Fashion is a phenomenon that reaches far beyond clothes, influencing social and cultural behaviors. Is there a way to not be a slave to them?
Tag: identity
The clash over language teaching is less about classrooms and more about who gets to define what it means to be Indian.
Even those on the French left who resist the country’s color-blindness were dismayed when an optional question on parental origin was added to the census. Although the issue may seem benign in countries where race is routinely asked about, in France the question acted as a lighting rod for debates over how to address discrimination considering the country’s dark past and the current rise of the far right.
As the UN vote to formally recognize the State of Palestine gets closer, pressure on Donald Trump is growing. He must decide, once and for all, whether to continue his unconditional support for Netanyahu or seek a viable way forward.
Deported by the U.S. and rejected by Bhutan, dozens of former refugees are now stranded in Nepal without citizenship or legal status. Their statelessness raises urgent legal and human rights questions about the consequences of deportation.
I don’t want to be ‘rescued’ by Pakistan. I don’t want to be silenced by India. I want to grow in a space that allows me to be both Kashmiri and Indian without splitting my tongue in two. I want the world to know that patriotism can look like criticism, and loyalty can sound like longing.
Having long been the driving force of the European Union, France and Germany are facing multiple crises simultaneously, threatening the balance of their relationship. It couldn’t have come at a worse time.
More than 100 years ago, German colonists destroyed the culture of the Chagga people in Tanzania. Now the Chagga are trying to regain their lost history through books by German missionary to the region Bruno Gutmann, the author’s great-grandfather.
“Then the white man found the Middle East: a distant place, rich in nature and humanity, with a beautiful climate. He invaded it, then divided it, then separated the sections accordingly.”
We live in a political, social, economic and fundamentally cultural environment that viscerally rejects all pain and suffering as irrelevant. For the modern individual, it is not so much a case of being free to do this or that, as to be free from whatever limits us.
A new group theater in Lisbon — made up by a majority of Brazilian migrants — has set out to explore the idea of migration through plays. They started with putting in scene a story about the concept of nationhood — because every migration story looks different, but it also has some universal basis, the artists tell independent media Mensagem.
Tim Walz speaks Mandarin. But don’t expect to hear Kamala Harris’ running mate deploying his Chinese language skills on the U.S. election campaign trail.
In some school and work environments, hairstyles associated with blackness, such as dreadlocks, are still prohibited. One family is embracing a radical change in attitude.
The author was from one of the rare families in Damascus who were not direct victims of Syria’s long civil war. But she hardly emerged unscathed.
In matters of foreign policy, whether the war in Ukraine or in Gaza, the rejection of extremes should appear as an obvious fact of reason and ethics. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
The lesser known Phlegraean Fields, near Naples, are now making headlines in Italy because of intense volcanic activity. Together with Vesuvius, they evoke fears in the heart of Neapolitans, but they are also a part of who they are.
For the Colombian trans activist Álex Rodríguez Pineda, there is no single way to be a person with trans life experience; our gender identities and our bodies are in constant construction. He speaks with Colombian daily El Espectador about masculinity and trans activism.
Russia’s semantic war against Ukraine aims to create a discourse and future in which Ukraine never was and never will be. Ukraine — and its Western allies — must take this war as seriously as the military war.
Some movies portrays a character’s bisexuality as a temporary identity, a stop on the journey towards “true” homosexuality, mirroring the biphobic idea that it is not a “real” sexuality in itself.
Despite a growing population and recent policies, “new residents” and their Taiwan-born children are not yet fully integrated into the country’s politics and society. Following the general election in early January, the Singapore-based Initium Media talks with young “new second generation” Taiwanese about their personal and political experiences.
‘Thirst trap’ and ‘edgelord’ were recently added to the dictionary – so why hasn’t ‘nibling’ made the cut?
It’s the first big election of 2024, and it may well prove one of the most contested — and significant ones. As these vote on Saturday, Taiwanese citizens will be picking the fate of their identity and democracy.
This wasn’t supposed to be about politics or identity or anti-Semitism, about war or peace. It’s a story about a name. What’s in a name? Nothing at all, says Mr. Shakespeare. Or maybe all of the above when the name is Israely and the year was 2023.
Daughter of conservative Korean immigrants to Argentina, portrait of rising star in Latin America’s electronic music club scene.
Postmodernism’s eagerness to relativize what is commonly considered factual, objective or real is attractive to recent, jaded, generations, but can barely help a contemporary world lurching between chaos and calamity.
Phd candidate Tashi Dema, from the University of New England, discusses how social media apps, particularly WeChat, are helping to preserve local Bhutanese languages without a written alphabet. Dema argues that preservation of these languages has far-reaching benefits for the small Himalayan country’s rich culture and tradition.
Opera has played with ideas of gender since its earliest days. Now the first openly trans performers are taking to the stage, and operas explicitly exploring trans identities are beginning to emerge.
Two different cases of hijab controversies in India show there is one thing that is consistent, which is to impose on people at the margins an idea of “uniformity.”
Our Naples-based psychiatrist offers a short-and-sweet exchange with a patient, on what it means to feel “different”.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked an anti-Moscow nationalist upsurge in Latvia, which is now seeking to reduce the use of the Russian language in the public sphere in a country where almost 40% of the population are Russian speakers. While support for Kyiv is widespread, tensions in the country are growing, including on the language front.
In the island nation, Rizo Libre (free curl) seeks to rescue Afro-descendant roots on the island.
Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of “gastronationalism.”
The case of 12-year-old twins, one of whom was transgender, who jumped off a balcony after being bullied, led experts in trans childhoods to reflect on how to better protect children. And how to talk about it.
Reverberations of the war in Ukraine is just one factor forcing Sweden to reinvent its identity as a nation in a destabilized world order which puts into question the values the country had long stood for, including non-alignment, free trade and market liberalism.
A widely mocked tweet by the Associated Press tells its reporters to avoid dehumanizing labels such as “the poor” or “the French”. But one French writer replies that the real dehumanizing threat is when open conversation becomes impossible.
The fight against hunger should be a top priority in Brazil — provided it’s addressed as a whole. And to do that, the country needs to face its structural racism issues, an issue newly-reelected President Lula da Silva vowed to tackle.
Tensions between Taiwan and China have ratcheted up over the last two years, peaking with Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August. The Taiwanese who have lived peacefully on the mainland for many years are now questioning their place in an increasingly hostile environment.
Each year thousands of French people ask to change their surname or first name or choose a pseudonym. It may be a question of pride or identity, but it is never a small thing for those who call themselves something new. Here are some of their stories.
At 3,304 and counting, the list of officially recognized emojis includes more than just happy faces, hearts and clinking beer mugs. With certain icons there are politics at play, and even questions about regional pride and sovereignty, as lawmakers in the Canadian province of Quebec made clear in recent days. For now, there is no […]
After a century-long history of political strife, Brexit risks undoing the hard-earned two decades of reconciliation.