Abstract In the last decade, the expansion of digital media and sociopolitical changes have contributed to a transnational revival of patriotic attire linked to nationalist performance, particularly in post-Communist contexts. This article examines the visual and ideological intersections between politics, media, and dress, focusing on the cultural, performative, and political dynamics of contemporary nationalist fashion. It investigates the historical roots of this phenomenon, its postcolonial, gendered, and global dimensions, and its role in the reconstruction of historical memory. The study traces how patriotic attire, featuring neo-folk motifs, embroidery, religious symbols, historical scenes, and political iconography, serves as a visual manifestation of new nationalist narratives in post-Soviet and post-Communist states. These sartorial forms function both as ideological statements and as expressions of utopian and dystopian visions of the nation. The emergence of this trend is situated within a longer tradition of 19th-century patriotic self-visualization, adapted to contemporary sociopolitical conditions.
Abstract Due to their major influence on the process of democratic backsliding in numerous countries around the world, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, populist and nationalist parties have been extensively explored in academic literature in recent years. While these parties’ domestic dynamics have been thoroughly studied, both independently and in comparative designs, their foreign relations have largely gone unnoticed. This is a shortcoming in the literature, especially when it comes to the European Union, where these parties have the ability to collaborate in the European Parliament and influence European policies. As a result, the purpose of this study is to examine nationalist parties’ parliamentary diplomacy by exploring the case of a new and ambitious newcomer, Romania’s Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR). Based on interviews with party members and netnography, our findings demonstrate that AUR’s parliamentary diplomacy is organised around three important objectives: Eastern and Central Europe, Western Europe and the EU level. While their focus on the EU is explained by their successful ambition to enter the European Parliament in 2024, and their focus on Eastern Europe by their desire to do so by strengtening collaboration with ideologically similar parties in Poland, AUR’s focus on diaspora is unlike any other Romanian political party: they not only try to forge ties with the Romanian diaspora in the West, but they also open the black box of Romanian historical diasporas, particularly the ones in Serbia and Ukraine. Preliminary findings contribute to the literature in political science and international relations on autocratization (Luhrmann, Anna, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New about It?” Democratization 26 (7): 1095–1113. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029.) and democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe (Bozoki, Andras, and Daniel Hegedűs. 2018. “An Externally Constrained Hybrid Regime: Hungary in the European Union.” Democratization 25 (7): 1173–1189. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1455664.), both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, this paper contributes by opening up the research on the parliamentary diplomacy of nationalist parties, while empirically I contribute by exploring the case of AUR.
Abstract This research note proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for studying the relationship between music and nationalist conflict. Conceptually, it introduces acoustic coercion — the enforcement of sonic conformity through informal violence operating with state complicity under credible impunity through selective non-intervention — as a consolidating concept for dynamics documented piecemeal across existing scholarship on music-politics relations. This concept captures dynamics that frameworks often organized around propaganda, censorship, and resistance capture partially: the gap between formal tolerance and informal terror, the conscription of performers into political service, and the impossibility of acoustic neutrality in polarized environments. Methodologically, the note demonstrates how historical acoustemology — the reconstruction of past sonic environments from textual sources — can serve nationalism studies by recovering the lived experience of sonic conflict from archival materials while remaining attentive to listening positionality. The toolkit applies equally to ethnographic study of contemporary cases; the historical emphasis reflects the available evidence. Drawing on original research into the partisan press in Athens during the Greek National Schism (1915–1922), the note shows how professional musicians became trapped subjects, compelled to perform partisan repertoires through violence and economic necessity. The note concludes by suggesting how these tools might illuminate other cases where sound serves as a medium of nationalist boundary enforcement.
Abstract The purpose of the present study was to identify the mechanisms of the functioning of religious ethos in the political discourse of Japan and Singapore. The methodology combined political science, cultural studies, religious studies, and historical-genetic analysis. The findings showed that Japan developed a distinctive model of religious-political interaction based on Shintoism as a sacralised foundation of statehood. During the Meiji period, State Shinto legitimised political authority and national unity, while after 1945, religious symbols continued to influence national consciousness despite official secularism. In Singapore, religious pluralism contributed to a model of “managed harmony,” in which Confucian ethics, adapted to modern conditions, supported civic cohesion. The state regulated the religious sphere to preserve social stability. Comparative analysis demonstrated that both countries used religion as an instrument of political integration, although through different institutional mechanisms. Confucian traditions were particularly significant in both contexts, but acquired different political interpretations. The study concluded that religion remains an important component of contemporary national ideologies, adapting to modernisation and globalisation without losing cultural identity. The findings may inform political planning in culturally diverse societies.
Abstract The 1940s were a formative and divisive decade in modern Greek history, leaving enduring scars on society. This study explores the ethnic dimension of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) through the lens of conflicting collective memories and political identities in northern Greece’s Kastoria region. Drawing on oral history interviews conducted with local residents and secondary sources, it examines how two key ethnic groups in the area — the Dopii and the Pontians — developed divergent narratives of the 1940s. The analysis shows how wartime experiences and postwar persecution shaped each group’s memory of occupation and civil conflict, which in turn reinforced distinct ethnic identities and political affiliations. Over time, these narratives of victimhood and blame became central to group identity, although recent generational changes and new social realities began to soften the divisions. The findings underscore the dynamic interplay between memory, identity, and historical trauma in a multiethnic context, illustrating how the civil war’s legacy continues to shape local identities and intergroup relations, albeit with diminishing intensity over time.
In this article, I explain how ideology in Russia's war against Ukraine has been formulated within specific genres and discourses that are reminiscent of the carnivalesque. Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of carnival has often been used to conceptualise forms of democratic resistance to authoritarianism. Yet alternative readings have always questioned this notion of carnival as liberation, and instead present the Bakhtinian carnival as a potential space and time of violent lawlessness and transgression. I use these contested readings to argue that ideology in Russia's war is articulated and enacted through the carnivalesque, using forms of transgressive humor, grotesque imagery, and profane language. I use evidence from Russian social media channels, broadcast media, official discourse, and cultural production to support this Bakhtinian framing. The carnivalesque framing of wartime ideology enables Russia to mobilise and demobilise different parts of society simultaneously. It permits social distancing from the war for the Russian public, and enables the leadership to blur and obfuscate ideological tenets, while legitimising the creation of a space of exception in Ukraine, in which transgressive practices are normalised. In this way, carnival is a highly effective discursive mechanism for the transition during wartime to a more consolidated ideological regime in Russia.
This article introduces CriTaRep v1, a geo-coded event dataset documenting state repression against Crimean Tatars (2000-2024). Drawing on locally sourced materials in Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian, and Russian languages, CriTaRep records n = 709 repression events affecting more than 2,200 individual victims. We inductively identify 22 repression types across three categories: deprivation of liberty, legal and administrative repression, and physical repression. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea marked the onset of a large-scale and systematic repression campaign against the Crimean Tatar population. We document a concentration of arbitrary searches on Thursdays, physical repression targeting elites, and intensified repression during periods of dissent. Empirical analyses show that repression spikes in response to protest activity. Russian authorities respond rapidly and increasingly harshly to dissent, pursuing a dual strategy of protest suppression and long-term deterrence. CriTaRep fills critical gaps in existing datasets and provides new opportunities to study patterns and mechanisms of demographically targeted repression in Russian-occupied territories and beyond.
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Tbilisi has become one of the key destinations of post-2022 Russian emigration. Unlike in many other host societies, this arrival has been met in Georgia with pronounced public resistance, articulated through the language of occupation and anti-imperial refusal. Slogans such as "Russians go home" and references to a "third occupation" translate everyday Russian visibility - language use, spatial clustering, and lifestyle practices - into a historically saturated interpretive framework. This article examines how and why such interpretations have emerged in Tbilisi, and why hostility is frequently directed even at self-identified "good Russians" who oppose the war and the Russian regime. Empirically, the article draws on a mixed-method research design combining long-term ethnographic and digital observation with 30 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2022 and 2024 with young, urban, pro-European Georgians in Tbilisi. Rather than analysing migrants' intentions or political self-identifications, the study centres the perspectives of the host society and the conditions through which Russian presence is interpreted. Analytically, it adopts a decolonial/postcolonial perspective and mobilises the concept of coloniality to distinguish between historical empire and the persistence of linguistic, cultural, and epistemic hierarchies after its formal end. The findings demonstrate this dynamic.
This article explores how cultural representations of outer space in Kazakhstan reflect and shape public debates on the history and legacy of the Soviet cosmos while offering new perspectives on national cosmic imaginaries. Kazakhstan inherited much of the Soviet outer space physical infrastructure, including its most potent artefact, spaceport Baikonur. The article demonstrates that the artistic representations of the cosmic themes provide an important ground for understanding 1) how the cosmic enthusiasm and utopianism of Soviet astroculture have been moulded into a more critical interpretation of outer space and its impact on Kazakhstani society and 2) how the cosmic mythologies of the past have been used for reinventing Kazakho-futurism as an element of the nation's future. 'Cosmic art' offers a unique lens for exploring how cultural representations of outer space contribute to the redefinition of societal conditions and the complexity of becoming a sovereign nation in the twenty-first century.
The article examines politically loaded catchphrases and their development and transformation in the discourses of Russian-speaking social media users. It focuses on how propaganda catchphrases, used to transmit political messages, acquire new meanings and applications in online communication, and how this process is shaped by the specific context of the Baltic states, where the Russian population underwent minoritization after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The data was collected in the course of longitudinal (2021-2025) ethnographic online observation, primarily from posts and comments in public Facebook groups localized in Estonia. Applying conversational analysis of online data, the article investigates the life cycle of specific words and phrases to show how they evolve into complex indexical signs and even systems of signs used to define not only the referenced objects but also the speaking subjects, their audiences, and the sets of ideas they tend to identify with. Using them as discourse devices, Baltic Russian speakers in their public online communication oppose the official discourses of their respective states; in doing so, however, they do not simply transmit the Kremlin propaganda, but rather creatively repurpose local discourses and contexts, building echo chambers of their own.
Abstract The article engages the recent literature on whiteness and East-West ethnic hierarchies in Europe with an Eastern European perspective. We analyze how German ethnicity expresses symbolic superiority in a multicultural region of Romania by tracing how non-ethnic Germans affiliate with the local German minority and sustain German associational life. Such dynamics unfold within institutions of the German minority but are amplified by mobility to Germany, transnational ties, and significant German investments. We focus on how a notion of a “better society” derives not only from regional economic development due to German investments and local German political leadership, but especially from civic initiatives associated with ethnic German minority actors. We thus show how such hierarchies of superiority become articulated from below, as non-Germans attach worth, opportunity, and social improvement to a presumed more progressive “German societal model.”
Abstract Salafism is an orthodox movement associated with political Islam that defines itself mainly through the negation of opposing ideologies and practices. Although a minority, Salafist movements have gained traction across parts of the Islamic world. This article examines an emerging branch of Salafism in Iranian Kurdistan (Known as Rojhelat). It employs narrative analysis to examine Sunni Kurds in Iran, with participants selected through purposive and maximum-variation sampling. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that Salafists advocate for a maximalist interpretation of Islam, envisioning a Quran-centric society where Da’wah and jihad are deemed essential for establishing an Islamic state. They attribute shifts in Islamic lifestyle and attire to the weakening of Da’wah , governmental neglect, Westernization, and the erosion of the family’s socializing role. While they promote a form of conditional tolerance toward other Islamic groups, as well as non-conforming Muslims and perceived hidden enemies, their distrust of the Islamic Republic of Iran remains pronounced, criticizing the regime for reducing religion to mere rituals and failing to recognize true Sunni Kurds. However, given their prioritization of resisting Western influence and the security constraints within Iran, Salafists have primarily concentrated their efforts on Islamic Da’wah rather than confrontation with the state.
Abstract The article details the complex geopolitical and national conditions that shaped the securitization of Kists — a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who primarily reside in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia. Securitization of Kists emerged at the intersection of colonial encounters: Russian colonial relations with the Caucasus, primarily with Georgia and Chechnya, and Western neocolonial relations with Muslims in a form of global counterterrorist policies that painted Islam as a looming threat to the Western world after 9/11. Moreover, notions about minorities within Georgia contributed to the emergence of the securitization paradigm towards Kists. These circumstances molded Georgian national politics concerning Kists — namely, securitization policies and practices that legitimized violent special operations in the valley, close surveillance, scrutiny, and intimidation of the community. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, qualitative interviews, and critical discourse analysis, this article examines these policies, practices, and the profound effects of the state’s politics on the social landscape of Pankisi. Moreover, this research also observes various everyday strategies and tactics employed by Kists to navigate the social terrains of marginality.
This article examines recent developments in three key areas of nationalism research that integrate emotions into theoretical frameworks and empirical analysis. First, it explores studies that revisit historical nation-building through the lens of the history of emotions. Second, it discusses how the “affective nationalism” literature has shifted the focus of banal nationhood reproduction from mental representations to emotions. Third, it reviews efforts to theorize the emergence of intense national emotions in certain periods and their role in political mobilization and change. The article highlights critical advancements across these areas, particularly in linking emotions to meaning through narratives, expanding research from national centers to the frontiers, and challenging the illusion of national harmony by emphasizing power dynamics and dialectical change. The conclusion suggests future research directions, including investigations of national emotions within diasporic communities and digital networks.
This article examines the political ecology of water and ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, Iraq. Kirkuk is an internally disputed frontier territory, controlled by the federal government of Iraq but claimed by Kurdish nationalists. Kirkuk contains some of Iraq's largest oil fields and most productive agricultural lands. In recent decades Kirkuk has also faced water shortages tied to global climate change. The article deploys survey data, supplemented by qualitative historical research, to evaluate framing of environmental security and the relationship between water insecurity, ethnic conflict, and governance. We find that commitments to competing programs for territorial control in Kirkuk correlate with different framing of ecological risk factors. Arabic-speaking respondents frame water scarcity as a matter for the federal government. Kurdish-speaking respondents prefer to enlist the Kurdistan Regional Government or local politicians to deal with water scarcity, undercutting federal jurisdiction. These findings cast doubt on environmental security and peacebuilding theories which suggest that ecological scarcity can spur inter-ethnic cooperation toward sustainability. Rather, commitment to different ethnoterritorial programs justify different perspectives on ecological change. At a policy level, these findings show that political conciliation must come before progress in environmental peacebuilding.
This study aims to analyze how two popular television series, Famagusta (produced in Greece) and Bir Zamanlar K & imath;br & imath;s (Once Upon a Time in Cyprus, produced in Turkey), reflect the political approaches of Greece and Turkey toward the Cyprus issue. Television series are often powerful media for national narrative building, and both Famagusta and Bir Zamanlar K & imath;br & imath;s series demonstrate the ways historical events are selectively portrayed to reinforce contemporary political perspectives regarding Cyprus. Beyond simply retelling historical events, both series are used to reflect the ongoing efforts of Greece and Turkey to assert rights over Cyprus, a geopolitically significant island with a complex colonial past. This study will analyze how these series engage in narrative framing to legitimize national claims over a distant territory, using television series as a medium for both national narratives and colonial continuity. The study will explore the underlying messages, rhetorical tools, and symbolic elements that each series uses to shape the public perception about the Cyprus issue, drawing on concepts from media studies and international relations.
Social scientists have paid significant attention to the study of ethnic and religious minorities in Europe, and yet one group that evaded such scrutiny is the Tatars residing in modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland, who are unique in being Europe's only Muslim community that survived under Catholic rule since the late medieval period. While Muslims in medieval and early modern France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were eradicated through a mix of mass expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres, Lithuanian-Polish Tatars survived over six centuries. This article examines this unique case to understand the comparative political dynamics of persecution and toleration across medieval and early modern Europe. The article argues that the interstate and societal configuration of power explains the Tatars' exceptional survival. The interstate and domestic dynamics are linked in that Lithuanian rulers successfully resisted forced conversion and eventually adopted Christianity on their own terms, which allowed for the preservation and perpetuation of religious sectarian diversity backed up by multiple political stakeholders. In the domestic struggle between monarchs, Papal allies, the Catholic nobility, and non-Catholics, none of the religious sectarian factions could achieve a hegemonic majority, let alone monopolistic control of political and military power, necessary for a coercive religious sectarian homogenization.
