This session explores the role of "class" as an analytical category in studying the recent ascent of nationalisms all over the globe. In an era of rising uncertainties and inequalities, class has been a consistent subtext of studies on neonationalism but their inter-relation has recently not received the explicit attention it deserves. What can anthropological analysis of class contribute to understanging and explaining neonationalist mobilizations/sentiments.
Long Abstract:
As neoliberal globalization gained center stage, the staunchest counter-movement has increasingly come in language of nationalism. From the xenophobic anti-immigrant parties of the West to Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East and Hindu Nationalism in India, from indigenous rule in South America to anti-Communism in Eastern Europe, "nation" has served as the central metaphor with which to bring new constituencies into politics and reignite old ones. While the language of "class" has been dormant in most of these instances of political community-building, it only features explicitly in Bolivarian pseudo-socialist attempts. Similarly, social scientists have only hinted at the importance of class for their analyses of neo-nationalism. Anthropologists possess a unique vantage point to understanding this new wave of political mobilization through fieldwork and inter- and intra-regional comparison. Consequently, the session aims to tackle the following range of questions: What is the role of "class" and class based experiences in studying and explaining the recent ascent of nationalisms all over the globe? What is its relation to the language of "nation" in political mobilization campaigns? How do the followers of these new nationalisms understand and frame their position vis-à-vis the rest of society? How has global capitalist restructuring influenced the local manifestations of nationalism - both in the sense of helping to ignite them, to frame them and to limit them? How can anthropology help us understand the growing appeal of nationalism as well as its limits as a counter-ideology in such disparate local contexts?
The paper explores the role played by 'class' in regional identity formation in Italy after the rise of centre-right political forces. It argues that the significance of 'class', as a cultural construct and subjective category, needs to be understood in relation to the value systems that give it meaning.
Paper long abstract:
Many anthropological works have highlighted the ways notions such as 'nation' and 'culture' can take on a political dimension in the formation of nationalist and regionalist movements as a reaction to global economic changes. Yet the role played by 'class' in national or regional identity formation still remains largely unexplored. Drawing upon ethnographic information collected in rural communities in the Trentino region of northern Italy in the last few years, the paper examines the ways class consciousness is complicated by the salience of a particularistic consciousness derived from the rise of new regionalist and centre-right political forces in Italy. It illustrates the ways 'class' is implied in local cultural practices which are bound up with the development of a regional and local identity even though it no longer takes on an explicit political dimension as a subjective category. More importantly, it shows that the newly-emerging political forces in the region achieved considerable appeal not because 'class' was subordinated to other forms of identity such as 'culture' and 'territory', but because at the local level 'class' was interpreted as a constituent part of cultural and territorial identity. In suggesting that in late modernity 'class' continues to shape people's cultural practices even when it does not take the form of 'class consciousness', the paper argues that its significance, as a cultural construct and subjective category, needs to be understood in relation to the social structures and value systems that give it meaning.
The paper analyzes and compares workers' experience of postsocialist change and its impact on their social and political attitudes in Hungary. It presents the results of an oral history project conducted in Rába MVG in North-western Hungary between 2002 and 2003. Rába belonged to the large enterprises of the socialist period and was considered to be a "model" factory. It survived systemic change but with considerably reduced personnel. Twenty-twenty life-history interviews were made with an equal number of people who were still employed there, and with those who had lost their jobs during re-structuring. The selection of the interview partners had two main criteria: 1) equal number of men and women; 2) the age of at least 40 so that the interview partners have work experience in the socialist regime. To find interview partners, I used the snowball method and newspaper advertisements.
The workers did not only find themselves in an increasingly difficult financial situation but they also had to learn to live with the constant fear of unemployment, and to accept the loss of prestige of working in a "model" factory. These "narratives of decline" did not, however, challenge capitalist order as such. The contradiction between experience and expectation was resolved with the argument that something went wrong with the implementation of capitalism leading to the search for "enemies" and the support of the ideology of the strong state.
Drawing on ethnographic research among Hungarian and Romanian football fans of C.F.R. football club in Cluj-Napoca the current paper explores the ways in which class and ethnicity together with local and national affiliations are mobilized in shaping the identities of these fans.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research among Hungarian and Romanian football fans of the C.F.R. football club in Cluj-Napoca the current paper explores the ways in which class and ethnicity together with local and national affiliations are mobilized in shaping the identities of these fans. In a context characterized by a high degree of groupness they all contribute to situationally define and redefine the principles of solidarity as well as those of exclusion. It is my contention that the C.F.R. fans, although divided along ethnic lines, manage to find more encompassing principles of identification which allow them to act together. Class operates in two distinct ways to facilitate this outcome: the Hungarians perceived higher social position, a consequence of their urban past, goes hand in hand with the largely middle-class actual position of the Romanian fans of the club. Sharing similar practices and dispositions, although for different reasons, these fans manage to shape and sustain similar identities which permit the maintenance of a high degree of groupness.
We try to unfold historically the link between space and class in the Central European city of Cluj, addressing the problem of how the nationalism as politics of locality played an important role in the postsocialist dynamic between the working class and middle classes.
Paper long abstract:
Despite the fact that the biggest electoral support for tensed ethnic debates over the city center of Cluj came from the former socialist workers, they barely walk through it in their daily routines or popular celebrations. For the working class, nationalism was the language used to express and (attempt to) reverse their progressively severe postsocialist subordination. Although occupying a subordinate position in the social division of labor, from the point of view of the symbolic order, the worker was the key actor in the legitimizing socialist pantheon. However, after the collapse of the system, the privatization discourse turned the worker and the unions into an obstacle hindering the rebirth of factories as successful capitalist enterprises. In this new context, the language of nationalism and ethnicity offered Romanian working class an 'us' that attempt to cut across the class divisions in a city with a peculiar geography, where the young Romanian working class socialist neighborhoods bordered the Hungarian old middle class inner city. Ethnicity and nationalism played the role of a language/grammar? of power mobilized for the purpose of redrawing the socio-spatial positional asymmetries and thus articulating the right to the city for the working class. We will try to unfold historically the link between space and class in the Central European city of Cluj, addressing the way in which the politics of locality played a crucial role in the dynamic between the working class and middle classes.
This paper will focus on the rise of nationalism in Serbia after the 2000 political changes. Analyzing class-related experiences can help us ground the image of identity polarization in particular socio-political and economic processes that have reconfigured Serbia’s reality for the last seven years.
Paper long abstract:
Since the fall of the Milosevic regime and the democratic changes in 2000, many would agree with a Serbian minister that today Serbia is once again falling in a collective cultural madness. The rise of nationalist party's power as indicated by the electoral results of the last four years, the spread of a nationalist public discourse, the violent events after the proclamation of Kosovo's independence in February 2008, all produce an image of Serbian society as highly polarized among two axes of identity politics: nationalism/isolation on the one hand and European identity/democracy on the other.
Aim of this paper is to de-construct this omnipresent culture-talk by analyzing ethnographic data on nationalism supporters' discourse, practices and power relations that structure their everyday life. The concept of class can be a useful analytical tool in that it can historicize the culturally framed struggles by grounding them in the particular political and economic processes that constitute Serbia's social reality of 'transition' to open market and liberal democracy. Nationalism, I will argue, gains its supporters from a wide spectrum of society, ranging from elites to under classes, not because of a pre-dominance of national identity over social differentiation; rather nationalism appeals in different ways and for different reasons to different social groups. The same could be argued for the normative and morally circumscribed pro-western democracy movement as well.
This paper investigates nationalist mobilization in Hungary based on micro-politics in two “working-class” districts of Budapest since 2002. How do individual life-histories get construed to fit the narrative of anti-Communist party politics and how do political adversaries attempt to discard the “civics” as an angry right-wing mob?
Paper long abstract:
Hungary has seen the 1990s politics of patience give way to that of protest since the 2002 elections. Nationalist mobilization has become prevalent in the face of unrelenting bouts of neoliberal reforms as even some of the staunchest "Socialist" voters have switched political allegiances to the "civic" side. At the same time, enduring networks and fear-mongering against an alleged fascist threat has so far prevented the return of the "anti-Communists" to power. This paper investigates the above process in two traditionally "working-class" districts of Budapest, focusing on the so-called polgári körök or civic circles who have formed the backbone to the mass FIDESZ party in opposition.
How has the idea(l) of the "nation" become dominant in the Hungarian discourse of post-Socialist and anti-neoliberal imaginaries and how does it get intertwined with past and present understandings of "class"? Furthermore, how have elites tried to disqualify any anti-neoliberal critique after 1989? Anthropological research can shed light on the workings of complex political labeling and mobilization by looking into the micro-political relations that yield seemingly bizarre mixtures of party and activist ideologies as well as twists in personal and communal histories. How do workers become "civics" and why are they then portrayed as an angry right-wing mob?
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