Narratives of Belonging

Edited by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch

Assuming that the desire for a sense of belonging is an anthropological constant, even as the conceptualization of respective articulations as “identity” is problematic, this special issue of Telos and its contributions aim at stimulating a reflection upon the tension between “identity” as a concept and idea that is deeply entrenched in our philosophical, political, and social language and a more flexible, conceptually and politically open articulation of humans’ quest for belonging. The contributions to this special issue are guided by identifying anti-essentialist, inclusive narratives of belonging that help to turn being into becoming, time into temporality, history into historicity, and development into genealogy, and to elaborate the tension between essentializing and temporalized notions of being.

Introduction: Narratives of Belonging—The Interrelation between Ontological-Epistemological Observations and Narrative Methodology
Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch

Nationality of Food: Cultural Politics on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Food Museums
Eunju Hwang and Jin Suk Park

Loving Hong Kong: Unity and Solidarity in the Politics of Belonging
Chih-yu Shih

Belonging in Aboriginal Australia: A Political “Cosmography”
Stephen Muecke

A Way to Transcend Boundaries: Pluralist Theology, Shūsaku Endō, and Global IR
Atsuko Watanabe

Identity Discourses in Western Late Modernity and the Notion of “Liminal Space”
Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch

Constitutional Origins of Ethnic Nationalism: Cultural Aporia of a Nation-State
Zaal Andronikashvili

Reviews

The Savage Savants
Robert D’Amico

The Early Christian Origins of Secularization
Eric Hendriks-Kim

Comfort in Rootlessness
Arno Tausch