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Ecuador strikingly illustrates two contradictory forces of the global cultural economy: the pressures of market integration that erode economic independence and the pursuit of 'autonomy' that has motivated native movements. Examining here how Quichua communities practice self-determination during enactments of popular justice and negotiations for urban market access, the article shows the political limitations and economic risks of autonomy defined in the context of bounded indigenous territories. It also argues against the practicality and even desirability of autonomy formulas that assume new, unified multicultural identities as a means of framing relations among autonomous peoples. Instead, the author contends that Quichua peoples have been working towards a 'relational autonomy' linked to the geographic mobility of peasant careers. It manifests itself not through zonal separation and new pluricultural identities, but rather through strengthening and restricting relations with others. The autonomy that emerges, then, is situational, reflecting the responsiveness of indigenous organizers--rather than programmatic commitment to ideals, multicultural or otherwise. Key Words: Indigenous people, Latin America, Andes, Autonomy

Scholarly attention to the processes of globalization and the construction of regional blocs such as the European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur has resulted in the relatively widespread belief that borders are in the process of disappearing. Yet, ethnographic studies on political borders have for several years been evincing various redefinitions of border areas comprising new conflicts and mechanisms for strengthening certain barriers between countries. This article attempts to contribute to the discussion of the interplay between nation, state, and border in the Mercosur by analyzing transformations on the Argentinian-Brazilian border. My particular interest is in examining how sociocultural conflicts and negotiations at borders in this region are affecting the construction of new meanings of nationality, and conversely, how new policies (especially 'hygienic' barriers) being defined from the politico-economic centers are transforming local populations' everyday lives and experiences. Border populations can be as important in the construction of state and nation as are areas deemed to be central. Key Words: borders, nation, Mercosur, policy, Argentina, Brazil, public health

In the 1990s, Ulster-Scots language and culture was mobilized by some Ulster unionists in Northern Ireland as a badge of their cultural identity. The Ulster-Scots language and culture had its eighteenth century, premodern heyday in the north-eastern counties of the north of Ireland where it expressed distinctiveness from English and Englishness. However, in common with many regional dialects elsewhere in Europe, the processes of modernization signalled the demise of Ulster-Scots. The contemporary reinvention of an Ulster-Scots identity was precipitated by the 1990s political transformation of Northern Ireland. This reinvention has multiple manifestations. It is, variously, a myth of origin, a language and culture, a communal consciousness, a reaction against Irish nationalist cultural assertiveness in Northern Ireland, an embryonic nationalism, and a component part of the British identity. Ultimately, the reinvention of the Ulster-Scots cultural narrative appears designed to offset advances made by Irish nationalists in the assertion of their culture in Northern Ireland. Ulster-Scots has also been reinvented in an attempt to provide the Ulster unionist identity with the cultural booster required to deliver security and continuity to an identity experiencing chronic insecurity and doubt during a period of political transformation. However, the ability of Ulster-Scots to deliver on these aims is questionable. Key Words: Ulster-Scots, cultural politics, reinvention, Irish nationalist, agreement

This article examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia. In examining the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization, it is argued that the present resurgence of Hinduism is related to a growing sense of displacement experienced by Tamils in Malaysia. Thaipusam, while representing a collective assertion of Tamil and Hindu identity, also signifies 'Indian' within an Islamic-modernist discourse of the Malaysian nation. Becoming an ethnic subject within a multicultural nationalist discourse, in turn, produces ambivalence among some Tamils which is manifested in status concerns and social distancing within the Tamil community. Many elite Hindus, in turn, are drawn to the apparently ecumenical and modernist teachings within Hindu reform organizations. The vicissitudes of Malaysian Hinduism bring into focus some of the complex ways that diasporic sentiments are produced and differentiated along lines of status and class within and against modernist state-ideologies. Key Words: diaspora, ethnicity, Malaysia, nationalism, religious revivalism, Tamils

The capacity of cyberspace to bypass some of the spatial divisions that underpin social inequality endows it with political significance. This article examines some of the ways in which cyberspace has contributed to redrawing the boundaries between public and private and some of the consequences of this for people, things, and ideas in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. It shows how cyberspace influences a wide range of political phenomena including political mobilization and censorship, intergenerational communication, identity formation, sexuality, sense of belonging, and forms and location of symbolic capital The relationship between net users in the diaspora and cyberspace involves a circuit of reorderings of one's understanding of the diaspora, one's contact with it in cyberspace, of one's own ideas on the basis of what one finds there, and of social relationships established and maintained in cyberspace. Paradoxically, the very richness and diversity of the ideas and opinions found in Iranian cyberspace may undermine the idea of there actually being a single Iranian diaspora. Key Words: cyberspace, diaspora, Iran, private, public

In the context of globalization and European integration, the interplay between social boundaries and territorially defined political borders becomes more complex in that they become increasingly delinked. In some regional settings, this might imply that while the political border is softened, the socio-cultural closure between the border communities becomes even tighter. This article investigates this issue in relation to the German-Polish border region. Looking at the German-Polish twin-city, Guben-Gubin, the first section describes the ways in which cultural closure materializes. Emphasis is given to the link between cultural closure and an increasing alienation of local people from the Europeanized symbolic cross-border politics pursued by the local and regional political elite(s). The second section, however, argues that the 'cultural closure' thesis is perhaps too simplistic to grasp the complexity of cross-border interaction of local people. Investigating the cross-border strategies of three milieux, the article concludes that what can be found in a setting like Guben-Gubin is in fact a complex configuration of openings and closures at various spatial and symbolic levels, sometimes taking place simultaneously in one and the same milieu. Key Words: affectual field, border, boundary, disembedding/reembedding, German-Polish border region, hybridity, milieu, symbolic Europeanization