Inter ethnic Relations

A year after its opening, in the summer of 2013, our research study set out to explore how members of the public from all sections of society use and share City Park. We were interested in their experiences and feelings for the site and what they think it has contributed to the City of Bradford. We also aimed to explore the experiences and perceptions of local businesses and workers who share the site, and the way the space is regulated and managed. This report details our research findings.

A persistência de uma certa memória política que, insistentemente, invoca a experiência colonial portuguesa, em toda a sua largura e profundidade, como um momento contínuo de excepcional diplomacia cultural, tem encontrado nos últimos anos uma resposta interessante por parte de uma historiografia que se tem ocupado em escrutinar a dimensão retórica impressa, durante e pelo Estado Novo, no domínio das relações inter-étnicas nos diferentes contextos coloniais. Por outro lado, essa interpelação tem sido insuficiente para compreender a espessura e a evolução da questão racial durante a ditadura, em particular os contextos que envolvem as chamadas minorias intermediárias que dispunham de recursos inacessíveis à maioria negra mas que, ainda assim, foram objecto de um variado conjunto de práticas de subalternização. Nesse sentido, e partindo de um exemplo tão diverso quanto complexo, o das mencionadas minorias intermediárias de origem asiática, este artigo pretende discutir as diferentes raízes e influências dos critérios racializadores em que assentaram os mecanismos burocráticos e populares que visavam impor e legitimar uma desigual distribuição de recursos políticos, sociais e económicos em território moçambicano durante o séc. XX.

From the Germans of Danzig (now Gdansk, in Poland) to the Turks of Rhodes: the «Europa etnografica» map (1:6.000.000) of the Atlante internazionale del TCI (1st ed., 1927). For a later version of this map (3rd ed., 1929) you can see www.davidrumsey.com

Simultaneous trends for ethnicization and gentrification are contributing to the fragmentation of contemporary urban spaces. This is characterised by the emergence of new social and urban units that break the homogeneity of the modern city and lead to the development of new networks, territorially discontinuous, less neighbourhood centred and with a limited intersection. With Mouraria (Lisbon, Portugal) and San Francisco (Bilbao, Spain), two traditional and multiethnic neighbourhoods, as case-studies this paper aims to critically discuss the nature of gentrification, its coexistence with ethnicization and its contribution for socio-urban fragmentation. The empirical analysis of the residents’ social networks will be used to test levels and types of interaction and the spatial formats they assume.

[Keywords: Gentrification, ethnicization, sociospatial fragmentation, social networks]

In Late Antiquity, ethno-religious diversity emerged as a defining feature of the Mediterranean, a region set at the conjunction of Europe, Africa and Western Asia, and home to Hellenism and the Abrahamic religions. As a consequence of environmental, geographic, and historical factors, societies developed in which an array of dominations of Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together. While ideological currents mitigated for the marginalization and segregation of minorities, pragmatism demanded flexibility in ethno-religious relations. In the common Mediterranean environment minority and majority groups in both Christian and Islamic developed similar strategies and approaches vis-à-vis ethno-religious, and whereas repression and violence against minorities occurred in certain circumstances, generally accommodation of subject out-groups was the rule. These conditions persisted into the early Modern Period, when the emergence of notions of race and national identity provoked a reconfiguration of ethno-religious relations through much of the region.

One of the most salient features of the Medieval Mediterranean is that it was a zone of intense interaction and long-term co-habitation of members of various ethno-religious communities whose relations are usually conceived of as fundamentally adversarial. Nevertheless, Christians, Muslims and Jews not only lived alongside each other but amongst each other in both the Christian- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean, even during the era of the Crusades. Typically, such relationships have been presented as either fundamentally hostile, or cordial, and as related to the “tolerance” that host cultures were inclined to demonstrate as a consequence of their own religious orientation. By contrast, this paper takes a phenomenological approach by focusing on a specific manifestation of this interaction: the emergence of out-group political elites in confessionally-defined societies. Through the medium of three case studies – a powerful Jew in Islamic Spain, a powerful Muslim in Norman Sicily and a powerful Coptic Christian in Fatimid Egypt – it demonstrates that the status of minority elites was related to concrete political circumstances grounded in the particular environment of the region, and that, in spite of cultural differences that might have distinguished them, these societies developed near-identical strategies for engaging with minority elites. The language of religious polemic, exclusion and marginalization was not absent, but it tended to serve as a post factum rationalization for repression, rather than a cause, and tended to be deployed decisively only in certain circumstances. This provides new insights not only into Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, but the nature of Mediterranean history and society.

Las sociedades nativas de las pampas reconocieron la existencia de tres tipos de comerciantes: nampulcan, pulperú y huincá huitrán. El primero viajaba por los territorios de distintas parcialidades indígenas; el segundo ofrecía en los campamentos indios las mercancías traídas de la frontera; y el restante se adentraba en espacios controlados por los hispano-criollos, visitando sus poblaciones. La diferenciación entre quienes recorrían la tierra y los que llegaban hasta pueblos y ciudades (warria) refleja una experiencia histórica que vinculaba el contacto interétnico con situaciones de mayor riesgo. Los huincá huitrán eran figuras ambiguas, capaces de mediar exitosamente entre mundos diferentes y obtener bienes necesarios o deseados, pero simultáneamente constituirse en una fuente de grave peligro para las propias comunidades. Con frecuencia, su actividad solía ponerlos en contacto con enfermedades europeas y transformarlos en vectores involuntarios de las mismas. El artículo se centra en esta última cuestión y examina las vinculaciones existentes entre comercio fronterizo y recurrentes epidemias de la devastadora viruela durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Para ello, se utilizarán fuentes documentales interpretadas al amparo de abundante información contenida en estudios antropológicos, demográficos y lingüísticos.