This newsletter contains the contributions from writers who are experts in their fields but whose views do not necessarily represent those of ASEN.

ASEN, London School of Economics (LSE), Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

Summer 2012

Newsletter of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism

Dear members and friends of ASEN,

We are happy to present the Summer 2012 issue of The Ruritanian. In this issue you will read about our featured book, The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan by Farhan Hanif Siddiqi. You will also find a list of recently released books, upcoming conferences, announcements and a profile of new ASEN co-chair, Ellie Knott. Members will also read an article on ethnonationalism and statist militarism in Burma by Dr Muang Zarni. As always, please let us know if you have any conferences or upcoming books of interest, or any comments or suggestions about the newsletter in general.

–The Newsletter TeamAnastasia Voronkova and Zara Rabinovitch, Co-Editors

Aameer Patel, Associate Editor

In this issue:• The Politics of Ethnicity in

Pakistan by Farhan Hanif Siddiqi

• Nationalism in the News: Ethnonationalism and statist militalism in Burma

• Recent books• External conferences• Announcements• Member profile: Ellie Knott

ASEN Events ASEN (group)

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asen.newsletter @lse.ac.uk

In order to understand the Pakistani state and government’s treatment of non-dominant ethnic groups after the failure of the military operation in East Pakistan and the independence of Bang-ladesh, this book looks at the ethnic movements that were subject to a military operation after 1971: the Baloch in the 1970s, the Sindhis in the 1980s and Mohajirs in the 1990s.

Siddiqi critically evaluates the lit-erature on ethnicity and nationalism by taking nationalist ideology and the political divisions it generates within ethnic groups as essential in estimating ethnic movements. He goes on to chal-

lenge the modernist argument that nationalism is only relevant to modern-industrialised socio-economic settings. The available evidence from Pakistan makes clear that ethnic movements emanate from three distinct socio-economic realms: tribal (Baloch), rural (Sindh) and urban (Mohajir), and the book looks at the implications

that this has, as well as how further arguments could be advanced about the relevance of ethnic movements and politics in the Third World.

The book also provides academ-ics and researchers with background knowledge of how the Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir ethnic conflict in Pakistan took shape in a historical context, as well as probable future scenarios of the relationship between the Pakistani state and government, and ethnic groups and movements.

Featured Book The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan: The Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir Ethnic Movements

by Farhan Hanif Siddiqi

Dr Farhan Hanif Siddiqi is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Karachi, Pakistan. He specialises in theories of nationalism and ethnicity, ethnic conflict and ethnic movements in Pakistan.

1Summer 2012

Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence and Democratization in Eastern Europe Sherrill Stroschein, May 2012, Cambridge University Press

The European Union as a Global Conflict Manager Edited by Richard Whitman and Stefan Wolff, May 2012, Routledge

Islam in the West: Key Issues in Multiculturalism Edited by Max Farrar, Simon Robinson, Yasmin Valli and Paul Wetherly, June 2012, Palgrave Macmillan

The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey Erik Zürcher, June 2012, I. B. Tauris

Racial Discrimination: Institutional Patterns and Politics Masoud Kamali, June 2012, Routledge

The Study of Ethnicity and Politics: Recent Analytical Developments Edited by Adrian Guelke and Jean Tournon, July 2012, Verlag Barbara Budrich

Inter-ethnic Conflict Transformation in Ethiopia: The case of Amhara-Afar Conflict in Kewot and Semurobi Areas Anteneh Alemu, July 2012, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing

Race, Ethnicity and the Cold War: A Global Perspective Edited by Philip Muehlenbeck, July 2012, Vanderbilt University Press

The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict Edited by Linda Tropp, July 2012, Oxford University Press USA

Everyday Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: Up-Country Tamil Identity Politics Daniel Bass, August 2012, Routledge

Affirmative Action in Plural Societies: International Experiences (Conflict, Inequality and Ethnicity) Edited by Graham Brown, Amim Langer and Frances Stewart, August 2012, Palgrave Macmillan

The Other Zulus: The Spread of Zulu Ethnicity in Colonial South Africa Michael Mahoney, August 2012, Duke University Press

Nationalism and Mobilization in Nepal: Identities and Mobilization After 1990 Edited by Mahendra Lawoti and Susan Hangen, August 2012, Routledge

Old Conflict, New War: Israel’s Politics Towards the Palestinians Uni Ben-Eliezer, August 2012, Palgrave Macmillan

From Conflict to Recognition: Moving Multiculturalim Forward Edited by Michael Kearney, August 2012, Editions Rodopi B. V.

Nationalism and Conflict Management Edited by Eric Taylor Woods, Robert Schertzer and Eric Kaufmann, August 2012, Routledge

Recent Books

Announcements23rd Annual ASEN Conference

The 23rd annual ASEN Conference will take place at the LSE on 9–11 April 2013, with the 19th

annual Ernest Gellner Memorial Lecture being delivered by Professor David Martin on the evening of 8th April.

Professor David Martin is Honorary Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Lancaster University and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the LSE.

He is a prolific contributor to public as well as sociological debate about religion. The author of more than 20 books, he has established creative lines of thinking both within the sociology of religion and at the interface between sociology and theology.

2Summer 2012

International Winter School on Fedaralism and Governance 2013:

Federalism and Fundamental RightsThe Winter School is a postgraduate programme offering a broad range of courses in federalism and governance. It enables academics, post-docs and practitioners to extend and deepen their knowledge in multilevel government and governance, especially from a legal and political science perspective. The next edition (4–15 February 2013) will focus on “Federalism and Fundamental Rights.”

Successful participants of the 10 day programme are awarded 10 ECTS credits. The working language is English. The application deadline is 26 October 2012. For further information and application please visit our website: www.eurac.edu/winterschool

Memories of Conflict, Conflicts of Memory Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University College London, Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies, and the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Senate House, London, UK, 13–14 February 2013

The conference is intended to address, among others, the following issues:

• Official commemoration• Gendered memory• Cultural memory and communicative memory• Memory, history and law• Contested memories• Memory, migration, exile and displacement• Fictions of memory and performing memory• Sites of memory, testimony and archives

Please submit a 250 word abstract and a short biographical note to the convenors by 1 October 2012.

Convenors: Jordana Blejmar (jordana.blejmar@sas.ac.uk) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (a.raychaudhuri@ucl.ac.uk)

Collective Identity and Practices of Citizenship in PostcommunismUniversity of Wroclaw, Poland, 22–23 February 2013

The conference is intended to address, among others, the following issues:

• Conceptual and theoretical changes of focus in understanding the post-communist citizenship.• Institutional/legal developments of citizenship in the post-communist countries with a focus on controversies. • The role of transformation processes for the citizenship practices in those countries • Citizenship and civic education (the role of the education system vis-à-vis citizenship).• Post-communist citizenship and nationalism.Power and citizenship in the post-communist countries (the role of inequality and class stratification).• The impact of external actors such as the Russian Federation, the USA or the EU on the citizenship practices in post-communist countries.

Please submit proposals to the organisers via www.conferencepro.eu/citizenship by 30 September 2012.

Conference papers will be submitted to The

Journal of Social Science Education and published in a contracted special issue “Post-Communist Citizenship” in 2013.

Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism in European Media and Film: Rights, Responsibilities, Representations University of Manchester, UK, 23–25 May 2013

The conference will address questions such as:

• In what senses are various types of media, including those reliant on new communication technologies, aggravating inter-ethnic tensions in Europe?• How serious a threat to social cohesion in European societies are extremist websites, blogs and other new media forms of global and national provenance?• Are ethnic and racial minorities accorded appropriate rights to representation in national broadcasting systems?• To what extent are representations of ethnicity, race and nationhood, and the coverage of issues pertaining to ethnic cohesion, dependent on national context?• What are the conceptual frames to which journalists and film-makers in various European societies resort when covering this area and what are their origins and consequences?• How are European broadcasters with national responsibility dealing with the rise of the anti-immigration, Islamophobic right on one hand, and with the loss of faith in official multicultural policies on the other?• What role does non-news broadcasting (drama serials; documentary programming; situation comedy; light entertainment genres) play in the representational process?• How have cinematic imaginations of national and European identity refracted the shifting consensus on values of ethnic diversity?

It is intended that selected papers from the conference will form the basis for special issues of one or more prominent journals in the field.

Please email your proposals (250 words) for papers of up to 20 minutes in length and your one-page CVs to the conference organisers (Professors Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz) at RRRMediaConference@manchester.ac.uk by 30 September 2012.

External Conferences

3Summer 2012

This issue we speak to a new ASEN Co-Chair!

What is your name and where are you from?My name is Ellie Knott and I am from Hertford, which is just north of London.

What are you currently studying/researching?I am currently a PhD student in the Department of Government at LSE. I am researching the kin-state policies of Romania and Russia in Moldova and Crimea. The majority of people in Moldova and Crimea can be considered Romanian and Russian respectively, yet they remain divided from their “kin-states.” I am researching how people in Moldova and Crimea use the rights and benefits available to them, like dual citizenship, and what these opportunities mean.

What led you to study nationalism?As an undergraduate studying Geography, I was interested in the relationship between identity, culture and politics and in particular, I developed an interest in how this relationship has shaped post-Soviet states and societies. This led me to study nationalism as part of my master’s degree, where I specialised in the post-Soviet region, before beginning my PhD at LSE.

What do you plan to do after your PhD?I would like to work in academia and continue to work on nationalism in the post-Soviet region. However this very much depends on what opportunities are available in a few years time which, for most researchers right now, is something quite uncertain!

If you ruled the UK for a day and could implement any change or new policy, what would it be?I would try to enforce better learning of foreign languages at school. While not the most exciting policy, I think that it is one of the failing aspects of school education in the UK, since so few people leave with adequate knowledge of another language. We do live in a world where English is increasingly a lingua franca, but I think we should encourage native English speakers to broaden their knowledge of other languages, rather than rely on English.

What is your favourite place in London?Where I live, there is a bar called Frank’s which is only open in the summer. It is on the top floor of a multi-storey car park and so has one of the best views in London from west to east with Battersea power station, St Paul’s and the

The Dome all visible. I like visiting each year to see what is new on the London skyline and it is one of the few things that draws people down to southeast London.

What are your thoughts on the rise of extreme right parties across Europe?I think we focus not just on extreme right parties but also on extreme right social movements, such as the English Defence League, since these tend to be more radical and violent than extreme right parties. Fortunately in the UK, the strength of parties like the BNP seems to be diminishing, but this could be due more to internal problems within the party, rather than diminishing support among the electorate.

Members, raise your profile!Email us: asen.newsletter@lse.ac.uk

Member Profile

4Summer 2012

new and recent titles from polity

Land of StrangersAsh Amin (University of Cambridge)

“A brilliant and illuminating book. Ash Amin relentlessly dispels clichés about modern society in reader-friendly prose; more positively, he explores ways to manage the complexities with which we live.”Richard Sennett, London School of Economics and New York University

March 2012 200 pages • Hb 978-0-7456-5217-7 £50.00 • Pb 978-0-7456-5218-4 £15.99

The Crisis of the European Union: A ResponseJürgen Habermas

“One of Europe’s most prominent intellectuals, a social political theorist of the highest standing, builds a case that Europe’s leaders will sooner or later have to answer.”Financial Times

April 2012 120 pages • Hb 978-0-7456-6242-8 £16.99

NationalismTheory, Ideology, HistorySecond editionAnthony D. Smith (London School of Economics)

“All who are interested in the study of nationalism are most fortunate to have available this masterly, updated distillation of Anthony Smith’s four decades of intensive scholarship on the topic. It is concise and yet treats all of nationalism’s key aspects, including its wellsprings and historical evolution.”Walker Connor, Middlebury College, Vermont

2010 216 pages • 978-0-7456-5127-9 Hb £50.00 • 978-0-7456-5128-6 Pb £15.99

The Ethnicity ReaderNationalism, Multiculturalism and MigrationSecond editionEdited by Montserrat Guibernau (Queen Mary, University of London) and John Rex (University of Warwick)

“A superb collection of writings on ethnicity. They have selected from the best historical and contemporary scholarship on this fraught issue, covering a wide range of topics, from citizenship to violence.”Eric D. Weitz, University of Minnesota

2010 348 pages • 978-0-7456-4701-2 Hb £65.00 • 978-0-7456-4702-9 Pb £19.99

available now from all good bookshops

www.politybooks.com

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