Dimensions of Cultural Security for National and Linguistic Minorities

Researchers from different social sciences examine the notion of cultural security and its meaning for different national and linguistic minorities. Cultural security is comprised of various dimensions, including institutional and territorial arrangements, state stability, and different patterns of citizen belonging and participation.

Cultural security is a basic need for individuals belonging to national and linguistic minorities. Structurally exposed to asymmetric power dynamics, these minorities compete with the larger society for material and non-material resources, rendering their future perspectives particularly precarious. This book brings researchers from different social sciences together to examine the notion of cultural security and its meaning for different national and linguistic minorities through multiple case studies in Europe, Asia, North and South America. The cultural security of these minorities comprises various dimensions, including institutional and territorial arrangements, state stability, as well as different patterns of citizen belonging and participation. Through the prism of these dimensions, the contributors to this book present a variety of strategies of cultural resilience, societal structures and institutional frameworks allowing national and linguistic minorities to secure a certain degree of cultural autonomy and develop a sense of belonging to their respective states. Cultural security is an inescapable condition for the fair and sustained development of both minorities and majorities in today's societies characterized by deep diversity.

Autorentext

Jean-Rémi Carbonneau (PhD 2019, Université du Québec à Montréal) is a researcher in comparative politics at the Sorbian Institute and research associate at the Chaire de recherche du Canada en études québécoises et canadiennes. His main areas of research are language policies, federalism, nationalism and political parties in Germany, Spain and Canada. Fabian Jacobs has been a research fellow at the Department of Cultural Studies of the Sorbian Institute since 2008. As part of his PhD at the Leipzig University, he worked with a Roma community in Romania. His main areas of research in the field of comparative minority studies are cultural landscapes, cultural security and endogenous development strategies. Ines Keller is a cultural scientist at the Sorbian Institute in Bautzen since 1992. Her main interests of research are cultural heritage, traditional clothing and regional customs in a multi-generational perspective. She published various works on German-Sorbian interculturality and on the cultural impact of post-war German displacements and regional structural changes.

Inhalt
Part I Institutional Dimension Part II Territorial Dimension Part III State Stability Part IV Patterns of Collective Identification Part V Participatory Dimension