【Webinar Report】Rethinking Minority Nationalism as an Arena of Competing Struggles: Breaking with the Kurdish Nation, Perceiving Kurdish Nationhood.

On Thursday, 2021 November 4th, an online lecture by  JSPS postdoctoral fellow for the Institute of Asian, African, Middle Eastern Studies at Sophia University, Dr. Mustafa Khalili, an expert in Ethnicity and Minority Nationalism, was provided during the seminar. His presentation was given under the title, "Rethinking Minority Nationalism as an Arena of Competing Struggles: Breaking with the Kurdish Nation, Perceiving Kurdish Nationhood.”

In his lecture, Dr. Khalili elaborated on his ethnography research findings on Kurdish nationhood, even rethinking core concepts as ethnicity, nations, minority nationalism, and the difference between multi-ethnic states and multi-nation states. His research investigated “Kurdishness” within two categories, everyday Kurdishness in the city and contested categories of Kurdishness in the political realm, to investigate ethnicity and nationalism from both everyday life and nationalistic politics among ethnopolitical entrepreneurs and ordinary people. He concluded that the ethnographical approach recognized Kurdishness as a dynamic, a “groupness,” among many other multiple social identities that the Kurds have before expanding on Kurdish Nation-ness and Kurdish points of view.

After presenting his research, Dr. Khalili also shared about his study journey and his ethnography experiences, granted by funding from the JSPS, making his research possible.

At the end of the session, the lecture concluded with a Q&A session, during which Dr. Khalili and members of the audience went back and forth to dissect several questions, such as how to get linked with respondents, interview complications arising from corona, what the practical issues using an ethnography approach during research are, etc.

 

Written by Yami Roca and Yusy Widarahesty (Doctoral Students at the Graduate School of International Relations)