"[...]
Robert Hayden: What has triumphed in Europe in this century is the concept of nation-state,in which the nation, which is an ethnic group in American terms,gets the state, which is a territory and a government. The nation is sovereign. So the Germans are sovereign in Germany, and if you are not an ethnic German, you may be living in Germany but you are not part of the sovereign body. Most of Europe is setup in this way. What won in the free and fair elections in Yugoslavia at the end of Communism was the ethnic state, and that required moving populations. The areas that were mixed in the former Yugoslavia have become unmixed, and Kosovo is the last stage in this.
[...]
DH: Sounds like Europeans are guilty of the tribalism they accuse"primitive" peoples of.
RH: Absolutely, except they call it nationalism. You call it tribalism in Africa, nationalism in Europe, communalism in South Asia --racism in America, but it doesn't take the territorial form in America that it does in Europe."
----------------- I thought hayden's comments were on the mark. a further hypothesis, given the discussions from other threads lately: that this territorialisation of ethnicity/race, or rather the ethnicisation of nations, is not only evident in Europe, but also in other parts of the world which, not surprisingly perhaps, have a European inclination if not Euro colonial history. I think that the amplification of this relation between ethnicity and nation, is a mark of the rise of Europe, not, as some would be inclined to think, a mark of the return to pre-Euro (as in 'uncivilised') forms of national identity. ----------------
Israel:
Michael p. wrote:
>All of Israel has been scandalized -- or at least pretends to be
>scandalized -- by the new frontier this marks in tribal infighting in a
>country where everyone is supposedly the same ethnicity.
isn't it the case, that because of the highly ethnicised definition of Israeli citizenship in the first place, that conflict would be ethnicised? I.e.., does it really mark a contradiction? to the extent to which the inclusiveness (universality) of Israeli citizenship was premised on exclusions, then this is not really a scandal, unless one wants to call the exposure and multiplication of already-existent premises a scandal.
someone mentioned to me Netanyahu's election slogan some time ago. was it 'One Nation' or some such, or was this Labor's slogan? funny and telling in either case; but this might only be a sad joke Australians get... ---
Eritrea/Ethiopia:
Juliana wrote:
>pre-19th century Italian colonialism, which means Eritrean conquest.
>... I have spoken to many Ethiopians and Eritreans, and they
>speak of constant propaganda such that they can never quite know what is
>going on (sound like anything else you guys have been talking about??),
>and of attempts by both countries to expel citizens who live in one
>country but are from the other--young men in particular.
--- p.s.. apologies for reposting sections of old posts, Juliana, but I thought they were important discussions to paste (think) together at some point.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au