Demands for national independence among ethnic minorities around the world suggest the power of nationalism. Contemporary nationalist movements can quickly attract fervent followings, but they can just as rapidly lose support. In Constructing Grievance, Elise Giuliano asks why people with ethnic identities throw their support behind nationalism in some cases but remain quiescent in others. Popular support for nationalism, Giuliano contends, is often fleeting. It develops as part of the process of political mobilization—a process that itself transforms the meaning of ethnic identity. She compares sixteen ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, where nationalist mobilization varied widely during the early 1990s despite a common Soviet inheritance. Drawing on field research in the republic of Tatarstan, socioeconomic statistical data, and a comparative discourse analysis of local newspapers, Giuliano argues that people respond to nationalist leaders after developing a group grievance. Ethnic grievances, however, are not simply present or absent among a given population based on societal conditions. Instead, they develop out of the interaction between people’s lived experiences and the specific messages that nationalist entrepreneurs put forward concerning ethnic group disadvantage. In Russia, Giuliano shows, ethnic grievances developed rapidly in certain republics in the late Soviet era when messages articulated by nationalist leaders about ethnic inequality in local labor markets resonated with people’s experience of growing job insecurity in a contracting economy. In other republics, however, where nationalist leaders focused on articulating other issues, such as cultural and language problems facing the ethnic group, group grievances failed to develop, and popular support for nationalism stalled. People with ethnic identities, Giuliano concludes, do not form political interest groups primed to support ethnic politicians and movements for national secession.
Demands for national independence among ethnic minorities around the world suggest the power of nationalism. Contemporary nationalist movements can quickly attract fervent followings, but they can just as rapidly lose support. In Constructing Grievance, Elise Giuliano asks why people with ethnic identities throw their support behind nationalism in some cases but remain quiescent in others. Popular support for nationalism, Giuliano contends, is often fleeting. It develops as part of the process of political mobilization—a process that itself transforms the meaning of ethnic identity. She compares sixteen ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, where nationalist mobilization varied widely during the early 1990s despite a common Soviet inheritance. Drawing on field research in the republic of Tatarstan, socioeconomic statistical data, and a comparative discourse analysis of local newspapers, Giuliano argues that people respond to nationalist leaders after developing a group grievance. Ethnic grievances, however, are not simply present or absent among a given population based on societal conditions. Instead, they develop out of the interaction between people’s lived experiences and the specific messages that nationalist entrepreneurs put forward concerning ethnic group disadvantage. In Russia, Giuliano shows, ethnic grievances developed rapidly in certain republics in the late Soviet era when messages articulated by nationalist leaders about ethnic inequality in local labor markets resonated with people’s experience of growing job insecurity in a contracting economy. In other republics, however, where nationalist leaders focused on articulating other issues, such as cultural and language problems facing the ethnic group, group grievances failed to develop, and popular support for nationalism stalled. People with ethnic identities, Giuliano concludes, do not form political interest groups primed to support ethnic politicians and movements for national secession.
In this book, Sara Phang explores the ideals and realities of Roman military discipline, which regulated the behavior of soldiers in combat and their punishment, as well as economic aspects of their service, including compensation and other benefits, work, and consumption. This thematically organized study analyzes these aspects of discipline, using both literary and documentary sources. Phang emphasizes social and cultural conflicts in the Roman army. Contrary to the impression that Roman emperors "bought" their soldiers and indulged them, discipline restrained such behavior and legitimized and stabilized the imperial power. Phang argues that emperors and aristocratic commanders gained prestige from imposing discipline, while displaying leadership in person and a willingness to compromise with a restive soldiery.
Disintegrating Empire examines the entangled histories of three threads of decolonization: the French welfare state, family migration from Algeria, and the French social workers who mediated between the state and their Algerian clients. After World War II, social work teams, midlevel bureaucrats, and government ministries stitched specialized social services for Algerians into the structure of the midcentury welfare state. Once the Algerian Revolution began in 1954, many successive administrations and eventually two independent states—France and Algeria—continuously tailored welfare to support social aid services for Algerian families migrating across the Mediterranean. Disintegrating Empire reveals the belated collapse of specialized services more than a decade after Algerian independence. The welfare state’s story, Elise Franklin argues, was not one merely of rise and fall but of winnowing services to “deserving” clients. Defunding social services—long associated with the neoliberal turn in the 1980s and beyond—has a much longer history defined by exacting controls on colonial citizens and migrants of newly independent countries. Disintegrating Empire explores the dynamic, conflicting, and often messy nature of these relationships, which show how Algerian family migration prompted by decolonization ultimately exposed the limits of the French welfare state.
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