scholarly journals Descent, Culture, and Self-Determination: States and the Definition of Indigenous Peoples

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi De Costa

Canada’s concept of “status” – the definition of who is an Aboriginal person under the Indian Act – has its analogies in the administrative practices of many countries. However, the European colonial expansion produced great variety, with contemporary states now relying on multiple categories of definition; descent from an enrolled historical population is often arbitrarily combined with particular cultural or demographic attributes. Effective activism has, in recent decades, pushed states towards policies of Indigenous self-definition. However, this remains constrained and uneven. While the initial goal here is a critical survey of definitions of Indigenous status in the “settler states” of Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa and the US, the paper examines practices in Latin America, Scandinavia and Russia as well as Asia and Africa. It concludes with a discussion about ongoing challenges for state practices of definition, including the implications of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linzhu Wang

This article considers the applicability of the concept of indigenous peoples in China, in accordance with the definitions developed in international law. It examines different approaches to define indigenous peoples in international law, and explores how those definitions may relate to Chinese ethnic groups. In particular, the article looks at possibilities for Chinese minorities to claim indigenous status, based on the standards of ‘the priority of settlement’ and ‘distinctiveness arising from historical continuity and attachment to a specific land’. It argues that the uncertainty of the definition, the complexity of the ethnic situation, and the reluctance of the Chinese Government make the application of indigenous rights in China unclear at the present. The Chinese minority/indigenous argument, to a certain extent, depends on the elaboration of international norms on indigenous rights, as well as the clarification of Chinese terms in relation to ethnic minorities.


Author(s):  
Volker Scheid

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.


Author(s):  
Michael Mascarenhas

Three very different field sites—First Nations communities in Canada, water charities in the Global South, and the US cities of Flint and Detroit, Michigan—point to the increasing precariousness of water access for historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, African Americans, and people of color around the globe. This multi-sited ethnography underscores a common theme: power and racism lie deep in the core of today’s global water crisis. These cases reveal the concrete mechanisms, strategies, and interconnections that are galvanized by the economic, political, and racial projects of neoliberalism. In this sense neoliberalism is not only downsizing democracy but also creating both the material and ideological forces for a new form of discrimination in the provision of drinking water around the globe. These cases suggest that contemporary notions of environmental and social justice will largely hinge on how we come to think about water in the twenty-first century.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.


Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Anca-Simina Martin

Jews as a collective have long served as scapegoats for epidemics and pandemics, such as the Bubonic Plague and, according to some scholars, the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic. This practice reemerged in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when more and more fake news outlets in the US and Europe started publishing articles on a perceived linkage between Jewish communities and the novel coronavirus. What this article aims to achieve is to facilitate a dialogue between the observations on the phenomenon made by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the latest related EU reports, with a view to charting its beginnings in Romania in relation to other European countries and in an attempt to see whether Romania, like France and Germany, has witnessed the emergence of “grey area” discourses which are not fully covered by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-73
Author(s):  
Veronika Bílková

The approaches of EU institutions and the US to democracy assistance often vary quite significantly as both actors choose different means and tactics. The nuances in the understandings of democracy on the part of the EU and the US lead to their promotion of models of democratic governance that are often quite divergent and, in some respects, clashing. This book examines the sources of this divergence and by focusing on the role of the actors’ "democratic identity" it aims to explain the observation that both actors use divergent strategies and instruments to foster democratic governance in third countries. Taking a constructivist view, it demonstrates that the history, expectations and experiences with democracy of each actor significantly inform their respective definition of democracy and thus the model of democracy they promote abroad. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in democracy promotion, democratization, political theory, EU and US foreign policy and assistance, and identity research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 350-360
Author(s):  
V. Bolshakov ◽  
Yu. Maznichenko ◽  
Yu. Holub ◽  
M. Molyboha ◽  
I. Samoilenko

The systematic analysis of the world experience of civilian use of knives not as cold weapons showed that at present the knife did not become the main attribute of equipping tourists, fish men and even hunters. In particular, today there are very few types of hunting, during which the knife is used to finish off the beast or to protect against it. At the same time, as the practice of hunting management proves, during hunting there are many uses for the knife, even without considering it as a means for cooking. This, in particular, sharpening various stakes (for a tent, a hut, a campfire), skinning a game, preparing chips for a fire, scraping ice from skis or marsh mud from shoes. To do this, in accordance with current state technical standards, any folding knife must have a lock, and the blades of all knives must be of sufficient thickness so as not to break from the load. Handles of hunting knives should be comfortable to hold so that your hand will not get tired during long-term work. For all knives, according to the technical requirements, the length and thickness of the blade must be consistent, as well as the angle of inclination of the tip relative to the axis of the blade. With regard to the above, an interesting example is the collection of knives by the Swedish company Eriksson, consisting of four models, made in the configuration of the Swedish finca. The knives have a handle and a blade of a classic Finnish knife, but with a one-sided stopper. Their blades, depending on the color of the handle, are made of different types of steel. Knives with blue plastic handles have stainless steel blades, and knives with red handles are made of carbon steel. It is believed that in Sweden almost every construction worker walks with such a knife in his pocket. It should be noted that according to the current method of forensic investigation of cold weapons and structurally similar products in it, these knives can be attributed to cold weapons by the size of the blade. It is also interesting an urban-type knife, which is not a cold weapon of the Worden Tactical Medium Company. Renowned wizard Kelly Warden, an instructor for American Rangers, designs this knife. Since 2001, Kelly Warden has been the main consultant on impact and blade weapons of Detachment 1 of the US Special Forces. He trains Special Forces hand-to-hand combat with the use of a knife, machete, baton, sticks, as well as the method of forceful detention. The blade length of the knife described is 74 mm, thickness – 3.8 mm; the handle has a sub-finger protrusion to prevent the arm from slipping on the blade. The knife does not have a standard stopper, which, in addition to protecting it from slipping the hand on the blade, must prevent the hand from sinking into the victim’s body. By all measures, this knife is not a cold weapon in accordance with the requirements of the criminal law of Ukraine. Kelly Warden believes that the knife as a means of self-defense levels the difference in weight, height and physical strength, but its main drawback is its damaging ability. The proposed article is devoted to this circumstance, the definition of the role of the restrictor in classifying a knife as a cold weapon.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Elkington

Pakiwaitara (Elkington, 2001) came about as a gap identified in social service delivery between western, middle class, dominant culture and the healing of Māori whānau in crisis. While education has responded to this gap by offering bicultural training, ensuring more Māori components within degree programmes, etc, social services statistics are still high for Māori and indigenous peoples. It has helped to shift the definition of cultural supervision to inside the definition of specialised professional supervision (Elkington, 2014), but now continued invisibility of values and beliefs, particularly that of Tauiwi, exacerbate the problem. The challenge must still be asserted so that same-culture practitioners are strengthened in same-culture social work practice (eg, by Māori, for Māori), and to avoid when possible, or otherwise by choice, white dominant-culture practice, for all-and-every-culture social work practice (eg, by Pākehā, for everyone).


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han-Chung Lien ◽  
Chen-Chi Wang ◽  
Shou-Wu Lee ◽  
Jeng-Yuan Hsu ◽  
Hong-Zen Yeh ◽  
...  

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