Nationalism and ambivalence: Ethnicity, gender and folklore as categories of otherness

Patterns of Prejudice

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 237-258

  Roginsky, Dina ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Body; Cultural politics; Dance; Ethnicity; Folklore; Gender; Israel; Nation building; Nationalism; Zionism

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745005058     PISSN: 0031322X     EISSN: 14617331     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00313220600769505     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966);
2. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. from the French by Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane 1979);
3. Haim Hazan, 'Body image and temporality among the aged: a case study of an ambivalent symbol', Studies in Symbolic Interaction, vol. 7a, 1986, 305-29;
4. Margaret Lock, 'Cultivating the body: anthropology and epistemologies of practice and knowledge', Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 22, 1993, 133-55;
5. Helen Thomas, The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003).
6. Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1988);
7. Jane K. Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1990);
8. Sara Hinski, 'Rokmet Ha-tahara me-bezalel' (Women's embroidery in Bezalel), Theoria u-bikoret, vol. 11, 1997, 177-205;
9. Lisa Gilman, 'The traditionalization of women's dancing, hegemony, and politics in Malawi', Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 41, no. 1, 2004, 33-60;
10. Michael Herzfeld, The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004).
11. This article uses socio-historical analysis as the main research method, relying mostly on archival materials. An ethnographic analysis of the dances deserves separate consideration. See, for example, Dina Roginsky, 'Sixty years of the first Israeli dance festival 1944-2004: changes in Israeli folk dances', Machol Achshav, vol. 11, 2004, 24-30 (Hebrew and English).
12. Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990);
13. Don Handelman, Nationalism and the Israeli State: Bureaucratic Logic in Public Events (Oxford: Berg 2004).
14. Handelman, Nationalism and the Israeli State, ch. 2.
15. Handelman, Nationalism and the Israeli State, Ibid., 41-2.
16. Mark Levene, "The limits of tolerance: nation-state building and what it means for minority groups', Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 34, no. 2, 2000, 19-40;
17. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds), Unsettling Settler Societies (London: Sage 1995).
18. See, for example, Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995);
19. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2001).
20. Mizrahim (or Sephardim) are 'Oriental' (or 'Eastern') Jews from Asia and Africa; Ashkenazim are 'Western' Jews from Europe.
21. Gurit Kadman, 'Am Roked (Dancing Nation) (Jerusalem: Shoken 1969).
22. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso 1983);
23. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983);
24. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1983);
25. Anthony D. Smith, The Antiquity of Nations (Cambridge: Polity 2004);
26. Craig Calhoun, 'Nationalism and ethnicity', Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 19, 1993, 211-39;
27. John Hutchinson, 'Myth against myth: the nation as ethnic overlay', Nations and Nationalism, vol. 10, nos 1-2, 2004, 109-23.
28. Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England 2000).
29. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism;
30. Anderson, Imagined Communities;
31. Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition.
32. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks [1952] (London: Paladin 1970);
33. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New York: Panthom 1978);
34. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1993);
35. Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge 1990), 1-7, 291-322;
36. Homi K. Bhabha, 'The other question: difference, discrimination and the discourse of colonialism', in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Min-Ha and Cornel West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art 1990), 71-87.
37. Homi K. Bhabha, 'Introduction: narrating the nation', in Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, 1-7 (1).
38. Bhabha, 'The other question', 71.
39. Zygmunt Bauman, 'Modernity and ambivalence', in Mike Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London: Sage 1990), 143-69 (165).
40. Zygmunt Bauman, Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, Ibid., 166-7.
41. The idea of ideological embodiment through folklore is discussed in the author's dissertation: Dina Roginsky, 'Mecholelim Israeliut: Leumiut, Ethniut Ve-folklore "Rikudei Ha-am ve-haedot" Be-Israel' (Performing Israeliness: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Israeli 'Folk and Ethnic' Dance), Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. The current article will not deal specifically with the complicated process of embodiment, which needs to be demonstrated ethnographically and deserves separate consideration.
42. Richard M. Dorson (ed.), Folklore in the Modern World (Paris: Mouton 1978);
43. Hutchinson, 'Myth against myth'.
44. Hutchinson, 'Myth against myth', 112.
45. Dorson (ed.), Folklore in the Modern World, 11 (emphasis added).
46. Uli Linke, 'Folklore, anthropology and the government of social life', Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 1, 1990, 117-48 (118).
47. Linke, 'Folklore, anthropology and the government of social life';
48. Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1997).
49. Bendix, In Search of Authenticity.
50. See, for example, work on Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Bendix, In Search of Authenticity
51. and Linke, 'Folklore, anthropology and the government of social life';
52. on Germany during the Third Reich: James R. Daw and Hannjost Lixfeld (eds), The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994);
53. on the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Bendix, In Search of Authenticity;
54. on nineteenth-century Greece: Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (New York: Pella Publishing 1986);
55. on the Soviet regime: Ia M. Zhornitskaia, 'The study of the folk dancing in the Soviet Union: its state and tasks', in John Blacking and Joann W. Kealiinohomoku (eds), The Performing Arts: Music and Dance (The Hague: Mouton 1979);
56. on the Kalevala epic in nineteenth-century Finland: William A. Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1976);
57. on twentieth-century Ireland: Moe Meyer, 'Dance and the politics of orality: a study of the Irish Socoil Rince', Dance Research Journal, vol. 27, no.1, 1995, 25-39;
58. on early twentieth-century Japan: Mariko A. Tamanoi, 'Gender, nationalism and the Japanese native ethnology', Positions, vol. 4, no. 1, 1996, 59-86;
59. on late twentieth-century Serbian nationalism: Robert Hudson, 'Songs of seduction: popular music and Serbian nationalism', Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, 157-76;
60. on twentieth-century Sri Lanka and Australia: Bruce Kapferer, Legends of People, Myths of States (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press 1988);
61. on twentieth-century Quebec: Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec;
62. on twentieth-century Malawi: Gilman, 'The traditionalization of women's dancing, hegemony, and politics in Malawi';
63. and on twentieth-century Israeli Zionist nationalism: Zerubaval, Recovered Roots
64. and Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground.
65. It should be noted that, in a similar way to archaeology, folklore studies have sought to understand past cultural evidence, but with the important difference that folkloric elements and customs are embodied in the present life of ethnic and traditional groups and are not only objects of antiquarian interest. This fact serves to increase the cultural ambivalence towards folklore and its carriers. Anthony D. Smith portrays 'the nationalist as archaeologist', without the differential value of researching the live carriers of the past: Anthony D. Smith, 'Gastronomy or geology? the role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations', Nations and Nationalism, vol. 1, no. 1, 1995, 3-23.
66. Fiona Wilson and Bodil F. Frederiksen (eds), Ethnicity, Gender and the Subversion of Nationalism (London: Frank Cass 1995), 1-6;
67. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage 1997);
68. Glenda Sluga, 'Identity, gender and the history of European nationalism', Nations and Nationalism, vol. 4, no. 1, 1998, 87-111;
69. Hanna Herzog, 'Redefining political spaces: a gender perspective on the Yishuv historiography', Journal of Israeli History, vol. 21, nos 1-2, 2002, 1-25.
70. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 2.
71. Sluga, 'Identity, gender and the history of European nationalism'.
72. Wilson and Frederiksen (eds), Ethnicity, Gender and the Subversion of Nationalism;
73. Nira Yuval-Davis, 'Women and the biological reproduction of the nation', Women's Studies Institutional Forum (special issue on 'Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism'), vol. 19, nos 1-2, 1996, 17-24;
74. Wendy Bracewell, 'Women, motherhood and contemporary Serbian nationalism', Women's Studies Institutional Forum (special issue on 'Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism'), vol. 19, nos 1-2, 1996, 25-33.
75. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 45.
76. Wilson and Frederiksen (eds), Ethnicity, Gender and the Subversion of Nationalism;
77. Ruth Seifert, 'The second front: the logic of sexual violence in wars', Women's Studies Institutional Forum (special issue on 'Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism'), vol. 19, nos 1-2, 1996, 35-44.
78. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 24.
79. Lock, 'Cultivating the body';
80. Thomas, The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory.
81. Douglas, Purity and Danger;
82. Foucault, The History of Sexuality;
83. Hazan, 'Body image and temporality among the aged'.
84. Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle (London: Routledge 1993).
85. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks;
86. Bhabha, 'The other question'.
87. Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec;
88. Herzfeld, The Body Impolitic.
89. Linke, 'Folklore, anthropology and the government of social life', 118.
90. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 8;
91. Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece;
92. Thomas, The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory;
93. Gilman, "The traditionalization of women's dancing, hegemony, and politics in Malawi'.
94. Sherry Ortner, 'Is female to male as nature to culture?', in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (eds), Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1974), 67-87.
95. Katherine Neustadt, 'The nature of woman and the development of American folklore', Women's Studies Institutional Forum (special issue on 'Women and Folklore'), vol. 9, no. 3, 1986, 227-34.
96. Katherine Neustadt, Women's Studies Institutional Forum (Special Issue on 'Women and Folklore'), Ibid., 231.
97. Gertrud Kraus, the outstanding dance artist of the Jewish settlements who fled from the Nazis to Palestine in 1935, was the assistant of Rudolf Von Laban, the most prominent philosopher and choreographer of human movement and dance working in Germany and Austria; see Giora Manor, Haye hamahol shel Gertrud Kra'us (The Life and Dance of Gertrud Kraus) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1978). All the other important dance figures in Palestine in those days were influenced by the modern German Expressionist style, among them, Gurit Kadman, Yardena Cohen, Leah Bergstein, Else Dublon, Rivka Sturman, Tille Rossler and the Orenstein family.
98. Ruth Eshel, Li-rekod 'im ha-halom: reshit ha-mahol ha-omanuti be-Erets-Yisra'el, 1920-1964 (Dancing with the Dream: The Development of Artistic Dance in Israel, 1920-1964) (Tel Aviv: Poalim Library and Israeli Dance Library 1991).
99. Kadman, 'Am Roked;
100. Judith Brin Ingber (ed.), 'Shorashim: the roots of Israeli folk dance', a special issue of Dance Perspectives, vol. 59, Autumn 1974.
101. Gurit Kadman, 'Folk dance in Israel', in Fred Berk, Ha-Rikud: The Jewish Dance (New York: American Zionist Youth Foundation 1972), 27-8.
102. Gurit Kadman, Folk dance in Israel, Ha-rikud: The Jewish Dance, 1972, 27-28, Ibid.
103. For precise data, see Moshe Lissak, 'Ha-mahapecha ha-demografit hevratit be-shnot ha-hamishim' (The socio-demographic revolution of the 1950s), in Anita Shapira (ed.), Azmaut: hamishim ha-shanim ha-rishonot (Jerusalem: Shazar Institute 1998), 13-55.
104. Carl Frankenstein, 'Le-baaiat ha-hevdelim ha-etneem' (The problem of ethnic differences), Megamot, vol. 2, no. 3, 1951, 261-76.
105. Shlomo Deshen, Mahatsit ha-umah (Half the Nation) (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press 1986).
106. Gurit Kadman, Rikude 'edot be-Yisrael (Ethnic Dances in Israel) (Givataim: Masadah 1982).
107. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press 1998), 71-2.
108. Kadman, 'Am Roked.
109. Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew (Berkeley: University of California Press 2000).
110. Yehouda Shenhav, Ha-Yehudim-ha-'Arvim: le'umiyut, dat, ve-etniyut (The Arab-Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved 2003).
111. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
112. Aziza Khazzoom, 'Tarbut Maaravit, teeug ethni ve-sgirut hevratit: ha-reka le-ee ha-shivion ha-ethni be-Israel' (Orientalism, Jewish identity and social closure: historical roots of ethnically based social closure in Israel), Sodologia Israelit, vol. 2, 1999, 385-418.
113. See also Shenhav, Ha-Yehndim-ha-'Arvim.