The Political Anthropology of Ethnic and Religious Minorities by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815382126
Google: 9xjctAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 39219282
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-01-15T12:14:55+00:00

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF LIMINALITY IN POLITICS

But what is the source of such paradox? Ambivalence and mutability seem to be an ever-recurring theme in the region’s history, dictating its “political character.” The region is at the same time at the center and at the margin of the world that grew from the remains of the two Roman Empires. The binary dialectics and the limits of definition between the eastern and western Roman heritage, the Byzantine Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, the Russian and multiple western empires, and the communist and the democratic worlds were always established with reference to this area. Therefore, the region itself has continuously remained “neither this nor that” — a minority at the center, “betwixt and between” of the two dialectically related worlds.10

Geographically it is often referred to as the transitory space. In the case of Ukraine, the state’s name literally means “a land on the verge” or the “borderland.”11 Talking about the more recent history, it was and in some cases is still imagined as “in transition” from what can be broadly called “the Soviet existence” towards the liberal democratic existence, which nowadays becomes increasingly associated with the European Union. Most recently, it has been a clashing point between the new transformation of the civilizational binary mentioned above in form of the Transatlantic and what is becoming the trans-Asian worlds.12 In Boris Yeltsin’s words, the Cold War was replaced by the “Cold Peace.”13 The Central and Eastern European region became a field of different global power plays. It is an area of expansion for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union as well as an area of postimperial interest to the Russian Federation.14 Ethnic minorities once again emerge here as a medium and a pretext for conflict, also used as a tool to justify power-interest-based politics.

Arnold van Gennep conceptualized and Victor Turner elaborated the conceptualization of the process of transition with the theme of identity at its center as liminality.15 The term, as used by the authors, refers to small-scale tribal groups. Yet, it has been successfully applied by social and political thinkers in relation to contemporary politics as well, particularly when discussing paradoxical and ambiguous political realities.16 Politics is most often considered a rational affair, where interests meet and clash, and strategies unfold, where negotiations happen and agreements are signed. However, there is another side, the a-rational one (one that is prereflective), which is of no less importance to lived political reality than the former. The “human side” of politics consists of passions, principles, historical narratives, images, and representations. And these become particularly important during liminal transitions. In short, politics is not only institutional, logical, and legal but also human, paradoxical, and experiential.17

Talking about recent experiential side of politics (including the effect on collective memory, narrative as well as political imaginary and culture) in Central-Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union realized a brutal modernization, particularly in the east of the region, which changed its face profoundly. It systematically destroyed and transformed

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