Université de Fribourg

Autochthony, ethnicity, indigeneity and nationalism : Time-honouring and state-oriented modes of rooting individual–territory–group triads in a globalizing world

Zenker, Olaf

In: Critique of Anthropology, 2011, vol. 31, no. 1, p. 63-81

Recently, proliferating discourses on autochthony and indigeneity have been noted as the flip-side of globalization. Against this backdrop, this article synthesizes insights from studies of nationalism and research on autochthony, explaining how identity formations literally ‘take place’ by conceptualizing ‘autochthony’ – the proclaimed ‘original’ link between individual, territory...

Université de Fribourg

Linguistic Relativity and Dialectical Idiomatization : Language Ideologies and Second Language Acquisition in the Irish Language Revival of Northern Ireland

Zenker, Olaf

In: Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2014, vol. 24, no. 1, p. 63-83

A considerable number of Irish Catholics in West Belfast, originally native English speakers, have started learning the Irish language throughout the Northern Irish conflict in order to feel more Irish. Many of these have developed a strong conviction that the Irish language contains a different worldview from the one embodied in English. However, rather than constituting a plausible...