Boundaries and Belonging : States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices

Although state borders remained remarkably stable during the Cold War, states have disappeared, splintered, consolidated, and blended into supra-national communities since 1990. The articles in this volume look at borders in a new way, stressing their impermanence. In particular, the study looks at the tension between the actual borders of states and other virtual boundaries that frame human communities. The contributors include political scientists, sociologists, geographers, and historians who write about the Middle East, Europe, China, North America, and Asia. Cover......Page 1 Half-title......Page 3 Title......Page 5 Copyright......Page 6 Contents......Page 7 Contributors......Page 9 Preface and Acknowledgments......Page 11 Part i Introduction......Page 13 1 Mental Maps and Virtual Checkpoints Struggles to Construct and Maintain State and Social Boundaries......Page 15 Boundaries......Page 17 Belonging......Page 26 The Image and Practices of the State......Page 32 Part ii On the Eve of the Nation-State: The Ottoman Empire......Page 37 2 Do States Always Favor Stasis?......Page 39 Early Years......Page 41 Settling Nomads......Page 45 Mobility-in-Stasis......Page 51 Boundaries and Belonging......Page 56 Conclusion......Page 59 3 The Permeable Boundaries of Ottoman......Page 61 Ottoman Jews and the Hazards of Modernity......Page 66 The Language of Change......Page 70 Part iii The State and "Dangerous Populations"......Page 83 4 “Dangerous Populations”......Page 85 The Border and the Creation of a Palestinian National Minority in Israel......Page 88 The Border as “Protected Area”: Creating a Heteronomous Space......Page 92 Protected Against Whom?......Page 96 The Border as a Total Institution......Page 103 Concluding Remarks......Page 109 5 Making Myanmars......Page 111 Why Non-Burmese Languages Became Dangerous......Page 113 Language, Boundaries, and Belonging before 1988......Page 116 Language and Belonging in the “Myanmar” Era......Page 121 Differentiation......Page 123 Homogenization......Page 125 Making Myanmar Speakers......Page 127 Conclusion: The Making (or Unmaking?) of Myanmars and Myanmar Speakers......Page 129 Introduction......Page 133 Transnational and Ethnic Networks in International Affairs......Page 138 The Kurdish Challenge......Page 140 Justice Ministry: Kurdish Rights in European Courts......Page 142 The Justice Ministry and Leverage Politics......Page 145 KHRP and Alternative Avenues of Justice......Page 146 “Culture Ministry”: Preserving and Promoting Kurds as Nation......Page 147 The Institut Kurde de Paris......Page 148 MED-TV......Page 150 “Foreign Affairs Ministry”: Kurdish Politics, Parliaments, and Diplomacy......Page 152 “Enemy State”: Ethnic Kurdish Politics in Virtual Kurdistan West......Page 153 Foreign Diplomacy......Page 154 Apo Goes to Rome: Abdullah Öcalan in Virtual Kurdistan West......Page 156 Conclusions......Page 157 Part iv Inscribing Membership and Contesting Membership in the Nation......Page 161 Introduction......Page 163 “Full Blood” versus “Mixed Blood” Challenges to the Nation......Page 166 “Head of Family” Debate......Page 168 Political Competence......Page 170 “Deserving” Indians and Political Competence in the Jane Waldron Case......Page 173 “Blood Quantum”......Page 175 Blood Quantum Arguments in Waldron Case......Page 178 “Mixed Bloods” and the Threat of Ambiguity: The Barney Traversee Case......Page 179 Redefining “Mixed Bloods”......Page 184 Conclusion......Page 187 8 Belonging and Not: Rossland, British Columbia, during the Great War......Page 189 National Belonging, the State, and War......Page 190 The Golden City Goes to War......Page 195 Exclusion and Appropriate Behavior......Page 203 Reconfiguring Allegiances......Page 208 Conclusion: Loyalty, Labor, and the Networks of the State......Page 213 Introduction......Page 217 The State in Intimate Spaces: Politics, Marriage, Divorce, and Sex......Page 221 The State in Public Spaces......Page 229 Conclusion......Page 235 10 Gender and the Reproduction and Maintenance of Group Boundaries......Page 238 Who Are The Religious Communities in Israel?......Page 243 Gender and Group Boundaries......Page 247 Internal Group Restrictions and Gender Roles: Marking In Group as Out Group......Page 254 Conclusion......Page 257 Part v Beyond the State: Transnational Forces and the Challenge to the State......Page 261 11 Passports into Credit Cards......Page 263 Citizenship and the Symptoms of Neoliberalism......Page 267 From PACE-ing the Border to the NEXUS of Business and Security......Page 271 The Cascadian Space of Neoliberal Selfhood......Page 282 Conclusions......Page 290 Introduction......Page 296 European Law: The End of Nationality and Territory as a Basis for Belonging?......Page 300 Public Servants, Public Sector Employment, and the Contested National Bond......Page 310 Migrants, Residents, and Contested Access to Social Welfare......Page 314 Third Country Families, Associated Nationals, and Contested European Membership......Page 321 No Stake in Europe? Individuals and Civil Society between Nationalized and Universal Communities......Page 325 13 Boundaries of the Nation-State and the Lure of the Islamic Community in Turkey......Page 330 The Heritage of Contestation: Universal Islam and the Local State......Page 331 Islamist Ascendance......Page 333 The Nation-State and Its Islamic Criticism......Page 335 The Welfare Party between Islam and the Nation-State......Page 337 The Welfare Party and the Borders of the Nation-State......Page 338 Transgressing Secular Turkish Citizenship: The Welfare Party and the Kurds......Page 341 Transgressing Secular Turkish Citizenship: The Welfare Party and the Head-Scarved Women......Page 343 Conclusion......Page 347 Part vi Conclusion......Page 349 14 Conclusion......Page 351 Index......Page 371 "This interdisciplinary volume maintains the importance of a spatial understanding of society and history, but suggests a way of conceiving of borders and space that goes beyond a school map of states. Its subject is the struggle among differing spatial logics, or mental maps. It is concerned with the meaning that state borders hold for people, but recognizes that such meaning varies and is contested by other social formations. The authors here ask, To what degree do state borders encase the mechanisms that make the decisive rules governing people's lives and to what extent do they give way to other rulemakers? To what extent do states circumscribe the communities to which people feel attached and to what extent do they intersect with other communities of belonging? The essays in this book home in on the struggles and conflicting demands on people, given that state borders are not automatically pre-eminent and that other spatial logics demand attention"--Jacket This interdisciplinary volume maintains the importance of a spatial understanding of society and history, but suggests a way of conceiving of borders and space that goes beyond a school map of states. Its subject is the struggle among differing spatial logics, or mental maps. It is concerned with the meaning that state borders hold for people, but recognizes that such meaning varies and is contested by other social formations. To what degree do state borders encase the mechanisms that make the decisive rules governing people's lives and to what extent do they give way to other rulemakers? To what extent do states circumscribe the communities to which people feel attached and to what extent do they intersect with other communities of belonging? These essays home in on the struggles and conflicting demands on people, given that state borders are not automatically pre-eminent and that other spatial logics demand attention. In the period from the end of the Cold War, at the beginning of the 1990s, to the present, academics and laymen alike have moved away from a view of borders as fixed and hard features of international life.