Gabriella Elgenius remembers the remarkable Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, who passed away on November 27, 2024, at the age of 62. I first met Thomas at the London School of Economics when he was giving a lecture...
The Ruritanian
The blog of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism
Yaqui-Mixe interculturality: notes on new forms of indigenous governance and public policy in modern Mexico
The first time I was in a "real" autonomy was in 1983, in an autonomous demarcation in the province of Yunnan, in the People's Republic of China. That experience made me aware of the possibility that non-dominant peoples - ethnic minorities as they used to say - could...
Nationalism and crime
It is possible to find coverage of most things and nationalism in academic journals. For example: obscure sports (lacrosse) (Robidoux, 2022), wildflowers (Dahl, 1998), style of hats (Akturk, 2017) and food: gastronationalism (De Soucey, 2010) – literally, nationalism...
In memoriam: Shane Nagle
I was very sad to hear that my friend, Dr Shane Nagle, who served for several years as ASEN's conference secretary, passed away in April at the age of only 35 after being diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2021. Shane and I met when I was a masters' student at the LSE...
Indirect Rule Can Shrink Polarization
Everybody knows that the United States is a highly polarized country, divided into blue states and red. Blue states tend to favor minority voting, abortion rights, mask mandates, climate mitigation, gay and transgender rights, Medicare expansion, gun controls, a...
Why Karabakh Does Not Need Autonomous Status in Azerbaijan
The small number of 25,000 Armenians continuing to live in Karabakh are too small in number to require an autonomous republic. Meanwhile, keeping 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces in place is a bad policy option as their primary goal will be to keep tensions simmering...
The crisis in and over Northern Ireland
In elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2022, Sinn Féin won the largest share of the vote of any party by a wide margin. In terms of seats it was just ahead of the second placed Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This was the first time a nationalist...
Announcing The Ruritanian
Welcome to ASEN's new blog, the Ruritanian! The fictional country of Ruritania, breaking away from the empire of Megalomania, is often used for a placeholder name of a country in which nationalism developed, not least by Ernest Gellner. "Ruritanians had previously...