One Facet of Ethnic Categorization, Ethnicization and Ethnic Activism in Nepal

Ethnicity and identity. particularly for Nepal with diverse human and cultural groups, has become more important in the context of number of ethnic upsurges accompanying macro-level social movements in Nepal, resulting in a radical transformation in the political system. Given the context, this paper aimed to reflect one of the many dimensions of ethnic activism in historical context focused on one of Nepal's least studied ethnic groups, the Paharis. Further, the paper also attempted to connect the categorization of human groups with the politics of identity. The paper is prepared by extensive reviews supplemented by a number of in-depth interviews among the given community around Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Kabhrepalanchok, and Sindhupalchok district. The paper concludes that Pahari ethnicity and activism have their own trajectory within the broader ethnic movement and activism that became apparent after 1990, followed by the movement initiated by other ethnic groups.

Ethnic categorization practices and boundary (re)making in a multiethnic borderland of Ukraine

Multiethnic borderlands, like Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine, are characterized by ethnic-linguistic-confessional complexity where ethnic boundary-making and ethnic categorization are constructed and rooted in politics. The present study aims to analyze how the mechanisms of ethnic categorization and boundary-making play out on a local level. Based on data analysis and fieldwork conducted in Hudya/Gődényháza in Transcarpathia, a village with ethnically, linguistically, and denominationally diverse population, we describe how “ethnicity” is getting blurred and reconstructed in the narrative strategies of residents. We examine the characteristics of the various classification systems (external classification, self-reporting) and their relation to each other. It is found that the ethnic, linguistic, and denominational affiliations in the village (and its wider region) are often divergent, which is reflected in the significant discrepancy between the data gathered in various ethnic classification systems. We argue that denomination is the prime factor of both self-identification and external classification, obscuring the boundaries between religious and standard ethnic terms. We further point to the formation of new boundaries between autochthonous and allochthonous populations. Although this cleavage emerged a few decades ago and has been transgressed by dozens of marriages among autochthonous and newcomers, it can easily get ethnicized, thus it adds an extra layer to the existing distinctions.

Ghosts

This chapter examines how Philip Roth responds to Jewish American readers and contexts in his fiction. Roth exploits the tensions and transitions in Jewish American political aspirations in the period, setting heated political debates about assimilation and particularism against different measurements of value in the novel. By using live cultural debates from the period, Roth courts ethnic categorization, while ultimately relativizing such categories in his attempt to pursue alternative understandings of literary value. In Roth’s earlier ‘Nathan Zuckerman’ fictions, the comedy and intelligence emerge through his practice of contrasting the ‘humble needs’ of a desiring body with the rush either to pass political judgement or to withdraw the novel from the complications of embodied life. The second half of the chapter demonstrates how Roth engages both directly and indirectly with the work of Hannah Arendt and the 1950s context for thinking about the Holocaust. This section of the chapter focuses in particular on an unpublished screenplay housed in Roth’s literary archive.

Introduction

Chapter 1, “Introduction: The Invisible Empire,” identifies the Jiankang Empire as one of the world’s largest medieval empires, and assesses why it is so little recognized or studied. It identifies long-standing patterns of interpretation in the Chinese historical tradition, and the modern historiography that relies upon it, as systematically de-emphasizing or denigrating the military and political accomplishments of the empire. It identifies key problems in the traditional Chinese nationalist narrative with regards to political geography, cultural terminology, and ethnic categorization. These compel us to avoid teleologically freighted terms such as “China” and “Chinese” in analyzing East Asian history in the early medieval period. The chapter develops a revisionist framework and terminology for understanding the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing it as a charter state within a Sino–Southeast Asian zone that had strong cultural similarities to the better-known Indo–Southeast Asian zone.

Intercultural parallax: Comparative modeling, ethnic taxonomy, and the dynamic object

Comparative modeling is necessary for semiotic inquiry. To better theorize such pursuits, a reflexive turn is in order: comparative modeling needs comparative modeling. In search of experientially grounded analogies better suited for understanding, validating, scrutinizing, and accounting for the situation of the semiotic inquirer, this paper applies insights from Peircean process semiotics and Göran Sonesson’s extended theory of cultural semiotics toward two ends: one theoretical, the other applied. First, I undertake a critical review of recent scholarly and creative works that attempt to adapt concepts of “parallax” as a source domain for comparative modeling activities. I do this in order to continue laying groundwork for a more complex, systematic theory of reflexive semiotic modeling in human inquiry, building on my earlier work. Second, I explore a specific case study of comparative intercultural modeling: namely, nationalist ethnic classification strategies in China and Vietnam. While many researchers have considered the onomastic and geopolitical dimensions of state-sanctioned ethnic categorization programs in these two countries, little has been done to unpack the powerful visual and narratological strategies employed by both; and little has been done to compare the intercultural categories these strategies serve to legitimize. The Vietnamese classification program is clearly modeled on its Chinese counterpart historically, but important categorical mismatches emerge between the two that indicate the presence of hidden diversity. Comparing the two systems also leads to a number of discoveries with implications for further developing the theory of cultural semiotics. Ultimately, the function or purpose of parallax modeling is shown to both comprehend and point beyond nascent intercultural and intracultural models toward more complex blends, by holding all such relations in a comparative frame, not as irreconcilable positions but as a more developed composite sign indicating the presence of yet more deeply buried dynamic objects to be searched out through further collateral experience.

Családnév és etnikai kategorizáció

Surnames and ethnic categorization. The category of “Hungarian surname” in Hungary and in minority status The study investigates how lay ethnic categorization based on one’s surname works from theperspective of the prototype theory. The analysis is based on a questionnaire survey, in which 854Hungarian students took part from 21 universities in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Focus wasplaced on the evaluation of a list of surnames compiled based on several criteria. According toprevious results, the typical conditions for the category of HUNGARIAN SURNAME are the following:1. transparency, 2. spelling adjusted to Hungarian spelling standards, 3. typical Hungarianmorphological structure, 4. well-known Hungarian name bearers. In our present paper, weexamine several further aspects and types of surnames, such as name frequency, surnames of artificialor ethnonimic origin as well as surnames considered to be of Roma, German or Jewish origin.There are a number of substantial similarities in the categorization of the individual surnamesbelonging to name categories defined differently. There are some differences in categorizationcompleted by Hungarians who live in Hungary and those who live in neighbouring countries, butthere are more common features. However, there is no clear analogy between surnames and ethniccategories: the connections are quite complex and can be traced back to several causes; thus, relationsoften vary name by name.

Friendship Bias in Ethnic Categorization

Interethnic friendships are highly beneficial for decreasing ethnic prejudice. However, this is not true when friends identifying with different ethnic groups perceive each other as of the same ethnicity. We investigate the extent to which people categorize their friends “incorrectly”, that is, not matching these friends’ self-identifications. We thus move beyond the established practice of conceptualizing ethnic categorization as an individual characteristic (“who is categorized into which ethnicity”), and define it on the level of pairwise relations (who categorizes whom into which ethnicity), which enables us to model the effect of friendship on ethnic categorization. Using dynamic social network models, we also disentangle this effect from the simultaneous effect of categorization on friendship, taking characteristics (e.g. self-identifications) of both the observed and the observing individual into account. On data of 12 Hungarian high-school classes with one minority group, the Roma, we find that students of the majority group tend to select and keep friends whom they observe as majority members. In contrast, students of the minority group do not prefer other minority members when choosing friends, but tend to categorize their existing friends as minority peers. We conclude that these are two different manifestations of the preference for same-ethnic friends.

Why the “real” numbers on Roma are fictitious: Revisiting practices of ethnic quantification

This article scrutinizes the administrative and scientific practices by which the Gypsy/Roma category has been historically constructed in Europe, particularly in Central and South Eastern Europe. Censuses, police-led inquiries, social surveys and expert estimates made the ‘Roma’ category appear objective, making invisible the multiple technical and political decisions behind their interpretations. This paper examines the technologies behind the production of ethnic categories and that of Roma in particular: namely, guidelines and manuals for field workers, recruitment and census campaigns, consent forms, questionnaires, data processing, basic assumptions and interpretation of data. While expert networks give objectivity and flexibility to the collection and circulation of data, the labour involved in crafting ethnic statistics often remains obscure. This paper follows the historical departures and continuities of Roma categorization from the 18th century to present times. The category ‘Roma’ was produced and reproduced through quantification practices with the justification that ethnic data (or categorization) would help solve social problems and contribute to Roma integration. The technical literature reviewed in this paper and the auto-ethnographic analysis shed light on the machinery of ethnic categorization, and allows us to assess the impact of various kinds of labour upon this categorization: from the more visible work performed by ethnopolitical entrepreneurs and scholars – to the relatively invisible contributions of field workers, administrators and census takers. This article calls for a critical scrutiny of how Roma ethnicity is crafted through practices of ethnic quantification and encourages researchers to use methodological prudence and more self-reflection in their own academic practices.