Journal articles on the topic 'Shona religion'

AbstractThis article examines some of the beliefs and practices underlying traditional African religion's attitudes to nature with reference to Shona religion of Zimbabwe. At the theoretical level, assuming a romantic view of Shona attitudes to nature, it is possible to conclude that Shona traditional religion is necessarily environmentally friendly. The strong beliefs in ancestral spirits (midzimu), pan-vitalism, kinship, taboo and totems have the potential to bear testimony to this. The aim of this article is to critically examine the extent of the claims that Shona traditional religion is environmentally friendly. It shows that Shona attitudes to nature are in fact discriminative and ambivalent. I argue that the ecological attitude of traditional African religion is more based on fear or respect of ancestral spirits than on respect for nature itself. As a result we need to re-examine Shona attitudes to nature if Shona traditional religion is to re-emerge as a stronger environmental force in the global village. After introductory remarks the article gives an overview background about the Shona focusing on their socio-political organization, world-view and religion. An examination of Shona attitudes to nature focusing on the land, animals, and plant life and water bodies follows. After this there is a reflection on the ethical consequences of Shona attitudes to nature. The last part considers the limits of the romantic view of Shona attitudes to nature.

SummaryUnderstanding the social and cultural contextual determinants of sexual behaviour of adolescents and young adults is an essential step towards curtailing the spread of HIV. This study examined the effects of one cultural factor, ethnicity, on sexual abstinence, faithfulness, condom use at last sex, and risky sex among young people in Zimbabwe. Data from the cross-sectional, population-based 2005–06 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey were used. Net of the effect of sociodemographic and social–cognitive factors, and using multinomial logistic regression, ethnicity was found to have a strong and consistent effect on sexual behaviour among youth. In addition, the study found that there were ethnic-specific and within-gender differences in sexual behaviour, for both men and women. Shona youth were more likely to be abstinent than Ndebele youth. Compared with Shona youth, Ndebele youth were more likely to have engaged in risky sex. However, Ndebele men were more likely have used condoms at last sex, compared with Shona men. For both men and women, sexual behaviour was more socially controlled. School attendance and religion exerted protective effects on sexual abstinence. For men only, those living in rural areas were less likely to be faithful and more likely to have engaged in risky sexual behaviour than those living in urban areas. The study attests to the fact that ethnic norms and ideologies of sexuality need to be identified and more thoroughly understood. In addition, the study provides evidence that in order to promote safe and healthy sexuality among young people in Zimbabwe, cultural, social and gender-specific approaches to the development of HIV prevention strategies should be seriously considered. Current success in the Abstinence, Being faithful and Condom use (ABC) approach could be strengthened by recognizing and responding to cultural forces that reproduce and perpetuate risky sexual behaviours.

Abstract Many scholars have examined masculinities in African societies. However, these examinations cannot be generalised across Africa, given the socio-cultural, economic, political and historical factors that infringe with religious beliefs. This article offers a case study of masculinities in a specific religious context, the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (zaoga), a Pentecostal church. It utilises zaoga’s teachings on masculinities against the background of Shona religion and culture (the dominant ethnic group in Zimbabwe). The analysis specifically focuses on the role of the Jesus-figure in the discourse on masculinity in zaoga, exploring whether Jesus presents a model of ‘redemptive masculinity’ or rather reinforces hegemonic notions of masculinity. The article highlights the ambiguity of Pentecostal masculinity and offers an overall critique of the effects of masculinities upon Pentecostal faith and practice.

Earlier this year, I received a small grant from the Edinburgh University Development Trust Fund to determine the feasibility of formulating a major research project exploring the religious dimensions within the recent land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe. Since spirit mediums had played such an important role in the first Shona uprising in 1896–97 against colonial occu¬pation (the so-called First Chimurenga) (Parsons, 1985: 50-51) and again in the war of liberation between 1972 and 1979 (the Second Chimurenga) (Lan, 1985), I suspected that these central points of contact between the spirit world and the living communities would be affecting the sometimes militant invasions of white commercial farms that began sporadically in 1998, but became systematic after the constitutional referendum of February 2000. Under the terms of the grant, I went with my colleague, Tabona Shoko of the University of Zimbabwe, in July and August 2004, to two regions of Zimbabwe: Mount Darwin in the northeast, where recent activities by war veterans and spirit mediums had been reported, and to the Mberengwa District, where land resettlement programmes have been widespread. This article reports on my preliminary findings in Mount Darwin, where I sought to determine if evidence could be found to link the role of Traditional Religion, particularly through spirit mediums, to the current land redistribution programme, and, if so, whether increasing levels of political intolerance within Zimbabwean society could be blamed, in part at least, on these customary beliefs and practices

I often have heard boxing fans remark that the prize ring reveals life the way it really is. The elemental combat between two individuals, the primal physical struggle, the quest for glory and fear of humiliation, all contribute to the belief that men in the ring are in touch with life's underlying realities. Significantly, depicting “life the way it really is” is precisely the role anthropologist Clifford Geertz ascribes to religious worldviews. Religions, Geertz tells us, do not just buttress social systems or justify conditions as men and women find them. They also explain the way the world works, cut behind surface appearances, and offer visions of underlying order which give meaning to daily life. Through drama and ritual, religion depicts the “really real” with idealized clarity. Religious symbols unmask the way the universe is in sheer actuality and demonstrate the moving forces behind mundane affairs. The truism that America's popular religion is sports takes on new significance in light of Geertz' observation. And in the pantheon of the 1920s, no gods shone more brightly than the heroes of the ring.

This research aimed to find out the actual situation on the ground regarding what mainline Christianity is actually doing in confronting or conforming to biblical and cultural norms regarding the role and position of women in their denominations. It is based on six mainline churches. This field research reveals that it may not be enough to concentrate on gender in missionary religions such as Christianity, without paying attention to the base culture: African traditional religio-culture which informs most people who are now Christians. It also illuminates how the churches are actually acting to break free of the oppressive biblical traditions and bringing about changes regarding the status of women in their churches. In some cases women are now being given more active roles in the churches, but on the other hand are still bound at home by an oppressive traditional Shona patriarchal culture and customs. Through a hybrid qualitative research design combining phenomenology and case study, what we are referring to as phenomenological case study, we argue that Christianity is a stimulus to change, an impetus to revolution, and a grounding for dignity and justice that supports and fosters gender equity efforts.

La religión judía ha vuelto a tener nuevos adeptos en los jóvenes como consecuencia de no tener referentes en sus inmediatos mayores una expresión profunda de la fidelidad que tuvo siempre el Pueblo de Israel por su Dios: Yahvé. Probablemente toda la historia del pueblo judío, ha atravesado a través de la historia por innumerables y desgraciados acontecimientos que han marcado su vida: desde la salida de la esclavitud de Egipto, comandados por Moisés, guiados por la mano del Señor, durante cuarenta años hasta la llegada a la Tierra prometida, hasta los hechos lamentables, desgraciados que desembocaron en la persecución y exterminio en los campos de concentración nazis durante la década de los 30 y 40 del siglo XX, conocida por todos como la Shoá. Éste, sin duda, puede haber uno de los aspectos que ha incidido hacia una mayor religiosidad en las generaciones actuales._______________________The Jewish Religion has had new young adepts once again as the result of the lack of references from their immediate seniors on a deep expression of the characteristic faithfulness of the People of Israel for their God: Yahweh. It is probable that all the history of the Jewish people, which has passed through a great number of unfortunate moments in history, has leaved a mark in their lives: from the exile of the slavery in Egypt, leaded by Moses and guided by God’s hand during forty years until they arrived to the promised land, until the lamentable and unfortunate facts that ended in their persecution and extermination in the Nazis Concentration Camps during the decades of the 30’s and 40’s of the twenty century, event known as shoa. This fact, without doubt, can be considered one of the main aspects in the growth of a greater religiosity in nowadays generations.

Satisfaction of patient is the preferred item for the consumption of care. It is related to health services consumption. The objective of the study was to determine the level of patient satisfaction and associated factors among patients Primary Hospitals of North Shoa Zone. Institutional-based cross-sectional study design were implemented from March 15-April 25, 2019. Sample sizes of 422 inpatients were included. Participants were selected by lottery method. Factor analysis was used in order to generate factor scores for further analysis. Variables P<0.25 on the bivariate analysis were included in the multiple linear regression and variables with p<0.05 with 95% confidence interval were considered as statistically significant. There was 59.1% inpatient was satisfied. Sex, religion, place of residence, previous admission and occupational status of a housewife, ggovernment employee and educational status of primary school were associated with patient satisfaction.

Oscar Romero’s homilies on the transfiguration of Jesus offer a unique window into his way of reading Scripture as a churchman seeking to bring the gospel to bear on his historical moment. For Romero, the light that shone in the face of Jesus on the mountain must shine through the church in the dark places of the world as the church follows the same road as its Lord: the road that ends in glory but first endures the cross.

AbstractCan Barth’s theology contribute to the development of post-Shoa theology? It is argued in the North American context that Barth remains tied to a Christian tradition of anti-Semitism. Scholars committed to renewal of Jewish-Christian relations learn from the radical legacy of Barth’s theology of Israel while at the same time critically distancing themselves from his limitations. This paper attempts to analyze Barth’s theology of election and Israel for the sake of Jewish-Christian mutuality and its implications for interreligious peace.

AbstractAfrican theologies are most often classified as either theologies of inculturation, or of liberation. Canaan Banana was one of few African theologians who combine authentic indigenization and liberation in their thought. The author, who knew Rev. Banana personally, based his analysis on Banana's writings and on interpretations by other scholars. Banana's theology was influenced by his ecumenical leadership as a Methodist minister, studies in the United States, involvement in the liberation struggle, and national leadership as the first President of Zimbabwe. Banana's liberation perspective, in contrast to those of most South African black theologians, dealt with issues of class rather than of color. His political theology, articulated when he was president of Zimbabwe, focused on the relation of socialism and Christianity. For him liberation involved struggle and even armed struggle. In his last decade former President Banana began to articulate a prophetic "Combat Theology." Banana stimulated a heated discussion on biblical hermeneutics in southern Africa by proposing deletion from the Bible of passages used to justify oppression. Believing that God is revealed also through creation and African culture, he found creative myths and images of Jesus in the cultures of his own Shona and Ndebele peoples. His contribution is a theology that can help Christianity to be both indigenous and socially relevant in 21st century Africa.

Summary These studies are ‘contributions to (the) recovery of ... rich and hitherto neglected aspects of English religion, from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth’. Six ‘studies in reformation’ (part one) are followed by five ‘writing the reformation’ essays (part two). Attention to detail, arresting subject matter, lucid prose and impeccable research are evident throughout this book. Its eleven essays challenge students of the English Reformation to question some long-held presuppositions. Fresh and convincing light is shone on, for example, mediaeval piety, Elizabethan religious ‘tolerance‘, Catholic approaches to the Bible, the biases of historians, and on why great novels and dramas may not necessarily be historically accurate. These indispensable essays will especially serve those who are willing to examine long-held assumptions. Zusammenfassung „Die Studien, welche dieses Buch ausmachen“, wie Duffy in seiner Einleitung schreibt, „dienen als Beitrag zur Wiederentdeckung von … reichhaltigen und bis dato vernachlässigten Aspekten der Religion in England vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert.“ Sechs „Studien zur Reformation“ (Teil 1) werden gefolgt von fünf Aufsätzen als „Berichte über die Reformation“ (Teil 2). Detailtreue, interessante Themen, klar verständliche Prosa sowie eine einwandfreie Forschung ziehen sich durch das gesamte Buch hindurch. Seine elf Aufsätze fordern Studenten der englischen Reformation heraus, einige lang gehegte Annahmen in Frage zu stellen. Neues und überzeugendes Licht scheint zum Beispiel auf mittelalterliche Frömmigkeit, elisabethanische religiöse „Toleranz“, katholische Zugänge zur Bibel, Vorurteile von Historikern sowie darauf, weshalb große Romane und Dramen nicht notwendigerweise auch historisch korrekt sein müssen. Diese unentbehrlichen Aufsätze werden besonders denjenigen eine wertvolle Hilfe sein, die bereit sind, lang gehegte Voraussetzungen auf den Prüfstand zu geben. Résumé Les études constituant ce livre veulent « contribuer à la (re)découverte … d’aspects riches et jusqu’à présent négligés de la religion anglaise, du XVe siècle au XVIIe. » Six « études autour de la réforme » (première partie) sont suivies par cinq essais sur le thème « écrire la réforme » (deuxième partie). Ce livre se signale de bout en bout par une grande attention portée au détail, une thématique saisissante, une prose claire, ainsi qu’un travail de recherche irréprochable. Ses onze essais invitent les étudiants de la Réforme anglaise à s’interroger sur certaines vieilles présuppositions. Quelques examples: cette lumière fraîche et convaincante jetée sur la piété médiévale, la « tolérance » religieuse élisabéthaine, les approches catholiques de la Bible, les partis pris des historiens ou la raison pour laquelle tous les grands romans ou drames ne sont pas forcément exacts d’un point de vue historique. Ces essais indispensables seront particulièrement utiles à ceux qui sont prêts à réexaminer certaines suppositions à la vie longue.

The thinking of E. Levinas deeply influences the actual debates in Christian systematic theology. In catholic thinking, we know the norm of the Lateran Council in 1215: You cannot discern a similarity between God and man without discerning a greater dissimilarity between them. Do we take this norm seriously in our metaphysical ontology and theology? The otherness and goodness of God is the main problem in Levinas's philosophy and with regard to the catastrophes of the two world wars and the Shoa in the twentieth century he asks, what the significance of the talking about God in present times could be. Ethics has to become the »prima philosophia« because all our thinking and acting has an ethical significance and thus we may not forget this. Therefore, infinity and otherness receive an ethical meaning and constitute our responsibility as »inspired subjects« for the whole world. In the tradition of Jewish thinking, Levinas combines the unicity of each man and the universality of human responsibility for all people. In the face of the other, who is suffering, we are confronted with the face of God himself. What can we learn from Levinas today?

"The Man in the Panther's Skin" is the masterpiece of Shota Rustaveli (c. 1160—after c. 1220), the greatest Georgian Christian poet, who has been translated into nearly 45 languages in the world so far. In this article we are going to study the Motifs of ʿUd̲h̲rī Love (AR: al-ḥubb al-ʿud̲h̲rī) in Rustaveli's book. The Ghazal (ode) of Ud̲h̲rī is a literary product of the Islamic-Arab community in which love derives its principles from religion of Islam and the like. In fact, during the era of the Umayyad caliphate (661-750 BCE) was born ʿUd̲h̲rī as a new kind of ode in the Arabic poetry in the Arabian Peninsula and has made its way into other lands, including Iran, and this kind of love poem penetrated through Iran into Rustavli's poetry.ʿUd̲h̲rī poem was narration of true, intense and chaste love between lover and a beloved far from sensuality, debauchery and lechery. Therefore, their lifestyles were very similar to mystic. The main purpose of this study is to find out the extent to which Rustaveli was influenced by ʿUd̲h̲rī poem. The research method in this article is to compare the specific and objective features which inferred from the Arabic-PersianʿUd̲h̲rī literature with the narrative in the Rustaveli's work. This does not mean, of course, that we will examine all the ʿUd̲h̲rī poetry works written before Rustaveli's book in the world; rather, we mean matching the specific Motifs of Arabic-Farsi works with the Rustaveli's poem. The results of this study show that there is a complete similarity between the motifs in the poems of Rustaveli's work and the motifs of the ʿUd̲h̲rī poets in all its components. This study also confirms that if we omit some details of the story in Rustaveli's book, we will find that Rustaveli was thoroughly familiar with Islamic ʿUd̲h̲rī literature and implemented it in his book "The Man in the Panther's Skin".

Islamic ideology is the basis and source of Islamic state, which sets out the rights of Muslims as well as the Dhimmis. Islam teaches the tolerance and fairness to non-Muslims citizens. Islam gives the non-Muslims religious freedom. Quran says, “There is no compulsion in Faith”. Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) says, “If anyone wrongs a Mu'ahid, detracts from his rights, burdens him with more work than he is able to do, or takes something from him without his consent, I will plead for him on the Day of Resurrection”. Arab Muslims conquered Spain in 711 A.C. The Muslims defeated Christians there, while the Jews also existed there. When the Muslims (Moors) conquered this country, they behaved and treated the people here with fairness and tolerance. The tolerance of Muslims has had a profound impact on non-Muslims and the environment here. Many of non-Muslims converted to Islam with their own consent. Muslims gave them full enfranchise to worship according to their own religion; the priest did not need to hide their religious status. Muslim Spain had complete freedom of education which led to students coming from other countries for pursuit education. Non-Muslims adopted culture, living style and ways to dress of Muslims. They learned Arabic and began to read poetry in Arabic. Arabic literature translated into Hebrew and Latin by non-Muslims. In Muslim Spain there was freedom of expression. The Jewish scholar Ibn Naghrila spoke on the beliefs of Muslims under the Muslim rule in Spain.Hasdai ibn Shaprot (d.970) established a madrasa for Jews in Cordova to teach the Holy Scripture and Talmud. Katie Magnus (d.1924) says, “Like a dream in the night – Life in Spain”. Due to the tolerance of Muslims, Europeans became aware of civilization and from that time renaissance began. Muslims behaved non-Muslims with tolerance, contrary to non-Muslims, while they overcome on Muslims, wherever their attitude with Muslims is always regrettable. With the fall of the Muslim’s empire, Spain fell into the darkness of ignorance. Stanley lane-Poole (d.1931) says, “The Moors were banished, for a while the Christian Spain shone, like the Moon, with a borrowed light, then came the eclipse, and in that darkness Spain grovelled ever since”.

The Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) is a Christian denomination with its own internal substance and purpose in life. However, postmodernist changes have affected the Church’s operation with religious, ethical and spiritual implications. The COCZ engaged in conference centre construction (at Somabhula, Gweru South, Zimbabwe), constitution making (adopted 2014) and further ministerial formation through university education. The study was conducted among the Lukuluba people of Somabhula using qualitative research methods. Activities among the Lukuluba people need to be done in critical review of the church’s ideological duty, discovery of the Lukuluba people’s religious consciousness and development of a contextual pedagogy that appeals to the people’s religious spirituality. The study found the need to review the modes of Lukuluba cultic practices of the Shona Mwari religion for purposes of attaining mission continuity within the community and being mindful of the need to continue in the founding identity of the COCZ.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Identity and mission continuity of the Church of Christ in contemporary Zimbabwean society relates to human creation, baptismal dignity and vocation as systematic theology has ecclesiological, soteriological, incarnational, existential, ecological, biblical, inculturational and missiological implications.

This article attempts to highlight the existence of mental disorders resulting from narcissistic relationships as reflected in the system of communal education that was practiced in Israeli kibbutzim until the 1980s. The narcissistic disorder is characterized by an emotional short-sightedness, a false self, developed as a defence against feelings of worthlessness, and unique behavioural patterns in interaction with others. Narcissists demand much attention, recognition and closeness on the part of their children and spouses, while they themselves lack empathy and find it difficult to respond to subjectivity in others. The spotlight is shone on victims who are affected by narcissistic parents, as well as similar cases of children raised in the system of communal education on kibbutzim. A parallel is drawn between the narcissistic adult and the communal education system which, in adherence to an ideology, fails to see the differential needs of each child and satisfy them. Such children suffer from emotional disorders as a result of the demand made of them to conform to a specific educational model that was in keeping with the times. Three areas are cited in which children brought up in the system experienced deprivation: nights spent with no adult in attendance; conformity in dress and attitude to religion and tradition; and suppression of personal talents and aptitudes. Recommendations are made for treating victims of narcissistic parents and children reared in the system of communal education.

The recent Must Fall movements shone a light on how South African universities are exclusionary spaces in many respects. In addition to the focus on racial, financial, and epistemological exclusions, the movements also highlighted how gender and sexual minorities are marginalised in university curricula and spaces. In the wake of these movements, I taught a range of courses dealing with gender and sexuality to pre-service teachers at a South African university. Using an autoethnographic approach, I recount some of the challenges I faced in teaching subject matter that many South Africans consider controversial. Students often relied on simplistic discourses of culture and religion to voice resistance to my courses and to “disrupt” my classes, while the subject matter simultaneously disrupted their deeply held concepts of identity. These moments of disruption from students, while largely intended as resistance, offered considerable pedagogical value, especially when viewed through the lens of critical pedagogy that informs my teaching approach. In this article, I use autoethnographic reflections to describe some of these moments of mutual disruption. I examine how the discussions with students have shifted after the Must Fall movements, linking the philosophy and some of the events of the movements to the ways that students are engaging differently. I argue that these pre-service teachers also hold the potential to disrupt discourses of queerphobia, gender-based violence and HIV in the South African school system. Additionally, I contend that gender and sexuality diversity deserve greater focus in teacher education in order to create critical thinking spaces that can foster reflective capacities in teachers around how they relate to learners who are gender and sexual minorities.

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. These two axes are constantly reshuffled and renegotiated online where, thanks to the technological possibilities of HTML hypertext, a whole range of identities and identifications may be brought together at any given time. We trust that these insights will be of interest in future discussion of online networks, transnational communities, identity formation, and hypertext aesthetics where much urgent and topical work remains to be done. References Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. “You Are What You Link.” 2001 Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong. 26 Apr. 2010. ‹http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm›. Ali B. “Leipe Mocro Flavour.” ALIB.NL / SPEC Entertainment. 2007. 4 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www3.alib.nl/popupAlibtv.php?catId=42&contentId=544›. Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro J. Oiarzabal. Diasporas in the New Media Age. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006 (1983). Aoyama, Shana. Nikkei-Ness: A Cyber-Ethnographic Exploration of Identity among the Japanese Peruvians of Peru. Unpublished MA thesis. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke, 2007. 1 Feb. 2010 ‹http://hdl.handle.net/10166/736›. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: U College London P, 1997. Everett, Anna. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Fernández, María. “Postcolonial Media Theory.” Art Journal 58.3 (1999): 58-73. Georgiou, Myria. Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diasporic Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities. Creskill: Hampton Press, 2006. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Gower, Eric. “When the Virtual Becomes the Real: A Talk with Benedict Anderson.” NIRA Review, 1996. 19 Apr. 2010 ‹http://www.nira.or.jp/past/publ/review/96spring/intervi.html›. Haraway, Donna. Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ito, Mizuko, et al. Hanging Out, Messing Out, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Japanese American National Museum. “Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants.” Discover Nikkei, 2005. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/›. Lama, Abraham. “Home Is Where the Heartbreak Is for Japanese-Peruvians.” Asia Times 16 Oct. 1999. 6 May 2010 ‹http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/AJ16Dh01.html›. Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Leurs, Koen. Identity, Migration and Digital Media. Utrecht: Utrecht University. PhD Thesis, forthcoming. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Etnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Mo. “Marokkanen met Brainz.” Hyves, 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://marokkaansehersens.hyves.nl/›. Odin, Jaishree K. “The Edge of Difference: Negotiations between the Hypertextual and the Postcolonial.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.3 (1997): 598-630. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Narratives @ Home Pages: The Future as Virtually Located.” Colonies – Missions – Cultures in the English-Speaking World. Ed. Gerhard Stilz. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2001. 396–406. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Subjects and Migration.” Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies. Ed. Gabrielle Griffin and Rosi Braidotti. London: Zed Books, 2002. 205–20. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1.1 (1991): 83-99. Schäfer, Mirko T. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2011. Van Doorn, Niels, and Liesbeth van Zoonen. “Theorizing Gender and the Internet: Past, Present, and Future.” Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Ed. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard. London: Routledge. 261-74.