From Sartre to Levinas, continental philosophers have looked to the example of the Jew as the paradigmatic object of and model for ethical inquiry. Levinas, for example, powerfully dedicates his 1974 book Otherwise than Being to the victims of the Holocaust, and turns attention to the state of philosophy after Auschwitz. Such an ethics radically challenges prior notions of autonomy and comprehension-two key ideas for traditional ethical theory and, more generally, the Greek tradition. It seeks to respect the opacity of (...) the other and avoid the dangers of hermeneutic violence. But how does such an ethics of the other translate into real, everyday life? What is at stake in thinking the other as Jew? Is the alterity of the Jew simply a counter to Greek universalism? Is a rhetoric of exceptionalism, with its unavoidable ontological residue, at odds with shifting political realities? Within this paradigm, what then becomes of the Arab or Muslim, the other of the Jew, the other of the other, so to speak? This line of ethical thought-in its desire to bear witness to past suffering and come to terms with subjectivity after Auschwitz-arguably brackets from analysis present operations of power. Would, then, a more sensitive historical approach expose the Palestinian as the other of the Israeli? Here, Zahi Zalloua offers a challenging intervention into how we configure the contemporary. (shrink)

This paper suggests looking at cuisines of poverty as practical and political systems practiced by urban and rural Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is an important and interesting case study within which political and economical considerations govern and enhance the development, change, and acceptance of culinary knowledge. Cuisines of poverty operate in two simultaneous arenas. As systems of practical knowledge, they repeatedly center on the ability to maintain the traditional kitchen, turning it into a tool-kit out of which information (...) is recruited upon need. Simultaneously, cuisines of poverty reveal the inter-connection between the culinary discourse and the political one. It is where issues such as access to land, national and ethnic identity, and means to participation in the dominant culture are of major concern. The analysis of cuisines as operating on two complementary discourses contributes to the understanding of the relationship between food and the arena of power. (shrink)

This article expands Kandiyoti's concept of patriarchal bargaining to include men's negotiations. It analyzes how marginalized groups within a dominant sociocultural knowledge regime strategize to advance change while trying to maximize security and optimize their life options. The case study analyzes primaries held within kin-based groupings— hamulas among Palestinian Arabs in Israel—to determine the candidates for municipal elections. Based on interviews and analysis of newspaper articles, the authors claim that the turn to primaries by hamulas was an attempt (...) to resolve disputes that were undermining the patriarchal system. The primaries provided entry to those of lower ranking in the hierarchy of hamula political leadership, while retaining the exclusion of women from the political sphere. Thus, while bargaining with patriarchy, gender identities and hierarchies are contested, re/produced, and negotiated as both a political means and an anchor for social identities. (shrink)

Multiculturalism has become a central theme in many academic disciplines from philosophy to education, social work and psychology, ultimately reaching political science and law. What seems to be unique in current studies on multiculturalism is not merely the observance and display of societies that happen to be diverse in terms of the religious, cultural, national and ethnic affiliation of their members. Rather, it is the central argument that such divergence is legitimate and should be accommodated. Accepting other groups in (...) society and the legitimacy of accommodating them has become a virtue of tolerance.This paper argues that we must first look into multicultural theory itself to discover what can be called ‘multicultural qualifications’. These are in essence pre-conditions without the presence of which group accommodations, even if granted based on group membership, should not be considered as multicultural in nature. With multicultural theory as a backdrop, this article intends to identify such multicultural qualifications. The Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel is studied in its constellation as both a national minority group and as a religiously diverse group as an object for testing the application of the identified multicultural qualifications. (shrink)

Zionist national identity in Israel is today challenged by two mutuallyantagonistic alternatives: a liberal, secular, Post-Zionist civic identity, on the one hand, and ethnic, religious, Neo-Zionist nationalistic identity, on the other. The other, Zionist, hegemony contains an unsolvable tension between the national and the democratic facets of the state. The Post-Zionist trend seeks a relief of this tension by bracketing the nationalcharacter of the state, i.e., by separation of state and cultural community/ies; the Neo-Zionist trend seeks (...) a relief of the same tension by bracketing the democratic nature of the state, i.e., by consolidating the Jewish ethno-national character of the state. The focus of the study is upon two dimensions of this unfolding cultural-political strife: the conflicting perceptions of time and space, and the ways they affect the perceptions of the boundaries of the collectivity, either in an inclusionary manner (the ``post'') or in an exclusionary manner (the ``neo''). (shrink)

The book addresses the representation of three groups of "others" in Israeli schoolbooks: Holocaust victims, presented as the stateless persecuted Jews "we" might become again if "we" lose control over the second group of "others" - Palestinian Arabs - who are racialized, demonized and Nazified, and presented as "our" potential exterminators. The third group comprises non-European (Mizrahi and Ethiopian) Jews, portrayed as backward people who lack history or culture, requiring constant acculturation by "Western" Israel. Thus, a rhetoric of (...) victimhood and power evolves, and a nationalistic interpretation of the "never again" imperative is inculcated, justifying the Occupation and oppression of Palestinians and the discrimination of non-European Jews. Advocating a multidirectional memory, the book proposes an alternative Hebrew-Arabic, multi-voiced and poly-centered curriculum that would relate the untold accounts of the people whom the pedagogic version of history seeks exclude. Instead of traumatizing and urging vengeance, it will encourage discussion and celebrate diversity and hybridity. (shrink)

In Educations in Ethnic Violence, Matthew Lange explores the effects education has on ethnic violence. Lange contradicts the widely held belief that education promotes peace and tolerance. Rather, Lange finds that education commonly contributes to aggression, especially in environments with ethnic divisions, limited resources and ineffective political institutions. He describes four ways in which organized learning spurs ethnic conflicts. Socialization in school shapes students' identities and the norms governing intercommunal relations. Education can also increase students' frustration (...) and aggression when their expectations are not met. Sometimes, the competitive atmosphere gives students an incentive to participate in violence. Finally, education provides students with superior abilities to mobilize violent ethnic movements. Lange employs a cross-national statistical analysis with case studies of Sri Lanka, Cyprus, the Palestinian territories, India, sub-Saharan Africa, Canada and Germany. (shrink)

This chapter examines the rabbinic Judaism from the Palestinian context. It suggests that it is not possible to provide any unambiguous framework which will offer clues to the context, or contexts, in which the extraordinary corpus of rabbinic works was composed. It concludes that the composition of the rabbinic literature could only take place in a society marked by a complex interplay of beliefs, ethnic identities and languages and identifies the most common points of reference in Jewish religious (...) writing. (shrink)

The trend to centralization of the Mizrahi narrative has become an integral part of the nationalistic, ethnic, religious, and ideological-political dimensions of the emerging, complex Israeli identity. This trend includes several forms of opposition: strong opposition to "melting pot" policies and their ideological leaders; opposition to the view that ethnicity is a dimension of the tension and schisms that threaten Israeli society; and, direct repulsion of attempts to silence and to dismiss Mizrahim and so marginalize them hegemonically. The (...) Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow [The Keshet], the most prominent proponent and representative of this trend, was established in the 1990s with the intention of being a leading civic and political body in Israeli society. While it was the Mizrahi worldview that led to selection of the organization's name and aims, their vision was to be involved in social struggle on behalf of other groups in Israeli society. Since it was established, The Keshet has aimed to function as an assertive, long-term alternative coalition exerting influence, power, and pressure on the Israeli narrative network. And, indeed, the organization has succeeded in disrupting Israeli discourse, principally, by challenging the ideological foundations of the Zionist meta-narrative. Nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century and nearly a decade since it was established, The Keshet not only represents the most current wave of Mizrahi discourse, it has changed it to such a great degree that it is impossible to ignore its influence. Further, this alternative narrative may have significant potential to advance the internal Jewish discourse so fundamental at this time given the changing Israeli situation and regional conditions. And, while it is possible to view The Keshet and this new narrative as a continuation of the Mizrahi struggle, as a narrative The Keshet's agenda represents a post-colonial perspective and multi-cultural alternative to Zionism as a social vehicle. Amidst all of this, The Keshet continues to offer concrete proposals to change the Jewish character of the state as well as its internal and external relations. One of the primary goals of this study was to examine the rise of the Mizrahi narrative over the last two decades and the new Mizrahi discourse in Israeli society. More specifically, the study sought to attain an in-depth understanding of the central narrative created and represented by The Keshet. An additional goal was to investigate the influence of The Keshet's activity and the narrative it constructed in regard to other narratives. In particular, the study focused on The Keshet's opposition to the central Zionist narrative that infuses civic, political, and academic frameworks in Israel. Accordingly, the primary research questions investigated in the study sought to determine: What has been the influence of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow on the Mizrahi narrative in Israel? And, what are implications of such influence for the central Zionist narrative? Methodologically, the study was based on narrative and comparative analyses of texts from different periods of the older and newer Mizrahi narratives. The corpus included two types of texts: First, academic texts and opinion pieces, both philosophical and programmatic in nature, published in magazines, journals, books, as well as position papers; second, all of the texts published by prominent and influential figures who charted the path of The Keshet or led it organizationally and/or intellectually over the last twenty years (e. g., Yehudah Shenhav, Yossi Yona, Moshe Krief among others). All texts were examined by means of philosophical, historical and critical hermeneutic tools. This analysis revealed different levels of Mizrahi and civic discourse in Israel as well as among The Keshet's founders and leading ideologues. The study was based on a three stage process model, developed for purposes of this study, for investigation and analysis of the new Mizrahi narrative as well as other oppositional narratives, in particular opposition to the hegemonic meta-narrative. The stages are: issuing the challenge, dissolution and, liberation; that is, liberation is the measure of the ultimate success of the struggle for narrative change. Such change is not based on success in the field, but rather on a radical, fundamental reversal of thought, discourse patterns, stylistic structures, as well as forms of questioning - in this case of taken-for-granted racist mechanisms. However, the principal change is in achieving a deep, inner de-legitimization of the signifiers, categories, and reproductions of all manner of mockery that are based on immoral colonialist processes that are reinforced by regimes of fear and intimidation whose self-destruction began upon their very creation. This three stage model charts the course of the oppositional Mizrahi narrative from: accounting for the past (passing judgment on the so-called historic colonialist Zionism) to writing a new (pure Mizrahi) history and creation of a Mizrahi-Arab identity separate from the Ashkenazic, identified as Zionist. Contemporary post-colonialist discourse is integral in these stages. Such a perspective has been transformed by transitions from - binarism to hybridity, Orientalism to Occidentalism, the politics of "liberation" to "constructive" politics, from the history of consciousness to the history of change, as well as from nationalist to post-nationalist questions. Fundamentally, according to this approach, political and other struggles for the emerging narrative of Mizrahi (or Arab) history seek to centralize it in society and weave it amidst the models of multiculturalism. Undertaken in parallel, the central characteristics of all these stages are borrowed from countries in which the need for national reconciliation led to renunciation of apartheid and racist policies and historical judgment of the hegemony supported by racist leaders. In addition, these three moves were undertaken in Keshet and its ideologues by means of substantive symbolic violence directed at the hegemonic Ashkenazic discourse, which included creation of hatred of it, use of stereotypes the opposite of oppressive discourse, and adoption of an arrogant point of view toward it. This stands in stark contrast to the claims of the self-proclaimed new Mizrahi stance of a discourse established on purely ethical grounds that sought to cleanse itself of these very same oppressive elements. The model developed for and demonstrated in this study allows for analysis of oppositional narratives in which the libratory stage evolves into a form of entrapment, as appears to be occurring to the new Mizrahi discourse. This conclusion is based on the observations shared by many Keshet proponents including leading intellectuals who worked on the manifestos that were the subject of criticism from the Zionist camp. The study identified and defined the following six interwoven strata, which for purposes of explication are each discussed in a separate chapter: The first chapter presents a general theoretical discussion of the issue of the narrative and the inter-narrative struggle that has become central and applicable in various ways in the latest generation (e. g., anthropologically, hermeneutically, and philosophically). The analysis surveys different discussions in the inter-narrative struggle and locates them in the contexts, relations, and meanings derived from, representing, and indeed reproducing the narrative of national identity. The second chapter includes a historical survey of the older Mizrahi struggle that existed prior to the ascendance of the new Mizrahi narrative. Initially, Mizrahi discourse focused on expressing the ethnic protest that grew in years to follow. These feelings of discrimination and social distancing of the immigrants from Islamic countries gave birth to expressions of protest, the most prominent of which were Wadi Salib and the Black Panther Movement's various activities. The research literature contains many explanations for the exacerbation of the ethnic problem and creation of a situation that could not be ignored. The consensus academic view reached at the end of the 1970s identified a number of primary factors for this situation: the existence and extensive numbers of different ethnic groups; the relative or absolute segregation of frameworks within which members of these ethnic groups lived and acted; and the significant overlap between socio-economic status and feelings of discrimination retained by members of the Mizrahi group due years of neglect by the Ashkenazic establishment, the strengthening of Mizrahi social, cultural, and political power, as well as the emergence of a Mizrahi elite that identified with Mizrahi problems. The severe consequences of feelings of discrimination were expressed in a long series of events, such as: rioting by residents of the Rehovot Sharayim neighborhood in 1956; events of Wadi Salib in Haifa in 1959; and a chain of activities involving the Black Panthers in the 1970s. Protest was also an aspect of the "tent movement" in the 1970s and 1980s. Political activities were advanced by the Tami Movement that competed in the election for the 10th Knesset in 1981 and the Shas Movement that has continued to garner political power since being found in 1984. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized as the era of radical consciousness of Mizrahi discourse as well as by the rise to power, in consecutive order, of the political parties – Tami, Shas, and the Mizrahim HaHadashim [the New Mizrahi]. The latter party laid the foundations of the new radical Mizrahi discourse from which emerged such cultural activities as: Iton Aher [A Different Newspaper]; Bimat Kivon Aher [Another Direction Forum]; Efir'yon journal; the Halah Organization for Education in Neighborhoods, Development Towns, and Villages; Kedma; the newspaper – Patish [Hammer]; and, eventually the establishment of Keshet. The third chapter presents an examination of the materialization of the inter-narrative struggle in the case of Israel, with a specific focus on The Keshet and the new Mizrahi narrative advanced by it and intellectuals. The Keshet ideology is examined in the context of its grounding in post-colonial thought, especially that of Edward Said; the directions proposed by Ella Shohat and her followers; the central thinkers of the narrative in Israel in the last decade; and the harsh critique leveled at the Ashkenazic-Zionist narrative. The practical steps proposed for implementation within the multicultural model are also examined. Here the effort to reduce the centrality of Zionism while revealing its oppressive mechanisms was undertaken in parallel with use of these mechanisms in order to create a Mizrahi space with broad margins inclusive of alternative forms of Israeli identity in the Middle East and in conjunction with Arabs within and beyond Israel. Mizrahi traditionalism is examined in the fourth chapter in two particular respects. First, the criticism of the new Mizrahi narrative leveled by the renewed view and, second, the implications of the alternative in terms of creating a Mizrahi space that does not oppose Zionism. Rather, in opposing the post-colonialist perspective, this renewed traditionalist perspective criticizes as well as values Zionism. This space seeks to be both Jewish and Mizrahi. It does not detach itself from nationalist Zionism but rather views itself as a continuation of this tradition and, accordingly, is an effort to develop a next stage in its development. For example, an essential dimension of the traditionalist perspective, "commitment," is considered in this stage to be a fertile basis for dialogue with the past and as an anchor for contemporary interpretation of Mizrahi and other Jews' identities in Israel. The fifth and sixth chapters deal with all of the vectors of criticism directed at the new Mizrahi narrative, including its ideological foundations, philosophical stance, as well as intellectual and practical basis in the Israeli sphere in the face of Palestinian nationalism. These vectors of criticism from within and beyond The Keshet deal with issues, such as, the meaning of the movement's activities and the narrative that it offers regarding questions of Israeli identity, Israeli collective memory, and Mizrahi self-perception. At the same time, it must confront the capitalist neo-liberal narrative in a global world and thrive in a context in which it must make itself manifest amidst oppositional narratives. The final chapter presents a comprehensive, critical analysis of the new Mizrahi narrative. It does so by means of a theoretical model that examines it as an oppositional narrative – one that seeks to challenge the hegemonic meta-narrative, to dissolve the boundaries of the narrative discourse, and to propose liberation and redemption that may led to entrapment amidst a changing, a-dichotomous realities (e. g., global economic development in the face of Zionist nationalisms that display ideological strength as well as development of the sense of being an Israeli that maintains its vitality and continuity while being constituted by sectors that challenge being a Mizrahi, such as co-ethnic subjects. The Keshet's influence is dramatic and extends in a number of central directions. Its political activity and non-entry into the domains of the Israeli parliament granted the movement significant power in civic discourse and contributed to changing the persona of the Mizrahi discourse; for example, from political-party struggles over budgets and obtaining shares of the regime to changing the face of Israeli society and the centrality of the Mizrahi narrative. This change included deconstructing the Ashkenazic narrative and constructing comprehensive Ashkenazic-Zionist guilt, as evident in the Ehud Barak's request for collective forgiveness. This was accomplished through the participation of leading members of Keshet who appeared in prominent intellectual forums and engaged in lively discourse - principally in academic, social, and media domains. Such participation gave new meaning to various aspects of Israeli society while establishing different models of multiculturalism. The rise of the new Mizrahi narrative is a significant marker in the inter-narrative struggle as it represents a desire for separate or hybrid identities. And, the deep probing of the narrative constructed by leaders of The Keshet and those who identify with the movement produced a number of clear ways to distinguish it from the old Mizrahi struggle, whose history was portrayed through social protests, in a manner similar to linear vectors marked with wars and elections. The old Mizrahi struggle selected the traditional tactical struggle identified usually with social and political movements that seek to change political, social, and economic reality - from the bottom up. Their primary demand was to change decisions as well as the division of social goods and resources. Hence, this older period of struggle was not aimed at opposing the ideological foundations of the hegemonic narrative nor did it seek to undermine in a radical manner the unique nature of the state of Israel as a revolutionary solution for the problems of the Jews according to the Zionist approach, as a national home for the Jewish people, and recognition of the right to an preferred and meta-definition of Jewish nationalism. In contrast, the top down struggle advanced by the new narrative is part of an ideological movement led by the educated that is assertive and ground in post-colonialist theory. Accordingly, it was critical of the techniques and mechanisms of oppression as well as sought to attack the Zionist ideological foundations and to reveal its racist operations and the regimes that have preserved it so efficiently for many years. The uniqueness of this narrative is the intellectual offensive that continues to be advanced and, in parallel, development of the discourse struggle in Israel concerning the justification for Zionism and the concrete political proposal that Jews reject the taken-for-granted status of it as an ideology. This new narrative recognizes the historic difficulties of subversion as an emancipatory and, principally, moral effort. In addition, the new Mizrahi narrative shares the foundations and narrative of Palestinian victimization. In its radical version, the new Mizrahi narrative seeks to connect to the Palestinian narrative in order to create a new space here. According to this version, this action will take place gradually. The first stage will be characterized by opposition to Western European, Ashkenazic Zionism. The Eurocentric Zionism will surrender in the second stage, to be followed in the last stage by creation of a coalition of Jews and Arabs that will be establish through concrete actualization of the refugee status and victimization that is shared by both Palestinians and Mizrahim (whether as Mizrahim or Jewish-Arab). Not a speculative academic exercise, the goal sought by this narrative is delineate and to achieve a multicultural model in which equality, liberty, and social justice will overcome the nationalism and colonialism of either side; that is it will be neither Zionist nor Jewish. Thus, this approach stresses what is shared (e.g., acceptance of the Arab space and not a rejection of it; the legitimacy of the Arab language and culture). This is part of detachment from and historic judgment of the colonialist Zionist enterprise. This possibility includes moral elements that remove the evil and harm caused by Zionism for many years as well as inner cleansing – primarily among Ashkenazim – of attitudes towards Jews and non-Jews. Though, in this regard, it should be noted that, to date, the new narrative has not made similar claims that Palestinians undergo a similar process. The assumption seems to be that this should be tested, that the coalition proposed is a possibility that will be recognized by the Palestinians, and that they are prepared to undergo a similar, shared moral process that involves negating the state of Israel as a Jewish, Western state, a state of the Jewish people, and not only for those who live within it. These Mizrahi thinkers conducted a significant move through deconstruction and substitution of the Eurocentric narrative with a multi-cultural proposal that is optimistic and even attractively naïve. Today, they acknowledge that they did not take into account Palestinian nationalist violence directed to citizens, the traditionalist alternative, and widespread opposition within the Mizrahi community toward what is perceived to be Mizrahi seclusion. They also did not take into account the harsh criticism rendered by young and educated Mizrahim who claim that they were born into a complex, multi-dimensional, multi-layered identity that includes internalization of the language of the West and rules of the game of this complex identity. And, though they are critical of some of its values, this makes it difficult to mount internal emotional opposition to the West and to the globalization contained within this world. Hence, this more familiar world is preferred over the values of the Mizrahi-Arab alternative, particularly in regard to problems in the domains of democratic citizenship, stance taken toward women, and freedom of speech. Further, educated Mizrachim reject the post-colonialist perspective and are stridently critical of its dichotomization. They claim that such a division is irrelevant in a world in which older ideologies have collapsed and new spheres – such as cyberspace and others – are open to them in which they can present themselves with an Israeli identity that is not categorized as necessarily Mizrahi. (shrink)

Preface The conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has endured for a century. It centers on control of territory and, as common in such disputes, is characterized by conquest, destruction, and revenge, with all the animosity and sorrow that these actions bring. Because the land in question is terra sancta to three major religions, the conflict evokes powerful passions involving identity, honor, and the propriety of cultural claims. That its disputants employ sophisticated arguments and armaments, that (...) they are willing to combat not only each other but rival voices within their own ranks, and that decades of international diplomacy have failed to produce a satisfactory solution, render it "one of the most difficult political problems of our time, perhaps the most difficult of them all". Marked by a series of surprising achievements, deceptions and atrocities in which each side has underestimated the tenacity and resourcefulness of the other, it guarantees fascinating study. (shrink)

In the modern Middle East, the public institutions associated with the internationally recognized states of the region are rarely viewed as trustworthy or reliable. Born in the demise of the Ottoman Empire, midwifed by European imperial powers who paid lip service to the development of the inhabitants, and nurtured in the cold war by superpowers largely indifferent to the well-being of the peoples of the region, the existing states came to be associated with expectations of welfare provision and structures of (...) accountability that privileged external actors over local interests. In the absence of public institutions that responded to and represented local interests, people organized around those still vibrant alternative forms of community that existed – the exchange networks of informal economies or the kinship systems of extended families and the ethnic and religious communities of language, sect and confession – and sometimes they reorganized and reinterpreted these identities to supplement and ultimately supplant the failing states in which they found themselves. (shrink)

The framework of the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict has evolved over the last half century through an instrumentalization of violence by the parties concerned. Two alternating "structures of violence" have emerged to define this instrumentality: the one Israeli, the other Palestinian. I call these structures of violence "alternating" rather than merely "reciprocating" because the one not only feeds off the other and actually practices on the other that which is merely fancied and projected as the other's intention but also (...) because they have inverse periodicities: The "Great Revolt" of 1936-1939 introduced the principle of "armed struggle" into the practice and lore of a fractured and often factional antiBritish and anti-Zionist insurgency. It was effectively countered by British might coupled with an essentially defensive Jewish posture of consensus and "restraint". By contrast the current Palestinian "Uprising" has the Arab side preaching restraint if not always nonviolence, through a pluralistic consensus on the immediate national ends such practice aims to achieve. Against this is an avowed Israeli policy of "the iron fist" that for the first time since independence has broken the general Zionist consensus with regard not only to the utility and morality of violent means but also to national goals. (shrink)

Much of John Rawls' later work is concerned with the appli cation of his philosophical conceptions to the reality of liberal-democratic polities. I suggest that given the modern democratic reality of ethno national pluralism, Rawls' political conception of justice is insufficient to ensure democratic stability. Democratic states manage to contain ethnic pluralism while remaining compatible with liberal principles by promoting a corporate national identity. The key, I argue, lies in the particular member ship criteria devised and implemented by (...) the state. Hence, the promotion of a corporate national identity negates state neutrality, but not necessarily political liberalism. Key Words: Israel • Israeli Arabs • national identity • pluralism • Rawls. (shrink)

This study investigates post-revolution discursive identity formation in Tunisia. It uses insights from the discourse-historical approach to analyze five speeches given by the Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed since his election in 2019. Focusing on the referential and argumentative strategies employed in these speeches, the analysis reveals that the President constantly appeals to a unique Tunisian identity that reconciles Tunisia’s position between the East and the West and between Arabness, Africanism, Islam and Mediterranean cosmopolitism. The analysis indicates that in (...) the context of an unstable post-revolution environment in Tunisia and in the MENA region as a whole, Kaïs Saïed tends to invoke the alleged importance of collective identity, be it on the basis of religion, history, language or culture, or by stressing the importance of affiliation with an ethnic group, a nation or an ummah. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine how Muslim Arab–Israeli teachers conceptualize the Israeli–Arab conflict with their students. The findings show that Arab schools are in a constant state of tension between opposing poles of identity and belonging. The teachers emphasize their students’ alienation from the Israeli establishment and their lack of identification with the Jewish state, while expressing deep identification with the Palestinian people. They are able to cope with this split by seeking contents and coping (...) mechanisms of a universal nature that are not in dispute, and which enable students to repress the dissonance in which they live. (shrink)

All efforts undertaken so far to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians have failed to seriously address the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. This failure stemmed from a conviction that the question of historical justice in general had to be avoided. Since justice is a subjective construct, it was argued, allowing it to become a subject of negotiation would only perpetuate the conflict. However, the experience of these peace efforts has shown that without solving the problem (...) of the Palestinian refugees an agreement cannot be reached. And the problem cannot possibly be solved without addressing the key Palestinian demand on this issue — the right of return. For both sides, the right of return, more than any other issue, touches on the essence of their history since the beginning of the conflict between them, and on their future. The national narrative of each side thus centers on its version of the history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in the course of which the Palestinian refugee problem was created. And each side maintains the fundamental belief that its future national existence hinges on whether, and how, the issue of the right of return is resolved. For the Palestinians, the right of return is an inalienable right that defines their national identity and their struggle for liberation. For Israeli Jews, the right of return is perceived as an existential threat to the Jewish character of their society, if not to its very existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that within each of the two societies a national consensus has been built around this issue and that the position of each society seems to stand in complete opposition to that of the other. However, we argue that a morally and politically sound basis could and should be established for a workable solution and that such a basis can be provided by the notion of "transitional justice." Transitional justice stresses two major steps as necessary for reconciliation between parties involved in an historic conflict: recognition and restitution. Recognition entails revealing the historical truth about the injustices committed and according their victims dignity and respect as rights-bearing human beings. Restitution is meant to alleviate some of the material deprivation suffered by the victims and is also a form of recognition. In the Israeli-Palestinian case, recognition by Israel of the right of return would entail its assumption of responsibility for the uprooting of the majority of Palestinian society in 1948. This would satisfy a demand that has become a fundamental element in Palestinian national identity. Recognition would then enable the two parties to enter negotiations over restitution, in particular the implementation of the right of return. In these negotiations, as many Palestinian political leaders have indicated, the concerns of Israeli Jews with their national identity would be taken into account. Only if the fundamental concerns of the two parties, which center on the issue of the right of return, are met can the road towards reconciliation between them be opened. (shrink)

This essay explores the current and historical meaning of forgiveness in Arab and Islamic cultural and religious contexts. It also hopes to encourage further empirical research on this understudied topic in both religious and peacebuilding studies. In addition to the perceived meaning of forgiveness in an Arab Islamic context, this essay examines the links between forgiveness and reconciliation. Relying on religious sources including the Qur'an and Hadith, as well as certain events in Islamic history, the essay identifies various ways to (...) conceptualize and explain the meaning of forgiveness. This theoretical and conceptual segment is followed by a section which explores current perceptions of forgiveness among Arab Muslim teachers in five different communities. The empirical data for this analysis is based on a larger comparative regional study that has been completed through surveys and structured interviews with educators from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel. Our study concluded that the teachers' perceptions of forgiveness were mainly derived from religious sources and identities and that Islamic religious discourse provided a solid foundation for framing the meaning of forgiveness. (shrink)

This article presents and analyzes two examples of peace education practices in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Zochrot is an organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel. The School for Peace is a Jewish-Arab organization that conducts encounter activities with the goal of encouraging participants to become active in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Both practices are grounded in critical pedagogy and postcolonial literature, and their aim is to change existing power (...) structures. Current political realities, however, which include oppression, occupation, and injustice, exacerbate the challenge of this goal. We identify three challenges that demand attention if these practices are to realize their transformative potential: essentialism, responsibility of the victim, and singular utopia. Finally, we highlight the importance of hybrid identity as an educational approach that is a promising path for realizing the transformative potential of critical PE. (shrink)

For over last 70 years, the concept of "return" attained primary focus for the national narrative of Palestinian struggle against devastating conditions, categorized as eviction from ancestral homeland, diffusion in all aspects and reconstitution of national unity. However, the very idea create fears among Israelis regarding their authority of whole Zionist enterprise, as well as demographic stability of Arab-Jewish ventures, with regards to the return of large number of Palestinians to their own places or any other part in Palestine. (...) Discrimination in opposition to Palestinians is no longer perpetrated fully by Israeli state, but common to its society, as well. Our article is an answer to the complicated question: Can refugees along with other displaced victims ever claim their right in entering Israel and Palestine, since this State includes Gaza and West Bank territories? Various articles have made an attempt to clarify the matter through some internal laws and have also interpreted the rights mentioned in ‘International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights’, particularly while clarifying the idea evolved from the typical term: 'his own country’. The article focuses on the viable first point, specifically on the claim as a right of the Diasporas return to the formerly called ‘Palestine’. Various resources are utilised for the purpose of the research. This includes books, scholarly researched articles and newspapers etc. The study is analytical in nature and based on qualitative research method. Most of the literature used for the article is Secondary. The conclusion drawn in precise manner is that the intentions are blended in repeated violations of human rights, along with ethnic and religious refining and various innumerable deficiencies, and try to become regularly involved in sensitive issues. This turned out to be disheartening for the people living there as no efforts are made for a truthful resolution. (shrink)

Social researchers have extensively addressed the immigration of one million Russian speakers to Israel/palestine over the past twenty-five years. However, the immigrants’ incorporation into the Israeli occupation regime and the ongoing colonisation of Palestine have rarely been questioned as such. In the interviews informing this article, Russian-speaking immigrant women living in Arab-Palestinian communities discuss their complex relations with Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli and Russian-Israeli communities. Sharing a background with Russian-speaking Jewish Israelis on the one hand, and marital kinship ties to (...) Palestinians on the other, these women encounter multiple boundaries of territory and identity in their everyday lives. Drawing on feminist border thinking, I explore these encounters as a navigation through geopolitical and epistemic borderlands in a dense colonial reality. I am particularly interested in the potential of such an exploration to question essentialism and destabilise binary ethno-national categories of identity, such as Arab/jew and Israeli/palestinian, that dominate not only hegemonic but also emancipatory discourses. These binary divisions are not a straightforward outcome of political regimes but rather the result of ongoing border-making processes, which are vulnerable to disorder and disruption. This perspective aims to enrich understandings of the roles that gendered ethno-national identities play in sustaining the colonial relations of power in Israel/palestine. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPart of a comprehensive study to analyse British broadsheets’ coverage of the First Gaza War, this paper examines the moral arguments presented in editorials. Doing so, it showcases a non-dualist, relational inquiry of the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of focusing on what is empirically ‘true’, morally ‘right’, and ethnically ‘Israeli/jewish’ or ‘Palestinian/arab’ as extra-discursive categories, it approaches them as discursive constructions and asks what relations, what forms of lives the editorials cultivate in representing them. The analysis (...) demonstrates that whilst newspapers overwhelmingly imagine isolated and ahistorical essences to clash in Palestine-Israel, they do not exclusively do so. Traces of a discourse of relations, where ‘I’ is partly constituted by the ‘Other’ can also be found in the editorials. It is with the vicissitudes of such relational accounts that the article concludes. (shrink)

The emergence of multicultural theory and of claims of recognition by cultural, ethnic, and national minorities has brought to the forefront previously neglected aspects of the right to equality. However, when judged on their own, claims for recognition stand the risk of failing to fully capture, and even distorting, the meaning of equality. I suggest that in order to avoid this risk, multicultural claims need to be contextualized. Employing Nancy Fraser’s framework of two dimensions of justice—recognition and redistribution—and adding (...) a third dimension—political participation, I suggest a framework for a contextualized assessment of multicultural claims that allows us to properly and fully assess their validity. I then go on to employ this framework on the claims of Israel’s two most significant cultural minorities—the Palestinian Arabs and the Ultra Orthodox Jews. I show how the use of the suggested framework helps to expose the considerable differences between these two cultural minorities, and consequently the notable difference in the merits of their claims, a difference that would have otherwise gone undetected. (shrink)

Terrorism, as a form of politically motivated violence, is as ancient as organized warfare itself, emerging as soon as one society, pitted against another in the quest for land, resources, or domination, was moved by a desire for vengeance or found advantages in military operations against noncombatants or other ‘soft’ targets. It is sanctioned and glorified in holy scriptures and has been part of the genesis of states and the expansion of empires from the inception of recorded history. The United (...) States itself emerged through the systematic ethnic cleansing of native Americans, a nearly 300-year campaign that featured the destruction of homes and crops, the theft of land, forced expulsions, massacres, and tears.1 While terrorist violence has been employed by both sides in the conflict over Palestine for over 80 years, the prevalence of the rhetoric of ‘terror’ to describe Arab violence against Israeli and Western targets is a more recent phenomenon. For more than three decades, this rhetoric has fostered the popular perception that Arab terrorism is the central problem in the Middle East crisis, and that once solved, progress can be made on other issues. Nothing could be more illusory. The Western obsession with Arab terrorism not only overlooks the fact that terrorist activity between Arabs and Jews has been reciprocal, but, more generally, that attempts to remove an effect without touching its causes are utterly futile. Terrorism between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is the product of deep divisions, entrenched strategies, and fundamental grievances and will not disappear so long as both sides cling to their present political ambitions and convictions. No informed discussion of its normative status can ignore its historical and political context. At.. (shrink)

During this period, when disciples were growing in number, a grievance arose on the part of those who spoke Greek, against those who spoke the language of the Jews; they complained that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution. When Americans think of ethnic conflict, conflict between blacks and whites comes to mind most immediately. Yet ethnic conflict is pervasive around the world. Azerbijanis and Turks in the Soviet Union; Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; (...) class='Hi'>Arabs and Jews in the Middle East; Maoris and English settlers in New Zealand; Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan; French and English speakers in Quebec; Africans, Afrikaaners, and mixed-race people in South Africa, in addition to the tribal warfare among the Africans themselves: these are just a few of the more obvious conflicts currently in the news. We observe an even more dizzying array of ethnic conflicts if we look back just a few years. Japanese and Koreans; Mongols and Chinese; Serbs and Croats; Christians and Buddhists in Viet Nam: these ancient antagonisms are not immediately in the news, but they could erupt at any time. And the history of the early Christian Church recounted in the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that suspicion among ethnic groups is not a modern phenomenon; rather, it is ancient. The present paper seeks to address the problem of ethnic conflict in modern western democracies. How can our tools and traditions of participatory governments, relatively free markets, and the common law contribute to some resolution of the ancient problems that we find within our midst? In particular, I want to focus here on the question of ethnic integration. (shrink)

From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. (...) This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen. (shrink)

Social identity is a factor that is associated with well-being and community participation. Some studies have shown that ethnic identity goes along with empowerment, and that interaction between the two leads to greater indices of well-being and community participation. However, other works suggest a contextual circumstance (i.e., perceiving one’s own group as a minority and/or being discriminated) may condition the nature of these relations. By means of a cross-sectional study, we analyzed the relations of social identification (or (...) identity fusion) and collective psychological empowerment with personal well-being, social well-being and community participation in a sample of Basques. A total of 748 Basques participated (63.1% women; ageM= 39.28;SD= 12.13). Individuals who were highly identified or fused with Basque speakers and who were highly empowered showed higher indices of well-being (both personal and social) and of community participation than non-fused individuals with low empowerment. The results also suggest that social identification (or identity fusion) offsets the negative effects of perceiving the group as a linguistic minority. Collective psychological empowerment proved to be an especially relevant factor that needs to continue to be explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Maimonides and the Rise and Fall of the Sabians:Explaining Mosaic Laws and the Limits of Scholarship Jonathan Elukin The Koran mentions the Sabi'un three times (II 6-2, V 69, XXII 17). "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabi'un—whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is right—shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing (...) to fear or to regret." This language is repeated in the second citation. The third appearance is slightly different: "As for true believers, the Jews, the Sabi'un, the Christians, the Magians, and the pagans, Allah will judge them on the Day of Resurrection. He bears witness to all things." 1 Early Islamic commentators often disagreed on the identity of the Sabi'un, and the confusion continued throughout the medieval Islamic period. 2 The term Sabi'un was applied by some early Koranic commentators to the survivors of an ancient Jewish-Christian sect, the Elchasites in southern Iraq. 3 One minority group of ethnic Arab "pagans" with a hellenized elite in Harran, in Arabia, also took the Koranic name Sabian in the third/ninth century to claim the status of a "people of the book" and therefore avoid persecution. It is this group that some later Muslims identified as Sabi'. 4 The scholarly consensus now suggests that [End Page 619] the term Sabian refers to some kind of Gnostic identity that can encompass "the disciples of Judeo-Christian baptizing sects... and, on the other, Harranian astrolators, the last representatives of decadent Greco-Roman paganism." 5The mysterious Sabians would play a key role in attempts by early modern European scholars to understand the origins of the Mosaic legislation. It was through Maimonides, the great twelfth-century Jewish scholar, that the Sabians were transmitted to Christian scholars. By the seventeenth century, the Sabians of Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed had become a fixture in how scholars understood or at least debated the history of the origins of Mosaic law. Increasingly perceived as a diffuse paganism rather than a specific ethnic identity or subsumed by the more tangible reality of Egypt, Sabianism drifted to the margins of scholarship by the end of the Enlightenment. During the nineteenth century the Sabians became superfluous to scholarly efforts to understand the origins of Israelite monotheism. This study is an attempt to understand the growth of the enthusiasm for the Sabians by early modern scholars and then its precipitous decline. In a large degree it was the nature of the evidence itself regarding the Sabians that shaped and ultimately undermined the survival of the Sabians in European thinking. Still, both Christian and Jewish scholars well into the twentieth century lived with the ghosts of the Sabians as they sought to explain otherwise mysterious Mosaic commandments.In the Guide Maimonides argued that the sacrificial system legislated by Moses was an example of God's mercy. It would have been impossible for the Israelites to abandon suddenly the style of idolatrous worship learned in Egypt, and so Moses crafted the sacrificial system gradually to replace false gods with the true God. Maimonides still needed to explain the particular details and reasons for the sacrifices and the other ritual laws. 6 To that end he claimed to have read various texts, particularly the so-called Nabataen Agriculture, which purported to describe Abraham's education among and flight from the Sabians as well as a summary of the practices of the Sabians. 7 (The Sabians had made one brief appearance before Maimonides's discussion in the Guide; the tenth-century Karaite Jew, Qirqisani, declared in his Kitab al anwar, "the modern Christian philosophers assert that the laws of the Torah were given to the Children of Israel only because of God's wrath; and that they [Israel] have chosen these laws for themselves only on account of their resemblance to the laws of the Sabians, which was due to the fact that they became... (shrink)

The work analyzes the results of a pilot socio-cultural study of the Tuvan diaspora of the city of Abakan, conducted by researchers of the N.F. Katanov Khakass State University. The results of the study describe the social structure of the analyzed ethnic group, the level of interaction between members, the reasons for moving to another national region, as well as the activity of socio-cultural attitudes. In addition, atten­tion is focused on the level of expression of the ethnic (...) class='Hi'>identity of representatives of the Tuvan diaspora, which, as a result of the study, is characterized as increased. The author also comes to the conclusion that the ethnic identity of the analyzed group passes into the category of intersubjectivity and is not subjective. (shrink)

In recent times, African states have experienced multiple challenges. The most disturbing one is the inability to evolve a sustainable culture of dialogue that is suitable for the mitigation of ethnic conflicts in contemporary Africa. It is this failure that has generated many other problems in other spheres. These problems, in concert, have made the socio-political space largely that of frustration, despair and disappointment. This accounts for the social design of unhealthy alliances and the basis for the affirmation of (...) parochial primordial frivolities at the detriment of a trans-national identity. But why have the affirmation of these primordial alliances and its attendant conflicts remain daunting, intricate and resilient, in spite of the several attempts by scholars to mitigate it? This paper argues that extant discourse of the above concern fails because it ignores the value of the conditions for the practical realisation of agreement in situations of conflict. The attempt here is to explore indigenous mediation strategies especially from the traditional Igbo speaking people in South-Eastern Nigeria in arriving at trans-national identity in Africa, which will be inclusive other than the divisive structure that has exclusive character in extant discourse. This paper, therefore, will employ the analytic-descriptive method to interrogate the above in a manner many scholars are wont to ignore. Hence, it is expected that this paper will initiate a perspective that will challenge extant interpretation of the conditions of dialogue and consequently human solidarity in African States. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the city of Jerusalem, which not only lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but is inextricably shaped by its developments. Nominally unified under Israeli sovereignty, Jerusalem nevertheless remains starkly divided between an Israeli west and an occupied Palestinian east and is best understood as a frontier city characterized by long-simmering tensions and quotidian conflict. With its future tied to the future of the conflict, Jerusalem remains caught between two options: the almost (...) global preference for the city’s repartition in accordance with a ‘two-state solution’ and the Israeli desire to maintain the status quo. A closer look at contemporary Jerusalem, however, reveals the untenability of both options. In this essay, I seek to document how the reality of Israeli-Palestinian division sits alongside a dynamic of blurred separation in the city, which has forged an uneasy coexistence of sorts. Re-thinking the frontier as a site of both conflict and coexistence, I argue, is key to imagining future possibilities for the city that do not rest on the desire for ethnically-pure spaces, but are rather guided by a politics of co-presence that recognizes the impossibility of disentangling Arab and Jewish histories, memories and connections to the city. (shrink)

This handbook explores the link between ethnic identity and language from the perspectives of different social science disciplines and diverse geographical regions. This volume will serve as a complete resource on the subject and, because of its accessibility, will appeal to scholarly, college and lay audiences. "...a useful resource for readers who wish to gain an overview of some of the main issues of language and ethnicity in diverse regions and to understand the approach to these issues taken (...) by scholars in disciplines other than their own..."--Linguistics and Education. (shrink)

From the thought of mid-twentieth century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla, I develop an account of what I call ‘ethics of ethnic identity,’ which include: a) a set of norms of agency grounded in ethnic identity, or ethnic norms of agency—reasons for action and obligations that spring from a given ethnic identity, and b) a type of normativity governing these ethnic norms of agency. I argue that one of the theoretical advantages of this (...) account is that it fares well with respect to human flourishing, moral obligations, and freedom and autonomy. I also develop an account of ethics of ethnic identity from Christine Korsgaard’s account of the sources of normativity and use it as a sophisticated foil against which my elaborations of Portilla’s views can be fruitfully contrasted. (shrink)

The purpose of this interesting book is, in the words of the author, "to demonstrate that aristocratic Roman families attempted to construct ethnic identity . . . in order to advertise and celebrate themselves in Rome's political culture; to discover how these families advertised their ethnic identity; and to recover what messages they intended to convey to the Roman public via such identity advertisement. . . . [in other words, the book aims] to focus on (...) how the ethnic identity of the families of the ruling class interacted within the social and political culture of the Roman Republic". (shrink)

(1998). Region, Locality Characteristics, High School Tracking and Equality in Access to Educational Credentials: the case of Palestinian Arab communities in Israel[1] Educational Studies: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 233-240.

A limited number of studies attempted to account for regional and community‐level variables in exploring the mediating mechanisms conditioning the structure of educational opportunities. As a result, contextual dynamics of social stratification remain largely obscure. The aim of the present paper is to examine the relative effects of regional, locality and high school variables on access opportunities of Palestinian Arab high school pupils in Israel to educational credentials. The analysis is based on the aggregate data of 46 Arab localities. (...) Findings reveal that while high school tracking patterns are affected by high school variables at community level , access to educational credentials is determined by community‐level SES and the locality's geographic location . The implications of these findings for the broader study of issues related to equality in educational opportunities are discussed. (shrink)

Seamus Heaney's exploration of identity politics has long been a subject of debate among scholars. While some view him as a creator of his own ethnic identity, others critique him as a fabricator of myths and idealized origins. However, the truth of Heaney’s engagement with ethnic identity is far more nuanced. His journey, evolving from a focus on communal attachment to active alienation, and ultimately to the deconstruction of binary oppositions, marks a significant shift from (...) essentialism to pluralism. This transformation is deeply intertwined with Heaney's evolving aesthetic and philosophical reflections on key identity-related themes—such as place and displacement, nationalist claims and political martyrdom, center and emptiness, and border and transcendence. Through this process, Heaney engages in a continual negotiation of personal and collective anxieties, producing poetry that is marked by ongoing revision and renewal. His reflections on identity and their poetic revisions provide profound insights into the ethical dimensions of his work, which not only enhances our understanding of his intellectual development but also positions him within the broader context of Western intellectual traditions. In light of contemporary global conflicts, Heaney’s poetic engagement with themes of identity, place, border, and transcendence offers valuable perspectives on the relationship between self and other, as well as between in-group and out-group dynamics. This essay considers how Heaney's reflections can inform contemporary philosophical discussions on identity and the ethical implications of belonging in a divided world. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore a specific variant of multicultural education inIsrael that developed within the dominant Jewish cultural identity, that isthe claim of Jews from Islamic countries (Mizrahi Jews) for educational autonomy. This demand arose against the backdrop of an aggressive nationalist ideology – Zionism – that claimed torepresent all Jews, and yet was too ambivalent toward its non-European Jewish subjects. The Mizrahi Jews' dual identity, as Jews and as products of the Arab culture, conflated with the (...) state's problematic self-conception as both Jewish and democratic. This phenomenon, apparently, is evidenced by the two types of multicultural responses that developed within the Mizrahi sector: a critical multiculturalism with a social-democratic character on the one hand, and an autonomist multiculturalism with fundamentalist featureson the other. (shrink)

Research on the forced migration of Lithuanians to the east of the former Soviet Union in the 1940s and early 1950s throws up a wide range of issues. Methodologically, most of such studies are similar in terms of the sample chosen, which consists of the former prisoners of gulags and exiles who have returned to Lithuania, but it usually disregards those who stayed. Accordingly, the Lithuanian diasporas that emerged in the east after the forced migration, including in Kazakhstan, have not (...) been studied in detail. In this article, our aim is to answer the questions of how and in what private and public contexts processes of the ethnic identification of the Lithuanian diaspora in Kazakhstan are determined, how ethnic boundaries are drawn, and what cultural and social resources are used for this purpose. As the research revealed, the conceptualisation of ethnicity implied by the Kazakhstan state that has been adopted by our informants eliminates its cultural content, or at most reduces it to forms evident in festive culture, as well as the need and possibilities for its expression. As a result, ethnic identity is constructed on the basis of what is almost the sole criterion: Lithuanian descent in the form of ‘root’ or ‘blood’. For most of our informants, ‘roots’ are just a fact of origin, as shown in the practice of entering Lithuanian ethnicity in personal documents, an officially required practice which does not have and does not presuppose any enactment of ethno-cultural differences. Ethnicity, which is seen as ‘in-rooted’ but also as culture-less and as muted by a doubling of roots among ethnically mixed families of origin, enables a whole spectrum of manipulations of ethnic identity. One such manipulation is attempting to profit from the Lithuanian ethnic identity by turning it into a resource for acquiring benefits. The practice of profiteering from the Lithuanian ethnic identity, and thus its transformation into a resource for gaining benefits in the forms of Lithuanian citizenship and a hope of being repatriated to Lithuania, is probably the most frequent factor in becoming Lithuanian by remembering Lithuanian roots and activating the Lithuanian ethnic identity. (shrink)