This dissertation explores how members of sovereignty movements in politically-dependent nations respond to transnational influences in their social, economic, and political lives. My research explores Puerto Rico's independence movements on the island and the U.S. mainland with the intent to uncover how transnational influences in Puerto Ricans' social and economic lives may filter into their political activities. I look specifically at how the prolific use of cultural nationalism within the Puerto Rican political community contributes to the characterization of Puerto Rico as a transnational community, and I investigate how this affects their political activities. I conducted research for this dissertation between 2003 and 2005 in San Juan, Puerto Rico and New York City, New York. I used a variety of ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews, participation and observation, and archival research. I conclude that any transnational experiences Puerto Ricans may undergo in their daily experiences do not directly impact their political agendas and activities. Instead, I highlight each independentista community as distinct and illustrate the localized political goals and practices of both. I discuss the significance of spatiality to both pro-independence Puerto Rican communities, specifically as it relates to the traditional nation-state structure and the multiplicity of boundaries affecting national membership and access to citizenship and rights that it entails. Ultimately I argue that neither has the cultural eclipsed the political, nor has the transnational eclipsed the local, in Puerto Rican nationalist movements. Instead, I contend that the nation-state is still a powerful influence on contemporary definitions of national membership and belongingness, and locality and spatiality are significant motivators in today's sovereignty movements.

Over the past decade, the undercurrent of interest in the alt-right and white nationalism – the belief that white people need a unified culture and possible statehood – has grown into a movement worthy of serious academic and political interest. The progressive platform rallying against the history of colonialism, the privileges of men, and the supremacy of whites through identity politics has created new problems with its proposed solutions. White, working-class men feel dispossessed in a world where diversity can be defined by “fewer white men.” The working-class feels no privilege in their race or gender, but rather, frustration. What is privilege if not the comfort of wealth? Due to these political changes, whites, and working-class men in particular are searching for new forms of identity to be able to access influence through identity politics themselves while their grasp on demographic power wanes. White nationalism and Odinism – a modern iteration of Viking religion – progressively are becoming some of the few not-exclusively-Christian options for white male identity. While most do not openly advocate for racialized violence, they do not publicly denounce it either, encouraging traditionally masculine ideals of sexuality and warrior culture. This thesis seeks to provide a snapshot of how white, working-class men are involving themselves in identity-making in a multicultural world through ethnographic analyses of white nationalism and Odinism.

Japan is currently undergoing a subtle but pervasive social upheaval, a period of broad structural reform and soul-searching triggered by the rigors of the collapse of the hyperinflated "Bubble Economy" of the late 1980s. As the nation confronts the irretrievable loss of that economic mass delusion, it is turning instead to the reclamation of a quality of life sacrificed for much of the 20th century to national ambition for first military, and then economic pre-eminence. Historian Jeff Kingston has claimed that the ongoing changes, ranging from the reduction of working hours to the institution of freedom of information laws, have been equal in magnitude to those following the Meiji Restoration and Japan's defeat in World War II. Arguably, they represent the long-delayed fruition of postwar democratizing reforms. This dissertation examines the role of American popular music, and particularly hip hop, in reflecting and shaping these changes. Starting with the 1920s and 1930s, when jazz-loving "modern girls" stood for the alluring and threatening decadence of urbanization, the influence of American music on Japan has been strong for decades. This influence came to full flower during and after Japan's surrender and subsequent occupation, as exemplified by successive trends for everything from rockabilly to country and western to folk. Though obviously the condition of occupation enhanced the exchange of musical texts, and did exercise particularly economic pressure on Japanese musicians to adopt American styles, it is not simply a case of cultural adaptation motivated by domination of force. The central testament to this is the eventual role African-American music - not just jazz, but rock, funk, and soul - took on as the 'music of resistance,' initially in connection with the student protests that marked Japan in the 1960's. Such an articulation shows the powerful role of Japanese desire, particularly on the part of youth, for the America represented by popular music. Most recently, hip hop has shown the continued attraction African-American music holds for Japanese people, and youth in particular. Hip hop reached Japan in the early 1980s and entered the mainstream with East End X Yuri's million-selling pop-rap singles of the mid-1990s. Its prominence continues to this day, in many cases embodied in Japanese artists who imitate African-American styles and sounds wholesale. Such imitation has been roundly criticized by international critics and commentators, condemned as contextless cultural theft and a testament to Japanese insensitivity on matters of race. In my study I examine a cadre of contemporary musicians who, while equally dedicated to hip hop, firmly resist such uncritical imitation of blackness, instead emphasizing their own unique musical and cultural innovations. I argue that this transition from imitation to innovation mirrors a broader cultural shift away from widespread deference to authority and towards a greater openness to innovation and change, and is just one way that the work of Japan's underground hip hop artists resonates with the ongoing 'quiet revolution.' Hip hop has encountered a few particularly important ongoing social changes: that from a lifetime employment system to one increasingly characterized by temporary and part-time labor; from a self-declared homogenous society to a multicultural one; and, more generally, from one defined by elite emphasis on social compliance and loyalty to a wider acceptance of iconoclasm and individuality. It is tempting to classify this as the transition from an 'oppressive' system to a 'free' one - from bad to good. But there are complexities and ambivalence inherent in the emergent situation. For example, while the new employment model provides much greater flexibility for individuals and frees them from the past tyranny of the corporate system, it also exposes them to much greater financial uncertainty. The rising sense of self-worth among minorities, for which hip hop is an important channel, simultaneously threatens to transform these identities into objectified fetishes. Individuality is not without its costs. Meanwhile, hip hop is also being deployed in ways that reinforce the old model of deference and authoritarianism, particularly by artists who promote revisionist histories and the revival of militarism. The significance of hip hop for social change derives from a long history of interaction between Japanese and African-American culture. This history resurfaces in hip hop recordings, as well as in the lifestyle of urban musicians and fans. This dissertation follows the daily lives and viewpoints of hip hop artists in Tokyo and throughout Japan, from some of its most successful to those just starting their careers. It tracks their music-making processes and their practices of cultural adaptation, and places them within the larger context of Japanese society. It ultimately describes how an art form derided as imitative and derivative has come to reflect the very unique contours of the new soil to which it has been transplanted.

Nationalism has appropriately been a much studied, as well disparaged, phenomenon. However, little work has been done on the specific ways in which nationalists thought about the nature of history and the effect of economics in the formation of nationalist identity. In the case of Central Europe and the lands that now comprise the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Czech and German nationalists had very specific notions of the history of the area and how that history bolstered their claims to be the sole true inhabitants. These claims were created in part due to the effect of economic modernization and job competition. As nationalist notions took hold of the population, ethnic conflict grew between Czechs and Germans in the Habsburg empire. This ethnic conflict helped to fragment the empire and hasten its collapse after World War One. The course of World War Two and the Nazi occupation and breakup of Czechoslovakia was influenced by these nationalist notions. With the progression of World War Two and the Nazi occupation, Czechoslovaks came to believe that they had an affinity with Russia and that the cause of communism was linked with an explicitly “Slavic” identity. After the war approximately three million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, a major act of ethnic cleansing and seen by the Czechoslovaks as the culmination of their perceived age long conflict with the Germans. Communism became hugely popular, seen as the victorious ideology proving Slavic superiority over the Germans. Communist sympathy and party participation grew to enormous levels. When Communist politicians used a political disagreement in February 1948 to call for a mobilization of the population to institute communist rule, the population responded enthusiastically and ushered in a communist majority government.

This thesis examines the roots of antisemitic rhetoric expressed by Polish nationalists between 1918 and 1939. I argue that nationalist rhetoric and political campaigns during this period focused on calling for Poles to defend themselves against Jewish economic and political domination. The first half of this work utilizes pamphlets, books, newspaper articles, and other written works wherein Polish nationalists, in particular members of the National Democratic Party(NDP), expressed a fear of Polish Jews and called for their eviction from the country. Fear that Poland, a country that had been partitioned by surrounding empires for the past two centuries, would not last long as an independent country were central in the rhetoric of these authors. In their eyes, Jews threatened Poland’s already compromised political and economic position. Throughout the 1930s, the NDP and other nationalist groups began to call for Jews to emigrate. The second half of this thesis uses three Polish counties (Siedlce, Sokołów Podlaski, and Węgrów) as a case study to examine the effects of the NDP’s campaign of boycotting Jewish businesses. All three counties had large Jewish populations concentrating in mostly urban areas. I undertake this study by examining reports produced by the Starosta Powiatowy, a state official in charge of describing political activities, crimes, and other major events in a given county. The reports revealed that there was a correlation between the increase in the NDP agitating for boycotts in 1936 and increased reports of Jewish families being terrorized by people breaking their windows. By examining these dynamics, I illuminate some of the political, cultural, and economic forces that contributed to the rise of antisemitism in interwar Poland. In addition to emphasizing the NDP’s language of national self-defense, thesis also highlights some of the impacts of this rhetoric.

Contemporary scholars of imperialism and colonialism studies have revealed how different imperial spaces were malleable, and they constantly shift through negotiations between diverse agencies. Whereas most existing studies investigate change of imperial space from the view of ‘metropolitan centre’, this thesis attempts to decentralise the dominant view of existing Japanese imperialism studies, and explores the Japanese imperial expansion with a particular focus on people’s subjectivities and agencies on the national border zone. The thesis particularly focuses on the border/boundary between the Yaeyama Archipelago of the Ryukyu Islands and colonial Taiwan. The first chapter explores the boundary between Yaeyama and Taiwan in representation and discourse after Yaeyama was annexed to Japan. I discuss how ‘Yaeyama’ came to appear as a historical subject in the Japanese colonial discourse, by distinguishing itself from the colonised subject as well as criticising the dominance of the main island of Okinawa. In critically examining the previous Yaeyama Studies, I suggest reconstructing Yaeyama’s history in the East Asian regional framework. The second chapter explores how civilians actively committed themselves to defining the national territory during the late nineteenth century. The chapter also aims to reconsider the dominant discourse of Okinawa’s modern history, which tends to focus on conflicts between the Japanese government and the former samurai class of Okinawa prefecture. Chapters 3 further discusses how people on the border zone constructed the boundary between Japan and Taiwan, but I argue that the border between Yaeyama and Taiwan did not only demarcate the ‘metropolitan nation’ and the ‘colony’, but also demarcated the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ areas. In other words, the third chapter considers how the national border had different implications to people on the border zone. I explore how new settlers dominated the newly emerging economy of Yaeyama and developed trade links with colonial Taiwan. Furthermore, I discuss how while Yaeyama native farmers were marginalised from the local economy and industry, they also crossed the border in a form of rural-urban migration. Chapters 5 and 6 examine Yaeyama migrants’ experiences in Taiwan. Firstly, I explore in what social and cultural conditions Yaeyama migrants lived and worked during the 1920s to the 1940s. I argue that the distinction between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Taiwanese’ was not instantly determined by the colonial authority, but continuously constructed and negotiated by social agents. In Chapter 6, I examine how Yaeyama migrants shaped their Japanese identity by distinguishing themselves from the colonised subjects. The southern border between the Inner Territory and the Outer Territories were constituted through the interaction between ensembles of practices in the local ‘place’ and the wider imperial networks and ‘space’. Yaeyama people’s experiences of constructing and crossing the boundary effectively demonstrates how the determination of the Japanese national border was incorporated into colonialism, and how Japanese colonialism was associated with the emergence of modernity in East Asia. With a particular focus on the border islands of Yaeyama, this thesis presents an alternative view to Japanese colonial history, East Asian social history as well as Okinawa’s modern history.

This Thesis examines the ideology, politics and organization of the Australian Extreme Right 1975-1995. Its central interpretative theme is the response of the Extreme Right to the development of the Australian State from a conservative Imperial structure into an American "anti-communist" client state, and ultimately into a liberal-internationalist machine which integrated Australia into a globalized capitalist order. The Extreme Right after 1975 differed from the various paramilitaries of the 1930's and the conservative anti-communist auxiliary organizations of the 1945-75 period. Post 1975, it lost its preoccupation with fighting the Left, and progressively grew as a challenger to liberal-internationalism. The abandonment of "White Australia" and consequent non-European immigration were the formative catalysts of a more diverse and complex Extreme Right. The Thesis uses a working definition of generic fascism as "palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism", to measure the degree of ideological and political radicalization achieved by the Extreme Right. This family of political ideas, independent of the State and mobilized beyond the limits of the former-period auxiliary conservatives, expressed itself in an array of organizational forms. The complexity of the Extreme Right can be demonstrated by using four typologies: Radical Nationalism, Neo-Nazism, Populist-Monarchism and Radical-Populism, each with specific points to make about social clienteles, geographical distribution, particular ideological heritages, and varied strategies and tactics. The Extreme Right could mobilize from different points of opportunity if political space became available. Inevitably a mutual delegitimization process between State and Extreme Right led to public inquiries and the emplacement of agencies and legislation to restrict the new radicalism. This was understandable since some Extreme Right groups employed violence or appeared to perform actions preparatory thereto. It also led to show-trials and para-State crime targeted against particular groups especially in the period 1988-91. Thereafter, Extreme Right organizations pursued strategies which led to electoral breakthroughs, both rural and urban as a style of Right-wing populist politics unfolded in the 1990's. It was in this period that the Extreme Right encouraged the co-optation by the State of the residual Left in the anti-racist fight. This seemed natural, as the Extreme Right's vocal references to popular democracy, national independence and the nativist heritage, had permitted it to occupy the Old Left's traditional ground. In that way too, it was "The Other Radicalism".

<p>A central theme in Pauline Melville’s novel, The Ventriloquist’s Tale, is the question of endogamy and exogamy, with the opposing alternatives embodied in Melville’s characters. This theme has received much attention in the critical commentaries generated by the novel, with a prevailing number of critics claiming that Melville proposes endogamy as the only option for indigenous communities to remain intact. However, such an argument overlooks the significant fact that Melville’s characters are always already the offspring of exogamous encounters, through which a multiplicity of boundaries have been permeated. Furthermore, the spatial motifs developed in the novel can be seen to undermine commonly accepted delimitations of supposedly homogenous groups, the nation-state constituting the prime example, and this in turn profoundly alters the notion of mixing. Consequently, contending that Melville even enters a debate on endogamy and exogamy stems from a predisposition to see the world in other terms than those Melville sets out in her novel. The nature of boundaries and borders in Melville’s fictitious world are therefore explored using Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities as a framework. This examination shows that the novel undermines the notion of the nation-state as a homogenous entity and reveals a global structure that dictates and drives interaction on a global scale. Consequently, instead of a debate on exogamy, we see in the novel an exploration and dismantling of notions of borders, boundaries and barriers between individuals and groups of people.</p>

<p>Denna uppsats i etnologi handlar om hur Zlatan Ibrahimovic framställs och beskrivs utifrån en speciell konflikt under hösten 2006 och våren 2007 i Aftonbladet och Expressen. Denna konflikt började med att tre fotbollsspelare i det svenska A-landslaget i herrfotboll gick på krogen en kväll och fortsatte sedan med att Zlatan sa nej till detta landslag under en period. Jag menar att tidningarna producerar bilder av hur man bör och inte bör vara för att räknas som ”svensk”</p><p>Media gör Zlatan Ibrahimovic till en motsats av ”svenskhet” och svensk nationalism. Jag upplever det som att Zlatan får stå som symbol för mycket mer än bara fotboll i dagens Sverige, han får representera bilden av ”invandraren”, av utanförskap, av individualism, han kan också ses som ett bevis på att alla kan lyckas bli en stjärna.</p><p>Media både bekräftar rådande svenskhet och skapar svenskhet genom att beskriva Zlatan. Samtidigt upplever jag att media uppmanar Zlatan att bli en ”äkta svensk”,</p><p>Zlatan, gör dig svensk!</p>

Many black Cubans decided to join the Cuban criollo separatists in their fight for independence from Spain in the late nineteenth century because rebellion seemed to promise a means to end slavery and shake their bonds of second class citizenship. To a large degree this was true as Cuban independence represented a multiracial triumph that ignored race and social status. Racial fraternity quickly faded, though, as the twentieth century began and black Cubans found themselves in the same disadvantaged position as before independence. This essay discusses how racism and limitations on black organization in the early republic dashed any real hopes for social mobility and spurred many Afro-Cubans to seek alternative ways to fight for racial and socioeconomic equality. I will focus on how Afro-Cuban racial awareness and black organization grew following the disappointments of Cuban independence and how the application of the 1910 Morua amendment restricting political organizations and the 1912 massacre of thousands of Afro-Cubans forced black activists to seek less direct means to redress problems of poverty and inequality. Following an analysis of why many black Cubans renounced assimilation and decided to organize based on race, I will discuss the small political space within which Afro-Cubans were able to operate and the various strategies they employed to avoid being labeled as racists and anti-Cuban. These strategies were generally passive in nature, though, and employed racial uplift or regeneracion as a means to become accepted by white society. Considering that many black elites accepted racial uplift as a means to fight for black opportunities and equality, I will evaluate if this strategy served their goals of penetrating white society at the expense of poorer Afro-Cubans. I will also focus on the rare efforts of Juan Rene Betancourt, one of the very few black activists that rejected regeneracion and endorsed black nationalism as the sole means to achieve racial equality in Cuba. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the efficacy of black Cuban organizations to improve the position of blacks in Cuban society leading up to the 1959 revolution and why they were not more successful.