The sacredness of the cow and the religious proscription against the consumption of beef were invented as late as the medieval period, and have since represented powerful unifying forces among the Hindu community. Today, the wave of lynchings the country has experienced shows how these notions continue to be instrumentalized by the nationalist extreme right.
Addressing the fragility of Latino pan-ethnicity in the U.S., Marie L. Mallet presents an overview of the social interactions between Latino communities in Los Angeles, Boston and Miami, showing how these differential interactions impact on the identity formation and subsequent assimilation of Latino immigrants.
Instead of examining minorities in a vacuum, historians should not overlook the relations that these groups build with one another, whether conflictual or not. This is the core of Maud Mandel’s research, which focuses on Jews and Muslims in contemporary France, against the backdrop of WWII, the Algerian War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
