Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson

My article replies to Allen Carlson's critique of the existing literature on Chinese nationalism (Carlson's article was published in Volume 15, issue 1 of Nations and Nationalism, 2009). I address Carlson's criticisms and proceed to evaluate his proposal to move away from an allegedly unhelpful focus on nationalism towards the allegedly more illuminating framework of national identity construction. My approach to the existing literature on Chinese nationalism acknowledges efforts made within it at grappling with issues of theory and definition and builds on this acknowledgement to operate a selective appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I argue that while some of the problems identified by Carlson do indeed plague the literature, his advocacy of abandoning nationalism as a focus of research is unwarranted. There is continuing validity in using nationalism as a lens for understanding how China sees its place in the world.     

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT. New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?     

Continuity and Discontinuity: Narratives of the Yellow Emperor in Early Twentieth-Century History Textbooks

In the study of the origin of Chinese civilization, there has been considerable debate about the identity of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi). There have been two main approaches: One proposes that the memory of the Yellow Emperor was altered under the influence of nationalism in the twentieth century. The other argues that the memory has been passed down in a continuous, unaltered stream since ancient times. By examining the narratives about and images of Huangdi in history textbooks published during the early twentieth century, this article shifts the focus from Huangdi as a symbolic figure in the political world to one in which we examine his reception in the everyday world. Thus we will explore different Huangdis, taking up aspects of memory, continuity, and discontinuity.     

Fichte and the German Idiom: the Metaphysics of the Addresses to the German Nation

This article argues against the dominant Anglophone and Francophone interpretation of Fichte, which reads him as advancing either a form of ethnic or cultural nationalism. It claims that what is missing from the current reception of Fichte is the essentially philosophical and cosmopolitan character of his nationalism – the fact that the Addresses to the German Nation uses non‐empirical and cosmopolitical concepts to develop and articulate its nationalistic viewpoint. It therefore claims that the notion of a national philosophical idiom that the Addresses present, far from being a screen for its nationalism, is its driving engine. It does this by considering the problems of translating the German locution ist unsers Geschlechts. Consequently, it is claimed that the cosmo‐nationalism of Fichte is not reducible to a set of claims regarding ethnicity or even the empirical world, even if a discourse on the organismic, on what counts as life, irreducibly haunts the Addresses.     

Hans Kohn: the idea of secularized nationalism

More than seventy years after its publication, Hans Kohn's 1944 The Idea of Nationalism is still regarded as a ground‐breaking contribution to the study of nationalism. This essay is aimed to highlight a significant theme in this work which has largely gone unnoticed, namely, the pivotal role of religion and secularism in Kohn's account of nationalism, and especially, in his persistent struggle for a ‘perfect’ nationalism. Kohn's conception – and personal experience – of the relationship of nationalism and religion will be examined through several stages of his turbulent life. First, as a young Zionist in Prague, when he parlayed Martin Buber's Zionist creed into an ethnic concept of nationalism. Then, in Kohn's journalistic writing in the 1920s and in his first theoretical works on nationalism in the years 1929–1942. Finally, Kohn's more mature and crystallized account of nationalism in his 1944 book will be revisited from the perspective of the nationalism–religion relationship.     

Security,ethnicity, nationalism

Using Slavic examples, the article looks at the nationalism/security nexus present today between the birth of ethnicities (early middle ages) and the birth of nationalism (eighteenth century). I discuss how Slavic ethnicity emerged in Greek and Roman security thinking. Others were classified in terms of ethnoi and were then interpellated into this self‐understanding. If ethnicity is an identity for the Other, then nationalism is an identity for the Self. It becomes a security concern not to order the Other polity's identity, as did the Byzantines, but to see to it that groups that may threaten your own nationalism – minorities, imperial subjects – cannot embrace nationalism. The policy of denying nationhood to minorities must be understood amongst other things as security policy. The organic understanding of the nation as young and vital demonstrates a third interstice between security and nationalism. If the young and vital nation is to grow and expand at the expense of the old and tired, then the polity that represents itself as a young and vital nation is by dint of that representation alone a security threat against those that they represent as old and tired. Finally, I discuss how this theme is played out in today's Russia     

Nationalist cosmopolitanism: the psychology of cosmopolitanism,national identity,and going to war for the country

A frequently expressed criticism of cosmopolitanism by liberal nationalist theorists is that its moral universalism is incompatible with national identity and patriotic obligations, defined as obligations to the nation and to fellow nationals. While some scholars of cosmopolitanism agree with this incompatibility argument, others contend that nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and patriotic duties are not rivals. However, few efforts have been made to examine the relationship between cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and patriotic obligations at the level of individual people. Drawing fresh insights from psychological approaches to social identity, I argue that cosmopolitan individuals have an integrated dual identity that embodies both nationalism and world citizenship, and this dual identity is compatible with patriotic obligations. Using data from the 2010–2014, round of the Word Values Survey, I show that cosmopolitans who identify as world citizens also identify with the nation and are willing to perform the ultimate patriotic sacrifice of going to war to defend their country. Upending certain convention wisdoms, this result indicates that cosmopolitan and national identities are compatible and cosmopolitan identity does not hinder patriotic obligations.     

A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism1

ABSTRACT. Is nationalism in China on the rise? Is it making China more combative in the international arena? More fundamentally: Is a focus on nationalism the most effective intellectual framework for understanding how those living within the People's Republic of China (PRC) are defining their position in contemporary world politics? This article briefly answers each of these questions. It argues that, despite forwarding some compelling insights, previous work on Chinese nationalism has been undermined by a number of major flaws. It then finds that such shortcomings are in no small part a product of the narrowing gaze that a focus on nationalism alone imposes on the study of identity politics. The article then advocates that in place of the nationalism rubric, a turn to the broader question of national identity formation is merited. Utilising this perspective, it concludes by cautioning that incipient splits within contemporary Chinese national identity may portend a more tumultuous relationship between China and the rest of the world in the years to come.     

Between the devil and the deep blue sea: nationality,power and symbolic trade‐offs among evangelical Protestants in contemporary Northern Ireland1

ABSTRACT. National identity is a symbolically complex configuration, with shifts of emphasis and reprioritisations of content negotiated in contexts of power. This paper shows how they occur in one post‐conflict situation – Northern Ireland – among some of the most extreme of national actors – evangelical Protestants. In‐depth interviews reveal quite radical shifts in the content of their British identity and in their understanding of and relation to the Irish state, with implications for their future politics. The implications for understanding ethno‐religious nationalism, nationality shifts and the future of Northern Ireland are drawn out.     

Identifying Scotland and Wales: types of Scottish and Welsh national identities

Abstract. How are national identities and the ‘imagined communities’ ( Anderson 1991 ) upon which they are based linked? This article demonstrates that Q‐methodology, which allows each participant to express his or her own ‘personal nationalism’ ( Cohen 1996 ) while simultaneously highlighting how these individual assessments aggregate into coherent, shared types of national identity, provides a means of empirically assessing the linkage between the micro‐ and macro‐components of national identity. When applied to the cases of Scotland and Wales, the six types of national identity – three each in Scotland and Wales – highlight distinctions that reflect, as well as challenge, the ubiquitous academic division between civic and ethnic national identities. They also illuminate the differing natures of contemporary Scotland and Wales, with particular emphasis on the observation that the Welsh imagined community appears to be fundamentally more contested than the more easily forged Scottish imagined community.     

Between Islam and the nation; nation-building,the ulama and Alevi identity in Turkey

This article analyses the relationship between Islam and nationalism by considering the role of the ulama in Turkey, housed within the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA). The ulama – religious scholars and experts of Islamic law – in Muslim majority contexts are typically closely linked with the state and play a key role in shaping the boundaries of Islam and of what is Islamically acceptable. However, this is also of consequence for the boundaries of the nation, since in Turkey Islam and nationalism has been intertwined, with Islam playing a central role in nation-building, as a basis of ethnic identity formation and a source of symbols and myths. This articles shows, firstly, that the PRA has acted as a carrier and preserver of Sunni (Hanefi) Muslim identity in continuity with the Ottoman ulama and, secondly, that it has delimited nation-building, by considering its approach to and interventions against Alevi identity.     

Stateless Nation-Building: Quebec,Catalonia and Scotland in the Changing State System

Abstract. The reconfiguration of political space is bringing about new forms of territorial politics. The meanings of nationalism and the state are being transformed and new types of autonomist movement are emerging. These are often seen as a resurgence of ethnicity, or as attempts to recreate mini nation-states fragmented from the existing ones. Mainstream political science tends to regard them negatively. It is argued that the resurgence of minority nationalism is also a response to the needs for collective action in a world of weakened nation-states. New forms of collective identity and action are emerging which recognise the limitations of traditional sovereignty and the necessary interdependence of the contemporary world. There is much that is new here, but also much that has always been present but has been lost in the state-centred perspective of political science. The argument is illustrated by an examination of three of the most electorally successful nationalist movements in the Western world, in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. These are seen not as classic nationalist movements but as nation-building projects which recognise the limitations of the nation-state formula and are engaged in ‘stateless nation-building’. This project is difficult to translate into constitutional terms or to reconcile with the model of the state prevailing in the respective majority communities.     

Introduction: The state and historic buildings: preserving ‘the national past’

Historic buildings are important in nationalism through their roles in building and reinforcing national identity. As part of the expanding ‘heritage industry’, they are also of growing economic and political importance. Despite their physical existence, historic buildings are ‘created’ – they must be constructed as ‘historic’ through processes of choice and the attachment of significance. The state can perform these functions through policies that define and select buildings for protection, by ownership and funding, and by its uses of buildings for nationalistic purposes. Yet state actors can have good reasons – nationalistic and economic – to destroy or fail to preserve historic buildings. The paper examines why, when and how state actors pursue policies to protect historic buildings. It offers arguments about patterns of state action that part of state strategies to promote national identity and cultural nationalism.     

Civitatis Ghaniensis Conditor: Kwame Nkrumah,symbolic nationalism and the iconography of Ghanaian money 1957 – the Golden Jubilee

ABSTRACT. During his tenure as premier from independence in 1957 until he was ousted by a military and police coup in 1966, Kwame Nkrumah was the living personification of the Ghanaian nation‐state. As the self‐proclaimed Civitatis Ghaniensis Conditor– Founder of the State of Ghana – his image was minted on the new national money and printed on postage stamps. He erected a monument of himself in Accra, changed the national anthem to make references to himself, customised the national flag to match the colors of his CPP party, made his birthday a national day of celebration (National Founder's Day), named streets and universities after himself, and amended the constitution whereby he became Life President. Since the coup, many of the symbols of nationhood that Nkrumah constructed have been debated, demolished, reconsidered and reengineered by successive governments to rewrite the Ghanaian historical narrative. This article analyses the contentions of one of Nkrumah's first expressions of symbolic nationalism – that of the national coinage.     

Transcending Nationalist Divides: Religious Reconciliation as the Basis for a One‐State Solution in Israel/Palestine

Nationalism's inability to yield peacefully coexisting forms of political identity in Israel/Palestine has persisted for more than a century. This is so whether one refers to strands of secular nationalism that composed predominating, modern historical foundations for Israeli and Palestinian political consciousness, or subsequent forms of nationalism that have become intertwined, ever more, with religion. Further, nationalism's failure to foster a way out of the Israel/Palestine impasse infects not only the familiar (but increasingly problematic) “two‐state” solution but also the contested (but perhaps more productive) “one‐state” solution. The one‐state solution has tended to involve a secular approach, for example, the binational variety emblematized by Edward Said, or, alternatively, a nonbinary democratic state where equal citizenship is not contingent on distinct forms of identity. However, the untapped promise of the one‐state solution could be better actualized with ingredients for the construction of citizenship that, in a real, spiritual sense, transcend the limiting divisions of nationalism. Specifically, shared religious roots, including the modes of reconciliation integral to the three Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—most directly ensnared within the Israel/Palestine bind might offer a more fruitful basis for coexistence.     

‘United by blood’: race and transnationalism during the Belle Époque

The Belle Époque, often thought to be a period defined by nationalism, also saw the remarkable global proliferation of transnational affinities – especially those centred on race. Across Europe and its settler territories, notions of pan‐racial affinity spread alongside imperial nationalism, in the context of technological advancement that permitted novel imaginative possibilities. Meanwhile, texts of political imagination in Africa and Asia during this period – particularly those of pan‐Africanism and pan‐Islamism – demonstrate not only an awareness of the significance of racial thinking for Europe but a theorisation of the connections between Europe's racial imagination and its policies in the colonised world. The same advances in the fields of communication and travel that opened the door for new imaginative possibilities in Europe also enabled disparate communities in the colonised world to conceive of themselves, often for the first time, as collectively racialised subjects of a European world order.     

Remaking Sarajevo: Bosnian nationalism after the Dayton Accord

The task of rebuilding a city after war-time destruction can take many forms. In addition to the obvious signs of refurbishment and new buildings, there are more subtle forms of renewal involving a re-creation of the city’s identity and changes to its inhabitants’ views of the world. For Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the cessation of the struggle for control of the city, involving various ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, has brought about several forms of renewal, many of which have been closely related to the altered political status of Bosnia. This paper investigates ways in which the changing face of Sarajevo is associated with attempts to establish the state of Bosnia and Hercegovina subsequent to the signing of the Dayton Accord that guaranteed some measure of security to Sarajevo and to Bosnia itself. In particular, manifestations of a growing Bosnian nationalism are analysed in the context of the new state’s attempts to establish a clear identity within the deeply disturbed geopolitical setting of the former Yugoslavia. Special attention is given to the renaming of many streets within Sarajevo and to the symbolism on the newly-issued banknotes. Consideration is given to theories of nationalism and to the manifestations of nationalism in the specific context of the former Yugoslavia. There is particular focus upon the position of the Bosnian Muslims in the newly-established state and the emergence of a Bosnian nationalist agenda.     

Media,Language Policy and Cultural Change in Tatarstan: Historic vs. Pragmatic Claims to Nationhood

Abstract. The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictory. Although sometimes posed in terms of an historical legacy, claims to nationhood are also strongly shaped by more pragmatic contemporary concerns. In addition to more conventional forms of political mobilisation, national identity is also contested in cultural arenas. Examining policies on language reform and media development, for example, sheds light on the processes through which a sense of national identity is currently being renegotiated in Tatarstan. The Republic's official multicultural policy is situated in the context of a range of distinct conceptions of Tatarstan's identity, from radical Islamic nationalism to a view of the republic as a Russian province.     

Sententiousness and Nationalist Discourse: The Case of Alfredo Rocco

Abstract. This article considers the normative and hypostatising functions of nationalist discourse, and the necessity of rhetoric to nations and nationalism. It does so on the basis of a case study of sententiousness in the thought of Alfredo Rocco. Rocco was one of the most important Nationalist and Fascist intellectuals and the legislative architect of the Fascist state. His political thought is analysed by taking as a starting point a quirk of the historiography on Rocco, which insistently attributes a dangerous ‘rigour’ to his texts, and in particular to the punchy, sententious quality of his style. A close reading of Rocco's nationalism, using Flaubert to understand the rhetoric of sententiousness, reveals a systematic pattern of contradictions between normative and hypostatised definitions of the nation. Aspects of these findings, it is argued, can potentially be extended to embrace all forms of nationalism.