Identities Journal Blog
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Identities Blog
    • Blog Collection
    • About Our Blog
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • Commentaries
      • COVID-19 Blog Series
      • COVID-19 Symposium
      • More Blogs
    • Blog Series >
      • COVID-19 Blog Collection
      • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events >
      • Fireside Chat with Prof Nicola Rollock
    • Past Events >
      • Race and Class
      • W. E. B. Du Bois and his Strange Synthesis of Spirituality and Sociology
      • Decolonizing Politics Symposium
      • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact
    • Subscribe for Updates
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Identities Blog
    • Blog Collection
    • About Our Blog
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • Commentaries
      • COVID-19 Blog Series
      • COVID-19 Symposium
      • More Blogs
    • Blog Series >
      • COVID-19 Blog Collection
      • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events >
      • Fireside Chat with Prof Nicola Rollock
    • Past Events >
      • Race and Class
      • W. E. B. Du Bois and his Strange Synthesis of Spirituality and Sociology
      • Decolonizing Politics Symposium
      • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact
    • Subscribe for Updates

The far right, the mainstream, and mainstreaming

25/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Cross-posted by Ideology Theory Practice

​Discussion and debate about the far right, its rise, origins and impact have become ubiquitous in academic research, political strategy, and media coverage in recent years. One of the issues increasingly underpinning such discussion is the relationship between the far right and the mainstream, and more specifically, the mainstreaming of the far right. This is particularly clear around elections when attention turns to the electoral performance of these parties. When they fare as well as predicted, catastrophic headlines simplify and hype what is usually a complex situation, ignoring key factors which shape electoral outcomes and inflate far-right results, such as trends in abstention and distrust towards mainstream politics. When these parties do not perform as well as predicted, the circus moves on to the next election and the hype starts afresh, often playing a role in the framing of, and potentially influencing, the process and policies, but also ignoring problems in mainstream, establishment parties and the system itself — including racism.

This overwhelming focus on electoral competition tends to create a normative standard for measurement and brings misperceptions about the extent and form of mainstreaming. Tackling the issue of mainstreaming beyond elections and electoral parties and more holistically does not only allow for more comprehensive analysis that addresses diverse factors, manifestations, and implications of far-right ideas and politics, but is much-needed in order to challenge some of the harmful discourses around the topic peddled by politicians, journalists, and academics.

Read More
0 Comments

Revitalising language through digital media

18/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
UNESCO’s Atlas of Endangered Languages recognises over 2,500 endangered languages worldwide. Languages represent not just a form of communication, but also the cultural knowledge of that language. However, in his book Language Death, David Crystal estimates that the world is in danger of losing nearly half of all accumulated knowledge at the current rate of language loss. With language intrinsically tied to culture, many communities that experience a decline in the use of their native language perceive it as a sign that their culture is dying. The result is often that older generations look for ways to maintain, transmit and revitalise use of their language through younger generations.
​
The internet is intrinsically connected to issues of language and cultural identity. As language is the primary means for spreading cultural information, internet resources in minority languages can empower speakers of these languages by enabling them to display their own way of life and voice their concerns and issues in their mother tongue. In this way, they may revitalise their languages, reinforce cultural symbols and strengthen cultural identities. 

Read More
0 Comments

Racial identities in the new South Africa

11/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
‘What are you?’ When posed with this question in highly racialised societies, most people respond by sharing their racial identity. Although racial identity is a personal decision, the choice is often constrained by the recognised racial categories available within the racialised society.
 
For example, as written into law through the 1950 Population Registration Act – linchpin legislation that helped set in motion South Africa’s Apartheid system by defining race for its population – to be Coloured was to be ‘a person who is not a white person or a native’ Black/African. To be Coloured meant you were neither/nor. 
 
We are now a quarter century into post-Apartheid South Africa and the state has undergone a massive sociopolitical transformation that operates under the ideal to be non-racist. Some changes include the repealing of Apartheid laws, including the Population Registration Act. So how has the transition from the white supremacist Apartheid state impacted Coloured racial identities in post-Apartheid South Africa? I explore how racial identities are created and recreated to adapt to state-level racial (re)formation processes in my recently published Identities article, ‘Able to identify with anything’: racial identity choices among ‘Coloureds’ as shaped by the South African racial state’.

Read More
0 Comments

Boxing with identities

4/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
The use of identity markers in sport has received considerable attention from scholars in a number of disciplines over a number of decades. This has been looked at in a variety of different sports and includes insightful studies published in Identities such as the works of Paul Campbell and Daniel Burdsey on football and Constancio Arnaldo on boxing.

In our Identities article, ‘Pretty fly for a white guy: The politics of race, nation and difference in professional boxing’, we look at the ways in which race and nation are (re)presented within the coverage of one particular fight. Boxing is a sport that relies heavily on binary divisions. In his book Boxing and Society, the sociologist John Sugden noted how success in the ring could ‘symbolise not only individual achievement, but also racial and national superiority’. For the promotion of many championship bouts the hype around the fight is constructed around binary oppositions. This paper looks at the bout between Joe Calzaghe (a white boxer from Wales) and Bernard Hopkins (a black boxer from the USA) as a case study to explore the representation of identities. In attempting to tease out some of the key themes to emerge in the intersection of race and nation, we tried to understand how identities are portrayed within boxing. This work also highlighted further differences around the understanding of social class and core/periphery relations within a particular sport.

Read More
0 Comments

    Blog Categories

    All
    Activism
    Anti-racism
    Asylum Seekers
    Belonging
    Black Lives Matter
    Blackness
    Borders
    Boundary Work
    Cities
    Citizenship
    Colonialism
    Commentaries
    Conflict
    Cosmopolitanism
    Covid-19
    Cultural Memory
    Culture
    Decoloniality
    Diaspora
    Discrimination
    Displacement
    Diversity
    Ethnic Boundaries
    Ethnic Identity
    Ethnicity
    Exile
    Far Right
    Gender
    Global South
    Identity
    Immigration
    Indigenous
    Integration
    Intersectionality
    Islamophobia
    Justice
    Kinship
    Marginalisation
    Migration
    Multiculturalism
    National Identity
    Nationalism
    Nationhood
    Nativism
    Othering
    Policing
    Populism
    Postcolonial
    Race
    Racial Identity
    Racialisation
    Racism
    Radicalism
    Refugees
    Religion
    Resistance
    State Racism
    Stereotyping
    Stigmatisation
    Subjectivity
    Transnationalism
    Victimhood
    Whiteness


    Blog Collection

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019

Explore Identities at tandfonline.com/GIDE