Hot and cold ethnicities in post-Soviet space: special issue of JMMD 2014, Volume 35, Issue 2JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Volume 35 Number 2 2014 (published online 25 Oct-08 Nov 2013)
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showAxaArticles?journalCode=rmmm20#.UoErA7MijIX
Special Issue: Hot and cold ethnicities in post-Soviet space
Guest Editors: Anastassia Zabrodskaja and Martin Ehala
This special issue is the outcome of an academic dialogue that began with a conference organised by Martin Ehala and Anastassia Zabrodskaja in Tallinn in 2011. The purposes of the conference were to explore the issues of hot and cold ethnicities and to examine the phenomenon of ethnic temperature as the key factor in group vitality, as well as the processes of ‘temperature change’ and their effects on inter-ethnic relations in society. This special issue synthesises the insights from the conference and offers proposals for further analysis. This collection of contributions deals with a variety of case studies with a particular focus on the strength of members’ emotional attachment to their group. Such a division of ethnicities can be categorised into two prototypes: ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. A ‘hot’ ethnic group is one whose members have a high emotional attachment to their group. ‘Cold’ ethnic groups are those whose members’ emotional attachment to the groups is low, absent or latent.
Two central issues that need to be resolved for the metaphor of hot and cold ethnicities to have explanatory value are to specify what factors influence ethnic temperature and how the temperature can be measured. A promising area to explore this is provided by the post-Soviet space. The following papers explore the theoretical issues outlined above from different viewpoints and in different settings. The main goal of all the analyses, both triangulated and comparative, presented in the present collection is to reveal the relationships between the processes of identity dynamics and collective emotional alignment.
CONTENTS
Inter-ethnic processes in post-Soviet space: theoretical background
Anastassia Zabrodskaja and Martin Ehala
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845194#.UoEqGbMijIU
Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia: more ‘cold’ than the others? Exploring (ethnic) identity under different socio-political settings
Natalya Kosmarskaya
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845195#.UoEqjLMijIU
Still warm but getting colder: changing ethnic identity of post-Soviet Jewry
Elena Nosenko-Stein
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845196#.UoEqeLMijIU
Ethnic identity in post-Soviet Belarus: ethnolinguistic survival as an argument in the political struggle
Nelly Bekus
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845197#.UoEqZ7MijIU
Between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ temperatures: introducing a complication to the hot and cold ethnicity theory from Odessa
Abel Polese
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845198#.UoEqsrMijIU
Hot and cold ethnicities in the Baltic states
Martin Ehala and Anastassia Zabrodskaja
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845199#.UoEqn7MijIU
Formation of territorial collective identities: turning history into emotion
Martin Ehala
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2013.845200#.UoEqUrMijIU