Viral nationalism: romantic intellectuals on the move in nineteenth‐century Europe

ABSTRACT. Intellectuals were important to the spread of nationalist ideology in nineteenth‐century Europe for a variety of reasons. Firstly, their works facilitated the international spread of the discourse of nationalism; secondly, they mediated between the fields of political institutions and cultural reflection. This article looks at the international mobility and networks of romantic‐nationalist intellectuals, and uses the case of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798–1874) as an example.     

The wartime Slovak state: a case study in the relationship between ethnic nationalism and authoritarian patterns of governance

This is a case study of the clerical‐nationalist Slovak state established under Nazi protection during World War II. As the only example of Slovak political independence prior to the break‐up of Czechoslovakia in 1993, nationalist interpretations of its legacy have helped shape the Slovak discourse on post‐communist state‐ and nation‐building. To explore the impact of the Slovak state on the development of Slovak nationalism, this article examines how the ideology of the Slovak state structured the relationship between the individual, state and nation; the roots of the regime's ideology; and the ramifications of this ideology for governance during the period of statehood. Through this exploration, I hope both to contribute to a fuller understanding of the relationship between ethnic nationalism and authoritarian patterns of governance and to lay the groundwork for further study of the sources of post‐communist Slovak political culture.     

Images of Catalonia

Abstract. The aim of this article is to offer an account of the Catalan nationalist discourse contained in the works of Jordi Pujol, leader of the Convergence and Unity Party (Convergéncia i Unió or CiU) which has been in power since the first democratic election to the Catalan parliament in 1980 having renewed its mandate for the fifth time in 1995. The article is divided into three parts. First, it explores the political scenario set up by the 1978 Constitution which recognised the existence of ‘nationalities and regions’ within Spain and allowed the country to be divided into seventeen autonomous communities. Second, it analyses the image of Catalonia contained in the 1979 Statute of Autonomy. Third, it offers an account of the nationalist discourses put forward by the four major Catalan nationalist parties emphasising their different content depending upon the political ideology with which they are associated. This section provides a detailed examination of the Convergence and Unity Party's nationalist discourse which is based upon the defence of a non-violent nationalism aiming at the development of Catalan identity without seeking independence from Spain and stressing the potential role of nations without a state in the constitution of a united Europe.     

Missionaries and the Development of a Colonial Ideology of Female Education in India

Protestant missionaries in India developed a fully articulated ideology of female education in the 1840s. They employed a separate spheres gender construction in a colonial context, assigning to the female the leading role as the custodian of culture, thus regarding her as the key to successful proselytism and cultural transformation. This ideology was the work of male missionaries before females entered the field in large numbers, and was deeply dependent on prior Indological discourse. The ideology and its emphasis on the formation of character influenced both colonial educators and nationalist writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

‘Peasantist nationalism’ in inter-war Greece (1927–41)

Abstract

‘Peasantist nationalism’ was a new radical nationalist discourse in the twentieth century. The crisis in agriculture in the 1920s, urbanism and the perceived overpopulation of the cities were important social factors that instigated the intellectual construction of the ‘peasantist nation’. Peasantist nationalism was by and large constructed by agronomists, a new stratum of technocrats who used nationalism as a vehicle for social mobility and their entry into the strata of the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie. Peasantist nationalist ideas, set forth earlier by the agronomists, were adopted by Metaxas' quasi-fascist regime and upgraded to the level of the state's hegemonic ideology.     

The strange case of ‘John Black’ and ‘Mr Hyde’: constructing migrating Jamaicans as (un)worthy nationals

This paper examines how migrating Jamaicans were constructed as ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ of Jamaican diasporic membership in the early years of statehood, to demonstrate the role of nationalist cultural repertoires in constructing particular diasporic imaginaries. I conduct a discourse analysis of Jamaica's national newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, between 1962 and 1966, a period encompassing crucial transitions in Jamaican migration movements and from colony to statehood. I argue that tropes of respectability present in Afro‐creole nationalist ideology form the cultural repertoires used to distinguish migrants' actions as worthy or unworthy of national membership. These distinctions specify who ‘counts’ as part of the diaspora and how migrants of different social positions may claim and articulate their membership.     

Geographers Performing Nationalism and Hetero-masculinity

Our article builds upon the insights of recent critical geographic inquiry that has examined the involvement of geography in a multitude of power relations, and in particular the processes of European imperialism and colonisation. The focus of this article, however, is the involvement of the discipline of geography in the constitution and maintenance of a hetero-masculine nationalist discourse. We focus our analysis on articles published in the New Zealand Geographer, but suggest that such hetero-masculine nationalist discourse exists also in the works of geographers writing about other nation-spaces. Our purpose is to draw geographers' attention to the constitutive effects of banal practices in geographic scholarship. We draw upon Michael Billig's concept of ‘banal nationalism’ to argue that the articulation of nationalist narratives is an endemic feature of the contemporary nation/state, and one that forms a particular discursive order that situates author, text and reader in an assumed national and hetero-masculine landscape.     

Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia

Abstract. It is inaccurate and misleading to apply the term ‘nationalism’ to Russia prior to the present day. Both Tsarist and Soviet leaders sought to maintain an empire and not a nation‐state, and their national consciousness was imperial rather than national. The lack of Russian nationalism was crucial for Russian history since it explains the failure of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Modern societies cannot be successfully constructed upon the basis of imperial thinking. The absence of Russian nationalism also has significance for nationalism theory. Russia possessed the social, political and cultural characteristics that have been adduced as ‘causes’ of nationalism by a wide variety of scholars, yet Russia failed to develop a nationalist movement. This suggests that what is crucial to modem nationalism is the appearance of a particularist, secular ideology, since the most notable aspect in which Russia differed from Europe was Russia's universalistic, religious and imperialist discourse of national identity.     

Nationalism,economic crisis and ‘realistic revolution’ in 1980s Mexico*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how the Mexican state drew upon nationalist discourse for legitimacy following the 1982 debt crisis. The analytical framework situates Mexico within the context of Latin American nationalism and explores the structural and conjunctural factors that contributed to the endurance and effectiveness of Mexican revolutionary nationalism as a hegemonic nationalist discourse. Historical commemorations during the Miguel de la Madrid administration (1982–88) are then examined to show how the state evoked nationalist motifs as it dealt with economic crisis, pressure from the USA, domestic political opposition and the implementation of neoliberal reforms. The relative effectiveness of sometimes counterintuitive appeals to nationalist legitimacy is found to be neither wholly ‘rational’ nor ‘irrational’, in this case having its basis in a history of elite and popular negotiation through the revolutionary nationalist framework, the continuity of the post‐revolutionary Partido de la Revolución Institutional (PRI) state model and the lack of a viable competing paradigm.     

From ‘motherland’ to ‘daddy state’: A genealogical analysis of the gender undertone in China's nationalist discourses

This article examines the gender undertone of China's nationalist discourses, especially in familial metaphors of nationalism, and how such an undertone shapes people's understandings of state authority and state-citizen relations. Conventional nationalist discourse of the ‘motherland’ evokes the image of an insulted and raped mother as the symbol of national humiliation and calls for actions from patriots (masculinised in the discourse). In recent years, however, we have seen the emergence of a new discourse that depicts the nation-state as a rich, powerful and masculine ‘daddy’. Using discourse analysis and Foucauldian genealogical methods, this article argues that the discursive development has to be analysed against China's historical backgrounds, especially considering new standards of masculinity and femininity in the era of economic reform. Capital is equated to masculinity and righteousness, whereas femininity is shaped by the middle-class values of consumerism and political disengagement. The ‘daddy state’ discourse conjures strong paternalistic power from China's economic capacity that can be projected onto challengers of state authority, while also constructing the nationalist public as feminised consumers whose consumerist enjoyment relies on patriarchal state protection.     

For the Good of The Nation: ‘Strategic Egalitarianism’ in the Singapore Context

In this article, I introduce the concept of ‘strategic egalitarianism’ in relation to women's co‐optation into nationalist projects in Singapore. By strategic egalitarianism, I mean the granting of equality to women that is contingent upon meeting particular pragmatic nationalist objectives. For example, the granting of equal educational and employment opportunities by the government in the 1960s was necessitated by Singapore's economic survival as a newly emerging nation. By the 1980s, another pragmatic national concern dealing with rapid decline in population growth emerged, requiring that women prioritise the role of motherhood. A complicating factor in the procreationist discourse is the government's eugenic policy that favours the ‘right’ kind of women, in particular, to bear the ‘right’ kind of babies for the continued vitality of the nation. In the course of this article, I examine the problem with strategic egalitarianism, which shifts its ground depending on the nationalist goals of the day, and the implications this has for Singapore women.     

Do nationalist parties shape or follow sub‐national identities? A panel analysis on the rise of the nationalist party in the Flemish Region of Belgium, 2006–11

In this article, we examine the steep and unprecedented rise of the New Flemish Alliance (N‐VA), a Flemish nationalist party in Belgium that succeeded in gaining almost thirty per cent of the vote in a couple of years. During this period, a panel survey among 3,025 late adolescents and young adults was conducted. Our analyses suggest that support for a sub‐nationalist ideology is far more successful in explaining a subsequent vote for the nationalist party than vice versa. In terms of supply and demand mechanisms, we find that N‐VA has managed to address a preexisting reservoir of Flemish nationalist voters (demand), rather than attributing to a development of a stronger Flemish identity among its followers (supply). We should therefore not overestimate the constructionist power of (sub‐)nationalist political elites for the development of (sub‐)nationalist identities.     

What kind of nationalism sets the radical right and its electorate apart from the rest? Pride in the nation's history as part of nationalist nostalgia

This contribution concerns the nationalist ideology of the radical right and the kind of nationalism that prevails amongst its voters. The article addresses whether closeness to the nation, patriotism and chauvinism are relevant for people to be attracted to the radical right compared with competing parties or whether a reference to an out‐group perceived to harm (economic or cultural) interests is necessary for voters to opt for the radical right. The argument here is based on the ASEN lecture at the 2018 General Conference in London and sets forth a closer interest in nationalist nostalgia.     

Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography

In Orientalism, Edward Said attempts to show that all European discourse about the Orient is the same, and all European scholars of the Orient complicit in the aims of European imperialism. There may be “manifest” differences in discourse, but the underlying “latent” orientalism is “more or less constant.” This does not do justice to the marked differences in approach, attitude, presentation, and conclusions found in the works of various orientalists. I distinguish six different styles of colonial and postcolonial discourse about India (heuristic categories, not essential types), and note the existence of numerous precolonial discourses. I then examine the multiple ways exponents of these styles interact with one another by focusing on the early‐twentieth‐century nationalist orientalist, Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo's thought took form in a colonial framework and has been used in various ways by postcolonial writers. An anti‐British nationalist, he was by no means complicit in British imperialism. Neither can it be said, as some Saidians do, that the nationalist style of orientalism was just an imitative indigenous reversal of European discourse, using terms like “Hinduism” that had been invented by Europeans. Five problems that Aurobindo dealt with are still of interest to historians: the significance of the Vedas, the date of the vedic texts, the Aryan invasion theory, the Aryan‐Dravidian distinction, and the idea that spirituality is the essence of India. His views on these topics have been criticized by Leftist and Saidian orientalists, and appropriated by reactionary “Hindutva” writers. Such critics concentrate on that portion of Aurobindo's work which stands in opposition to or supports their own views. A more balanced approach to the nationalist orientalism of Aurobindo and others would take account of their religious and political assumptions, but view their project as an attempt to create an alternative language of discourse. Although in need of criticism in the light of modern scholarship, their work offers a way to recognize cultural particularity while keeping the channels of intercultural dialogue open.     

Ethnocentricity of the Nationalist Discourse

Abstract. Nationalism is a theory about the nature, purposes, boundaries and the basis of the legitimacy and the unity of the state. It maintains that the state should ideally be constituted as a nation. This means that a nation has a right to form a state of its own, as also that every state should endeavour to become a nation. The nationalist discourse rests on several assumptions, such as that nationalism is a universal phenomenon, that nationalist movements have identical structures, that all nations aim to become independent states, that non-Western nationalism is derivative in nature and that nationalism is an unmitigated evil. The author elucidates the distinctive nature of nationalism and criticises these and related assumptions.     

The apparitions of the Virgin Mary of Medjugorje: the convergence of Croatian nationalism and her apparitions

Abstract. This article concerns the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in one of the most popular, ‘active’ apparitional sites in the world: Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The connection between nationalist discourse and apparitions has often been observed and noted in the literature on nationalism; however, the examples of this connection are scattered in the literature and the question why the apparitional phenomenon so easily lends itself to co‐option into nationalist discourse has never been addressed. This article explores this question by showing that what binds the two phenomena together is the idea of ‘chosenness’ and ‘specialness’, which in turn can be theoretically linked to discussions about national election in the literature on nationalism. This article illustrates the convergence of nationalist and apparitional discourses by drawing on a selected number of examples of how the apparitions in Medjugorje have been appropriated by Croatian nationalist discourse.     

When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.     

The chimera of national identity

ABSTRACT. In both popular discourse and many academic works, the existence of national identity is largely taken as given. Although researchers disagree on whether national identities are modern or perennial, and how best to gauge the intensity of identification with a particular nation, there is near unanimity on the view that national identities are real and perceptible entities. In contrast to this view I argue not only that there was no national identity before modernity but also that there is little empirical evidence for the existence of national identities in the modern age either. While it is obvious that many individuals show great affinity for their nations and often express sincere devotion to the ‘national cause’, none of these are reliable indicators of the existence of a durable, continuous, stable and monolithic entity called ‘national identity’. To fully understand the character of popular mobilisation in modernity it is paramount to refocus our attention from the slippery and non‐analytical idiom of ‘identity’ towards well‐established sociological concepts such as ‘ideology’ and ‘solidarity’. In particular, the central object of this research becomes the processes through which large‐scale social organisations successfully transform earnest micro‐solidarity into an all‐encompassing nationalist ideology.     

The female body as the bearer of national identity in Iran: a critical discourse analysis of the representation of women's bodies in official online outlets

Abstract

The female body has been in the foreground of nation-building in Iran especially since the 1930s projects of modernization, when unveiling women and adaptation to Western clothing became a crucial factor of bolstering modern Iranian national identity as opposed to a religion-based national identity. After the 1979 Revolution, the Islamic dress code became compulsory and female imagery depicting modesty and piety became a source of national identity. Although the representation of women's bodies in nationalist discourses has been subject of different studies, women's representation in official online outlets is still understudied. This article discusses how women's bodily appearance and representation in official online outlets feed into the nationalist discourses in Iran. Three key cases between 2014 and 2017 are addressed: (i) actress Leila Hatami kissing a man at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival; (ii) the public debate on women's entrance to sports stadiums in 2014–2015; (iii) the public revelation of actress Taraneh Alidoosti's tattooed forearm in 2016. Data were collected from multiple Iranian official online platforms and a critical discourse analysis was undertaken to analyse different forms of discursive articulation regarding women's bodies and national identity. Drawing on feminist literature inspired by the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics, the article discusses the ways in which women's bodies are discursively constructed to illustrate a uniform Islamic nationalistic discourse.