Representation, Identity, and Dissent

The Sources of Russian Regionalism by Yoshiko M. Herrera looks at political factors which lead to the downfall of the Soviet Union and birth of a new Russia. Herrera assesses how literary movements, the economy, and political movements affected Russia in the early 1990s. His research looks at regionalism in Russia and how that contributed to political ideology changes. The reading concludes with Herrera outlining the order and relationships of his research. As I reflect on the reading, I think about the regionalism of the United States. We are divided in political ideology in a way that could be tracked by a flow chart. Southern states ideology differs from northern state ideology as well as urban city ideology. These disagreements could potentially be traced back to the Constitutional Convention. A flow chart could represent how events and actions such as the Civil War or FDR’s New Deal led America to its current ideology. In considering what typology I would create that encompass...

Kenneth J. Meier and Jill Nicholson-Crotty’s Gender, Representative Bureaucracy, and Law Enforcement: The Case of Sexual Assault   discusses how passive and active representation affect law enforcement. Meier and Nicholson-Crotty explore how the issue of sexual assault affects women more than men. Police forces are a majority male institution which report a minority of sexual assault and rape instances. Their study demonstrates how female representation in a police force should help increase the number of reported sexual assaults and attention by the police to the issue. They call for scholars to focus more on the benefits of passive representation. ‘“Get on the Internet” Says the LORD’: Religion, Cyberspace, and Christianity in Contemporary Africa by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu describes the relationship between Christianity and the internet in Africa. Asamoah-Gyadu discusses the Church of Pentecost (CoP) and International Central Gospel Church (ICPG) usage of the internet to spread...

Sara E. Brown’s Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide discusses the role of female agency in the Rwandan Genocide. Brown argues that women played a significant role in the genocide in several roles. Genocide narratives often describe the male role but rarely consider female agency in the violence. This article explores how Hutu women contributed to the killings not only as bystanders but also as participants in the mass violence. Brown emphasizes how Rwandan women were viewed as sexual deviants, outsiders, and disinterested in the mass murder of Tutsis. Her work argues against these images and necessitates that female genocide narratives are studied. Brown’s analysis of the Hutu commandments enlightened me. She lists the commandments which includes one disqualifying a Hutu man from the ethnic group if they marry a Tutsi woman. The Hutu women generally did not sympathize with the Tutsi women. As the genocide transpired, the Hutu women did not provide Tutsi women with aid nor di...

     Celebration and Suppression: The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement by Mary Bernstein analyzes how identities are deployed in social movements. Bernstein discusses a social movement's relationship with polity, past history, and other conditions which affect its strategic decision making. She also explores how social movements differ while using group and environmental characteristics as an explanation. The article concludes that studies of new social movements “should focus on the structural relationship between identity and mobilization” rather than “asking what is “new””. This article caused me to reflect on the evolution of social movements. The argument mentions how groups will choose to portray themselves as similar or different from the larger group as a whole. The predominant example of Bernstein’s work is the lesbian and gay movement. She details how the movement began and what changes have been made throughout its history. She uncov...

In Group Entitlement, Anger, and Participation in Intergroup Violence, Christopher Claassen discusses the emotional conditions which are associated with intergroup violence. Claassen determines that anger is the best explanation for intergroup violence. He also mentions that there are four rival explanations: fear, hatred, contempt, and resentment. The four other explanations prove to be relevant but are less significant than anger in motivating intergroup violence. Claassen hypothesizes that “intergroup anger increases an individual’s intention to participate in intergroup violence” and “perceived violations of group entitlements result in increased levels of intergroup anger”. His work demonstrates that violations of group entitlements will increase levels of intergroup anger while intergroup anger will increase the likelihood of intergroup violence. Our last reading addressed underlying conditions which lead ethnic groups to rebel. Claassen’s research focuses on violence in intergro...

Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min’s Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis examines how ethnonationalist struggles contribute to the outbreak of civil wars. The trio of Cederman, Wimmer, and Min make three hypotheses on which group characteristics increase the probability of an ethnonationalist conflict. Their studies found that “exclusion and competition along ethnic lines are strongly associated with internal conflict” (113). Their data demonstrates a correlation between the underrepresentation of ethnicities and civil wars.  However despite this correlation, Cederman, Wimmer, and Min mention that countries with high oppression of an ethnic group are less likely to be the subject of political conflict. This surprised me because my understanding was that the oppression of a minority typically leads to a rebellion. After reflecting on their point, I see why oppression is unfortunately an effective and unethical way of maintaining power. Another point the...

Kanchan Chandra’s What is Ethnic Identity and Does it Matter? explores factors which qualify ethnic qualities to be a part of an identity. Chandra discusses ethnicities which may falsely represent an identity as well as ethnic characteristics which commonly contribute to an identity.  Gendering Comparative Politics by Teri Calaway describes the workings of the Comparative Politics of Gender (CPG). The journal outlines the independent and dependent variables that CPG scholars utilize. It also emphasizes the importance of CPG and argues what should change in the field of CPG for proper recognition and impact. Calaway’s work clearly analyzes the reality that gender plays a key role in politics which should be further understood. I enjoyed the Chandra piece far more than Calaway’s; however, I learned more from Calaway. Chandra’s writing involved several case studies about different ethnic groups which demonstrate how ethnicity can contribute to identity. She features the story of Ame...

Beyond “identity” by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper explores the concept of identity in social and political systems. Brubaker and Cooper examine comparable terms to identity and raise questions about how we form our identities. Their work highlights inherent characteristics which contribute to our perception of identities as well as behaviors which make similar contributions. There are certain assumptions which can be made with regard to the term “identity”. There are also ambiguities. Beyond “identity” covers many of these characteristics which describe the complexity of identity. I enjoyed reading this journal article as an introduction to our course. They did an excellent job demonstrating how some terms like “self-understanding” may be a component of identity, but they are not a definition of identity itself. I also found it useful to read what aspects of identity they found to be implied. Brubaker and Cooper suggest that by nature identity is unchanged throughout time. ...