression analyses of the 2009 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey to determine effects of regional factors, compared to other factors, such as ethnicity, language, and age, on attitudes towards the Stepan Bandera faction of the OUN and the UPA. The paper shows that that regional factors and perceptions of the involvement of the Bandera faction of the OUN and the UPA in mass murder are strongest predictors of views concerning these nationalist organizations.

This paper investigates how a regional identity can be maintained in a nonmodern context, focusing on the case of southern Xinjiang in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The argument focuses on one aspect of this identity system, the popular historical tradition, arguing that its deployment through both manuscript technology and regional shrine pilgrimage contributed to the maintenance of Xinjiang's settled Turki identity group before the construction of the “Uyghur” identity. In the absence of a national history, separate histories of local heroes were linked together through custom anthology production and networked travel to shrines, yielding a modular historical tradition that accommodated local interests in regional narratives. Central to the operation of this system were community authorship in the manuscript tradition, the creation of a new genre for local history, and the publicly recorded circulation of pilgrims who heard performances of historical texts. This constellation of phenomena underpinned an alternative type of imagined community: a reasonably homogeneous, regional, writing-facilitated identity system flourishing in a nonmodern context.

According to commonly held opinion, Arab officers of the Ottoman Army were instrumental in the initiation of the Arab Revolt and the Ottoman final defeat by throwing their lot in with the British and French. This article is an effort to correct this stereotypical opinion by making use of untapped Ottoman archive records and creating a data set. Even though the Ottoman Empire did not manage to integrate different ethnic groups, it did succeed in creating a viable and effective officer corps by making use of military educational institutions for implanting general unity and a sense of inclusiveness. Thanks to esprit de corps and long-established military institutions, most of the Arab officers stayed loyal to the empire up until the very end.