The politics of identity: Place, space and discourse 9781526110268

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The book contributes a unique interdisciplinary examination of timely case studies from Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. These case studies explore emerging and problematic identity practices and policies that have significant political, social, cultural and economic impact in relation to gender and sexuality, place and space, belonging and inclusion, migration and citizenship, and security and foreign policy. These are explored through a range of approaches from international relations, sociology, citizenship studies, social psychology, memory studies, narrative theory and assemblage theory, with different disciplines and perspectives critically analysing questions of power, subjectivity, hierarchy and resistance. The book showcases the political implications of identity, how it is constituted, and the effects it produces. This edited collection will be of particular interest to students of international relations theory, migration studies, gender and sexuality, post colonialism and policy-making at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Dean Keep is Lecturer in Digital Media at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Agius and Keep (eds)

Christine Agius is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

The politics of identity is concerned with exploring identity beyond something that an agent ‘possesses’; instead, identity is interrogated as a complex and often problematic category in social relations. In an era where ‘identity politics’ are heavily scrutinised, this edited collection turns the focus around to the ‘politics of identity’, exploring how identity can be constituted, and the ways in which it is created and contested, multiple and contradictory. The book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which identity can be theorised, and the complexities that emerge in identity practices.

THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY Place, space and discourse

ISBN 978-1-5261-1024-4

Edited by 9 781526 110244

Christine Agius and Dean Keep

The politics of identity

The politics of identity Place, space and discourse

Edited by

CHRISTINE AGIUS AND DEAN KEEP

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 1024 4 hardback

First published 2018

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or thirdparty internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

To Connie Agius, who was always herself, and Shirley Keep, who could mix in any company.

Contents

List of contributors page ix Acknowledgements xiii List of abbreviations xiv   1 The politics of identity: making and disrupting identity Christine Agius and Dean Keep

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Part I  Establishing and consolidating identity   2 Co-constituting Fijian identity: the role of constitutions in Fijian national identity Christopher Mudaliar

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  3 Australian foreign policy and the vernacular of national belonging 34 Katie Linnane   4 Gendered identities in peacebuilding: an analysis of post-2006 Timor-Leste 53 Sarah Smith   5 Agents of peace: place, identity and peacebuilding Gëzim Visoka

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Part II  Identity rupture   6 A space for identity: the case of Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians 91 Hind Ghandour

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Contents

  7 The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome: between state control and ‘collective-identity closure’ Riccardo Armillei

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  8 Telling terrorism tales: narrative identity and Homeland 123 Louise Pears   9 Right(s) from the ground up: internal displacement, the urban periphery and belonging to the city Helen Berents

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Part III  Contesting identity 10 Sweden, military intervention and the loss of memory Annika Bergman Rosamond and Christine Agius 11 Pollution and purity: caste-based discrimination and the mobilisation of Dalit sameness Ted Svensson

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12 The queer common: resisting the public at Gezi Park and beyond Paul Gordon Kramer

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13 Positive regard for difference without identity Lucy Nicholas

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Index

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Contributors

Christine Agius is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. She has held previous lecturing posts in the UK and completed her PhD at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include Nordic politics and security, identity, and critical security studies. Current research interests include immigration, gender, sovereign bordering practices and drone warfare. She is the author of The Social Construction of Swedish Neutrality: Challenges to Swedish Identity and Sovereignty (2006, Manchester University Press) and has published articles in Cooperation and Conflict, Security Dialogue and other journals. She is the director of the Identity Research Network, which brings together interdisciplinary research on the theme of identity. Riccardo Armillei gained his PhD from Swinburne University of Technology in 2015 and has worked as an Associate Research Fellow for the UNESCO Chair, Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, based in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Australia. His research interests include Romani/‘Gypsy’ studies, citizenship and national identity, forced migrations, social justice, cross-cultural theories and practices. He has published his research in journals such as Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Contemporary Italian Politics and Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture. Helen Berents is a lecturer in the School of Justice, Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology. Her research explores representations of youth in political events and engages with the lived experiences of violenceaffected young people, and she has carried out fieldwork in Colombia and Guatemala. More broadly, she is interested in questions of how people are

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rendered insecure by institutions of authority and power, how young people are politicised but not seen as political and how feminist and narrative methodologies open space to find the everyday within these explorations. Her recent publications include an Enloe Award-winning article in International Feminist Journal of Politics and articles in Critical Studies on Security and Peacebuilding, amongst others. Annika Bergman Rosamond is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden. Her research interests include the nexus of communitarianism and cosmopolitanism in international theory, feminism, gender cosmopolitanism, celebrity and world politics, as well as security studies. Her publications include War, Ethics and Justice: New Perspectives on a Post-9/11 World (2012, co-edited with Mark Phythian), Women, Peace and Security – and Denmark (Danish Institute for International Studies report 2014, 32, Copenhagen), as well as book chapters and articles in Global Society, Ethics and International Affairs and Cooperation and Conflict. Hind Ghandour was awarded her PhD from Swinburne University of Technology in 2017. Prior to joining Swinburne, she taught Middle East Politics and Arabic Language at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. She has extensively researched refugees in the Arab world, with a focus on Palestinians in Lebanon. Her research explored the effects of naturalisation on notions of identity and belonging among naturalised Palestinians in Lebanon. Her areas of expertise are citizenship, naturalisation, Middle East politics and refugee studies. She is currently based in the San Francisco Bay area of the United States. Dean Keep is a lecturer in Digital Media and Course Director of the Bachelor of Screen Production at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. His research has a strong focus on emergent media cultures and practices, evocative auto-ethnography and the aesthetics of personal photography. His creative practice involves the use of heritage and digital media technologies to examine the ways in which visual media may inform our understanding of historical time, place and personal/cultural memories. He is also co-director of the Identity Research Network and a PhD candidate at the School of Art at the Australian National University, Canberra. Paul Gordon Kramer is Assistant Professor in Political Science and International Relations at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. His primary fields of interest are queer international relations and qualitative enquiry. His thesis used Foucauldian governmentality and Deleuzian assem-

Contributorsxi blage thinking to explore how queer people resist governance in contemporary Turkey. His research was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. His paper on Gezi Park won the New Zealand Political Studies Association–UK Political Studies Association Exchange Award in 2015. Katie Linnane completed her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Who We Are and What We Stand For: Foreign Policy and National Identity Construction under Keating and Howard’, at the University of Queensland in February 2016. Katie is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in Australian public policy, international relations, foreign policy analysis, political rhetoric and cultural studies. She has published her work in the Australian Journal of Politics and History. Christopher Mudaliar is a PhD candidate at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. His research interests focus on nationalism and nation-building, with an emphasis on Pacific countries. His thesis takes a mixed methods approach using discourse analysis to explore post-colonial national identity creation in Fiji. Currently he teaches Pacific politics at Swinburne University of Technology and is a contributor to media forums on the Pacific. Lucy Nicholas is Senior Lecturer and Discipline Coordinator in Sociology at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, specialising in gender and sexual diversities, social and political theory, queer theory and feminisms. Their PhD was awarded at the University of Edinburgh in 2012. Her first book, Queer Post-Gender Ethics, was published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan and won a special commendation from The Australian Sociological Association for best first book in the field. They are director of the Melbourne Queer, Feminist and Gender Studies Network. Louise Pears is the Research Fellow for the Security and Justice Research Group at the University of Leeds. In 2016 she completed her PhD at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, also at the University of Leeds, entitled ‘Terrorists, Heroes, and Homeland: How Race and Gender are Negotiated to Make Meaning in Terrorism TV’. Her research interests are located within the fields of critical terrorism studies, feminist security studies, whiteness, critical race scholarship and popular culture, and explore the relationship between (in)security, culture and people’s lives and identities. Sarah Smith has lectured in gender, international relations, security and conflict resolution at Swinburne University of Technology, Australian Catholic

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University and Monash University, Melbourne. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Central European University, Budapest. She was awarded her PhD from Swinburne University of Technology in 2015. Her research examines critical intersections between gender, post-colonialism and the practice and policy of peace and conflict. She has published her research in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Global Change, Peace and Security and E-International Relations. She has also undertaken research work for non-governmental organisations and written commentary on various issues. Ted Svensson is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His main research interests are state formation, identity politics, poststructuralist international relations, contemporary South Asia and issues broadly related to constitutive moments. His publications include Production of Postcolonial India and Pakistan: Meanings of Partition (Routledge, 2013) and articles in Third World Quarterly, Global Society and Alternatives. He is also co-editor of Governing Borders and Security: The Politics of Connectivity and Dispersion (Routledge, 2014) and editor of the journal Cooperation and Conflict. Gëzim Visoka is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Dublin City University in Ireland. His research focuses on post-conflict peacebuilding and the politics of statehood, and his most recent books are Peace Figuration International Intervention (Routledge, 2016) and Shaping Peace in Kosovo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His forthcoming book Acting Like a State: Kosovo and the Everyday Making of Statehood will be published in Routledge’s series Interventions in early 2018. His work on post-conflict peacebuilding, transitional justice, minority rights, foreign policy and ethics of international governance has been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including: Journal of Common Market Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Studies Perspectives, International Peacekeeping, Civil Wars, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and Peacebuilding.

Acknowledgements

All books, particularly edited collections, owe debts of gratitude. This edited collection emerged from the activities and interactions of the Identity Research Network (IRN), which we established in 2014 at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. The IRN brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research around the theme of identity through monthly seminars and collaborations. In December 2014 the IRN organised a workshop, several papers of which appear in this edited collection. We thank all IRN members in contributing to the network’s development and for their incisive and excellent engagement. This edited collection has very much been a collaborative effort by all involved. We would like to thank the authors for giving their work and time for this project and, in many cases, for agreeing to review chapters. Thanks are also due to Helen Berents and Sarah Smith for their exemplary organisational assistance with the IRN’s activities. Sarah also helped to speed the progress of the book with her editorial assistance, for which we were extremely grateful. This book would also not have been possible without the research and funding support received from Swinburne’s Faculty of Health, Arts and Design’s Research Development Grant Scheme. The Swinburne Institute for Social Research and the Department of Education and Social Sciences also provided assistance and funding support for our activities. The editorial team at Manchester University Press have provided exceptional guidance and enthusiasm for this project and we have been extremely grateful for their support. Christine Agius Dean Keep Melbourne 2017

Abbreviations

Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, Turkey) ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps ANZUS Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty BJP Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) CIA Central Intelligence Agency (USA) DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations DRC Democratic Republic of Congo EOP Enhanced Opportunity Programme (NATO) ESDP European Security and Defence Policy EU European Union ERRC European Roma Rights Centre FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) F-FDTL Falintil-Forças Armadas de Defesa de Timor-Leste (Defence Forces of Timor-Leste) GCC Great Council of Chiefs (Fiji) HDP Halkların Demokratik Partisi (People’s Democratic Party, Turkey) IDP internally displaced people INTERFET The International Force for East Timor ISAF International Security Assistance Force ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant LGBTQ lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer LADV Law Against Domestic Violence, Timor-Leste NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NGO non-governmental organisation AKP

Abbreviationsxv PNTL PRT SAF SAP SÄPO SGBV UK UN UNMIT UNSC UNPOL VPU

Polícia Nacional Timor-Leste Provisional Reconstruction Team Försvarsmakten (The Swedish Armed Forces) Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti (Social Democratic Party, Sweden) Säkerhetspolisen (the Swedish Security Service) sexual and gender-based violence United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste United Nations Security Council United Nations Police Vulnerable Persons Unit

1

The politics of identity: making and disrupting identity Christine Agius and Dean Keep

The power of identity to manifest as a unifying and divisive force pervades social, cultural, economic and political relations. Economic crises, war and conflict, struggles over resources and equality, and questions of exclusion and belonging are premised both overtly and subtly in claims about identity. This finds expression at and between the individual and collective level. In the wake of the January 2015 terrorist attacks at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, people around the world readily identified with France and values such as freedom of speech with the hashtag #jesuischarlie (‘I am Charlie’), and #jesuisparis after the November attacks in the same year. The anti-­ establishment push-back against globalisation and mainstream politics from both the left and right of the political spectrum invokes questions of identity, to differing degrees. The Eurozone crisis has provoked discussions about the failure of the European political and economic project and identity. The push for independence in Scotland in 2014, and the rise of Syriza in Greece, and Podemos in Spain, also reflected efforts to rethink national and sub-national representation and identity against wider societal and economic crises. In the UK, the June 2016 referendum on EU membership was deeply tied to questions of identity in both the Leave and Remain campaigns. For those supporting ‘Brexit’, the referendum was an opportunity to ‘reclaim’ national identity and ‘control’ over economic and immigration policy and borders. The Leave campaign’s saturation of images and rhetoric imagined a restored national sovereignty and identity that proved to be a powerful, if contentious and divisive, discourse. For many who supported staying in the EU, the loss of the referendum was experienced as an ‘existential’ – or ‘Brexistential’ – crisis (Spicer 2016), an undoing of an identity that was attached not only to the nation-state (which now appeared different) but also to Europe. Questions of ‘who we are’ shape our subjectivities and the world we inhabit,

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but the relationship is more intricate than locating identity as a causal factor in human behaviour and relationships. For some time, questions of identity have been fixated on ‘identity politics’, which has pitched class against gender, race, sexuality and other status-based social movements which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in response to post-industrial change. Neo-Marxists upheld class as the main social movement through which to address structural inequality and promote social change (Bernstein 2005, 66). As such, identity politics based on other social status is regarded as a distraction to achieving wider social justice and is thus non-political (despite the intersection of gender, race, sexuality and other categories with class). Some account for the rise in identity politics as an outcome of capitalism’s homogenising tendencies, where identity politics emerges as the working class is weakened by processes of globalisation (Fox Piven 1995) or the left’s inability to address gender, race and sexual inequality (Bernstein and Taylor 2013). Post-election analyses of the 2016 US presidential election have been dominated by ‘identity politics’, particularly the rise of ‘white identity politics’ as an explanatory force for Trump’s success (Knowles and Tropp 2016; Taranto 2016), and the source of Hillary Clinton’s loss. Moreover, the ‘rising American electorate’ of minorities, millennials and women that Clinton relied on failed to translate into votes (Judis 2016; Slater 2016). According to Jodi Dean, the reason pollsters ‘got it so wrong’ has in part been due to assumptions about fixed demographic categories to determine views and preferences. Dean’s critique of the fixation on identity politics emerging from the US presidential election identifies several problems that mainstream analyses have yet to address: ‘the appeal of identity, attachments to it and investments in it’. Hashtag-ready statements of identity, such as Clinton’s ‘I’m with Her’ slogan, utilise what Dean refers to as ‘affective networks of communicative capitalism’, whereby mass personalised media is used by individuals to circulate feelings and opinions, and identify enemies. This form of ‘weaponized identity politics’ does little to understand or challenge the underlying foundations that block solidarities and real capacity for change (Dean 2016). In the same vein, the need to be attentive to the ‘politics of identity’ remains important, lest we restrict the parameters of debate and fail to thoroughly analyse identity. The politics of identity can be a wider lens through which to examine seismic and everyday phenomena, because a politics of identity is concerned with how identity works, and the effects (and affects) it produces. When we speak of ‘identity’ we are not simply classifying but, rather, engaging in a complex series of meanings, intersections and possibilities of being, and relating that construct to the fabric of social, political, cultural and economic life. Identity underscores how collectives and individuals interact, their subjectivities, and how they manage complex problems and challenges. Naming and categorising is a vital part of identity work and is political. But

Making and disrupting identity3 understanding and analysing how a politics of identity works requires further questions. Writing before Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, psychologists Stephen Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam maintained that Trump’s success was attributable not only to his political rallies, which were carefully orchestrated performances (‘identity festivals’), but also to his ability to be a successful ‘identity entrepreneur’ – ‘in essence, his ability to represent himself and his platform in ways that resonate with his wouldbe followers’ experience of their world’ (Reicher and Haslam 2016). When elites enunciate their vision of nation and community, what sort of politics of identity underscores such discourses, and how does it structure and produce specific debates about ourselves (and others)? How is identity performed and performative? How do language, discourse and narrative shape meaning and identities, and what ‘work’ do emotional and affective cues and appeals do? How do we use technology, media, images and other forms of communication to express ideas about identity? How is power deployed in claims about identity? In our ‘post-factual’ age, where untruths and inaccuracies are consumed and circulated as ‘truth’, and established understandings of politics and society are fraying, questions about how we form our identities and see others hold great importance, because identity plays a role in how we are constituted and how we regard others, and has meaning for our future choices.

Problems of identity, approaches to identity Although identity pervades the human experience and constitutes the subjectivities of individuals, nations, groups, ethnicities, religions and other collective formations, it remains a ‘slippery’ concept (Buckingham 2008, 1; Connolly 1991, 64; Lawler 2014, 1). Analyses often begin by invoking the Latin derivative – idem (‘same’) – which establishes identity as referring to ‘identical’, or the notion that we are identical with ourselves but also others (Buckingham 2008, 1; Jenkins 2008, 16–17; Lawler 2014, 9). Dictionary definitions, however, impart an older, ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘jurisprudential’ usage of the term, which is concerned with legally naming or associating ‘things’, such as the legal name for an entity or individual (Descombes 2016, 4; Fearon 1999, 8). The political usage of ‘identity’ in English-speaking nations is only a recent development, traced to Erik Erikson’s coinage of the term ‘identity crisis’. Erikson’s psychosocial work of the 1950s and 1960s examined the loss or weakening of identity in adolescent subjects and soldiers returning from the Pacific in the Second World War. ‘Identity crisis’ came to signify an inability to maintain a consistent self (Descombes 2016, 17–18; Fearon 1999, 9; Stokes 1997, 2). Changes or challenges to established identities invoke notions of crisis and uncertainty. In this vein, political psychologists have elaborated Erikson’s concept of identity crises further through ontological insecurity,

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which refers to the idea of certainty of self, or the ‘subjective sense of who one is, which enables and motivates action and choice’ (Mitzen 2006, 344). In the context of globalisation – the opening of borders, rapid communication, proliferation of technologies, movement of peoples, trade, markets and the spread of ideas – core understandings of identity are seen to be breaking down and developing in different ways. Social theorists have drawn attention to the critical implications for human subjectivity that are part of these processes, particularly in the ‘posthuman age’ where processes of globalisation, information- and bio-technologies impact subjectivity (Elliott 2016, 2). Dislocation, job losses, economic and social changes and cultural shifts affect not only routines but understandings of self and one’s place in the world. Despite many arguing that such changes promote new opportunities, there is also a withdrawal into a defence of the self, and a desire to reaffirm selfidentity (Kinnvall 2004, 742; Parekh 2008) or appeals to ‘authentic’ identities. Globalisation brings about a desire to return to an imagined homogeneity in the face of such changes, evidenced in the rise of right-wing populism across Europe, North America and elsewhere. The more porous nature of identity is also reflected in how citizens see themselves. A BBC World Service poll conducted in 2016 found more people from emerging economies identifying themselves as global rather than national citizens. This was particularly the case in Nigeria, China and Peru, where over 70 per cent of respondents saw themselves as global citizens. The same poll showed the trend in industrialised nations, such as Germany (30 per cent, the lowest since polling began in 2001), to be lower, explained by economic pressures and immigration (Grimley 2016). Knowing ‘who we are’ is a foundational claim about identity, which Jenkins defines as the ‘human capacity – rooted in language – to know “who’s who”’. This basic form of categorisation contributes to social reality; furthermore, our own self-perceptions are ‘intimately related to who we think others are, and vice versa’ (Jenkins 2008, 5 and 12, italics in original). Efforts to analyse identity involve categorisation, such as identifying personal, societal, corporate and collective levels. These divisions are predicated on national, cultural, religious, economic and ideological grounds. Among scholars, there is agreement that identity is a process (‘identification’), but they differ to various degrees on the question of whether it is a thing that individuals or groups ‘possess’ or whether identity determines behaviour or actions (Buckingham 2008, 1; Jenkins 2008, 5 and 13). Various approaches focus on explaining identity or using identity as an explanatory tool to establish causality (Fearon 1999). Traditional theories of international relations, for instance, have a limited view of identity, assuming that the identities of states are pregiven. Rationalist theories, such as realism, argue that states are ‘like units’ and behave according to their capabilities and interests. For liberals, it is a

Making and disrupting identity5 mosaic of individual and group interests that are contained within the ‘state’ (Guillaume 2010, 13). Yet, individual and collective identities cannot form without exposure to and engagement with the outside world and others; it is through interaction that identity forms, and the relationship is co-constitutive, a point taken up by social constructivism in international relations. Here, identity explains the behaviour of actors and is central to how interests are defined through social interaction and intersubjective meanings rather than given (Adler 1997; Fierke and Jørgensen 2001; Hopf 1998; Wendt 1994). The tendency to regard cultural, national or religious groups as a singular identity is likewise problematic, because ‘solidarist’ approaches deny the multiple possibilities of identity, obscuring how we engage, refer to or prioritise our different identities and associations, depending on context (Sen 2006, xii). Actors experience a hierarchy of multiple, and at times competing, identities. Singular conceptualisations of identity also fail to consider intersectionality, where other axes of difference such as ethnicity, religion, caste, ability, gender and sexuality alter the meaning of an identity category or intersect with additional forms of domination or subjugation (Crenshaw 1991). Sociologists have long understood identity as a process undertaken in interaction with others, in social and cultural contexts. From Mead’s symbolic interactionism (1934) to Goffman’s dramaturgy (1956), sociologists draw on varying metaphors for the way that identity is ‘done’. Fenstermaker and West’s (2002) conceptualisation of ‘doing difference’ and Butler’s ‘performativity’ belie that there is any true self underneath the doing; this has ontological implications for identity as a concept, implying that identity itself is an ‘empty’ category, ‘real’ only in so far as it is ‘performatively constituted’ through citational practices (Butler 2011, 1999). Categorising identity is complicated, because it is multiple, relational and processual, rather than primordial or given (Berger and Luckmann 1991, 194; Guillaume 2010, 12–9; Lawler 2014, 5–6). Moreover, temporality, binaries and discourse have significant meaning for how we understand identity. Identity varies over time and context, and does not remain static. ‘National identity’, for example, is not singular but is the product of contested and multiple readings and hierarchies of identity. Claims to an innate national identity are problematic because the nation-state is never coterminous with itself over time and space. There is no ‘natural’ identity, particularly when it comes to the nation. Rather, identity is ‘congealed into a “fact”, a “given”, precisely because it had been a fiction … an unfinished task’ (Bauman 2004, 20, italics in original). Likewise, Connolly speaks of the tendencies to ‘congeal established identities into fixed forms, thought and lived as if their structure expressed the true order of things’ (Connolly 1991, 64). For Stuart Hall, there is a ‘constitutive outside’ to identity and the unity upon which identities proclaim are built on power and exclusion (Lawler 2014, 12). Deconstructing

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the binaries of identity (self/other, homogeneity/heterogeneity, or sameness/ difference) demonstrates the exclusionary relationship that operates in such oppositional constructs, and how each binary has a hierarchy of value or violence (Hall [1996] 2013, 18). Through language and discourse, the contingent and unfixed meanings associated with ‘stable’ identities come under closer scrutiny, revealing silences and power relations. Discourses are ‘systems of meaningful practices that form the identities of subjects and objects’; they draw the ‘political frontiers between “insiders” and “outsiders”‘ (Howarth and Stavrakakis 2000, 3–4; cf. Mole 2007, 18). Foucault’s genealogical works were careful interrogations of the ways that discourses shape the subjectivities of individuals to understand themselves in certain ways, based on the assumption that ‘relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, c­irculation and functioning of a discourse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth’ (Foucault 1980, 93). Identity matters because it constitutes subjectivity – but how that subjectivity is constituted reveals its inherently unstable and problematic nature. Discursive approaches to identity unveil the power relations that underscore identity and meanings (Fairclough and Wodak 1997) and set the parameters of possibility and subjectivity (Campbell 1998; Epstein 2011; Guillaume 2010; Weber 1998; Zehfuss 2002). These ‘post-identity’ approaches ‘reconceptualize identity as a category through dissections of subjectivization, positionality and normativity’ (Cryderman 2013, 19). Beyond these continuing debates on the nature and content of identity, it has also been argued that we should ‘forget’ identity, or that identity as a concept is exhausted. The latter view has been taken up by the ‘post postidentity’ or ‘anti-identity’ camp, which ‘extol[s] universality and censure[s] identitarian logic’ (Cryderman 2013, 20; Moran 2015). Brubaker and Cooper (2000, 1) argue that identity has been overused and oversubscribed as an analytical category, and has come to ‘mean too much … too little … or nothing at all’. Fearon, on the other hand, suggests that rather than ‘banish’ identity, we might do better to ‘dispense with “identity” and analyse instead the politics of social categories and the political implications of desires for dignity, honor, and self-respect’ (Fearon 1999, 37). Our contention is that identity still matters, and continues to evolve both materially and conceptually with significant political, social, cultural and economic effects. Without an exploration of the ways in which the politics of identity works, or underscores how we define and set the limits for possible human action and activity, we omit an essential analysis of the human experience. It is also imperative that claims made under the guise of identity be critically examined. The chapters in this edited collection aim to do this across a range of empirical case studies that cover the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, South America and the Middle East,

Making and disrupting identity7 through primary material and interdisciplinary frameworks. The rationale of this edited collection is to explore the ways in which ‘identity’ is constituted, contested and ruptured. We aim to explore how identities continue to be performed, transformed and (re)invented through place, space and discourse, their contingent and fluid nature, and the tensions and constraints that result. The collection gives space to how we can imagine possible alternative identities, or reconstruct identity in ways that produce different meanings and possibilities in collective and individual subjectivities. It also points to the co-constituted and contingent nature of identity across the individual, state and international level.

Themes: making, displacing and contesting identity The book is divided across three parts and themes. The first part is concerned with the ways in which identity is established and consolidated, and the inherently contingent nature of identity in the processes of its construction. In Chapter 2, Chris Mudaliar examines the discursive role of constitutions in identity making in Fiji after independence. In the post-colonial Fijian context, constitutions are read as discursive tools that are imbued with historical significance and questions of power relations. Since 1970, Fijian identity has been defined in ethno-nationalist terms; efforts to reimagine a different Fijian identity under the banner of iTaukei in the 2013 constitution put forward by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama contextualises the complexities of national identity in the Melanesian context. In Chapter 3, Katie Linnane explores how political elites have imagined Australian identity in their foreign policy articulations. Focusing on the different conceptualisations of Australian identity in the 1990s under prime ministers John Howard and Paul Keating, Linnane examines how the contrasting political ideologies of both leaders drove political and public discourse on national identity and shaped Australia’s past and future self-image in significant ways. In Chapter 4, Sarah Smith explores constructed gendered identities in peacebuilding through the case study of Timor-Leste. The chapter focuses on women, arguing that constructed gendered identities mediate both the representation of women in post-conflict settings and the roles women can undertake in building peace. Their exclusion through constructs of gendered identities represents complications for notions of inclusivity in peacebuilding. Gëzim Visoka continues in the vein of peace and conflict in Chapter 5 with a focus on the agents of peace and how ideas about their role and identity inform practice. This study considers how place, habitus and performative roles shape the identity of agents in practice. In doing so, Visoka aims to bypass exclusionary dichotomies and offer a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of post-conflict societies through critical hermeneutics and human geography.

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The politics of identity

Establishing identity also involves ruptures or forms of displacement, which the second part of the book examines in closer detail. Hind Ghandour shows how Palestinians in Lebanon have reinterpreted ideas of identity and agency through the process of tawtin (naturalisation). Tawtin has been a controversial issue because it is underpinned by notions of assimilation to the Lebanese state, which has been opposed by many Palestinian refugees. Ghandour’s study has important implications for understanding identity, rights and citizenship against a backdrop of intractable conflict, the movement of people, agency and identity. Along a similar path, in Chapter 7 Riccardo Armillei’s focus on the Romani people in Italy also engages with questions of agency and identity. Armillei examines how space has shaped identity. Here, the Romanies were treated as a problematic nomad community, the solution to which involved interventions that were based on the ‘camp’. This ghetto-like space was used as the main tool for the re-education and inclusion of the Romani population within mainstream society. Yet from this space – the campi nomadi (nomad camps) – a ‘bottom up’ opposition formed. The Romani communities living in the camps saw themselves not as victims but, rather, as fighters or warriors, deploying the camp to their benefit. Alongside marginalisation, the camps system also produced significant practices of resistance and self-ghettoisation within the camps. In Chapter 8, Louise Pears explores the interaction of popular culture, geopolitics and identity through her examination of the popular television series Homeland. Drawing on narrative theory, the chapter foregrounds how stories matter – in particular, how television shows are a site of gendered, raced and nationalised identities and how audiences make sense and meaning of such tales. In bringing together work on identity, narrative and security and international relations, Pears demonstrates how popular culture serves as an important shaper of identity, but that this process is not entirely given or one-way. The ability of audiences to interpret notions of identity, security and power indicates that the politics of identity requires multiple meanings and contexts. In Chapter 9, Helen Berents examines internal displacement and belonging in Colombia, foregrounding the lived, everyday experiences of those internally displaced by conflict and marginalised by poverty. Questions of citizenship, power and everyday politics actively construct identity to resist stigmatisation and exclusion. In attempting to find ways of recognising such communities beyond the restrictive formalised bounds of government definitions, a local, everydaybased politics of identity and belonging emerges. The final part of the book examines contested identities. Efforts to reconstitute or produce a different identity are the subject of Chapter 10, where Annika Bergman Rosamond and Christine Agius examine the redirection of Sweden’s security and defence policy towards a more militaristic turn through questions of identity and memory. The chapter explores the accompanying

Making and disrupting identity9 shifts in identity that make this transition seemingly ‘natural’ and in keeping with Sweden’s tradition of active internationalism, peacekeeping and its self-image as a ‘good state’. Significantly, the chapter examines how memory discourses work in circuitous ways to justify and naturalise new actions, policies and practices whilst reconstituting identity in the process. In Chapter 11, Ted Svensson examines the complexities of discrimination in the case of Dalit identity through a focus on the expansion of the scope of Dalit sameness. The notion of a shared, expansive Dalit identity beyond local or national contexts has allowed both for a global layer of activism to develop and for formerly disparate groups or communities to affiliate themselves with the cause against casteist perceptions of pollution, hierarchy and status. Svensson examines the outcomes and consequences of this development and its implications for identity. Paul Kramer engages assemblage theory and the notion of the ‘public sphere’ to understand how populations are governed in Chapter 12. Using the concept of the queer common, questions of identity are explored through space and sexuality in the case of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013 and the role of the LGBTQ community in state–societal relations. Kramer’s study points to a complex relationship between those considered ‘outside’ the state and those considered to constitute the ‘norm’ and institutions of the state. In the final chapter, using queer theory, Lucy Nicholas critically explores the limits to tolerance discourses for fostering truly positive intergroup relations in a context of prejudice. Using Australian case studies that seek to go beyond tolerance for minority groups, towards celebration of differences, the chapter outlines how the contact hypothesis from social psychology can be developed and extended alongside queer ethics to offer a practical solution for how people may have better, more enabling relations with individuals different from themselves, without collapsing back into homogenising group identities. It considers the model of ‘allophilia’ (love of the other) from social psychology, alongside queer theory ethics, to sketch an alternative sociality that is enabling but not homogenising.

References Adler, E. 1997. “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 3 (3): 319–59. Bauman, Z. 2004. Identity. Oxford: Polity Press. Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann. 1971. The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin Press. Bernstein, M. 2005. “Identity Politics.” Annual Review of Sociology 31 (1): 47–74. Bernstein, M. and V. Taylor. 2013. “Identity Politics.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Social and Political Movements, edited by D. A. Snow, D. della Porta, B. Klandermans and D. McAdams, 1–4. London: Blackwell. Brubaker, R. and F. Cooper. 2000. “Beyond ‘Identity’.” Theory and Society 29 (1): 1–47.

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Buckingham, D. 2008. “Introducing Identity.” In Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, edited by D. Buckingham, 1–24. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Butler, J. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. —— 2011. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. Abingdon: Routledge. Campbell, D. 1998. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Connolly, W. E. 1991. Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations Of Political Paradox. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Crenshaw, K. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color”, Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99. Cryderman, K. 2013. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Theory of Exhaustion and the Question of Identity.” In Beyond Postmodernism: Onto the Postcomtemporary, edited by C. K. Brooks, 18–32. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dean, J. 2016. “Not Us, Me.” Verso Blog. 26 November. http://www.versobooks.com/ blogs/2970-not-us-me. Descombes, V. 2016. Puzzling Identities. Translated by S. A. Schwartz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Elliott, A. 2016. Identity Troubles. An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Epstein, C. 2011. “Who Speaks? Discourse, the Subject and the Study of Identity in International Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 17 (2): 327–50. Fairclough, N. and R. Wodak. 1997. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Discourse as Social Interaction. Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction, edited by T. van Dijk, 258–84. London: Sage. Fearon, J. D. 1999. “What is Identity (as We now Use the Word)?” Stanford University, 3 November. https://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/ wp-content/uploads/2013/10/What-is-Identity-as-we-now-use-the-word-.pdf. Fenstermaker, S. and C. West, eds. 2002. Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power and Institutional Change. London: Routledge. Fierke, K. and K. E. Jørgensen, eds. 2001. Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation. London: M. E. Sharpe. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972– 1977. Brighton: Harvester Press. Fox Piven, F. 1995. “Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics.” Socialist Register 31: 102–16. Goffman, E. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Grimley, N. 2016. “Identity 2016: ‘Global Citizenship’ Rising, Poll Suggests.” BBC News, 28 April. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-36139904. Guillaume, X. 2010. International Relations and Identity: A Dialogical Approach. Abingdon: Routledge. Hall, S. [1996] 2013. “Who Needs Identity?” In Identity: A Reader, edited by P. Du Gay, J. Evans. and P. Redman, 15–30. London: Sage.

Making and disrupting identity11 Hopf, T. 1998. “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory.” International Security 23: 171–200. Howarth, D. R. and Y. Stavrakakis. 2000. “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis.” In Discourse Theory and Political Analysis, edited by D. Howarth, A. Norval and Y. Stavrakakis, 1–23. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jenkins, R. 2008. Social Identity, Third Edition. London: Routledge. Judis, J. B. 2016. “Why Identity Politics Couldn’t Clinch a Clinton Win.” Washington Post, 11 November. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-identitypolitics-couldnt-clinch-a-clinton-win/2016/11/11/ed3bf966-a773–11e6–8fc0– 7be8f848c492_story.html. Kinnvall, C. 2004. “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity and the Search for Ontological Security.” Political Psychology 25 (5): 741–67. Knowles, E. D. and L. R. Tropp. 2016 “Donald Trump and the Rise of White Identity in Politics.” The Conversation, 21 October. https://theconversation.com/donaldtrump-and-the-rise-of-white-identity-in-politics-67037. Lawler, S. 2014. Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mead, G. H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitzen, J. 2006. “Ontological Security in World Politics: State, Identity and the Security Dilemma.” European Journal of International Relations 12 (3): 341–70. Mole, R. 2007. “Discursive Identities/Identity Discourses and Political Power.” In Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics, edited by R. Mole, 1–24. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Moran, M. 2015. Identity and Capitalism. London: Sage. Parekh, B. 2008. A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdependent World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Reicher, S. and S. Haslam. 2016. “The Politics of Hope: Donald Trump as an Entrepreneur of Identity.” Scientific American. 19 November. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-politics-of-hope-donald-trump-as-an-entrepreneurof-identity/. Sen, A. 2006. Identity and Violence. London: Penguin. Slater, T. 2016. “Why Clinton’s Identity Politics Backfired.” Spiked, 10 November. http://www.wsj.com/articles/mistaken-identity-politics-1478888487. Spicer, A. 2016. “The UK is in Brexistential Crisis. Is There a Way Forward?” Guardian, 1 July. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/01/uk-brexit-brexistential-vote-leave-eu-britain. Stokes, G. 1997. “Introduction.” In The Politics of Identity in Australia, edited by G. Stokes, 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taranto, J. 2016. “Mistaken Identity Politics.” Wall Street Journal, 11 November. http://www.wsj.com/articles/mistaken-identity-politics-1478888487 Weber, C. 1998. “Performative States.” Millennium 27 (1): 77–95. Wendt, A. 1994. “Collective Identity Formation and the International State.” American Political Science Review 88 (2): 384–96. Zehfuss, M. 2002 Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part I

Establishing and consolidating identity

2

Co-constituting Fijian identity: the role of constitutions in Fijian national identity Christopher Mudaliar

Identity is often assumed to be something that can be possessed and retained by actors, rather than contestable and multiple. Rather than possessing an ‘innateness’, identity can be contingent upon a range of inter-subjective meanings that are generated by social interaction (Howarth 2005). These social interactions generally rely upon and are expressed mainly through language and other forms of communication (Mead 1982). This situates identity as a relational process that is shaped by its relationship to other meanings. However, this also necessitates that identity must also be understood within the specific discursive context that first gave rise to those meanings (Torfing 2005, 14). The discursive context surrounding identity formation and maintenance can be viewed as highly contested, where political actors attempt to wield greater influence over discursive contexts and, by extension, identity (Howarth 2005, 336). Exploring constitutions offers a unique picture into this process. As a discursive tool, constitutions are responsible for both forming and maintaining identities. This is because constitutions attempt to constitute who ‘the people’ are by defining their rights vis-à-vis the state. Tushnet explains that if ‘the people’ changes, so too must a constitution, as the reformed ‘people’ themselves need to be re-established through a new constitution that redefines their new relation to the state. This means that constitutions act as a conduit of multiple discourses on identity within a state, seeking to both constitute the people as they are and simultaneously make them into something else (Tushnet 2010, 672). Similarly, they are often designed within political and discursive contexts. The intersection between the identity of ‘the people’ and the forging and reforging of constitutions is seldom explored within the literature (Lerner 2010, 69), and cases that explore the link between constitution making and national identity are generally Eurocentric (Rosenfeld 2010, 209).

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Fiji offers an apt case study to examine this relationship within a divided society, where the identity of ‘the people’ is often muddied. Regarded as an unstable state due to a lack of national cohesiveness – attributed to colonial legacies (Akram-Lodhi 2000; Lal 2006; Mishra 2000) – Fiji has seen four constitutions implemented since independence in 1970. Colonialism allowed and perpetuated an artificial ethnic divide drawn between indigenous Fijians and indentured Indian labourers. Repercussions of the colonial period saw these ethnic groups develop different ideas of what constituted ‘the people’ in post-independence Fiji. The implication of this is that identity became a salient force in Fijian politics, with state apparatus becoming arenas of identity contestation. Exemplified by ethno-nationalist coups in 1987 and 2000, certain state apparatus – like constitutions – saw reform, so that the relationship between state and people only reinforced certain representations of ‘the people’s’ identity. These reforms often sought to encode exclusive indigenous Fijian identity as being representative of the national identity to legitimate political power. The introduction of the 2013 constitution by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama – who rose to power on the back of a coup in 2006 – represents a rupture in the exclusive use of national identity within Fiji. Advocating that his coup was based upon a need for the removal of destabilising ethnic-based politics, Bainimarama introduced new terms within the 2013 constitution to emphasise inclusiveness. This included renaming indigenous Fijians as ‘iTaukei’ so as to open up space for the previously contested term ‘Fijian’ to become an encompassing term for all citizens of Fiji, instead of being ethnically exclusive. The aim of this chapter is to examine how the post-independence constitutions of Fiji, from 1970 to 2013, can be read as important discursive tools that reflect, produce and set the parameters of identity. The chapter opens with a discussion about the co-constitutive role constitutions play in identity formation, acting both as products and as influencers of identity. Using discourse analysis, it considers how constitutions themselves can be read as discourses, since their initial implementation represents a culmination of competing social interactions. Yet they also influence and shape future discourses because they carry politically salient text that defines the rights afforded to particular identities within a state. Yet constitutions do not exist in a vacuum; context is vital to understanding how each constitution represented particular discourses of identity and how notions of ‘the people’ are challenged in a divided context. Melanesian politics offers a unique reading of identity that is not often found in other contexts because of its political fluidity – which offers a number of potential examples, like Fiji, to explore how multiple identity discourses intersect within politically fluid states. The role of colonialism in Fiji is then explored in relation to how exclusive views of national identity were woven into the constitutions of 1970, 1990 and 1997.

Co-constituting Fijian identity17 Here the link between the preambles of the constitutions and the electoral systems that reinforced a divisive identity is explored. The 2013 constitution, however, represents a different turn towards inclusiveness, and the final section explores Bainimarama’s vision of Fijian identity, and its implications.

Constituting the nation: approaches to identity and discourse Constitutions are generally examined for their institutional and procedural aspects, with focus upon either the act of constitution writing or the construction of democratic institutions (Lerner 2010, 69). Intersections between constitutions as discourses of identity are rarely discussed, largely owing to the problem of whether a collectivity of people exists prior to a constitution or if the process of constitution making actually creates the collectivity (Preuss 1993, 644). Trenz (2010, 97), drawing on Laclau and Mouffe (1985), argues that collective identity needs to be discursively represented, as it has no existence beyond discourse, since only discursive practices can constitute a collective identity. A constitution as a statement expressing who the collective ‘people’ are must then be considered as a discourse itself. Returning to Preuss’s problematisation, this means that a constitution occupies a unique discursive position within a state, as its setting of political parameters necessarily influences both representations of identity and how ‘the people’ can identify with this conception. This means that constitutions play dual roles as a discourse; by acting as an artefact containing the culmination of multiple discourses that occurred during constitution making, as well as by impacting on future discourses on identity by setting political parameters. In essence, if the discursive landscape surrounding a constitution’s drafting shifts over time, the political parameters set by a constitution will still remain within this new discursive landscape. The political parameters –and their discursive associations with identity – laid within the constitution will then be free to be reproduced and influence a new context. Rosenfeld sees constitution making as dependent upon ‘unique contextual and relational factors’ that must be analysed accordingly (2010, 209). Discourse analysis allows us to do this, since it seeks to understand the actions and perceptions within historical conditions that allowed such specific actions and perceptions to be considered legitimate in the first instance (Mole 2007, 18). Generally, discourse is considered to be ‘a group of statements which provides a language for talking about a particular kind of knowledge about a topic’ (Hall 1992, 201). Central to discourse analysis is the social construction of reality through social practices such as language (see also Chapter 10). Discourse analysis has numerous approaches and applications, however, this chapter focuses upon political discourse analysis. This regards discourse as a form of argumentation constructed by political actors about how social r­ eality

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should be conceptually mediated. This is because political actors engage in discourse through specific political actions and practices which are generally discursive (Dijk 1997, 13). In this sense, political discourse analysis looks at the underlying reasons for why particular meanings are included or excluded within a discursive sphere (Hansen 2005, 96). A culmination of these practices and actions can be identified through forms of text which have a political function or implication – like constitutions (Dijk 1997, 14). This is because political discourse analysis focuses upon looking at how discourses as ways of representing provide reasons for how agents act, tending to examine isolated parts of texts – like preambles and electoral systems – rather than more generic features (Fairclough 2013) Using political discourse analysis, the chapter focuses on how constitutions include or exclude certain themes to promote particular representations about the identity of ‘the people’. Drawing on constructivist literature from nationalism, this includes the invention of traditions to substantiate the identity of ‘the people’ through the reinforcement of symbolic and r­ itualistic themes (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Guibernau (2007, 11) views the creation of a common history as a fundamental method for defining who ‘the people’ are so as to establish a perception that the nation historically existed. This is because a defined national history has the power to include or exclude certain groups from identifying as ‘the people’ within a nation. Particular discourses on identity can also be reinforced by certain state institutions, like electoral systems. Constitutions attempt to tie both discourses of identity and acts of identification together through the discursive links they create between a preamble and electoral arrangements. Preambles attempt to identify the constituent people or the source of sovereignty through things like establishing a national history (Orgad 2010, 717). The electoral system specifies how the act of identifying as ‘the people’ will occur through voting. The discursive reinforcement between the preamble and electoral system is arguably the most salient part of a constitution, since it links a part widely read by the public and in educational sectors through the preamble with an act of identification through voting in a way designated by the electoral system. The inclusion or exclusion of identity within the preamble may translate into how the electoral system includes or excludes candidates with a different identity to the one expressed within the preamble. Lawson suggests that constitutional change in Fiji has often been used as a means of justification to overthrow democratically elected governments (Lawson 1992). This implies that because the identity of who ‘the people’ are is perceived to have changed, the constitution must be reconstituted as well. This certainly holds true in the cases of the Fijian constitutions of 1990, 1997 and 2013, which were redrafted and then codified particular views of national identity immediately following a power struggle

Co-constituting Fijian identity19 (as will be discussed below). This shows us that constitutions hold a pivotal role in the negotiation of national identity and that within divided states those that gain access to state apparatus often wish to codify particular views of identity that legitimise their position (Foster 1995, 1). Complicating matters is the post-colonial nature of Fiji, where post-colonialism ‘is not marked as a critical transcendence of colonial ideologies, but rather as the confusion of narratives, authorities and loyalties that characterises colonial aftermath’ (Otto and Thomas 1997, 7). This often means that when a colonial power leaves within a divided society like Fiji, the state often becomes the arena of identity negotiation itself (Leach et al. 2013). In the following section, I outline this colonial legacy by relating it to the construction of national identity within the ­independence constitution of 1970.

Fiji and colonialism Politics within Melanesia is often viewed as a complex arena because of a dichotomy between traditional and Western forms of political organisation (Dinnen 2008; Foster 1995). This is largely due to colonial influence within the area which often sought to hybridise Melanesian political systems through ‘indirect’ rule. Mamdani elaborates in the context of Sudan, stating that indirect rule was usually an enforcement of indigenous tradition by a colonial elite, seeking to institutionalise difference within the polity and society as a whole (Mamdani 2012). This was seen as a better option than the ‘direct’ colonial mode of rule, which often resulted in uprisings against the colonial ruler. However, indirect rule had the effect of transforming perceived or constructed racial differences into very real institutional inequalities (Loomba 2005, 191). There are suggestions that Fiji may have been one of the first cases of British indirect rule, with its lessons transported to African contexts later (Veracini 2008). One of the ways indirect rule occurred was through the establishment of a ‘chiefly’ political system over a ‘big man’ system (Norton 2000, 108). Pre-colonial Fiji housed two competing systems of traditional rule: a ‘chiefly’ system operated in the east, and ‘big man’ system in the west (Jolly 1992; Rutz 1995). The ‘chiefly’ political system is defined by chiefs who are the main political actors for a community, with power bestowed upon them through a hereditary lineage (Lawson 1992, 67). The chiefly system was a feature of the Polynesian model, which came about through contact with Tongans on the east coast of Fiji (Lawson 1990, 798). By contrast, a traditional Melanesian ‘big man’ system operated in the west, which was orientated around a political actor who gained power through persuasion and skill, and not hereditary lineage. The British supported the chiefly system, as it offered an easier route to

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centralising command, since they could install the British monarch as a legitimate high chief in the eyes of Fijian tradition. The official transfer of power to colonial rule was carried out under the Deed of Cession in 1874, where a ‘paramountcy’ provision for indigenous Fijians was added that later played a role in fuelling ethno-nationalist movements. ‘Paramountcy’ is a uniquely Fijian term that the Deed of Cession employed and which was assumed by indigenous Fijians to mean that colonialists would ensure indigenous Fijian interests would be maintained during colonial tasks (Lal 2010, 29). The term was later misappropriated by ethno-nationalists to imply that indigenous Fijians should always retain privileges over other ethnic groups in Fiji (Lal 2012, 496). The chiefly system was protected and extended during colonisation, as it was believed that doing so maintained a paramountcy of Fijian interests (Newbury 2011, 48). The establishment of the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) in 1876 acted in this capacity by mediating between the British and Fijians during the administration of colonial tasks (Thomas 1990, 152). The GCC could be described as a part of the indirect rule campaign, as its establishment effectively allowed colonial rule to be institutionalised through indigenous tradition enforced by the chiefly system. The introduction of an Indian labour population (who would total 61,000 by 1920), brought in to farm sugar cane at the request of the British, tested the extent of both paramountcy and indirect rule (Trnka 2005, 356). The expansion of Indians coincided with their calls for greater colonial integration, only to be denied by colonialists in favour of protecting existing indigenous land and chiefly political arrangements. The indentured Indian labour population had no ‘chief’ of their own, and so could not represent themselves within Fijian politics at the time (Newbury 2011, 48). Colonials shifted administration into two separate modes: indirect rule for the indigenous and direct rule for the Indian population. This lack of colonial integration came to a head when large parts of the indentured Indian community chose not to return to India and instead settled in Fiji (Lal 2008, 12). Doing so rendered the Indian population to a confined political position, as the colonialists had to balance both administrative systems against notions of paramountcy. Repercussions of the dual administrative systems arguably reinforced ideas within the indigenous community that the settling Indian population were not part of Fiji, as they were largely excluded from colonial decision making (Thomas 1990, 151). Compounding this exclusion further was the continued support from colonialists for organisations like the GCC and indigenous land-holding registries. These organisations allowed indigenous Fijians to maintain and extend certain privileges as they provided an unequal political (through the GCC) and socio-economic (land) playing field against the settling indentured population. The core of modern-day ethnic tensions in Fiji is often drawn to this unequal distribution of political

Co-constituting Fijian identity21 representation and land arrangements, caused by separate colonial administration systems. In the following section I examine how the constitution established at independence continued this legacy through an identity discourse.

A start: the 1970 Constitution The favourable arrangement between coloniser and the elite political class of indigenous chiefs meant there were few drivers behind the handing over of Independence in 1970, since the arrangement was deemed politically advantageous to both (Lawson 2010, 6). Described as a paternalistic relationship, it allowed the colonial-era status quo to remain relatively unchanged after independence, through both land arrangements and political rights. The ­introduction of communal rolls kept the political status quo by splitting the polity into ethnic blocs, allowing the continuance of colonial-era power relations between the ethnic groups, as indigenous chiefs continued to compose the political class. Economically, Indian Fijians (Indo-Fijians) still carried a vital role in the growth of Fiji’s economy through their adaption to a cash economy, so their autonomy could not be reduced further (Rutz 1987, 542). The immediate post-colonial period in Fiji can, then, be characterised as a tension between the ‘paramountcy’ of Fijian interests reconciled against Indo-Fijian economic growth that benefited the whole of Fiji. The paternalistic relationship underlying the creation of the 1970 constitution lent itself to displaying indigenous Fijian identity as representative of the nation’s identity. As will be shown, this happened through its explicit representation of history within the introductory text, and its encoding of a particular electoral system that reinforced this history by continuing paramountcy themes. The introductory text of the 1970 constitution begins by acknowledging Fiji’s Cession to the Queen in 1874, carried out under the Chiefs with the power of God. The opening statement argues a particular view about a perceived ‘Fijian’ nation through its referencing of Cession, which implies that Fiji existed as a unified state, and therefore nation, prior to independence. By citing the Chiefs, it explicitly states who the power of the Fijian state was vested in before Cession. The emphasis placed upon the Chiefs as having the power to cede Fiji glosses over the complicated arrangement of Fiji’s pre-­colonial political systems, and presents only a partial image of pre-colonial political configuration. In doing so, it presents Fiji as politically unified under one paramount Chief during Cession. In turn, this establishes a link with Cession that legitimises the Chiefly system’s position post-independence. There is a distinct possibility that the introductory text aimed to introduce a version of Fiji that could be politically unified only under a Chiefly system. The reference to God similarly promotes the Chiefs as partly religious symbols, reinforcing

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Christianity as a prominent part of the nation, despite its ethno-specific role in Fiji (Weir 2015). The idea of a chiefly political arrangement is reinforced through the following passage in Article 1 which calls for other ‘races’ in 1970 to adhere to the principles that were held within the Deed of Cession back in 1874. And Whereas many persons of all races and creeds have come from divers countries and have desired peace and prosperity under the precepts and principles of such Cessions1 … (Fijian constitution 1970, introductory text)

In terms of national identity, the introductory text so far presents indigenous Fijians as the natural owners of Fiji, and the Chiefs as their symbolic and political heads (Lawson 1992, 67). The emphasis placed upon who Fiji belonged to is important, as it establishes a history of Fiji with which only certain groups can identify. Drawing on Cession in 1874 acts as a two-fold way of doing this, as it allows only indigenous Fijians to identify with this history, while providing an easy legitimation for the exclusion of other identities within the nation. The mention of ‘many persons’ instead of naming them as ‘Fijians’ in Article 1 clarifies this, as it is meant to remind other races that they do not naturally belong in Fiji but, rather, exist within Fiji on the whim of the Chiefs who are sovereign Fijians. Similarly, it also presents ‘Fijian’ as being a term for only indigenous Fijians and relegates anyone who exists outside this as something ‘other’ by placing them antagonistically against ‘Fijian’. This is further enhanced by the electoral system within the constitution, which structurally reinforces the antagonistic use of ‘Fijian’. The constitution sets up ethnically based communal electoral rolls that limits the potential for Indo-Fijians to gain access to state power, unless aided by an indigenous Fijian coalition (Lal 2002, 153). The consequence of communal rolls forcibly unified indigenous and Indo-Fijians into respective groups, presenting each as homogenous political groups. This kind of homogenisation helped to transform the political sphere along ethnic lines, as it forced people, through voting, to recognise only their respective group identity. In doing so it provided a discursive link between the preamble, which emphasised exclusive indigenous Fijian identity, and an act of voting that reinforced the disparity between identity discourses through decreased political representation. The language and messages provided in the introductory text foreshadowed a constraint of the discourse on national identity in Fiji. The electoral process itself represented a form of discourse by attempting to reinforce the symbolic position of Chiefly authority – and, by extension, indigenous Fijian identity – into a structural one through communal electoral rolls. Whether by design or by the circumstances surrounding independence, the 1970 constitution promoted indigenous Fijian identity as being representative of the national identity.

Co-constituting Fijian identity23

The 1990 constitution: a nation under threat The period following independence saw Indo-Fijians seeking political parity through non-ethnic means by relying upon cross-ethnic labour parties for political representation (Ramesh 2010, 491). A broadening of GCC membership allowed sympathetic indigenous Fijian trade union members entry into the political ranks, adding further pressure towards a recognition that the political plights of Indo-Fijians had to be faced eventually (Norton 2009, 99). These alternative avenues for political representation precipitated discussions about changing land arrangements, in turn heightening ethno-nationalist fears of waning indigenous Fijian political influence and control over the nation. Amidst these events the 1987 election was called, which resulted in the election of an indigenous Fijian Prime Minister backed by the support of Indo-Fijians. This win, however, provided impetus for a military-led indigenous Fijian ethno-nationalist coup by Sitiveni Rabuka, who acted on perceptions that indigenous Fijians would suffer under an Indo-Fijian-backed government. He legitimised the coup by claiming that the 1970 constitution was inadequate for protecting the rights of indigenous Fijians, since it allowed an Indo-Fijian-backed party to gain political power. Rabuka’s coup rhetoric included a claim that the term ‘paramountcy’ within the Deed of Cession guaranteed indigenous Fijian political power, when in fact this was a misappropriation. The misappropriation reflects Rabuka’s own popular perceptions that the 1970 constitution provided Indo-Fijians with too many avenues for stating claims to the Fijian nation through political influence. At this point in time it might be said that perceptions surrounding who could access state power started to become coterminous with the identity of the Fijian nation. Constitutional challenge then represented an avenue for reworking or reemphasising certain aspects of the nation’s supposed identity. As such, the 1990 constitution was introduced by Rabuka with the explicit aim of restoring the paramountcy of indigenous Fijian interests – and, by extension, for the reinforcement of indigenous Fijian identity as the national identity (Lawson 1992). The 1990 constitution builds upon the version of history outlined in its predecessor, attempting to further clarify the exclusiveness of the nation. Article 2 initially highlights a belief by the constitution makers that the 1970 constitution was inadequate for protecting indigenous Fijian rights. It then applies this as evidence for claiming that certain indigenous Fijian rights should be enhanced. The main change the 1990 constitution makes is the way it explicitly displays a need for the safeguarding of indigenous Fijian rights, from a perception that other ethnic groups pose a threat to those rights.

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AND WHEREAS those events were occasioned by a widespread belief that the 1970 Constitution was inadequate to give protection to the interests of the indigenous Fijians, their values, traditions, customs way of life and economic well-being; AND WHEREAS the people of Fiji have expressed the desire to have a new Constitution for the advancement of their belief, rights and freedoms and accept that it is desirous that the 1970 Constitution be replaced so that the will of the people may be truly set forth and their hopes, aspirations and goals be achieved and thereby enshrined. (Fijian constitution, 1990, introductory text)

The result is a clarification of who should be excluded from Fijian national identity under the 1990 constitution. It does this by specifically excluding people through the phrase: ‘the people of Fiji have expressed the desire to have a new constitution’. Yet the only people of Fiji who would potentially express this desire would naturally be indigenous Fijians, as they would be the chief beneficiaries. As such, the nature of the phrase intends to exclude anyone who disagrees with the proposition of forming a new constitution founded upon the advancement of indigenous Fijian rights. The language used in Article 2 also falsely represents that a majority of citizens believed that the 1970 constitution was inadequate for protecting the rights of indigenous Fijians. The inclusive wording tacitly presents indigenous Fijians as again being a politically unified group, as it excludes anyone who disagrees (Billig 1995, 6). People who would have reason to disagree are then represented as something other than the constitution’s articulation of ‘Fijian’. The use of exclusive language supports a view of national identity that privileges indigenous Fijian identity, with indigenous Fijian identity being able to hold this privileged position only because of an outlined and official requisite history to draw from which can make such claims, thereby delegitimising competing claims from other ethnic groups. The introductory text also foreshadows a change in the electoral system through its calling into question of the 1970 constitution’s validity to facilitate the ‘will of the people’. This shows that the electoral process was singled out as inadequate for the protection of indigenous nation claims, since they were challenged cross-ethnically through the 1987 election. Given the unfavourable electoral result for indigenous Fijian ethno-nationalists in 1987, the whole constitution had to be reformulated, as there was a perception that their privileged representation as a dominant and unified group could be challenged by other groups gaining access to state power. The resulting electoral system again played a role in reinforcing the link with the preamble’s representation of identity through a stricter enforcement of political representation. It did this by stamping out any means of cross-ethnic voting, further reducing Indo-Fijian voting power and thereby guaranteeing an indigenous majority. Simultaneously, extra powers were added to the indigenous-only institution,

Co-constituting Fijian identity25 the GCC. The 1987 election result challenged the salience of indigenous Fijian identity, provoking Rabuka’s coup. The reforged 1990 constitution represented a means to reassert indigenous Fijian identity as a national identity by further privileging indigenous Fijian identity through the preamble again reinforced by electoral arrangements.

The 1997 constitution The following period between the release of the 1990 constitution and the 1997 constitution can be described as a continuation of Rabuka’s coup rhetoric. Rabuka promoted the 1990 constitution as a way to provoke Indo-Fijian emigration, envisioning a Fiji containing only indigenous Fijians (Trnka 2005, 355). The current Indo-Fijian population has dropped to around 33 per cent, which can be traced back to Rabuka’s initiatives (Lal 2013, 2). The decreased economic influence of Indo-Fijians on the economy, combined with international pressure, eventually made Rabuka’s ethno-centric position untenable. A redraft of the constitution was proposed in 1997 to soften ethnically divisive initiatives. The 1997 constitution was thus formed through a constitutional commission that included members from the Indo-Fijian community. The context that surrounded the release of the 1997 constitution varies from the previous two, as its commission input means that it was not solely crafted by the indigenous Fijian-dominated state. Another underlying factor was a recognition that a ‘fairer’ constitution was needed to maintain state stability. The 1997 constitution differs from the previous two introductory texts as it begins by announcing a multicultural Fiji (see below). This is followed by an identification of different ethnic groups and a recognition of their place within Fiji. The introductory text also calls for a common citizenship based on an undefined political and economic imperative. The departure from a racially motivated introductory text within the opening dialogue suggests that the call for a multicultural Fiji could coincide with a reformulation of historical foundations towards inclusivity. The previous two constitutions supported claims of a racially based Fiji through the presentation of an exclusive Fijian history. By suggesting that Fiji is now ‘multi-cultural’, the exclusiveness of history towards one ethnic group should be diminished. Article 3 selects some key elements of the introductory text to emphasise the placement of using words like ‘our’ and ‘all’. RECOGNIZING that the descendants of all those who chose to make their homes in these islands form our multi-cultural society; AFFIRMING the contributions of all communities to the well-being of that society, and the rich variety of their faiths, traditions, languages and cultures; TAKING PRIDE in our common citizenship and in the development of our economy and political institutions. (Fijian constitution, 1997, introductory text)

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These are important, because the claims towards multiculturalism allow these words to include other ethnic groups as part of the nation (Billig 1995, 6). Problematically, the multiculturist claims within the 1997 constitution are somewhat undermined by the retelling of national history, found earlier in the introductory text, that recounts Fiji’s constitutional history. This is because it discusses the role of Cession, the Chiefs and the message behind each coup. By doing so it excludes other representations of Fijian history, making multicultural claims less tenable, since it accounts only for the role that indigenous Fijians played in history. Further compounding the issue, the text reports that the 1997 constitution was allowed only under the blessing of the High Chiefs. This is complicated because it infers that once again a Fijian constitution could not be made without the approval of a Chief. This kind of provision infers that, despite the 1997 constitution’s claim of multiculturalism, a traditional indigenous Fijian organisation still figuratively operates as a higher authority and, importantly, is part of an organisation that has historically underpinned all the constitutions post-independence. The electoral system within the 1997 constitution wound back the harshness of the 1990 reforms by increasing the number of Indo-Fijian seats and reintroducing cross-ethnic voting through general seats. The system was also changed from a first-past-the-post to a preferential system, while retaining a guaranteed indigenous majority for the Senate. As such, it still retained elements of both the 1970 and 1990 constitutions, by once again linking the preamble to the communal rolls – but this time offering a genuine chance for increased Indo-Fijian political power if the stars aligned. Shifts in the political context leading up the 1997 constitution saw the reconstitution of the ‘people’ through a multicultural identity. The constitution attempted to both capture this and enforce it upon later citizens. It attempted to disempower and to render previously salient concepts of ­identity impotent in favour of a new, inclusive conceptualisation. The preamble and electoral system again were instrumental in this, as the multcultural i­ dentity purported in the preamble was reinforced through more equal electoral arrangements – although not complete abolition of communal rolls.

The 2013 constitution The new electoral laws and a return democracy saw the election of the first Indo-Fijian-led party to government in 2000. Keeping with the history of Fijian ethno-nationalist movements, the new government was promptly overthrown by a civilian-led coup by George Speight. Sharing similar aspirations to Rabuka, Speight reverted to arguments that the coup was legitimate because the Indo-Fijian government posed a threat to indigenous p ­ aramountcy and

Co-constituting Fijian identity27 identity. Speight’s actions paved the way for the installation of Laisenia Qarase as Prime Minister, an avid supporter of the ethno-­nationalist agenda (Ratuva 2011, 112). Qarase supported the marginalisation of the Indo-Fijian community by tolerating demeaning rhetoric by his ministers directed at the community, as well as extending the scope of affirmative-action initiatives for only indigenous Fijians (Lal 2013, 3). Qarase lasted until 2006, when he was deposed by a military coup led by indigenous Fijian Frank Bainimarama. Bainimarama described the coup as necessary to remove the ethnic nature of politics from Fiji (Ratuva 2011, 116). Considering his coup legitimate because of this, he moved towards initiatives that would hopefully lead to a future void of racial tensions. The methods of achieving this goal post-2006 have often been criticised as heavy handed, referring to a suppression of critical voices and civil liberties (Republika, May 2013). In response to this Bainimarama released a new constitution in 2013, with a promise to hold elections in late 2014 – which saw his democratic return. His election campaign centred on notions of equality and common citizenry for all Fijian citizens as ‘Fijians’. At first glance the 2013 constitution represents Fijian national history within a new paradigm. This shift is most evident within the preamble, laying out a new presentation of national history. Article 4 contains the preamble from the 2013 constitution, and within it we can see no explicit references to Fijian history, nor mention of Fiji’s existence as a pre-colonial national entity. The pushing of the term ‘iTaukei’ as the official signifier for indigenous Fijians is another important inclusion, along with a declaration that ‘Fijian’, as a term, will now encompass all ethnic groups within Fiji. WE, THE PEOPLE OF FIJI, RECOGNISING the indigenous people of iTaukei, their ownership of iTaukei lands, their unique culture, customs, traditions and language; RECOGNISING the indigenous people or the Rotuman from the island of Rotuma, their ownership of Rotuman lands, their unique culture, customs, traditions and language; RECOGNISING the descendants of the indentured laborers from British India and the Pacific Islands, their culture, customs, traditions and language; and RECOGNISING the descendants of the settlers and immigrants to Fiji, their culture, customs, traditions and language, DECLARE that we are all Fijians united by common and equal citizenry; RECOGNISE the Constitution as the supreme law of our country that provides the framework for the conduct of the Government and all Fijians; COMMIT ourselves to the recognition and protection of human rights and respect for human dignity; DECLARE our commitment to justice, national sovereignty and security, social and economic wellbeing, and safeguarding our environment … (Fijian constitution, 2013, preamble)

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The preamble starts with a degree of ambiguity about Fiji’s history, as it lacks the previously standardised elements of Fijian history, like the Deed of Cession, independence and recitals of constitutional history. The removal of these references from the 2013 constitution’s preamble signifies that the constitution makers have devised a new national history for Fiji. As a result, the scope of national inclusion through identity has the possibility of either being further limited, or expanded upon in later parts of the constitution. One indicator of a newly devised history is evidenced by the manipulation of language within the statement ‘indentured laborers from British India’. At first glance this statement contrasts starkly with the historic constitutions which either excluded the group from being mentioned alongside Fijian history or relegated them to ‘Indians’. The invocation of ‘indentured laborers’ alludes to the idea that those coming from British India to Fiji had a degree of choice, as opposed to arriving by chance. The degree of choice that this amounts to is contested, as being ‘indentured’ has often been argued as being a blurred line between accepting slavery or partaking in free labour market opportunities (Marsh 2012, 221). In either case, it has been shown that indenture has contributed to high mortality rates from alleged abuses, and has resulted in historical diaspora populations (Mongia 2004, 754). The experience of Indian labourers who stayed in Fiji is no exception (Gillion 1962). This could mean that the use of the word ‘indentured’ by constitution makers was embedded as a deliberate attempt to recognise the historical plight of IndoFijians. This lends itself to the idea that Indo-Fijians who are currently in Fiji are there because they are partly victims of historical circumstance. As such, recognition of this kind points to Indo-Fijians as being a named and accepted group within the official history of Fiji. The second indication is the (re)introduction of ‘iTaukei’ as an umbrella and exclusive term for indigenous Fijians’ representation, allowing ‘Fijian’ to be resignified as an inclusive term for all citizens. The implication of this is that it allows ‘Fijian’ to be inclusive of more groups than just indigenous Fijians, as iTaukei can be re-established as a signifier for indigenous Fijian identity. This in itself points towards two new conceptualisations of ethnic identity present within Fiji. Firstly, iTaukei attempts to shift what being indigenous Fijian represents; and secondly, the term allows ‘Fijian’ to act as a signifier for something else. This is a major shift, as previously the historic constitutions deemed ‘Fijian’ as an exclusive indigenous Fijian term, with other groups being defined in relation to it. A new conception of what it means to be indigenous Fijian through iTaukei is evidenced in the preamble by the employment of the word ‘unique’ preceding its introduction. References to the iTaukei and Rotuman people as having a unique culture signify that their culture and language exist only within Fiji, whereas other cultures within Fiji could foreseeably exist elsewhere. This sug-

Co-constituting Fijian identity29 gests that the constitution makers are attempting to link indigenous Fijian identity specifically with culture and language, rather than being coterminous with a politicised racial identity. Removing racial or ethnic connotations away from the term ‘Fijian’ could be further evidenced by the etymology of the word iTaukei, and how its original definition has been manipulated to a degree by constitution makers. Generally speaking, iTaukei has been defined as: native, original occupant, or owner (MacNaught 1982; Sahlins 2004), yet the term does contain a dualism.2 This shows that the foundation of iTaukei has been set relationally as a way of differentiating between those who possess land – either ancestrally or ­literally – and those that hold political power over the land. Yet, as we have seen, constitution makers are attempting to link iTaukei as being representative of a unique language and culture, and not necessarily as a distinct racial group nor land-owning unit. The ambiguity and progression of meanings around the term could form a basis for further study, as the original and relational nature of the term seems at odds with the official conception. Together these indicators point towards a reconceptualisation of Fijian national history carried out through a selective use of inclusive language. The 2013 constitution then attempts to change the parameters of what it means to have a Fijian identity from something historically intrinsic to just wanting to identify as Fijian. It does this by delineating previous representations of Fijian history so as to establish an ambiguous history that is inclusive of differing discourses of identity from other communities. Again, the electoral system within this constitution reinforces the inclusivity claims within the preamble by abolishing communal rolls and instituting a proportional system, which tends to include smaller parties and foster coalitions (O’Neil 2010, 135). They also individualise the voting process which might alleviate some of the institutionalised collective ethnic voting that the previous electoral systems enforced. The abolition of communal rolls – and associated ethnic identities – could have happened only with the resignifying of the term ‘Fijian’, which was possible only because of the introduced term ‘iTaukei’ taking up the mantle as an expression of indigenous Fijian identity. The electoral system then acts to reinforce the inclusiveness of Fijian identity through the voting process at every election.

Conclusion The constitutional history of Fiji shows how constitutions can be both influencers and shapers of identity. The renegotiation of identity during the reforging of constitutions represents the unique discursive positions that constitutions hold within a state. They attempt to both ‘take people as they are, and at the same moment, seek to make them something else’ (Tushnet

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2010, 672). This means that they are both influenced by the discourse that surrounded their conception, while attempting to influence and shape future discourses of identity. They do this by utilising discursive links between the preamble and electoral system, where the preamble acts as a soft influence, attempting to define the character of a nation’s identity, with the electoral system reinforcing this identity by offering a selection of representatives. In Fiji this meant that the selection of representatives was already preassigned through communal rolls, making the act of voting a forced act of identification towards a particular ethnic representative. The 1970 constitution set this up through its colonial roots, pushing a discourse of exclusive indigenous Fijian identity as representative of the nation. The challenging of this status quo through the 1987 election showed that identity discourses had shifted, conferring an identity crisis. Two options were available to respond to these shifts, either reconstituting the people according to the electoral result, or a re-emphasis of the original 1970 discourse. Given the political scenario, the latter prevailed, and resulted in the establishment of the 1990 constitution, which further pushed the bounds of indigenous Fijian identity as the constituent people. As time marched on the political ground shifted as Indo-Fijian emigration contributed to economic stagnation and, coupled with international pressure, forced a rethink of identity that prompted the drafting of yet another constitution in 1997. The 1997 constitution lessened the emphasis of exclusivity in identity and eventually saw the election of the first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister. Again, the colonial status quo was challenged and once again prompted a resurgence of exclusive indigenous Fijian notions of identity that were expressed within the 2000 coup. That coup was short lived, and another coup in 2006 saw the validity of protecting some inclusive notions of identity within the 1997 constitution by furthering them within the new 2013 constitution. These new, inclusive conceptions now exist within a new political scenario, attempting to render the previous exclusive discourses of identity impotent; whether this happens is yet to be seen. Fiji shows us that constitutions are important for understanding identity discourse, since they both influence and shape identity through intersecting with old and new contexts. The Fijian case study presents a unique example in a region where political scenarios frequently change and political systems co-constitute notions of identity. Colonial legacies and the ramifications of artificially imposed political systems within Fiji mark out this case study from European contexts. These legacies undermined pre-existing power relations in favour of colonial agendas, subsequently giving rise to discourses that have had lasting effects post-colonialism. Concepts of both power and rule under colonialism forced questions of identity to the surface as colonial discourses disrupted tradition in favour of modernising. Constitutions within these post-colonial states

Co-constituting Fijian identity31 acted as a discursive conduit for identity struggles, both seeking to recognise a traditional identity and attempting to shape it alongside modernity. The Fijian experience makes an important contribution to understanding this aspect of identity within a non-European and post-colonial context.

Notes 1 These cessions are not elaborated upon in the 1970 constitution but have been taken to mean that indigenous Fijians should retain paramountcy over other ethnic groups. 2 Sahlins’ (2004, 53) derivation shows that the term arose in relation to a dualism between ‘sea’ chiefs and ‘land’ chiefs, with iTaukei representing the original owners of the land if they were ruled by an immigrant ‘sea’ chief. It would then seem that at its core, iTaukei has previously been a relational term to describe those who have ancestral claims to land, and those who do not. This may explain why MacNaught (1982) says the term is often employed by indigenous Fijians to refer to themselves as against other races, as Indo-Fijians have traditionally sought more permanent land arrangements in Fiji, to the consternation of indigenous Fijians.

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3

Australian foreign policy and the vernacular of national belonging Katie Linnane

On 22 October 2014 a gunman opened fire on the Canadian National War Memorial and Houses of Parliament, killing a soldier on ceremonial duty and injuring three others. In expressing sympathy on behalf of all Australians, then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott (2013–15), announced: ‘today more than ever, Australians and Canadians are family’ (Wroe 2014). On the surface, such a statement of solidarity appeared both appropriate and unexceptional. In times of crisis or catastrophe, messages of support from world leaders are a prudent and expected measure of international diplomacy. Yet, never before had Abbott’s foreign policy language appeared quite so intimate and emotional. What was significant about this event that prompted the Prime Minister to claim familial links of this kind? International relations scholars who develop a concern for the way that language shapes our social world argue that the motivations behind foreign policy statements such as Abbott’s do not necessarily matter (see Campbell 1998; Doty 1993; Fierke 2002; Hansen 2006). What matters is how the language works to produce meaning. This insight requires an understanding of language as not simply a referential tool but the basis for frameworks of meaning, or discourses, that construct social reality. To speak of family is to evoke ideas of lineage and shared history. When Abbott pronounced Australia and Canada as ‘family’ he was engaging with a discourse that positions the two countries at home within the ‘Anglosphere’ – a space that provides for feelings of acceptance and security among English-speaking nations with cultural heritage originating in Britain. In this sense, the Prime Minister’s words were not simply performing a routine diplomatic function; they were also making a profound set of claims about Australian identity – of what it means to be Australian in the world. Abbott’s was not a novel construction of Australian identity and belonging; similar utterances by Australian prime ministers

The vernacular of national belonging35 regarding Australia’s place in the world have been a prominent and continuing feature of Australian foreign policy discourse since federation in 1901. Indeed, arguably, the majority of Australian prime ministers have articulated an image of Australia amongst the Anglosphere in view of its historical links and continuing political and military cooperation with Great Britain. However, not all Australian prime ministers have conceived of Australian identity in this way. Under the premiership of Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991–96) traditional notions of Australian subjectivity – of what it meant to be Australian – became fiercely contested. In a concerted departure from previous constructions of the nation, Keating’s national narrative featured Australia free of its constitutional commitments to Britain, and more readily associated with its trading partners in Asia. In response to the profound transformations occurring to the international system and a sustained period of national introspection precipitated by economic renewal at home, Keating identified the need to re-examine the bases for a coherent and shared national identity. How would a multicultural, secular, post-colonial Australia generate notions of loyalty and belonging amongst its citizenry? And how would it experience loyalty and belonging in the world? (Alomes 1988; Grimshaw et al. 1994; Hudson and Bolton 1997; Turner 1994) Addressing the Australian House of Representatives on 7 June 1995, Keating suggested that the answer would be found in an Australian republic, arguing that it would: ‘in our minds and in those of our neighbours, answer beyond doubt the perennial question of Australian identity – the question of who we are and what we stand for’ (Keating 1995, emphasis added). Rejecting the notion that Australia needed identity renewal, Keating’s successor, Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007), suggested that the ­perennial question plaguing Keating had long been answered, claiming with some confidence that ‘Australia brings with its role in the world certain ideas and values. Our place in the international system is informed by who we are and what we stand for’ (Howard 2005). In his efforts to reclaim the national story and re-establish Australia’s Anglo-Celtic heritage as the foundation for the values that bind the nation together, Howard constructed a counter-­ narrative to Keating’s in which the Liberal leader assured Australians that they could be already be certain of their identity, proud of their cultural traditions, assured of their constitutional monarchy and secure in alliance with ‘great and powerful friends’ Britain and the United States. This chapter is concerned with Australian foreign policy as a critical space in which Australian national identity is constructed and contested. In identifying key themes, images and stories or narratives within their foreign policies it will trace Keating and Howard’s overt and deliberate attempts to tailor Australian identity – its self-image, history and values – to suit their ­conception of Australia’s rightful place in the world, be it as part of a c­ omprehensive

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engagement with Asia or a recalibration back to the Anglosphere. Specifically, this chapter aims to uncover the way prime ministers Keating and Howard engaged with dominant foreign policy discourses to construct their conceptions of the nation and what this meant for Australian subjectivity. Through an analysis of key foreign policy texts and speeches it will examine how Keating and Howard constructed narratives of national identity in support of their foreign policy agendas, fixing them to the cultural landscape so that they might resonate with the domestic population. The result of their interventions was to ‘hail’ people into identities or subject positions, privileging certain identities over others and making way for different bases of belonging. As such, this chapter seeks to establish Australian foreign policy as part of a political project to define what it means to be Australian; to define who we are and what we stand for.

Contesting belonging in Australian foreign policy: history vs geography Discussions of where the nation belongs in the world are fundamental to the Australian identity project and have long been a ‘perennial theme in Australian foreign policy’ (Wesley 2007b, 20; see also Younane Brookes 2012). Inevitably, these discussions chart the tensions inherent in Australia’s Western cultural tradition and geographical proximity to Asia – between Australia’s history and its geography. Specifically, questions regarding Australia’s sense of place revolve around ‘the paradox of geographical proximity to, but cultural distance from, Asia and of geographic distance from, but cultural intimacy with, the Anglo-Saxon heartlands’ (Evans 2005, 25). A rich tradition of literature surveys the profound implications these tensions have had for Australia’s sense of self as a political community and as an independent state in international politics (see Dalrymple 2003; Higgot and Nossal 1997). Indeed, Evans has referred to it as Australia’s ‘enduring geopolitical dilemma’, arguing that ‘few societies have been shaped as dramatically by the contrast and contest between geography and history as Australia’ (Evans 2005, 25). The tensions between history and geography, between the temporal and spatial dimensions of Australian national identity, have played a crucial role in crafting Australia’s two enduring foreign policy traditions. The first, born of concerns regarding the indefensibility of the Australian continent, relates to a historical preoccupation with alliances from amongst the great Anglo-American powers (see Bell 1988). Initially driven by imperial loyalty and then bound by geographic necessity, the pursuit of national security through alliances with what Prime Minister Robert Menzies (1939–41 and 1949–66) referred to as ‘great and powerful friends’ has formed the bedrock of Australian defence policy since its inception. This national security logic

The vernacular of national belonging37 tended to reflect the dominant conception of the nation at home – AngloCeltic, English-speaking, Western, democratic, Christian – images that went largely uncontested as the conditions for national belonging. In constituting a ‘deep conservative attachment to British and American leadership’ (Dalrymple 2003, 61) and in engendering a somewhat pessimistic view of regional geopolitics, Australia’s alliance culture aligns most closely with the foreign policy orthodoxy of the Australian Liberal Party. Perhaps with the exception of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975–83), who wished to infuse Australian foreign affairs with a greater sense of liberal internationalism, Liberal Party prime ministers have generally taken a pragmatic approach to world politics, expressing scepticism at the effectiveness of international organisations like the United Nations, a preference for b ­ ilateralism and an unwavering commitment to Australia’s security alliances. Prime Minister John Howard was the exemplar in this regard. Shortly after the Howardled Liberal–National Coalition came to power in 1996, the government announced a departure from the foreign policy priorities of its predecessor, advocating an international agenda informed by a ‘hard-headed pursuit of the national interest’ (DFAT 1997). This realist, state-centric approach to foreign affairs that characterised Howard’s eleven years in office resulted in discernible ambivalence toward regional relations, renewed focus on security matters and the assertion of a distinct set of Australian values, steeped in the Western experience and secured by the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty) alliance. Australia’s second, more recently developed, foreign policy tradition involves embracing the transformation of formerly entrenched attitudes regarding a threatening Asia1 and engaging in a deliberate effort to forge links with and make a rightful place among the societies in its immediate region (see Goldsworthy and Edwards 2003). This historic shift in Australian attitudes toward the Asian region, while perhaps slow and unsteady, is attributable to several different developments both in Australia and in the broader geopolitical environment, from the end of the Second World War onwards. Britain, still recovering from the ravages of war and the steady dismantling of its empire, sought to redefine itself from imperial hub to pivotal member of the European Community, leaving Australia to look to its immediate region for trade and economic links. The United States had asserted itself as the dominant Western superpower, and in response to the rise of communism in Asia cast its security net westward across the Pacific, replacing Britain as Australia’s security guarantor. Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister and self-declared ‘Anglophile’, Robert Menzies, left office sounding the death knell for British race patriotism, which in turn made space for foreign relations that went beyond the familiar framework of the Commonwealth. And, rather belatedly, Australia’s almost constant post-war immigration programmes

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were extended to non-Europeans, leading to the final dissolution of the White Australia policy in 1973. Changes in Australian public attitudes to race and ethnicity, receding anxieties about Australia’s remoteness and security, changing economic and geopolitical realities in the Asian region itself and post-Cold War global redistributions of power and influence all created the conditions for an emerging sense that regional engagement was key to a more prosperous and independent future for Australia. Building on moves by Labor prime ministers Whitlam (1972–75) and Hawke (1983–91) toward greater diplomatic and cultural dialogue with Asia, Keating sought to tie Australia’s future to the rising economic fortunes of its neighbours by deepening engagement with the region, locating it as the site for multilateral trade and security initiatives such as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Regional Forum. Underpinning this approach was an understanding of Australia as a ‘middle power’2 and the potential for cooperation and influence involved in coupling this with a commitment to ‘good international citizenship’ – a distinctly Labor notion that involved the extension of moral responsibility beyond state borders to the wider global community. Keating’s enthusiasm for regional relations came to dominate his foreign policy agenda such that, despite Liberal Party attempts to deny them the monopoly, the Labor Party still has the greater purchase on ‘Asian engagement’ (see Brett 2005; Wesley 2007a). Certainly, Australia’s abiding foreign policy traditions – the pursuit of Anglo-American security alliances and Asian economic engagement – involves an implicit choice between bifurcating loyalties – between defending history and securing the future – two themes that polarised Australian identity debates in the 1990s. In a protracted struggle, Keating fought to forge a new future, while Howard sought to secure the past. Crucially, their divergent and competing conceptions of the nation and, by extension, the national interest had significant implications for Australian subjectivity and belonging.

Narrating belonging National identity is a slippery concept, not easy to capture or analyse (Billig 1995). We know that it matters because political leaders like Keating and Howard regularly refer to it. Indeed, scholars who argue that the nation is socially constructed rather than given, argue that it is only in references such as these that national identity is identifiable at all (Bellamy 2003). This claim relates to Benedict Anderson’s (1983) theorisation of the nation as an ‘imagined political community’ whereby individuals who might never be known to one another achieve a sense of collective ‘self-consciousness’ via “‘a stylised repetition of acts”’ that perform or narrate the nation into being (Butler, cited

The vernacular of national belonging39 in Campbell 1998, 10). These identity narratives – self-constitutive stories which link the past, present and future – establish feelings of connection and belonging that might not otherwise exist, consequently bestowing upon the nation a sense of validity, purpose and empowerment (Canovan 1996). Since ‘there is no essential common ground that binds a society together’ (Nabers 2009, 192), national identities rely on this process of repeated articulation; they are ‘in permanent need of reproduction’ (Campbell 1998, 12). As such, national identities can never be fully formed or settled, rather they are changeable and continuous and, as socially constructed and political, subject to contestation. This insight can be fruitfully linked to the field of international relations theory. Critical scholars understand foreign policy as a ‘privileged instance of the stylised repetition of acts’ that constitutes a state’s national identity (Campbell 1998, 11; see also Hansen 2006). Foreign policy relies upon representations of identity, the self-constitutive stories that produce the nation and define its interests (see also Chapter 10). This claim relates to the notion that language is productive and meaning is achieved through discourse. That is, the language we use to identify ‘things’ – ‘objects, subjects, states, living beings and material structures’ – is what bestows them with meaning (Hansen 2006, 18). Yet, as Fierke argues, we are not at liberty to give these ‘things’ ‘any meaning that we like’; meaning is not the property of individuals, it is ‘subject to the criteria of our social world’ (Fierke 2002, 346). Hopf refers to these shared ideas and concepts as ‘intersubjective meanings’, from which ‘we can understand action and behaviour’ (Hopf 1998, 173). When inter-subjective meanings achieve regularity and partial stability, discourses are established (Holland 2010). The social nature of discourse makes it inherently unstable and political, as contestations take place over which interpretations constitute common sense and consequently which ways of talking or acting are deemed acceptable or unacceptable (Weldes 1996). Within this world of competing and impermanent representations there can be no objective claim to reality; rather, reality constitutes a complex web of perspectives that achieve dominance via continuous articulation. Following this, foreign policy has a constitutive effect on national identity. That is, in comprising a productive process by which it instantiates a state’s identity – in repeatedly articulating who we are and what we stand for – foreign policy becomes a site in which the nation is produced and reproduced. With their unique capacity to speak on behalf of the national community, political leaders such as prime ministers have a pre-eminent role in the construction of identity via foreign policy. No other actor can make claims regarding who we are and what we stand for with quite the same authority and legitimacy. And yet, prime ministers are constrained by the discursive frameworks in which they operate because discourses are social and political. That

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is, in constructing particular images of Australia to support their foreign policies, in articulating who we are to justify what we stand for, prime ministers Keating and Howard could not simply weave an identity narrative according to their own personal conceptions of the nation; they needed to draw upon cultural cues – popularly held images, ideas and stories – that would resonate with their audience. Using the concept of ‘framing’, constructivist scholar Michael Barnett (1999) stresses the importance of cultural foundations for making foreign policies meaningful and legitimate. In conceptualising foreign policy as a process of negotiation between political leaders and the political community for whom they claim to speak, Barnett suggests that leaders articulate a direct relationship between a nation’s collective identity and its national interests to sell a policy decision to the electorate. Identity narratives are particularly important in this regard; they make up the cultural tool kit from which political actors draw, revising them to ‘frame’ foreign policies and bestow them with popular support. The result of these interventions is to construct an image of Australia, contestable and changeable, but nonetheless partially stable and dominant. The institutional authority to speak on behalf of the political community gives leaders purchase over who is included in their construction of nation and who is not, and consequently who may or may not experience belonging. They not only have the power to determine how the nation is constructed but also how national subjectivity – the idea or sense of who we are – is constituted (Burke 2008, 16). In their efforts to provide a theoretical framework for how identity is constructed through language, constructivist scholars borrow from Althusser’s concept of interpellation (1971). Interpellation is a linguistic process through which subjects are ‘hailed’ into a particular subject position, at once prescribing a specific identity and a particular way of functioning in the world. Here, the speaker makes an ideological representation that is consistent with the listener’s sense of self, and in doing so the speaker produces the listener’s identity. Put differently, interpellation ‘calls to us, tell us who we are, and in the moment of that calling we recognize ourselves’ (Finlayson 1996, 93). In the context of national identity, interpellation involves recruiting individuals as members of an ‘imagined community’ by drawing on representations of belonging. This can be as simple as using the terms ‘us’ and ‘we’, which can delineate who experiences belonging by hailing i­ndividuals into a collective identity with a core set of values (see also Chapter 12). Interpellation has not only identified them but also ascribed them with certain (national) characteristics. Finlayson, for example, employs interpellation to demonstrate how Ulster Loyalist discourses construct an image of a nation independent of Roman Catholicism and Irish nationalism. Key themes within Ulster Loyalism – religion, democracy and identity – reveal the manner and

The vernacular of national belonging41 extent to which subjects identify with Loyalist articulations (Finlayson 1996). In the context of US foreign policy, Weldes applies interpellation to her study of the Cuban Missile Crisis to demonstrate how specific identities are created, and how individuals come to identify with these subject-positions and so with the representations in which they appear. Once they identify with these subject-­ positions, the representations make sense to them and the power relations and interests entailed in them are naturalized. Thus, the representations appear to be common sense, to reflect ‘the way the world really is’. (Weldes 1996, 287)

Building on Althusser, both scholars expose the power of resonant claims to national community in delineating identities and interests, and highlight the utility of interpellation in mapping the relationship between the nation and the world. Former Prime Minister Abbott’s reference to Australia and Canada as family provides a useful example of interpellation. Simply by uttering words with which they would readily identify – ‘Australia’, ‘Canada’ and ‘family’ – Abbott ascribes the national subjects of Australia and Canada with characteristics common to both countries. He gives meaning to the word ‘Australia’ by invoking a shared history of English-settler colonialism that still strongly informs popular cultural attitudes. He also draws on secularism, democratic values, freedom of the individual, even a love of sport. Australians are then bestowed with those traits regardless of whether that is how they understand their ‘Australianness’. What is interesting about an appeal to international belonging such as Abbott’s is that it also performs a foreign policy purpose. In constructing an image of Australia and Australianness as akin to Canada and Canadianness, Abbott could also graft those nations together in a such a manner that made the confluence of their political agendas seem natural or expected. Canada’s Prime Minister at the time was Abbott’s political mentor, fellow conservative Stephen Harper, with whom Abbott shared a remarkably similar world-view (Wroe 2014). In addition to their attitudes toward small government and economic rationalism, the two leaders had comparable approaches to a range of global issues from climate change to international security. Abbott’s claims to familial ties could be understood as an attempt to foster some form of political accord with Canada (in the face of mounting pressures regarding action on climate change and in drumming up support for Australia’s anti-ISIS activism in the UN) by appealing to resonant themes of national identity and belonging in the world. Keating and Howard’s national identity narratives served their foreign policies in similar ways. For example, in pushing a regionally focused foreign policy agenda, Keating attempted to construct an identity to suit. This

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involved narrating a history of intolerance in which his fellow Australians were complicit. Less than a generation ago, we still lived in fear of Asia. We regarded our near neighbours with a mixture of ignorance, hostility and condescension. We are now much more part of the region. (Keating 1992, emphasis added)

In so doing, Keating was hailing Australians into a subject position whereby they, as Australians, could emerge from a past of prejudice to assume an identity commensurate with inclusivity, cooperation and progress; an identity befitting a nation at home in Asia. Correspondingly, when the Howard Government pledged Australia’s on-going assistance to the United States in fighting the war on terror, it did so in a manner in which military support was seen as consistent with an on-going feature of Australian identity: If we left this contest [war on terror] only to America, we would be leaving it to them to defend our rights and those of all other people of the world who have a commitment to freedom and liberty. We will not do that ... Australians have always been a people prepared to fight their own fights. (Howard, cited in McDonald 2005, 309)

Here, Prime Minister Howard’s attempt at justifying military assistance involves framing security policy so that it appears compatible with resonant identity narratives associated with Australia’s history as a reliable military ally. In hearing the Prime Minister’s words, individuals recognise themselves as the Australian subjects he addresses and in so doing assume the identity and values central to that subject position – a person who belongs to a national community with a proud military tradition and who espouses a commitment to freedom and liberty. This is how interpellation is achieved and policy legitimised; Australians are hailed into support for foreign policy with the power of identity and recognition. The political power of interpellation is reflected in the fact that it serves to privilege some identities over others. For example, despite his efforts to speak for the nation as a whole, Howard’s image of Australia as part of the Western tradition privileged themes that were, at their core, endemic to an established Anglo identity. It did not necessarily include ‘second wave’ immigrant Australians, nor did it encompass the Indigenous experience. Rather, these identities were marginalised, even silenced. Instead of constructing an image of Australia as culturally plural and democratically inclusive – a political community that required its members to share a sense of purpose by adhering to civic principles – Howard constructed a sense of nationhood that drew from cultural cues. Through his words, Howard was reconstituting Australian subjectivity according to his conception of the nation and where he understood it to belong in the world.

The vernacular of national belonging43 The way Australians experience belonging to the nation, whether culturally or politically defined, has always been intimately connected to how they would also experience belonging in the world. According to Howard’s construction of national identity, Australians would experience a natural affinity with the Anglo-sphere and the West in correspondence with a national identity that was distinctive, settled and culturally defined. This sense of belonging diverged considerably from the one Keating cultivated before him. Under Keating’s construction, Australians would share a sense of community with their neighbours in the Asia Pacific in view of a broader, fluid, more inclusive national identity.

Keating: a narrative of national reinvention and a political sense of belonging Keating’s notion of where Australia should experience belonging in the world was intimately connected with his sense of collective identity at home. Indeed, his political language over his period in office revealed his direct and explicit attempts to couple Australia’s identity with its future in Asia, using foreign policy as a space in which to articulate the need for a national reappraisal: We are seeing the nation fundamentally re-shaped and re-oriented: re-shaped as a modern, multicultural society and a diverse, productive and competitive economy; and re-oriented towards the countries of the region in which we live and where we know our future so substantially lies. (Keating 1995)

Keating’s identity project was, in part, a response to profound transformations to the international system precipitated by the end of the Cold War. No longer defined by their position on the east–west continuum, nation-states in the early 1990s were increasingly cooperating in regional blocs and Australian policy makers were keen to unlock the economic potential associated with East Asian dynamism. A policy in pursuit of closer economic engagement with ‘Asian tigers’ such as Singapore and South Korea was largely enabled by a series of economic reforms, initiated under Keating as Treasurer during the 1980s, that deregulated the economy, making Australia more internationally competitive. Following his success in instituting widespread economic reform as Treasurer, Prime Minister Keating pursued social policies that would best complement the partnership between his neoliberal agenda and the Labor welfare tradition. His aim was to create an internationally competitive Australia that combined social justice with economic rationalism. But more than this, the competitive edge Australia required involved it surpassing its identity and traditional values system (George 2009). To revise what he believed related to narrow conceptions of the nation, Prime Minister Keating constructed an

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identity narrative that was intended to break with a past of racial intolerance and establish a new collective sense of self. According to Keating, this more reflective Australia would be well equipped to confidently address any questions relating to who we are, having finally ‘emerged from the shadows of its British past, embraced a republican future, engaged with Asia and achieved a lasting reconciliation with its indigenous peoples’ (Curran 2004, 2). These revisions to Australian identity would enable a cosmopolitan future in which an independent, economically reformed and internationally competitive Australia would ‘seize the neoliberal moment’ and achieve a sense of belonging amongst its Asian neighbours (Kelly 2009, 49). Keating constructed a grand vision of Australian society that took in images of a nation diverse and independent; one that had finally driven out the demons of White Australia and now sought to strengthen its marginal voices; one which could shed the symbols and hang-ups of old to embrace a new flag and a new destiny within the region. As part of a broader commitment to multiculturalism, his reconciliation initiatives reflected a positive response to the emerging legal challenges posed by Indigenous Australians to land ownership, and saw an attempt to develop a rhetorical framework that would recognise the culpability of non-Indigenous Australians in their dispossession. He launched a sustained attack against Australia’s constitutional links to the British monarchy, arguing that it was time for Australia to ‘face regional realities’ and become formally independent as a republic. My criticism is directed at those Australians – or more accurately that Australian attitude – which still cannot separate our interests, our history, or our future, from the interests of Britain. I say that this attitude has long been, and remains, debilitating to our national culture, our economic future, and our destiny as a nation in the Asia-Pacific. (Keating 1992)

These were Keating’s ‘big picture’ ideas, prescribed as preconditions for Australia’s engagement with the region and thus the development of its full national potential. Equally, Keating’s big-picture policies were effortlessly serviceable to his Asian vision: reconciliation would reflect a mature sense of inclusivity; multiculturalism would point to a reputation for tolerance and the celebration of cultural difference; republicanism would symbolise the unshackling of colonial attitudes and make Australia more ‘politically coherent’ to Asian nations; and neoliberal economic reform would be the vehicle through which Australia integrated into the regional political economy (Burke 2008, 160). Keating constructed Australian nationhood around a political sense of belonging. This was central to his conception of Australia and the narrative that he constructed in support of a foreign policy that took in a more cosmopolitan future. He used his prime ministerial position to speak for ‘all

The vernacular of national belonging45 Australians’, hailing them into an identity that would uphold principles of justice and equality, democracy and liberty, regardless of their cultural background. Britain’s monarchy and political institutions would not be discredited, but they were not Australian. Australians would make their own way, in the direction of the Asia Pacific. Indeed, the way in which Australians would experience belonging to the nation corresponded with how they would also experience belonging in the world. Keating constructed an image of Australia as a diverse and tolerant nation, bound by civic virtue that had made room within its memory for the contribution of the various cultures of which it consisted, and had sought to promote this inclusion through the severance of formal colonial attachments. This was intended to cultivate an inclusive national political community in preparation for Australia’s acceptance in the region. Younane Brookes refers to this construction as a kind of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ where ‘attachment to a familiar identity allows feelings of belonging to extend beyond national boundaries’ (Brookes 2012, 552). A political sense of belonging to the nation enabled engagement with Asia based on an appreciation of cultural difference, underpinned by a shared sense of purpose and the promise of peace and prosperity. It was designed to establish an identity ‘fluid enough to adapt to changing world conditions’ and foster a sense of community with nations that Keating believed would largely determine Australia’s future in the world (ibid.). Certainly, the question over the redefinition of Australian identity from a European past to an Asian future remains a fundamental and continuing feature of public debate. But during the mid-1990s, at the height of Australia’s ‘Culture Wars’ (see Davison 2000; George and Huynh 2009; Macintyre and Clark, 2003), these debates reached fever pitch. At the elite level, deliberations reflected the persistence of the opposing views of internationalists and traditionalists in the foreign policy establishment. Advocates of Labor’s Asian engagement policies maintained that greater familiarity with the region was integral to Australia’s future economic and security interests and that a more cosmopolitan identity would see Australia more swiftly adapt to new world conditions. Critics argued that Australia’s past and its identity were inextricably linked – that to reinvent one was to abandon the other – and Australia would ‘not gain Asian acceptance by imitation and deference’ (McLennan 2003, 37). At the popular level, the debate appeared chiefly one sided. By 1995, Australian public opinion had registered a sharp resistance to Keating’s push for Asian engagement (Wesley 2007b). Some Australians were concerned that the Prime Minister’s penchant for national introspection was tantamount to deprecation, and took issue with the notion that there was anything wrong with Australian identity (ibid). Others were unsettled by the specific content of the changes Keating prescribed, worrying that certain images or myths

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relating to themselves would be lost if the nation’s cultural framework was restructured around a more ‘Asian’ identity (George 2009). For many, ‘Asia’ – so stridently linked with progress and prosperity during the Keating era – had become a symbol for change in the national imagination, and their rejection of intensive calls for regional engagement simply reflected the sentiments of a public that was ‘fatigued with the initiatives and visions of the Keating government’ (Mauzy 1999, 336). Evidence of this dissent has since been identified in a number of ways. Wesley points to a ‘broad, visceral discomfort with the Keating agenda’ apparent in the ways ‘Asia’ was depicted in Australian popular culture in the 1990s (Wesley 2007b, 3). Dalrymple suggests that polling data on immigration and security issues reveal the ‘skeptical and reserved’ attitudes of Australians regarding policies that promoted Asian linkages (Dalrymple 2003, 104). The emergence of Pauline Hanson, who entered the political scene in 1994 as a Liberal Party member of Parliament and later formed the ‘One Nation’ party, reflected and encouraged this response. Leach suggests that Hanson’s antiAsian rhetoric gave a voice to the grievances of what Judith Brett calls ‘the old White Australia’ and highlighted a desire to recover ‘a particular version of Australian identity and “place” perceived to be under threat’ (Brett cited in Leach, 2000, 43). Similarly, Professor Ross Garnaut claimed that Hanson had struck a chord with those Australians ‘uneasy at the process of integration with Asia’ (Garnaut cited in Mauzy 1999, 336). Certainly, these forms of contestation represent an emerging crisis of legitimacy for Keating’s Asian engagement narrative, but the ultimate repudiation of Labor’s regional commitment, as many suggest, was the return of the Liberal Party to power after the 1996 election (see Brett 2005; Curran 2004; George 2003; Kelly 2009).

Howard: a narrative of national reverence and a cultural sense of belonging When the Liberal-led Coalition took office in March 1996, Prime Minister Howard articulated a vision for Australia and its place in the world that differed markedly from his predecessor’s. Howard, a radical conservative, a traditionalist and a nationalist, profoundly objected to Keating’s construction of a nation in need of transformation and intuited the Australian public’s need for reassurance. The new Prime Minister saw no problem with the identity Australia had already established for itself, preferring to praise the nation’s achievements and celebrate its history, rather than subject it to scrutiny (see Brett 2003; 2005). For Howard, the basis of Australian identity was located in the values and traditions of the ‘old Australia’, at its core a bastion of the Anglo experience (Curran 2004). His nationalism was deeply embedded in those defining moments from which characters such as the

The vernacular of national belonging47 ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) digger and the bush battler emanated, readily displaying what would become distinctive Australian traits such as mateship and egalitarianism. This deep connection with the past meant that, for Howard, issues such as Indigenous reconciliation and the republic were to denigrate a national history that was distinctive and praiseworthy, while the notion of a multicultural Australia seemed to deny the existence of an established and distinctive Australian culture and to stymie its advancement as a unifying force amongst a nation of immigrants. In response to Keating’s attempts to alter Australian identity, Howard made every effort to safeguard it. Foreign policy, especially, became a pivotal space in which to defend his conception of the nation through galvanised alliances with ‘great and powerful friends’ and assert an identity distinct from the region. In Howard’s view, Australia’s national interests could still be located within the Asia Pacific, but engagement with Asia should not include ‘reinventing Australia’s identity or abandoning the values and traditions which define Australian society’ (DFAT 1997). Howard understood Australia as in but not of Asia. Contrary to the claims of his predecessor, the new Prime Minister believed that his nation naturally stood apart from its immediate region. During his first overseas trip to meet with Indonesia’s President Suharto, Howard made plain his feelings that Australia’s core values were not only dissimilar but also non-negotiable: We do not claim to be Asian … we bring our own distinct culture, attitudes and history to the region. We are very different and we cannot always see eye to eye. No country can be asked to deny its history, principles or culture. (Howard 1996)

The notion that Australia ought to stand apart from Asia was, to an extent, supported by several regional developments that took place during the late 1990s. What became known as the ‘Asian financial crisis’, and the resulting fall of Indonesia’s President Suharto, overturned many long-held assumptions in Australia’s foreign policy establishment, notably, the continued growth of the Asian economies and the projected strength of Indonesia as a South East Asian powerhouse, which consequently served to threaten the sense of regional solidarity the previous government had aimed to foster. These developments, coupled with the relative success of the 1999 Australianled INTERFET (International Force for East Timor) Mission in East Timor, saw the government vindicated in its attempts to distinguish itself from the region. It created an air of loftiness and self-importance perhaps most obviously manifest in the Howard Doctrine – the Prime Minister’s notion of Australia as ‘Deputy Sheriff’ to the United States in policing the region (see Brenchley 1999). These sentiments, understood in the context of a renewed commitment to the US alliance and a pledge to increase defence expenditure,

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signalled the direction that a more muscular Australia was going to take in Asia under Howard. Howard placed resolute faith in the US alliance as the principal strategic relationship amongst Australia’s foreign affairs and sought to galvanise that partnership by stressing a common cultural code underpinned by shared interests. Certainly, US relations provided Howard with a greater opportunity to enunciate his conception of Australian values than relations with Asian neighbours would allow. But more than that, the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for the US relationship surrounded the true harmony he saw in Australian and American national values as part of the broader Western tradition to which both nations belonged. According to Howard, the foundations of Australia’s friendship with the United States related to their shared cultural heritage and similar historical struggles that gifted them with a common commitment to freedom and democracy. It was a relationship forged by a covenant relating to the kind of world Howard believed Australians would want to live in: Of all the nations that we value and whose friendship we cherish, there’s no relationship more natural, more easy and one more deeply steeped in shared experience, in common aspiration for the kind of world we all want our children to grow up in than the relationship between Australia and the United States. (Howard 10 September 2001, cited in Garran 2004, 70)

According to Howard, when terrorists attacked New York and Washington on 11 September, 2001 they launched ‘an assault on the way of life we hold dear and in common with Americans’ (ibid.). The events marked the beginning of an era in which the Prime Minister believed those shared values and common way of life would come under great threat. This in turn propelled military excursions into Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 as part of an interventionist foreign policy tasked with defending Australia and promoting its place within the Anglo-American world. Howard constructed a sense of Australian nationhood around a cultural sense of belonging. An identity narrative that drew explicitly from Anglo themes spoke to Howard’s conception of the nation as unified through shared values and a way of life essential to white settler Australia. Howard’s use of the national ‘we’ hailed Australians into an identity that practised those traditions and recognised them amongst the broader Western world to which Australia was (constructed as) a part. Within this construction, Australians would experience belonging as part of the Western world. Howard’s Australia, a country of essentially Anglo ethnic character, proud recipient of British cultural and political inheritance, unapologetically distinct and thus isolated within its region, would feel its sense of security as part of the West and its sense of community amongst the Anglo-sphere. In this respect, there would be no need to abandon what Howard saw as a settled Australian identity – it could

The vernacular of national belonging49 approach relations with its region in a pragmatic or realistic sense, ‘not seeking to make unnatural changes to its own character, nor claiming similarities which are not recognised by others’ (Dalrymple 2003, 222). Indeed, a cultural sense of belonging to the nation would dovetail neatly with a cultural sense of belonging to the world.

Conclusion During the 1990s, the foundations of Australian national subjectivity became fiercely contested. In a manner that reflected their divergent and competing conceptions of the nation, successive prime ministers Paul Keating and John Howard engaged in a protracted struggle to define Australian identity. Crucially, Australian foreign policy became a key site in which their conceptions of the nation were constructed and contested. In weaving together narratives of nationhood with resonant foreign policy discourses – in conflating ideas of who we are and what we stand for – Keating and Howard were able to ‘hail’ Australians into certain subject positions, reconstituting their national subjectivity, privileging certain identities over others and delineating the boundaries for belonging. Under Keating, belonging was political. Australians were interpellated into an identity that took in notions of cosmopolitanism and democracy – traits that supplemented a sense of self amongst regional neighbours. Under Howard, belonging was cultural. Australian identity was inextricably bound up in values and tradition – themes consistent with an emotional and on-going connection with Britain and the United States. While there is not space to investigate how notions of national belonging were constructed under Prime Minister Abbott, his statement regarding familial links with Canada suggests that his understanding of Australia and its place in the world mirrors that of Howard and, correspondingly, points to the enduring power of a national narrative that begins and ends with an Anglo identity for Australia, at home and abroad. This is not to suggest that a counter narrative relating to a more regional ‘Asia Pacific’ sense of self cannot be resurrected; rather, that the contours of debates about Australian identity remain somewhat limited to a choice between history and ­geography – a testimony to the dominance of its foreign policy traditions. Perhaps more importantly, Abbott’s utterance highlights the persistence of Australia prime ministers in shaping the nation according to their conceptions and, as such, reminds us of the need to investigate foreign policy as a discursive site in which identity is articulated and contested. Considering the power of this process in establishing ideas of self and belonging, it is essential to continue asking questions about how political actors such as prime ministers construct identity in this way, and with what implications for Australian subjectivity.

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Notes 1 For further discussions on how Asia loomed large and threatening in the Australian national imagination see: Walker (1999), Goldsworthy (2001) and Goldsworthy and Edwards (2003). 2 Unlike a great power or superpower that has the power to directly influence outcomes in accordance with its interests, a middle power in international relations refers to a state that has sufficient international recognition or leverage to achieve its aims, usually in collaboration with other middle or lesser powers. See Ungerer (2007) for further discussions.

References Alomes, S. 1988. A Nation At Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism, 1880–1988. North Ryde: Angus and Robertson. Althusser, L. 1971. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Barnett, M. 1999. “Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change: Israel’s Road to Oslo.” European Journal of International Relations 5 (1): 5–36. Bell, C. 1988. Dependent Ally: A Study in Australian Foreign Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bellamy, A. J. 2003. The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-Old Dream? Manchester: Manchester University Press. Billig, M. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE Publications Brenchley, F. 1999. “The Howard Defence Doctrine.” The Bulletin, 28 September, 22–4. Brett, J. 2003. Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— 2005. “Relaxed and Comfortable: The Liberal Party’s Australia.” Quarterly Essay 19. Melbourne: Black Inc. Burke, A. 2008. Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety. New York: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, D. 1998. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and Politics of Identity. 2nd edn. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Canovan, M. 1996. Nationhood and Political Theory. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Curran, J. 2004. The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Dalrymple, R. 2003. Continental Drift: Australia’s Search for Regional Identity. Aldershot,: Ashgate. Davison, G. 2000. The Use and Abuse of Australian History. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). 1997. In the National Interest:

The vernacular of national belonging51 Australian Foreign Policy White Paper. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Doty, R. L. 1993. “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of US Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines.” International Studies Quarterly 37 (3): 297–320. Evans, M. 2005. “The Tyranny of Dissonance: Australia’s Strategic Culture and Way of War 1901–2005.” Study Paper No. 306. Land Warfare Studies Centre. Fierke, K. 2002. “Links Across the Abyss: Language and Logic in International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 46 (3): 331–54. Finlayson, A. 1996. “Nationalism as Ideological Interpellation: The Case of Ulster Loyalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (1): 88–112. Garran, R. 2004. True Believer: John Howard, George Bush and the American Alliance. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin. George, J. 2003. “Will the Chickenhawks Come Home to Roost? Iraq, US Preponderance  and Its Implications for Australia.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 57(2): 235–42. George, J. and M. Hutchinson. 2009. “Culture War as Foreign Policy in the US and Australia.” In The Culture Wars: Australian and American Politics in the 21st Century, edited by J. H. George and K. Huyn, 37–56. South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan. George, J. and Huynh, K., eds. 2009. The Culture Wars: Australian and American Politics in the 21st Century. South Yarra, VIC: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldsworthy, D. 2001. “Introduction.” In Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia, Vol 2., edited by P. Edwards and D. Goldsworthy, 1531–44. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Goldsworthy, D. and P. Edwards, eds. 2003. Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia. Vol. 2 1970s to 2000. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Grimshaw, P., M. Lake, A. McGrath and M. Quarterly, eds. 1994. Creating a Nation. Ringwood: Penguin. Hansen, L. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Abingdon: Routledge. Higgott, R. and K. Nossal. 1997. “The International Politics of Liminality: Relocating Australia in the Asia Pacific.” Australian Journal of Political Science 32 (2): 169–85. Holland, J. 2010. “‘Howard’s War on Terror’: A Conceivable, Communicable and Coercive Foreign Policy Discourse.” Australian Journal of Political Science 45 (4): 643–61 Hopf, T. 1998. “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory.” International Security 23 (1): 171–200. Howard, J. 1996. Official Banquet Speech. To President Soeharto and Guests. Jakarta. 16 September. http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse. Howard, J. 2005. “Australia in the World.” Lowy Institute for International Policy Annual Lecture. Lowy Institute, Sydney. 31 March. Hudson, W. and G. Bolton. 1997. Creating Australia. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin.

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Keating, P. 1992. Australia Day Address. Admiralty House, Sydney. 26 January. http:// pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse —— 1995. Australia and Japan. Address to Keio University, Japan. 25 May. http:// pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse. Keating, P. 2000. Engagement: Australia faces the Asia Pacific. Sydney: Macmillan. Kelly, P. 2009. The March of Patriots: The Struggle for Modern Australia. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Leach, M. 2000. “Hansonism, Political Discourse and Australian Identity.” In The Rise and Fall of One Nation, edited by M. Leach, G. Stokes and I. Ward, 42–56. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press. McDonald, M. 2005. “Constructing Insecurity: Australian Security Discourse and Policy Post-2001.” International Relations 19: 297–320. Macintyre, S. and Clark, A. 2004. The History Wars. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. McLennan, A. 2003. “Engagement with Asia Revisited, Review of Continental Drift: Australia’s Search for a Regional Identity by Rawdon Dalrymple.” Policy 19 (1): 37–40. Mauzy, D. 1999. “Redefining a Nation: Australia’s Efforts to Gain Acceptance for its Policy of ‘Comprehensive Engagement’ with Asia.” The Round Table (350): 333–46. Nabers, D. 2009. “Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11, 2001.” Foreign Policy Analysis 5: 191–214. Turner, G. 1994. Making it National: Nationalism in Australian Popular Culture. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Ungerer, C. 2007. “The ‘Middle Power’ Concept in Australian Foreign Policy.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 53 (4): 538–51. Walker, D. 1999. Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850–1939. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Weldes, J. 1996. “Constructing National Interests.” European Journal of International Relations 2 (3): 275–318. Wesley, M. 2007a. The Howard Paradox: Australian Diplomacy in Asia 1996–2006. Sydney: ABC Books. Wesley, M. 2007b. “Location, Location, Location.” Griffith Review, 18: 11–46. Wroe, D. 2014. “Prime Minister Tony Abbott Talks of Canada as ‘Family’ after Attacks.’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October. Younane Brookes, S. 2012. “Security in Our Identity: Regional Threat and Opportunity in Australian Election Discourse, 1993 and 1996.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 58 (4): 542–66.

4

Gendered identities in peacebuilding: an analysis of post-2006 Timor-Leste Sarah Smith

Introduction The adoption of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000 was a landmark in affirming the important role of women in peace and security, as well as purporting the necessity of a ‘gender perspective’ throughout peace processes, peace operations and in post-conflict reconstruction. While it has been much praised, a number of problems have been identified by scholars and practitioners alike (Coomaraswamy 2015; Kirby and Shepherd 2016a). One key issue to emerge has been the policy approaches that have developed from ‘gender mainstreaming’ and ‘gender balance’, particularly the technocratic responses that eschew broad considerations of how gender could be understood to inform peace operations. Moreover, in policy and practice, ‘gender’ and ‘women’ are frequently conflated, indicative of conceptual limitations relating to gender in peace operations. This conflation reinforces gendered identities in both the discourse and practice of peace-making, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Identity as a social construct has been crucial to understanding security (Bilgin 2010). Identity can be a source both of security and of insecurity, it shapes security-seeking behaviour, what or who is constructed as ‘threat’, and is also constituted – or socially constructed – by security practice. Gendered language, images and practices have long been employed in the discourses of security, war and nationalist movements, both facilitating the construction of normative gender identities and perpetuating militarised security-seeking behaviour (Enloe 1989; 2004; Yuval-Davis 1997, 93–111). These gender constructions pertain to both masculinity and femininity, and indeed the two are mutually reinforcing (Enloe 2004, 107). The role of produced and productive gendered identities has been analysed in relation to nationalism, nationbuilding and war, highlighting the shaping of these processes by gendered

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identities and, in turn, the (re)constitution of gendered identities (Pettman 1996; Tickner 2001; Yuval-Davis 1997). The concept of identity is thus central to understanding security; recognising gender identity as significant in security further exposes relations of domination and subordination, and constructions of masculinity and femininity (Hoogensen and Rottem 2004). Beyond the conflict environment, gendered identities are also found to be crucial in the post-conflict environment, and policy makers increasingly understand that a gender lens is essential to understanding the post-conflict landscape in reconstruction efforts (Ní Aoláin, Haynes and Cahn 2011, 5). In delineating the importance of gendered identities to the practice of peace operations in particular, this chapter focuses on the case of Timor-Leste, which offers a unique case study through which to examine the formation and persistence of gendered identities in the post-conflict context. Timor-Leste was a site of significant international intervention in the Asia-Pacific region and hosted one of the first UN peace operations to include a Gender Affairs Unit. Drawing on participant interviews conducted in 2012–14 with national civil society organisations and UN mission and agency staff,1 triangulated with official reports and documentation, the chapter examines how gender policy, incorporated into institutional practice, produces and reinforces a gendered identity for women in post-conflict situations, an identity that is one dimensional and eschews acknowledgement of other intersecting identities, such as class, race, ethnicity, religion and age. In particular, this chapter examines how the policy implementation of ‘gender’ in the security sector during the time of the UN’s Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT, 2006–12) was rooted in ideas about feminine victimisation and subordination. The chapter begins by outlining the ‘gendering’ discourse in peacebuilding broadly and then moves to the more specific example of a predominant discourse of women as victims in post-conflict situations. Termed a ‘victim narrative’, this discourse represents a constructed gendered identity that has tangible policy outcomes in terms of where women are added to the security sector and the roles they can take on. Gender policy within peace operations is therefore shaped by normative gender conceptions and constitutes what women ‘might be, do or want in the field of gender and security’ (Shepherd 2011, 504). In examining the case of Timor-Leste, the chapter demonstrates how security sector reform undertaken as part of peace operations reified a particular vision of victimised and passive women who could serve in the security sector in only ‘feminised’ ways – such as in community support or communication roles. The case demonstrates that although the discourse of women’s engagement being essential is welcome, the way gender is currently conceptualised means that women come to embody gender policy – without further critical reflection on how peace operations themselves are constitutive

Gendered identities in peacebuilding55 of a militarised and gendered post-conflict insecurity – and are thus incorporated into practice in ways that construct and conform to normative gender identities. Consequently, the chapter argues that gendered identities are constructed through the policy, practice and discourse employed in post-conflict peacebuilding and this shapes women’s engagement with peace operations. Examining this period of international intervention in Timor-Leste provides a case study of how gender identities were constructed, connected with biological sex and, in turn, reinforced the maintenance of gendered power relations.

‘Doing gender’ in peacebuilding The ‘gendering’ of women is a conceptual limitation of the UN’s Women, Peace and Security practice. The social construction of gendered roles occurs via UN peacebuilding generally and via gender mainstreaming practices in particular, reflecting the conflation of ‘gender’ with ‘women’ (see Shepherd 2011). The problem with this process is that it assumes that gender is a fixed, objective fact about an individual. By connecting gender with biology, its social construction is overlooked and it ‘reaffirms the “naturalness” of female/male identities and bypasses the performative aspects of gender’ (Charlesworth 2008, 359). As the addition of a gender perspective to peace operations – as mandated by Resolution 1325 – is ostensibly focused on improving women’s empowerment and women’s protection, the resultant justifications for women’s increased presence in peacebuilding have often relied on gendered assumptions about what women can or should do in post-conflict reconstruction. This is not to challenge the necessity of women’s inclusion in peace and security decision making but, rather, it aims to uncover the continued perpetuation of gendered binaries which have previously buttressed women’s exclusion from those same processes. One way to examine the constructed nature of gendered identities is to look at the roles that women are encouraged to take on, and to meet what purposes. In peace operations, ‘gender’ work roles within the UN – such as Gender Focal Points or Gender Advisors – are typically given to women, sustaining a presumption not only that gender work specifically pertains to women but that ‘gender work’ is women’s work (Tiessen 2005). This represents a gendered hierarchy within international peace and security processes in that women are given gender work, which in turn is marginalised within peace operations. Gender advisors and focal points are often marginalised within units, and gender programmes are often marginalised within missions more broadly; the gender component of peacebuilding and peacekeeping is not taken as seriously as other ‘essential’ functions (Tiessen 2005). Gender, along with human rights, is viewed as a ‘soft issue’, which is in opposition to ‘hard’ issues like military security and policing (UN Gender Advisor, ­interview

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with author, Melbourne, 27 February 2014). As Hilary Charlesworth argues, the trend reflects the creation of a ‘women’s ghetto’ within peacebuilding with less power and resources than other sectors (Charlesworth 2005). To be sure, part of sensitising peacebuilding to both gender issues and women’s marginalisation is to increase the number of women in decisionmaking roles, yet to do so only in designated ‘gender’ areas limits women’s participation more broadly. While women are well represented among ‘gender’ areas they remain under-represented in other decision-making areas and as peacekeeping personnel (Dharmapuri 2013). Moreover, as gender work becomes women’s work, this positions women’s interests around gender, rather than broader political, social and economic issues, and prioritises women’s ‘gender interests’, rather than those that may be constructed around class or race (Al-Ali and Pratt 2009, 72). A precedent is then set in which women come to embody the gender policy of peace and security, but deeper understanding of how gendered norms and identities may impact on an individual’s complex conflict experiences can be ignored. Similarly, issues that fall under the category of ‘gender issue’ can be ameliorated simply by the addition of women. Through the reproduction of gendered categories, the rhetoric of gender in peacebuilding does little to challenge gendered power relations that characterise post-conflict moments. Tarja Väyrynen argues that the discourse of gender promoted by the UN reproduces essential categories for both masculinity and femininity, ascribing gender roles to each (Väyrynen 2004). In turn, these essentialist and hegemonic gendered understandings get incorporated into the UN’s existing state-centric structures without fundamentally challenging them (see Chapter 5). Consequently, the aims and outcomes of gender mainstreaming perpetuate the dominant rhetorical and cultural frameworks embedded in UN policy and practice. The policy of gender mainstreaming itself therefore embodies constitutive power in terms of gender norms. Consistent with poststructural feminist literature (see Butler 2006), gender mainstreaming rests on women as the subject of gendered security. Gender in peacebuilding has been incorporated in a way that reproduces stable binaries of man and woman, in turn contributing to their normativity (Kunz 2014). These normative gender ideals produce specifically gendered identities, contributing to their construction and maintenance through the organisation of activity based on gender dualisms (see Harding 1986, 17–18). Thus the ‘gender’ contained in UN p ­ eacebuilding policy and practice is itself both gendered and gendering, ultimately leaving existing hierarchical arrangements intact. Importantly, feminism has also struggled with assuming a monolithic identity and projecting this onto the homogenised category of ‘women’, which has been challenged by postcolonial and third-wave feminist theorists (Butler 2006). Consideration of this is especially important when examining gender in peace operations and

Gendered identities in peacebuilding57 interventions: as a number of authors have highlighted, feminist rhetoric was historically utilised in colonial interventions into women’s lives which saw ‘other’ women constructed as victimised, vulnerable and in need of intervention (Hunt 2006; Kapur 2002; Mohanty 1988; Spivak 1988). A constructed and homogenised category of ‘woman’ excludes and is silent on other axes of power, thus subverting these alternate and co-existing identities. The assumption of gender binaries linked to biological sex can be seen in the justifications for women’s inclusion in peacebuilding, peace-making and peacekeeping. While this goal is important, it has frequently led to a characterisation of women as inherent and natural peace-makers, thus making their incorporation into peacebuilding not only a necessity for the attainment of gender equality but also as following a simple gendered logic, largely reflective of a liberal feminist position. Looking at the case study of Timor-Leste, for example, a report from the UN Secretary General on Timor-Leste stated that ‘women’s skills as peacemakers and peacebuilders should be utilized and strengthened so that they may participate in and lead community reconciliation and healing efforts’ (UNSC 2006a, 14). Even with the increased visibility of gender and women in international peace and security discourse, the dominant narrative continues to rely heavily on gendered tropes, and consequently on the forming and reinforcing of gendered identities. Consistent with feminist criticisms of protection narratives in traditional security discourse (see Stiehm 1982), within UN gender policy discourse there is the linguistic denial of women’s varied histories and experiences, and the propensity to construct women as passive and as victims (Hudson 2012a; Shepherd 2011; von Braunmühl 2012). The victim narrative constructs women as victims of men’s violence against each other, which fosters insecurity (war), as well as specifically men’s violence against women. In the victim narrative, men have agency and engage in war, whereas women are victims of war. The victim narrative of women’s protection is a further gendering of women into passive roles and, conversely, men into active roles. The focus of this narrative tends to be on women’s experiences of sexual violence both in times of conflict and during post-conflict reconstruction. The most frequently cited evidence of an essentialist understanding of women as victims of war is the increasing attention paid to sexual violence in conflict by Women, Peace and Security resolutions subsequent to Resolution 1325 (Barrow 2010; von Braunmühl 2012). Security Council Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009) and 1960 (2010) all pay special attention to sexual violence in conflict but say less about women’s empowerment or their existing contributions to both peace and conflict. Women, Peace and Security Resolution 2106 (2013) maintains this focus, paying attention to the a­ ccountability of perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict, yet notes that women’s political, social and economic empowerment, as well as the recruiting boys and

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men into prevention programmes, are essential to combating sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.2 While recognising victimisation in conflict is necessary, it is problematic when this is the only way that women achieve visibility (Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2012), and where it is atomised from the broader context of gender inequity within which it occurs. Moreover, one can conceptualise a spectrum of violence which includes both structural and direct violence, and within which they are related, meaning that paying attention to social and economic structural violence should be part of responses to sexual violence during and after conflict (Kirby and Shepherd 2016b, 380). For example, in examining the political economy of sexual violence against women both in war and post-conflict, Jacqui True has demonstrated its relationship with women’s lack of access to social and economic rights and resources. This is further perpetuated by the prioritisation of law-and-order security above these rights for women in post-conflict moments by intervening actors (True 2012, 144–5). In relation to nationalist conflict, Cynthia Enloe suggests that in highlighting the propensity of commentators to emphasise women’s victimisation, the aim is not to ‘push women’s vulnerability back into the shadows’ (Enloe 2004, 104). Rather, the aim is to counter an ‘ungendered’ view of the actors involved in conflict and provide space to acknowledge women’s varied and heterogeneous experiences, asking questions about who is and is not victimised and why (which of course should equally be applied to men). What this highlights is that while women and men can be and are victims of violent conflict, they are not only victims. Underlying the emphasis on women’s protection (along with attendant lack of attention to men’s victimisation) are gendered stereotypes that subordinate women to patriarchal protection (see Hudson 2012a; Shepherd 2010, 73–4). In essence, a gendered identity of passive woman is constructed and projected onto women. It is undoubtedly important to recognise women’s victimisation, and how and why this maybe different to men’s, and this discussion is not intended to criticise or challenge the important work done on detailing the forms and impact of gendered violence during and after conflict. Instead, the discussion highlights that victimisation does not represent the entirety of women’s experiences, and it is therefore problematic where policy approaches to incorporating a gender perspective construct it to be. Torunn Tryggestad has argued that while both women’s equality and women’s protection have become internationally accepted norms, issues of women’s equality in decision making have been more contested in the forming of international resolutions than have been issues relating to women’s protection (Tryggestad 2010, 161–2). Therefore, emphasising the ‘gendering’ of women and the presence of a ‘victim narrative’ not only speaks to limitations in the way that ‘gender’ in peacebuilding is conceptualised, but also suggests that such limitations

Gendered identities in peacebuilding59 exist as a manifestation of the marginalisation of women as decision makers. Importantly, it is also demonstrative of how peacebuilding practice rests on the assumption of normative gendered identities, and in turn how it reinforces these identities. In short, then, women’s experiences of conflict and post-conflict are multiple and varied. Beyond gender identities, they will be shaped by other ­intersecting identities such as race, religion, class, sexuality or ethnicity. Enloe argues that a gendered lens makes visible not just that women and men’s experiences are shaped by gender, but that they vary among women and among men based on other identity factors – asking why some women and some men, for instance, are targets of violence in conflict will necessitate a deeper look at gender’s intersections with issues of race, class, ethnicity and other identities (Enloe 2004, 104). For example, Lori Handrahan highlights the intersection between both ethnic identity and gender identity in analysing the occurrence of war-time rape. Ethnic and gender identity construct the enemy’s women as ‘other’, and violence against them can represent the ‘expansion of ethnic territory by the male conqueror’ (Handrahan 2004, 437). This highlights the racialised identities constructed in security discourse as well, which have been highlighted in the discourse of international interventions more broadly, especially by those who view peace operations as an iteration of colonialist practice (see Razack 2004). Post-colonial authors have argued that raced hierarchies of power and the process of ‘othering’ have always permeated who is constructed as victim and who they are a victim of (Spivak 1988, 297). In focusing on violence against women there has been a reinforced image of the woman as victim (rather than actor) and the ‘Third World victim subject has come to represent the more victimized subject; that is, the real or authentic victim subject’ (Kapur 2002, 2). In the context of peace operations, this can be read as ‘other’ women (those at mission sites) being constructed as victims of the conflict and of men’s violence, rather than as actors in the peace-making and building process. Demonstrative of this, the following section discusses the gendering of women in post-conflict Timor-Leste, which occurred simultaneously to their exclusion from highlevel peace-making and conflict resolution roles.

The case of UN peace operations in Timor-Leste As the above section has detailed, conceptual limitations in the way ‘gender’ is conceived of and incorporated into peacebuilding practice lead to the construction and maintenance of gendered and normative identities. Technical fixes that require a static, communicable framework that can be called ‘a gender perspective’ are limited in their capacity to fundamentally change relations between individuals, and limit understanding of how these processes

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themselves are also gendered and gendering. The construction of gendered identities outlined above shapes the roles that men and women can undertake in post-conflict reconstruction, and this has been visible in Timor-Leste. Therefore, the following section examines the outcomes of peace-operation policy in a specific context, shedding light on the actual outcomes for some women of some gender policy. Victims: sexual and gender-based violence The 2006 crisis period in Timor-Leste, or more explicitly the responses to it, exemplifies the ways in which post-conflict peacebuilding genders identities. The crisis, briefly, was the result of disintegrating security institutions in Timor-Leste: the national police force, PNTL (Polícia Nacional Timor-Leste), and the national defence force, F-FDTL (Falintil-Forças Armadas de Defesa de Timor-Leste). The result was widespread violence in Dili and significant property damage, as well as approximately 150,000 internally displaced people (UN Special Commission 2006). It also led to the establishment of UNMIT at the request of Timor-Leste’s leaders, the final peace operation in Timor-Leste, ending in December 2012. Given the situation it was deployed into, UNMIT’s mandate focused on supporting national reconciliation, restoring public security until the PNTL was reconstituted and consolidating security sector institutional development within PNTL (UNSC 2006b). UNMIT focused on security sector reform and capacity building within East Timorese security institutions; in essence, it was a police mission. The traditional security focus of this mission – both its methods and outcomes – continued the overwhelmingly militarised approach to peace and security in Timor-Leste by successive UN peace operations. The characterisation of the crisis, its depiction in national and international media and the formal response to it were decidedly male centred. Anna Trembath and Damien Grenfell have argued that depictions of the crisis – in newspaper articles, in images and in academic and institutional accounts – were predominantly of a masculinised urban domain in which men, both within and outside the security institutions, committed public acts of violence (Trembath and Grenfell 2006). They suggest that this is demonstrative of the way that men are most commonly identified as the dominant actors in nation forming, partly through their enactment of public acts of violence ‘in war and revolt’; they continue that Timor-Leste was being depicted as ‘a violent and unpredictable place where women are shown only as victims or with their agency limited to their role as carers’ (Trembath and Grenfell 2006, 10). Aside from being depicted as victims only, they and others have highlighted the near-complete absence of women in analyses of the crisis period (Niner 2011; Trembath and Grenfell 2006). Reports of this period tend to focus on male political leaders, instigators (such as those

Gendered identities in peacebuilding61 within the police and defence forces) and young men associated with martial arts gangs (Kingsbury and Leach 2007, 5–11; Scambary 2009; UN Special Commission 2006).3 A gender unit was established as part of UNMIT, and the resurgence of peacekeeping post-2006 is associated with an increased ‘gender presence’ in Timor-Leste (UN Population Fund, interview with author, Dili, 4 September 2012). UNMIT’s gender unit was mandated to take on a more supportive role when compared to the security and police functions of the mission, supporting the existing UN agency programmes in-country and the development of a National Action Plan on gender-based violence, rather than being a driver for these changes (UNSC 2006b). In interviews, the crisis was characterised as a turning point in the way that ‘gender issues’ were conceived of by international actors in Timor-Leste. This was in specific relation to the way UNMIT’s presence was associated with spotlighted attention to sexual and gender-based violence, institutionally given the acronym SGBV. The increased attention to SGBV was thanks in large part to the support of international organisations and their support for a variety of campaigns. One participant explained that SGBV became a national focus point in the post2006 period, largely driven by the international community, which capitalised on the existing domestic ground-swell around the issue (UN Women, interview with author, Dili, 17 September 2012; see also Hall 2009). As discussed above, the construction of a gendered identity that predominantly characterises women as victims is evidenced in a focus on violence against women and SGBV. In Timor-Leste, campaigns regarding SGBV referred especially to sexual and domestic violence committed against women in the home. East Timorese women’s organisations had long been advocating on the issue of domestic violence, which had appeared belatedly on previous UN operation agendas in Timor-Leste (Joshi 2005). Indeed, East Timorese women’s organisations had been advocating around issues of violence against women throughout the Indonesian military occupation period, presenting evidence to the UN on conflict-related gender violence and connecting with transnational movements, such as that associated with the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 (see Alves 2010, 84; Lighur 1995). This advocacy continued post-conflict, and then also included family violence and exploitation committed by peacekeepers. In contrast to earlier periods of lethargy on the part of peace operations with regard to SGBV, the attention post-2006 was a turning point, although the focus was almost exclusively on domestic and family violence, rather than, say, including violence and exploitation perpetrated by peacekeepers, or the paucity of justice outcomes for conflict-related gender violence (Harris-Rimmer 2007). While the attention was certainly warranted, SGBV was able to appropriate larger portions of funding, without attendant support for related issues such as access to economic and social rights (UN

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Gender Advisor, interview with author, Melbourne, 27 February 2014; UN Gender Advisor, interview with author, Dili, 20 July 2012; International advisor to NGO, interview with author, Dili, 7 August 2012; UN agency Gender Advisor, interview with author, Dili, 7 August 2012). In discussing her experience in Timor-Leste and elsewhere, a UN gender advisor stated: I actually think that in places where this is debated, in donor organisations and all those places, they’re much more comfortable about giving money to the woman as victim, rather than the empowerment of women. Because, you know, there is a comfort zone around women as victims, there is no comfort zone around women who are empowered. (Interview with author, Melbourne, 27 February 2014)

Therefore, while attention to issues of SGBV in Timor-Leste was welcome, this focus was not balanced with empowering approaches to women’s inclusion in formal peace dialogues, nor with recognition that these two issues are indeed interconnected. Resolution 1325 also calls for increased representation of women in peace negotiations and in decision-making roles throughout peace operations. Those who highlight increasing emphasis on protection and victimisation suggest that this is at the cost of women’s empowerment (Hudson 2012a; Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2012). In TimorLeste, the fact that women played such a small role in peace-making efforts in response to the 2006 conflict is illustrative of the reality that women continue to lack an influential role in security affairs in Timor-Leste (Niner 2013, 255). According to UNMIT’s Special Representative to the Secretary-General, Ameerah Haq, women were almost entirely absent from high-level dialogues to end violence in 2006 (Haq 2011). This reflects similar occurrences in 1999 in Timor-Leste, where women struggled to be included in formal peace-making processes leading up to and after the end of the Indonesian military occupation of the territory (see Rede Feto 2000; Roynestad 2003, 3–4). Conceptions of women’s role in the security sector and of women’s collective security were limited to their victimisation as a result of SGBV. Yet women did engage in community conciliation roles throughout the crisis, even though this was not recognised. The traditional security preoccupation with men’s public violence and women as victims of violence in the home arguably limited UNMIT’s view, rendering the peacebuilding activities of these East Timorese women and their agency more broadly invisible to them. The following section turns to examine how women were included in security sector reform in only limited and gendered ways, demonstrating further the constructed nature of gender identities in peace operations and the atomised policy approaches to the incorporation of a gender perspective. Resolution 1325 has been a platform for mainstreaming gender in security sector reform; however, the way this is

Gendered identities in peacebuilding63 done rests on essentialised understandings of what women ‘bring’ to these roles, because they are women (Hendricks 2015, 368–9). Gendered: women in the security sector As mentioned above, UNMIT was considered a police mission and its areas of work were focused on security sector reform in Timor-Leste. The way that gender was incorporated into UNMIT’s security sector reform packages is indicative again of how peace operations construct and rely on gendered identities. Given the institutional focus of UNMIT and the salience given to security sector reform in combating post-conflict SGBV, the gender work of UNMIT centred on two key areas. The first was to improve the representation of women in Timor-Leste’s police force. The second, and relatedly, was to improve the sensitivity and response of the police force to gender issues, namely, SGBV. UNMIT’s gender unit focused on state security institutions, adding women to these institutions and training for UN Police (UNPOL), PNTL and F-FDTL staff to respond to gender-based violence (UN Gender Advisor, interview with author, Dili, 25 July 2012). Policing mandates have been increasingly incorporated into peacekeeping as the nature of interventions has expanded into multidimensional, complex peace operations. Consequently, civilian police units (UNPOL) have been added to the peacekeeping matrix, which in turn train national police forces in post-conflict settings. Peace operations in Timor-Leste had previously taken on an executive policing function from 2000 to 2004, and in 2006 UNMIT again took this over, which was subsequently handed back to PNTL in 2012. A Vulnerable Persons Unit (VPU) had been established within the PNTL under the UN’s transitional administration (UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, 1999–2002) to respond to domestic violence cases, and UNMIT renewed support to the VPU. Timor-Leste’s Law Against Domestic Violence (LADV) contained a provision for a police unit to help investigate such cases and protect victims. Since the law’s adoption in 2010, the VPU has worked in this capacity as the dedicated police unit outlined in the LADV (DPKO 2013). UNPOL advisers supported the VPU in developing its structural capacity, such as developing standard operating procedures, and in capacity building, such as training national police members (DPKO 2013). Under UNMIT, a Gender and Human Rights Advisor was installed in the office of the PNTL General Commander in July 2009 and a civilian advisor was hired to ensure gender mainstreaming throughout PNTL’s policies and directives (DPKO 2013). The recruitment and retention of women as peacekeepers and in national police forces has become an increasingly important approach to fulfilling the UN’s internal goals of gender balance and is linked to the improved protection of women and girls in post-conflict situations. Including women in

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these security sector terrains is a central approach of incorporating a gender perspective into peace operations. As described in a DPKO progress report, female peacekeepers not only improve the UN’s gender balance, but they can also carry out particular gendered tasks, such as: assisting female ex-combatants during the process of demobilising and reintegration into civilian life; widening the net of information gathering; performing cordon and search of women; interview survivors of gender based violence; assisting in the aftermath of sexual violence and mentoring female cadets at police and military academies. (Gender Advisory Team 2010, 8)

Thus, women are included in peacekeeping contingents to take on particular (gendered) tasks, many of which pertain explicitly to the stated aims of gender mainstreaming and to the treatment of women in peace operations (Hudson 2012b, 90). Women’s participation is encouraged for the very same reasons that women have historically been excluded from militaries; that is, the justification of women’s involvement is on the basis of assumed stereotypical feminine traits, especially as inherently peaceful (Carreiras 2010, 480). This policy approach rests, then, on normative gender identities, reaffirming the normativity of those gender identities in the process. This becomes particularly apparent in the roles that women take on within the security sector. Throughout peace operations, women’s representation at decision-making levels has remained poor. In March 2013, women accounted for 3 per cent of UN military personnel and approximately 9.7 per cent of UNPOL staff (Dharmapuri 2013, 1). Similar figures were reported in 2014.4 Representation of women in military and police contingents was also low in each mission in Timor-Leste (Ospina 2006, 28–9), and this was perceived by participants. For example, the director of one national women’s organisation stated: From our point of view [UNPOL] was mostly men … So that’s why we, we tried asking them … but at least we have [some] women in UNPOL in TimorLeste that we can see they are helping … Not many though, not many women. (Interview with author, Dili, 3 September 2013)

Another participant who had worked as a national advisor for UNPOL noted that the low numbers of women in the police and military UN contingents meant that peace operations in Timor-Leste were failing to live up to their own set standards: Women in UNPOL … OK, I can say not many. So UN is asking [us] about gender, [that] gender should be equal, but sometimes they are not … UNPOL, OK there are some women, but in the military [peacekeeping forces] it is very few, military forces it is very few. (Interview with author, Dili, 3 September 2013; see also Björkdahl 2008)

Gendered identities in peacebuilding65 While UNPOL encouraged women’s representation in PNTL, this engagement was designated in a particularly gendered way. For example, women were especially represented in the VPU and were encouraged to work ‘with computers and the communication system’ and in ‘working closely with the community’ (UNPOL advisor, interview with author, Dili, 3 September 2013; Director, national NGO, interview with author, Dili, 3 September 2013). Similarly, during the UN’s transitional administration, which was operational from 1999 until full independence in 2002, the small number of East Timorese women employed with the mission were included as consultants in areas such as health care and education and ‘women for the most part [were] excluded from discussions concerning politics, economics, national security and other such typically “male” arenas’ (Ajiza Magno in Schmaedick 2001). This reflects broader institutional trends; as the Global Study on the implementation of UN Resolution 1325 produced in 2015 reported, only 3 per cent of military staff in peace operations are women, and of that 3 per cent most were employed as support staff (Coomaraswamy 2015, 139). As Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd highlight, while the ‘glacial’ movement on the actual numbers of women’s representation in peace operations is problematic, we must also look to where women are represented in peace operations to understand the level to which gender (not synonymous with women) is taken seriously within peacekeeping: ‘The mere presence of women on any given mission is not as important as what position they hold, how their presence alters gender practices in situ … and how these elements interact with the wider context of conflict and its resolution’ (Kirby and Shepherd 2016b, 375). The VPU was an important step in making security institutions more responsive to the security needs of both women and children in Timor-Leste, especially as issues of domestic violence and sexual violence had previously been inadequately dealt with. Yet, where women’s inclusion or incorporation into peace operations is limited to only these ‘gendered’ tasks, they continue to work on the periphery of mainstream peace and security processes. These technical approaches to gender inclusivity rest on and perpetuate essentialised and normative gender identities that have historically seen women as subordinated and excluded from priority issues of politics, economics and ‘hard’ military security.5 This has led some to argue that, rather than the integration of women and gender into previously excluded domains, the Women, Peace and Security agenda sits alongside, and separated from, the international peace and security agenda (Hendricks 2015, 369). Moreover, the approaches are consistent with Sandra Harding’s definition of gendered activity, in that they ‘divide necessary … activities between different groups of humans’ (Harding 1986, 17–18), based on perceived gender dualisms. The examples discussed above are demonstrative of the constitution of particular gendered identities in peacebuilding, as well as that gender work is women’s

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work and gender pertains solely to women. While the UN, and in this case UNPOL, encouraged gender balance, they perpetuated an understanding of particular gendered identities for women. This is particularly evident given that women’s work appears to be concentrated in tasks related to gender and in relation to women, and these are not as highly regarded as other core security functions.

Conclusion The above discussion has examined gendered identities, conceptualised here as socially and politically constructed norms attached to masculinity and femininity, demonstrating how they are constituted in and constitutive of peace operation practice. This was done through a close examination of the case of post-2006 Timor-Leste. The chapter has argued that this manifested as framing women’s experiences as narrow and attached to particular gender narratives about their experiences and contributions. Specifically, the chapter has argued that the ‘gendering’ of identities in peace operations was visible in the framing of women primarily as victims, and in the (gendered) roles that women were encouraged to assume in the security sector in TimorLeste. This examination has served to challenge the simplistic construction of women’s gendered identity, one that lacks agency and complexity. Although the adoption of UN Resolution 1325 was an essential development and watershed moment for women and gender in peace-making, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, there remain conceptual and practical limitations in the ­implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and the construction and perpetuation of gendered identities is but one of these (Kirby and Shepherd 2016b). The construction and maintenance of such gendered identities can perpetuate hierarchical relations of power between men and women, limiting the potential of socio-political transformation of gender relations via i­ nstitutional peace operations. Essentialist and normative gendered ideals are reinforced, even though this occurs ostensibly under a rubric of empowerment or emancipation; as Judith Butler contends, ‘these domains of exclusion reveal the coercive and regulatory consequences of that construction, even when the construction has been elaborated for emancipatory purposes’ (Butler 2006, 6). By highlighting not only how gendered identities are constructed in discourse and practice, the case of Timor-Leste demonstrates how this limits women’s engagement with peace operations and their peace-making tasks, making invisible their experiences and contributions outside of these identities. Ultimately, it is essentialist constructions of women that maintain their global subordination to patriarchal power, which manifests itself in both structural and direct violence; re-instituting such assumptions therefore

Gendered identities in peacebuilding67 maintains this status quo, rather than transforming it, despite the rhetoric of women’s empowerment and/or protection.

Notes 1 The research project was designed to examine the implementation of the gender component of peace operations in Timor-Leste and sought input from a variety of stakeholders. The author conducted thirty-six interviews with staff from East Timorese women’s organisations, UN peace operations and UN agencies in Timor-Leste. Interviews referenced in this manuscript were conducted with ethics approval from Swinburne University, SUHREC Project No. 2012/83. 2 In March 2016, the UN Security Council adopted its first resolution on the prevention of peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse while on mission – Resolution 2272. 3 This last group and its involvement in street violence, especially during the crisis period, has led to some analyses of masculinity in Timor-Leste (see Myrttinen 2009; 2012; Scambary 2009), an essential yet under-analysed area in international relations and security studies. 4 Figures sourced from: http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/issues/women/wom​ eninpk.shtml. 5 Jacqueline Siapno (2008) has reported that gender sensitivity within PNTL remains poor, particularly noting sexual harassment within PNTL and the existence of ‘glass ceilings’ for women within Timor-Leste’s security sector.

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Gendered identities in peacebuilding69 Joshi, V. 2005. “Creating and Limiting Opportunities: Women’s Organising and the UN in East Timor.” In Challenges and Possibilities: International Organisations and Women in Timor-Leste. Melbourne: Globalism Institute, RMIT University. Kapur, R. 2002. “The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘Native’ Subject in International/Post-Colonial Feminist Legal Politics.” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15: 1–37. Kingsbury, D. and M. Leach. 2007. “Introduction.” In East Timor: Beyond Independence, edited by D. Kingsbury and M. Leach, 1–16. Clayton: Monash University Press. Kirby, P. and L. J. Shepherd, eds. 2016a. “The Futures of Women, Peace and Security.” [Special Issue] International Affairs 92 (2). ——  2016b. “The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.” International Affairs 92 (2): 373–92. Kunz, R. 2014. “Gender and Security Sector Reform: Gendering Differently?” International Peacekeeping 21 (5): 604–22. Lighur, L. 1995. “A Message to the Beijing Conference from the East Timorese Women: From Lafai Lighur of the Clandestine Resistance.” 6 September. http:// www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54b/053.html. Mohanty, C. 1988. “Under Western Eyes.” Feminist Review 30: 61–88. Myrttinen, H. 2009. “Poster Boys No More: Gender and Security Sector Reform in Timor-Leste. In Policy Paper No 31. Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Niner, S. 2011. “Women in the Post-Conflict Moment in Timor-Leste.” In Security, Development and Nation-Building in Timor-Leste: Cross-Sectoral Perspectives, edited by V. Harris and A. Goldsmith, 41–58. New York: Routledge. —— 2013. “Between Earth and Heaven: The Politics of Gender.” In The Politics of Timor-Leste: Democratic Consolidation after Intervention, edited by M. Leach and D. Kingsbury, 239–58. New York: Cornell University. Ospina, S. 2006. A Review and Evaluation of Gender-Related Activities of UN Peacekeeping Operations and Their Impact on Gender Relations in Timor-Leste. Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Pettman, J. J. 1996. Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics. London: Routledge. Razack, S. H. 2004. Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rede Feto. 2000. “Statement Made by Rede Feto Timor Lorosa’e (A Network of East Timorese Women and Women’s Organizations).” United Nations Security Council Special Session: The Role Of Women In Maintaining International Peace and Security. 24 October, Dili. Roynestad, E. 2003. “Are Women Included or Excluded in Post-Conflict Reconstruction? A Case Study from Timor-Leste.” UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) Expert Group Meeting on Peace Agreements as a Means For Promoting Gender Equality and Ensuring Participation Of Women, Ottawa, November 10–13. Scambary, J. 2009. “Anatomy of a Conflict: The 2006–2007 Communal Violence in East Timor.” Conflict, Security and Development 9 (2): 265–88.

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Schmaedick, A. 2001. “Ajiza Magno Discusses the Next Phase of Struggle.” The East Timor Estafeta: Voice of the East Timor Action Network/US 7 (1). Schnabel, A. and A. Tabyshalieva. 2012. “Forgone Opportunities: The Marginalization of Women’s Contributions to Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.” In Defying Victimhood: Women and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, edited by A. Schnabel and A. Tabyshalieva, 3–47. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Shepherd, L. J. 2010. “Gendering Security.” In The Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies, edited by J. P. Burgess, 72–80. Abingdon: Routledge. —— 2011. “Sex, Security and Superhero(in)es: From 1325 to 1820 and Beyond.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (4): 504–21. Siapno, J. 2008. “Whispered Confidences: Articulating the Female in the PNTL (Police) and the F-FDTL (Military) in Timor-Leste.” IIAS Newsletter, 7–8. Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Stiehm, J. 1982. “The Protected, the Protector, the Defender.” Women’s Studies International Forum 5 (3): 367–76. Tickner, J. 2001. Gendering World Politics. New York: Colombia University Press. Tiessen, R. 2005. “What’s New About Gender Mainstreaming? Three Decades of Policy Creation and Development Strategies.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 26 (S1): 705–20. Trembath, A. and D. Grenfell. 2006. “Oan Kiak: Women and Independence in TimorLeste.” Arena Magazine 83: 10–2. True, J. 2012. The Political Economy of Violence against Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tryggestad, T. 2010. “The UN Peacebuilding Commission and Gender: A Case of Norm Reinforcement.” International Peacekeeping 17 (2): 159–71. UNSC (United Nations Security Council). 2006a. Report of The Secretary General On Timor-Leste Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1690 (2006). New York: United Nations. —— 2006b. Resolution 1704 (2006). United Nations. New York: United Nations. UN Special Commission. 2006. Report of the United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste. Geneva: United Nations. Väyrynen, T. 2004. “Gender and UN Peace Operations: The Confines of Modernity.” International Peacekeeping 11 (1): 125–42. von Braunmühl, C. 2012. “A Feminist Analysis of UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security.” In Feminist Strategies in International Governance, edited by C. Gulay, E. Prügl and S. Zwingel, 163–80. London: Routledge. Yuval-Davis, N. 1997. Gender and Nation. London: SAGE Publications.

5

Agents of peace: place, identity and peacebuilding Gëzim Visoka

Introduction The international community has tried, since the 1990s, to tackle the legacies of civil wars and the spill-over effects of conflicts through peacebuilding interventions. Peacebuilding has come to entail a broad range of interventionary practices which seek to restore stability, rebuild livelihoods, strengthen state institutions, promote democracy, human rights and ­reconciliation and restore societal normalcy. In implementing this liberal agenda of p ­ eacebuilding, a wide range of actors are involved. Recently, there has been a turn towards examining and differentiating the identity of agents in peacebuilding interventions (Kappler 2015; Orjuela 2008; Richmond 2011). Predominantly the literature continues to use the vaguest dichotomy, ‘international’ and ‘local’, to delineate in the broadest sense those who intervene to supply peace and those who receive it. In response, post-colonial critiques of peacebuilding interventions use hybridity as an analytical lens to open up the scope for rethinking the hierarchies and cartographies of peacebuilding agents. Similarly, semantic accounts have started to reflect on the suitability of the language of domination in post-conflict societies, as such a vocabulary embodies ­imbalanced power relations and cultural domination (Lemay-Hébert et al. 2014). However, these existing accounts lack a dynamic conceptualisation of identity in post-conflict societies. This chapter proposes a new account of the identity of agents in conflictaffected societies. It investigates how place and performativity shape the identity of agents and their positionality towards peacebuilding processes. The ontological starting point is that there are multiple agents in post-conflict societies who have distinct and overlapping attributes, and that it is quintessential to identify them and develop analytical constructs for ­understanding them. To explore the relation between the agents’ presence and their impact

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on peacebuilding, this chapter bypasses the exclusionary dichotomies between local/international and liberal/indigenous agents and develops a typology of six types of agents, horizontally arranged around their insideness and outsideness towards a particular conflict-affected place. Using political geography and reflexive sociology (see Relph 1976), this chapter rearranges agents of peace as follows: existential insiders, subjective insiders, empathetic i­ nsiders, behavioural insiders, objective outsiders and existential outsiders. This ­typology does not reproduce dichotomies between the local and international; rather, this differentiated account of the identity of peace agents elucidates the fluid meaning of peace and the complex approaches to peacebuilding, and disentangles the intentional and behavioural nuances of ­different agents. Such a conceptual unpacking opens up the space for studying certain ignored groups of agents and enables embracing anti-foundationalism and epistemological contingency when studying actors in peacebuilding processes. The chapter first sets the context for elaborating alternative ways of approaching the categorisation of agents in post-conflict places via a brief discussion of the attribution of agents in peacebuilding studies. Drawing on the literature on place, space and performance theory, it then proposes a conceptual framework for identifying peace agents. Finally, the chapter explores how the positionality of agents towards a conflict-affected place – that is, the nearness and remoteness of insider and outsider agents from the locus of peacebuilding processes – profoundly shapes the prospects for sustainable peace. The chapter seeks to contribute to the exploration of new vocabularies for studying peacebuilding processes, and in doing so to contribute to the critical literature which offers alternative approaches to understanding societies affected by violent conflict. Unpacking identity has implications for understanding who are true agents of change, as well as rethinking spaces of peacebuilding, especially in the coming age of remote interventionism and resilience building in peace, security and development practices.

Solid categorisation of agents in peacebuilding studies Identity politics are one of the most contentious issues in conflict-affected societies, being both a cause of violent conflicts and an impediment to peacebuilding. While this is an important topic and has received extensive attention (see Chapter 1), this chapter is concerned with a rather different dimension of the identity politics, namely, the politics and implications of the categorisation of agents in peacebuilding studies. The academic and policy literature on peacebuilding and statebuilding has predominantly invoked the dichotomy between the ‘internationals’ and the ‘locals’ to demarcate the boundaries, identity, representativeness and power relations between these two broad conceptual divisions (see Chesterman 2004; Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Pugh,

Agents of peace73 Cooper and Turner 2008). Scholars extensively invoke the notion of ‘internationals’ to refer to outsider agents both as individuals and as collectives (international organisations) either working on the civilian or in military aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding (see Chapter 4). The notion of ‘internationals’ often refers to UN missions, regional organisations, the donor community and bureaucrats and policy makers operating under international organisations and Western influential states. On the other hand, the ‘local’ are ­identified as the entire realm of agents who belong to different identity groups of the post-conflict state and possess local citizenship. Most regularly, the notion of the ‘locals’ is invoked in the context of local political elites and domestic officials who are involved in the post-conflict transitional institutions and political structures. The cartography of the identity of peace agents since the end of the Cold War has been dominated by the Eurocentric and colonial-era binaries of Western/Indigenous, local/international and modern/traditional. These have been driven by the logic of the epistemological solidity of identities and by categories and hierarchies of belonging, worth and agency. Solid categorisation and labelling of identities seeks the normalisation of certain uneven hierarchies of power, human individuals, values, objects and narratives (Brown 1993). William E. Connolly (1995, 50, 89) argues that the process of ­normalisation treats ‘the small set of identities it endorses as if they were intrinsically true; this puts it under tremendous pressure to treat everything that differs from those intrinsic truths to be fundamental threats’. Solid identities are important not only for more easily studying social messiness but also to facilitate the government of individuals and collectivities. The definition of agents as local and international, and liberal or indigenous, is too general, misleading and unrepresentative. This is significant, because once the identity of individuals is overshadowed by generalised labelling, examination of their distinct agency vanishes. Identification of individuals and communities based on their race, ethnicity and religious belonging has primarily served elites in securing political support and has often reproduced violence and undermined peacebuilding (Moran 2011, 180). Consequently, an extensive variety of agents and their performances end up being overshadowed by this conceptual meltdown. An attempt to move beyond this dichotomy has emerged as part of the critical turn in peacebuilding studies. Roger Mac Ginty’s work on hybrid forms of peace discusses the danger of romanticising the local, traditional and indigenous, and argues that ‘a simplistic binary easily overlooks the fact that there are traditional and indigenous ways of warfare, torture, exclusion, and degradation’ (Mac Ginty 2011, 51). Mac Ginty rightly points out that simplistic and semantic binaries between local, indigenous and international agents are incapable of capturing the complexity of human societies, particularly in

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the context of post-conflict societies. Richmond and Mac Ginty argue that ‘[t]he non-acceptance of established political categories allows us to reassess boundaries and identify the connections, networks and co-constitutive elements that comprise the context for contemporary peace-support intervention’ (Richmond and Mac Ginty 2015, 180). Richmond has developed a more nuanced conceptualisation of peace agents, namely the dichotomy between the ‘international’, ‘liberal’ and hybrid forms of ‘liberal-local’ and ‘local-local’. Here, local denotes ‘what international actors normally perceive as a range of actors and terrains spanning their non-Western and “non-liberal” partners for liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding at the elite level … and civil society (Richmond 2011, 14). Concerning the ‘local-local’, Richmond maintains that they are perceived as ‘the existence and diversity of communities and individuals that constitute political society beyond this often liberally projected artifice of elites and civil society, who may also have transnational and transversal exposure’ (ibid., 14). Furthermore, Richmond argues that the division between the local and the liberal could lead to a ‘local-liberal hybridity’, which can represent positive and negative practices (ibid., 18–19). The discourse of hybridity has tried to loosen this fixity and reveal the contingency and temporalities of identities in post-conflict societies. Regardless of contextual nuances, understanding societies as hybrid entities risks not only reproducing new binaries but also conceiving fluid identities as new static identities. While Richmond’s account bears extensive relevance, it emphasises the local only in relation to the externally perceived identity and ideology of the host population, including the elite and civil society, without shedding much light on the more nuanced and complex social positioning and identity of agents in post-conflict societies. Despite these efforts to expand the categorisation of peace agents, critics: highlight how hybridity discourses are ‘entrapped by the terms of the liberal peace debate’ (Heathershaw 2013, 277–80); consider the binaries between the local and international as symptomatic to a Eurocentric critique of liberal peace (Sabaratnam 2013); highlight the risk of normalising certain local actors at the expense of other local voices (Kappler 2015, 876; Randazzo 2016, 8); and suggest ‘exploring the differences existing within these very groups and how these differences may influence the pursuit of local legitimacy’ (Maschietto 2016, 1). Hence, if one of the problems with solidity is its predisposition towards conceptual encapsulation, alternative intellectual avenues should be explored so as to avoid such entrapments. It is also seen as incongruent with the reality of identity’s being more dynamic and changing than those totalising discourses allow. It is important to move in the direction of de-naturalising these conceptions of identity so as to account for other, reality-adequate modes of belonging.

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Place-based identity in conflict-affected societies Responding to the existing solid understanding of identity, one possible pathway is to endorse fluidity as a suitable approach to account for the processes of becoming without a solid beginning and end, as well as to capture the performativity and temporality of identities. Fluid sociological perspectives might be useful in this regard, as they describe conditions of disintegration, individualisation, and disengagement of collective agencies and the persistence of fluidity and ambivalence as new forms of invincibility (Bauman 2000, 14). Liquid sociology signifies that social structures, identities, agencies and relationships are ‘constantly being made, undone and remade’ (Blackshaw 2005, 48). Endorsing a fluid understanding of identity, Kappler argues that ‘[a]ctors legitimately delocalise and (re-) localise in different contexts and visà-vis different audiences, while such processes may even happen in parallel or in chronological shift’ (Kappler 2015, 885). Similarly, Elisa Randazzo suggests conceptualising local agency as ‘a multiple, messy assemblage of hybrid networks, where the identification of clear-cut identities and agendas is discouraged’, with the sole purpose of avoiding the reproduction of new binaries, meta-narratives and the marginalisation of certain agents (Randazzo 2016, 9, 11). Therefore, anti-foundationalist ontologies may be more suitable for studying identity, but not to the point that all forms of identification are made redundant and unobservable. If identity is dismembered from anything, as Giddens (1991) and other sociologists claim, then it will be difficult to reconceptualise identity in post-conflict societies and to make sense of contingency, pluralist agencies, interconnectedness and blurred lines of identification. One possible pathway for recognising reflexive identities but retaining some degree of ontological embeddedness is political geography, which situates fluid identities in relation to their affiliation with a particular place, power relations, spaces of agency and boundaries of belonging and performing. Christine Berberich, Neil Campbell and Robert Hudson argue that place is the site ‘where identities are exchanged, performed and constructed’ (Berberich, Campbell and Hudson 2012, 21). As Guntram H. Herb argues ‘[e]ven identities based on seemingly aspatial, social variables, such as those based on race and gender, are constructed through places of interaction’ (Herb 2015, 360). Similarly, Martin Jones, Rys Jones and Michael Woods argue that [p]lace matters in the analysis of political processes … The importance of place comes not from any intrinsic environmental influence, but from the distinctive configurations of social relations that exist in particular places … [which] can influence both the structure of power relations within localities and the way in which residents engage politically with the wider world. (Jones, Jones and Woods 2004, 113)

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In examining the significance of space, Edward Relph explores people’s identity in relation to a place. For Relph, ‘the unique quality of place is its power to order and to focus human intentions, experiences, and actions spatially’ (Seamon and Sowers 2008). He maintains that spatial identity consists of people’s relation with a place’s physical settings, its activities, situations and events, and the individual and collective meanings created through people’s experiences and intentions in regard to that place (Relph 1976, 45). The quintessential dimension of Relph’s work is his original distinction between insideness and outsideness to a particular place. Relph maintains that insideness to a place is determined by closeness and sameness to a place, by perceived safety and ease. Therefore, the greater the closeness and insideness that a person feels to a place, the stronger his identity affiliated to that place. On the other hand, the outsideness of a person is determined in relation to separation or alienation from a place, which is largely influenced by his experience of that place. Agents are insiders to a particular place at a particular time, while simultaneously outsiders to other places at other times. As Kappler rightly argues, ‘[p]eacebuilding identity, that is, the labels actors are positioned with and position themselves with during a process of peacebuilding, is therefore highly time- and space-dependent’ (Kappler 2015, 878). Therefore, as Simon Springer and P. L. Billon argue ‘geographers … can play a key role in shaping our collective understandings of violence and its relationship to space’ (Springer and Billon 2016, 3). Within such a geo-ontology of belonging, agents perform a wide range of functions which define their space of agency. As Herb argues, ‘place is not synonymous with local’ (2015, 361). Place is an assemblage of material and discursive aspects of social life, relations, conflict, irredentism, memories and social formation and disintegration. Identities are emplaced phenomena constituted through performances (see also Chapter 13). Judith Butler argues that identity ‘is real only to the extent that it is performed’ (1990, 278). There is no being prior to doing; becoming takes place in the act of performing. Similarly, Vikki Bell argues that ‘taking the temporal performative nature of identities as a theoretical premise means that more than ever, one needs to question how identities continue to be produced, embodied and performed, effectively, passionately and with social and political consequences’ (Bell 1999, 2). Therefore, enactment is crucial in becoming an identifiable agent. Prior conceptualisation of the agency of insider and outsider actors is rooted in solid, ­primordial normative frameworks. This signifies that place is a social ­construction, derived largely from human intentional and unintentional actions, which brings about the emergence of meaning for various physical and cultural objects. Dialectically, people make places and shape spaces, just as spaces shape people and places make people. Doreen Massey suggests ‘thinking of places as areas’ that are

Agents of peace77 imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself. (Massey 1994, 154)

Hence, place-based and performative analysis of identity challenges the Western-centric paradigms of peacebuilding agents and opens up the space for generating a new vocabulary of peace in conflict-affected societies. Building on this discussion, how can we develop a conceptual framework which takes place and performance as the basis for fluid capturing of fluid identities in conflict-affected societies? Current debates in peacebuilding studies provide a vertical depiction of power relations, identities and agencies, associating the international with top-down modes of governance and the local with bottomup approaches. Contrary to previous accounts, the conceptual framework of peace agents outlined below offers a horizontal, flat and spatial categorisation of identities in conflict-affected societies. Building on Relph’s phenomenological study of places, a pluralist depicting of agents would consist of at least six different agents that are positioned in temporal proximity towards a ­particular place. The typology of agents consists of: 1 2 3 4 5 6

existential insiders subjective insiders empathetic insiders behavioural insiders objective outsiders existential outsiders.

In this new categorisation of agents, existential insiders and subjective insiders represent native insiders who have either have been born in that particular place or are perceived to belong to an ethnic and national group that is either a majority or minority group populating that place. The rest of the agents, respectively, the empathetic insiders, behavioural insiders and objective outsiders, are non-natives who belong to a different place from the particular post-conflict place they live in , work in or engage with. They see post-­conflict places as placeless zones of detachment, intervention, exceptionality and exploitation. Exceptions to this are existential outsiders, who could be natives who were born in the post-conflict place but, for political and social reasons, do not inhabit the place any longer. While being aware that this categorisation of actors risks being perceived as essentialist, the fact that agents have the possibility to move from one mode of identification to another leaves space for seeing identity as fluid and temporal and performative. Horizontal differentiation across insideness and outsideness towards a particular place has the potential to become one of the most dynamic conceptualisations of identity,

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recognising that all agents are temporarily associated with a particular place. This is not the case with the dichotomy of local–international, nor with other dichotomies which are overloaded with political and ideological connotations. The extent to which someone is referred as insider or outsider also signifies the relationship which agents have with a particular place. In sum, the six types of agential identification are not static and undifferentiated; rather, they are changeable, depending on the dialectical and situational positioning of each agent towards a particular place and each other. In this way we pluralise further peace agents, while also recognising their spatial temporalities and fluid performances and discourses. Existential insiders Existential insiders are native insiders who are fundamentally attached to and dependent on a particular place and its socio-ecological settings. They are the genuine ‘locals’ who generate local knowledge and represent the genuine local culture. Contrary to modernist claims, existential insiders are stationed in the most elementary spaces of society and are profoundly connected with a particular place, culture and people deriving from their material dependence on and socio-physiological attachment to a particular place and their ideological commitment to a particular life practice. They are often distanced from cosmopolitan understanding of the world, socio-technological interactions and other cultural practices outside their conformable zones. Notwithstanding differences between existential insiders across different places, cultures and contexts, existential insiders would be categorised as: random people living in rural and urban zones, socially and materially disadvantaged people; marginalised minority communities, uneducated and unemployed people, women who serve in households that might or might not have basic education, naturally disabled people or war invalids, including war veterans and ex-combatants. In the context of post-conflict societies, existential insiders are the subaltern social groups that are beyond the radar of liberal interventionists. They are similar to what Richmond refers as ‘local-local’, situated in the most foundational sites of post-conflict societies. Apart from immediate post-conflict humanitarian assistance, they do not benefit from peacebuilding projects and have a limited role in shaping local and national politics. Existential insiders experience precarious lives without institutional protection, entrapped in hierarchies of domestic violence and patriarchalism, clanbased governance and discrimination. Subjective insiders Subjective insiders are those native insiders who are generally referred as the local elites. They are perceived to possess ‘subjectivity’, manifested through political, economic and cultural power and authority. Their self-proclaimed

Agents of peace79 representative roles and affiliation with a particular place give these agents the epithet of subjective insiders. Subjective insiders occupy the most important political, economic and social fields in post-conflict societies. They are often political leaders, former warlords, influential business people, prominent journalists, insiders working for international organisations, civil s­ ociety leaders, village elders, dissident activists and diaspora figures. The most known and privileged type of subjective insiders are the political leaders who are often the main local participants with whom various types of insider and outsider agents interact to provide stability, develop political institutions and undertake peace and ethnic reconciliation actions. Performative acts of resistance, sacrifice and self-imposed leadership grant these insider agents the legitimacy to become political elites and the ‘right’ of passage from existential insider to subjective insider. While existential insiders have limited access to peace processes, subjective insiders are the main beneficiaries of peacebuilding projects. Their proactive role in society is the main precondition for outsider agents to consider them as influential and viable interlocutors through whom the peace settlement and its implementation can occur. They are equipped with charisma and the rhetorical language of nationalism, localism, and also of cosmopolitanism and pacifism. Subjective insiders serve as a bridge between local culture and outsider interveners, as well as connectors between different power centres and political interests. Empathetic insiders Empathetic insiders are non-natives living for a long period of time with existential insiders who have accepted the local culture and language, and perform empathetic position towards insiders. The empathy of outsider agents towards existential insiders gives the name of empathetic insider. Empathetic insiders could be considered humanitarian workers, civil society activists, members of peace movements, or researchers and anthropologists who spend many years, if not decades, in a particular conflict-affected place. While the closeness to the insider people is mainly determined by the duration of time and linguistic and cultural empathy, these are not the only factors that make someone an empathetic insider. Beyond language, the closeness of empathetic insiders to the local community is determined by their extensive work and assistance provided to the community by bringing humanitarian aid to reconstruct socially and materially broken and divided communities. Empathetic insiders oppose top-down, bureaucratic interventions and are pioneers of grassroots change and bottom-up processes in conflict-affected societies. Their unique social positioning within post-conflict societies makes them influential agents who have the potential to modify the social structure and habitus by sharing their life as an example of reflexive human agents, to encourage insider and outsider agents to change their policies, and ultimately to keep the social dynamics fluid

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and changeable. Among all other types of agent in peacebuilding practices, empathic insiders have the capacity, willingness and situational possibility to be agents of change and to serve as multipliers of the good practices of socioeconomic development, emancipation and political courage. Behavioural insiders Behavioural insiders are those external experts and consultants who pragmatically navigate post-conflict places and work strategically with insider agents. Their expertise, which is based on the utilisation and interpretation of local knowledge, makes them behave as the insiders of a particular conflict-affected society (see Sriram et al. 2009). One of the most common types of behavioural insider are long-term foreign (outsiders) workers who are affiliated with a particular post-conflict place primarily because of their deployment as part of military or civilian international peacekeeping and peace- and state-buildingrelated missions. Foreign diplomats, military observers, civilian peacekeepers and UN volunteers can also be considered as behavioural insiders. They see post-conflict societies as convenient employment places with high salaries and diplomatic privileges and immunities. Long-term foreign workers acting as behavioural insiders often create their own habitus in post-conflict societies, interact only among themselves and avoid the everyday life and complex reality of post-conflict people. Long-term foreign workers are resilient agents, adaptable and capable of transforming their personal and professional ­identities to and moving from one peace operation to another. The time that behavioural insiders spend in post-conflict places does not necessarily determine their closeness towards the host society. Further, foreign scholars, researchers and journalists who claim to be country experts could be behavioural insiders who live and visit a particular post-conflict place with the clear intention of collecting local knowledge and using it for research purposes. Objective outsiders Objective outsiders are agents who are remotely engaged with another postconflict place, largely due to their work for foreign governments, international organisations or special agencies, and have assigned political roles to monitor, observe or take decisions for a particular post-conflict place. Typical examples of this type of objective outsider are desk officers working for international and regional organisations, foreign governmental and non-governmental agencies, and military officers leading remote military and surveillance operations. Diplomats and senior officials of international organisations are among the most influential agents that shape the political processes in post-conflict places. Although insider agents do not democratically elect objective outsiders, their legitimacy and authority derive from the mandate which international society has given to them, or from the political,

Agents of peace81 economic and institutional power which they possess in the international arena. Often, objective outsiders do not visit post-conflict places and, as such, rely primarily on secondary sources to inform their decisions and actions. They operate through a network of intermediaries, mainly relying on behavioural insiders to formulate policies and decisions and take actions that profoundly shapes peace processes in post-conflict places. Objective outsiders are primarily interested in advancing external interests and agendas. Their discourse is based on abstract ideas and conversations; thus they garner only a handful of distilled knowledge from post-conflict places and rely on comparative and intuitive knowledge. Existential outsiders Finally, existential outsiders are often those agents who have been excluded and expelled from a particular society and place for political, security, economic or cultural reasons. Under this category come individuals complicit in war crimes, politicians from enemy states, ‘collaborators’ with the previous regime, witnesses of past crimes and long-term refugees and displaced people. In different post-conflict contexts, there is extensive pressure from the outsider agents to engage minority communities and the return of refugees and internally displaced people as a strategy to achieve some sort of ethnic reconciliation and establish a stable peace. On some occasions, existential outsiders take this role because of the bitter and unbearable past experiences associated with a particular place, people and circumstances. Other existential outsiders who either before or during the conflict have occupied influential political and socio-economic positions as part of the previous regime tend to be either self-excluded or excluded by others as a result of their past activity. Hence, the collective identity of existential outsiders and their social functions before and during the war often becomes a source of tension with the emplaced existential and subjective insiders. This typology of agents who are involved in international interventions and post-conflict peacebuilding is more comprehensive, yet nuanced, than any other account of identity in peacebuilding studies. As opposed to vertical accounts of identity (top-down vs bottom-up), which still recognise and maintain the supremacy of external interventionism, the horizontal depiction of agents places the insider actors at the centre of peacebuilding process as well as opening up the space to recognise the role in shaping peace processes of outsider remote agents, who are often overlooked in peacebuilding studies.

Differentiated identity and implications for peacebuilding The differentiation of identity and recognition of its contingencies opens up the possibility of generating nuanced views of different segments of

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­ eacebuilding. It helps to expand the importance of different sites of violence p and peace, as well as assisting in exploring how the geo-positionality of agents towards a particular place generate new affections, modes of knowing and political commitments. Positioning different agents in the scaling of agency, from the local epicentres of post-conflict societies to the international sites of power and governance, helps to identity distinct forms of conflict prevention as well as conflict provocation. Most importantly, the differentiated identity of peace agents requires systematic changes concerning the way we know peace and the way we build peace. Identity and belonging are emplaced phenomena. Places can be spaces of peace, but also of violence, memory and security. As the outsider interveners are primarily concerned with governing post-conflict places in accordance with their external blueprints and political agendas, they focus only on limited spaces and locations to perform their agency. The narrative that local conflicts are about power and domination makes institutions the main site of intervention, at the cost of ignoring the true landscapes of post-conflict violence and reconciliation (Laliberté 2016). Undoubtedly, institutional geographies of peacebuilding represent important sites for understanding the dynamics of peacebuilding and peace-breaking, especially the coordinating functions of text and emplaced relations in mobilising the work of others (Smith 2005). Ethnically divided cities and regions are often seen as spaces of trouble and insecurity overloaded with contentious memories (Kappler 2014). As Béatrice Poulingy argues, ‘inhabitants of poor districts and shanty downs often see peacekeepers only when they are called in to carry out punitive operations against local gangs’ (Poulingy 2006, 33). Effectively, insider agents control the suburban and rural zones. For external actors, spaces of peace are often only those places where liberal peace events take place. Other, non-desired events and developments are often reduced to non-events (Visoka 2016b). However, a differentiated understanding of identity in conflict-affected societies demands the exploration of alternative sites. Roger Mac Ginty argues that by exploring alternative sites of agency, such as everyday practices in divided and conflict societies, we can identify ‘conflict-defying, conflictdelaying and conflict-minimizing social capital’ (Mac Ginty 2014, 550). In this regard, existential insiders produce and perform their everyday diplomacy of conflict-avoidance and other coping mechanisms in order to navigate through religious, political, economic and ethno-nationalist differences. Understandably, this everyday practice of peace ‘occurs in a space or locality over which individuals and communities will exercise limited control’ (Mac Ginty 2014, 553); however, they play an important role in shaping broader and systematic aspects of peacebuilding. Therefore, peacebuilding engagement should take into account everyday, peripheral spaces that are habituated by existential insiders if they want to increase the impact of their intervention.

Agents of peace83 Outsider agents working on peacebuilding and development projects have constantly remained distant from local subjects, due to material, cultural and ideational differences. Touching upon this problematic, Poulingy argues that, among other factors, the ‘geographic distribution’ of outsider peacekeepers ‘influence[s] what takes place in the interaction between peace operations and local people’ (Poulingy 2006, 27–8). Points of encounter are often brief, and insufficient to build trust and mutual understanding between insider and outsider agents. Nicole Laliberté argues that sites of peacebuilding intervention are less about ‘the creation of peace’ and predominantly about ‘maintaining the networks of mutual legitimisation among peacebuilding partners’ (Laliberté 2016, 2). With increasing attacks on humanitarian workers and civilian peacebuilders, the distancing between insider and outsider agents has expanded. These events have been convenient to the global security agenda of merging development and peacebuilding with security and foreign policy of dominant Western states. The peace–security–development nexus has revealed the mixed motives for intervention and has weakened concern for the potential adverse outcomes and negative impact of such interventions. The constant mobility and detachment of outsider agents from the locus of conflict societies and their broad variety of actors have resulted in weakening the local legitimacy of peacebuilding intervention, have generated resistance and resentment towards i­ nternational missions and have undermined the effectiveness of p ­ eacebuilding projects. Remoteness and post-interventionary discourses of resilience can empower subjective insiders at the expense of existential insiders. To deal with such unmonitored spaces of peacebuilding, many behavioural insiders choose ‘to operate through proxies in the form of partners, subcontractors or local staff recruited for the single purpose of access’ (Sandstrom 2014, 287). Under these circumstances subjective insiders, such as local power-holders and their civil society actors, become gatekeepers of what peacebuilding projects are implemented and who benefits from humanitarian relief. In order for peacebuilding interventions to succeed, there must be a relational and empathetic reconnection between insider and outsider agents. To paraphrase Cox, the production of knowledge in conflict-affected places is always for someone and for some purpose (Cox 1981; see also Visoka 2016b). In the peacebuilding context, local knowledge is disqualified for being a contingent form of knowing and learning that is in a constant struggle to remain contextual, not replicable, against formal, deductive reasoning. Don Kalb defines local knowledge as ‘place-based’ knowledge that is embedded in ‘a set of situated, embodied, and practical insights into dynamic and shifting social relations and institutions of production and reproduction’ (Kalb 2006, 581). Despite the importance of local knowledge, ‘thematic knowledge currently overshadows country expertise’ (Autesserre 2014, 70). Consequently, this

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­ ierarchical order of knowledge privileges outsider expertise, promotes the h circulation of personnel and favours a standardised template at the expense of situational and contextual modes of knowledge and acting and side-lines local expertise. Objective insiders often distort the realities of post-conflict societies in their official narratives, largely because of self-interest and donor pressure, and also because of desire to promote narratives of success and progress to the audiences in their countries of origin. As Sandstrom argues, ‘UN agencies and contractors give the impression that everyone is doing the right thing and monitoring effectively. There is little to no hint of complications or problems in most cases, or even that programming or projects sometimes have a negative outcome’ (Sandstrom 2014, 269). Local knowledge is taken into account only as a strategic move to devise better interventions and achieve securitisation purposes, privatisation projects and the institutionalisation and formalisation of social practices through regulation and legislation (Visoka 2016a). The reliance of interveners on dominant narratives about the causes of local conflicts, their poor understanding of local context and the development of top-down solutions can result in devising wrong interventions, which can increase structural violence on the ground (Visoka 2017). Arguably, Autesserre shows that ‘international efforts can reach their full potential only when intervening structures rely on in-depth local expertise to complement thematic competencies’ (Autesserre 2014, 80). The further away the agent is located from existential insiders, the more the richness of local knowledge is reduced, relying thus on secondary knowledge reproduced and interpreted through different social and political mediums, such as the media, policy documents and academic publications. This implies that the more distant and ‘objective’ the agents are, the greater the likelihood of ignoring local dynamics and circumstances, with a consequently higher risk of taking harmful decisions that may have unintended consequences. Seen differently, a lack of knowledge of the micro-details of post-conflict processes offers objective insiders and outsiders the possibility to invoke plausible deniability when failures occur. Equally, the unproductive relationship between outsider and insider agents reduces the ability of interveners to understand the context of their peacebuilding interventions, which undermines the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions. Hence, more effective peacebuilding interventions require modes of knowledge to be tailored that are suitable to different places, replacing universal policy blueprints, and the development of contextspecific policy knowledge that is fluid and adaptable.

Conclusion This chapter has provided an alternative framework for identifying agents in peacebuilding contexts. By using place as conceptualising reference, the

Agents of peace85 analysis has revealed the viability of fluid accounts of identity and agency in conflict-affected societies and the variety of impacts that each peace agent can have in peacebuilding processes. Existing solid identifications of subjects in post-conflict societies overshadow important aspects for understanding the complexity of social processes that support or undermine peacebuilding efforts. The typology introduced in this chapter integrates into a single, coherent yet fluid framework a wide range of actors that so far have only been examined separately or grouped as ‘locals’ and ‘internationals’. The usefulness of bring these different actors into one integrated framework helps to explain how the scale and positionality of agents towards a particular postconflict place generate different ontologies of peace, different sets of practices and knowledge and different political obligations. Place, as a central feature of spatial studies, plays an important role in producing and performing new identities and enacting new forms of agency which help to reconstitute societies. Hence, the preliminary discussion in this chapter explored how the horizontal, place-based differentiation of agents of peace opens up the possibility of examining and observing some of the overlooked aspects of post-conflict societies. Unpacking identity highlights the need to rethink how we know about peace and how we go about implementing that knowledge. Two important aspects were highlighted: the necessities of pluralising sites of peacebuilding engagement, encompassing from institutional to peripheral sites, and of taking bottom-up and local knowledge as a basis when devising peace policies. The existing solid identification of agents has overlooked important nuances of agency that different insider and outsider agents possess, produce and perform as a result of their spatial and functional positionality towards a particular post-conflict place. The next stage will be to examine the empirical viability of this typology when studying the agencies, places and spaces of peacebuilding processes.

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Part II

Identity rupture

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A space for identity: the case of Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians Hind Ghandour

Introduction As a consequence of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 Palestinians sought refuge in the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt (Al-Husseini 2007). Approximately 110,000 sought refuge in Lebanon (Al-Husseini, 2007; Chatty et al. 2005, 11; Sayigh 1979, 99), although the exact number of Palestinians who arrived to Lebanon in 1948 is disputed. Suleiman describes the early years of Palestinian arrival as the phase of ‘adaptation and hope’, which was characterised by a welcoming stance towards the Palestinians (Suleiman 2006, 20; see also Haddad 2003). Lebanon’s role as a host state was thought to be temporary, as it was believed that the international community would soon resolve the crisis. At the time of their arrival in 1947–48,1 the newly created refugee population referred to themselves as returnees and not refugees, as they wished and advocated to return to their homes (Peteet 1995; Zureik 1996). However, it became apparent as early as 1949 that the possibility of repatriation to their homes would not be granted by the newly established state of Israel (Al-Husseini 2007; Talhami 2003). Lebanese citizenship was granted to a segment of the refugee population through the process of tawtin (naturalisation), while the rest continue to hold refugee status till today. Tawtin occurred in two waves. The first began in 1949 and continued until the outbreak of the first Lebanese civil war in 1958, during which 28,000 Palestinian Christians and 3,000 Muslims acquired Lebanese citizenship (Al-Natour 1993, 15, 40; Haddad 2003; Sayigh 1995). According to Haddad, 50,000 Palestinians were naturalised in Lebanon during the 1950s and 1960s (Haddad 2003, 478). Most were from wealthy families, and had lived in the cities of historical Palestine (Sayigh 1995, 42). The second wave occurred in 1994 with the issuing of

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the Naturalization Decree of 1994 under the government of Rafic Hariri, which granted citizenship to 154,931 foreign residents, 32,504 of whom were Palestinians from the Seven Villages2 (El-Khazen 1997; Hourani and Sensenig-Dabbous 2012, 189; Maktabi 1999). Tawtin3 is a process of naturalisation that is underpinned by notions of assimilation, integration and belonging to the Lebanese state, and has thus been opposed by many Palestinian refugees (Hanafi and Long 2010; Knudsen 2009; Meier 2010). According to Salih, ‘tawtin means being forced to accept another watan, another homeland, and this is unacceptable for Palestinians’ (Salih 2013, 83). Having the same root as the Arabic term watan (homeland), tawtin was regarded by Palestinians as a national category of membership that aimed to establish Lebanon as an (alternative) homeland for Palestinians (Meier 2010; Sayigh 2005). This notion of an alternative watan has overshadowed the debate about mass naturalisation in Jordan, and has contributed to negative perceptions and opposition among many Palestinian refugees toward its replication in Lebanon (Meier 2010; Tobin 2012). If tawtin were to take place, Palestinian identity would be perceived as undergoing a procedural un-rooting and erasure and eventual substitution by Lebanese status. The relative absence of research on Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians can be understood as an assumption of their assimilation and integration into the host state. Much academic interest has been generated in the study of camp residents, predominantly residents of the Shatila camp in Beirut (Allan 2013; Feldman 2015). This has left naturalised citizens and, to a lesser extent, urban refugees, significantly understudied. There is a comparative abundance of literature addressing Jordan’s naturalised Palestinians, and this remains unparalleled in the case of Lebanon (Massad 2012). This chapter aims to address the gap by critically examining how a concept like tawtin raises questions about citizenship and identity. The idea of tawtin as an imposition of Lebanese national identity upon a Palestinian refugee population is problematic in that it reifies the prevalent notion that citizenship is identity. By drawing upon 40 in-depth interviews4 with naturalised Palestinians in Lebanon conducted from July 2013 to January 2014 and from June to August 2014, this chapter challenges the inextricable binding together of citizenship and identity. The relationship between citizenship and identity is far more flexible, nuanced and complex than these categorisations would suggests, and ‘what ordinary people associate with citizenship is one of the biggest lacunae in the literature’ (Isin and Wood 1999; Joppke 2007, 44). An exploration into narratives of the naturalised reveals different and sometimes contradictory understandings of the relationship between citizenship and identity, as well as the changing, adaptive and responsive nature of the meanings associated with each. The chapter begins by drawing upon the conceptual relationship between citizenship and identity. It then discusses this relationship as it pertains to

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians93 the question of tawtin in Lebanon. Lebanese national rhetoric posits tawtin to be the transference of Palestinians from a Palestinian to a Lebanese ethos. The majority of Palestinians believed that tawtin was aimed at undermining Palestinian national consciousness and it was thus rejected by the majority of the population. By giving voice to naturalised Palestinians in Lebanon, this chapter explores whether tawtin has in fact been successful in undermining Palestinian identity, or whether the latter has managed to survive. The relevance of this study extends beyond the scope of Palestinians in Lebanon, as it applies to similar cases of naturalisation elsewhere, Palestinian and otherwise.

Citizenship and identity A by-product of the nation-state, citizenship was developed in the Western context to establish congruence between sovereign territory, belonging and identity (Miller 2000; Smith 2001). In the modern nation-state, citizenship constitutes the central mode of membership, upon which the relationship between the citizen and the sovereign is established and defined. Isin and Wood (1999) describe this relationship between citizenship and identity as multifaceted and characteristically flexible, adaptive and inherently complex. The stability of modern democracy partially rests on the justice of its structures, the sense of identity of its citizenry and how they ‘view potentially competing forms of national, regional, ethnic, and religious identities’ (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, 353). Citizenship can work to blur existing boundaries between competing identities and expressions of belonging, through policies of assimilation and integration (Miller 2000). Conversely, citizenship policies can also work to maintain difference, such as ethnic, national or cultural disparities that differentiate minority groups from the majority (Kymlicka 1995). In distinguishing between the citizen and the non-citizen, citizenship serves as a consequential and differential marker of identity (Heater 2004). For post-national theorists, practices of citizenship that endow citizens with a common identity to which they belong have been significantly challenged following the emergence and proliferation of global human rights. In conceptualising citizenship as an expansive and global concept, a post-national approach accounts for the emergence of a sense of ‘universal personhood’ that has played an increasingly dominant role in the global political sphere (Soysal 1994; 2012; Tambini 2001). This suggests a decoupling of rights from the nation-state following the rise of a global human rights agenda as an alternative to the sovereign as a guarantor of rights. Consequently, the relation between citizenship and identity is thus challenged. Additionally, this shift away from territorially bound national identity is also attributed to the multiplicity of associations and memberships experienced by individuals in an increasingly globalised world (Isin and Wood 1999). Critics

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of post-nationalism shed light on the absence of the stateless and the refugees from these debates, such that that despite the proliferation of human rights, access to rights remains inextricably bound to access to citizenship (Arendt [1951] 1973; Benhabib 2004; Bosniak 2006; Malkki 1995; McNevin 2011).5 Indeed, there exists an expansive discourse of citizenship that goes beyond these post-national conceptualisations to present the concept as vibrant, flexible and susceptible to reinvention (Bosniak 2006; Joppke 2007; Kivisto and Faist 2007). Joppke, for example, distinguishes between three dimensions of citizenship: rights, identity and status. According to Joppke, citizenship as status signifies access to rules vis-à-vis a formalised relationship with the state. Citizenship’s dimension of rights represents the formal capacities attached to being a citizen, determining the rights with which citizens are endowed by means of membership and inclusion; finally, citizenship as identity refers to the behavioural aspect of being part of a collective, whereby individuals act as and conceive themselves to be part of a collective, classically the nation, and behave according to its normative structures. Citizenship, according to Joppke, addresses the unity and integration of society, and it remains closely connected with the semantics of nation and nationalism (Joppke 2007, 37). Joppke’s framing of citizenship according to its dimensions illuminates expressions of agency in how individuals position themselves within its context, and the meanings that they attribute to their status; for example, those who ‘understand their citizenship as a set of rights would find the national meanings of citizenship almost unintelligible’ (Joppke 2007, 37–8). Throughout this chapter, the individual practices and experiences of citizenship are highlighted; framing citizenship in accordance to its dimensions allows for this analysis. While for some citizenship is conceptualised as identity, for others it represents access to rights (see also Chapter 8). The section that follows distinguishes between the dimensions of citizenship – namely rights and identity – to illustrate the variegated, individual and flexible ways that identity is negotiated within the context of the case study.

Tawtin in Lebanon Since the Palestinian arrival in 1947–48, Lebanon’s political elites have taken a position against the naturalisation of its significant refugee population (Allan 2013; El-Khazen 1997; Haddad 2003; Knudsen and Hanafi 2010). Refugees are categorised as ‘special status foreigners’ unable to access public social services, and have been subjected to severe restriction in all areas of public and private life, including but not limited to employment, property law and the freedom of movement (Al-Natour, 1997). Most resort to seasonal jobs, hard labour or attempt to circumvent legal restrictions, which often involves being underpaid, overworked and unprotected (Hanafi and Long 2010). By and

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians95 large, Lebanon has opposed the tawtin of its Palestinian population. This has been blamed on the country’s sensitive religio-demographic balance, which cannot sustain the inclusion of a large Sunni population (El-Khazen, 1997; Haddad 2003). Also to blame has been its weak economy, which would be unable to sustain jobs for the prospective increase in citizenry (see Haddad 2003). This anti-naturalisation approach has not been particular to Lebanon, and, with the exception of Jordan, Arab governments have not naturalised Palestinian refugees, claiming that this would impede their ability and willingness to return to their homes in historical Palestine (Khalidi, M. A. 2001; Khalidi, R. 2001; Salam 1994). The Palestinian influx to Lebanon was problematised vis-à-vis the country’s pre-existing social and sectarian cleavages. Particular to Lebanon was the threat that naturalisation posed to the existing sectarian political order. As a minority made up mostly of Sunnis, the tawtin of Palestinians was framed as a threat to the ‘sensitive demographic balance’ upon which the Lebanese consociational structure was established (Haddad 2003; Meier 2010; Salam 1994). As for Palestinians, for them tawtin threatened the continuity of Palestinian national identity. The Palestinian national discourse posited Lebanese citizenship to be in contention with Palestinian identity/identities and thus ­necessitated its prevention (Hanafi and Long 2010). Indeed, the policies and requisites of tawtin are founded upon notions of identity and belonging to a Lebanese state, and the presumption that naturalisation in Lebanon signifiesthe successful imposition of a national (host-state) identity upon Palestinians is problematic. In any case, an analysis of citizenship in Lebanon must go beyond these top-down notions of identity that are embedded within tawtin discourse. In so far as tawtin discourses present citizenship as identity, tawtin will continue to be perceived as being pregnant with nationalistic nuances, which are arguably problematised by the experiences of citizenship as conveyed by the naturalised. Thus, a paradigmatic shift in perceptions of tawtin is necessary that suggests the need to ‘open up’ our analysis of the concept. The following section further elaborates on the process of tawtin by highlighting its policy of re-Lebanisation – a requisite to which those wishing to naturalise had to conform.

‘Re-Lebanisation’6 and the myth of homogeneity Particular to the Lebanese process of tawtin is a conflation between citizenship and identity that is premised upon jus sanguinis principles of citizenship (Butenschøn et al. 2000). These policies aim at the creation and establishment of national unity and identity. Due to this conflation between citizenship and identity, Palestinian political parties have advocated an anti-tawtin position, suggesting that undergoing tawtin means foregoing Palestinian rights and

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identity. Lebanese political discourse represents tawtin as a scarecrow that stirs public phobias by threatening to destabilise the Lebanese state if it were to take place (Hanafi et al. 2012, 42). For nascent post-colonial states such as Lebanon, the requisites for naturalisation have remained conscripted into a national rhetoric of kinship and shared bloodlines (Joseph, 2000). Jus sanguinis ideology was aimed at establishing national sentiment and belonging among the citizenry. Lebanon’s civic myth was founded upon principles of kinship that told the story of a nation composed of multiple, large (as opposed to small and nuclear), ‘natural’ groupings based on biological relatedness and bloodlines, descended through male genealogies and primordial ‘birth groups’ that predated the creation of the modern state (Joseph 2000, 108). It has been told as the story of a nation composed of several natural communities organised according to religio-sectarian divisions and kinship relations (Joseph 2000, 108). The hegemony of the civic myth of sectarian pluralism in Lebanon is most salient in that it explains history, state structure, politics, social organisation and citizenship laws (Hudson 1969; Suleiman 1967). This myth of kinship has also served to justify what has been done with regard to strategies of naturalisation, what can be done and what cannot be done. Principally, this has meant that in order to become Lebanese one had to be ‘born Lebanese’ (Peteet 1995; 2005). In effect, and concerning tawtin, this meant that Palestinians looking to gain Lebanese citizenship had to proclaim an inherited link to (modern territorial) Lebanon that predated 1948. This perspective posits Palestinians as ‘foreigners’ to be included into a homogenous Lebanese population; tawtin was posited as threatening the continuity of Lebanese bloodlines and common ancestry. In an effort to maintain its national character and perceptions of homogeneity, the Lebanese state adopted a policy that sought to ‘prove’ the Lebanese ancestry of those to whom it granted citizenship. This occurred through a policy referred to as reLebanisation.7 The details of the process lack legislative clarity, as the policy has not been made official in Lebanese citizenship statute. Participants with whom I met revealed that Palestinian families resorted to seeking citizenship through various methods, such as hiring lawyers to fabricate Lebanese descent. As such, they resorted to falsely proclaiming their ancestral belonging by maintaining that their families had originated from villages and cities located in present-day territorial Lebanon, but had been living in mandatory Palestine in 1948. Ironically, this meant that their arrival in Lebanon in 1948 was, in fact, a ‘return’. A relevant example of how this policy remains in effect is the (in)famous case of the Seven Villages. The cluster of villages had been located in mandatory Palestine under the British Mandate and were annexed to Lebanon after 1948 (Kaufman 2006). As such, their residents were de facto made into

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians97 Palestinian refugees on the establishment of the Israeli state. In order to be granted citizenship, residents of these villages had to ‘prove’ their Lebanese ancestry and that their territory had in fact ‘belonged’ to Lebanon all along. In a widely covered media case, residents of the villages claimed that their territory had been unjustly annexed to British Mandatory Palestine under the Paulet-Newcombe Agreement and that the territory had in fact originally been part of Lebanon (Kaufman 2006). This case demonstrates the extent to which the myth of kinship permeates the citizenship process, and the inextricably bound notions of identity and belonging that underpin it. While the case of the Seven Villages was highly publicised, many cases of tawtin in the 1950s and 1960s were undocumented, as they were legally regarded as a recovery of citizenship (istirdad jinsiyya). This suggests that the actual number of naturalised Palestinians is likely to be greater than is delineated in existing statistics. In the following section I draw upon in-depth interviews, observations and various conversations and encounters with naturalised Palestinians to bring to light their experiences, perceptions and accounts of citizenship as they relate to notions of identity and belonging.

Citizenship as rights The naturalised Palestinians interviewed ranged in age, gender, legal and socio-economic status. All those interviewed were granted citizenship shortly after their arrival in Lebanon in 1948. In the early years of Palestinian arrival, the future did not look promising and the prospect of repatriation appeared increasingly bleak (Al-Husseini and Bocco 2009; Talhami 2003). Thus, many families like George’s resorted to fabricating their origin in order to acquire Lebanese citizenship, a decision that George and others deemed necessary for their own future. At age eighty-eight, George recalls the process of his family’s naturalisation in detail, as he explains in the following statement: At the time [circa 1954] it wasn’t as difficult to get the passport as it is now. My family made a decision that it was necessary for us to get it [citizenship]. We were asked to sign a legal affidavit stating that we were in fact from a Christian village in the north of Lebanon, and that our origins were in fact Lebanese and not Palestinian. We signed, I think we had hired a lawyer at the time, I don’t remember. It didn’t really mean anything, we were, we are, Palestinian. We just did what we had to do to get the citizenship. If they wanted us to sign this paper in order to get it [citizenship], then so be it. We knew we were Palestinian; this paper would never change that … At the time we used to joke about the price of Lebanese citizenship in the same way we’d talk about fruit and vegetable prices. My friends would come and tell me ‘it’s gone up today’ or ‘today the price has dropped’. They used to sell it back then, I remember when it used to be 10,000 [liras] and then it went up to 15,000 [liras].

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George’s narrative of citizenship as a commodity that was to be bought and sold conveyed a status that was void and devoid of national meanings. In part, this was perhaps due to the artificiality of the tawtin process, but most importantly it was underpinned by the distinction he made between his Palestinianness, on the one hand, and his citizenship status, on the other. While the national Palestinian narrative poses citizenship in dialectic to Palestinianness, narratives of tawtin, as expressed by many, presented citizenship as separate from elements of identity and belonging. For George, and the many who echoed his perspective, citizenship was regarded as a necessary tool that enabled access to membership and rights, and was thus deemed necessary. Framing citizenship through this lens of access contradicts prevalent discourses of tawtin that conflate citizenship with identity. While narratives were far from uniform, they nevertheless suggested a prevalent decoupling of identity from citizenship, where membership in the Lebanese state was not regarded within a dimension that accounted for a Lebanese ‘identity’ associated with tawtin. Asserting Palestinian-ness in conjunction with and not in contradiction to Lebanese citizenship suggests the presence of alternative narratives of tawtin that counter prevalent national discourses. In the context of Palestinians, this decoupling of citizenship and identity arguably stemmed from the desire to preserve and maintain Palestinian identity. As such, many Palestinians disregarded notions of belonging, kinship, identification and the national nuances imbued within tawtin. They digressed from these narratives and towards a reconceptualisation of citizenship that accounted for its dimension of rights. George’s family had been urbanites in historical Palestine, and thus the process of their naturalisation was not as problematic as it was for others. He expressed an acute awareness and recognition of the artificiality of his proclaimed Lebanese origins, which were falsely attributed to a small Christian village in Lebanon. This requisite of re-Lebanification, was aimed at establishing a sense of belonging to (territorial) Lebanon and thus undermining Palestinian origins. George’s perception of citizenship put forth an alternative narrative to that discussed above, as by Sara for example, who attributed her sense of ‘feeling at home’ in her village to an ancestral linkage with Mount Lebanon that predated her family’s arrival in 1948. For George, conforming to the policy of re-Lebanisation was a means to an end, it was a way of facilitating the naturalisation process, and it was not internalised nor imbued with sentiment of belonging and identification. As previously stated, this study departs from the epistemological position that citizenship is a negotiated construct and one that is in a constant state of negotiation and flux. For George, citizenship was constructed and negotiated within a historical context that accounted not only for his own Palestinian origins but for the artificiality of the naturalisation process in Lebanon.

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians99 Thus, ‘citizenship’ as expressed by George distinguished between place of origin, identity and membership/citizenship status. He distinguished between Palestinian origins, the acknowledgement /experience of being Palestinian and citizenship status, because for him they were not one and the same. George’s conceptualisation of his own citizenship status challenged the national narratives of tawtin that posit to link territory, identity and belonging under the guise of citizenship. George’s emphasis that citizenship would not undo his origins and Palestinian identity suggest that citizenship for George does not necessarily denote notions of belonging or identification. More importantly, George separates citizenship from identity, whereby he asserts that ‘we are Palestinian’, regardless of what his citizenship status may state. Najat was granted citizenship by means of marriage. Now in her early seventies, Najat became naturalised some years after she married her husband, Imad, himself a naturalised Palestinian. She has three children, who were raised with a ‘strong consciousness of being Palestinian first’, and three grandchildren, who she hopes ‘will never forget their asl [origin]’. She does not recall the exact year when she became naturalised; the pragmatism with which she regards the process of her naturalisation is apparent, as she explains in the following words: I can’t remember when I took the paper. My husband insisted that I do it, but I didn’t really find a reason. It didn’t make any difference to me whatsoever; my children would get it from their father. It is very important for my children … Their lives would have been very difficult had we not had the passport … I guess they treat you better if you’re Lebanese … At the end of the day, it’s a [pauses] and how do I explain it? It’s a wasila8 [tool], nothing more nothing less. It’s just a piece of paper, it doesn’t change who we are. To be honest, sometimes I forget I even have it [laughs].

Citizenship, as expressed by Najat and George, shifts from expressions of national citizenship to practical conceptualisations. In juxtaposition to one another, the latter emphasise the necessity of citizenship, its pragmatism and practicality for work, employment and ensuing a decent livelihood. For Najat and George, citizenship is constructed through a lens that accounts for rights, and a more secure and stable future. It is regarded as an enabler, a wasila that enables a better a more stable future. Najat questioned what their lives would be like if they did not become naturalised, she wondered what her children would do if they could not work. Palestinian refugees, without citizenship, are without the right to have rights, denied even the most elemental rights such as higher education, property ownership and movement (Al-Natour 1997). In a similar sentiment, Reem, a thirty-two-year-old second-generation naturalised Palestinian highlighted the importance of citizenship for Palestinians when she explained why her grandfather had sought citizenship and the

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impact this has had on her life. Reem comes from a Palestinian urban family who fled to Lebanon from Jaffa. Her family arrived in Lebanon by boat in 1947, when her grandfather fled as a young man with his parents and siblings. The family were naturalised some years later: we [Palestinians] did not have any other choice, but to become naturalised. I guess some chose not to do so because for specific reasons, that is their prerogative, but if it were up to me, I would have done the same thing my grandfather did … after all what is a jinsiyya [citizenship]? It is basically a set of rights, and without them, life is so limited and difficult … A passport doesn’t define who you are it just makes life much easier.

Reem defines her citizenship status primarily as access to rights. By juxtaposing her own access with the denial and lack of access that characterises the refugee experience, Reem exposes a heightened awareness and acknowledgement of the importance of citizenship, which for her rests primarily upon access to a set of rights. By questioning what is citizenship she undermines the national nuances with which Lebanese citizenship and the process of tawtin are imbued. Positing ‘Palestinian identity’ as an entity to be protected in the face of naturalisation is problematic in that it assumes a singularity of identity which does not account for the variegated and multiple experiences of Palestinians in the diaspora, in host states and even in Palestine/Israel that have contributed to the construction of complex and diverse identities influenced by geographic location, socio-economic class and legal status (Sayigh 2011). Despite these disparate experiences in the diaspora and host states, there are important parallels to be drawn between the case of naturalisation in Lebanon and how the naturalised frame, imagine and construct their citizenship status with cases of naturalisation elsewhere. Mavroudi, writing in the context of Palestinians in Greece, coins the term ‘pragmatic citizenship’, which is regarded as a strategic form of citizenship that arises out of need (Mavroudi 2008, 307; see also Chapter 7). It is most relevant to those who are stateless, whose expressions of citizenship are decoupled from the national narrative of their respective host countries and who regard citizenship as access to rights that they would have otherwise been denied as refugees (ibid., 310). Underpinning such pragmatic notions of citizenship is a negotiation of power. Studies of transnational and flexible citizenship show that citizenship is increasingly perceived as a tool of empowerment that can bypass and transgress boundaries (Ong 1999). For the naturalised, this empowerment is of a different kind. Going beyond membership, recognition and access to rights, citizenship represented an empowerment that enabled the naturalised to work towards the benefit of other Palestinians, mainly refugees. Tanya, a second-generation naturalised citizen in her late twenties, had

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians101 recently set up a small NGO in one the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Her case was similar to many others that I encountered, and it brought to light the responsibility that she, and many other naturalised Palestinians, felt towards their refugee counterparts, as she explained in the following words: My grandfather got the citizenship in the 1950s. Our fate could have been the same as those people living in the camps, I guess we just got lucky. I often compare my situation to theirs; perhaps it’s because of the guilt I feel? They are helpless, can’t work, can’t provide for their families. When you are worried about getting food on the table you can’t be concerned with helping your community. You can’t be concerned with improving living conditions and reducing poverty when you are busy trying to feed your kids, trying to survive … but people like me can, we can be of benefit to our people. For example, a Palestinian refugee in the camp can’t set up their own organisation because of government restrictions on their ability to work and own businesses. And, they wouldn’t have the capital to do it – but we [the naturalised] can, and we should.

While many participants had never stepped foot inside a camp, others were quite dedicated and involved in improving the living conditions of refugees. They recognised the ‘privilege’ granted to them by means of their citizenship status. Most importantly, underpinning their experiences was a resounding sense of guilt that was shared by many, and with this guilt came a sense of responsibility. Hannah Arendt argued that even more fundamental than the particular rights of citizenship is the ‘right to have rights’, to have ‘a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective’ (Arendt [1951] 1973, 296).

Conclusion While tawtin aimed at conflating citizenship with identity, the expressions of the naturalised challenged and countered this dominant discourse. This chapter has argued that it is upon the permeation and salience of expressions and sentiment of Palestinianess that this decoupling between citizenship and Lebanese identity was articulated by the naturalised. Indeed other factors have contributed to this decoupling of identity and citizenship, such as the precedence of sectarian-religious and regional affiliations over the prospect of one national, unified identity that could be appropriated to all Lebanese citizens, naturalised and otherwise (Larkin 2012; Salibi 1998). Yet, for the naturalised, the question of citizenship and its meaning were primarily constructed upon notions of Palestinian-ness and its preservation. In drawing upon their expressions, the variegated ways through which this relation was weakened not only informed practices of citizenship but challenged the prevalent tawtin discourses as well. In shedding light on a perspective that has been much overlooked in academic discourses, namely that of the naturalised

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themselves, the subtle and creative ways in which they challenged national tawtin discourse surfaced. This was primarily achieved through articulations of citizenship as access to a set of rights, as opposed to a membership that necessitated national belonging and identity. Narratives conveyed the blurring of boundaries between in-group and outgroup. While citizenship is manifested in how it defines the ‘other’ (Turner 1993), the boundaries upon which these categories were constructed were fluid and flexible. Perceptions of the collective entailed a constant renegotiation of the ‘in-group’ vis-à-vis the ‘out-group’, an exercise that informed the fluidity and manoeuvrability of the boundaries of citizenship. In categorising themselves as Palestinians, the naturalised included the refugees in their collective narratives of the self, which fundamentally challenges perceptions of the shift in how membership is defined. This depicts the manoeuvrability and flexibility of who defines the collective, and works to challenge the central role associated with citizenship status in defining it. This suggests the need to extend analyses of tawtin beyond the topdown imposition of a national identity towards an analysis that accounts for the practices of tawtin/citizenship by shedding light on expressions of agency that underpin these practices. Indeed, the theorisation of the relation between citizenship and identity has concluded that this relation is inherently complex, adaptive and flexible (Isin and Wood 1999). However, the majority of citizenship studies focus solely on a Western receiving context, and address practices of citizenship from within a dimension of sending and receiving states.9 In turn, naturalisation processes within Middle Eastern states, such as that of tawtin in Lebanon, have been under-studied. Within this chapter, this binary perspective perpetuated by tawtin discourse, conflating citizenship with identity, has been challenged. There is a need to further explore and develop alternative frameworks to those perpetuated by existing discourses that reify and retell the story of tawtin discourse, where tawtin is presumed to result in the complete and total assimilation of the Palestinian population.

Notes 1 A significant number of Palestinians fled as early as 1947, due to the escalating violence which eventually led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. 2 Six of the seven villages have predominantly Shiite populations: Terbikha, Saliha, Malkiyah, Nabi Yusha, Kades and Hunin. The seventh village, Ibl Qamh, has a mixed Shiite–Greek Orthodox population. The are located along historical border Lebanese–Palestinian border 3 Other variations of this transliteration include tawteen or towteen. 4 Interviews were deemed the most appropriate method of data collection because

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(1) they provided a much-needed voice to the naturalised, who have been overlooked from scholarly and political debates pertaining to tawtin in Lebanon and (2) they allowed for an investigation into the experience of tawtin. While interviews were utilised as the primary method of data collection, I also drew upon observations of participants and non-participant naturalised citizens. Ethical approval was granted by Swinburne University [Project 2013/110] For Arendt, belonging to humanity itself should guarantee access to rights (Arendt [1951] 1976, 296). I am grateful to Dr Souheil El-Natour for introducing the term Re-Lebanisation, which I translated from the Arabic i’adad al Labnana. S. Al-Natour, personal communication, 11 October 2013. Salih quotes ‘an elderly refugee from Bourj al-Barajneh who stated: jinsiyya hiya wasila [tool] – nationality is just a means to an end. Nothing more than that’ (Salih 2013, 82). Exceptions to this are Butenschøn et al. (2000) and Joseph (2000).

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Haddad, S. 2003. The Palestinian Impasse in Lebanon: The Politics of Refugee Integration Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Hanafi, S., J. Chaaban and K. Seyfert. 2012. “Social Exclusion of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Reflections on the Mechanisms that Cement Their Persistent Poverty.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 31 (1): 34–53. Hanafi, S. and T. Long. 2010. “Governance, Governmentalities, and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee camps of Lebanon.” Journal of Refugee Studies 23 (2): 134–59. Heater, D. 2004. A Brief History of Citizenship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hourani, G. G. and Sensenig-Dabbous, E. 2012. “Naturalized Citizens: Political Participation, Voting Behavior, and Impact on Elections in Lebanon (1996–2007).” Journal of International Migration and Integration 13 (2): 187–202. Hudson, M. C. 1969. “Democracy and Social Mobilization in Lebanese Politics.” Comparative Politics 1 (2): 245–63. Isin, E. F. and P. K. Wood. 1999. Citizenship and Identity. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Joppke, C. 2007. “Transformation of Citizenship: Status, Rights, Identity.” Citizenship Studies 11 (1): 37–48. Joseph, S., ed. 2000. Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Syracuse University Press. Kaufman, A. 2006. “Between Palestine and Lebanon: Seven Shi’i Villages as a Case Study of Boundaries, Identities, and Conflict.” The Middle East Journal 60 (4): 685–706. Khalidi, M. A. 2001. “Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.” Middle East Report 25: 28–9. Khalidi, R. 2001. “The Palestinians and 1948: The Underlying Causes of Failure.” In The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by E. L. Rogan and A. Shlaim, 12–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kivisto P. and T. Faist. 2007. Citizenship: Discourse, Theory and Transnational Prospects. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Knudsen, A. 2009. “Widening the Protection Gap: The ‘Politics of Citizenship’ for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, 1948–2008.” Journal of Refugee Studies 22 (1): 51–73. Knudsen, A. and S. Hanafi, eds. 2010. Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and Place in the Levant. New York: Routledge. Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kymlicka, W. and W. Norman 1994. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory.” Ethics 104 (2): 352–81. Larkin, C. 2012. Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past. London: Routledge. Maktabi, R. 1999. “The Lebanese Census of 1932 Revisited: Who Are the Lebanese?” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26 (2): 219–41. Malkki, L. H. 1995. “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1): 495–523.

Lebanon’s naturalised Palestinians105 Massad, J. A. (2012). Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press. Mavroudi, E. 2008. “Palestinians and Pragmatic Citizenship: Negotiating Relationships Between Citizenship and National Identity in Diaspora.” Geoforum 39 (1): 307–18. McNevin, A. 2011. Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political. New York: Columbia University Press. Meier, D. 2010. “‘Al-tawteen’: The Implantation Problem as an Idiom of the Palestinian Presence in Post-Civil War Lebanon (1989–2005).” Arab Studies Quarterly 32 (3): 145–62. Miller, D. 2000. Citizenship and National Identity. Cambridge MA: Polity Press. Ong, A. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peteet, J. M. 1995. “Transforming Trust: Dispossession and Empowerment Among Palestinian Refugees.” In Mistrusting Refugees, edited by E. Valentine Daniel and J. Knudsen, 168–86. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— 2005. Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Salam, N. A. 1994. “Between Repatriation and Resettlement: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.” Journal of Palestine Studies 24 (1): 18–27. Salibi, K. S. 1998. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. Berkeley: University of California Press. Salih, R. 2013. “Reconciling Return and Rights: Palestinian Refugees and the Emergence of a ‘Political Society’.” Jadaliyya. 26 March. http://www.jadaliyya. com/pages/index/10814/reconciling-return-and-rights_palestinian-refugees. Sayigh, R. 1979. Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries. London: Zed Press. —— 1995. “Palestinians in Lebanon: Harsh Present, Uncertain Future.” Journal of Palestine Studies 25 (1): 37–53. —— 2005. “A House is not a Home: Permanent Impermanence of Habitat for Palestinian Expellees in Lebanon.” Holy Land Studies 4 (1): 17–39. —— 2011. “Palestinian Camp Refugee Identifications: A New Look at the ‘Local’ and the ‘National’.” In Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and Place in the Levant, edited by A. Knudsen and S. Hanafi, 50–64. London: Routledge. Smith, A. D. 2001. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity Press. Soysal, Y. N. 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— 2012. “Citizenship, Immigration, and the European Social Project: Rights and Obligations of Individuality.” The British Journal of Sociology 63 (1): 1–21. Suleiman, J. 2006. “Marginalised Community: The Case of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.” Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalization and Poverty. Brighton: University of Sussex. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/57a08c4be5274a31e0001112/JaberEdited.pdf. Suleiman, M. W. 1967. Political Parties in Lebanon: The Challenge of a Fragmented Political Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Talhami, G. H. 2003. Palestinian Refugees: Pawns to Political Actors. New York: Nova Publishers.

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Tambini, D. 2001. “Post-National Citizenship.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (2): 195– 217. Tobin, S. A. 2012. “Jordan’s Arab Spring: The Middle Class and Anti‐Revolution.” Middle East Policy 19 (1): 96–109. Turner, B. S., ed. 1993. Citizenship and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Zureik, E. (1996). Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies.

7

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome: between state control and ‘collective-identity closure’ Riccardo Armillei

Introduction The Romani presence on the Italian peninsula can be dated back to the fifteenth century. Since then, the Zingaro (Italian derogatory term for ‘Gipsy’) has always been characterised as the outsider par excellence, forced to play the role of ‘guest’ and live out a condition of eternal semi-clandestinità (semiillegality) (Tomasone 2012). Especially after the Risorgimento (Resurgence), the new, unified Italian nation-state introduced policies specifically directed at controlling ‘vagabonds’ and, more broadly, ‘socially dangerous’ groups, such as the Romanies (Clough Marinaro 2009). They became the main catalyst for all the fears harboured by the Italian elite for the purity of a putative national identity. As in other parts of Europe, in Italy the pinnacle of segregational practices against Romanies was reached early in the 1940s under the Fascist regime, when they were interned in concentration camps such as Agnone, Arbe, Boiano, Cosenza, Gonars, Perdasdefogu and Prignano (Bravi and Sigona 2006). Only from the 1970s did the Italian government start to experiment with new forms of ‘cultural protection’ explicitly directed to the Romani communities. These approaches were based on the premise that Romanies were ‘nomadic’ people. According to Bravi and Sigona, the very first form of ­recognition and protection of the ‘right to nomadism’ in Italy can be dated back to October 1973, when the Ministero dell’Interno issued the Circolare (internal administrative document) MIAC no. 17/73 (2006). While facilitating the temporary stay of the Romani people in special campsites (Sigona 2002), this ­document also had negative consequences for them. Firstly, it started to address the Romani issue in terms of ‘Problema Nomadi’ (Nomads Problem) (Bravi and Sigona, 2006). Secondly, the recommendations contained in MIAC no. 17/73 sowed the seeds of the future ‘camp strategy’.

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In a work published in 2000 by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Italy was iconically defined as ‘Campland’, the only country in Europe promoting a policy of segregating its Roma population inside ‘ghetto-like urban camps’ (Clough Marinaro 2009, 265). More than a decade later the strategy of housing Romani people inside institutional camps still represents the pivotal measure used by the Italian government to ensure the ‘inclusion’ of this minority group. Today only a small part of the Romani people live in camps and just 3 per cent of all the Romanies in Italy still maintain a ‘nomadic’ lifestyle (Commissione Diritti Umani del Senato 2011). Despite this, the approach of the Italian government is to consider the Romani people as ‘nomads’, a term which describes them as unwilling or unable to settle within the host society. This situation was particularly evident during the Emergenza Nomadi period. Following a number of supposedly threatening situations which occurred among the Romani communities living in ‘camps’ in 2007, the Italian government launched a state of emergency that aimed to solve an issue that, if in the 1970s it had been categorised as the Problema Nomadi (Nomads Problem), was now described and handled as a ‘natural disaster’ (Fiorucci 2010, 34). Directed mainly towards the Romani ‘camp-dwellers’, this approach turned these people into a ‘security issue’, while re-establishing and justifying an old trend of keeping them under surveillance and control. This also fuelled widespread racism and reinforced the stereotypical binomials ‘nomad/foreign’ and ‘Romani/crime’. The choice to adopt such an extraordinary approach not only misused the terms ‘nomads’ and ‘emergency’ vis-à-vis the Romani people (Amnesty International 2010, 4), but also incited further efforts to disempower them. This study aims to analyse the situation of the Romani people in Italy. In particular, by looking at the condition of those living in campi nomadi (nomad camps) in the city of Rome, where fieldwork was conducted between 2011 and 2012,1 this chapter reflects on the effects of state policies on the camps’ internal dynamics and group identities. Sigona (2002) argued that in Italy it is the experience of an encamped existence, and the government politics behind the compulsion to live in this way, that create Zingari as a specific ethnic collectivity and a ‘target group’. Using Marotta’s (2011) work, the camp became an ‘ethnic place’ as a result of the ‘social sorting’ indulged in by political and economic forces, with implications that transcend, but certainly include, control of the Romanies. In turn, the existence of an inhospitable environment dominated by racism and discrimination has provoked the target group to develop, in its turn, a sort of ‘reactive ethnicity’ (Marotta 2011, 202–3). But, while reinforcing and crystallising the centuries-old contrast between Romanies and non-Romanies, the campi nomadi became a lucrative business where everyone plays their part. What emerged from the analysis of

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome109 data collected is that the experience of the Romani people in the capital city demonstrates a very complex set of relationships in what has been termed the ‘camps system’. Here different agents (local authorities, third sector organisations, and Romanies themselves) have been involved, to differing degrees, in reifying the marginalised position of this minority. An in-depth analysis of this specific socio-political context revealed the existence of competition and antagonisms, corruption, lack of transparency and accountability, and inefficiencies which have contributed over the years to producing and maintaining the present living situation of the Romani people. By using the perspective of the Romanies (both intellectuals and ‘campdwellers’), this chapter will focus on the realities of these establishments, moving from the notion of the camp as means of ‘protection’ for Romani culture, as emerged in the 1970s (Bravi and Sigona 2006), through to its evolution into a ‘system’ of social control and segregation (Nicola 2011; Sigona 2002, 2005). It will examine how Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ managed to exercise a level of free agency. In this context, the ‘camp’ is not just an exogenous institutional means of control and segregation, but Romanies found a way to use it as a tool of ‘resistance’ to government exclusionary efforts (see also Chapters 6 and 9). In other words, while mainstream society was perceived as a threatening environment, the ‘camp’ became a powerful weapon to protect the in-group (us) against the out-group (them), producing what I call ‘collective-identity closure’. The chapter is divided into four main sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the Romani population in Italy. The second section reflects upon the ‘camps system’ in the city of Rome and its role in fostering contrasting views and attitudes between Italian mainstream society and Romani people. The third section focuses on the campi nomadi as a protective shield and a tool of ‘resistance’, where Romanies have constructed and reified a strong sense of belonging in opposition to non-Romanies. The fourth and final section draws upon the analysis and interpretation of fieldwork material and is organised according to themes arising from interviews. In conclusion, this chapter argues that it is the existence of the camp itself, the institutional neglect, the lack of real inclusion policies, which has caused the development of antagonistic behaviours and mutually excluding identities among the Italian majority and the Romani people. Developing an understanding of the dynamics of power and ‘resistance’ within the camps, this study may provide a foundation for genuine acknowledgement and redress.

The Italian Romani population The Romanies have endured a long history of marginalisation; today they make up one of the largest ethnic minorities in Europe without a territory.

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Yet, contrary to the stereotypical label of ‘nomadic’, they are for the most part connected to the region or nation where they live (Kolukırık 2005, 2). Although their names and religion change depending on where they reside, and despite comprising a multitude of groups and sub-groups scattered across all continents, ‘Romani’ as a language is still one of the features that distinguishes them and helps them to create community (Mancini 2010–11). Since their first appearance in Europe, which can be dated to circa the tenth century AD (Matras 2004), these people have been generally identified by the mainstream in derogatory terms (i.e. Gypsies, Zingari, Zigeuner, Gitanos, Cigani). Since 1971, after the First World Romani Congress held in London, they have agreed on the dissemination of the term ‘Roma’. But while the use of the term ‘Roma’ was endorsed by many, including the European Commission, it is not embraced universally by all Romani communities. The adjective ‘Romani’ (plural Romanies; used in this paper), instead has a much wider ethnonymic application (Rövid 2011, 48). As such, Hancock argues, all Romani groups use it to describe themselves (Hancock [2002] 2010). In Italy, Romanies can be divided into three major groups: Rom, who predominantly live in the centre and south of the country and are inclined to a sedentary life; Sinti, who are found mainly in the north and have maintained a nomadic lifestyle; and Camminanti, the least populous and least represented group, located mostly in Sicily during winter and travelling throughout Italy during the warm months, when they work as organ-grinders, tinkers and repairers of household items (Bellucci 2007). These three groups are commonly recognised as the longest-established Romani communities in Italy. Others have migrated there more recently, especially since the end of the Second World War. The Romani communities of Italy can be subdivided by their citizenship status as well as by period of immigration: 70,000 are citizens, from families that have been in Italy for more than 600 years and spread all over the national territory; 90,000 came from the Balkans in the 1990s after Yugoslavia collapsed, are classified as extra-comunitari (non-EU citizens) and live mainly in the north; while the arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria are EU citizens and predominantly live in the major metropolitan areas (Milan, Turin, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Bari, Genoa). To these groups one should also add the unknown number of rom irregolari (illegal Romanies) (Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali 2011a, 26). A further distinction can be made in describing the Romani presence in Italy. It is possible to distinguish Rom e Sinti autoctoni (autochthonous or native groups) from Rom e Sinti stranieri (immigrants or foreigners). Fiorucci (2010) refers to the first group as those who have been living in Italy for a long time. Fiorucci counts those who arrived after 1945 in the second category. Over the years, especially after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Romanies in these categories came into conflict with each other. The arrival, in subse-

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome111 quent stages, of Romani groups from elsewhere in Europe has often been perceived by ‘Italian-Romani’ communities as an intrusion and a threat. The presence of new ‘foreigner-communities’, and their criminalisation, affected public perceptions of the whole Romani population. Romanies who arrived from the Balkans in the 1980s and 1990s, and those who left Romania at the time of EU enlargement in January 2007, have been accused of compromising the fine balance developed over the years between ‘Italian-Romanies’ and non-Romanies. At the same time, most of the economic resources allocated to Romani communities were realigned towards these ‘alien’ groups – typically addressed as Rom dei campi (Romanies of the camps; Ricordy et al. 2012) – forgetting that concrete problems among the Italian-Romanies still needed tackling (Converso 1996, cited in Fiorucci 2010).

The ‘camps system’ According to the most recent figures, between 130,000 and 180,000 Romani are living in Italy (Commissione Diritti Umani del Senato 2011): about half are Italian citizens, 20 to 25 per cent are from European Union countries, mainly Romania, while the rest are either non-EU members or stateless since the dissolution of Yugoslavia (ERRC, OsservAzione and Amalipé Romanò 2010). Generally speaking, there is no precise data on Italy’s Romanies, because Romanies usually adopt mimetic strategies the better to assimilate into the rest of the population, thus reducing the risk of potential discrimination (Commissione Diritti Umani del Senato 2011), and no country in Europe, except for Britain, gathers ethnic data. In 2008, during the ‘state of emergency’, a special census targeting the Romani minority was conducted by the Italian government – together with the Italian Red Cross and the police force ­– raising serious concern within the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2012. Prefects, in fact, were authorised to ‘carry out a census of individuals and families, children as well, and to collect and store personal information, including photos and fingerprints’ (Amnesty International 2012a, 9). Only a fraction of the Romani people live in camps today – about 40,000 of them, between one-quarter and one-fifth of the entire population of this minority (Commissione Diritti Umani del Senato 2011). In the cities of Rome, Milan and Naples, the task of identification revealed the existence of 167 encampments. According to the census, 12,346 people were living in these camps, almost half of them (5,436) children. It was also estimated that at least as many people, afraid of being singled out and deported, left the encampments before or during the census (Ministero dell’Interno 2009). These camps can be roughly classified into three categories: (1) illegal or unauthorised camps, basically spontaneous encampments similar to ‘the slums of many Third World cities […] often without running water, toilets

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and electricity’ (Sigona 2005, 748); (2) legal or authorised camps, ‘tolerated’ by the local authorities but equally precarious and poor as those in the first category; and (3) equipped or solidarity villages, which can be described as camp structures built by public institutions on ‘the military camp model, with residents allotted a numbered place with a caravan or, sometimes, a prefabricated container’ (Sigona 2005, 748). The latest versions of campi nomadi, which fall within the third category, are commonly fenced, equipped with video surveillance and patrolled by security officers at the entrance and inside the camp (Amnesty International 2012b; Daniele 2011a). It is not surprising that all three types of camp are generally built, or allowed to exist, on the outskirts of cities ‘in areas close to prisons, dog pounds and rubbish dumps’ (Sigona 2005, 748). Despite such deprivation, millions of euros are spent every year on Romani-related issues. This has become a huge business, involving hundreds of employees, in public and private sectors alike, as well as Romani people. In the city of Rome, for instance, Carlo Stasolla’s 2012 book quantified its market worth (at least €60 million) as well as its workforce (450). As stated by Daniele (2011a), the activities implemented for the social inclusion of the Romani people represented one of the biggest items of expenditure for the municipality (cleaning and maintenance of the camp areas, the schooling of Roma children). The intertwined relationship between different agents involved in the ‘camps system’ can be summarised as follows. Administrations carry out forced evictions and breed new camps, instead of implementing real social inclusion policies. Yet, as recent studies point out (Bechis 2014; Pacelli 2015; Stasolla 2012), there is evidence showing a ‘mutual accommodation’ structure of relation between the public sector and third sector organisations, the sub-contracted agents working within campi nomadi. In turn, funding dependence from government (Crescenzi 2008; Zamaro 2005), emphasises the dichotomous approach adopted by these organisations concerning the Romanies: on the one hand, contestation of government policies; on the other hand, compliance with government requirements. Particularly within the official operations of the ‘Nomad Emergency’, Romani voices were comprehensively ignored. A number of authors have described the condition of the ‘Romanies of the camps’ in Italy as institutionalised within a system of ‘patrol and surveillance’. Rossi conceptualised the encampments as physical spaces where Roma were ‘forced to live’ (Rossi 2010, 3). Bravi and Sigona (2006) analysed the camp as non luogo (no man’s land), a place whose purpose was to confine the ‘Other’ and where individuals lost their sense of self. Ronald Lee used the expression ‘Kalisferia’, which in Romanes (the Romani language) means ‘a place between Earth and Heaven’, to describe the camp (Lee 2002). A report produced by the ERRC portrayed this as the outcome of a policy that aimed to ‘infantilise’

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome113 Romani individuals (ERRC 2000, 12). The strongly criticised policy of housing Romanies in institutional camps, with their poor education and resultant high illiteracy rates – together with an indefinite legal status, consequent unemployability and the denial of access to social security and the health-care system – keeps Romani communities on the margins of society and excludes them from public and political life. The camp thus produces and replicates the idea of the Romanies as ‘a “monstrous hybrid” of humanity and bestiality’ (Todesco 2004, Piasere 2006, both cited in Solimene 2013, 171) which in turn has served the purpose of justifying the implementation of exceptional measures.

Performing ‘resistance’ and ‘collective-identity closure’ As well as the top-down approach adopted by government and the third sector, there is also recent trend to describe Romani communities living in camps as actively performing a bottom-up opposition (Clough Marinaro 2015; Daniele 2011a, 2011b; Sigona 2015; Solimene 2012; 2013). While exclusionary policies have been implemented by the government, with the indirect complicity of its sub-contracted agents, these people were not mere, voiceless spectators. This chapter disputes recent interpretations of the camp as an istituzione totale (total institution) (see Nicola 2011), where Romanies are reduced to a ‘bare life’ (see Clough Marinaro 2009) upon which the state can inscribe its sovereign power without restriction. The use of Foucault (1990) has been particularly important to interpret the condition of encamped communities. This has helped to understand the Romanies’ responses to the ‘camps policy’ as an act of ‘resistance’ which, as argued by Solimene (2013) as well, does not result in open forms of political struggle, but is more subtly and strategically enacted in everyday interactions. Although the relationship that emerges between the state, the third sector and Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ is shaped by an unequal struggle, ‘where there is power, there is resistance’ (Foucault 1990, 95). By drawing on Wacquant’s analysis of the ‘ghetto’ as a Janus-faced institution of ethno-racial closure, Clough Marinaro (2015, 11) sees Rome’s institutional camps’ functioning as a protective shield against a controlling outside world, fostering ‘active forms of identification, resistance, and mobilisation from within’. This is clearly in opposition to the previous one-dimensional view of camps as isolating and confining spaces for an unwanted ethnic group (Clough Marinaro 2009). Likewise, Sigona acknowledges the strategies of ‘resistance, adaptation, and contestation’ that ‘camp-dwellers’ develop in their everyday lives. The camps provide ‘access to (some kind of) protection and recognition, as well as some practical benefits’ (Sigona 2015, 11–12; see also Solimene 2013, on the Bosnian Xoraxané Romá living in illegal encampments).

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In 1989, Asséo coined the definition peuples-Résistances (Resistancepeoples), which described how Romani people resisted assimilation and expressed what she calls an ‘internal counter-hegemony’. More recently Carrasco uses the concept of ‘warriors’ to underline the fact that for centuries the Romanies resisted the ‘colonisation of their way of life by any means necessary’ (Carrasco 2011, para. 6). As the following section shows, such labels are accepted by some intellectual and ‘camp-dweller’ interviewees in the context of exploiting established ‘Gypsy’ stereotypes for their personal gain, mainly as a way of obtaining welfare aid, while simultaneously blaming others: governments, third sector organisations and mainstream society. Over the years the campi nomadi have become a ‘battlefield’, an arena of conflict between Romanies and non-Romanies, which, as Solimano posited, is not productive space for conflict from which valid solutions could emerge (Solimano 1999). The camps are, rather, a site where oppressor and oppressed form and crystallise their own identities as homogenous entities, each in opposition to the other, thus producing ‘collective-identity closure’. It became the symbolic expression of the radical opposition between the ‘Gadjikane’ dimension (being non-Romani) and the ‘Romanipen’ (Roma-being), a category that unites all Romani people (Fischer 2011). This chapter argues that the existence of a deeply rooted opposition between the Italian majority group and the Romani minority is consolidated within the ‘camps system’. For the dominant culture the ‘Other’, par excellence, is the Zingaro, while for the Romanies this corresponds to the Gadje, which in Romanes stands for the entire non-Romani population (Benedetto 2011). This manifests itself in two different and opposing ways in each of them: an assimilationist approach adopted by mainstream society and an attitude of refusal and rejection on the part of the minority group’s members. The strong sense of cultural belonging and superiority on both sides of today’s divide represents an obstacle to mutual understanding and positive dialogue. The existence of this separateness between Romani communities and mainstream societies led Gheorghe and Acton to coin the term ‘Gypsy archipelago’ (2001, 55). On the one hand, this expression describes the diversity of various sub-groups and meta-groups, with their cultural, religious, linguistic and geographical affiliations. On the other hand, despite the great internal diversity that characterises Romani communities around the world, a unifying factor could be found in their blunt opposition to the ‘Gadje world’ (Kyuchukov and Hancock 2010).

By-products of the ‘camps system’: welfare dependency, exploitation and inter-ethnic rivalries In order to have a closer understanding of the strategy adopted by the Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in response to the ‘camps policy’ and its implications on in-

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome115 and out-group identity formation, this section will look at the perspectives of the Romani people themselves. By drawing upon interviews conducted with both Romanies living in houses (outside campi nomadi) and Romani ‘campdwellers’, I will suggest that the camp is not a place where Romanies are forced to live but, rather, a tool used to maintain a status quo. In this context, I argue that the daily struggle to make the best of a bad situation might be interpreted as a form of ‘resistance’. One of the main themes to emerge from the interview material is how camp-dwellers have adapted and used the ‘camps system’ to their own advantage, mainly as a way of obtaining welfare aid. This point emerged during an interview conducted with Nicolae Gheorghe, a Romani intellectual from Romania, after his visit to the ‘equipped village’ Tor de’ Cenci in June 2012. Gheorghe described the condition of camps’ inhabitants as resulting from a ‘sclerosi del pensiero collettivo’ (‘a sclerosis of collective thinking’). He was struck by the fact that some of the inmates owned houses back in their countries of origin, yet said with evident satisfaction, ‘We are nomads and we want to live in this camp’ (personal communication, 21 July, 2012). Gheorghe’s argument was confirmed by a number of ‘camp-dwellers’ interviewed during the data collection in Rome. Despite owning a house, as Ca. (a Romanian Romani living in the ‘equipped village’ Candoni) argues, ‘living in the camp is better than going back home. Life in Romania is much harder and Romanians are very racists towards us’ (personal communication, 11 April 2012). B., another Romani from Romania, also living in Candoni after having spent more than 20 years living in campi nomadi in Italy, reinforces Ca.’s statement. According to him, although a number of Romani families would like to move out the camp, there are also many others that state otherwise: ‘Why should I leave if here I do not have to pay anything?’ (Personal communication, 4 April 2012). Italian Romani intellectual Guarnieri also recognised the responsibility that Romani people have for themselves. Those living in camps have developed a welfare dependency and feelings of being discriminated against by Italian society. According to him, although a number of them have a salary which might allow them to live outside the camps, they have no desire to do so because ‘that they do not have to think about rent and bills etc.’ (Personal communication, 21 April 2012). Gheorghe was convinced that, having lived in ‘ghetto-camps’ for 30–40 years, many of these Romanies had developed an ‘immunity’ to social change: In one sense it is impossible not to empathise with them. But, on further consideration, I found their statements were used as a way of defending the status quo, for not wanting to move out. It is basically a situation of immobility. (Personal communication, 21 July, 2012)

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Co., a Romani woman from Serbia who lives in the Via dei Gordiani ‘authorised camp’, seems to echo Gheorghe’s sentiment. According to her: Not many Romanies are motivated and really want to change. Only few of them try hard to find a job, send their children to school and respect the laws. Many of them, for instance, get a lot of money begging on the street. And in some cases they invest their money buying properties in their country of origin. (Personal communication, 29 June 2012)

Interestingly, Gheorghe also highlighted the existence of a precise strategy enacted by a part of the Romani population to live in camps in order to get some practical benefits: It is commonly believed that Romani people are the victims of racism and persecution. Yes, they are victims, but they are also fighters. […] In Romania, after the fall of Communism I saw many people selling their apartments and re-entering a Romani ghetto in Romania or migrating to Italy to live in camps, becoming ‘Zingari’ again inside those camps. […] These people are thus also responsible for their situation. (Personal communication, 21 July, 2012)

In turn, this attitude has contributed to the diffusion in mainstream discourse or media analysis of negative images of the Romanies such as ‘nomads’, ‘dirty’, ‘lazy’, ‘criminals’. A 2007 survey of a ‘mainstream’ population sample revealed that only one in 1,000 had a complete knowledge of Italy’s Romani communities (Arrigoni and Vitale 2008). Many do not even know that most of them are Italian citizens (Istituto per gli Studi sulla Pubblica Opinione, 2008) and think they should all be expelled (Kington 2008), or subjected to such practices as fingerprinting and DNA profiling (AnalisiPolitica 2008). Another aspect that emerged from data analysis was the existence of a great level of rivalry within the camps. Ti., a Romanian Romani man living at Candoni ‘equipped village’, described the camp as a ‘little jungle’: When you enter here you are not in Italy anymore. It is a place where people become ‘cannibali emancipati’ (emancipated cannibals). Everyone lives to the neighbours’ disadvantage. In the Salone camp there were a lot of Mafia-type criminal activities and problems connected to the existing rivalry between different groups (Slavic and Romanian peoples). (Personal communication, 6 June 2012)

The occupation of empty containers, for instance, became a very common practice within camps. As reported by M., one of the inhabitants of the Castel Romano camp, ‘as soon as a “camp-dweller” vacates a container in the camp, disputes amongst Romanies begin, which can also lead to wars between rival groups’ (Personal communication, 26 June 2012). In July 2014 an operation conducted by the local police in the Salone camp brought to light an illegal system of trade and rental of these containers, which over time had become a lucrative business for a number of Romani families (Pierucci 2014).

The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome117 In this context, many have grown more skilled in what a Romani informant from the former Yugoslavia, N. (an inhabitant of the former Casilino 900 ‘illegal camp’), has defined as ‘arte della sopravvivenza’ (the art of survival), a contest in which the conventional wisdom is that only the strongest will prevail. To quote N.: Because of the camp, the Romani communities developed a system in which people are not merely prey but become predators too. Government politics can take credit for that. Romanies are just placed in a ‘shipping’ container and left to their destiny. Without consultation, necessity dictates every act. Under these circumstances Romanies have to battle on all fronts to succeed. (Personal communication, 14 May 2012)

What seems to emerge from the analysis of these interviews is that the enactment of the ‘camps policy’ has generated a mixture of results and attitudes: while the Italian government keeps allocating public funds to the construction and operation of ‘ghetto camps’, Romanies have also learned to use the ‘camps system’ for their own ends. The ‘Romanies of the camps’ and their ‘Gadje’ antagonists are thus not presented as part of a ‘powerful’/‘powerless’ dichotomy, where actors are fixed and polarised in restrictive categories. Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ basically occupy an ‘in-between’ position partly imposed on them by outside forces and partly of their own volition. While defending their status quo and related interests, Romanies have also developed a ‘camp identity’ which shelters and unites them from the threatening Italian mainstream society.

Conclusion Competitiveness and widespread corruption among the Romanies lay at the heart of life in the camps. Power struggles exist not only between the Gadje and the Zingaro, but also within Romani communities living in camps. Exploitation of the strongest over the weakest pushes a number of Romanies to accept the conditions of an encamped life as the lesser of two evils. In the camp, in fact, they can count at least on their extended families, while outside the camp they would not have real opportunities for social inclusion (employment, education, health and housing). Paradoxically, the camp became the only place where Romanies felt secure and protected. Mainstream society was still perceived as a threatening environment where it would have been more difficult to survive without community support. Nevertheless, in contrast to a prevailing belief that Romani people were merely passive actors, institutionalised by the government and forced to live inside the ‘campi nomadi’, this chapter has shown a different reality. Many of them, in fact, had a house and a job but chose to live in the camp as a deliberate strategy.

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While the government and third sector organisations keep breeding the ‘camps system’, the Romanies have also learned to use is to achieve their own goals (chiefly defending a condition of welfare dependency). It is important to recognise the existence of a top-down approach adopted by government and sub-contracted agents, which always left slender scope for the Romani voice. But a bottom-up opposition, as voiced by the Romani communities living in camps, does exist as well. Their subtle ‘resistance’ has played a key role in pushing the government and the third sector to adopt paternalistic approaches which assisted them in keeping a ‘ghetto economy’ alive (Nicolae Gheorghe, personal communication, 21 July, 2012). In turn, the ‘camps system’ has contributed to reinforcing and crystallising the centuries-old contrast between Romanies and non-Romanies. On the one hand, mainstream society creates enclosed spaces as a strategy to defend oneself from a supposedly threatening minority group. On the other hand, Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ adopted the ‘campi nomadi’ as a form of survival and forced cohabitation with the ‘Gadje’ majority. The ensuing ‘collective-identity closure’ serves to perpetuate the idea of the Romani and the ‘Gadje’ people as homogeneous and mutually antagonistic entities.

Note 1 During fieldwork eighty-two structured and semi-structured interviews were conducted with official actors, third sector representatives and other privileged informants directly or indirectly involved in Romani issues. Twenty-six were Romani individuals (of whom fifteen were ‘camp-dwellers’). The personal communication material used in this chapter is part of these interviews. Ethical review of this research project was undertaken by Swinburne’s Human Research Ethics Committee (SUHREC). On 10 June 2011 ethics clearance was granted with protocol number SUHREC Project 2011/028.

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The Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ in Rome121 Romanies in European Cultures, edited by N. Saul and S. Tebbutt, 53–78. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Ministero dell’Interno. 2009. Censimento Dei Campi Nomadi: Gli Interventi Adottati per Superare lo Stato di Emergenza [Census of the Nomad Camps: Interventions Implemented to Overcome the State of Emergency]. http://www1.interno.gov. it/mininterno/export/sites/default/it/sezioni/sala_stampa/speciali/censimento_ nomadi/index.html. Nicola, V. 2011. I Ghetti per i Rom. Roma, via Di Salone 323. Socianalisi Narrativa di un Campo Rom [The Ghettos for Romani Peoples. Rome, Di Salone Road, 323. Socio-Analysis Account of a Romani Camp]. Cuneo, Italy: Sensibili alle Foglie. Pacelli, V. 2015. “Mafia Capitale, Riesame: ‘Salto di qualità con giunta Alemanno’” [Capital Mafia, Re-Examination: ‘Further Ramification During the Alemanno Administration]. Il Fatto Quotidiano, 7 January. Pierucci, A. 2014. “‘Mille euro per una baracca ai rom’: Accusati di corruzione due vigili urbani [A Thousand Euro for a Shanty House: Two Municipal Officers Investigated for Corruption].” Il Messaggero, 10 July. Ricordy, A., C. Trevisani, F. Motta, S. Casagrande, S. Geraci and G. Baglio. 2012. La salute per i rom: Tra mediazione e partecipazione [The Health of the Romanies: Between Mediation and Participation]. Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon. Rossi, M. 2010. “The City and the Slum: An Action Research on a Moroccan and a Roma Xoraxanè Community in Rome.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham. Rövid, M. 2011. “Cosmopolitanism and Exclusion: On the Limits Transnational Democracy in the Light of the Case of Roma.” PhD diss., Central European University. Sigona, N. 2002. Figli del ghetto: Gli italiani, i campi nomadi e l’invenzione degli zingari. [Sons of the Ghetto: Italians, Nomad Camps and the Invention of the Gypsies]. Civezzano: Nonluoghi. —— 2005. “Locating ‘The Gypsy Problem’. The Roma in Italy: Stereotyping, Labelling and ‘Nomad Camps’.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (4): 741–56. —— 2015. “Campzenship: Reimagining the Camp as a Social and Political Space.” Citizenship Studies 19 (1): 1–15. Solimano, N. 1999. “Immigrazione, convivenza urbana e conflitti locali [Immigration, Urban Coexistence and Local Conflicts].” La Nuova Città 2 (4): 135–40. Solimene, M. 2012. “The Challenge of Defining the Object of Study. The Case Study of a Group of Bosnian Roma.” Rannsóknir í félagsvísindum XIII. October 2012. —— 2013. “Undressing the Gağé Clad in State Garb: Bosnian Xoraxané Romá Face to Face with the Italian Authorities.” Romani Studies 23 (2): 161–86. Stasolla, C. 2012. Sulla pelle dei Rom: Il Piano Nomadi della giunta Alemanno [On the Skin of the Romani Peoples: The Nomad Plan of the Alemanno Administration]. Rome: Edizioni Alegre. Tomasone, M. 2012. “Il genocidio nazista dei Rom [The Nazi Genocide of the Romanies].” Museo delle Intolleranze e degli Stermini. www.akra.it/amis/micros/ rom_micros.rtf. Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali. 2011a. Relazione al Parlamento sull’effettiva applicazione del principio di parità di trattamento e sull’efficacia

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8

Telling terrorism tales: narrative identity and Homeland Louise Pears

Terrorism currently dominates the in/security imaginary and it is identified as a key threat to Western democracy. Critical scholars have written about how the discursive framing of 9/11 as an existential security threat enabled the War on Terror as a response and reconstructed particular identities of the terrorist ‘other’ and identities for the threatened states (nations, groups, religions, international organisations) as they framed themselves as security actors defending ‘themselves’ from the terror threat (Froula and Randell 2010; Hunt and Rygiel 2006; Jackson 2005). This is a threat that is framed as being both physical (they will bomb us) and cultural (they hate ‘our’ way of life). Terrorism has long been a plot device in popular culture (Shaw 2014). Despite predictions that the terror attacks of 9/11 would lead to a movement away from terror as entertainment and the immediate reaction of Hollywood to the attacks which saw action films postponed and family films rushed into production, popular culture has been a key site/sight of the War on Terror. Not only have terror attacks, threats and responses dominated our news media, they have also been in our video games, films and television shows. These cultural representations are one place that the ‘common sense’ of terrorism is articulated. They do not simply relay the facts of a reality of terrorism out there, but they shape the meaning of terrorism, re-presenting it to the audience in narrative form. Terrorism is narrativised, with good guys, bad guys, victims and heroes. One emergent form of popular culture that really engaged with terrorism was the terrorism television drama, with Alias, Spooks and 24. Homeland follows on from these television shows to tell a story of terrorism and counter-terrorism set ten years after 9/11. Produced by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, based on the Israeli show Hatufim, Homeland is the latest instalment of terrorism television. Homeland demonstrates how terrorism stories are a

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crucial site in which identity and security interact. As a deliberate intervention into terrorism debates in the USA, Homeland is a show which seems to purposefully interrogate the identity categories of terrorist, hero, Muslim and American to engage in the trauma of 9/11 and the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is not the definitive terrorism story but, rather, one place where the on-going discourses of terrorism are told in a compelling serialised format. It is used here to demonstrate the interaction of identity, in/ security and popular culture, and to ask how terrorism stories are continuing to articulate securitised identities. This chapter asks what viewing position is created for the Homeland audience. It considers how this story of in/security creates a securitised identity. It argues that Homeland articulates a familiar securitised identity from American War on Terror discourse, a white, masculine, powerful and b ­ enevolent identity; an identity that makes sense of on-going counter-terrorism. However, it adds to this with data from focus groups1 with British viewers of the show, to demonstrate how this identity can be negotiated, contested and reshaped as it is consumed in different national contexts, and in this case the British context. It considers how a British audience make sense of this American story of counter-terrorism. The research data is significant because its findings reveal the potential to resist the subject position that Homeland creates, and to also demonstrate how audiences actively negotiate the identity categories that are created for them. This work draws on narrative identity theory to bridge understandings of security, identity and popular culture to show how stories matter. It builds on an extensive literature in international relations that explores the relationship between popular culture, foreign policy and identity, and it intervenes in this literature by adding in audience reception as a way to explore this relationship. The chapter is set out in three parts: first, it outlines how critical security studies has shown how ‘security and identity are mutually constituted social relations’ (Rowley and Weldes 2012, 515) in order to demonstrate the importance of looking at the way in which stories of in/security are told to establish particular (race and gendered) identities. Second, it turns to address how this is done in the US television show Homeland, to argue that even though it presents a complex terrorism story, Homeland still tells a story of terrorism which establishes a white, liberal masculine subject position for the viewer. The third section complicates this account by adding in data from focus groups with Homeland viewers. This section shows how people can rework the meanings encoded in the show, and so resist the subject position that they are invited to adopt. It considers how the American self-image can fail to translate with a British audience. It accounts for the messier relationship between in/security and identities that are demonstrated in Homeland. This equips us to tell different stories about terrorism and in/securities and to offer productive critical

Telling terrorism tales125 interventions into security policy and practice as well as to disturb the identity categories that they rearticulate and rely upon.

Terrorism, identity and popular culture This chapter builds on this growing field of popular culture and world politics (Grayson et al. 2009) to investigate the terrorism story told in Homeland and to argue that it articulates a very particular identity for its viewers: a gendered and raced identity which reaffirms counter-terrorism practices, despite its seemingly more critical take on terrorism drama. Scholars have shown how gender and race were mobilised in War on Terror discourses to create support for counter-terrorism by reusing tropes of female victims, free Western women, dangerous brown men and hyper-masculine heroes (Bhattacharyya 2008; Eisenstein 2004; Gronnvoll 2010; Shepherd 2006). At the same time, the threat of terrorism has rearticulated hegemonic masculinities (Carroll 2011), recreated an image of the ideal female neoliberal citizen subject (Faludi 2007) and been used to police the correct engagement with the state for queer people (Puar 2007). Terrorism stories reuse and rearticulate ideas about race and gender to make sense of terrorism, whilst these identity categories go on to support continued counter-terrorist violence and to establish particular gendered and raced ways of being and belonging. Scholars have shown how comic books (Dittmer 2005), popular fiction (Carroll 2011), television dramas (Takacs 2012; Van Veeren 2009), video games (Robinson 2015), horror movies (Briefel and Miller 2011) and documentaries (Froula and Randell 2010) have all played a part in the articulation of terrorism stories and the identities that they both rely upon and stabilise. This work builds on a rich literature from international relations that has shown how identity is articulated through security discourse and practice (Der Derian and Shapiro 1989; Doty 1996; Neumann 1999; Weldes 1999). There is a recognition that security threats are constructed discursively, and these threats create an identity for that which is threatened (Campbell 1998; Wibben 2011). This happens through difference, through opposition to the enemy and also through the narration of peoples and places, where the stories that are told contribute to the understanding of the world and our place within it (Dittmer 2010; Neumann 1999). Stuart Croft explains how security discourses ‘construct those who are our allies and those who are our enemies. When not in flux, they settle who “we” are, and who “they” are; what “we” stand for, and what “they” mean to “us”. They construct the space for “our” legitimate activity, and the space for the behaviour we will (and will not) tolerate from “them”’ (Croft 2006, 1). The use of fear and threat, inherent to security stories, invigorates the boundaries of us and them as ‘they’ become a threat to our way of life/lives.

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Narrative theory is important to understanding this. Narrative approaches recognise that ‘[w]e glean ideas about the world and our place in it from the stories we are told; we repeat these ideas and ideals in the stories that we tell’ (Shepherd 2013, 345). Narrative is distinct from discourse, it has a beginning, a middle and an end (Ciută 2007, 194). It does not just represent meaning in a static way, but emplots meaning. Security stories tell us who to fear, but also who we are, and our place within the world. This formation rests upon a narrative understanding of identity whereby there is no stable universal subject, but the subject is ‘dependent on the prior existence of discursive subject positions; that is, empty spaces or functions in discourse from which to ­comprehend the world. Living persons are required to “take up” subject positions in discourse, in order to make sense of the world’ (Barker 2003, 13). A television show creates particular subject positions which viewers are called upon to inhabit as they watch the drama unfold. The viewers are hailed by this discourse, a process often referred to as interpellation.2 Subjectivity is an individual’s sense of self. Subjectification, or interpellation, is the process by which a viewing position is created in the narrative which the audience are called upon to occupy; their sense of self is then created in relation to the narrative (Dittmer 2010, 37). Hall argues that considering interpellation ‘invites us to consider the question of how and from where identity comes, to what extent it is understandable, and to what degree it is something that we have any control over’ (Hall 2004, 4). Therefore, television is once place where a securitised identity is articulated for the audience as they are interpellated into the discursive subject position, and through which they are asked to make sense of counter-terrorism. Critical accounts of terrorism discourse have shown how the ‘other’ is represented and racialised in order to justify political violence. This work has drawn attention to how the association of terrorism with Islam has racialised Muslims and led to an increase in Islamophobia (Croft 2012; Gottschalk and Greenberg 2008; Jackson 2007). This chapter instead focuses on how the story of terrorism is also telling a story about ‘us’ as the people threatened by terrorism. In doing so, it builds on work that has considered how terrorism is used to stablise ‘our’ identities and so disturbs the subject/object distinction, where ‘we’ tell stories about the ‘Muslim other’, to instead see how ‘our’ identities are discursively created in terrorism stories. In particular, in this chapter, this results in a critical attention to the workings of whiteness in terrorism stories, fitting with the aim of critical whiteness studies, as expressed by Richard Dyer (2000), to make whiteness strange. The next section goes on to show how this process works through an analysis of the subject position that is established in the television show Homeland.

Telling terrorism tales127

Narrative identity in Homeland Homeland is a twelve-part TV series that follows Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Daines) as she attempts to thwart a terrorist attack on America. This hinges on her uncovering whether American Marine Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis) was ‘turned’ to terrorism during eight years of captivity in Iraq. Hugely popular, it has been syndicated globally and in the USA 6.5 million viewers tuned in each week (Dodge 2013) while 4 million viewers watched the finale of season one in the UK (BBC 2012). Homeland is a story about the counter-terror efforts of the CIA. Co-created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, it has been lauded as the ‘thinking man’s terrorism drama’. Rather than the gun-toting, strong, violent, American hero, this drama asks questions about the morality of torture, racial profiling of terrorists, the gender of heroes and the innocence of America. Homeland explicitly intervenes in the discourses surrounding terrorism, and in doing so it opens up space to be critical of the dominant narratives (and their gendered and racialised effects). It does this by having a female lead character (Carrie Mathison) who is unlike the familiar gun-toting, violent male heroes of terrorism dramas to come before her. It does this by having an American soldier (Nicholas Brodie) as the terrorist suspect, and by introducing a range of characters who are involved with the terrorist plot. These include Nicholas Brody, a white American marine, Aileen Morgan, a white American woman, Tom Walker, a black American marine, Roya Hammad, an American journalist with Palestinian heritage and Abu Nazir, the main terrorist leader and mastermind of the terrorist plots that are enacted in the show. Homeland does go to some effort to depict the terrorists in more complex and sympathetic lights than we have seen in comparable terrorist dramas after 9/11 (from Spooks to 24). It shows that Brody’s motivation for terrorism is to avenge the death of a young boy who was killed (alongside eighty-two of his classmates) by an American drone strike. Work on terrorism discourse has shown how the stereotype of the dangerous brown man has acted as a repository for all that ‘we’ are not, and other against which ‘our’ identity is articulated (Bhattacharyya 2008; Morey 2010; Puar 2007; Shaheen 2008). He is evil, barbaric, irrational and violent, so we are good, civilised, rational and peaceful. This matters because the identities of terrorist and counter-terrorist are uncoupled for the violences they perform, and instead rest on this supposedly essential identity. What is more, as many scholars have argued, there is a peculiarly American self-identity that animates its foreign policy, an America which is uniquely good, free and capable, which acts as the policeman for the world (Drinnon 1997; Hunt 1987; Lawrence and Jewett 2002; Neumann 1999; Weldes 1999), An identity that relies upon a logic of masculine protection and a lasting image of the white

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Christian saviour. The enemy, here the terrorists, are the binary opposite to this righteous hero. Typically, this identity is articulated in security studies through the hard bodies and heroic action of the main characters. The subject position is created for the audience as they watch the white, male hero win the day. In psychoanalytic film theory, the process of subjectification was first explained through a process of identification, whereby viewers are expected to recognise themselves in the main characters, and therefore identify with them and occupy their point of view (Lapsley and Westlake 2006). Mulvey (1975), a feminist film scholar, intervened to argue that the resultant viewing position, or gaze, is masculine because we are invited to see the world through the eyes of the typically male protagonists. Yet, in Homeland, we are faced with imperfect characters. There are a female protagonist who suffers from bipolar disorder, an American marine as terror suspect and an image of home life that is fractured by extramarital affairs, teenage rebellions, divorce and abandonment. There is a more complex process of interpellation at work in Homeland which rests upon insecurity and the terrorist threat, which is not built on identification with infallible heroes, but through more complex and fractious relationships with the main characters of the show and their terrorist enemies. Homeland articulates the physical threat that terrorism poses to ‘us’. It creates a collective identity for the viewers as the victims of terrorism, in opposition to terrorist characters and through the viewing position that the show creates.

The white Western subject position in Homeland The first way that the subject position is articulated in Homeland is through the use of insecurity. Insecurity underpins the dramatic tension of the Homeland plot and plays a central role in the creation of ‘us’ as the potential victims of terrorism. The premise of the show is that there is an imminent threat of attack to the United States. The show uses all of the typical devices of television to ensure that this threat is made to feel urgent and frightening, with the pathos and action underlining the ‘on the edge of your seat’ and ‘in the nick of time’ elements that make this show recognisably a drama (Thornham and Purvis 2005). There is no other threat in the show, and we do not see the CIA operatives work on any other cases. As such, this re-establishes terrorism as the paramount threat to our safety. All of the characters are shown to be in danger, in terms of the overarching threat of the terror attack, through individual scenes and moments of violence and attack. This collective identity establishes the audience as the Western victims of terrorism. The audience are called to recognise themselves in the victims of terror attacks, as they are all perpetrated on American citizens. They are also

Telling terrorism tales129 called to identify with the overarching feeling of insecurity that underpins the show. This is established through the familiarity of the places where many of the violence acts take place (parks, offices, parking lots). It is established as these violence events are constantly linked back to other terror attacks on America and ‘the West’ through repeated references to 9/11 throughout the plot. The opening credits show the World Trade Centre collapsing over excerpts from American presidents denouncing terrorist incidents, whilst Carrie declares that she ‘won’t let that happen again’. The show successfully rearticulates the threat of terrorism by associating it with a threat to the home, indeed the title and the tagline, ‘it hits home’, demonstrat how central this blurring is to the plot. This is a familiar discursive gesture by which threats to the nation are dramatised through threats to the domestic home (Meeuf 2006). It also shows terrorist violence, and it articulates this in terms of historical attacks on the West, couched within a War on Terror discourse. Therefore, the initial subject positon that this creates for the viewer is one of potential victim of terrorism, reiterating the essential feature of terrorismbased securitising stories that ‘we’ are under threat from ‘them’. The second way a subject position is created, in a familiar discursive move, is through its articulation against the terrorist identity. However, at first glance, the image of the terrorist as the ultimate other is disturbed in Homeland. Here, the terrorists sometimes look like ‘us’, talk like ‘us’ and even have understandable justifications for their violence. This appears to disturb the dichotomy of good/evil and to undo the idea of an essential difference between our identity and their identity. Yet, the lead terrorist figure still articulates his motivation for terrorism in the more familiar ‘clash of civilisations’ rhetoric: Abu Nazir: With your designer brands and your organic foods, beach houses and sports clubs. Do you really have the perseverance, the tenacity, the faith? Because we do. You can bomb us, starve us, occupy our holy places, but we will never lose faith. We carry God in our hearts, our souls, to die is to join him. It may take a century, two centuries, three centuries, but we will exterminate you. (Season 2, episode 10, Broken Hearts)

In this pivotal scene, the ‘us versus them’ binary is clearly articulated as terrorist versus ‘the West’. The terrorist plots are all aimed at American citizens and involve the deaths of innocent people. This shows that they are (and will always be) against ‘us’ and ‘our’ way of life. The presence of the American terrorist reifies the presence of the homegrown terror threat. What is more, although the terrorist characters might be white and Western, their terrorist actions are always explained through interactions with, or experiences in, the Middle East. Brody is ‘turned’ during his imprisonment in Iraq, Aileen is turned through her experiences in Saudi Arabia and her relationship with

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a Muslim man. The essentially Middle Eastern, foreign and Islamic nature of terrorism still animates the plot. Therefore, there is still a subject position articulated in opposition to the terrorist figure, an identity underpinned by the clash of civilisation binary. The treatment of Islam and Muslims in Homeland is product of, and productive of, a non-Muslim audience, and it therefore re-establishes the ‘otherness’ of Islam. All of the terrorist characters in Homeland are Muslim and this is one way that Muslims are othered. However, not all Muslim characters are also terrorists, such as Danny Galbraz and Fara Sherazi, who are Muslim CIA officers. Although Homeland goes to some efforts to give a sympathetic or accurate portrayal of Islam in some scenes, for instance the scenes in which Brody prays, there is still a treatment of Islam as the different and unusual religion, as that which is strange and needs explanation. It is Brody’s conversion which plays this out most explicitly as it is ‘revealed’ that he is Muslim, something he feels he has to keep secret from his family and which he is asked to explain by his daughter, by his wife and by Carrie. At the same time, the treatment of Islam and of Muslim characters remains quite two-dimensional and their religious beliefs are only really explored in terms of their commitment to terrorism or the American state. The references or synecdoche used to establish ‘Islamicness’ are invariably prayer, ‘Eastern’ music and (unsubtitled) Arabic, which all stay firmly rooted in a racist image of the Islamic other. There is some reference to the anti-Muslim racisms they might face, when Fara is abused for wearing the headscarf. Homeland does not simply depict all Muslims as bad guys, it demonstrates some nuance to the racialising discourse of Islamic terrorism. What is crucial for the creation of the subject position is that the Muslim characters are shown to be different or remarkable in some way, and the audience is not called to simply identify with either them, or their faith. Whilst at the same time there is an articulation of a white subjectivity, whiteness remains a central norm in Homeland. Homeland shapes the audience’s perspective of the racialised other, but Homeland also operates to reinforce white audience members’ views of themselves. Whiteness is spoken in Homeland through its interaction with the racialised other. There are some occasions where it is brought into stark relief, most notably in the character of Aileen, where her whiteness and ‘Caucasian’ appearance is contrasted to her terrorist intentions. However, on the whole, whiteness is not called out explicitly in the text, or reflected upon in quite the same way that Islam is brought into focus, yet it remains central and visible within it. Phil Chidester argues that this strategy comes from ‘an urgent need to speak white at the same time defending its historically guaranteed privilege of silence’ (Chidester 2008, 159). Indeed Dyer argues that whiteness asserts itself visually, but at the same time it recedes into the background (1997). This is made apparent through

Telling terrorism tales131 Carrie, whose whiteness, her blonde hair, is an important part of her identity, whilst at the same time it is an unremarkable part of her identity. Carrie enjoys the structural advantages that allow her to travel freely, be part of and covered by American security, and for the most part to have her race as an unmarked norm. She also takes part in a set of cultural practices of whiteness that mean that she can live in the suburbs, work for the government, listen to jazz, drink French wines and speak fluent Arabic, interacting with (or appropriating) other racialised cultural forms in ways that bolster her own progressive white cosmopolitanism. Her whiteness is most visible when she is in the field in the Middle East, where she stands out, and often dyes her hair brown or covers it with a headscarf. This creates an ‘ethnonormalised implied viewing positon’. In an analysis of 24, Peter Morey argues: these dramas construct what we would call an ethnonormalised implied viewing position; that is, one who is imagined either as part of, or sympathetic to, a white western consensus, often organised around notions of family and patriarchy seen as under attack from the irrational nihilism of Islamist terrorism. (Morey 2010, 251)

In Homeland, a drama which at first seems to offer a more complicated and nuanced account of Islamic terrorism, we can see how this ‘ethnonormalised implied viewing position’ is still at work.

The male subject position in Homeland Despite the female lead, a masculine subject position is created in Homeland. This is not linked to a masculine body on screen, but instead results from the way the audience are called upon to occupy a masculine superiority to the characters. The audience are not called to identify with any one character, but instead they are called to reject aspects of each character’s behaviour. In these moments of rejection, the audience are allowed to feel superior to the characters. In work on soap operas scholars have argued that, as opposed to adopting the male gaze, female viewers took on the position of ideal mother, with a roving identification they willed each character to do well. Here, I identify a roving identification, and dis-identification with characters. It is a subjectivity that involves both investing in and sympathising for characters, whilst also being frustrated by and actively dis-identifying with characters. The protagonists in Homeland do not provide a safe refuge for the audience. The imperfect characters mean that the audience is not invited to simply identify with them. Carrie, the CIA lead, is a compelling character who moves the plot forward. The show is centred on her redemption, and she manically attempts to make up for the failing of 9/11. However, she is flawed, u ­ nlikeable

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and often frustrating. She suffers from bipolar disorder, often acting hysterically, or irrationally, she has breakdowns. She is shown to be failing in her personal life, lonely and often unhappy. Brody, her counterpoint, as a returning prisoner of war is a more likeable character who elicits a greater feeling of sympathy as he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and attempts to reintegrate into American life. However, having turned to terrorism, planning an attack on the USA and failing as a father and husband, he is not a character that the audience are asked to straightforwardly identify with. Both Carrie and Brody often act as ‘bad’ examples of their gender. Carrie is a promiscuous and lonely woman, while Brody fails as a father and husband. In these moments, the audience are not called upon to fully identify with perfect characters but, rather, to actively distance themselves from these ‘problematic’ practices and behaviours. Furthermore, within these moments of frustration with the characters’ behaviour, not only do we learn the ‘correct’ way to behave but the audience are also afforded the opportunity to establish themselves as already better, smarter or more in control than the characters in Homeland. We can empathise with Brody’s sadness over Issa’s death, and understand how this has led him to join Al Qaeda; however, we still know better than to do that ourselves, and instead see him as a weak or damaged character. Similarly, for Carrie, while we sympathise with the suffering she experiences as a result of her bipolar disorder, we know better than to make such rash or dangerous decisions. The use of dramatic irony in Homeland (where the significance of particular actions and events in the plot are understood by the audience but not the characters) functions to bolster the audience’s superiority because the audience often knows more than any of the characters within the show. This happens when we see into Brody’s garage to watch him pray, which Carrie’s hidden cameras do not see. It happens when we watch Carrie take her antipsychotic medication, which her colleagues are unaware she takes. It happens when we see the bomb maker prepare the bomb for Brody, or when we watch Tom Walker’s movements just before the terrorist attack. In Homeland this creates a logic chain in which the more you see, the more you know. Each time that we are allowed to see more of the action, we immediately know more than the characters. This association of knowledge and power is made throughout Homeland; it underlies the pathos and action. The blurring of the public/private boundary extends to the point where there is very little that remains private in Homeland. As well as saying something about surveillance, and its efficacy, this gives the audience a position of power in relation to the characters in the show. They are superior to the characters, and they see and know more than any character in the show. The viewing position in Homeland is gendered and raced. This position (despite the female lead) is masculine. This representation creates a white,

Telling terrorism tales133 Western subject position for the viewer without ever making that position explicit (by simply having a white masculine hero with whom the audience uncomplicatedly identifies). While Homeland disturbs the straightforward ‘us versus them’ binary that pits the West against Muslims, it still invokes this division and reanimates it. It relies upon and reifies the audience as part of the ‘us’: the white, non-Muslim, American/Western civilian, the person that is under threat and that Carrie/the CIA is working to protect. It is this insecurity which is central to the creation of a common identity. This common identity is, in turn, formed though the explicit articulation of the racialised other of terrorism and the articulation of whiteness. What is remarkable about this subject position is how closely it echoes one current articulation of hegemonic masculinity in security policy and practice. As argued by Hooper, the articulation of hegemonic masculinity that is related to foreign policy and international relations changes over time (2001). There is a shifting image of the ideal subject of international relations. The subject position of the benevolent, powerful, but also empathetic masculine figure that is moulded by the text seems to fit closely with the self-image of Western (but particularly American) statehood circulating in international relations at the moment: a Western man who acts not simply in his own interest, but in order to look after/save both his fellow citizens and the victims of terrorism internationally. This self-image is crucial to the on-going practice of counter-terrorism violence. This story still sets up the Western self-image as the innocent victim, as the righteous wielder of righteous counter-terrorism, the figure of international security which makes counter-terrorism violence justifiable.

The active audience: negotiating identity in Homeland It is not enough to simply say that ‘the audience’ are positioned as masculine, white, powerful subjects. The text creates this implied viewing position, but the ‘interpellation’, the process by which audience members are called to occupy this position, is not all-powerful, and indeed the audience members sometimes fail to take up the preferred position. As Morley argues, ‘the struggle in ideology takes place precisely through the articulation/disarticulation of interpellation’ (Morley 1989, 20). It is not only by switching off that audiences can resist the process of interpellation. This builds on the idea of the ‘active audience’ from cultural studies, developed from the intervention of Hall in the 1980s in which he argued that there is meaning encoded in a text by its producers, but before that message makes sense it has to be meaningfully decoded by its viewers. Although this does not mean that the meaning of a text is ever entirely in the hands of its audience, it recognises the potential for mis-readings and active readings by audiences as they come to make sense of

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a show from their own perspectives (Hall 1981). Data gathered from focus groups with British viewers demonstrates how this negotiation takes place amongst Homeland viewers. The interpellation most obviously breaks down for Homeland when the participants demonstrate a greater level of care for the characters than is built into the text, or where they identify with characters at unexpected times. Below are some examples of moments where the audience members had different relationships to the characters and the plot than expected, and so resisted the ‘us and them’ logics of terrorism. There is also a discussion of how the viewing position is negotiated through their Britishness, through the context of consumption. A startling example of the resistance to the othering of terrorism came when the participants Vish and Tessa said that they hoped Brody would detonate his suicide bomb. This support for the terrorist action goes beyond the prescribed level of sympathy that the Homeland story seems to establish and suggests a much more resistant reading that actually undermines some of the central logics of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and the identity on which the story relies. They said: Tessa: Yeah I was with him in the first series and I hate to say this … but after that episode [where we are shown the American drone killing 83 children in Pakistan] I kind of wanted him to go through with it [the terrorist attack], and stick with it [because] he had a reason and I think he was almost justified. Vish: You kind of want [Brody] to go through with it.

In this moment, then, the strict ‘us versus them’ of terrorist versus terror victims breaks down for Vish and Tessa as they find themselves identifying with a terrorist character. The same thing happens when another participant, Rachel, sympathises with the terrorist leader, Nazir. In the drama this is the terrorist character who most readily fits with the familiar stereotype of the terrorist villain: he is brown, Middle Eastern and ruthless, he plans terrorist attacks against Europe and America that are designed to cause mass casualties amongst civilians, and he does this because he is against the West. Yet Rachel says: I think with Abu Nazir, you saw a lot of his character, you saw a lot of the processes of brainwashing Brody. You saw his kindness, you saw that he has a child, you saw that he wanted [his child] to be educated, you saw that he was another person. There was more to him that just a terrorist.

Whilst in this statement she does not go so far as to say that she identifies with Nazir, there is a clear breakdown of the othering of the terrorist character. It has been argued by scholars that a key way terrorists are othered is through the delimiting of sympathy for terrorist characters (Alsultany 2012). However, here Rachel shows sympathy with the terrorist. The terrorist figure

Telling terrorism tales135 is not operating as an evil other against whom Rachel positions herself entirely but, rather, he has invoked her sympathy. The subject position that I identified in Homeland can be seen to legitimise on-going discourses and practices of counter-terrorism. It both relies on the idea that ‘our’ violence is legitimate self-defence and reproduces this idea. Indeed, this is how some participants interpreted the counter-terror violence in the show: Tessa: I think it is massively pro-security services, in terms of justifying the times that security services do something that might make people in the street uncomfortable or unhappy … There is times when you watch Homeland and you think why didn’t they just kill that person, then it would have been fine, and it makes that OK. It made kind of restricting liberties [OK] … you think it is for the greater good and so it is OK.

However, as further evidence of the failure of this subject position to work entirely, or to be safely stabilised in the Homeland story, there were also participants who rejected the counter-terrorist violences. For example, Ben argued that: Most of the atrocities that you see committed in Homeland are committed by the Americans, or decided upon by Americans. I think it isn’t supportive of anyone.

This is a critique of counter-terrorism violence that emerges through watching and negotiating with the show. Viewers do not necessarily adopt the securitised subject position, but can actively reject this position and the logics of violence that it both relies upon and enables. The ‘white Western consensus’ rearticulated in Homeland is also ­questioned by Phil when he says: The argument they [the writers of Homeland] don’t look at in too much detail I think is the reverse of the War on Terror, which is the war without borders.

He is rejecting, or at least questioning, the very grounding of the insecurity story of terrorism told through a War on Terror frame. He is not simply adopting an ethnonormalised viewing position – as defined by Morey (2010) above – he is critically reflecting upon it. One further way that the subject fails is through the difference between the production and consumption context, as an American show that is being consumed by a British audience. Participants in the research often articulated their identities or understanding in contrast to an ‘American’ perspective. This is evident in the quote (above) from Ben when he criticises the ‘Americans’ in the show. Indeed this was a move that many of my participants performed, whereby the War on Terror, or the moments of violent excess, were described as American. Rather than reading American innocence in

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Homeland, the participants were much more prepared to see America as a whole as problematic. The extremes of the War on Terror are associated with the Americans; for example, Jane and Sarah read Homeland as a critique of American behaviours: Jane: I came out; well I am against the Americans particularly politically, but … I thought they came out of it really badly, just the way they functioned I thought they were despicable. Sarah: Well I would interpret or suspect, I don’t know, that it was a difficult series for Americans to watch, being quite left wing, British, yeah I sort of come from the same sort of position about American imperialism.

Participants felt that the show represented America badly. Here ‘the Americans’ serve as a different type of ‘other’ in the terrorism discourse. This is a reading of Homeland that is specific to the British context of consumption. On one hand, they are given a further way to resist any pro-counter-­terror message from the show because they do not identify with the invocations of the Americans as threatened in the show. On the other hand, there is a less positive reading of this, where we see the Americans othered in a way that allows this audience to avoid reflecting on British complicities in War on Terror violences or on-going practices of counter-terrorism. This unpicks the idea of a Western consensus over the War on Terror and draws attention to the localised interpretations of this discourse. It asks us to consider where these shows are viewed and how War on Terror discourses travel. The image from the text can indeed be depressing because it is possible to take a critical reading of Homeland which shows how it manages to rearticulate support for counter-terrorism even whilst it seems to engage in a more nuanced telling of the terrorism story. However, this debate can be complicated and reanimated by the inclusion of the audience’s interpretation. In each instance of their resistance to the preferred meaning of the text, they are also resisting the moment of subjectification. While these are just glimpses of the way in which the relationships that viewers have with characters and identities are not entirely predetermined by the text, they demonstrate the potential for a more complicated and potentially resistant process of identity making that happens as people engage with in/security stories. They also show how security narratives travel, and so they disturb the idea that there is a homogenous Western perspective on terrorism.

Conclusion This chapter began with a discussion of the subject position that is made available in Homeland. This subject is white, fair and intelligent, but nevertheless under threat from the racialised terrorist other. The resultant subject position

Telling terrorism tales137 is the articulation of the familiar subject of in/security discourse, and this chapter has argued that it acts to reify the need for counter-terrorism. It is important, though, to recognise that the process of interpellation must also be understood through the frame of the active audience. The moments where participants read against the text are moments where they not only are negotiating the meaning, but they are also negotiating the process of interpellation, which is not always successful. This might seem like only faint respite, but it is important to stress the potential that lies in these small cracks or fissures to open up a critique of on-going counter-terrorist violence. The British audience members were able to critique the representation of American counterterrorism, and in doing so they distanced themselves from the securitised subject position made available in the show. It is tempting to try to tell a coherent story of the work that popular culture does in the rearticulation of in/security, whiteness and gender, and in doing so flag the symbolic violence performed by the inclusions and exclusions of this discourse. Yet the text does not mean anything until it is read by an audience, and in this reading there is the potential for active reading. There is some negotiation rather than the simple interpellation of audiences into subject positions, allowing space for resistance and agency to the workings of narratives of security. This chapter has given some brief examples of what this resistance can look like and what it can mean by using Homeland and audience interpretations of the show. This has a wider significance for how we conceptualise the interaction of security and identity because it asks that we add the people back into discursive analysis of security. This is not total freedom from the text, but it suggests that we take seriously the small opportunities for resistance that can challenge identity formation.

Notes 1 The focus groups were conducted with participants who had watched all three series. As a means to consider the negotiation of meaning that takes place I held five groups with a total of eighteen participants. All participant names used in this chapter are pseudonyms. This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (ESRC no: ES/J500215/1) with ethical approval from the University of Leeds (AREA 12-154). 2 Interpellation is a phrase originally introduced by Althusser in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)” (Althusser 2006 [1972]). In this text he is applying the term to processes of state governance. However, the term has been taken up in the study of media texts, gender and race.

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Right(s) from the ground up: internal displacement, the urban periphery and belonging to the city Helen Berents

Introduction Situations of precarious existence and forced migration prompt a radical requestioning of the structure and basis of belonging, including that of formal belonging to the nation-state, and amongst the complexities of the everyday. Although those who are internally displaced by conflict, or marginalised by poverty or other discriminations, technically remain citizens of a state – with the implications of protection, support and the ability to participate in political processes – many times such disruptions to the assumed ‘normal’ flow of belonging create disjunctures and denial of status. The continued adherence to state-centric models of citizenship frustrates the ambitions for recognition of those who do not fit. The notion of citizenship, stemming from an adherence to the relationship between state, citizen and territory – cemented through the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 – is linked conceptually to the practices of political community and identity. With the growth of globalisation and the neoliberal market the state has continued to rise in prominence; however, the model of a conscientious liberal state which provides security and political enfranchisement often fails in the face of forms of movement that are extra-legal or non-normalised, such as internal displacement and forced migration (Escobar 2008; Zeiderman 2013; 2016). In Colombia there are approximately six million internally displaced people (IDPs) (IDMC 2015b). A majority of these individuals and families end up on the periphery of large cities in situations of poverty, exclusion and insecurity. The protracted nature of the conflict in Colombia has challenged notions of belonging, as well as the role of the state in providing security and enfranchisement for its citizens; this configuration has been called a ‘violent failure of citizenship’ (Koonings and Kruijt 2007, 12), a feature of urban landscapes in Latin America more broadly that prompts attention to the changing nature of notions of citizenship.

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There is growing attention on practices of belonging and the nature of citizenship in many parts of the globe since the turn of the century. Increasingly, challenges to political membership and the struggle to belong occur through bodies which are situated in public space (see Butler 2011; Harvey 2012; Mitchell 2003; Zeiderman 2013). This chapter explores these claims in relation to the situation of IDPs who live on the periphery of Colombia’s capital Bogotá. A brief discussion of internal displacement and the experiences of those displaced is first outlined to provide context. Then this chapter explores the act of radical appearance, or visibility of those who are normally rendered marginal, within the ‘civil’, ‘accepted’ spaces of society through protests and encampments. Here, I draw upon Henri Lefebrve’s notion of a ‘right to the city’ as explored by David Harvey (2003; 2008; 2012), linking this through Judith Butler’s attention to bodies in public spaces to contend that such actions foreground the city as a significant site of identity-claims for those whose claims of belonging are negated or ignored by the structures of the powerful. This is exemplified through the radical actions of encampments by IDPs in Bogotá and protests by marginalised communities. The second section contests the exclusion of communities of internally displaced and otherwise socially, economically and politically marginalised people on the urban periphery by forwarding a notion of belonging based in presence and residence (Varsanyi 2006) which asserts a notion of citizenship predicated on Hannah Arendt’s claim that citizenship is active, a ‘right to claim rights’ ([1951] 1973, 296; see also Chapter 6). Within this discussion I draw on work conducted by me in a semi-urban community on Bogotá’s outskirts on everyday life and belonging in these contexts.1 This chapter’s interconnected discussions of protest and communal belonging together build an argument for thinking more critically about what it means to belong in the context of the ‘violent’ failure of citizenship in some parts of Colombia as a result of protracted conflict, urban violence and entrenched exclusionary policies and structures. This opens new ways of thinking about belonging not only in radical moments but also amongst the everyday.

IDPs and the urban periphery Colombia has the second-highest number of IDPs globally (exceeded in 2014 by the consequences of Syria’s crisis, which has resulted in more than seven million Syrian IDPs (see IDMC 2015a). Approximately six million IDPs (IDMC 2015b) equate to more than one in ten Colombians displaced by conflict or related causes. This massive internal displacement is due to the complex array of factors stemming from Colombia’s armed conflict.2 The Colombian government is required to provide three months of emer-

Right(s) from the ground up143 gency assistance to IDPs who register with the government; this includes assistance with public services such as education, health care, counselling and housing subsidies (Profamilia 2011, 12). Not all IDPs receive this assistance, either because they are unaware that it is available or because they fear that registering as an IDP will make them traceable by those from whom they are fleeing or that they will be stigmatised by the host community. Additionally, these systems and services are overstretched and inadequate for the lived experiences of many displaced people (Moloney 2004). In Colombia most IDPs end up in informal urban communities rather than in established IDP ‘camps’. Many end up in barrios on the periphery of medium and large cities, and while Bogotá and Medellin attract the highest total numbers, other smaller cities receive very high numbers of IDPs relative to the size of their existing population. The pattern of movement is overwhelmingly rural-to-urban, with 70 per cent of Colombians now living in ‘urban’ environments – a dramatic shift from just decades ago.3 Arrivals in these urban peripheries construct dwellings with whatever material is available; initially this is often plastic tarpaulins, cardboard and corrugated metal, while in more established dwellings concrete blocks are used. These communities often occupy land illegally. Many communities have now been ­established for several decades and some occupants are very gradually gaining rights to their land and access to municipal services. These communities commonly have high levels of poverty, low job opportunities, lack of access to services; and gangs associated with the broader armed conflict control much of the space. Employment is either in low-end service industries such as cleaning and labouring, or in the informal market selling goods on the roadside (Aysa-Lastra 2011). Zea notes that displaced people ‘continue to live in social structures that reinforce discrimination and mask their past experiences and histories’ (Zea 2010, 11). The challenges of navigating the bureaucratic processes associated with being poor, marginal and often displaced exacerbate inequalities. Furthermore, the insecurity in these communities often replicates that of the communities of origin, and so fleeing the conflict does not resolve underlying issues nor, inevitably, improve individuals’ experiences and options. Violent altercations between armed groups and the state occur across and through citizens’ lives in both rural and urban environments.

‘Non-place’, uncivility, and exclusion The negative attributes of these peri-urban barrios come to stigmatise both the geographical area and the occupants. The dominating understanding of the area – by those citizens beyond its boundaries – is a place of danger, of misery, and the source of violence and insecurity for the other citizens of the

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city.4 Regardless of the manner in which individuals enter urban environments, those displaced by the conflict continue to find their lives bound by the difficulty of asserting, often unheeded, their demands as citizens (Pécaut 2000). Such a configuration creates an understanding of the places occupied by IDPs as ‘other’ to the civil, occupied space of society and excludes the occupants of these spaces from being able to participate in the full plurality of citizenship and belonging. Central in the creation of place is a firming of a notion of places that are ‘other’. Edward Said argues that the creation of identity in this sense occurs through the practice of ‘designating in one’s mind a familiar space which is “ours” and an unfamiliar space beyond “ours” which is “theirs”’ (Said [1978] 2003, 54). The starkest recognition of sanctioned places is to describe them in opposition to ‘non-places’. Carolyn Nordstrom draws on Marc Auge’s concept of ‘non-place’ (Auge 1995) to argue that the making of places as visible sites of belonging, power or meaning depends on a ‘non-recognition of non-places’ (Nordstrom 2004, 37). For Nordstrom, the intriguing aspect of non-places is their applicability to illicit spheres in conflict zones. If places are given meaning and substance, they are made in opposition to all that is elsewhere, to that which is ‘constructed in popular thought as the province of misery and danger ... the homeless, the criminal, the illicit, the marginal ...’ (Nordstrom 2004, 37). Nordstrom’s interpretation of non-places is useful when considering the presence of large populations that exist in a state of marginality and precariousness on the literal edges of the civil, made place of cities such as Bogotá. Barrios are ‘invasions’, illegal settlements, encroaching upon the assumed civility and security of Bogotá itself. Rengifo Castillo notes that these zones do not exist in the collective imagination of the big cities as spaces of struggles for social inclusion, or the right to belong to the city, rather, they are recognized for their marginality, for the high rates of violence and for the danger, real or imagined, that they represent for the rest of the inhabitants of the city. (Rengifo Castillo 2005, 61)

Such prescribed understandings can be seen to not only problematise a spatialised conception of the issue, but also problematise those who occupy that space. Fear of violence, tied to a specific place, is fundamental to our understandings of space. Negative understandings of a place can prompt a ‘visceral and emotional charge to our ontological and epistemological interpretations’ (Springer 2011, 94). Those who live within this geographical area are aware of this external attitude. Palacios’ definition of ‘territory’ is useful in connecting claims of place to claims of identity and rights-having (Palacios 2002). He defines territory as ‘a portion of appropriated natural space – appropriated materially and

Right(s) from the ground up145 s­ ymbolically – and transformed through social action on which a particular human group claims and gives all or part of its members rights to access, control and use the resources’. Such a definition of ‘territory’ as a particular configuration of space gains relevance when the history of illegal settlement of these areas – the fights for rights to the properties that have been built, conflict over construction of roads and other communal services and struggles to provide sanitation and water services – is considered. In this context, the characterisation of the inhabitants as ‘uncivil’ strips them of their ‘civil’ rights, the most significant of which is the ability to contribute to and within the participatory democracy that – at least in name in Colombia – still exists. These territories on the urban periphery have grown in permanent tension with hegemonic social sectors and with a state that is disinterested and not effective in supporting the rights of these populations (see Pécaut 2000). While this space enters the broader collective imagination as a ‘non-place’, a configuration that renders the occupants ‘uncivil’ and unable to fully participate, those who live within these spaces – those who have fled conflict and are profoundly affected by poverty and insecure livelihoods – navigate violence and insecurity daily to make claims of belonging to these ‘non-places’ as civil places. However, in many cases these claims do not resonate with the narratives that surround them, or the expected patterns of engagement.

Presence and protest: claiming a ‘right to the city’ Space, place and identity claims The profoundly negative characterisation of these spaces and occupants does not, however, stop these excluded individuals from acting. As Butler put it in 2011, speaking particularly of the Arab Spring: ‘Those who are excluded from existing polities … may be “unreal” only by those who seek to monopolize the terms of reality. And yet even after the public sphere has been defined through their exclusion, they act’ (Butler 2011).5 Butler draws upon Arendt’s observation that even those who are stateless have rights (Arendt [1951] 1973) – or, in the context of Colombia, it could be argued, those whose rights are not recognised do not cease to have rights, nor cease to be able to claim those rights. Indeed, for Arendt there was no useful distinction between refugees or s­ tateless people, because while they may ostensibly have legal rights they in effect are without rights (see Arendt [1951] 1973, 281; see also Chapter 6). The relationship between the state and people is one of rights and dependence; in the case of refugees or, indeed, IDPs, the ability to claim and secure these rights and to depend upon the state is interrupted or not successful. For Arendt and Butler, the right to have rights precedes any institutional authority. Butler’s claim above can be linked to another contention that underpins

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critical investigations of what the city means, and how people use and claim urban space. The idea of a ‘right to the city’ originates with Lefebvre (1968) and is articulated by Harvey as: far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is … one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights. (Harvey 2008)

For Harvey, the right to the city is fundamental in a discussion of power, privilege, citizenship and rights (2003; 2008; see also Mitchell 2003). While it is important to recognise that these discussions are framed within a European historical context, Colombia, with one of the world’s largest populations of IDPs, presents a situation in which the claims made on the state by those peripheral citizens can be read not only as challenges to liberal models of citizenship but also, more productively, as markers of new forms of organisation in making claims for the right to the city: a claim for the freedom to participate in collective decision making around life in urban environments. These theoretical positions help to articulate how and why the participation and demands of those who are excluded and marginalised are significant. The creation of spaces as exclusionary is not a fixed phenomenon but, rather, is constantly challenged. Spaces are subjective, constitutive of identities and therefore powerful sites for contestation. They also assist in beginning to think about the way in which public, embodied, everyday practices pose a radical challenge to liberal structures of belonging that effectively exclude these populations.

Protesting in Bogotá: out of place but claiming space Berney notes that deliberate policy and undertakings by successive mayors of Bogotá through the 1990s and 2000s have shaped the way in which public space has become emblematic of a vision of a city that has moved past its violent narco-history and is ready to step up on the global stage (Berney 2011). However, this transformation has seen the city become one where citizens must behave in certain ways – ‘public’ spaces are monitored and controlled, the homeless and poor are removed or contained, and citizens are trained to appropriate ‘civil’ behaviours: ‘A true Bogotano, in a sense was one who behaved well and fit within neoliberal class ideals (housed, gainfully employed, and with a strong sense of civic duty)’ (Berney 2011, 165). In counterpoint to this, protests by those rendered marginal by policies and structures have been a feature of Colombia’s urban politics for decades.

Right(s) from the ground up147 They argue that their rights are not respected, that they are given inadequate provisions and support and that the state abandons its responsibility to them. Formal protests by those displaced by the broader conflict frequently take the form of the occupation of visible public space. These are often spaces in which those who are marginalised and excluded are not normally visibly present, such as parks in neighbourhoods of high socio-economic status or central business areas. This action is a deliberate response to the exclusionary politics of public spaces in Bogotá. Occupation of public space in Bogotá has been used by IDPs increasingly in the decade since 2007. Others have explored these occupations in various ways. Zeiderman argues that claiming rights, citizenship or, more particularly, a ‘right to the city’, not only is based on the claim of a shared political membership but requires the claimant to demonstrate and prove their vulnerability or their position of risk (Zeiderman 2013; 2016). There is a link here to previous discussion of how the model of a conscientious liberal state fails in the presence of non-normalised movements, such as that of massive displacements; and, further, that echo Lefebvre’s ­argument that visible space is political, and can be an enabler of collective and individual actions (see Lefebvre 1968; see Chapter 12). There are two key examples of such occupation; the (infamous) occupation in 2008 of Bogotá’s 93rd Street Park, a site that is centrally located in an area of power, wealth and prestige (see Zeiderman 2013, 78–9) where approximately 200 desplazados (displaced people) occupied a park that is surrounded by embassies, multinational businesses and elite homes. The other is the occupation of the Parque Tercer Milenio (Third Millennium Park), very near to the Presidential Palace, by approximately 500 desplazados in 2009 (Zeiderman 2013, 79–82; see also Olarte and Wall 2012). In both cases the reported complaint of IDPs was the abnegation of responsibility by the government both for the causes of displacement and for the insufficient support and service provided to those arriving in Bogotá (Zeiderman 2016, 146, 150). The intention was to remain until these problems were addressed or recognised adequately; however, in both instances the structures and powers of the state were used to remove these individuals. In these protests IDPs used the nexus created between spaces, bodies and politics to advocate and claim a right to the city – as physical space and as an idea of political and social membership and belonging. However, their right to belong to the city is negated by the structures that ostensibly exist to support and include them. These protests are representative of actions taken by IDPs in various locations across Colombia. Protest, radical or disruptive appearance are also used by those excluded or marginalised by political processes. The case of the madres de Soacha (mothers of Soacha) is an illustrative example. The madres de Soacha are a small group of mothers whose sons were killed as part of the falsos positivos scandal that came to light in 2008 (El Tiempo 2008; Romero

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2008). The Colombian army had offered cash rewards to soldiers who killed or captured guerrillas; it subsequently came to light that soldiers had taken and killed young men from poor and marginal areas of the country, dressed them as FARC guerrillas and buried them as anonymous guerrilla fighters killed in combat (United Nations 2009; United Nations General Assembly 2010).6 Twenty-three young men from Soacha were found hundreds of kilometres away, near the Venezuelan border (O’Driscoll 2011). The madres de Soacha were key in raising public awareness and pushing for prosecution. This involved protests, in particular the occupation of the Plaza de Bolivar in Bogotá (outside the judiciary and parliament). Unlike the occupations discussed above, the mothers were largely met with support and sympathy. The mothers called for justice and, in doing so, challenged the assumption that their sons were of no consequence and able to be killed and manipulated on the basis of where they were from. Their protest challenges notions of citizenship and the appropriate role of the state. This observation echoes Arendt’s contention that while they may be entitled to rights, people in situations of displacement often are ‘without rights’ ([1951] 1973, 281). The indirect claim to belonging inherent in the mothers’ protest, their claim to solidarity with their fellow citizens against the failure of the state and their performance of these claims in public space speaks directly to questions raised above about who can speak and under what conditions. Those who claim space, attention and rights here challenge a notion of a collective identity that excludes them, instead arguing through their actions and occupation of public space that they count. There is a profound claim of visibility in these situations. Often those who find themselves on the margins find their claim of belonging challenged or rendered invisible. This is significant, as belonging in a substantive way is at the heart of claims of citizenship and the right to claim the rights associated with that designation.

A right to claim rights, and grounded claims to belonging ‘Presence and residence’ Arendt’s understanding of citizenship as a political capacity – the ‘right to have rights’, which is not automatic but comes from a shared decision to ‘guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights’ – precedes any political organisation and requires no authority to grant it (Arendt [1951] 1973, 301). This active process of claiming rights, and being recognised as having rights, centres the human being. When rights are denied by those in power, people seek new articulations of belonging that centre their humanity and mutual right to have rights.7 The above efforts of IDPs to claim rights, however, often continue to be

Right(s) from the ground up149 ignored by those beyond the periphery – an on-going complicity by the wider community of Nordstrom’s deliberate acts of ‘not-knowing’ (2004, 37–8; see also Nordstrom 1999) about the prescribed ‘non-place’. In this way, it is not only physical space, but also a conceptual space ascribed to the geographical region in the collective imagination that prevents the occupants from speaking or gaining entrance to represent themselves in the ‘public space’ of debate. To overcome the tension presented by the limited recognition that such people have, Varsanyi describes a ‘grounded’ idea of urban belonging based in ‘presence and residence’, rather than a ‘bounded’ concept relying on legal status (Varsanyi 2006, 369). In a discussion of this idea, McNevin notes that such an articulation by Varsanyi is reflected in the practices of other scholars who are rethinking the terms of political membership and belonging (McNevin 2007). While McNevin and Varsanyi are preoccupied with migration (legal and illegal) across state borders, their arguments and reflections have particular resonance with people in situations of internal displacement also, particularly in relation to illegal practices such as land invasions or squatting, which form the grounded position of presence and residence for ‘new forms of political subjectivity as legitimate claimants’ (McNevin 2007, 665). One way to recognise these new forms of claim making is to return to a notion of the everyday in which routine and practice locate people spatially in a web of relationships that they contribute to through dialogue and action. Participation in the civic and political life of a polity is thwarted by external renderings of these spaces as dangerous and violent. Yet Renfigo Castillo, writing specifically about a community on the southern periphery of Bogotá, notes that while the occupants see the practices of voting and participation in formal political processes as a form of citizenship, political participation is more often characterised as the ‘daily construction of social spaces of public debate’ (Castillo 2005, 35). Such a configuration can assist in building a located account of participation, in which the activities and presence of individuals can be seen to contribute to a spatial community, and provide the grounded emplacement to build claims to broader belonging – in/to the city, and as citizens. Communal belonging and everyday life Claiming the formal rights of citizenship, and the recognition of shared belonging through presence and protest, is one aspect of the challenge to traditional ideas of belonging. Those displaced and on the margins also challenge this idea through collective efforts within their community. Those characterised as ‘uncivil’ or ‘savage’ in the imaginaries of those in power are not unaware of the problematic nature of the external construction of the terrains of insecurity that constitute their everyday lives. During my

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fieldwork in a peri-urban community in Bogotá, I discussed the challenges of living in one particularly violence-affected area of the community with a mother of several children who attended the school in the community where I was conducting research. We discussed a range of topics – talking about the benefits of the school, the problems of the roads, the danger of the current very heavy rainy season – then suddenly she stopped and said: ‘If you think it is difficult here, it is nothing to the countryside in [place she was from]. At least the government is reminded we are here because we are at their door’ (November 2010). While this mother was speaking about the problems of living in this community particularly, in recognising the potentially positive effect of being there rather than in the countryside she was also demonstrating the active making of place and presence. By being ‘at the door’ she is participating in a form of action that demands recognition and inclusion in the considerations and demands of civil society upon the government. Presence and residence are evident in this mother’s conception of her sense of belonging. The argument that members of informal settlements are claiming place resonates with a right to the city, where individuals and communities participate in the production of urban spaces in ways that meet the needs of the inhabitants (rather than the desires of the state which conceptualise these spaces as ­commodities). These claims and contestations occur on the local level; such engagements occur in informal communities around the globe to contest neoliberal policies and framings, creating local initiatives for place making and belonging, and informal networks to combat violence and insecurity (see Roy 2009 on Indian cities; Neuwirth 2004 for a global overview; Fawaz 2013 on Beirut; and Kruijt and Degregori 2007 on Lima). I also attended workshops organised by the NGO Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones para el Trabajo-United States Institute of Peace (Center for Labor Studies and Research), which involved approximately thirty community leaders from several neighbouring communities meeting together periodically to foster leadership skills and encourage networking to resolve collective issues. Potable water was one of the key topics focused on by the participants. Again, the ‘indifference of the state’ was mentioned, and the lack of delivering on promises was described as a ‘lack of respect’ for the occupants of the community. For the participants the solution was two-fold: to organise in a way to present ‘leaders’ to manage the politics and lobby for improvement, and concurrently to find ways of caring for the existing resources of the community and of building capacity to collectively resolve the issue of inadequate water provision. Participants recognised the liminality of the spaces which the community occupied and were focused on finding practical ways of resolving the issues. They claimed a right to the city in their plans for community-based, needs-oriented planning.

Right(s) from the ground up151 The occupants of the community frequently come together with little or no reference to the state to collectively address issues and improve communal life. In these instances it is significant to note that these acts are not a rejection of the state entirely; rather, they are reactions to the unresponsiveness and inaction of the state in securing or providing vital services and assistance. In the effective absence of the state the occupants of the community, through these efforts, articulate a new form of belonging and of socio-political consciousness (Berents 2015). Such engagements can be read as efforts to reconstitute a sense of self and reinforcing notions of community formed in response to social exclusion from wider society. Excluded and marginalised as they are by the broader polity, these efforts exist alongside the radical protests described in the previous section. There is a connection between communal efforts to secure services and the large-scale occupation of public space by the desplazados and the on-going protest by the madres de Soacha. This connection is in the way in which all these acts transgress expected or appropriate behaviour and are fostered out of grounded, everyday strategies of belonging as those on the margins claim their rights and their presence and participation. These individuals exist in a space that is between recognitions. On the one hand, the Colombian government does recognise IDPs and those in situations of ‘vulnerability’ (defined by extreme poverty); and it indeed has laws and processes in place that are designed to assist them with material needs, with resettlement and with asserting their rights. On the other hand, this system is insufficient for the material needs of the people attempting to access it, and compounding this are the discourses that deny civility and the rights of collective belonging to the displaced. The explorations here – of large-scale protest and living and building community in places marked as illegal and dangerous by the authorities – centre an attention on the experiences of those on the margins. Together with the theoretical exploration, I argue that this is a partial attempt to correct the invisibility and abnegation of those who suffer the effects of conflict and the absence of state support and to theorise a conception of rights from the ground up.

Conclusion Although Colombia has systems and structures in place to try to address the needs and rights of the displaced within the country, in practice these do not always meet the needs of communities and individuals. Through this chapter I have argued that looking seriously at embodied experiences of how civility and a right to the city are both granted and denied might open up space to more meaningfully consider the rights of IDPs. In doing so, this chapter has identified the dynamics by which IDPs who live on the periphery of Bogotá

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are excluded from discourses of belonging, citizenship and enfranchisement. It has argued that informal settlements are seen as ‘non-places’, and their occupants as potentially dangerous and disruptive to the ‘city’. From here it drew on two conceptual points to reinterpret the actions of those on the margins. It first challenged the narratives of exclusion and found insight from Butler’s attention to bodies, and Harvey’s use of the idea of a ‘right to the city’, in order to legitimate the appearance of people in public spaces through protest and encampment as radical claims of belonging and assertion of identity. The second conceptual argument is that those who are excluded and relegated to the ‘non-place’ continue in everyday practice to make claims to belonging to the urban collective in addition to making broader claims of citizenship and belonging. Identifying and legitimising the bodies of those excluded responds to Butler’s observation that the public space is defined by their exclusion, yet they continue to act. Recognising these communities and individuals beyond restrictive and exclusionary frameworks forwards an understanding of an everyday-based politics of practice of the right to the city. The question that needs further empirical and theoretical engagement, but which this chapter has attempted to begin to answer, is: how then might we theorise this actual lived experience in a way that does not accept that the dominant models and understandings are sufficient, and in a way that recognises the presence and embodied experience of those on the margins of so-called civil life? This is the question that is necessary if, as this chapter has explored, those who are socially excluded and rendered conceptually in a ‘non-place’ do have a right to claim rights – and particularly, a right to the city. Hearing those claims is crucial.

Notes 1 Ethnographically informed fieldwork was conducted in this community over a period of months and ethical approval was granted by the University of Queensland’s Behavioural and Social Science Review Board on 1 September 2010 (approval no. 2010001003). For more detailed discussion of this community and the challenges it faces see Berents (2013, 2015). 2 Most recently, the current conflict, on-going since the mid-1960s, has been fought between leftist guerrillas the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), right-wing paramilitary organisations and the state. The multiple actors in the conflict, their involvement in other illegal practices (particularly the drug trade and arms dealing) and the duration of the conflict make Colombia’s conflict complex and difficult to resolve and have had deep impacts on the lives of Colombians. Previous efforts – both negotiated and by force – to secure broad peace have resulted in failure. Since late 2012 the Colombian government and leaders of the FARC have been engaged in formal peace talks in Havana, Cuba. For further reading on the history and other aspects of the conflict in Colombia the

Right(s) from the ground up153 following are offered as a starting point: Bouvier (2009); Medina and Téllez (1996); Palacios (2006); Richani (2002); and Tate (2007). 3 This movement is reflected in the emergence of the city as location and concept within Colombian social-political discourse for over a century. See Herrera (2003) on the city as a modernising paradigm in Colombia at the beginning of the last century. 4 This conception of barrios in Colombia is echoed in other Latin American nations. As far back as the 1970s Perlman (1976) demonstrated that insecurity, urban violence and stigma contribute significantly to the ‘reality’ of a ‘new marginality’ in Brazilian favelas; while Rotker’s (2002) edited collection explores these issues in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela. 5 Butler (2011) goes on to explicitly reference refugees as an example of those who may act: ‘Whether abandoned to precarity or left to die through systematic negligence, concerted action still emerges from such sites. And this is what we see, for instance, when undocumented workers amass on the street without the legal right to do so, when populations lay claim to a public square that has belonged to the military, or when the refugees take place [sic] in collective uprisings demanding shelter, food, and rights of mobility, when populations amass, without the protection of the law and without permits to demonstrate, to bring down an unjust or criminal regime of law or to protest austerity measures that destroy the possibility of employment and education for many.’ 6 This practice is now known to have been occurring sporadically for decades; however, what is commonly referred to as the falsos positivos scandal refers to the period between 2002 and 2008 when the practice became more frequent, well organised and demonstrating clear patterns. The UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary or Summary Executions, Phillip Alston investigated the situation and in 2009 called the practice ‘the cold-blooded and premeditated murder of innocent civilians for the sake of profit’ (United Nations 2009). It is estimated that over 3,500 young men from around Colombia were victims of this practice, although the number is impossible to confirm (FIDH 2012, 8). The murders of nineteen of the twenty-three young men from Soacha have been presented to the courts, but to date only three convictions have been recorded. The madres de Soacha continue to protest impunity and mishandling of their case, and others in Colombia. 7 Rojas expands Arendt’s ideas in relation to citizenship in a Colombian context in very productive ways (Rojas 2009, 229–32).

References Arendt, H. [1951] 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Harcourt. Auge, M. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso. Aysa-Lastra, M. 2011. “Integration of Internally Displaced Persons in Urban Labour Markets: A Case Study of the IDP Population in Soacha, Colombia.” Journal of Refugee Studies 24 (2): 277–303. Berents, H. 2013. “From the Margins: Conflict-Affected Young People, Social

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Exclusion, and an Embodied Everyday Peace in Colombia.” PhD diss., School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland. —— 2015. “Children, Violence and Social Exclusion: Negotiation of Everyday Insecurity in a Colombian Barrio.” Critical Studies on Security 3 (1): 90–104. Berney, R. 2011. “Pedagogical Urbanism: Creating Citizen Space in Bogota, Colombia.” Planning Theory 10 (1): 16–34. Bouvier, V. M., ed. 2009. Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. Butler, J. 2011. “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street.” European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics: Transversal 09. September. http://www.eipcp.net/ transversal/1011/butler/en. El Tiempo. 2008. “Máxima condena para militares con responsabilidad en desaparición de 11 jóvenes en Soacha: Uribe.” El Tiempo, 24 October. Escobar, A. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movement, Life, Redes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fawaz, M. 2013. “Towards the Right to the City in Informal Settlements.” In Locating Right to the City in the Global South, edited by T. R. Samara, S. He and G. Chen, 23–40. Abingdon: Routledge. FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), and CCEEU (Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos). 2012. Colombia. The War is Measured in Litres of Blood: False Positives, Crimes Against Humanity: Those Most Responsible Enjoy Impunity. Paris: FIDH. Harvey, D. 2003. “The Right to the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27: 939–41. —— 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53: 23–40. —— 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. New York: Verso. Herrera, M. C. 2003. “The City as a Modernizing Paradigm: Colombia in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century.” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 39 (1): 65–74. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). 2015a. Global Overview: 2015. Geneva: IDMC. —— 2015b. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data as of December 2014. http://www.internal-displacement.org/global-figures. Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt. 2007. “Fractured Cities, Second-Class Citizenship and Urban Violence.” In Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America, edited by K. Koonings and D. Kruijt, 7–22. London: Zed Books. Kruijt, D. and C. I. Degregori. 2007. “Lima Metropolitana.” In Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America, edited by K. Koonings and D. Kruijt, 101–16. London: Zed Books. Lefebvre, H. 1968. Le Droit à la ville, Paris: Ed. du Seuil. McNevin, A. 2007. “Irregular Migrants, Neoliberal Geographies and Spatial Frontiers of ‘The Political’.” Review of International Studies 33: 655–74.

Right(s) from the ground up155 Medina, C. and M. Téllez. 1996. Violencia parainstitucional, paramilitar y parapolicial de Colombia. Bogotá: Rodríguez Quito Editores. Mitchell, D. 2003. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, New York: Guildford Press. Moloney, A. 2004. “Displaced in Colombia.” NACLA Reporting on the Americas September–October: 9–12. Neuwirth, R. 2004. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World, New York: Routledge. Nordstrom, C. 1999. “Wars and Invisible Girls, Shadow Industries, and the Politics of Not-Knowing.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1 (1): 14–33. —— 2004. Shadows of War: Violence, Power and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. O’Driscoll, A. 2011. “Colombian Soldiers Paid $500 for Victims to Boost Kill Counts: Testimony.” Colombia Reports, 5 December. Olarte, C. and I. Wall. 2012. “The Occupation of Public Space in Bogotá: Internal Displacement and the City.” Social and Legal Studies 21 (3): 321–39. Palacios, G. 2002. Territorio. Palabras para desarmar, una aproximación crítica al vocabulario del reconocimiento cultural en Colombia. Bogotá: Ministerio de Cultura, ICANH. Palacios, M. 2006. Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia 1875– 2002. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pécaut, D. 2000. “The Loss of Rights, the Meaning of Experience and Social Connection: A Consideration of the Internally Displaced in Colombia.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 14 (1): 89–105. Perlman, J. 1976. The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Profamilia. 2011. Surveys in Marginalized Areas Sexual and Reproductive Health, Forced Displacement and Poverty 2000–2011. Bogotá: Profamilia. Rengifo Castillo, C. 2005. “Balance Comparativo: Conflictos por territorio, conflictos por participacion politica y jovenes en las comunas 7 de Barrancabermeja, 13 de Medellin, 15 de Cali y Cazuca (Soacha) y la Estancia (Ciudad Bolivar-Bogota).” In Jovenes, Conflictos Urbanos y Alternativas de Inclusion, edited by Sabogal Ruiz V. Plataforma Conflicto Urbano y Jovenes, CIVIS Suecia & ASDI, Bogotá. Richani, N. 2002. Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia. New York: State University of New York Press. Rojas, C. 2009. “Securing the State and Developing Social Insecurities: The Securitisation of Citizenship in Contemporary Colombia.” Third World Quarterly 30 (1): 227–45. Romero, S. 2008. “Colombian Army Is Accused of Killing Poor Civilians and Labeling Them Insurgents.” New York Times, 29 October. Rotker, S., ed. 2002. Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Roy, A. 2009. “Why India Cannot Plan its Cities: Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of Urbanization.” Planning Theory 8 (1): 76–87. Said, E. [1978] 2003. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

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Springer, S. 2011. “Violence Sits in Places? Cultural Practice, Neoliberal Rationalism and Virulent Imaginative Geographies.” Political Geography 30 (2): 90–8. Tate, W. 2007. Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia. Berkeley: University of California Press. United Nations. 2009. Statement by Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial executions – Mission to Colombia 8–18 June 2009. United Nations Human Rights Council, 19 June. http://reliefweb.int/report/colombia/statementprofessor-philip-alston-un-special-rapporteur-extrajudicial-executions. United Nations General Assembly. 2010. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston. New York: United Nations. Varsanyi, M. 2006. “Interrogating ‘Urban Citizenship’ vis-à-vis Undocumented Migration.” Citizenship Studies 10 (2): 229–49. Zea, J. E. 2010. “Internal Displacement in Colombia: Violence, Resettlement, and Resistance.” Anthropology. Unpublished manuscript: Portland State University. Zeiderman, A. 2013. “Living Dangerously: Biopolitics and Urban Citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia.” American Ethnologist 40 (1): 71–87. —— 2016. Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogota. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

Part III

Contesting identity

10

Sweden, military intervention and the loss of memory Annika Bergman Rosamond and Christine Agius

Introduction Since the 1990s, Sweden has gradually changed from a neutral country to one that is ‘militarily non-aligned.’ It has taken active part in international peace operations under the command of NATO and the EU, and contributed forces to operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya. In 2015 Sweden also set aside resources to train Kurdish troops in Northern Iraq in the fight against ISIS (Dagens Nyheter 2015). At the 2014 NATO Summit in Warsaw, Sweden signed up to a number of initiatives, such as the Host Nation Support agreement (ratified in 2016), which permits NATO to use Swedish territory for military exercises and crisis management operations. Sweden also agreed to participate in the Partnership Interoperability Initiative and the Enhanced Opportunity Programme (EOP) to forge closer military cooperation (NATO 2016). Such activities signal a shift away from participation in traditional forms of peacekeeping and towards more robust military engagement, which entails the use of brute force to promote international security and human rights, taking the shape of combative missions (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2015; Berndtsson et al. 2015, 315), as well as blurring the lines of what it means to be a militarily non-aligned state. Whilst Sweden’s changing approach to international security and peace could be explained as a response to exogenous developments related to humanitarian disasters, conflict and terrorism, such explanations fail to take account of deeper, more endogenous changes in Swedish society. Social democratic ideology and hegemony – the foundations of military non-alignment (Agius 2006; Bergman Rosamond 2015) – have loosened over the last few decades. Subsequently, the dominance of social democratic ideology and norms of collective identity have become contested. In this chapter we explore the intersection between collective identity and memory, in particular how new

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memories are created that permit and normalise new forms of military intervention. Sweden represents a complex case for thinking through how states construct memories. Where many nations construct their identities, collective memories and self-narratives through major events such as war, as a neutral state, Sweden lacks a contemporary legacy of warfare. Since the 1990s, however, neutrality has been gradually removed from the public narrative and elite attachment, both as a policy and as a normative platform that shapes national identity. Moreover, Sweden has pursued an ‘activist military agenda’ since 1997. This more ‘robust’ form of military engagement has seen its armed forces use ‘coercive and kinetic military force in expeditionary operations that are a long way from traditional Swedish peacekeeping during the Cold War’ (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2015, 479). Such activities produce new meanings and reconfigure Sweden’s collective identity. Sweden’s adoption of robust military roles is key to the reconstitution of its collective idea of identity and, as such, contributes to the creation of new stocks of collective memories, forging what we here define as a new ‘memory bank’ which has a militarised character. This shift has constitutive effects on the stories that are being told about the nation and that e­ thically legitimise the country’s engagement in robust military activities. How neutrality has been remembered (and forgotten) has played a crucial part in justifying and normalising specific practices as well as in deconstructing collective memories of the self as a neutral, peace-loving nation. This does not entail replacing one collective memory with another but, rather, relies on competing past and future narratives of identity. Thus, there is a circularity involved in creating the new collective ‘memory bank’; it relies on past events and (absent) national traumas to present a different future self. The chapter commences by investigating the constitutive links between nation, war and the ‘turn to memory’, which has recently been a focus of international relations theorising (Bell 2006; Edkins 2003a; Zehfuss 2007). The narratives of nations rely on stories of war, yet Sweden’s self-narrative lacks a contemporary war story or collective memory or experience of war. For Sweden, as a neutral state for over 200 years – now militarily non-aligned – a different self-narrative has shaped collective identity. This narrative of the collective self was largely authored by Sweden’s Social Democratic Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti, or SAP), whose vision of society and the external realm centred on key tropes of consensus, active internationalism and welfare (Agius 2006; Bergman Rosamond 2015). However, since the 1990s, the established narrative about neutrality and its associated memories has become dislodged and reinterpreted. As a defence doctrine and signifier of identity, neutrality is being partially forgotten, and new collective militarising memories and experiences are emerging, some of which have been traumatic to digest for the general public. In particular, participation

Military intervention and the loss of memory161 in military missions in Afghanistan has provided war stories for the nation. Soldiers’ lives have been lost in fighting global terrorism and helping to secure distant others. These developments have reaffirmed the militarising aspects of Sweden’s collective self-identity, a self that has become increasingly more willing to employ robust military means to combat global terrorist threats and to promote human rights beyond its borders. In the second part of the chapter the relationship between identity, memory and forgetting (as well as absent traumas) is explored. Here we examine how Sweden imagines itself as an engaged, active contributor to humanitarian military missions abroad, focusing on Afghanistan and participation in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whilst shedding part of its neutral profile and identity that does not cohere with such engagements. We then consider the complexity of forging new ideas of self and a collective ‘memory bank’. New notions of Swedish identity, and security cosmopolitanism constitute this new ‘memory bank.’ Drawing on selected official reports, statements and academic literature, we argue that the deconstruction of particular memories and associations of neutrality/military non-alignment is not simply representative of a shift from one identity to another. Rather, it relies on competing memories, actions and policies to establish context and precedent, whilst at the same time cohering with established ideas of the self, interpreted in new ways. The new ‘memory bank’ that Sweden is currently constituting opens up the path to more frequent and robust forms of military engagement and offers an opportunity to rewrite national identity. This chapter provides a nuanced analysis of the dynamics of foreign and security policy change in the context of domestic notions of self-identity, foregrounding the ways in which memory and identity are co-constituted and, in the words of J. R. Gillis, how ‘identity depends on the idea of memory, and vice versa’ (Gillis 1994, 3).

Nation, war and memory Memory has been an important feature of ethics, philosophy, art and history for centuries. As a field of studies, it is multidisciplinary, embracing psychology, anthropology, art, literature, politics, sociology, history, philosophy and the neurosciences (Kattago 2015; Olick, Vinitzky Seroussi, and Levy 2011; Roediger and Wertsch 2008). Since the 1980s historians have observed an ‘explosion of interest’ in the ‘turn to memory’ (Cubitt 2007, 1). The ‘memory boom’ has a number of distinct generations, exploring a variety of themes such as identity, commemoration, individual and societal memory (Winter 2001). The first generation of the memory boom stretched from the 1890s to the 1920s and focused on the formation of identities, particularly national identities. The second boom, in the 1970s and 1980s, dealt with

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the ­fragmentation of identities in response to wider global processes and the inclusion of new voices bearing witness and contesting established narratives (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Levy 2011; Bell 2006; Verovšek 2016; Winter 2006). In particular, the memory boom in the twentieth century has prioritised the remembrance and re-enactment of suffering, which Simpson argues brings trauma into the present, enabling us to learn the lessons of past atrocities (Simpson 2006, 3). Both the first and second memory booms coalesce around the two world wars. More recently, Hoskins and O’Loughlin, writing in the context of war and digital media, identify a third memory boom, one that memorialises the war dead in on-going and recent warfare. A key aspect of this third memory boom is its future orientation. Although applied to digital memories, an important aspect of relevance is ‘the setting out of the possibilities of future memory of present and recent-past warfare and other catastrophes’ that make up this third memory boom (Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2010, 116–17). This interplay between identity, memory and trauma has been a feature of the ‘memory turn’ in international relations (IR) and security studies in recent years. Here, the focus has centred largely upon the experiences and traumas of war (Bell 2006; Hutchison 2010; Resende and Budryte 2013; Zehfuss 2007), memorials and commemoration (Auchter 2014; Edkins 2003b; Sierp 2014), as well as the relationship between memory, nationalism and the nationstate (Bell 2003; Cruz 2000; McDonald 2010). Other studies have explored the nexus between memory, political power and security in IR (Lagenbacher and Shain 2010; Müller 2004). As a ‘meta-theoretical trope’ (Bell 2003, 65), memory provides insights that are missing from structural and institutionalist accounts within IR. Memory plays a central role in constituting collective discourses and practices of identification, shaping constructions of security and insecurity, as well as informing and influencing political action. Nonetheless, memory is difficult to define, and its scope and definition depend on methodological and theoretical preferences and paradigms. Collective memory, for example, differs from individual memory.1 Duncan Bell defines memory at its most basic level as ‘the processes or faculty whereby events or impressions from the past are recollected and preserved’ (Bell 2006, 2). To be clear, our focus on memory throughout this chapter is national collective memory and its relationship to identity. Shared identity relies on shared memories: ‘Group identities require a relatively widely shared understanding of history and its meaning, the construction of a narrative tracing the linkages between past and present, locating self and society in time.’ From this, the ‘imagined community’ forms, but memories and identities are also always contestable (Bell 2006, 5). We understand collective memory to be discursively constructed, through language, texts, speeches, media and images, which form part of intersubjective imaginaries. Below, we draw on select

Military intervention and the loss of memory163 speeches, official documents and media reports to document recent shifts in Swedish security discourse and practice. We see a co-constitutional relationship between memory and identity, both of which rely on narratives and discourses. Narrative creates a sense of continuity in the subject over time, but narratives also plot pathways, have central figures, events or characters and tell a story in a particular way, often in such a way as to constitute the self as different in relation to others (Browning 2008, 11 and 48; see also Chapters 3 and 8). The historical Swedish self-narrative connects neutrality with Sweden as a peaceful nation, a story that is in itself closely linked with social democratic internationalism (Agius 2006; Bergman Rosamond 2015). Discourses, on the other hand, are systems of representation that produce and reproduce social relations and understandings. Discourses construct the stories we tell about ourselves and govern how the story is told by others. They produce meanings as well as the identities of subjects and objects, and moderate the possibilities of political and ethical outcomes (Bialasiewicz et al. 2007, 406; Hansen 2006). In exploring the Swedish self-narrative we look at how collective identity has been constructed around certain self-narratives and the ways in which collective memories reinforce the latter. In other words, ‘(n)ational narratives … help organise historical memories of a people and are embedded’ (Reodiger and Wertsch 2008, 18) in literature, culture, customs, politics and everyday life. Memory is ‘vital to the sense of identity … crucial to the particular fabric and profile of the nation’ (Smith 2004, 3). However, collective memories constitute and guide people’s sense of  possible future action. The temporal aspects of collective memory are important to emphasise here. Memory is ‘a term which directs our attention not to the past but to the past-present relation. It is because the past has this living active existence in the present that it matters so much politically’ (Olick, Vinitzky Seroussi and Levy 2011, 257). Conny Mithander, borrowing Swedish historian Klas-Göran Karlsson’s definition of memory from his 1999 book Historia som vapen (‘History as weapon’), defines memory as a ‘subjective and narrative representation of the past which has been constructed in the present with an orientation of action towards the future’ and says that such ­recollections are the ‘object of political struggle’ (Mithander 2007, 180). As will be discussed below, this memory of Sweden as a peace-loving, gender-sensitive nation, supportive of UN peacekeeping during the Cold War, has been used as a platform for morally justifying and narrating Sweden’s participation in military interventions in the post-9/11 era. Collective ideas of self and the memories that are used to write such self-narratives contain a circularity to and connection with the present, making future action meaningful and consistent with the self. In certain interpretations, past traumas can also guide future action. In Ernest Renan’s much-cited lecture of 1882, ‘What is a Nation?’, the nation

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is conceived as a soul, constituted by the past and the present. For Renan, ‘[w]hen it comes to national memories, mourning is of more value than triumphs … A nation is thus a large-scale fellowship, created by the sense of sacrifices made and those one is inclined to make in the future’ (Renan 2006, 165). Shared experiences, war and traumas shape nations and are the defining features of ‘who we are’. For instance, elites invoke the narrative of the ‘birth’ of the Australian nation at Gallipoli in the First World War (McDonald 2010; see Chapter 3). Military losses and national trauma are remembered at annual ANZAC Day commemorations, and, although they are increasingly contested, such commemorations continue to shape public discourse about identity as well as perform Australian national identity. War helps to shape the nation by providing stories about the strength, character and resilience of that entity and its people. War memories are central to how the nation constructs its self-image and how others perceive that image (Olick, Vinitzky Seroussi and Levy 2011). ‘Collective memories’, as King notes, ‘have a tendency to coalesce around violent traumas’ (King 2010, 2). This prompts the question: how are memories constructed within those nations that lack war stories, experiences and violent traumas? What constitutes the identities and collective memories of such nations?

Narrating the self: neutrality and Swedish collective identity In June 2013 a news story published in the UK attracted brief attention, largely out of ridicule. The newly built town of Bradley Stokes in South Gloucestershire in the UK proposed erecting a blank memorial on which to etch the names of future military dead. The town itself did not exist during both world wars, having been established only in 1987, and had no residents killed in action (Telegraph 2013). The anticipation of future military deaths to be commemorated speaks to a somewhat chilling logic about the inevitability of warfare, and also of how the nation and its cities constitute and construct their sense of identity. For architect Sam Jacob, the Bradley Stokes blank memorial is particularly haunting because ‘[m]onuments usually address the past. They usually address a specific event’ (Jacob 2013). The way in which the Bradley Stokes monument elicits curiosity about memory and, indeed, time through its anticipation of future deaths provides a fascinating contrast with Sweden’s lack general lack of war memories, trauma or experiences. Sweden’s identity is constituted within historical language and memories of neutrality and military non-alignment stretching back over 200 years. Its most recent memory of warfare dates to the seventeenth century, when Sweden’s decline as a belligerent power took place; as such, war stories and memories are somewhat distant and absent in the self-narrative of the nation. War memorials in Sweden are few and often refer to Swedes who participated

Military intervention and the loss of memory165 in the wars of others, such as the La Mano sculpture in Södermalm, which commemorates Swedish volunteers who died in the Spanish Civil War. The almost 10,000 Swedes who volunteered in the Finnish Winter War have also been remembered in memorials in Finland and elsewhere. Peace monuments are more common, such as the famous ‘Non-violence’ ‘knotted gun’ sculpture in Malmö, Stockholm and Goteborg. In the absence of war narratives, Sweden’s collective identity has been constructed around broadly dominant social democratic norms and values. One of the most dominant was the concept of the folkhem, or ‘people’s home’. Elaborated in the 1930s, the folkhem was defined by an expansive welfare state, equality, consensual politics and neutrality. Specifically, the SAP, which was a hegemonic political force for many decades following the end of the Second World War (Ryner 2002), attached neutrality to its political platform and core norms and values. Swedish foreign policy practised a purposefully active internationalism, seeking to eradicate structural violence and inequalities between the global North and global South. Its policies could be seen as an outflow of its domestic welfare commitment, evidenced in consistently high provision of overseas development assistance and engagement in nonmilitary security, peacekeeping and mediation through the United Nations (Agius 2006; Bergman Rosamond 2012; 2015). Furthermore, the core tenets of SAP were largely accepted across the political spectrum and, as a result, social democratic ideology played a central role in constituting political and social life in Sweden (Ryner 2002), its neutrality doctrine and internationalist tradition (Agius 2006; Trädgårdh 2002, 152). Neutrality, nonetheless, was never envisaged as pacifism, but as an active, even pragmatic, defence doctrine in the post-war era.2 Neutrality enabled the pursuit of social solidarity and peace beyond borders, a position which mostly enjoyed consensus across the political parties and defined the foreign policy visions of prominent politicians like the former Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (1998–2003) and former Prime Minister Olof Palme (1982–86). Swedish internationalism provided a ‘third way’ alternative to the power politics of the post-war superpower global order, rejecting the mainstream interpretations of neutral states as weak and passive (Agius 2006). Sweden’s identity was that of a ‘good state’ (Lawler 2005) that recognised a dual obligation to non-citizens and citizens alike (Bergman Rosamond 2012). Over the decades, this self-image had become somewhat engrained in the collective memory.

Challenging collective memory Sweden’s self-image as a ‘good state’ (Lawler 2005) and neutral actor in global politics is not without controversy. Just as identity itself cannot be solely seen

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in essentialist terms (Bell 2006, 5), collective memories are always contestable and can be challenged by co-existing or alternative self-narratives about the nation and its value system. During the First World War there were efforts to dislodge public support for neutrality. Sweden’s belligerent past was idealised in popular weekly news magazine stories. Such narratives associated neutrality with humiliation, degeneration and passivity, contrasted against a past identity as a strong, warrior nation (Sturfelt 2011). Memory can also be moral in character (Winter 2006, 62). Sweden’s memory of neutrality has been largely narrated by its imagining itself as a moral actor, pursuing peace by staying out of war (Dahl 1999). This collective memory, however, takes on a different moral hue in later reinterpretations of Swedish neutrality. For example, during the Second World War Sweden traded with Nazi Germany, permitted the passage of troops through its territory and was seen to have supported the Allied and Axis powers at different stages of the conflict. The Nazi occupation of neighbouring Denmark and Norway, as well as the Holocaust, also produced a sense of shame and guilt for some (Gerner 2011; Johansson 1997, 168–70; Ruth 2009). In the 1990s Sweden’s wartime actions and history became subjects of public debate and critique. Revelations of ‘secret’ connections with NATO to receive military assistance during the Cold War further aided the narrative that Sweden’s past identity as a good neutral state was ‘mythologised’ (Gilmour 2010; Östling 2011). The ‘taboo’ of questioning neutrality and the consensus and memories around it was thus broken (Dahl 2002). These examples demonstrate that ‘[m]emory can thus function as a counter-hegemonic site of resistance, a space of political opposition’ (Bell 2003, 66). The challenges to the social democratic vision of Swedish collective identity meant that, despite its dominance, other articulations of ‘Sweden’ existed (Bergman Rosamond 2015; Goldmann 2008). Many of the non-socialist counter-narratives challenged the hegemonic position of the SAP and the dominance of the welfare state, particularly in the 1980s at the height of neoliberalism (Agius 2011; Bergman Rosamond 2015; Ryner 2002). The loosening of the moral aura around neutrality was part of these alternative narratives. As Sweden prepared to join the EU, in 1991 Carl Bildt’s non-socialist coalition won office and quickly redefined neutrality to ‘non-alignment’ and aligned Sweden’s foreign and security policy with that of a European identity. The Bildt government substituted the 1949 formulation of neutrality for a less-demanding brand that ‘aimed for neutrality in war’ with ‘ a view to neutrality in war’, and alliansfrihet (alliance free or non-aligned) was used more widely (Agius 2006, 150–8). Membership of NATO became a subject for public debate, supported by the Liberals (Liberalerna) and the Conservatives (Moderaterna). When the SAP regained power in 1994, Bildt’s reformulation remained unchanged. In 2001 the official definition saw neutrality as an

Military intervention and the loss of memory167 option, and one that was not viable if a fellow EU member state came under attack (Agius 2006, 190–1). For many non-social democratic actors, neutrality has been and continues to be a choice of realpolitik, rather than associated with morality, peace and internationalism (Huldt 2002, 46). Here, active internationalism was less about being a ‘good state’ and more about ‘mak[ing] a bad state feel good about itself’ (Dahl 2002, 141–2). This is not to suggest that the memory of neutrality as a positive trait has simply ‘disappeared’, even though it became increasingly missing in official discourses and statements and was replaced with different formulations that made the concept more opaque. Rather, a more gradual rather than radical shift had been taking place to dislocate the collective self-understandings that constituted ‘Sweden’. Opening up to different narratives and ideas about collective identity and memory is not only about contestation, it is about reworking these understandings to pursue different meanings and actions. Such processes involve both remembering and forgetting. Previously, neutrality meant defending political community at home while promoting ‘peace’ and ‘doing good’ beyond Sweden’s borders. Increasingly, it came to be associated with inaction in the new post-Cold War security environment as Sweden pursued deeper security engagement with external partners such as NATO and the EU. Changes in policy and action nonetheless must cohere with established ideas of the self. What makes certain policy choices palatable relies on engaging aspects of shared meanings, memories and identities and redeploying them in different ways. There is thus a circularity and co-option involved in justifying new policies such as closer cooperation with NATO, participating in military interventions to combat global terrorism and to protect vulnerable others (‘peace’ and ‘doing good’). Self-narratives create a sense of continuity over time, and can become essentialised or immutable. Yet, as Ricoeur explains, we can also engage in ‘retroactive re-alignment of the past’, whereby in the process of narrating identity, the meaning and representation attached to history tend to be retrospectively determined by the concerns of the present (cited in Browning 2008, 48). In the following section, we explore how those ideas of collective identity and memory are reworked to compose a new ‘memory bank’, and what memories and ideas of identity are forgotten in the process.

Forging a new ‘memory bank’: making different forms of activism possible How nations remember themselves is crucially important not only for the present self-narrative but also for the construction of future narratives that they may wish to write. Those future stories about the self also rely on forgetting so as to create new responses to domestic and international changes

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surrounding a particular nation. In the Swedish case systemic changes in the international system, as well as the global call for military contributions to international peace operations, particularly at the end of Cold War, prompted the revision of Sweden’s role and place in the global security architecture (Bergman Rosamond 2012). Sweden’s armed forces also reformed and internationalised, moving from conscription in 2010 to specialised allvolunteer forces designed for international crisis management missions and rapid deployment. This has led to a closer relationship with NATO, first through Partnership for Peace and further cemented through increased integration in both NATO and emergent EU security formations, such as the Nordic Battle Groups. In the EU context, Sweden has been involved in every European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) civil and military mission. Whilst most missions have been of ‘first generation’ peacekeeping, some, such as Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saw Swedish special forces deployed alongside French forces, involved combat and had a troubling neo-colonial context (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2015, 490; Bailes 2006, 21). Deeper engagement in EU security and NATO missions has met with little resistance domestically, due to cross-party support and little parliamentary intervention or public debate (Holmberg and Hallenberg 2017). These changes in military engagement and doctrine do not appear controversial because they are legitimised through cosmopolitan language and discourses which associate new forms of robust military engagement with internationalism, solidarity and cooperation (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2015, 492; Bergman Rosamond 2012; Kronsell 2012). The need to justify or explain such activities through this discourse reveals the sensitivity of identity and collective memory. Here we find not the replacement of collective memories of Sweden as a neutral, peaceful ‘good state’ (Lawler 2005), but that the recycling of certain narratives towards different policy. In one of the first statements of government policy of the new non-socialist coalition government led by Frederik Reinfeldt (2006–14), it was explicitly stated that Sweden has ‘broken away’ from neutrality because its membership of the EU is a ‘political alliance’. Still, there were references to the country’s ‘moral responsibility to address global problems’ (Swedish Government, 2007). Military non-alignment still commands significant public support, even if there has been a slow move towards seeing NATO membership as a positive development.3 In the 2015 Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap, MSB) survey, 47 per cent of Swedes still rejected NATO membership (MSB 2016, 75; see also Svenska Dagbladet 2016). At the same time, new military engagements also write another narrative about collective identity and memory. Forging new memories of war experience and trauma works to (re)produce the nation in a different way, and helps to furnish Sweden’s new ‘memory bank’. Indeed, Sweden’s moral

Military intervention and the loss of memory169 self-identification is present in many narratives about its engagement in Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF. Sweden contributed military and civilian forces in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014 as part of the NATO-led Operation Enduring Freedom, with around 500 troops. Swedish forces were first stationed around Kabul to provide support to Afghan security forces. As operations widened, Sweden joined British forces in Mazar-e-Sharif. In March 2006 Sweden took over operational command in Mazar-e-Sharif, with responsibility for the Provisional Reconstruction Team (PRT) and for security in four provinces in northern Afghanistan. In 2012 the PRT changed to a Transitional Support Team as handover to civilian Afghan leadership began to take place. Sweden pulled out of ISAF as it was disbanded in 2014. Sweden’s base camp was transferred to the Afghan government in 2014, and since September 2014, fifty Swedish forces personnel remain in Afghanistan, working as advisors to the security forces under NATO’s Resolute Support Mission. As a non-NATO contributor, Sweden’s role was not insignificant. In 2010 Sweden ranked at number fourteen in the total coalition contribution (over forty nations) of military troops to ISAF (Holmberg and Hallenberg 2017, 8). Sweden’s participation in ISAF is significant for a number of reasons. In part it reflects the substantial security changes that have taken place nationally, with the reformation of the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) from the early 1990s from a territorial defence to an expeditionary, cosmopolitan-minded defence force. Along the way, important changes to scope of activity should be noted, particularly the changes outlined in the 2008 National Strategy for Swedish Participation in International Peace Support and Security-Building Operations. The 2008 National Strategy outlines a greater role for Sweden in multilateral international military missions. It also establishes that in some cases, such as Responsibility to Protect, Swedish participation without a UN mandate might be permissible, as might be the legitimacy of using force (Swedish Government 2008). This final point has a bearing for Sweden’s peacekeeping tradition. As ISAF forces were faced with increased counter-insurgency in 2010, concerns were raised that the goals of the mission had altered, and Swedish ISAF troops were part of a warfighting campaign rather than a peacebuilding one (Radio Sweden 2013). The UN mandate afforded to the mission created the permissive basis for engagement, which later extended in terms of troop provision, geographical deployment and the nature of the mission. As engagements in Afghanistan began to stretch into counter-­insurgency, the rules of engagement shifted in 2010, with the possibility of Swedish units using force in conflictrelated situations to a greater extent. Thus, the lines between humanitarian peacekeeping and warfighting were blurred, in particular when Operation Enduring Freedom and ISAF came under the same US commander in chief (Noreen and Angstrom 2015, 288–91).

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Sweden’s engagement in Afghanistan was ‘sold’ to the public as an outflow of Swedish solidarism and support for international law and peace (Bergman Rosamond 2012; Kronsell 2012) and, as such, consistent with the very values that constitute Sweden’s self-image. Minister of Defence Sven Tolgfors (2007–12) defined Sweden’s participation in Afghanistan as ‘solidarity in practice’ (cited in Kronsell 2012, 78). The same minister stated in 2012 that ‘Sweden’s contributions to international peace keeping missions – for instance in Afghanistan – are fundamental to the security of civilians and for the safety of women’ (Tolgfors 2012a). The ethical obligation and tradition to support vulnerable others (‘saving strangers’, to use Nicholas Wheeler’s phrase) was present in government discourse, which stated that the aim was to ‘strengthen Afghanistan’s ability to maintain stability and security, democracy and human rights as well as offer its citizens possibilities to improve their living conditions and just and sustainable development’ (Regeringen 2010, 2, our translation). Sweden’s presence in Afghanistan was constituted within humanitarian semantics, pointing to the significance of supporting all Afghan people living in poverty, but in particular ‘women and girls’ and their entitlement to ‘better living conditions in a peaceful and democratic society’ (Regeringen 2010, 22). Such discourses cohere with past images and memories of Sweden as a ‘good state’. Subsequently, there was little parliamentary debate, even when the goals of the mission altered. This lack of transparency and debate meant that the Afghan mission, according to Agrell, represented one of the ‘great democratic deficits’ in Swedish security policy (cited in Holmberg and Hallenberg 2017, 8–9). Sweden’s Afghanistan engagement also produced different collective memories. The emergence of wartime blogging saw Swedish soldiers blogging about their experiences in Afghanistan under ISAF. Maria Hellman and Charlotte Wagnsson’s study of official and independent blogs about Sweden’s contribution to ISAF and security in Afghanistan sustain rather than challenge strategic narratives central to the government’s legitimisation of military activities. Here, bloggers out in the field are, overall, strongly supportive of the mission, and find it meaningful to believe that Swedish soldiers contribute to security in Afghanistan. Their accounts of themselves as ‘moral agents’, ‘mentors’ and ‘heroes’ provide stories and narratives that shape the cosmopolitan self-image of the nation. Their investigation of such blogs also found few war stories or accounts of fights with insurgents, and much greater discussion of the achievements of Swedish forces and their self-image as ‘good-doers’ beyond borders (Hellman and Wagnsson 2015, 14–17). In other accounts, ISAF was discursively constructed by the soldiers themselves as a war or warlike experience (Sveriges Television 2011) and, as such, traumatic and violent. Afghanistan was also the mission where Sweden’s war dead were becoming a more prominent feature (Aftonbladet 2010). With five troop fatalities,

Military intervention and the loss of memory171 wartime death could now be scripted into Sweden’s self-narrative. Although Swedish personnel have been injured and have died in various peacekeeping operations abroad, ISAF deaths gained more media attention. Engagement in Afghanistan also paved the way for the Swedish government to revise its treatment and recognition of veterans, many of whom were returning from service and facing physical, psychological and other challenges. A new bill introduced in 2010 created a Veterans Division in the SAF HQ to coordinate veteran affairs and issues. It would also be responsible for taking the lead in engaging the whole of society in veterans’ affairs. A veterans’ monument was erected in Stockholm, and a Veterans Day was initiated on 29 May 2011 in order to award medals and in recognition of veterans (Sundberg 2017, 167).

After Afghanistan: the new ‘memory bank’ and its implications The outcomes of these security changes are of significant importance. In April 2011 Sweden participated in the UN-mandated, NATO-led Operation Unified Protector in Libya. Sweden contributed eight JAS39 Gripen jets, which were used for reconnaissance and surveillance missions. The decision to participate was quickly agreed in parliament.4 Initially, participation was restricted to the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 mandate of enforcing the No Fly Zone and the arms embargo, as well as civilian protection. However, debates in parliament also saw a push for a more muscular contribution that involved combat and bombing targets on the ground, a position pursued by the NATO-friendly Liberal Party. When the mission was extended in June, Sweden’s role shifted from a defensive air campaign to a tactical reconnaissance, and was involved in surveillance and intelligence gathering which was provided directly to the Joint Force Command based in Naples (Dahl 2012, 1–4). Despite the lack of public debate, the operation enjoyed high levels of public support, with some 65 per cent polled in March 2011 supporting participation (Doeser 2014b, 203). Participation had been explained by referencing core collective norms, such as support for democracy and human rights, and protection of civilians. Sweden’s involvement has been explained in terms of opportunity (it was already prepared through its leadership in the Nordic Battle Group 2011), the legal foundation of UN mandate, parliamentary support and high public support, and questions about moral obligation and coherence with traditional policy of solidarity and humanitarianism (Doeser 2014a, 645). The speediness of the operation in Libya and the lack of groundforce presence on Sweden’s part made the contributions to Operation Unified Protector less controversial than Sweden’s prolonged presence in Afghanistan. However, long-term strategic issues also played a role. Sweden was the only Western non-NATO member state that participated. Tolgfors celebrated Sweden’s interoperability with NATO, noting that Sweden was

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more ‘capable than other NATO countries’ (Tolgfors 2012b). Sweden’s participation in the Libya mission can also be read as preparing the ground for future engagements of this kind, and now forms part of Sweden’s collective memory as a policy-success story that illustrates the compatibility of more robust forms of military humanitarian intervention as coherent with established ideas of Sweden as a peaceful nation. At the same time, the formation of domestic traumas also serves to reinforce ideas about collective identity and security and forges a link between Sweden’s securitising activities beyond its borders and security at home. In December 2010 Sweden experienced its first terrorist attack, in Stockholm. According to Carl Bildt, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, Sweden was ‘no longer immune’ to international terrorism (Bildt 2011, 3). In the aftermath of 9/11, threat perceptions in Sweden had been largely low in terms of terrorism. Since the attack, additional events have compounded concerns about terrorism within the state. This includes incidents such as the arrest of four Swedes who planned an attack on Denmark’s Jyllands Posten office; and the report published by the Swedish Security Service (Säkerhetspolisen, SÄPO) on violent extremism, which identified 200 extremists in Sweden, signifies the end of Sweden as a safe nation (Ranstorp 2011). Reports of young Swedish women and men travelling to the Middle East to join ISIS also disrupt the idea of Sweden as an exceptional nation (Dagens Nyheter 2014). The arrest of a Swedish citizen who was implicated in the bomb attacks on Brussels in 2015 is likely to have added to this sense of vulnerability (Dagens Nyheter 2016). In all, such events construct the idea that Sweden is vulnerable to both home-grown and exogenous threats (Göteborgsposten 2015, Svenska Dagbladet 2010). What is more, these incidents point to the co-constitutive relationship between military interventionism and vulnerabilities and traumas experienced at home. Thus, the memory of a distinct social democratic conception of non-alignment has been increasingly deconstructed in the 9/11 era, giving way to participation in more robust forms of military activism for humanitarian, gender and strategic purposes (Bergman Rosamond and Kronsell ­forthcoming). However, the belief that participation in international operations offers an effective avenue towards universalism has recently been ­accompanied by a renationalisation of the Swedish defence forces in a response to a perceived growing Russian threat in the Baltic region and incursions into Swedish sovereign space. The current Defence Minister, Peter Hultqvist, has signalled uncertainty in global security and concerns over ‘increasing Russian military activities in our vicinity and the annexation of Crimea’. Sweden is seeing a move away from primarily focusing on international engagement and towards ‘placing national defence at the centre’, with the goal to increase ‘operative capacity’ (Hultqvist 2016, our translation; Swedish Government

Military intervention and the loss of memory173 2015). The reintroduction of conscription, decided in 2016, also signals a ­concern with national security.

Conclusion: where is the new collective memory taking Sweden? The shifts in Sweden’s security policy and practice cannot be explained by issues of practical military transformations alone, nor the growing demand on states to participate in robust interventionism beyond borders. Rather, we would argue that for such shifts to take place an accompanying consistent story about collective identity and memory is needed. In this sense, the development of new war memories and experiences in military missions, albeit of limited character, forms a crucial aspect of Sweden’s post-Cold War and 9/11 self-understanding and story, both of which entail recycling existing collective meanings to permit new activities and memories. The move towards ­cosmopolitan military engagements and away from strict notions of neutrality in the early twenty-first century tells us that the formation of new memories with accompanying traumas, albeit of a more modest kind if compared with other nations, is furnishing parts of Sweden’s contemporary ‘memory bank’. The extent to which Sweden will actively engage in further military interventions is hard to predict, in particular since the current coalition government and the military establishment perceive Russia, under Putin’s leadership, as an increasing risk to national security, so much so that defence spending has been redirected to the national rather than international context (Swedish Government 2015). Memories about the nation are political and cultural as well as sites of identity contestation. Moreover, new impulses and redefinitions of collective memories and narratives demand certain elements of forgetting. What is being forgotten in the Swedish context is the associations of non-militaristic peace-building solutions in favour of more complex security solutions. The current reconfiguration of Sweden’s collective memory around neutrality highlights an interpretation of the limits of a neutral position in an era of nontraditional global conflicts and humanitarian interventionism. In addition, different means will be required to combat wider existential security issues such as global terrorism and abuses of human rights, as well as gendered violence in conflict. In the past, Sweden’s approach was mostly a political one, pursuing changes at the structural level through international law and multilateral institutions such as the UN. In the new collective narrative, NATO, the EU and the UN are all perceived as key to global conflict resolution and the combat of violent threats, whether at home or abroad. Indeed, collective ideas of identity and memory are dynamic and cannot remain static. Said (2000, 185) argues that ‘collective memory is not an inert and passive thing, but a field of activity in which past events are selected,

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reconstructed, maintained, modified, and endowed with political meaning’. Sweden’s collective memory and identity is not a singular story but multifaceted and complex, tainted by present-day notions of the self, the other, global obligation and notions of a neutral past. This turn will no doubt have ethical implications for Sweden’s self-perception and reputation abroad. Sweden’s recent engagements in military interventions and expeditionary operations have provided a supplementary ‘war story’ that we expect to become slowly embedded in the nation’s collective memory bank. The extent to which the meanings associated with neutrality – such as solidarity and peace – will remain attached to new military missions and how Sweden sees its international role remain to be seen.

Notes 1 Roediger and Wertsch note that there is a tendency in collective memory studies to borrow uncritically from studies of individuals and their memories. Terms such as ‘repression’ or ‘collective amnesia’ applied to collective memory can be problematic. For instance, ‘amnesia’ of a collective normally means that a particular issue or dilemma is not discussed, not that it was forgotten in the same way that an amnesia patient would forget events (Roediger and Wertsch 2008, 18). Verovšek, however, notes that the divide between collective and individual memory is at times not clear cut, as the latter relies on wider social contexts and phenomena to build memories, and memories are not formed, nor can they be read purely in isolation (Verovšek 2016, 531). 2 Criticism of Swedish neutrality during the Second World War prompted the development in the post-war period of a ‘credible neutrality’ policy which was more overtly tied to social democratic norms and principles and aimed to be more consistent in application. In 1949 the doctrine of neutrality was defined as nonparticipation in military alliances, and independent and strong territorial defence based on conscription, and public support for neutrality: ‘nonparticipation in military alliances in peacetime aiming at neutrality in war’ (Goldmann 1991, 123). 3 There was a brief surge of support for NATO membership in a poll in January 2015, with 45 per cent of respondents in favour (35 per cent opposed). The poll was conducted at a time of concerns over Russia’s incursions into Swedish airspace and its engagement in Ukraine. The poll also recorded a rise in support for defence spending (Radio Sweden 2015). 4 Only the populist anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats and the Green Party voted against participation (Expo Idag 2011).

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Public Opinion, and War: Winning Support for Foreign Military Missions, edited by B. de Graaf, G. Dimitriu and J. Ringsmose, 282–99. London: Routledge. Olick, J. K., V. Vinitzky Seroussi and D. Levy. eds. 2011. The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press Östling, J. 2011. “The Rise and Fall of Small-State Realism. Sweden and the Second World War.” In Nordic Narratives of the Second World War: National Historiographies Revisited edited by H. Stenius, M. Österberg and J. Östling, 127–48. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Radio Sweden. 2013. “Parliament ‘Misled’ over Sweden’s Afghan Mission.” 12 March. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=2054&grupp=10343&arti kel=5471575. —— 2015. “More Swedes want to join NATO.” 1 January. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/ artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6064600. Ranstorp, M. 2011. “Terrorist awakening in Sweden?” CTC Sentinel. http://www.ctc. usma.edu/posts/terrorist-awakening-in-sweden. Regeringen. 2010. Strategi för Sveriges stöd till det internationella engagemanget i Afghanistan [Strategy for Swedish support for international involvement in Afghanistan]. www.regeringen.se/contentassets/6284170ece4f493cad8960d2369 bbcf6/strategi-for-sveriges-stod-till-det-internationella-engagemanget-i-afghani​ stan. Renan, E. 2006. “What is a Nation? An 1882 Lecture.” The Social Contract 16 (3): 165–6. Resende, E. and D. Budryte. eds. 2013. Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates. London: Routldge. Roediger, H. L. and J. V. Wertsch. 2008. “Collective Memory: Conceptual Foundations and Theoretical Approaches.” Memory 16 (3): 318–26. Ruth, A. 2009. “Myths of Neutrality.” Eurozine, 16 October. www.eurozine.com/ pdf/2009–10–16-ruth-en.pdf. Ryner, M. 2002. Capitalist Restructuring, Globalisation and the Third World: Lessons from the Swedish Model. London: Routledge. Said, E. W. 2000. “Invention, Memory and Place. Critical Inquiry.” Critical Inquiry 26 (2): 175–92. Sierp, A. 2014. History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity. Unifying Divisions. London: Routlege. Simpson, D. 2006. 9/11. The Culture of Commemoration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, A. D. 2004. The Antiquity of Nations. Cambridge: Polity. Sturfelt, L. 2011. “From Parasite to Angel. Narratives of Neutrality in the Swedish Popular Press During the First World War.” In Caught in the Middle. Neutrals, Neutrality and the First World War, edited by J. Hertog and S. Kruizinga, 105–20. Amsterdam: Aksant. Sundberg, R. 2017. “A Veteran at Last. The Afghan Experience of Swedish Veterans Polic.” In The Swedish Presence in Afghanistan: Security and Defence Transformation, edited by A. Holmberg and J. Hallenberg, 160–81. Abingdon: Routledge. Svenska Dagbladet. 2010. “Svenska officerare dödade i Afghanistan” [Swedish Officers

Military intervention and the loss of memory179 Killed in Afghanistan] 7 February. http://www.svd.se/svenska-officerare-dodadei-afghanistan. Svenska Dagbladet. 2016. “Sifo: Kraftigt ökat motstånd mot NATO medlemskap.” [SIFO: Greatly Increased Resistance to NATO Membership]. 7 July. http://www. svd.se/svd-sifo-kraftigt-okat-motstand-mot-nato. Sveriges Television. 2011. Krig för fred [A War for Peace]. Television documentary. Stockholm: Sveriges Television. Swedish Government. 2007. Statement of Government Policy in the Parliamentary Debate on Foreign Affairs, 14 February. —— 2008. Government Communication 2007/08: 64. National Responsibility and International Commitment: A National Strategy to Meet the Threat of Terrorism. 7 February. ——  2015. Regeringens proposition 2014/15:109: Försvarspolitisk inriktning – Sveriges försvar 2016–2020 [Government Bill 2014/15: 109. Directions in Defence Policy: Sweden’s Defence 2016–2020]. Stockholm: Swedish Government. www. regeringen.se/contentassets/266e64ec3a254a6087ebe9e413806819/proposition-​20​ 14​15109-forsvarspolitisk-inriktning--sveriges-forsvar-2016–2020. The Telegraph. 2013. “Town Erects Blank War Memorial ‘For Future Deaths’.” 21 June. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10134817/Town-erectsblank-war-memorial-for-future-deaths.html. Tolgfors, S. 2012a. Inledningsanförande vid invigningen av Center for Gender in Military Operations [Keynote speech at the inauguration of the Centre for Gender in Military Operations] Livgardet, Kungsängen, January 24 http://www.regerin​ gen.se/contentassets/8b99f02eac22423ea8b54990352000f0/tal-2010–2014--forsv​a​ r​sminister-sten-tolgfors. Tolgfors, S. 2012b. Speech by the Swedish Defence Minister at ‘Rikskonferensen Folk och Försvar i Sälen’ [National Conference of People and Defence in Sälen]. 15 January. http://www.folkochforsvar.se/rikskonferensen.html. Trägårdh, L. 2002. “Sweden and the EU: Welfare State Nationalism and the Spectre of Europe.” In European Integration and National Identity, edited by L. Hansen and O. Weaver, 130–81. London: Routledge. Verovšek, P. J. 2016. “Collective Memory, Politics, and the Influence of the Past: The Politics of Memory as a Research Paradigm.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 4 (3): 529–43. Winter, J. 2001. “The Memory Boom in Contemporary Historical Studies.” Raritan 21 (1): 52–66. —— 2006. “Notes on the Memory Boom. War, Remembrance and the Uses of the Past.” In Memory, Trauma and World Politics. Reflections on the Relationship between Past and Present, edited by D. Bell, 54–73. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zehfuss, M. 2007. Wounds of Memory. The Politics of War in Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11

Pollution and purity: caste-based discrimination and the mobilisation of Dalit sameness Ted Svensson

Introduction In January 2016 Rohit Vermula, a doctoral student at the University of Hyderabad, took his own life to protest against his and four other Dalit (‘Untouchable’) students’ ban from entering key university buildings, including their university accommodation, and the cessation of scholarship funding on the basis of, as it turned out, an unfounded allegation that they had assaulted a member of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student ­association affiliated with the Hindu Right. Behind the decision to deny the students full access to university facilities and resources was a direct intervention by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in which the university was urged to address ‘antinational activities’ on its campus. In the aftermath of Vermula’s death, large-scale protests against caste-based d ­ iscrimination at institutions of higher education took place across India and a call was made for a nation-wide strike at all Indian universities. Opposition leaders, in addition, weighed in and accused the government, dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and particularly the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Smriti Zubin Irani, of having contributed to the tragic event. A few weeks later, Jats in the northern state of Haryana, conventionally seen as a privileged, even affluent, caste group, agitated for recognition as a backward community in order to gain access to affirmative action policies intended for low-caste groups. As part of their campaign they ‘blocked roads around the capital, set fire to railway stations and cars, and temporarily shut down a crucial canal that is a major source of the city’s water’ (Anand and Najar 2016). More than ten million people were left without water as a consequence, forcing the army to assume control over the canal. During these violent protests at least sixteen people were killed and many more were

Pollution and purity181 injured. As the two examples illustrate, caste matters in contemporary India. It matters both in the sense of affecting everyday lives by privileging some while discriminating others and in the sense of functioning as a ground for political mobilisation. How to deal with caste and casteist practices has been at the heart of Indian state making since the moment of decolonisation in 1947. What is new is that efforts to counter caste-based discrimination, much to the unease of the Indian state, are today often embedded in and reinforced through transnational and global frames. In this chapter I focus on caste as it has been perceived in Dalit imaginings, by Dalit activists. In India, long considered the primary setting of caste and casteism, the Dalit movement has, in its effort to counter existing underpinnings of castebased discrimination and violence, been marked by an overall failure to move beyond a process of reifying minority status. Conversely, Dalitness has foremost been mobilised as the insignia of group distinctiveness and an emblem of cohesion. With the exception of a brief period in the 1970s, when the Dalit Panthers were most active, B. R. Ambedkar’s (the instigator and totem of modern Dalit politics1) aspiration to eradicate rather than reform caste and the caste system has not been strongly asserted. Instead, what we find today are mutually reinforcing trends towards a discursive broadening of the scope of ‘Brahminical’ Hindu nationalism – especially in relation to electoral ­politics – an emphasis on Dalit ‘entrepreneurship’ and the use of Dalit uniqueness and precariousness as an argument for positive discrimination. However, in the case of the Dalit movement, with its forceful contestation of caste-based discrimination and violence, it is insufficient for a new societal ethos and new modes of sociability to arise without the enunciation of profound, even destructive demands – such as the ones propagated by Ambedkar in his Annihilation of Caste ([1936] 2015). Below, I thus explore some of the ways in which an envisioning of radical change through the abandonment of caste as an ascriptive and self-perpetuated category have been mobilised. What, when we consider caste specifically, are the necessary conditions for altering entrenched forms of self-perception and collective memory; and how might well-established patterns of caste-informed agonism and antagonism be subjected to transformation? In the chapter I move beyond an existing tendency in the extant literature to emphasise M. K. Gandhi’s and Ambedkar’s contrasting, even incongruous, positions on how to achieve change (for example, see Christopher 2015) – i.e. through ‘internal’, ‘Hindu reform’ or through an ‘exodus’ from and outright rejection of Hinduism – and ponder what an erosion of caste’s validity and present immanence means if India, rather than being depicted as the exclusive container of casteist practices, is placed in a global context of caste-based discrimination. What the here-scrutinised – domestic as well as transnational – ­contestations over caste indicate is, on the one hand, the contingent and evolving nature of

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Dalit identity and, on the other hand, the manifold attempts at appropriation that exist at any given point in time. Set within wider considerations of identity formation and reification, the analysis thereby validates the notion that both of these processes are reflective of and actuated by an intrinsic impossibility of saturation and completion. In addition, it substantiates the ­insistence that identity is always elusive and, in itself, an estrangement. The latter e­ ffectively undermines efforts to speak with certainty of legitimate representation, attainable vantage points and fully accessible experience.

Caste as a resilient discursive formation To be more exact, following Anupama Rao (2009, 80), this chapter enquires into the ‘repertoire of activism’ and ‘the conceptual vocabulary of politics’ found among Dalit activists in their Indian as well as their transnational guise. Consequently, it explores to what extent caste ‘as an institution of ranked, hereditary and endogamous occupational groups’ (Ganguly 2002, 327), i.e. as ‘a system of ascriptive hierarchies’ and ‘qualitative inequality’ (Jodhka 2016, 230, 237), can be contested and profoundly rethought.2 Like other groups mobilising for a broadening of citizenship status and for the refiguration of the expanse and inclusiveness of the demos, Dalit activism – sooner or later – will encounter the dilemma of articulating new yet equally limiting ideas concerning where to draw boundaries between those that are conceived of as political beings and those that are not.3 In addition, much like in recent and justified laments regarding the persistence of race and racism (see Amin 2010), caste seems to be similarly caught up in a perceived need to identify errant bodies and to firmly tie considerations of ‘population’ to notions of purity and pollution, life and death. Since caste, in crucial regards, is defined prior to and at birth, ‘life’ is here entwined both with the biological life of individuals and with the potentially eternal life of religious and national communities (for a forceful critique of kinship as the basis for political community, see Stevens 2010). If caste is taken as the foremost marker of group belonging, endogamous (i.e. inter-marriage) kinship becomes fetishised and the reproduction of kinship-based hierarchies is, consequently, conceived of as a matter that is not merely worldly, but contained in the ethereal as well. However, the literature on caste is divided as regards the extent to which the caste system ought to be conceived of as religiously mandated and authorised, or if recent development trends and the fact that caste is present also in non-Hindu settings attenuate and undermine its religious underpinnings.4 Surinder S. Jodhka’s research, for instance, effectively demonstrates that caste-based discrimination is at work even in urban, professional settings (Jodhka 2015, 119–41). Cities have not, contra modernist expectations, under-

Pollution and purity183 mined the salience of caste. Urban life does not, in discordance with the belief that cities allow for anonymity and a disintegration of traditional identity signifiers, bring about the abandoning of caste as stratification and organisation. Even though much has happened to casteism as ideology, caste matters – perhaps in an increasingly ‘secularised’ version; yet it matters (Jodhka 2015, 225). In urban as well as rural settings, caste continues to sustain ideas of ‘[a]n unequal yet stable and harmonious society’ based on a notion of community as ‘divided into mutually dependent groups, bound together by economic and ideological ties’ (for formulations, see Dewey 1972, 295). Although traditional ‘caste-based economy’ and ‘occupations’ are either actively challenged or, to a significant extent, have become outmoded, ‘locally dominant castes still insist on the ex-untouchables observing caste boundaries’ (Jodhka 2015, 48). Perceived transgressions are often harshly and violently punished, which has led Milind Wakankar to claim that low-caste communities ‘work between silence (the horror of caste discrimination) and speech (empowerment as caste communities in electoral stakes)’ (Wakankar 2008, 286). One should note that most instances of social mobility that occur within the framework of caste correspond to social mobility for entire caste groups, not individuals. This process is often referred to as an aspect of ‘sanskritisation’, namely the process whereby a low-caste community adopts ‘the customs, ritual, beliefs, ideology and style of life of a high and, in particular, a “twice-born” … caste’ (Srinivas 1998, cited in Ram 2008, 1345). We here find one important reason why Dalit activism is difficult to enact in a unified, homogenous manner, across all ex-untouchable communities and across all regions of India. Another is that the graded inequality goes all the way down, i.e. competition as well as the maintenance of difference and hierarchy are key features of how disadvantaged or marginalised groups mobilise collective identity vis-à-vis one another. In addition, notions and practices of untouchability persist in being of relevance when it comes to the lives of Dalits. Untouchability here denotes the ‘encoding of [the state of impurity] into one of a permanent stature’ (Sarukkai 2012, 190). In the case of Dalits, untouchability is not a matter of voluntary ‘decision’, not a matter of electing whether to be in a state of impurity or not, and not a matter of wishing to not be touched rather than being denied touch by others (Sarukkai 2012, 191). For Dalits, untouchability is ‘a negative “fact”’, one that applies only outside the realm of one’s own community (Sarukkai 2012, 192–3). Whether we should principally consider the practice of untouchability as prescribed by religion or view it through a more secularised lens is, again, debated. Pauline Kolenda’s point, raised four decades ago, that ‘[t]he problem of the relationship between text and context remains with us’ (Kolenda 1976, 596) is, thus, still relevant to ponder. Does untouchability, as experienced by

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Dalits, find its sanctioning in the canonical scriptures of Hinduism, or is its continued existence chiefly due to the fact that it is being recurrently acted upon? In other words, what are ‘the ideologies of living Hindus’ that perpetuate caste (see Kolenda 1976, 596)? This evidently comes with the parallel question of how change has been obstructed. In the words of Ambedkar, ‘[w]hy have the mass of people [in India] tolerated the social evils to which they have been subjected? … Why have there not been social revolutions in India, is a question which has incessantly troubled me’ (Ambedkar [1936] 2015, 274). Let us explore this below. The hegemony of caste Two sets of questions, elaborated upon in this and the next sub-section, arise in relation to the Dalit activist quest to ‘expand the categories of who or what [can] be a political subject’ (Rao 2009, 185), i.e. in relation to reimaginings of the boundaries of the demos and full membership in the political community. First, what accounts for caste’s ‘tremendous resilience’ (Jodhka 2015, 72)? Why, at a time when caste is waning as ideology, does it concurrently become more pronounced, more composite and intricate? Why, to speak with Jodhka, is caste ‘a much more active institution today than it ever was in the past’ (Jodhka 2015, 71)? These are particularly urgent questions, considering that ‘[w]hat is characteristic of the everyday experience of Hinduism is its unspoken nature’ (Wakankar 2013, 403). Caste’s silencing function is, thus, dual: it is contained both in the way that Dalit challenges are violently suppressed and in its seeming insignificance in and to everyday life. With Jodhka it might, accordingly, be maintained that caste continues to ‘[shape] opportunity structures, status differences and cultural values’ (Jodhka 2016, 229). Many would assert that the persistent relevance of caste is a reflection of how democratic politics has evolved in India since its independence in 1947. Indian democracy has, on the one hand, opened up novel arenas for caste recognition through its attempted facilitation of free and fair electoral politics. On the other hand, it has, as part of efforts aimed at inducing more substantive democratisation, accommodated an elaborate reservation system.5 Whereas the former is conceived of as related to ‘caste’s adaptations to the politics of modern India’ by becoming ‘a key to popular mobilizing’ (Gilmartin 2010, 415), the latter has laid down possibilities for and patterns of a ‘permanent antagonism between [the] Dalit and non-Dalit’ by being turned into ‘a structuring contradiction of state practice’ (Rao 2009, 274). As Laura Dudley Jenkins has argued, ‘the [Indian] postcolonial state continues to monitor the boundaries of its official categories’ and caste is at the absolute core of such monitoring (Dudley Jenkins 2003, 1165). While commenting on how the Constitution of India, as promulgated in 1950, came to envision caste in novel terms, Marc Galanter noted that,

Pollution and purity185 although it failed to define and state the specifics of ‘the institution of caste and of the existing group structure of Indian society’, three ‘general principles are consistently in evidence: (1) a commitment to the replacement of ascribed status by voluntary affiliations; (2) an emphasis on the integrity and autonomy of groups within society; (3) a withdrawal of governmental recognition of rank ordering among groups’ (Galanter 1966, 289). A noteworthy facet of this was how the so-called Hindu Code Acts of 1955–56 resulted in an abandonment of any legal recognition of differentiation made on the basis of the varna system6 and instead established ‘a more or less uniform law for Hindus of all regions and castes’ (Galanter 1966, 290). Another was that, through Article 17 of the Constitution, the practice of and discrimination on the basis of notions of untouchability – as pertaining to ‘untouchability ascribed by birth rather than attained in life’, and thereby applicable only to ‘those who have traditionally been considered “untouchables”’ – became illegal (Galanter 1966, 291–2). The latter, however, introduced a need and concomitant challenge to identify groups that fall within such a tightly circumscribed category. Moreover, it prevented the ­recognition of novel forms of untouchability and of novel groups being subjected to discrimination on the basis of it. As Galanter critically noted, ‘[t]hus the “untouchability” forbidden by law is confined to discriminations against certain not readily defined classes of persons’ (Galanter 1966, 293). The above general principles evidently impacted on the function and import of caste in post-independent India. By instituting reservations for the uplifting of marginalised and ‘backward’ citizens, caste was relied upon as a ‘communal criteri[on]’ for the sake of realising an equal society (Galanter 1966, 295). A major aspect of the uplifting of the lower social and economic strata has – much like the requirement to ascertain who might be considered ‘untouchable’ in a legal sense – been to establish the various caste groups that might be conceived of and categorised as backward. Already in 1957, M. N. Srinivas noted that the ‘provision of constitutional safeguards … has given a new lease of life to caste’, one which hardly would enable the emergence of a ‘casteless and classless society’ and instead work to ‘perpetuate the evil system of caste’ by affirming caste as the foremost ‘unit of social action’ (Srinivas 1957, 529, 547–8), which the introductory example of Jat mobilisation testifies to. Robert L. Kidder’s decades-old point that ‘caste has emerged as pressure groups within the political party system’ is, hence, of continued ­relevance (Kidder 1974, 177), which confirms that the Constitution’s intended ‘eliminat[ion] [of] caste as a relevant factor in the relationship of government to the individual – as subject, voter, or employee’ (Galanter 1966, 305) has failed. Another way of construing caste’s continued relevance is, in consonance with Christophe Jaffrelot, to maintain that Indian society continues to

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be marked by ‘“an obsession [with] small differences”, especially at the lowest levels of the social scale’ (Jaffrelot 2006, 37). This ‘obsession’ contributes to a situation in which the ‘most discriminated against’ are obstructed ‘from forming social coalitions against elite groups’ (Jaffrelot 2006, 38). We here find an additional layer of silencing and making absent to the conventional, yet valid, view that Dalit lifeworlds are partially hidden from and not fully communicable to the wider public and to state representatives. Dalits as minority: inside or outside the Hindu ‘fold’? Second, Dalit identity across India, as well as regionally and globally, lacks unity and singularity. In the case of Dalits, it is near-impossible to speak in terms of a homogenous community, and still a distinct ‘Dalit politics’ has arisen. Rao has, moreover, pointed to a peculiar aspect of Dalits as minority, namely that ‘theirs [is] an identity to be transcended, not reified’ (Rao 2007, 149). What, then, are the enabling grounds for the postulation of a cohesive Dalit identity; and what are the possibilities for forsaking it once it functions as a viable ground for Dalit activism? Elsewhere I (Svensson 2014) have insisted on the need to acknowledge and attend to D. R. Nagaraj’s concept of ‘self-minoritisation’ (2010) and the (since the late 1990s) emerging discourse on Dalit rights as human rights while studying contemporary Dalit politics, especially in relation to its transnational expressions. Combined, these indicate that existing attempts at delineating a shared sense of Dalitness spawn an overly limited, and limiting, discursive closure. There is, hence, an undeniable coeval existence of distinctiveness and conscious boundary-work among Dalits and, as evinced above, a wider context of ‘competitive politics’ wherein ‘feelings of caste solidarity’ are important (Jodhka 2015, 72). However, it ought, with Rao (2009, 187), to be pointed out that it is highly difficult to ‘[represent] Dalits’ political interests given their demographically negligible position and their exclusion from sites of social production and public self-representation’; and it needs to be recognised that in many instances ‘Dalit castes’ often exhibit ‘competitive and conflicting relations’ (Narayan 2009, 29). Thus, between these poles of certainty as regards who and what Dalits are and incessant fragmentation and plurality, it is clear that ‘Dalit’ as ‘a process of becoming and a community-in-the-making’ enters (Rao 2009, 16). This is not, however, solely entangled with actuating commonality among ex-untouchable communities or with turning ‘structural negativity into positive political content’ (see Rao 2009) as Hindu Right efforts – spearheaded by BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – of ‘appropriating the past and identity of the Dalits as Hindu past and identity’ demonstrate (Narayan 2009, 8). In a study of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Badri Narayan describes a process where ‘[l]ocal myths and legends are being recreated and reinterpreted’ to be

Pollution and purity187 consonant with ‘the overall political ideology’ of the Hindu Right (Narayan 2009, 20).7 This does not only mean that the Hindu Right can draw on Dalit cultural expressions as Hindu majority resources; it implies, in addition, that the local level is infused with the world-view that inheres in Hindu Right ideology (Narayan 2009, 21). Furthermore, it entails an attempt by Hindu Right outfits to refashion Dalits ‘as the militia and saviours who [historically] made up the army of protectors of Hindu dharma [“duty”8]’ (Narayan 2009, 31, 42). To make sense of these developments, I think we ought to return to Chetan Bhatt’s cognisant point that in Hindu nationalism ‘the pernicious ideologies of caste purity that already exist in Hinduism’ and ‘a new repressive conception of “liberation”, “emancipation”, nation-state formation (Hindu Rashtra) and even “revolution”’ are confluent and coalesce (Bhatt 1997, 152). The Hindu Right, as part of this, ‘constantly invoke the themes of “racial” purity, of blood and of soil, nature, essential belonging, purity and cleansing’ (Bhatt 1997, 153). Such concurrent reliance on notions of caste and racial purity must definitely be taken into account when we consider the ways in which the Hindu Right ascribes meaning to Dalits, especially considering its objective to achieve ‘total religious integration with politics’ and its effort to ‘[combine] “liberation” with archaeological and anthropological narratives of the authentic inner-self and the authentic body’ (Bhatt 1997, 153, 156). The dilemma for the Hindu Right is that its essentialist version of history, religion and culture does not readily conform with ‘lower-caste’ or ‘folk religious imagination’, which ‘de-historicizes and de-spatializes ­ symbols’ (Nagaraj 2014, 253). In distinction from the Hindu Right’s portrayal of India’s sacred geography, folk imagination ‘removes the specificity of regional and other verifiable facts’ and ‘spreads them [gods and sacred sites] all over’ (Nagaraj 2014, 253). A second complicating factor is that, unlike Hindu Right renderings of India as a sacred and national space, which tends to equate deities with ‘manifestations of the state’, folk imagination allows for a much more playful and immediate engagement with ‘god-heroes’ – one which allows for ‘mak[ing] fun’ of them, ‘satiriz[ing] them’, one which ‘mercilessly’ tests ​‘moral stature’. To the folk imagination, gods do not represent an essentialised ‘geo-historical reality’ (Nagaraj 2014, 253). Narayan has correspondingly insisted that we need to think of Dalit communities’ relation to the past as contained in and made accessible through ‘folklore, popular histories, myths, rituals, commemorative ceremonies, and so on, which tell stories of not only their glorious past and pitiful present but also of their constant struggle for survival’ (Narayan 2009, 3). In this affirmation of Dalit distinctiveness, we find attempts to ‘[draw] on the motif of autochthony’ and to ‘situate lower castes as original inhabitants of the subcontinent’ (Sikka 2012, 46, 49). Thus, while the Hindu Right is trying to

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embed Dalit concerns in a broader setting of Hindu ‘awakening’, the Dalit movement is embodying urges to name India’s Dalits as the original, preAryan inhabitants of India and the wider region.

Discursive repertoires of Dalit activism: exit strategies What are the available strategies for exiting the caste system or, more modestly, for exiting the position of being at its very bottom? How have such strategies been deployed and what notions of change and redemption run through them? Here, we encounter a whole range of utilised options: those that primarily seek, within existing conditions, to allow for social mobility and non-discrimination (i.e. either for individuals or for entire caste groups), those insisting on the redemptive power of the people if it is thought anew, and outright attempts, as Ambedkar designated it, to annihilate caste. Dalit antagonism and the preservation of a Hindu chain of equivalence Let me begin with the two most radical versions of Dalit ‘liberation’: Ambedkar’s and the one represented by the Dalit Panthers. In Ambedkar’s vision, the emphasis was placed on the need of realising ‘that the horizon of emancipation could not be contained within existing social relations’ based on a Hindu, scripturally sanctioned world-view that legitimised the sustenance of elaborate forms of deprivation and injustice (Rao 2009, 148),9 while the Dalit Panthers – principally active during the 1970s – proffered an ideology of liberation based on a mixture of Buddhism and socialism. In the early 1970s a significant strand of the Dalit Panthers perceived a need to synthesise ‘Marx’s views of exploitation with Ambedkar’s critique of cultural oppression’ by way of, among other things, attending to the ‘“revolutionary nature and aspiration of the masses”’, portraying the Indian National Congress as a vehicle and front for ‘Hindu feudalism’ and propagating the need for land reform and ‘for the elimination of “the varna system, caste system and class system”’ (Contursi 1993, 326). A distinct trait of the Dalit Panthers’ notion of far-reaching transformation – spawned by a ‘frustration with the inefficacy of parliamentary politics’ and the prevalent atrocities committed on the basis of casteism – was that they ‘acknowledged violence as an inevitable part of social change’ (Contursi 1993, 330–1). Ambedkar likewise, as Debjani Ganguly writes (2002, 330), ‘desired nothing more than a disjunction between the past Hindu Brahmanical India and the present of India as a socialist democratic republic’; to him, caste as a way of ordering differentiation and behaviour was ‘an ultimate abomination’. This was a position that, in the end, led him – with members of his caste community, i.e. Mahars – to convert to Buddhism.10 In his much-celebrated and, for many so-called caste Hindus, scandalous Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar

Pollution and purity189 wrote that ‘[t]here cannot be a more degrading system of social organisation than the caste system. It is the system which deadens, paralyses, and cripples the people, from helpful activity’ (Ambedkar [1936] 2015, 276). He maintained the need to abandon Hinduism as a religion that, above all, corresponds to ‘nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibitions’, rather than being one of ‘spiritual principles’ (Ambedkar [1936] 2015, 305). With Ganguly, Ambedkar might be described as ‘the founder of “dalit discursivity”’, in that he invested ‘the term “dalit” [with] the power and resonance it has today’ (Ganguly 2002, 332). Furthermore, he introduced a comprehensive notion of caste in that he maintained that ‘[a]ll are slaves of the caste system. But all the slaves are not equal in status’ (Ambedkar [1936] 2015, 295); and he insisted that ‘[c]astes form a graded system of sovereignties, high and low, which are jealous of their status and which know that if a general dissolution came, some of them stand to lose more of their prestige and power than others do’ (Ambedkar [1936] 2015, 295–6). For Ambedkar, the insight that caste cannot be thought of ‘in the singular number’, that ‘[c]astes exist in the plural number’, was imperative (1917, cited in Rege 2013, 104), and he chastised scholars of caste for ‘hav[ing] taken caste very lightly’, and instead professed that caste, in the plural, ‘is almost impossible to be sustained: for the difficulties it involves are tremendous’ (Rege 2013, 105–6). The final point is worth reiterating in relation to what was discussed above regarding the persistence of caste. How can it be that a ‘graded system of sovereignties’ that is ‘almost impossible to sustain’ is, at present, intensified in terms of its hold on those that occupy its lower rung and those that attempt to disown it? After all, the act of – through conversion – renouncing a place in the Hindu ‘fold’ might be deemed as a ‘rebirth’, as immediate emancipation. The practice of conversion, it should be remembered, is not limited to Ambedkar and the Mahar community. As K. W. Christopher writes, Dalits have often turned to conversion as a means to alter their situation and future fate (Christopher 2015, 71). To many Dalits, conversion has ‘appeared as a means of escape from spiritual and social marginalization’ (Christopher 2015, 71). At the same time, it does not seem to result in the termination of stigma and overcoming of inequality. A remarkable and notable aspect of conversion is that converts to Islam and Christianity do not retain their right to affirmative action policies; and another is that conversion is ‘banned by law in some Indian states’ (Christopher 2015, 71). Constituting a Dalit globality Since the late 1990s, a novel layer of Dalit activism has emerged: one which is less oriented towards the transcendence or erosion of caste as an Indian, even Hindu, institution and more preoccupied with finding recognition for caste’s global relevance. It coalesced particularly in relation to the 2001 Durban

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World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, by many considered a historical landmark in raising the international awareness of Dalit rights as human rights and of caste-based discrimination as an international issue that ought to be given equal attention as matters of race and gender. In this avatar of Dalit activism, human rights are stressed and the usually accepted exclusive link between Indian society and casteism is de-emphasised in order to place casteist practices in a global frame. The latter translates into recognition of caste-based practices in other parts of the world. Although South Asia might be seen as the region where caste is most widespread as a facilitating structure for graded inequality, the Dalit movement in its transnational guise is pointing to how caste is of relevance also in parts of West Africa, in Japan and Yemen, and among the South Asian diaspora in all places where it has settled. A strategy for raising the profile of caste-based discrimination has been to speak of caste as equivalent to race. The resemblance is said to reside in how both, on the basis of essentialising notions of descent, enact rigid patterns of segregation and legitimise ‘corrective’ violence against acts of transgression. I have elsewhere contended that a need exists while caste is at stake to move beyond hopes that ‘a work of uplifting and improvement, of making those presently deaf to the needs of others listen’ by, in part, ‘expanding the limits of our [present] rights regime’ is sufficient (Svensson 2014, 1693). We should, at the same time, not diminish and disregard the important work done by the transnational Dalit movement. Apart from operating as an extension of Indian Dalit activism, it has, to a significant degree, drawn on the work of Nepali Dalit organisations, and it has resulted in the establishment of organisations that take the global as their primary framework – foremost here is the International Dalit Solidarity Network. A noteworthy development as regards the rising attention to caste-based discrimination in global governance settings has been the increasingly explicit mentioning of caste as a global issue and the growing realisation that, in order to counter caste’s adverse consequences, states and other agents of global governance are required to act in concert. In January 2016 the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues devoted almost her entire annual report to ‘caste and analogous systems of inherited status’ and to the urgent need to deal with ‘atrocities committed against individuals ascribed to the lowest strata by virtue of their caste status’ (United Nations Human Rights Council 2016, 5). It is remarkable, particularly considering the earlier demotion of caste in many UN-held discussions of ­discrimination on the basis of racist prejudices, ill-treatment of minorities, etc. – often through the acceptance of India’s claim that caste-based discrimination is, foremost, a matter of domestic concern. The report notes that ‘“lower caste” groups … often share minority-like characteristics, especially

Pollution and purity191 their non-dominant and often marginalized position, stigma, and the historic use of the minority rights framework to claim their rights’, and ‘that minority rights standards … should be applied to combat discrimination based on caste and analogous systems’ (United Nations Human Rights Council 2016, 5). We here witness a discursive shift from seeing caste as equivalent to race to speaking of caste in terms of minority identity. India has, as indicated above, been highly unwilling to admit to caste’s being of more than domestic significance, even though its presence in other states and as part of diasporic social formations is unquestionable.11 While considering the reasons for the Indian state’s aversion to allow for casteism to be regarded as equivalent to racism and to be framed as globally relevant, we should – besides acknowledging India’s reluctance to abandon notions of inviolable sovereignty and non-intervention (Hall, 2013) and its conscious projection of itself as an emerging, capable and responsible global power – take more long-term developments into consideration. In other words, serious questions need to be asked regarding the enduring ideational labour that has gone into making caste an ‘Indian problem’. We find one such entrenched backdrop in how, during the so-called long nineteenth century, Indian notions of higher status and superiority became part of the international through the emergence of ‘a racial mapping of the world in which upper-caste Hindu intelligentsia distanced itself from “domestic others” … as well as inferior “foreign others” … while simultaneously affiliating itself with “Aryan” Caucasians’ (Krishna 2015, 141). A clear example of this was how Gandhi, in his activist work in South Africa in the early nineteenth century, placed ‘“British Indians” such as himself above blacks and thereby closer to whites (Krishna 2015, 145; see also Svensson 2013, 154–8). I also think that we, as Sankaran Krishna has laid a rough foundation for (Krishna 2015, 152), should build on the insight that the Dalit movement is a challenge to the very idea of an Indian nation, both in its Congress-induced, ‘inclusive’ shape and in the majoritarian imaginings of the Hindu Right. As an alternative to an Indian nation that can be taken for granted, that is always already in existence, notions of Dalit unity as more limited and simultaneously more vast than present-day projections of India as a nation-state need to be conceived of in relation to the specific character of the independence movement as well as today’s self-assured, lurid Hindu nationalism. The Dalit movement, at least in its Ambedkarite version, is bearing testimony to a distinct kind of expansive ‘homelessness’ in relation to what we today think of as India as a nation and as a nation-state. Herein lies one of the key potentials of the global layer of Dalit activism, namely to realise a sense of transnational, supra-statist solidarity among those who suffer from caste-based discrimination.

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Caste as race, race as caste In relation to the transnational mobilisation of the Dalit movement, particularly since the Durban conference in 2001, it must, once more, be asked what the relation between caste and race, between casteism and racism is. To what degree is it correct, for sociological (Milner Jr 1993),12 conceptual (Gupta 2000) or phenomenological (Guru and Sarukkai 2012) reasons, to insist on the particularity of caste, and thereby on the unique position and experience of the ‘Untouchable’, of the Dalit, the cast-away and oppressed, the broken and ground-down? To what extent is it accurate, along the lines of Gopal Guru in the much-debated The Cracked Mirror (Guru and Sarukkai 2012), to argue that no ‘single, uncontested, unified picture of the lived world’ exists or is attainable in ‘hierarchical societies’ such as India (see Kaviraj 2013, 382) – which implies that the Dalit experience is accessible only to Dalits themselves and that any theorising of the Dalit encounter and engagement with caste must stem from this unique and, to most, inaccessible experience? Contra Guru, I would, with Rao (2009, 197), pose the question ‘what does it mean to … witness Dalit life in all its brutality’ – and, I add, in its entirety? I would contend that what Guru is offering is a futile, vain position, since it is impossible to ever speak of a ‘single, uncontested, unified picture of the lived world’, and it is thus erroneous to point to India as a unique harbourer of such disunity and plurality. Also, as Rajan Gurukkal reminds us, a key realisation in writings on caste and Dalit activism is that it is not possible to speak of ‘contemporary dalit experience … in any homogeneous form transcending multiple subjectivities’ (Gurukkal 2013, 29). Related to this, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s reading of The Broken Mirror aptly reminds us of Gayatri Spivak’s suggestion that we ought to avoid ‘“predicat[ing] the possibility of knowledge on identity”’, as this is ‘an impossibility’ (Sunder Rajan 2013, 396). After all, if Sudipta Kaviraj is right in his reading of Guru, i.e. if ‘[e]xperience is always in a world’ and if, for Dalits, ‘it is always in a world that belongs to others’ (Kaviraj 2013, 386), how can we then pose ‘identity’ as vantage point for a ‘truer’ experience? Moreover, why should Dalit experience, as Kaviraj writes, be ‘uniquely incommunicable’ (Kaviraj 2013, 388)? What the present discussion indicates is that it is, most likely, not productive to stress Dalit experience as fully accessible even to ‘Dalits’. In a post-foundational sense, there are no ‘pure experiences’ that are not always already ‘theory-laden’ through their entanglement with ‘prior categories, traditions, discourses, and languages’ (Bevir 2011, 31). To say that non-Dalits cannot speak for Dalits might be right. The same is, however, true for ‘Dalits’ representing ‘Dalits’. Of this, transnational Dalit activists are fully, and painfully, aware. Although Dalit activists in 2001 turned foremost to a postulated, strategic

Pollution and purity193 synchrony between caste and race as an instrument for influencing agenda setting, we find proponents of a return to such a mutual consideration (e.g. Jodhka 2015, 229). Ankur Barua, for instance, has suggested that it is misleading to build a divergence on notions of ‘race’ as tied to biology rather than as denoting a ‘social construct … which relates inequalities and differentiations to ascriptive physical and cultural factors’ (Barua 2014, 4; see also Chapter 6). After all, contemporary racism is seldom exclusively tied to phenotypical attributes and the study of racism is commonly conducted on the basis of the concept of ‘racialisation’, where the latter might be defined as the activities whereby ‘races’ are made and imbued with tangible qualities. It would, thus, be misleading to speak of race and caste as wholly distinct and incongruent. It is not solely that race and caste give rise to similar patterns of discrimination that are generated and legitimised through notions of descent. Both are examples of the process whereby set categories of collective identity are turned into concrete discursive infrastructures and resources in the first place; and this is a process which does not merely implicate and include the ‘downtrodden’, abject and marginalised. Since caste’s linkage to religion is weakening, it seems increasingly tenable to describe the continued imprint of caste in terms of a process whereby categories are upheld through constant, often conscious, border work. As an accentuation of racialisation demonstrates, we are all – as Ambedkar propagated in relation to the salience of caste – part of the maintenance of racial distinctions and the distribution of status based on such distinctions. We are, in other words, all ‘slaves of the caste system’; we are all slaves of the reproduction of race – but slaves that are ‘not equal in status’.

Conclusion What do these, as shown, circumscribed and curtailed acts of exiting tell us about overturning the notions of purity and pollution, of stigma and dehumanising, that constitute the wider discursive landscape in which all attempts at mobilising Dalit identity are set? Is AbdouMaliq Simone right in insisting on the need for ‘tokens’ while bargaining a place, while finding vantage points and temporary respite, in an otherwise overwhelming multitude of identityrelated ambiguities and anxieties (Simone 2011), and has a reified Dalitness arisen as an answer to this? Returning to the introduction, and its portrayal of caste as privileging some while degrading others and as a groundwork and catalyst for political mobilisation, it might be said that Dalits project and act on a posited cohesiveness to counter the enormity of the silence that they are expected to live by. They thereby seek to challenge the normalised, routine physical and symbolic violence that is directed towards Dalits. In addition, what will it take to move beyond caste as a defining discursive

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formation which has definite implications for the lived reality of all those who are considered part of it? After all, even though Dalits are at the receiving end of caste-based discrimination, casteism affects all individuals and groups that are seen to have caste as their core insignia, as a birthmark. I fear that it is not, as the history of Dalit struggle demonstrates, sufficient to employ human rights in defence of Dalit rights, to engage in an effort to point to Dalits as a cohesive community which can, under the best of circumstances, act in union, nor to insist on Dalit experience as unique and as inaccessible to the non-Dalit. Instead, while we, with Ambedkar, await a ‘social revolution’, I suggest that divesting caste of its status as an Indian problem is an appropriate first step towards employing Dalit ‘homelessness’ as a productive ground for novel forms of political being and togetherness.

Notes   1 In his poem ‘Ode to Dr Ambedkar’, which was published in 1972, Namdeo Dhasal – the founder of the Dalit Panthers – writes with reference to Ambedkar that ‘[m]y history starts from you, the age of everyman you launched’ (Dhasal 2011, 12). In a later poem, from the 1981 collection Tuhi Yatta Kanchi (What’s Your Grade?), which bears the title ‘Ode to Dr Ambedkar: 1978’, Dhasal includes a part that reads: ‘You’ve gone far ahead of, The pedestal of your statue. You’ve grown larger than the name of the nation. Never did you sit like a sterile hen hatching eggs laid by others. You changed all our lives, Like a great flow of thought’ (Dhasal 2011, 50). In Dhasal’s depiction, Ambedkar stands out as the origin, role model and future of the remade, unrestrained Dalit.   2 In a speech at the Round Table Conference, held in London in 1930–1 with the intent to decide on constitutional reforms in British-ruled India, Ambedkar contended that ‘[i]t must be recognised that Indian society is a gradation of castes forming an ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt – a system which gives no scope for the growth of that sentiment of equality and fraternity so essential for a democratic form of government’ (see Das 2010, 25–6).   3 Why, for instance, should Dalit and Adivasi (‘tribal’) interests be posited as distinct; and, why is low-caste solidarity across categorisations based on religion not possible at present?   4 Ambedkar, for example, recurrently stressed the centrality of religion while trying to grasp caste and its history. In a speech to the Indian Franchise Committee in 1932 he stated that ‘[b]ased on religion, the ordinary Hindu only relaxes the rules of untouchability where he cannot observe them. He never abandons them. For abandonment of untouchability to him involves a total abandonment of the basic religious tenets of Hinduism as understood by him and the mass of Hindus […]’ (cited in Zelliott 2013, 145). As a consequence, Ambedkar thought it necessary, if the objective is to eliminate caste, to repudiate and denounce Hinduism.   5 In India, Dalits (as Scheduled Castes), Adivasis (as Scheduled Tribes) and so-called ‘Other Backward Classes’ are all deemed to be eligible for certain reservations in

Pollution and purity195 government, public jobs and state-administered education. Galanter has depicted the Indian constitution as an attempt to install ‘a regime of formal equality spanning a society of legendary hierarchy’ (Galanter 2002, 306). However, whereas it prevented the use of ‘“communal” measures’ in the process of ‘mitiga[ting] prevailing inequalities’, caste – together with Adivasi status – was retained as a key constituent ‘of the policy of compensatory discrimination’ (Galanter 2002, 306). The original intent was to employ schemes of positive discrimination ‘to remedy a state of affairs in which location in the caste structure was a key determinant of individual performance’ (Galanter 2002, 314).  6 While varna is equivalent to the ‘orthodox’ scriptural and vertical division of caste, often mistakenly taken to denote the caste system in its entirety, jatis correspond to the ‘hierarchically ranked endogamous groups’ (see Barua 2014, 5) that are the most concrete, lived experience and daily patchwork of caste.  7 These attempts should evidently be understood in relation to a ‘Dalit revolution’ in North India in the sphere of electoral and party politics (see Jeffrey et al. 2008). It is a ‘revolution’ often exemplified by drawing on the case of the Bahujan Samaj Party – a party led by a Dalit woman which, above all, represents a Dalit electorate in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh – and how it has enabled far-reaching ‘transformation in low-caste access to useful social networks, local political power, and cultural respect’ (Jeffrey et al. 2008, 1371). Bahujan samaj, interestingly, stands for ‘“the majority of society”’ (Jeffrey et al. 2008, 1370).  8 As Wendy Doniger notes, ‘Dharma […] is famously difficult to translate; it includes duty, religion, religious merit, morality, social obligations, the law, justice and so forth’ (Doniger 2014, 22).   9 Thus, Ambedkar considered all three positions on caste that Galanter outlined in 1966 redundant, i.e. ‘[t]he sacral view [which] regards the caste group in terms of its relation to the larger body of Hinduism; the sectarian view [which] sees it in terms of its own religious distinctiveness; finally, the associational view [which] defines caste in terms of its associational bonds’ (Galanter 1966, 279). 10 In October 1956 Ambedkar – together with an enormous congregation of Dalits – converted to Buddhism at a ceremony held in Nagpur. Two months later, at his cremation in Mumbai, a second large-scale conversion took place. According to figures cited by Jaffrelot, more than 300,000 people attended the first event, while approximately 100,000 participated in the subsequent conversion (Jaffrelot 2006, 133–6). 11 For example, in reply to the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, India expressed concerns that she ‘had breached her mandate which clearly described the minorities she should work on’ and thereby ‘opened the door to other groups being considered minorities’ (OHCHR 2016). In India, defining Dalits as a minority would signify a presently inconceivable acceptance that they are not members of the Hindu majority, which would, by consequence, undermine notions of India as a Hindu Rashtra (‘nation’). 12 Murray Milner Jr emphasised three facets as distinct from or more pronounced than in ‘other structures of inequality’: (a) ‘in principle, mobility across caste boundaries is prohibited’; (b) ‘caste position is in principle based solely on

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i­nheritance and ascription’; and (c) ‘enormous social and individual energies are devoted to differentiating and ranking caste groups [jatis] and maintaining their boundaries and identities’ (Milner Jr 1993, 303). The latter, of course, indicates that the ‘boundaries … are never completely unambiguous, and are frequently in contention’ (ibid., 306). Interestingly, he notes that these facets are ‘reversed’ in ‘the world-to-come’, i.e. ‘on the cosmic level’, as demonstrated by what samsara, karma and moksa denote in Hindu thought (ibid., 304–8).

References Ambedkar, B. R. [1936] 2015. Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition. New Delhi: Navayana. Amin, A. 2010. “The Remainders of Race.” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (1): 1–23. Anand, G. and N. Najar. 2016. “Haryana State in India Proposes New Caste Status in Bid to Quell Protests.” New York Times, 22 February. http://www.nytimes. com/2016/02/23/world/asia/new-delhi-jat-water-protest.html?_r=0. Barua, A. 2014. “The God of the Oppressed and the Politics of Resistance: Black and Dalit Theologies of Liberation.” Culture and Religion 15 (1): 1–20. Bevir, M. 2011. “Why Historical Distance is not a Problem.” History and Theory 50 (4): 24–37. Bhatt, C. 1997. Liberation and Purity: Race, New Religious Movements and the Ethics of Postmodernity. London: UCL Press. Christopher, K. W. 2015. “Cast(e)ing Narrative.” Interventions 17 (1): 64–81. Contursi, J. A. 1993. “Political Theology: Text and Practice in a Dalit Panther Community.” The Journal of Asian Studies 52 (2): 320–39. Das, B. ed. 2010. Thus Spoke Ambedkar: A Stake in the Nation. New Delhi: Navayana. Dewey, C. 1972. “Images of the Village Community: A Study in Anglo-Indian Ideology.” Modern Asian Studies 6 (3): 291–328. Dhasal, N. 2011. A Current of Blood: Poems Selected and Translated from the Marathi by Dilip Chitre. New Delhi: Navayana. Doniger, W. 2014. On Hinduism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dudley Jenkins, L. 2003. “Another ‘People of India’ Project: Colonial and National Anthropology.” The Journal of Asian Studies 62 (4): 1143–70. Galanter, M. 1966. “The Religious Aspects of Caste: A Legal View.” In South Asian Politics and Religion, edited by D. E. Smith, 277–310. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— 2002. “The Long Half-Life of Reservations.” In India’s Living Constitution: Ideas, Practices, Controversies, edited by Z. Hasan, E. Sridharan and R. Sudarshan, 306–18. Delhi: Permanent Black. Ganguly, D. 2002. “History’s Implosions: A Benjaminian Reading of Ambedkar.” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 32 (3): 326–47. Gilmartin, D. 2010. “Rule of Law, Rule of Life: Caste, Democracy, and the Courts in India.” The American Historical Review 115 (2): 406–27. Gupta, D. 2000. Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society. New Delhi: Penguin Books.

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Pollution and purity197 Guru, G. and S. Sarukkai 2012. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gurukkal, R. 2013. “On Mirroring the Social: Can Felt-Ontology Alone Inform the Theory?” Economic and Political Weekly 48 (14): 27–31. Hall, I. 2013. “Tilting at Windmills? The Indian Debate over the Responsibility to Protect after UNSC Resolution 1973.” Global Responsibility to Protect 5 (1): 84–108. Jaffrelot, C. 2006. Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste. Delhi: Permanent Black. Jeffrey, C., P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery, 2008. “Dalit Revolution? New Politicians in Uttar Pradesh, India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 67 (4): 1365–96. Jodhka, S. S. 2015. Caste in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Routledge. —— 2016. “Ascriptive Hierarchies: Caste and its Reproduction in Contemporary India.” Current Sociology 64 (2): 228–43. Kaviraj, S. 2013. “Why Is the Mirror Cracked?” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33 (3): 380–91. Kidder, R. L. 1974. “Litigation as a Strategy for Personal Mobility: The Case of Urban Caste Association Leaders.” The Journal of Asian Studies 33 (2): 177–91. Kolenda, P. 1976. “Seven Kinds of Hierarchy in Homo Hierarchicus.” The Journal of Asian Studies 35 (4): 581–96. Krishna, S. 2015. “A Postcolonial Racial/Spatial Order: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Construction of the International.” In Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line, edited by A. Anievas, N. Manchanda and R. Shilliam, 139–56. Abingdon: Routledge. Milner Jr., M. 1993. “Hindu Eschatology and the Indian Caste System: An Example of Structural Reversal.” The Journal of Asian Studies 52 (2): 298–319. Nagaraj, D. R. 2010. The Flaming Feet and Other Essays: The Dalit Movement in India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. —— 2014. Listening to the Loom: Essays on Literature, Politics and Violence. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Narayan, B. 2009. Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation. New Delhi: Sage. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 2016. “Human Rights Council Holds Interactive Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues.” OHCHR, 15 March. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews. aspx?NewsID=17233&LangID=E. Ram, R. 2008. “Ravidass Deras and Social Protest: Making Sense of Dalit Consciousness in Punjab (India).” The Journal of Asian Studies 67 (4): 1341–64. Rao, A. 2007. “Ambedkar and the Politics of Minority: A Reading.” In From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition, edited by D. Chakrabarty, R. Majumdar and A. Sartori, 137–56. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. —— 2009. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rege, S. 2013. Against the Madness of Manu: B. R. Ambedkar’s Writings on Brahmanical Patriarchy. New Delhi: Navayana. Sarukkai, S. 2012. “Phenomenology of Untouchability.” In The Cracked Mirror: An

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Indian Debate on Experience and Theory, edited by G. Guru and S. Sarukkai, 157–99. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sikka, S. 2012. “Untouchable Cultures: Memory, Power and the Construction of Dalit Selfhood.” Identities 19 (1): 43–60. Simone, A. 2011. “The Ambivalence of the Arbitrary: A Supplement to Ash Amin’s ‘The Remainders of Race’.” Theory, Culture & Society 28 (1): 129–37. Srinivas, M. N. 1957. “Caste in Modern India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 16 (4): 529–48. Stevens, J. 2010. States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals. New York: Columbia University Press. Sunder Rajan, R. 2013. “Theory in the Mirror of Caste.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33 (3): 391–97. Svensson, T. 2013. Production of Postcolonial India and Pakistan: Meanings of Partition. Abingdon: Routledge. —— 2014. “Humanising the Subaltern: Unbounded Caste and the Limits of a Rights Regime.” Third World Quarterly 35 (9): 1691–708. United Nations Human Rights Council. 2016. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. United Nations, 28 January. https://documents-ddsny.un.org/ doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/013/73/PDF/G1601373.pdf?OpenElement. Wakankar, M. 2008. “The Question of a Prehistory.” Interventions 10 (3): 285–302. —— 2013. “Topics of the New Dalit Critique.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33 (3): 403–8. Zelliot, E. 2013. Ambedkar’s World: The Making of Babasaheb and the Dalit Movement. New Delhi: Navayan.

12

The queer common: resisting the public at Gezi Park and beyond Paul Gordon Kramer

This struggle is not something you can do on your own. There is a huge world out there just waiting to humiliate you, kill you – you need to be together to face all these threats. (Sedef Çakmak, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party), interview with author, Istanbul, 28 February 2014)

Millions of people across Turkey protested against police violence, state totalitarianism, urban gentrification and a host of other concerns during the Gezi Park protests in late May 2013. Although police dismantled the activist presence at Gezi Park on 15 June, protests continued in and around Gezi through to LGBTQ Pride on 30 June. The melding of Pride with Gezi entailed a ­massive 100,000-person march to Taksim Square, in contrast to 2012, when only 20,000 participated (Hurriyet Daily News 2013). The protests fundamentally changed queer and trans people’s relationships with the Turkish public. In this chapter I establish the queer common as a tool for understanding a particular type of injunction against the state’s governance of the public. By queer common I refer to sexualised points of departure which destabilise the public. I argue that the state and other institutions manipulate the public to assert one acceptable model of heteronormative belonging. I show how this assemblage (which includes the state, the family, Sunni Islam and media and other components) polices acceptable identity and possible ways of being. This public assemblage does so by performing a national identity that is congruent with Turkish populism, Islamism, and neoliberalism (Acar and Altunok 2013; Lovering and Türkmen 2011). Yet the queer common interrupts this process. In the queer common, affects, language and relationships create an ontological disturbance that challenges party politics, given identity categories, virtual/online circulations and the capitalist seizure of public resources. This chapter will show that the public is used by institutional

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actors to define and shape acceptable identities, but that what I call the queer common both exposes this logic and creates openings for change. In this chapter, I employ data from fieldwork conducted in Turkey from February through April of 2014, wherein I interviewed twenty-five queer and trans individuals, in addition to conducting two focus-group discussions.1 The chapter focuses on a selection of those individuals most involved in the protests, including activists, non-profit organisers and local politicians. These interviews were significant for their findings in relation to the ways Gezi became a turning point for LGBTQ politics in Turkey, wherein queers were taken seriously as leaders in the democratic process (Interviewee J, Istanbul, 23 February 2014; Interviewee K, Istanbul, 26 February 2014; Interviewee N, Istanbul, 26 February, 2014). The interview data provides insight into the complicated relationships between Gezi Park, sexuality and the public. I use this data to explore how the movement impacted on the ways in which sexual identity in Turkey is governed. This chapter proceeds by establishing the context of the Turkish public as one aligned with heteronormative Turkish nationalism, to the exclusion of incompatible identities. Using assemblage theory, I argue for an understanding of the public as an on-going production. I look specifically at how manipulations of the public – like the gentrifying of Istanbul and restrictions on freedoms of speech – materialise a modern, pious, nationalist, ­heteronormative citizenship. The 2013 Gezi Park protests revealed and ­troubled this o ­ perationalisation of the public, thereby representing a resistance to the policing of the public in this way. In the main section I narrow my focus to queer organising within and beyond Gezi, with a focus on the Turkish public as a social, malleable tool used for the governing identities, and elaborate the impact of the queer common, which demonstrates that there are challenges to the public and its role in identity formation. In the section on defining the queer common, I posit that the queer common is a methodological approach to understanding a protest event in three ways: (1) it demonstrates what is private as opposed to being truly ‘open to everyone’; (2) it demonstrates the possibility of life outside of current norms of governance; and (3) it has far-reaching implications beyond the moment of protest in actual party politics. The research demonstrates not only the significance of the queer common in resisting specific identities but also the ways in which identity is defined by the public, which is itself constructed by fluctuating actors.

The Turkish public and proper citizenship Assemblage theory is an empirical approach to describing how social entities are comprised of heterogeneous elements which come together to create

The queer common201 wholes greater than the sum of their parts (Bueger 2014, 60). It is a way of destabilising the coherence of entities. It demonstrates that entities (the family, Islam, the body, the public) are made up of many component parts – including material places, objects and other bodies – which comingle to give the appearance of a coherent whole. Authors such as Jasbir Puar have used the notion of the assemblage to understand how seemingly coherent entities, like the body, materialise as a result of many different political investments – as ‘composites of information’ (Puar 2011). I argue that the public is an assemblage for heterogeneous, competing actors to try to normalise and propagate their own understandings of identity. In my own research, I have found that the Turkish public assembles public officials, neighbourhood groups and familial norms to produce the idea of queer/trans people as deviant. For example, in the public, actors accomplish this policing by deploying transphobic discourses and by enforcing laws dictating ‘public morality’ (Çakmak 2013, 145–6; Cürül and Dönmez 2013, 67–78). These desires to shape identities are visible in particular acts of production amongst the actors who constitute the public. This includes the creation and maintenance of public spaces, like the physical city, the street and the billboard, but also less tangible circulations, like media, online and even familial ‘common-sense’ knowledge about relationships. What is relevant here is how the assemblage unites actors, including the state, family and media, to produce acceptable identity categories in a desire to govern identity and shape bodies. As Ahmed argues, the public is ‘like a chair that acquires its shape by the repetition of some bodies inhabiting it’ (Ahmed 2004, 148). I argue that all public productions are like this chair: they are meant to be comfortable to some and uncomfortable to others, defining and excluding those who do not belong. However, alternative components, institutions and bodies also constitute the public, complicating the processes by which queer identities become knowable. The creation of a public dependent upon Islamist, neoliberal and familial ideals has narrowed the scope of acceptable citizenship. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan served as Prime Minister from 2003 until 2014 and has been president since then. While Erdoğan’s AKP party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party) is popular amongst the Sunni majority of varying economic levels, it depends upon the creation of the public via discourses of othering to make this nationalism cohesive. In 2012 Erdoğan revealed his intent to raise ‘religious generations’, and in the same year an AKP media campaign motto stated: ‘One nation, one flag, one motherland, one state!’ (Özsel, Öztürk and Ince 2013, 565). This is set against a backdrop of ideas of ‘acceptable citizenship’, in the promotion of women’s role in childrearing. As Prime Minister, Erdoğan declared it to be women’s duty to raise at least three children, and, as President, he stated in an inaugural speech at the Turkey’s Women’s and Democracy Association that: ‘A woman who

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rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete’ (cited in Strauss 2016). It is within this context that Erdoğan and the AKP buttress notions of piety and economic development by defining those who cannot fit as ‘other’. Erdoğan’s binary-making imagines pious, upwardly mobile citizens struggling against foreign, oppositional deviants as one monolithic entity. The implicit heteronormativity of the Turkish public is felt by queer and trans individuals in different ways. This heteronormative assemblage entails the arbitrary enforcement of vaguely worded ‘public morality’ laws as well as policing in non-legislative ways. This manifests in such acts as the police’s enforcement of the vaguely worded Misdemeanour Law to fine and arrest trans people (Çakmak 2013, 146). The law enables the police ‘to protect public security, public order, or common wealth’. Anti-queer hate speech depicts gay people as ‘sick’, and enables the banning of websites en masse (Kaya 2015, 52; Letsch 2013; Interviewee Q, Istanbul, 1 March 2014). The public diminishes sexual minorities’ rights in particular by means of limiting freedoms of expression and assembly.2 There are many instances where government officials have condemned queer people, both in discourse and in acts (LGBTI News Turkey 2015e; Interviewee Q, Istanbul, 1 March 2014). The exclusion of non-normative identities also manifests in everyday experiences. For trans people, everyday encounters like riding on a bus or walking down the street become challenging; trans people are scrutinised, yet heteronormative bodies move about unquestioned (Asya Elmas and Hevi Members, interview with author, Istanbul, 6 March 2014; Interviewee N, Istanbul, 26 February, 2014). Here, the Turkish state operates in assemblage with media, the family, religious and neoliberal institutions in making the public suitable for some at the expense of others (Interviewee K, Istanbul, 26 February 2014; Interviewee Q, Istanbul, 1 March 2014). Dean’s argument supports this analysis: in her work, she explores how the public is not an inert, open forum, removed from the institutions that created it (Dean 2005). Instead, it is a composite of power relations. Public speech, advertising and cultural productions comprise the public – and it is the onus of the audience to demonstrate their fealty to or detachment from these productions. The imbrication of different actors and the demand to negotiate one’s personal relationship to the public results in various forms of exclusion and power imbalance, showing that the public is not especially ‘for everyone’. This is clear in Turkey, where government and media hate speech marginalises queer people on a regular basis in order to cultivate a more heteronormative public space. The policing of non-normative identities is not only discursive but also entails deep economic and spatial transformations in order to exclude and govern. The state’s influence within the public is visible in its diminishment of ecology and transformation of urban space in Turkey, in addition to the crea-

The queer common203 tion of new restrictions on freedoms of speech and assembly. Characterised by Lovering and Türkmen as ‘bulldozer neoliberalism’ (2011), law making under Erdoğan’s AKP government has empowered the state housing authority to rapidly appropriate urban land (often under the guise of earthquake-risk mitigation), form private-public partnerships with construction companies and depose (sometimes violently) poor or informal settlements to far-flung, cheaply built mass housing developments (Türkün 2011, 69–71). Employing a language of modernisation, former public spaces and impoverished neighbourhoods are redeveloped into gated communities, private leisure facilities and malls.3 This constitutes a new ‘gating of the city’, wherein the expanding middle class and their wealth are localised and protected (Candan and Kolluoğlu 2008, 6). But the Turkish context suggests that this modernisation for some citizens comes at the expense of others, especially in regard to the top-down nature of gentrification induced by unaccountable state institutions (Kuyucu 2014, 612). The AKP’s electoral successes since 2002 are due in part to the popularity of these urban regeneration programmes. These authoritarian, neoliberal practices are made legitimate – and indeed welcomed by many citizens – because the state produces the public-as-revitalised in assemblage with institutions like the media, family and Islam. The acts of revitalisation are therefore an intervention which performs the state’s commitments to piety and familial values as inextricable from economic growth and modernisation (Bueger 2014, 60). For example, with projects like the revitalisation of the Tarlabaşı neighbourhood, local policy makers and media narratives envision the neighbourhood as a hotbed of incivility (Sakizlioglu and Uitermark 2014, 1373).4 State officials and contractors produce anti-Kurdish discourses, invoking fears of criminality and terrorism. These narratives of incivility are also tied to its trans sex-worker community, prompting concerns of moral degeneration (Sakizlioglu and Uitermark, 2014, pp. 1373–4; Interviewee G, Istanbul, 22 February 2014). A notorious case is the lynch-mob incident against trans people in the Avcılar neighbourhood in 2013, resulting in the arrest of fifteen trans people. Some fifty neighbours gathered to protest against the trans people living in their district, reportedly shouting slogans about defending the honour of the community. The police declared the trans people’s homes to be unlawful brothels, so they were boarded up after the individuals were arrested (LGBTI News Turkey 2013; SPoD 2013). The police have raided hamams – traditional sites of male–male sex (Ergun 2014). They use water cannons, tear gas and physical brutality against participants in the yearly Pride marches; at least seventy-eight people were wounded in 2015 (LGBTI News Turkey 2015d). LGBTQ organisations are forced to fight back against cyber attacks (Kaos 2014). In 2012 eighteen men were detained in a movie theatre for supposedly having sex on the premises and

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the owners of the cinema were arrested for ‘providing space for prostitution’ (SPoD 2013, 22). Queer individuals who suffer hate crimes (including eleven documented murders in 2012) find no recourse within the criminal justice system (SPoD 2013). Lesbians and trans people have few options for dedicated safe spaces within the city (Interview G, Istanbul, 22 February 2014).5 The trans murder monitoring project records nearly forty trans murders in Turkey since 2008 (TGEU 2015). These are heterogeneous examples of how the public assemblage polices unsuitable identities and conditions individual bodies by either condemning them beneath broad, moralising legislation or ignoring them entirely. The violence against unsuitable identities coincides with the rewarding of those who reflect the normalising discourses and practices of the state, media and family. This nationalist-modern citizen identity appeals to both landowners–elites and the lower-class. For example, the AKP appeases ­ Islamist elites through lucrative property development contracts (Karaman 2013, 3421). At the same time, the AKP patronises the urban poor, using massive gift programmes and entrenched networks of clientelism (Karaman 2013, 3421–4). Furthermore, Erdoğan demonstrates the difference between acceptable and unacceptable identity in his speeches: ‘[the Gezi Park protestors] don’t care about trees, saplings or flowers. These people think they are leftists, environmentalists, nationalists, anti-capitalist Muslims and the opposition. But they have never understood that they are being used as pawns in an anti-Turkey offensive’ (Cengiz 2014). Erdoğan’s binary-making imagines monolithic blocs of pious, upwardly mobile citizens struggling against traitorous, oppositional deviants. In the following section, I focus on how these formations of the public have met resistance.

Gezi Park Gezi started in late May 2013 as an environmentalist protest against the razing of a small park adjacent to Istanbul’s central Taksim Square. With no public deliberation about the redevelopment, bulldozers arrived to clear out trees in order to pave the way for the construction of a replica of Ottoman military barracks. These were designed to house a shopping centre, condominiums and possibly a mosque (Yardimci‐Geyikçi 2014, 445). While only around fifty demonstrators initially occupied the park, photos of the municipal police using tear gas and violence against the protesters elicited a national outcry. Within three weeks, more than three and a half million people (out of Turkey’s eighty million total) were participating in some 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey (de Bellaigue 2013). Not only was the size of the protest notable, but the heterogeneity of protestors made the activism difficult to pin down. Gezi brought together a diverse

The queer common205 assemblage of footballers, Muslims, Kurds, communists, environmentalists and queers.6 These protestors established a camp within the park, set up tents, staged performances and workshops and provided free food, medical care and water to others (Jadaliyya 2013). This support was echoed online with around six million combined mentions of the #direngeziparkı and #occupygezi on Twitter within the first five days alone (SMaPP 2013). Police deployed tear gas and water cannons to clear the encampment in June. However, protests connected to Gezi Park continue. Related activism includes the Berkin Elvan protests in 2014, the deployment of over 10,000 police to contain May Day protests every year since 2013 and the brutal crackdown on the Pride march of 2015. These movements continue to revolve around Taksim Square, engender viral attention on social media and bring together different segments of the population to protest against oppressive norms (Amnesty International 2016). Less explored by the media and academia is the relationship between Pride and Gezi in 2013. Pride occurred about a week after Gezi, assumed the same space as Gezi and was programmatically fused with Gezi. The theme of 2013 Pride Week was ‘resistance’, wherein the official programme depends upon a vocabulary of protest made popular within Gezi (Istanbul Pride Week 2013). Over a dozen workshops, performances and panels proposed queer perspectives on the Gezi Protests. Finally, hashtags on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook like #gezi and #diren (resist) were frequently accompanied by #lgbtonur (lgbtpride) and #stonewall by LGBTQ protestors and their supporters before, during and after Pride Week.7 This convergence between Gezi and queer activism demonstrates an interruption – what I call ‘the queer common’ – into the dominant ways in which the public guides identity and belonging. The following section elaborates ‘the queer common’ and demonstrates its lasting effects on the public.

The queer common What is commonly defined as ‘public’ (for example, parks or streets) usually appears to be democratically accessible, but is regulated by laws governing access. This discrepancy between what is or is not democratically ‘for everyone’ can be clarified by thinking about the common. Historical ­understanding of the common refers to natural resources (such as Gezi Park’s green space), which in the popular imagination do not belong to any one individual actor (Hardin 1968). Hardt and Negri extend this classic conceptualisation to include social productions and encounters: information, language and affects also do not belong to anybody, unless they are either made private or incorporated within the institutionally governed public (Hardt and Negri 2009, viii). Relationships, too, can be a site of common intimacy, cooperative

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labour and collective social experience; yet these become moderated by the gendered division of labour and heteronormative values. These restrictions over the common are reproduced by the family and the state to such a degree as to make other kinds of intimacies unimaginable (Hardt and Negri 2009, 161). Michael Warner refers to this ‘totalizing tendency’ of heteronormative society, which erases alternative affective, bodily and social experiences (Warner 1991, 8). This also relates to Jodi Dean’s argument, wherein new modes of communication are seen to entail new freedoms of speech and assembly. However, communicative practices are increasingly depoliticising in their privileging of public relations and spectacle over actual democratic deliberation (Dean 2005). While Hardt and Negri understand the common as a ‘sphere’ in opposition to the public and private, I use the queer common to denote something more slippery than that. Rather than establish the common within a binary relationship to the public, the queer common can be instead an interruption to the public as it usually polices appropriate identities. Thinking about the queer common is useful, I argue, for three reasons. First, it acts as a heuristic device to show us how the public is indeed regulated by institutions, both hegemonic and from below. Second, it provides the space for alternative ways of existence. As one participant argued, ‘[Gezi was] an anarchist space, where real human socialisation took over so everyone actually was supporting each other’ (Interviewee J, Istanbul, 23 February 2014). Third, the queer common reterritorialises the public itself with lasting developments in popular discourse and party politics. In this instance, it has provided a space for the intersectional category of Kurdish queers/trans to assert their voice in politics. I turn now to explore these three factors in depth. Identifying the common is foremost useful to explaining what is not common. That is to say, the public is not a space of democratic justice, nor is it freely accessible by the people. Instead it has laws (written or not) regulating acceptable usage that are enforced by the police. This entails less tangible forms of policing, like familial norms about whether physical contact is acceptable in parks or around children (Butler 2014, 10). Dean argues that ‘the claims to rationality raised in defense of democracy’s basis in the public sphere remain silent with regard to the means of publicity’ (Dean 1999, 164). While we are led to consider parks as open to everyone, or news productions as purveyors of objective facts, or Facebook as an open forum, instead these productions of the public are laden with laws governing access. This includes the outright rejection of unfit bodies. The state’s attempts to privatise the park space of Gezi is an impingement upon a common desire for free access to green, non-consumption spaces in Turkey. The voices of the people who use the park, including gay men and trans sex-workers who depend on it for cruising, were absent from the consultation plans (Research Open Lab on Urban Commons 2016). Moreover,

The queer common207 ‘cleaning-up’ queer public places in the city follows a precedent set by the Ülker Street anti-trans violence before the UN Habitat II conference in 1996, when the police chief brutally tortured and expelled trans people from the Cihangir neighbourhood (LGBTI News Turkey 2015a). Other notorious events include the Eryaman anti-trans attacks in Ankara in 2006, the displacement of LGBTQs from the Avcılar neighbourhood in 2012 and the ongoing displacement of trans people from the Tarlabaşı neighbourhood (Ünan 2015; Interviewee Q, Istanbul, 1 March 2014). In Turkey, cultures of cruising, wherein married and/or non-gay-identifying men meet trans and/or other men for sex, persist alongside the rise of more Western-styled LGBTQ identities and ‘Grindr’-hook-up culture (Interviewee O, Istanbul, 28 February 2014). To destroy these sites of common sexual experience and transform them into financially productive condominiums and malls or mosques is disabling for people who do not adhere to sexuality in terms of identity. Men who have sex with men, trans people, queers who cannot afford to be out socially or economically, or anyone who simply cannot afford internetenabled devices all depend upon the park, the street and the public more broadly for social and sexual encounters. The control of sexuality and identity is therefore tied to the manipulation of the public by the state, police, commercial interests and other actors of the urban landscape. An orientation to the common is useful in how it instructs us in what is actually not free to be used by everybody, but is actually highly restricted by the public or private. For Gezi, the state and its concomitant institutions (the public) moved to shape, divide and sell off the park because it never truly belonged to the people to begin with. The redevelopment of the park signifies restrictions of the common by the public in partnership with private corporate interests. Judith Butler argues that neoconservative governmentality demands the use of the police to protect economic interests, which makes critical encounters with the public often violent (Butler 2014, xiv; see Chapter 9). Next, we can also think about the common affective experience of policing, violence and silencing that is felt by widening segments of the Turkish population, especially by Kurds (Interviewee K, Istanbul, 26 February 2014). This explains why what started as a marginal environmental sit-in swelled into a massive protest after images of the initial police brutality were released (Göle 2013). The common affective experience of being violated and of lacking access to democratic processes resonated across the social. The occupation of Gezi, therefore, represents a takeover of the public by the people, thus liberating this public resource and producing a common one. Here, the common refers to a site of experimental politics which more closely represents minority identity subjectivities. These queer activists depict a common moment wherein queer people not

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only are represented politically but are in control of the governance of their sexual identity. Queers not only provided essential services for others but developed cultural practices (film screenings, performances, marches) on their own terms, in their own language. When I asked a local queer politician and community leader why she thinks the LGBTQ community had taken leadership roles in the protests, she argued that it had to do with the common experience of police violence towards LGBTQ: You would see for example the transgender sex workers, many of the transgender sex workers are lovers of policemen or having sexual intercourse with policemen, or have some other kind of agreements with policemen – so it is not just violence … but for a transgender sex worker working on the streets, it’s impossible to avoid the policemen. So what they do in order to survive, they get into interaction with them. They talk with them. They make bargains with them. (Sedef Çakmak, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party), interview with author, Istanbul, 28 February 2014).

This was not the only person I interviewed who suggested that queer interactions or ‘bargains’ with the state – and trans experience in particular – often waver between the extremes of violence and sex (Asya Elmas and Hevi Members, interview with author, Istanbul, 6 March 2014; Can Çavuşoğlu, interview with author, Istanbul, 23 February 2014; Interviewee G, Istanbul, 22 February 2014; Interviewee Q, Istanbul, 1 March 2014). In a casual conversation another activist explained the trans experience with the police more succinctly: ‘During the daytime, they fuck us. But during the night time – they fuck us.’ While trans and queer engagements with the public are often exploitative, in the realm of the common these experiences with marginalisation in public are transformed into productivity. Namely, they are looked to for their capacity to organise, their ability to articulate concerns and their experiences in managing physical, economic and psychological violence. The queer common as a site of knowledge sharing and affective circulation is further demonstrated linguistically in the issue of homophobic slurs at Gezi Park. Footballers at the protest chanted homophobic and misogynistic slurs about the government, claiming, for example, that Prime Minister Erdoğan was a ‘faggot’ (Yinanç 2013). Whereas at the football game, this might have simply gone unchallenged, the space of the common meant otherwise: ‘we were going to them and saying, ‘Don’t say “faggot” – it hurts us. Don’t say “prostitute”. It hurts sex workers. And they say they learn from Allah this machismo. Even they are killing each other normally, but here the [football clubs] are alike because they basically are the same’ (Interviewee J, Istanbul, 23 February 2014). Whereas the public depends upon the siloing of society and polarisation, LGBTQs are empowered in the common to educate and share their lived experiences with heterogeneous groups.

The queer common209 I posed the same question to a leader at Lambda Istanbul, who also held a leadership role during the protests. They agreed that queers occupied a unique leadership position hitherto unseen in Turkish society: ‘I think it was the first time actually we were taken as a serious group. Instead of we requesting to become a part, they would ask us to become a part’ (Interviewee O, Istanbul, 28 February 2014). The organiser referred specifically to their participation in cross-group organising and media appearances: some of the documentaries about the LGBTQ experience at Gezi included Lambda Günlükleri (Lambda Diaries) and Trans X Istanbul. Foreign media coverage ranged from the BBC (Azizlerli 2013) to the Huffington Post (Gee 2013) to VICE (VICE 2013) and Jadaliyya (2013). Groups that collaborated with queer activists included the new Left party the HDP (the People’s Democratic Party) (Traynor and Letsch 2015) and the umbrella platform Taksim Dayanışması (Taskim Solidarity) (Karasulu 2014, 166) as well as women’s groups (Potuoğlu-Cook 2015). The community organiser I spoke with argued that these new assemblages counteracted heteronormative understandings about queers as normally produced by the public. They argued that queer people are normally seen by the majority political parties as too effeminate or hedonistic to participate in the ­political (Interviewee O, Istanbul, 28 February 2014). However, within the moment of the queer common their capacity to confront the police, organise and provide essential services destabilised these stereotypes. Finally, the common engenders new institutions and radically alters old ones. This new-found acceptance of queer individuals, first expressed in solidarity during the Pride Parade of 2013, was recognised by politicians as a source of political power for the new Left in Turkey (Robins-Early 2015). This is why the Kurdish-friendly HDP has adopted a 10 per cent quota for queer and trans candidates. The HDP also established platforms such as antidiscrimination in employment for LGBTQs and had put forth the first-ever gay candidate to stand for parliament (Brooks-Pollock 2015). Additionally, SPoD, a queer activist NGO in Istanbul, gathered signatures of support for LGBTQ rights from over twenty-two MPs now sitting in parliament (LGBTI News Turkey 2015c). They also hosted a ‘Politics School’, entailing a series of workshops designed to share information and knowledge about the ways LGBTQs are impacted on by government and law (LGBTI News Turkey 2015b). Queer support for the HDP must be seen as a contributing factor in their having surpassed the high 10 per cent election threshold needed to enter parliament – which they did for the first time in 2014 (Robins-Early 2015). These modes of disseminating information and representative democracy, which were previously denied to queers by the public, are continuations of the common productions assembled at Gezi. Beyond the linkage between the common and party politics, Hevi was founded at Gezi Park. Hevi (meaning ‘hope’ in Kurmanji-Kurdish) is Turkey’s

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first Kurdish LGBTQ organisation. The group not only participates in protests but manages an online social network for Kurdish queers, runs Pride Week in the Kurdish South-East, manages a library/archive and stages a trans beauty pageant, among other activities. In my interview with the leadership, they explained that Hevi emerged at Gezi because of the unique prejudices and experiences faced by Kurdish LGBTQs in Turkey. Some participants in the conservative AKP LGBT group,8 for example, see recognition of Kurdish identity as separatist or divisive, and are quick to condemn Kurdish activism within the LGBT community (Focus group interview at Lambda, Istanbul, 22 February 2014). Yet members of Hevi see themselves as necessarily filling a gap in representation: We support the Kurdish movement in Turkey and fight for their rights. Some of our members lost their loved ones in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in the region, some of our members’ villages were destroyed, and we want to raise awareness and attract attention to the sufferings of the Kurdish people as well. (Asya Elmas and Hevi Members, Interview with author, Istanbul, 6 March 2014)

Kurds have unique cultural practices, relationships and knowledge that are not represented by other LGBTQ groups and that are historically denied by the state. These include providing a forum for the unique ways queer Kurds face discrimination in Turkish society, the violence perpetrated against their families and kinsmen in the South-East, and the silencing of Kurds within the LGBT community itself. The space of the common at Gezi helped to facilitate the identification of these experiences common to Kurdish queer bodies and therefore the coming together of this group. Another participant in the discussion argued that there are problems within Kurdish society itself that demand the intervention of an LGBTQ nonprofit organisation like Hevi: I would like to add that Kurdish people have made a lot of sacrifices for acceptance of the Kurdish identity and people by the Turkish people … Kurdish people have made little effort to understand their own population, culture and its members which also harbour people like us – I mean, LGBTs. The commonly held view in the Kurdish society is that there are no trans, gays within the Kurdish society or all Kurds are normal people. Kurdish LGBTs did not come into existence just after Gezi protests. Just after Gezi protests we attracted more attention onto Kurdish LGBTs. (Asya Elmas and Hevi members, interview with author, Istanbul, 6 March 2014)

Hevi therefore exists to combat exclusion not only from the state and public in general, but also within both the LGBTQ community and the Kurdish community separately. There is a need, they explain, to develop what it means to be Kurdish and LGBT, which they do through their cultural programming and advocacy. By hosting a queer Newruz (a New Year celebration), for

The queer common211 example, ‘there were thousands of people who got the chance to know us as LGBT organisation. In terms of making us known to a larger audience, the Newruz celebration event was a huge success. We met people who had never seen homosexuals before. This gave us hope and also Hevi means hope’ (Asya Elmas and Hevi members, interview with author, Istanbul, 6 March 2014). This recognition of Kurdish LGBT lives at Gezi was realised not only by Kurdish LGBTs, but also by heterosexual people. Prejudices about the Kurdish separatist movement and the difficulties encountered by Kurdish lives became better understood by those who for the first time experienced the brunt of police brutality and media silencing at Gezi. As one of my interviewees said, ‘we found out at the Gezi protests: the media said we are the terrorists. And then we thought, “Oh my god what was happening all those years in the [Kurdish] East?”’ (Interviewee J, Istanbul, 23 February 2014). Not only is the poor treatment of the Gezi protestors common to the state’s marginalisation of Kurds in the Turkish South-East: voices from intersectional Kurdish queers are crucial as the Kurdish conflict spills over into the international Syrian crisis, and the international focuses on the problem of Kurdish nationalism.

Conclusion I have argued that the queer common demonstrates the oppressiveness of the public as it governs sexual identity. This framework also shows how protest enables experimentation with social justice, democracy and liberated relationships that are otherwise denied by the public. Finally, the queer common shows that these acts of identity-based organising facilitate a queering of the public which lasts beyond the temporally and spatially bounded protest itself. The queer common demonstrated at Gezi helps us to understand how the public governs the everyday and asserts that the identity it produces is not given. It has disrupted party politics and popular understandings of identity by legitimising the modes of existence common to marginalised bodies. By understanding the impact of the public on identity, the possibilities for change can be explored. The queer common shows how the seemingly coherent public can be broken down and interrupted. It asks us to think of how these assemblages assert their coherence through acts which materialise acceptable identities. Yet the queer common demonstrates that this apparent unity is contingent, impressionable and responsive to organising from below. Moreover, the queer common provides a model for doing queer theory beyond anti-normative critique (see also Chapter 13). Instead, the queer common maps productive practices of living differently than under the neoliberal, heteronormative state. The benefits of redistributing the knowledge, experience, language and affects of normally marginalised bodies across

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the social may be most visible within particular moments of protest. The next step is to cultivate these alternatives beyond the protests and shape these ‘lines of flight’ into new, inclusive publics (Deleuze and Guattari 2008, 11–12). Using the queer common as a point of enquiry provides a robust model for understanding how identity movements are marginalised, resist and have lasting impacts on society and therefore must be used to understand the particularities of other queer protests across the world.

Notes 1 I conducted semi-structured interviews in Istanbul with LGBTQ activists and community members who identified as women, lesbians and trans-people, in addition to gay men. Except for the three named politicians, their names and identifying information are confidential to protect them from undue scrutiny in a climate of increasing state constrictions on freedoms of speech. In addition, most participants were not out to one or more members of their families. I did not qualify their sexuality or gender, which would be constrained by my own perceptions. Thus, I abbreviate all into the category of ‘queer’ as shorthand for sexually non-normative. The University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee approved this project (#010559) on 13 December 2013. 2 Freedom House shows a decline of press freedoms since 2012, entailing the imprisonment of (mostly Kurdish) journalists, and news and internet media censorship (Freedom House 2014). 3 ‘In 2002, Turkey’s cities issued building permits for 36 million square-metres of space. In the first three months of 2014, that number was 43 million, at a cost of $24bn – more than double the total spent just a year prior’ (Lepeska 2014). 4 See also the 2004 Başıbüyük redevelopment case, wherein TOKİ (the state housing authority) used police to violently remove the poor to build condominiums, using water cannons against the elderly and women. ‘This was the first of a series of violent conflicts that occurred almost every day for two months, some resulting in serious injuries’ (Lovering and Türkmen 2011, 90). 5 At the time of writing, only one bar held a lesbians-only night, once a week, called Bigudi. 6 It is reported that 78.9 per cent of participants at Gezi claimed no affiliation with a party or non-profit organisation, 93.6 per cent claimed they were not affiliated with any particular group and 44.4 per cent claimed to have never protested before (KONDA 2014, 16–17). 7 See #Lgbtonur, #direnayol and other relevant hashtags on Twitter, especially as used by @LGBTBLOK, @istanbulpride and @lambda_istabul: (Twitter 2016b) 8 For example, the AKP LGBT group – not officially affiliated with the conservative party – manages social media which routinely refers to HDP and its supporters as supporters of terrorism (Twitter 2016a).

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References Acar, F. and G. Altunok. 2013. “The ‘Politics of Intimate’ at the Intersection of NeoLiberalism and Neo-Conservatism in Contemporary Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum 41 (1): 14–23. Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. New York: Routledge. Amnesty International. 2016. “Turkey 2015/2016.” https://www.amnesty.org/en/ countries/europe-and-central-asia/turkey/report-turkey/. Azizlerli, E. 2013. “Gezi Park: Turkey’s New Opposition Movement.” BBC, 26 August. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-23795857. Brooks-Pollock, T. 2015. “Turkey Now Has Its First ever Gay Parliamentary Candidate.” Independent, 25 May. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/first-ever-openlygay-parliamentary-candidate-stands-for-election-in-turkey-10274746.html. Bueger, C. 2014. “Thinking Assemblages Methodologically: Some Rules of Thumb.” In Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations, edited by M. Acuto and S. Curtis, 58–66. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Butler, J. 2014. “Foreword.” In The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi, edited by U. Ozkirimli, vii–xvi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Çakmak, S. 2013. “No Living on Land or in Air: Discourse of Public Morality and Human Rights Violations of Transgender Individuals in Turkey.” Turkish Policy Quarterly 11 (4): 141–7. Candan, A. B. and B. Kolluoğlu. 2008. “Emerging Spaces of Neoliberalism: A Gated Town and a Public Housing Project in İstanbul.” New Perspectives on Turkey 39: 5–46. Cengiz, O. K. 2014. “Turkey’s Greens Protest Erdogan’s Airport Plans.” Al Monitor, 13 June. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/cengiz-istanbul-airport-erdogan-environment-akp-canal.html. Cürül, B. and R. Ö. Dönmez. 2013. “Transsexuals in Turkey: Between Disciplining and Eradicating.” In Gendered Identities: Criticizing Patriarchy in Turkey, edited by R. Ö. Dönmez and F. A. Özmen, 67–78. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Dean, J. 1999. “Making (It) Public.” Constellations 6 (2): 157–66. —— 2005. “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics.” Cultural Politics 1 (1): 51–73. de Bellaigue, C. 2013. “Turkey: ‘Surreal, Menacing … Pompous’.” The New York Review of Books, 19 December. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/12/19/tur​ key-surreal-menacing-pompous/. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 2008. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Ergun, M. A. 2014. “Police Raid on Firuzağa Hammam.” LGBTI News, 13 June. http:// lgbtinewsturkey.com/2014/06/13/police-raid-on-firuzaga-hammam/. Freedom House. 2014. “Turkey: Country Report.” Washington, DC: Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2014/turkey. Gee, R. 2013. “Young and Fighting Taboos in Turkey.” Huffington Post, 20 June. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/youth-radio-youth-media-international/youngand-fighting-taboos_b_3473520.html.

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Göle, N. 2013. “Gezi: Anatomy of a Public Square Movement.” Insight Turkey 15 (3): 7–14. Hardin, G. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. Hardt, M. and A. Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Hurriyet Daily News. 2013. “Timeline of Gezi Park Protests.” 6 June. http://www. hurriyetdailynews.com/timeline-of-gezi-park-protests-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=4 8321&NewsCatID=341. Istanbul Pride Week. 2013. “21. LGBT Onur Haftası 2013 İstanbul.” http://onurhaftasi. tumblr.com/?og=1. Jadaliyya. 2013. “Rethinking Gezi Through Feminist and LGBT Perspectives.” 11 November. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15037/rethinking-gezi-thr​ou​ gh​-feminist-and-lgbt-perspect. Kaos, G. L. 2014. “Prison Sentences for the Cyber Attacks on kaosGL.org!” http:// kaosgl.org/page.php?id=16133. Karaman, O. 2013. “Urban Neoliberalism with Islamic Characteristics.” Urban Studies 50 (16): 3412–27. Karasulu, A. 2014. “‘If a Leaf Falls, They Blame the Tree’: Scattered Notes on Gezi Resistances, Contention and Space.” International Review of Sociology 24 (1): 164–75. Kaya, A. 2015. “Islamisation of Turkey Under the AKP Rule: Empowering Family, Faith and Charity.” South European Society and Politics 20 (1): 47–69. KONDA. 2014. Gezi Report. 5 June. http://konda.com.tr/en/raporlar/KONDA_Gezi_ Report.pdf. Kuyucu, T. 2014. “Law, Property and Ambiguity: The Uses and Abuses of Legal Ambiguity in Remaking Istanbul’s Informal Settlements.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (2): 609–27. Lepeska, D. 2014. “Istanbul’s gentrification by Force Leaves Locals Feeling Overwhelmed and Angry.” Guardian, 2 July. http://www.theguardian.com/ cities/2014/jul/02/istanbul-gentrification-force-locals-angry-luxury-hotels-turkey. Letsch, C. 2013. “Turkey Alcohol Laws Could Pull the Plug on Istanbul Nightlife.” Guardian, 31 May. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/31/turkeyalcohol-laws-istanbul-nightlife. LGBTI News Turkey. 2013. “Avcılar-Meis Housing Complex: Violation of the Right to Housing.” 21 November. http://lgbtinewsturkey.com/2013/11/21/meis-sitesiviolation-of-the-right-to-housing/. —— 2015a. “Süleyman the Hose: ‘Could I Let People Say that the State’s Police Officers Were Beaten by a Homosexual?’” 30 January. http://lgbtinewsturkey. com/2013/09/20/suleyman-the-hose/. —— 2015b. “Politics School for LGBTI Begins.” 25 February. http://lgbtinewsturkey. com/2015/02/25/politics-school-for-lgbti-begins/. —— 2015c. “22 MPs in Turkey’s New Parliament Will Support LGBTI Rights.” 9 June. http://lgbtinewsturkey.com/2015/06/09/mps-in-turkeys-new-parliamentwill-support-lgbti-rights/. —— 2015d. “Turkey’s LGBTI File Criminal Complaints for Attacks Against Istanbul Pride – Hear Them Out!” 2 July. http://lgbtinewsturkey.com/2015/07/02/turkeyslgbti-file-criminal-complaints-for-attacks-against-istanbul-pride/.

The queer common215 —— 2015e. “The AKP’s LGBTI history from 2001–2015.” 26 September. http:// lgbtinewsturkey.com/2015/09/26/the-akps-lgbti-history-from-2001–2015/. Lovering, J. and H. Türkmen. 2011. “Bulldozer Neo-liberalism in Istanbul: The Stateled Construction of Property Markets, and the Displacement of the Urban Poor.” International Planning Studies 16 (1): 73–96. Özsel, D., A. Öztürk and H. O. Ince. 2013. “A Decade of Erdoğan’s JDP: Ruptures and Continuities.” Critique 41 (4): 551–70. Potuoğlu-Cook, Ö. 2015. “Hope with Qualms: A Feminist Analysis of the 2013 Gezi Protests.” Feminist Review 109 (1): 96–123. Puar, J. 2011. “‘I Would Rather Be a Cyborg than a Goddess’: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” philoSOPHIA 2 (1): 49–66. Research Open Lab on Urban Commons. 2016. “Mapping the Commons of Istanbul.” http://mappingthecommons.net/en/istanbul/. Robins-Early, N. 2015. “Meet the Pro-Gay, Pro-Women Party Shaking Up Turkish Politics.” Huffington Post, 8 June. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/08/ turkey-hdp-party_n_7537648.html. Sakizlioglu, N. B. and J. Uitermark. 2014. “The Symbolic Politics of Gentrification: The Restructuring of Stigmatized Neighborhoods in Amsterdam and Istanbul.” Environment and Planning A 46 (6): 1369–85. SMaPP. 2013. “A Breakout Role for Twitter? The Role of Social Media in the Turkish Protests.” http://smapp.nyu.edu/reports/turkey_data_report.pdf. SPoD. 2013. “2012 Report of Human Rights Violations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.” SPoD, 20 September. http://www.spod.org.tr/turkce/2012report-of-human-rights-violations-based-on-sexual-orientation-and-genderidentity/. Strauss, E. 2016. “The Turkish President Says Childless Women Are ’Incomplete.’ So Does US Policy and Culture.” Slate, 6 June. http://www.slate.com/blogs/ xx_factor/2016/06/06/turkish_president_recep_tayyip_erdo_an_calls_childless_ women_deficient_incomplete.html TGEU. 2015. “Trans Murder Monitoring 2015.” 8 May. http://tgeu.org/tmm-idahotupdate-2015/. Traynor, I. and C. Letsch. 2015. “Election Result Heralds a New Turkey, But not the One Erdoğan Wanted.” Guardian, 8 June http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2015/jun/08/election-new-turkey-erdogan-gezi-park. Türkün, A. 2011. “Urban Regeneration and Hegemonic Power Relationships.” International Planning Studies 16 (1): 61–72. Twitter. 2016a. AK LGBTİ (@aklgbti). Last accessed 23 February 2016. https://twitter. com/aklgbti. —— 2016b. #LgbtOnur. Last accessed 22 February 2016. https://twitter.com/hashtag/ LgbtOnur?src=hash. Ünan, A. D. 2015. “Gezi Protests and the LGBT Rights Movement: A Relation in Motion.” In Creativity and Humour in Occupy Movements, edited by A. Yalcintas, 75–94. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. VICE. 2013. “Istanbul Rising.” 8 June. http://www.vice.com/video/istanbul-rising. Warner, M. 1991. “Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet.” Social Text (29): 3–17.

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Yardimci‐Geyikçi, Ş. 2014. “Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Party Politics View.” Political Quarterly 85 (4): 445–53. Yinanç, B. 2013. “Homophobic Prejudices Broken By Gezi Incidents in Turkey.” Hurriyet Daily News, 29 June. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/homophobicprejudices-broken-by-gezi-incidents-in-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=51567& NewsCatID=339.

13

Positive regard for difference without identity Lucy Nicholas

A consensus that rests on authoritative and officially sanctioned truth always silences alternative truths, marginalises diversity and reduces it to abnormality. (Mac Noughton in DePalma and Atkinson 2009, 839)

Introduction Contact theory, or the contact hypothesis (Allport 1958), has been the go-to social psychology concept for promoting better relations between unequal social groups since its inception in the context of ‘racial’ desegregation in the USA. It proposes the use of ‘intergroup contact to reduce prejudice’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65) and has been applied to a range of dominant/­subordinate social groups such as ethnic groups, homo/heterosexuals, cis and trans people. Like much anti-prejudice work in social psychology, ‘intergroup contact’ has traditionally relied on naturalised assumptions about predetermined groups and differences in order to consider how better relations, without prejudice, between these assumed groups may be fostered (Gaertner et al. 1993). Additionally, the aims and contents of such contact are often under-theorised, especially when used in applied studies; for example, in seeking to challenge prejudice, such approaches often stop at problematic notions of tolerance as an ideal relation (Gonzalez et al. 2015). This in turn reifies and naturalises presumed group identities, which then further exclude other ‘out’ groups. The normalising of dominant identities, such as heterosexuality, whiteness and cisgender,1 remains a cause of ongoing but less-tangible inequalities than outright intentional prejudice. The limitations of contact theory in fully addressing underlying prejudices risk failing to address othering mentalities in general, which many contemporary social and political theorists have argued is the real and more resilient source of intergroup problems (Brown 2009; Hage 2000; Robinson 2013; Warner 1993).

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This chapter will question whether the aims and premises of contact theory are still useful in the context of increasingly subtle and systemic biases and inequalities, and whether and how it might be usefully extended to relations between more complex identities than simple, predefined oppositional ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. To do so, it considers some examples of intergroup othering using case studies pertaining to backlashes against gender, sexual and ethnic diversity in the contemporary Australian context. The first is the backlash experienced by Indigenous Australian footballer Adam Goodes in the context of Anglocentric ‘multicultural’ society. The second case illustrates the subtle sexism or othering experienced by female members of parliament in the masculinist context of Australian government. Finally, the limits of the contact hypothesis will be considered through the backlash against the Safe Schools Coalition, a whole-school programme designed to foster affirmative attitudes and environments for sexuality- or gender-diverse students in schools that are heterocentric and cisgenderist. In particular, this programme goes beyond tolerance and minority politics, aiming for affirmation for the chosen identities of young people, including the multiplicity of gender and sexuality subject positions that young people now identify with, outside of the binaries (Smith et al. 2014). All of these phenomena have experienced substantial critique and backlash from majority groups and are illustrative of pushback that occurs when ‘in’ groups are required to go beyond tolerance of clearly defined minority ‘out’ groups, having their perspectives decentred and being expected to change behaviour, and are useful for considering intergroup ethics. This chapter proposes the fruitful combination of queer ethics, post-tolerance political theory and the social psychology concept of ‘allophilia’ (love for the other) (Pittinsky, Rosenthal and Montoya 2011) as potential positive and practical alternative modes of relating to othering. Queer theory and other deconstructivist analyses of identity have long warned that to draw on established identities (which they posit are discursively constituted) to challenge hierarchies may inadvertently reify those identities by strengthening their seeming discursive reality. These approaches have also long emphasised that the underlying issues of prejudice are caused by dualistic inside/outside thinking more generally (Butler [1990] 2007; Fuss 1991; Nicholas 2014). This presents a real bind for social or political action that seeks to address inequality or prejudice that is caused by attributions of difference and identity that have very real material effects (Squires 2001). The chapter proposes employing queer theory and allophilia to move towards ‘positive regard’ as an alternative way to tackle prejudice. I suggest that queer ethics can lend a convincing strategy here, which I call ‘reading queerly’, that is, being able to approach an other with an openness that neither homogenises nor subordinates difference. Through the ‘post-tolerance’ case studies adopted, I draw

Positive regard for difference without identity219 on what Squires calls a ‘diversity perspective’ (Squires 2001, 7) which may be fostered at the individual, interactional and social levels.

Contact theory/the contact hypothesis Contact theory, or the contact hypothesis, is a social psychology concept that proposes the use of ‘intergroup contact to reduce prejudice’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65). The concept was established by Gordon Allport in 1958 in the context of racial desegregation in the USA, with the hypothesis that contact with members of a different ‘racial’ group would breed greater ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ (Allport 1958). The intended wider social implication was ‘that contact effects typically generalize to the entire outgroup’ (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, 751). It seems an ideal practical exposition of an ‘effective strategy for reducing … biases’ (Gaertner et al. 1993, 2). The theory has proved popular in the field of psychology and has been applied to many case studies and contexts based on oppositional or hierarchical group identities, such as marriage equality (hetero/queer contact) (Herek and Capitanio 1996) and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (Bargal 1990; Maoz 2000). These groups are often conceptualised according to an ‘in/out’ group dichotomy. A paradigmatic example of the concept’s extension and application is the ‘common ingroup identity model’ (Gaertner et al. 1993), which proposes that an effective method to reduce intergroup prejudice is to make two groups feel like one by providing them with a shared project that constructs a new border of in/out. This builds on Allport’s proposal that a shared purpose facilitates prejudice reduction (1958). It is proposed that this will ‘transform members’ cognitive representation of the memberships from two groups to one group’, i.e. a ‘change in members’ perception of group boundaries’ (Gaertner et al. 1993, 2). While the overarching hypothesis remains the same, over the years there has been some disagreement around the exact conditions of contact that would reduce prejudice. For example, Allport suggests that there are certain ‘optimal conditions’ that are more likely to make contact reduce prejudice (1958), whereas Pettigrew and Tropp, in a 2006 meta-analysis of studies that use the concept, conclude that ‘the meta-analytic findings indicate that these conditions are not essential for prejudice reduction’ (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, 751). Pettigrew has consistently argued that ‘writers overburden the hypothesis with facilitating, but not essential, condition,’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65), concluding that any kind of contact is enough. A key shortcoming in the potentially useful contact theory lies in the limitation that ‘the hypothesis fails to address process’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65), i.e. it does not specify truly, practically and procedurally how reduction in prejudice comes to occur in intergroup contact. That is, it advocates for contact as

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an end in itself, and ‘few attempts [have] been made to examine the processes or nature of interactions within the [intergroup contact] encounter itself’ (Maoz 2000). This internal procedure has importance for what characteristics the interpersonal contact with ‘others’ requires in order to produce more generalisable diversity mindsets in the interactants. Relatedly, the approach is often limited to the aim of reducing prejudice in specified groups, rather than considering the reduction in prejudicial attitudes more generally (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, 751). It is not clear if group-based perception or boundary making can be challenged more generally. Indeed, Pettigrew asserts that ‘the hypothesis does not specify how the effects generalize to other situations, the outgroup or uninvolved outgroups’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65). Discussing many of the experimental tests of the hypothesis, Dixon, Durrheim and Tredoux conclude that ‘these interventions may be successful in creating small islands of integration in a sea of intolerance, but they are unrepresentative of wider processes of contact and desegregation’ (Dixon, Durrheim and Tredoux 2005, 700). Another related shortcoming is that contact theory does not elucidate or take account of the contested nature of other concepts (in addition to that of ‘group’ and ‘boundary’) underpinning its premises. In particular, the ideal normative telos of ‘optimal intergroup contact’ (Pettigrew 1998, 65) is implicit in many applications of the model, but is not sufficiently articulated. Allport (1958) blithely contrasts bigotry to ‘tolerance’ in his work, but it is rarely elaborated in contact theory work what this ‘putatively ideal form of contact’ would be (Dixon et al. 2005, 698) and no ethical case is made for it. Indeed, social psychologists who are now moving beyond the end-point of tolerance argue that, in traditional contact theory, ‘many strategies focus primarily on creating “tolerance” as the outcome and may not focus specifically on creating positive support for stigmatized groups’ (Gonzalez et al. 2015, 372–3). The notion of ‘tolerance’ thus remains problematic, particularly with regard to real affirmation, which is explored in the next section.

The problems with tolerance Diversity is a prominent topic in public policy, popular discourse and social psychology. There is a lack of understanding of difference and diversity beyond simple tolerance, and around what real affirmation that does not just tolerate but celebrates differences might mean (Hage 2000). Tolerance and toleration are inherently liberal concepts, broadly understood to require ‘people to coexist peacefully with others who have fundamentally different beliefs or values’ (Mendus in Honderich 1995, 877). Tolerance tends to be ‘uncritically promoted’ as an unproblematic and gallant aim (Brown 2009, 2). Yet, at its core, tolerance is equated with forebearance or suffering; we

Positive regard for difference without identity221 ‘tolerate’ (rather than affirm) views or practices that we might disagree with (King 2012). Thus, the normative and practical ideal of ‘tolerance’ of predefined identities has problematic outcomes; ‘tolerance’ for minority groups is a discourse that underpins and perpetuates domination because it reifies the authority and universality of the dominant identity doing the tolerating (Hage 2000; Brown 2009). In academia there have been extensive critiques of diversity approaches which focus only on the part of the minority group (Nakata 2007) and only on ‘tolerance’, as opposed to real affirmation, as an aim (Hage 2000), as in ethnocentric tolerance of minorities in a culture dominated by one cultural heritage (e.g. the dominance of Anglo culture in Australia). In her critique of contemporary American use of the term that is analogical to Australian usage, Brown argues that the invocation of tolerance ‘operates from a conceit of neutrality that is actually thick with bourgeois Protestant norms’ (Brown 2009, 7). Indeed, the language of in- and outgroup in social psychology demonstrates the constitution of a normative neutral mainstream against an ‘other’. Brown’s strong argument is that ‘tolerance regulates the presence of the other’ (Brown 2009, 8) and can ‘overtly block the pursuit of substantive equality and freedom’ (ibid., 9). Contact theory attempts to address this ‘conceit of neutrality’, and indeed Allport proposed the contact hypothesis with the caveat that contact should ideally be between those of equal status (Allport 1958). However, the likelihood of this position, akin to Rawls’s liberal premise of the ‘original position’ (Rawls 1973) wherein we can find a pre-social place of equal status, is low. This is exactly the argument made by Bonilla-Silva, who eschewed a simple psychological analysis of racism and for whom such a level playing field does not exist (Bonilla-Silva 2010); and Stoll, Lilley and Pinter, who emphasise the continuation of ‘gender-blind sexism’ shaped by subtler social contexts and legacies (Stoll, Lilley and Pinter 2017). The limit is that ‘to “tolerate” and to be “tolerated” [inherently] involves an unequal relationship’ (Mirchandani and Tastsoglou 2000, 49). The danger is that contact theory aims for tolerance of a predefined and homogenised other, rather than a deep and authentic understanding and respect of another individual’s personal and collective traits. This is key to critiques of shallow multiculturalism that maintain an ethnocentrism and  paternalism. This has been a critique of Australian multiculturalism, which presents itself as multicultural but maintains an Anglo hegemony. This is a point argued in the Australian context by Hage, who cautions against discourse that reinforces ‘ethnics [or, in this case, any ‘other’] as people one can make decisions about: objects to be governed’. Hage calls this ‘internal orientalism’ (Hage 2000, 17), demonstrating a concern with the oppositional modes of thought that tacitly haunt different discourses around diversity and which, he argues, all demonstrate the impulse of white supremacy. Indeed, it

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has been argued in social psychology that prejudice ‘can manifest itself as an ostensibly benevolent paternalism that perpetuates inequality and exploitation’ (Dovidio et al. 2008, 5). The limits to tolerance as an aim are demonstrated by the backlashes that ensue at moments when less-privileged groups go beyond tolerance to demand something more, such as celebration. This can be seen in a variety of contexts, with a resurgence of discourse that responds to a feeling of loss for dominant groups. In Australia there is reactionary male supremacy and heteronormativity in response to feelings that feminism and queer activism have gone ‘too far’, for example, in promoting sexual and gender diversity or challenging the dominant categories. For example, the Australian branch of the Daily Mail newspaper suggests that the ‘No Gender December’ campaign that sought to challenge the gender stereotyping of toys in 2014 was ‘a step too far for even the loonies’ (Noble 2014), arguing alongside conservative MPs for the importance of traditional gender roles. Relatedly, the conservative national newspaper The Australian claimed in 2016 that now ‘heterosexual men who lean Right are the PC hate target of choice’ (Oriel 2016). In the USA, the election of Donald Trump, and his association with ‘alt-right’ men’s rights activist Stephen Bannon, illustrates the fear of loss among white Americans. Indeed, the alt-right explicitly champions what it calls ‘ethno-nationalism’ (Wilson 2016a) and anti-feminist sentiments in response to the perception that whiteness and masculinity are under attack. The call to ‘make America great again’ appeals to ‘a politics based on the idea of an imperilled white male identity’ (Wilson 2016b). In political psychology, Kinnvall has asserted that ‘as individuals feel vulnerable, insecure and experience existential anxiety, it is not uncommon for the wish to re-affirm a threatened self-identity’ (Kinnvall 2007, 4). A key motive for categorisation and prejudice may well be the ‘haunting fear that one’s status may not be secure’ (Dovidio et al. 2008, 5). A recent illustration of the backlash against minorities who go beyond quiet assimilation is through the resentment that has been levelled at the Indigenous Australian football player Adam Goodes. In 2015 Goodes used a traditional Indigenous war dance as his celebratory act at scoring a goal in Australian rules football. He also called out a football spectator who called him an ‘ape’. Booing of him subsequently increased at matches (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 2015). By emphasising his heritage and actively opposing racism, Goodes dared to go beyond a ‘sameness’ or ‘respectability politics’ demanded by the majority culture’s ‘tolerance’. Indeed, commentators have noted that, according to the logic of the recent resentment towards him, ‘if Goodes would just behave like white football players everything would be OK’ (Hamilton 2015). The popular denial that negativity towards Goodes constitutes ‘racism’ (Devine 2015) is characteristic of the continuing incapacity of the majority to move beyond the

Positive regard for difference without identity223 notion that racism/sexism/other prejudice is more than individual prejudice. This same debate played out in the ‘misogyny’ charges of then Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, against then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, in 2012. In Gillard’s infamous ‘misogyny speech’ of that same year, she confronted the opposition leader during parliamentary question time, naming him a misogynist. Abbott had been attempting to leverage against her the sexism of the parliamentary speaker. In the speech she responded to the many gendered ways in which she had been attacked by Abbott and his party in her time in parliament, and the many implicitly sexist things that Abbott has said more broadly. She cited examples of his claims that women are less suited to power, that under-representation of women is not a bad thing, and comments he had made about women doing the ironing (Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2012). Abbott and many commentators denied the charge of misogyny because of its individualising associations as an intentional and explicit hatred of women (Cox 2013). Challenging misogyny is, then, constructed as ‘playing the gender card’, rendering masculinist gender performances invisible, as the focus lies on a ‘transgressive performance of femininity’ in calling out sexism (Johnson 2015, 294). This incapacity to perceive of more structural and hidden aspects of gender prejudice that naturalises the dominant gender as neutral and superior has been described as ‘gender-blind sexism’ (Stoll et al. 2017). The same applies to the example of race and inequality, where the ‘new racism’ that underscores white supremacy entails ‘the invisibility of most mechanisms to reproduce racial inequality’ (Bonilla-Silva and Lewis 1996, 2). The much-charted rise in respectability politics of people of colour (Harris 2014) can be seen as emblematic of a way to ‘keep minorities “in their place”’ (Bonilla-Silva and Lewis 1996, 2) and is echoed in arguments against assimilation among those with non-normative sexual and gender orientation. Thus, I outline here what social psychology can use from social and political theory conceptualisations of power and identity to take anti-prejudice work a step further away from tolerance and towards real diversity, going towards filling out and fostering what Squires calls a ‘diversity perspective’ (Squires 2001, 7). In social psychology, for example, rather than focusing on the explicit level of homophobia, Monto and Supinski (2014) have shifted to interrogating the ‘discomfort’ of heterosexuals towards ‘homosexuals’. However, there are a plethora of useful extant concepts in gender and ethnicity studies which take into account not just negative attitudes towards minorities but the normalising attitudes of the dominant majority. These place at the centre of analysis the socialised ideas about identities and groups that are ­neutralised and normalised and that allow for the establishment of ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups at all. Exemplary of these are heteronormativity (as the counterpoint to homophobia) (Schilt and Westbrook 2009; Warner 1993);

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gender normativity (Gilbert 2009; Smith et al. 2014) and the related naming of ‘normal’ or ‘non-trans’ gender as ‘cisgender’ in order to decentralise and de-neutralise it; white ignorance (Mills 2007), ethnocentrism and orientalism (Said 1994) and, of course, white supremacy (Bonilla-Silva and Lewis 1996; Hage 2000); and othering of cultural difference (Aly 2007; Hage 2000). The body of work from social and political theory discussed above demonstrates that it is possible to analyse prejudice beyond predefined individuals or groups, and the opposite of prejudice as something more than tolerance of predefined individuals or groups. These critiques of tolerance and individualised analyses of prejudice are also key to queer theory critiques of ­assimilationist LGBT identity politics, or respectability politics, which, it says, seeks acceptance on the terms of the majority. Queer theory is a response to The limitations produced when gay and lesbian subjects are reduced to the problem of remedying homophobia, a conceptualization that stalls within a humanist psychological discourse of individual fear of homosexuality as abject contagion and shuts out an examination of how the very term homophobia as a discourse centers homosexuality as the normal. (Britzman 1995, 158)

Queer theory has tended to critique minority politics based on the limits of tolerance in a paradigm of ab/normality, and also because of the danger of collapsing back into ‘identitarian positionings’ (Weiner and Young 2011, 227). It conceptualises the uses of identity as reinforcing the impulses of heternormativity: to classify, hierarchise and divide (Nicholas 2014). Indeed, the central tenet of queer theory is that normalisation inherently leads to and masks domination (see Chapter 12). The backlash that the Australian school outreach programme Safe Schools Coalition – a whole-school approach that interrogates notions of sex and gender normality and celebrates sexual and gender diversity – experienced in 2015 and 2016 echoes that received by Goodes. This demonstrates how challenging heteronormativity, advocating for affirmation and celebration of diversity, and demanding more than tolerance and assimilation, leads to resentment in the powerful (Oriel 2016). These kinds of approaches require real change in the majority. This has also played out in the USA with the backlashes against the Obama administration advising schools to ensure that ‘transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment’ (Sanchez 2016). This wording calls for more than quiet tolerance, evoking the requirement for schools to provide explicit positive support. This has caused backlash from ‘ministers, parents and politicians who say the federal government has gone too far’ (Sanchez 2016). Such backlashes have been neatly summarised in social media through a viral meme that reads ‘When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression’ (Boeskool 2016). This only emphasises the need for diversity-oriented practices to move beyond demanding tolerance for pre-

Positive regard for difference without identity225 defined groups, concentrating instead on the interrogation of the persistent normative ideas underpinning privilege and the ‘inside/out’ status that many have argued identity is premised on (Fuss 1991).

The problems with groups Queer theory suggests that respectability politics reifies the very hierarchy within which these identities are ‘other’. Moreover, it further constrains by reifying the identities that it tolerates as real (Butler [1990] 2007). The very term ‘queer theory’, coined by Teresa de Lauretis in 1991, encapsulates this anti-normalising impulse with its desire to denaturalise heterosexuality and normative gender. What lends queer theory its transformatory potential is that it considers identity to be not just constructed, but constituted through discourse (Butler [1990] 2007; 1993), that there is no essence to what we call sexuality or gender identity before we name it. In the words of Judith Butler, to say ‘that the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality’ (Butler [1990] 2007, 136). This allows for it to be otherwise, sharing with practice-oriented contact theory the ontological premise that ‘group identity is alterable … ­categorization can become recategorization’ (Dovidio et al. 2008, 4). However, queer theory – influenced by deconstructive theory – takes this one step further, questioning whether categorisation can become de-­categorisation (Nicholas 2014). The queer theory critique of identity and identity politics is, in my reading, a liberatory project, in that it is ethically concerned with the oppressive outcome from identities relying on what Butler calls a ‘constitutive outside’ perpetuating what Fuss (1991) calls an ‘inside/out’ logic: ‘This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet “subjects,” but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject’ (Butler 1993, 3; see also Chapter 12). In an applied example of this, scholars of queer human rights have argued that the imposition of pre-existing group identities in attempts to secure LGBT human rights have served to reinforce the dominance of an Anglo model of group identity in relation to global sex and gender diversity (Altman 2010). According to Kollman and Waites (2009), LGBT rights discourses use and naturalise established (Anglo) categories of sexual orientation and gender identity. This reification of categories through aiming for tolerance of LGBT, they argue, always excludes, others or renders abject someone or something, limiting ‘sexual diversity to legally recognized categories considered acceptable by a society and state at a certain point in history’ (Kollman and Waites 2009, 12). At its most extreme, then, imposition of identity performs a ‘violence’

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to others by perpetuating an ‘oppositional epistemological frame’ (Butler [1990] 2007, 195; Nicholas 2014). This is an issue in the context of sexual and gender diversity, wherein people are increasingly identifying with genders and sexualities outside of the traditional binaries (Smith et al. 2014). Whilst they are important, demands for tolerance of clearly defined gender minority group identities (such as transgender according to the ‘wrong body narrative’, wherein gender identity remains within the binaries) do not necessarily entail celebration of gender diversity to include newer, more fluid identity positions such as gender queer, agender, bigender (Wolf and Schweisberger 2013). Such multiplicity and complexity of identity, along with intersectionality, truly poses a problem to anti-prejudice models premised on ‘intergroup contact’, as the group becomes far less easy to identify and homogenise. Instead of identity politics, then, queer theorists tend to choose to focus their political projects on the deconstruction of identity and the binary logic of selfhood itself (see also Chapter 1). Brown summarises the dangers of intergroup tolerance for the very same reason that Butler warns against identity politics, reminding us that ‘discourses of tolerance invariably articulate identity and difference’ (Brown 2009, 10). Likewise, queer theory critiques of identity warn against the aim of tolerance as reifying the neutrality of the dominant category in the hetero/homo binary, and not really challenging the underpinning hierarchies of heteronormativity. Of interest here is how social psychology projects designed to challenge prejudice can be seen as contributing to the constitution or reification of exclusionary group identities by invoking (and thereby performatively reconstituting) the differences that contribute to oppression. This, then, would render them band-aid approaches that do not address the real causes of group antagonism as understood by queer theorists: other-based identity itself. Thus, the practicable problem for queer theory is that of attempting to foster an ideal ethos that implores inequality but respects multiple, endless differences. There is the danger that challenging group identity as the basis for overcoming prejudice can inadvertently result in a naïve individualism that is best captured by universalising the liberal ‘colour-blind,’ ‘gender-blind’ type analysis critiqued above. Some early anti-prejudice approaches in social psychology have been critiqued for focusing too greatly on the individual level in this way, such that they elide the structural level of racism or sexism and other forms of prejudice that inform individual ideologies (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Stoll et al. 2017). Such analyses can simply reify the dominant as universal and under-theorise the existence of prejudice between unequal groups; and so, conversely, challenging group identification may pragmatically do more bad than good. The danger, in the context of sexuality, of pushing either identity or its deconstruction too far has been articulated by gay historian Jeffrey Weeks. If identities ‘are asserted too firmly there are dangers of fixing

Positive regard for difference without identity227 identifications and values that are really necessarily always in flux; yet if their validity is denied, there is an even greater danger of disempowering individuals and groups from the best means of mobilizing for radical change’ (Weeks 2003, 124). However, the point remains that the complexity of identities which are now being more widely expressed cannot be processed with existing groupbased models for tolerating minority groups, and thus require something different. This returns me to those perspectives outlined above that, instead of relying on anti-prejudice aims such as anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia or anti-racism, shift the onus to the dominant group to interrogate their own normative positions. In the words of Duggan, minority politics or the respectability politics that she names ‘homonormativity’ ‘lets the larger society off the hook of anxiety’ (Duggan 1994, 5). This, of course, echoes much earlier calls for white people to do the same, in critical whiteness studies (Mills 2007). In the following section, positive regard for otherness is explored through allophilia.

Positive is not the opposite of negative: allophilia Shifting responsibility to the whole of society, then, what would an authentic contact that transcends this ‘oppositional epistemological frame’ (Butler [1990] 2007, 195) look like and how might it be fostered? If we accept Allport’s (1958) hypothesis that a key individual motivation for prejudice is a deepseated insecurity about sense of self, then it makes sense that approaches that wish to foster positive attitudes and challenge the bases of such prejudice would look to a positive, enabling approach that can target what has traditionally been called the ‘in’ group. Indeed, some social psychologists have argued that ‘the study of prejudice is a negative approach to the study of interpersonal relations, and this negativity will be reflected in the nature of the resulting knowledge’ (Phillips and Ziller 1997). While there is some debate around the extent to which Allport assumed prejudice to be an intentional process, social psychology has been shifting to testing and measuring the subtler negative attitudes of dominant groups to others, replacing traditional concepts such as intergroup prejudice or discrimination with the less-intentional and more internalised ‘discomfort’ or ‘homonegativity’ rather than overt homophobia (Monto and Supinski 2014). This shifts the focus from overt and intentional phobia to more implicit negative attitudes. Researchers in this area argue that ‘there is further work to be done in explaining why homonegativity exists [and] how it is manifested’ (Monto and Supinski 2014, 912). While this work may lead to insights about the subtler aspects of prejudice, some social psychologists are moving away from this paradigm that analyses negative perspectives at all, and towards

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conceptualising what can instead cultivate ‘positive feelings and attitudes’ (Gonzalez et al. 2015), rather than limiting their aims to anti-prejudice. A new concept in social psychology, developed by Pittinsky et al. (2011), ‘allophilia’ as a kind of positive regard of the other, allows social psychologists to focus on positive relations between diverse people. The concept’s founder outlines that ‘allophilia refers to an individual’s feelings of affection, engagement, kinship, comfort, and enthusiasm toward members of a group seen as “different” and “other”’ (Pittinsky 2009, 212), and allows discussions of diversity to go beyond a tolerance model. Pittinsky has developed this concept because of the contention that allophilia is ‘something real in its own right, not simply the absence of prejudice and hatred’ (Pittinsky 2009, 213). Such a concept allows for interrogation of the factors that maximise these positive feelings, underpinning change-based strategies. Indeed, other thinkers have likewise concluded that ‘positive feelings and attitudes may facilitate more positive interactions between groups in general by reducing perceived group differences such that group differences and boundaries become less important in social interactions’ (Gonzalez et al. 2015, 373). This is akin to queer theory’s aim of deconstructing such oppositional difference. This is Pittinsky et al’s (2011, 42) ‘loftier goal – truly bringing diverse groups together by understanding and promoting positive intergroup attitudes’. It offers a conceptually sound practical counterpart, I argue, to the ethical positions that seek to go beyond tolerance as outlined above. For example, Pittinsky (2009) has argued that this is just the concept that can allow teachers to consider what alternative modes education practitioners wish to foster in classrooms, rather than being restricted to thinking about, for example, anti-prejudice work. This approach may not only move us beyond some of the limitations of the tolerance approach, but also beyond group-based strategies, representing an approach that is generalisable beyond the predetermined in- and out-groups, and simply to other individuals whom we perceive as different. As the work of allophilia is in its early stages, it has largely focused thus far on measuring positive attitudes and creating scales. However, some research has suggested that ally-development which is aimed at privileged groups may be able to cultivate the attitudes of allophilia identified in this work. For example, Gonzalez et al. (2015, 372) recommend ‘focusing on values, increasing understanding of privilege and its role in oppression, and cultivating empathy’ in the ‘in’ group or privileged group. This means that the focus can shift to targeting the mindset of the ­dominant or in-group towards difference more generally. This perspective is compatible with the theoretical perspectives on identity above and does not run the risk of reifying minority groups as the other or creating new others. It targets normality and otherness itself, and is an approach operationalised by ‘ally’ programmes, nonviolent communication strategies and whole-school

Positive regard for difference without identity229 approaches to tackling the bullying of minority groups. I will focus on some school programmes as case studies below, as indeed Pittinsky (2009) has already recommended that allophilia should be promoted in classrooms.

Diversity perspectives in practice The fear of a loss of social status has been identified as a key psychological motivation for prejudice (Dovidio et al. 2008, 5). This requires change across all three levels listed below, such that an individual, in being situated in interpersonal and social contexts that are enabling and positive, can have the mode of thought that enables them to in turn contribute with positive attitudes and feelings back to these contexts. I propose that an alternative ethic or way of relating to one another to that of othering could be described as a ‘diversity perspective’ (Squires 2001). Given our fundamental situatedness, this would require: 1 individuals equipped with a sense of self strong enough to resist this fear of loss, and equipped with a strong-enough ethos to resist attribution of hostile otherness 2 interactions with others that do not foster this fear, but enable the positive ethos 3 social contexts that do not foster this fear and enable positive ethos. Combing these two schools of thought – queer theory and the social psychology of allophilia – lends support to approaches that advocate for society-, community- or school-wide approaches to fostering positive relationships and respect. In more applied settings, many approaches to ‘positive’ relations, such as anti-bullying or social cohesion initiatives, have indeed seen a tendency for the responsibility to shift away from the minorities to the majority culture (Gonzalez et al. 2015). The whole-school approach to tackling gender and sexually based bullying is a case in point. This approach sees that ‘more is required than simply a plea to add marginalized voices to an already overpopulated site’ (Britzman 1995, 158) and fosters norm interrogation by all members of societies and positive counterparts. It is posited that this would target the real, lasting cause of prejudice, given that psychologists acknowledge that attempts to put the ‘optimal contact strategy’ into practice have ‘been at best only partially successful’ (Dixon et al. 2005, 698). Schools are key sites of constructing and perpetuating heterosexist and heteronormative ideas and behaviours (Temple 2005). They are therefore appropriate sites to foster ‘affection, engagement, kinship, comfort and enthusiasm’ (Pittinsky 2009, 214) via a range of strategies. For example, the US programme ‘SMS’ (Students for a Meaningful Solution) is a youth empowerment pro-

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gramme that deals with transforming bullying by addressing bullies, victims and bystanders. It interrogates entire mindsets and ways of interacting, offering students new, positive resources for understanding themselves, others, and the world (Kalayjian 2015). Similarly, the No Outsiders project in the UK sought to consider how schools may go beyond the tolerance discourse in the form of mere anti-homophobia stances, and towards explicitly enabling, truly diverse discourses and environments. Their explicit aim is ‘moving beyond a discourse of tolerance to challenge heteronormativity in primary schools’ (DePalma and Atkinson 2009). In the Australian context, the educational initiative of the Safe Schools Coalition addresses bullying based on othering by deploying resources to schools about the nature of sexual and gender identity, relationships and diversity (Nicholas 2016a; 2016b). Robinson emphasises ‘the value of starting the development of children’s sexual citizenship and building respectful and ethical relationships early in children’s lives through open and comprehensive sex and sexualities education’ (Robinson 2013, 82). These approaches speak to all three levels of diversity perspectives outlined above, focusing as they do on developing enabling individuals, relationships and contexts. They also avoid the need to appeal to specific, fixed-identity categories which can further minoritise, and aim for more positive outcomes than tolerance. Such approaches have seen great success in reducing the subtler forms of prejudice based on othering (DePalma and Atkinson 2009). This interrogation of normative identity and heterosexism is seen to benefit all students: Challenging heterosexism not only helps to break down the norms that ‘confine everybody to rigid gender role stereotypes’, but also encourages students to develop critical thinking skills to question presumptions and biases they encounter throughout their lives. (Temple 2005, 289)

This echoes claims from proponents of allophilia that ‘positive feelings, attitudes, and behaviours towards outgroups may also lead to positive outcomes for those with privilege, including personal growth and increased wellbeing’ (Gonzalez et al. 2015, 378). This ideal of acquiring ‘critical thinking skills to question presumptions and biases’ (Temple 2005, 289) is a key aim of queer pedagogy, the application of queer theory that seeks to expand the notion of ‘reading’ and ‘learning’ to include the ways that we read each other and culture (Sumara and Davis 1999). I have argued elsewhere (2014) that reading queerly, or becoming ‘queerly literate’ – understood as the capacity to challenge reductionist and binary thinking – is essential for fostering empowered individuals. Queer pedagogues claim that this capacity to ‘interrupt heteronormativity’ will ‘broaden possibilities for perceiving, ­interpreting, and representing experience’ (Sumara and Davis 1999, 191). What the above ­strategies entail, and what queer pedagogy more broadly aims

Positive regard for difference without identity231 for, is an ‘­unsettling the sediments of what one imagines when one imagines normalcy, what one imagines when one imagines difference’ (Britzman 1995, 165). Queer pedagogy, then, is about something quite different than teaching about LGBT people; it is ‘a thought of a method rather than a pronouncement of content’ (Britzman 1995, 155). Understanding ‘reading’ more widely like this, and aiming for a perceptual ideal of reading queerly speaks to all of the three levels of a diversity perspective that I outlined above. It allows for one to understand one’s own identity without needing appeals to normalcy and its constitutive outside of difference to orient oneself; it allows for interaction and readings of others that do not attempt to read them within normative attributions; and it provides wider cultural resources to allow for fostering this capacity. Queer pedagogy, therefore, is a means by which an authentic and long-lasting diversity perspective could be cultivated.

Conclusion This chapter has lent support to the argument that true diversity and positive regard for difference requires work and interrogation on the part of the dominant or privileged group. Such approaches will be more effective in challenging prejudice (including subtle negative attitudes) based on perceived differences in identity. Whole-school approaches to sexual and gender ­diversity encapsulate this approach, and useful future research could be done to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of these practices that seem to be the embodiment of the gallant aim of ‘allophilia’. Queer pedagogy may then offer a model for the mindset that could be usefully extended to cultivating open and positive diversity mindsets in society more broadly. These practices can be understood as microcosms of what, I argue, needs to occur on a society-wide level. They can challenge the normativity that allows for the construction of ‘in/out’ understandings of others. Challenging this normativity will foster longer-lasting challenges to prejudice, and more effective strategies for true diversity. They demonstrate a more effective approach to prejudice reduction, entailing the cultivation of a sense of positive regard for difference generally in all members of society, especially in the dominant or ‘in’ groups. This ‘diversity perspective’ can, then, account for the material realities of power imbalances that result from group-based social identity – that is, an understanding of group traits – without collapsing back into their difference-based logics and overriding a deep and authentic understanding and respect of another individual’s personal traits. Identities can reify and exclude, and such an approach offers understandings of self and other that go beyond identity categories.

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232

Note 1 ‘Cis is the Latin prefix for “on the same side.” It complements trans, the prefix for “across” or “over.” “Cisgender” replaces the terms “nontransgender” or “bio man/ bio woman” to refer to individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity’ (Schilt and Westbrook 2009, 461).

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Positive regard for difference without identity235 Squires, J. 2001. “Representing Groups, Deconstructing Identities.” Feminist Theory 2 (1): 7–27. Stoll, L., T. Lilley and K. Pinter. 2017. “Gender-Blind Sexism and Rape Myth Acceptance.” Violence Against Women 23 (1): 28–45. Sumara, D. and B. Davis. 1999. “Interrupting Heteronormativity: Toward a Queer Curriculum Theory.” Curriculum Inquiry 29 (2): 191–208. Temple, J. R. 2005. “‘People Who Are Different from You’: Heterosexism in Quebec High School Textbooks.” Canadian Journal of Education 28 (3): 271–94. Warner, M. 1993. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Weeks, J. 2003. “Necessary Fictions: Sexual Identities and the Politics of Diversity.” In Sexualities and Society: A Reader, edited by J. Holland and M. Waites, 122–31. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Weiner, J. and D. Young. 2011. “Queer Bonds.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17 (2–3): 223–41. Wilson, J. 2016a. ‘‘A Sense that White Identity Is Under Attack’: Making Sense of the Alt-Right.” Guardian, August 24. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/ aug/23/alt-right-movement-white-identity-breitbart-donald-trump. Wilson, J. 2016b. “Clickbait Scoops and an Engaged ‘Alt-Right’: Everything to Know About Breitbart News.” Guardian, 16 November. https://www.theguardian.com/ media/2016/nov/15/breitbart-news-alt-right-stephen-bannon-trump-administra​t​ i​on. Wolf, J. and V. Schweisberger. 2013. “Should We Stop Believin’? Glee and the Cultivation of Essentialist Identity Discourse.” In Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives, edited by J. Campbell and T. Carilli, 157–70. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Index

Note: ‘n.’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page Abbott, Tony 34, 41, 49, 223 active audience/reading 133–4, 137 Acton, T. 114 Adivasis, positive discrimination 194n.5 affirmation of difference/diversity 220, 221 Afghanistan 169–71 Ahmed, S. 201 Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad 180 AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/Justice and Development Party, Turkey) 201, 203, 204, 210, 212n.8 Alias (television series) 123 allophilia 218, 227–9, 230 Allport, Gordon 219, 220, 221, 227 Al-Natour, Souheil 103n.6 Alston, Phillip 153n.6 Althusser, L. 40, 41, 137n.2 Ambedkar, B. R. 181, 188–9, 193, 194n.1, 194n.2, 194n.4, 195n.9, 195n.10 America see United States Anderson, Benedict 38 Anglosphere 34 anti-identity approach 6 ANZAC Day commemorations 164 ANZUS alliance 37 Arab Spring 145 Arendt, Hannah 101, 103n.5, 142, 145, 148 Asian financial crisis 47 Asian region Australian attitudes towards 37–8 Australian engagement with 43, 45–6

assemblage theory 200–1 Asséo, H. 114 assimilationist LGBT identity politics 224 Auge, Marc 144 The Australian (newspaper) 222 Australian identity and Anglosphere 34–5, 48 ANZAC Day commemorations and 164 and belonging in the world 36–8 and cultural sense of belonging 46–9 ‘Culture Wars’ and 45–6 and history vs geography 36–8, 49 and political sense of belonging 44–6, 49 Australian values 37, 47, 48 Autesserre, S. 84 backlashes against diversity 218, 222 Bahujan Samaj Party 195n.7 Bainimarama, Frank 16, 27 Bannon, Stephen 222 Barnett, Michael 40 barrios internally displaced people 144 as non-places 144–5 stigmatising of area and occupants 143–4, 153n.4 Barua, Ankur 193 behavioural insiders 80 Bell, Vikki 76

238 belonging communal belonging and everyday life 149–51 grounded claims to 148–51 presence and residence 148–9, 150 in the world 35, 36–8 Berberich, Christine 75 Berney, R. 146 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 180, 186 Bhatt, Chetan 187 Bildt, Carl 166, 172 Billon, P. L. 76 Bonilla-Silva, E. 221 Bradley Stokes, blank memorial 164 Brett, Judith 46 ‘Brexit’ 1 British colonialism, indirect rule over Fiji 19–21 British race patriotism 37 Brookes, Younane 45 Brown, W. 221, 226 Buddhism 188 bulldozer neoliberalism 203 bullying, whole-school approach to 229–30 Butler, Judith 5, 66, 76, 142, 145, 152, 153n.5, 207, 225, 226 Campbell, Neil 75 Canada, as akin to Australia 34, 41, 49 Carrasco, O. 114 caste Dalit exit strategies 188–91 global relevance 189–91 hegemony of 184–6 as an ‘Indian problem’ 191, 194 as minority identity 191 particularity of 192, 195n.12 as race 190, 191, 192–3 as resilient discursive formation 182–8 social mobility for caste groups 183 untouchability 183–4, 185 caste-based discrimination 180–1, 182–3, 190 Castillo, Rengifo 144, 149 Charlesworth, Hilary 56 Charlie Hebdo, terrorist attack on 1 Chidester, Phil 130 Christopher, K. W. 189 cisgender 217–18, 224, 232n1 citizenship concept of 92, 93 conflation with identity 95–6, 98

Index flexibility of boundaries of 102 jus sanguinis principles 95, 96 relationship with identity 93–4 as rights 91–101 as right to claim rights 142, 145, 148–51 state-centric models 141 clash of civilisations 129, 130 Clinton, Hilary 2 Clough Marinaro, I. 113 collective amnesia 174n.1 collective-identity closure 109, 114 collective identity in Sweden challenging of 165–7 memory and 159–61, 173–4 neutrality and 164–5 collective memory moral character of 166 nature of 162–3, 164, 174n.1 Colombia assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs) 142–3, 147, 150, 151 conflict 141, 142, 143, 148, 152n.2 falsos positivos scandal 147–8, 153n.6 grounded claims to belonging 148–51 IDPs in barrios 143–4 madres de Soacha 147–8, 151, 153n.6 number of IDPs 142 protests by IDPs in Bogotá 146–7 rural-to-urban migration 143, 153n.3 stigmatisation of IDPs 143–5 violent failure of citizenship 141, 142 colonialism in Fiji 19–21 ‘indirect’ rule 19 the common 205–6 conflict-affected societies differentiated identity and peacebuilding 81–4 place-based identity in 75–81 Connolly, William E. 73 constitutions and identity formation 15, 16, 17–19, 29–31 preambles 18 contact theory/contract hypothesis 217, 218, 219–20, 221 cosmopolitanism 44–5 counter-terrorism 125, 133, 135, 136 counter-terrorism discourse 126, 135 Cox, R. W. 83 Croft, Stuart 125 Cuban Missile Crisis 41

Index239 cultural difference, othering of 224 ‘Culture Wars’ 45–6 Daily Mail (newspaper) 222 Dalit activism difficulty of enacting 183 discursive repertoires of 182, 188 strategies for exiting caste system 188–91 Dalit identity 182, 186–8, 193 Dalit movement 181, 188, 190 Dalit Panthers 181, 188, 194n.1 Dalit politics 186 Dalits conversion to Buddhism or Islam 188, 189, 195n.10 as minority 186–8, 195n.11 positive discrimination 194n.5 Dalrymple, R. 46 Daniele, U. 112 Dean, Jodi 2, 202, 206 deconstructive theory 225 defence policy Anglo-American security alliances 36–8 Howard Doctrine 47–8 de Lauretis, Teresa 225 Democratic Republic of Congo 168 dharma/duty 187, 195n.8 Dhasal, Namdeo 194n.1 discourse analysis of 17 identity and 5, 6 political discourse analysis 17–18 diversity, backlashes against 218, 222 diversity perspective 219, 223, 229–31 Doniger, Wendy 195n.8 dramaturgy 5 Duggan, L. 227 Dyer, Richard 126, 130 East Timor see Timor-Leste electoral systems 18 empathetic insiders 79–80 Enloe, Cynthia 58 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 201, 203, 204, 208 Erikson, Erik 3 ethnocentrism 224 ethno-nationalism 222 ethnonormalised implied viewing position 131, 135 European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) civil and military missions 168

Eurozone crisis 1 exclusionary group identities, reification of 225–6 existential insiders 78 existential outsiders 81 FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia/Revolutionary Army of Colombia) 148, 152n.2 Fenstermaker, S. 5 F-FDTL (Falintil-Forças Armadas de Defesa de Timor-Leste/Defence Forces of Timor-Leste) 60, 63 Fierke, K. 39 Fiji ‘big man’ system 19 ‘chiefly’ political system 19–20, 21–2 Christianity 21–2 colonialism 19–20 colonial legacies 16, 20–1, 30 constitutions see Fijian constitutions Deed of Cession 20, 21, 22, 23, 26 electoral system 24–5, 26, 29, 30 ethnic-based politics 16, 22, 23–7 ethno-nationalist movements 20 Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) 20, 23, 25 Independence 21 military coups 23, 25, 26–7 multiculturalism 25–6 pre-colonial political systems 19, 21 Fijian constitutions 1970 21–2, 23 1990 23–5 1997 25–6 2013 26–9 Fijian national identity indigenous Fijian identity as 21–2, 23, 24–5 multicultural identity 26 role of constitutions in shaping 29–31 Fijians common citizenry 27, 28 indigenous Fijians as iTaukei 27, 28–9 national identity 22, 23, 24–5 paramountcy of 20, 21, 23, 26 protection of rights 23–4 Indo-Fijians economic role and influence 21, 25 emigration 25 indentured labourers 20, 28

240 Fijians (cont.) marginalisation 27 political exclusion 20–1, 23 political power 26 recognition of historical plight 28 Finlayson, A. 40–1 Finnish Winter War 165 forced migration 141 foreign policy Anglo-American security alliances 36–7 Asian economic engagement 38 cultural foundations 40 history vs geography 36–8 and national identity 35–6, 39–42 Foucault, Michel 6, 113 France, terrorist attacks 1 Fraser, Malcolm 37 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia see FARC Galanter, Marc 184–5 Gandhi, M. K. 181, 191 Ganguly, Debjani 188, 189 Gansa, Alex 123, 127 Garnaut, Ross 46 gender, conflation with ‘women’ 53, 55 gender-blind sexism 221, 223 gendered activity 65 gendered identities construction and maintenance of 55, 66 in peace operations 53, 54 perpetuation of 66 in post-conflict environments 54 role in conflict environments 53–4 gendered roles, construction of 55 gender inclusivity, technical approaches 65–6 gender mainstreaming 56–7 gender normativity 224 gender prejudice 223 ‘gender work’, as women’s work 55–6 Gezi Park protests 199, 200, 204–5, 207–8, 212n.6 Gheorghe, N. 114, 115–16 Giddens, A. 75 Gillard, Julia 223 global human rights 93 globalisation and human subjectivity 4 push-back against 1 Goffman, I. 5

Index Goodes, Adam 218, 222–3 Gordon, Howard 123, 127 Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), Fiji 20, 23, 25 Greece, Syriza party 1 Grenfell, Damien 60 groups, problems with 225–7 Guru, Gopal 192 Gurukkal, Rajan 192 ‘Gypsy archipelago’ 114 Hage, G. 221 Hall, Stuart 5, 126, 133–4 Hanson, Pauline 46 Haq, Ameerah 62 Harding, Sandra 65 Hardt, M. 205–6 Hariri, Rafic 92 Harper, Stephen 41 Harvey, David 142, 146, 152 Haslam, S. Alexander 3 Hatufim (television series) 123 Hawke, Bob 38 HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi/ People’s Democratic Party, Turkey) 209 Hellman, Maria 170 Herb, Guntram H. 75, 76 heteronormativity 200, 202, 223, 224 HEVI 209–11 Hindu Code Acts 185 Hinduism 184, 194n.4 Hindu nationalism 181, 187 Hindu Right 180, 186–7, 191 Homeland (television series) British viewers’ readings of 124, 134–6 dramatic irony, use of 132 insecurity, use of 128–9 male subject position in 131–3 narrative identity in 127–8 negotiating identity in 133–6 as terrorism television 123–4 viewers as victims of terrorism 128 white Western subject position in 128–31 homonegativity 227 homonormativity 227 homophobia 223, 224 Hopf, T. 39 Howard Doctrine 47–8 Howard Government, military assistance to US 42, 48

Index241 Howard, John approach to foreign affairs 37, 42, 47–8 defence policy 42, 47–8 on engagement with Asia 47 national identity narrative 35, 36, 38, 42–3, 46–9 nationalism 46–7 on US–Australian relations 48 Hudson, Robert 75 Hultqvist, Peter 172 human rights access to 93–4, 103n.5 Dalit rights as 190–1 LGBT rights discourses 225 hybridity 71, 74 identity approaches to 4–7 concept of 3–4 conflation with citizenship 95–6, 98 constitution through discourse 225 contingent nature 15 deconstruction of 225–6 interplay with memory and trauma 162–4 performative nature of see performative as relational process 15 relationship with citizenship 93–4 and security 53–4, 124, 125 identity crisis 3–4 identity formation and maintenance discursive context 15 role of constitutions 15, 16, 17–19, 29–31 identity politics 2, 72, 225, 226 India caste-based discrimination 180–1, 182–3, 190 caste recognition 184–5 caste as resilient discursive formation 182–8 Dalit activism 182, 183, 188–91 Dalit movement 181, 188, 190, 191 Dalits as minority 186–8, 195n.11 Hindu Code Acts 185 Hindu nationalism 181, 187 Hindu Right 180, 186–7, 191 reservation system 184, 185, 194n.5 varna system 185, 188, 195n.6 Indian National Congress party 188, 191 Indigenous reconciliation 44 ‘indirect’ rule 19 Indonesia, economic strength 47

in/out group dichotomy 219 INTERFET Mission in East Timor 47 intergroup contact 217 internal displacement 141 internally displaced people (IDPs) 141 see also Colombia international citizenship 38 International Dalit Solidarity Network 190 internationalism, in Sweden 165, 167 international relations, memory turn 162 interpellation 40–2, 126, 128, 133, 134, 137n.2 intersectionality 5, 59, 226 intersubjective meanings 39 Irani, Smriti Zubin 180 ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) 169 Islamophobia 126 Israel establishment of 91 see also Palestinian refugees Italy Campi nomadi 108, 109, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118 Emergenza Nomadi 108, 111, 112 Problema Nomadi 107, 108 see also Romanies in Italy Jacob, Sam 164 Jaffrelot, Christophe 185–6 Jats, mobilisation 180–1, 185 Jenkins, Laura Dudley 184 Jodhka, Surinder S. 182–3, 184 Jones, Martin 75 Jones, R. 75 Joppke, C. 94 Kalb, Don 83 Kappler, S. 75, 76 Karlsson, Klas-Göran 163 Kaviraj, Sudipta 192 Keating, Paul ‘big picture’ ideas 44 foreign policy agenda 38, 41, 43 national identity narrative 35, 36, 41–2, 43–6 republicanism 44 social and economic policy agenda 43–4 Kidder, Robert L. 185 Kinnvall, C. 222 Kolenda, Pauline 183–4 Krishna, Sankaran 191

Index

242 Kurdish LGBTQ activism 209–11 Kurdish nationalism 211 Labour Party, and Asian engagement 38, 45, 46 Laliberté, Nicole 83 Lambda Istanbul 209 Latin America, violent failure of citizenship 141 Leach, M. 46 Lebanon conflation of citizenship and identity 95–6 myth of kinship 95–7 naturalised Palestinians 97–101 Palestinian refugees from Israel 91 refugee camps 92, 101 re-Lebanisation policy 96–7, 98, 103n.6 requisites for naturalisation 96 social and sectarian cleavages 95 status of refugees 94–5 tawtin 91–2, 94–6, 98, 101, 102, 102n.3 Lefebrve, Henri 142, 146, 147 LGBT rights discourses 225 liberalism, approach to identity 4–5 Liberal Party, foreign policy 37, 38 Libya, Operation Unified Protector 171–2 Lindh, Anna 165 Mac Ginty, Roger 73–4, 82 McNevin, A. 149 madres de Soacha 147–8, 151, 153n.6 Mahars 188, 189 Massey, Doreen 76–7 Mead, G. H. 5 Melanesian political systems 19 memory definition 162, 163 interplay with identity and trauma 162–4 memory boom 161–2 Menzies, Robert 36, 37 middle power in international relations Australia as 38 definition 50n.2 Milner, Murray 195n.12 minority politics 218, 224, 227 misogyny, challenging 223 Mithander, Conny 163 Morey, Peter 131 Morley, D. 133 multiculturalism in Australia 44, 221

Nagaraj, D. R. 186 Narayan, Badri 186, 187 narrative identity theory 124, 126 national identity and constitutions 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 29, 30 foreign policy and 35–6, 39–42 nature of 5 political leaders’ role in construction of 39–40 social construction and contestation 38–9 nations, shaping of 163–4 NATO Enhanced Opportunity Programme 159 Host Nation Support agreement 159 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) 169–71 Operation Enduring Freedom 169 Operation Unified Protector 171–2 Partnership Interoperability Initiative 159 Resolute Support Mission 169 Swedish involvement with 159, 166, 167, 168, 171–2 Swedish membership 166, 168, 174n.3 Negri, A. 205–6 Nepal, Dalit organisations 190 ‘No Gender December’ campaign 222 non-places 144 No Outsiders project 230 Nordic Battle Groups 168, 171 Nordstrom, Carolyn 144, 149 not-knowing, deliberate acts of 149 Obama administration 224 objective outsiders 80–1 One Nation party 46 Operation Artemis 168 orientalism 224 Palacios, G. 144–5 Palestine, British Mandate 96–7 Palestinian identity and Lebanese citizenship 91–2, 95–101 protection of 92, 93, 95, 100 Palestinian refugees and citizenship as rights 97–101 empowerment through citizenship 100–1 from Israel 91 in Jordan 91, 92

Index243 in Lebanon 91–2, 94–5 and re-Lebanisation 96–7, 98 repatriation, prospect of 91, 97 from the Seven Villages 92, 96–7, 102n.2 status in Arab countries 95 Palme, Olof 165 Paulet-Newcombe Agreement 97 peacebuilding agents behavioural insiders 80 differentiated identity and peacebuilding 81–4 empathetic insiders 79–80 existential insiders 78 existential outsiders 81 ‘internationals’ vs ‘locals’ 72–4 ‘local-locals’ 74, 78 objective outsiders 80–1 solid categorisation 72–4 subjective insiders 78–9 typology 77–8 peace monuments in Sweden 165 peace operations gender mainstreaming 56–7, 62–3 gender perspective 53, 55 gender policy 54–5 ‘gender’ work roles 55–6, 63–5 justifications for women’s inclusion in 57, 64 knowledge production 83–4 marginalisation of women as decision makers 58–9, 64, 65 soft vs hard issues 55 and women as victims of violence 57–8, 61–2 peace–security–development nexus 83 performative acts of resistance 79 aspects of gender 55 gendered body as 225 nature of identity 76-7 performativity 5 Pettigrew, T. F. 220 Pittinsky, T. L. 228, 229 place creation of 144 sanctioned places vs non-places 144 place-based identity in conflict-affected societies 75–81 PNTL (Polícia Nacional Timor-Leste) 60, 63, 65, 67n.5 Polícia Nacional Timor-Leste see PNTL political discourse analysis 17–18

political geography 72, 75–6 political leaders, construction of national identity 39–40 political participation, located account of 149–50 political psychology 222 politics of identity, analysis of 2–3 positive regard for others 218, 227–9, 230 posthuman age 4 ‘post-identity’ approaches to identity 6 post-nationalism 93–4 ‘post post-identity’ approach 6 post-tolerance political theory 218 Poulingy, Béatrice 82, 83 prejudice challenging 217, 218 and contact theory 217, 219–20 motivation for 227–9 paternalism and 221–2 social and political theory critiques 223–4 psychoanalytic film theory 128 Puar, Jasbir 201 Qarase, Laisenia 27 the queer common 199, 200, 205–11 queer ethics 218 queer pedagogy 230–1 queer theory 218, 224, 225 Rabuka, Sitiveni 23, 25, 26 race, equivalence of caste to 190, 191, 192–3 racialised identities 59 racism 222–3 Romanies in Italy 108, 116 anti-Muslim racism in Homeland 130 Randazzo, Elisa 75 Rao, Anupama 182, 186, 192 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 186 Rawls, J. 221 reading queerly 218, 230, 231 realism, approach to identity 4 reflexive sociology 72, 75 refugees rights of 145 see also Palestinian refugees Reicher, Stephen 3 Reinfeldt, Frederik 168 Relph, Edward 76, 77 Renan, Ernest 163–4

244 republicanism 44 respectability politics 223, 224, 225, 227 Richmond, O. P. 74, 78 Ricoeur, Paul 167 rights of displaced persons 148 right to claim rights 142, 145, 148–51 of stateless people 145 see also human rights right to the city 142, 145–6, 147, 150, 151, 152 right-wing populism, rise of 4 Roediger, H. L. 174n.1 Romanies in Europe 109–10 Romanies in Italy Camminanti 110 campi nomadi residents in Rome 108–9 camps policy 107–8, 117 camps system 109, 111–13, 114 census (2008) 111 citizenship 110, 111, 116 collective-identity closure 109, 113, 114, 118 cultural protection 107, 109 disempowerment 108, 112–13 exploitation 116–17 inter-ethnic rivalry 116–17 internment in concentration camps 107 negative attitudes towards 116 as ‘nomadic’ people 107, 108, 110 opposition to Gadje world 114 population, overview of 109–11 resistance 113–14, 115 Rom 110 as security issue 108 Sinti 110 social control and segregation 107–8, 109, 112–13 welfare dependency 114–16 Romani language 110 rooted cosmopolitanism 45 Safe Schools Coalition 218, 224, 230 Said, Edward 144 Sandstrom, K. 84 sanskritisation 183 SAP (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti/Social Democratic Party, Sweden) 160, 165 Scottish independence movement 1 security, identity and 53–4, 124, 125 security discourses 125

Index security policy, hegemonic masculinity in 125, 133 self-minoritisation 186 sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Timor-Leste 61–3 sexual violence in conflict 57–8, 59 Sigona, N. 113 Simone, Abdou Maliq 193 SMS (Students for a Meaningful Solution) 229–30 social constructivism, approach to identity 5 social democratic internationalism 163 Social Democratic Party, Sweden see SAP social and political theory, analysis of prejudice 223–4 social psychology, anti-prejudice work 217, 223, 226, 227–8 solidarist approaches to identity 5 Solimano, N. 114 spaces as sites for contestation 146 Spain, Podemos party 1 Spanish Civil War 165 Speight, George 26–7 Spivak, Gayatri 192 Spooks (television series) 123, 127 Springer, Simon 76 Squires, J. 223 Srinivas, M. N. 185 Stasolla, Carlo 112 subjectification 126, 128, 136 subjectivity 126 Australian subjectivity 35, 36, 38, 40, 42, 49 constitution and nature of 6 globalisation and 4 political subjectivity 149 white subjectivity 130 Suharto 47 Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari 192 Sweden actions during Second World War 166 activist military agenda 160 approach to international security and peace 159, 168 challenging collective memory 165–7 collective identity and memory 159–61 EU membership 166–7, 168 folkhem 165 internationalism 118, 165, 167 as militarily non-aligned state 159, 160, 166, 168

Index245 military engagement and doctrine 168, 169–71, 172 national security concerns 172–3 NATO, relationship with 159, 166, 167, 168–72, 174n.3 neutrality and collective identity 164–7 as neutral state 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 173, 174n.2 new ‘memory bank’ 160, 161, 168–71 peacekeeping tradition 169, 170 peace monuments 165 recognition of war veterans 171 self-image as ‘good state’ 165, 167, 168, 170 self-narrative 160, 163, 166, 167 social democratic ideology 159, 165 solidarism 170 terrorist attack in Stockholm 172 violent extremism 172 war dead 170–1 war memorials 164–5 Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) in Afghanistan 169–71 conscription 168, 173, 174n2 in Democratic Republic of Congo 168 in Libya 171–2, 174n.4 reformation and internationalisation 168, 169 renationalisation 172 symbolic interactionism 5 Syriza 1 Taksim Dayanısması (Taskim Soliarity) 209 tawtin 91–2, 94–6, 98, 101, 102, 102n.3 territory, definition 144–5 terrorism association with Islam 126 attacks in France 1 attack in Stockholm 172 framing of 9/11 attacks 123 identity and popular culture 125–6 as plot device in popular culture 123, 125 War on Terror 123 terrorism discourse 127 terrorism television drama 123–4, 131 see also Homeland (television series) Timor-Leste crisis period in 2006 60–1 domestic violence 61, 63, 65 INTERFET Mission (1999) 47

marginalisation of women as decision makers 58–9, 64, 65 martial arts gangs 61, 67n.3 peace operations 53, 54, 59–60 role of women in security sector 62 sexual and gender-based violence 60–3 UNMIT (2006–12) 54, 60, 61, 62 UN transitional administration 63, 65 women in security sector 63–6 tolerance, problems with 220–5 Tolgfors, Sven 170, 171–2 traditions, invention of 18 trauma, memory and identity 162–4 Treaty of Westphalia 141 Trembath, Anna 60 True, Jacqui 58 Trump, Donald 2, 3, 222 Tryggestad, Torunn 58 Turkey anti-queer hate speech 202 anti-trans violence 203–4, 207 Berkin Elvan protests 205 Gezi Park protests 199, 204–5, 212n.5 Kurdish community, violence against 210, 211 Kurdish LGBTQ activism 209–11 LGBTQ Pride marches 199, 203, 205, 209 limits on freedom of expression and assembly 202, 212n.2 May Day protests 205 Misdemeanour Law 202 modernisation 203 police brutality 203–4, 205, 207, 208, 211 political empowerment of queers 209 public morality laws 201, 202 queer organising during Gezi protests 207–9 urban regeneration programmes 203, 212n.3, 212n.4 women’s role 201–2 Turkish public, and proper citizenship 200–4 24 (television series) 123, 127, 131 Ulster Loyalism 40–1 United Kingdom referendum on EU membership 1 relations with Australia 37 see also British colonialism

246 United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) 54, 60, 61, 62 United Nations Security Council, resolution on Women, Peace and Security 53, 55, 57–8, 62, 65, 66 United States 2016 presidential election 2, 3, 222 American self-identity as policeman for the world 127–8 backlash against Obama administration 224 Cuban Missile Crisis 41 relations with Australia 48 self-image of American statehood 133 universal personhood 93 University of Hyderabad, caste-based discrimination 180 UN Police (UNPOL) 63, 64–5, 66 untouchability 183–4, 185 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor 63, 65 varna system 185, 188, 195n.6 Varsanyi, M. 149 Väyrynen, Tarja 56 Vermula, Rohit 180 Verovšek, P. J. 174n.1 Wagnsson, Charlotte 170 Wakankar, Milind 183 war memorials blank memorial in Bradley Stokes 164 in Sweden 164–5

Index war memories, and construction of national self-image 164 Warner, Michael 206 war on terror 42, 48, 123, 125, 135–6 Weeks, Jeffrey 226–7 Weldes, J. 41 Wertsch, J. V. 174n.1 Wesley, M. 46 West, C. 5 Western statehood, self-image 133 Wheeler, Nicholas 170 White Australia policy 38 white identity politics 2 white ignorance 224 whiteness in terrorism stories 126, 130–1 white supremacy 221, 222, 223, 224 Whitlam, Gough 38 women conflation with ‘gender’ 53, 55 empowerment of 62 marginalisation as decision makers 58–9, 64, 65 as passive 57, 58 patriarchal protection of 58, 62 role in peace and security 53 role in Turkey 201–2 in security sector 63–6 as victims of violence 57–8, 61–2 work roles in peace operations 55–6, 62, 64, 65 Woods, Michael 75