The role of classical music in the construction of nationalism: an analysis of Danish consensus nationalism and the reception of Carl Nielsen

ABSTRACT. Very little research has been conducted into the relationship between classical music and nationalism. This is a shame as music has played a significant role in the construction and consolidation of nationalism in many European countries. This article illustrates this by analysing the role of classical music and, in particular, contemporary serious music in the construction of Danish consensus nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s. In so doing, it explores the repression of the modernist expression which was and still is considered a Continental European phenomenon in favour of a local and traditional expression. Furthermore, it analyses the elevation of Carl Nielsen to the position of Danish composer par excellence.     

‘Rocking the nation’: the popular culture of neo‐nationalism

The aim of this paper is to understand contemporary forms of nationalism in a socio‐political context in which neo‐nationalism has obtained a dominant role not just in politics but in public discourse and in the cultural field as well. It investigates the emergence of a particular music scene in the beginning of the 21^st century, shaped by rock bands and performers and supported by far‐right political actors, which has made the ‘national’ imagination emotionally and ideologically appealing to a considerable part of Hungarian society and first of all to young people.     

Anti‐nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical, more nuanced versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self‐image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti‐nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self‐image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post‐modern anti‐nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism.     

Religion and ethno‐nationalism: Turkey's Kurdish issue

One approach within the Islamic camp treats Islam, which emphasizes overarching notions such as the ‘Islamic brotherhood’ and ‘ummah’, as incompatible with ethno‐nationalist ideas and movements. It is, however, striking that in the last decades, several Islamic and conservative groups in Turkey have paid increasing attention to the Kurdish issue, supporting their ethnic demands and sentiments. Even more striking, the leftist, secular Kurdish ethno‐nationalists have adopted a more welcoming attitude toward Islam. How can we explain such intriguing developments and shifts? Using original data derived from several elite interviews and a public opinion survey, this study shows that the struggle for Kurdish popular support and legitimacy has encouraged political elites from both camps to enrich their ideological toolbox by borrowing ideas and discourses from each other. Further, Turkish and Kurdish nationalists alike utilize Islamic discourses and ideas to legitimize their competing nationalist claims. Exploring such issues, the study also provides theoretical and policy implications.     

The limits of cultural nationalism: Italian Switzerland from a risorgimento perspective*

ABSTRACT. This article critiques the ‘cultural turn’ in Italian Risorgimento historiography by examining Italian Switzerland, and specifically Ticino. This area paradoxically aided and abetted Italian patriots, especially Giuseppe Mazzini, yet rejected becoming part of the Italian national project. This paradox is heightened by the fact that the vast majority of the Italian nationalist literary canon, as identified by Alberto Maria Banti, was republished in Ticino. The paradox is explained in terms of the conflict between long‐standing traditions of local autonomy and the idea of any form of uniform or centralised control, as originally represented by the Cisalpine Republic and then by both versions (Napoleonic and Piedmontese) of the Kingdom of Italy. However, I also use Banti's cultural concepts to demonstrate the creation of a powerful counter‐myth of Italian Swiss nationalism in the character of William Tell.     

Constitution‐writing,nationalism and the Turkish experience

Until recently there has been relatively little attention paid to the question of how the relationship between the state, its citizens and the nation is articulated in constitutional texts. This paper seeks to address this gap through an examination of how the rules of belonging to the nation are discussed by the political elite and how these discussions find their final formulation in the constitutional texts. The analysis focuses on the Turkish case at two constitution‐writing moments (1924 and 1961). While such moments have conventionally been assumed to be ‘revolutionary’, the data on Turkey highlights continuities rather than radical changes over time. More particularly, it underscores the resilience and salience of the principle of nationalism over time.     

Toward a topography of national trauma: mapping the past onto the future of American nationalism

Since the inception of the United States, many of those who have spoken for and to the nation have struggled to define and defend a coherent American nationalism. This article proposes that one of the reasons for this lies in the fault lines inherent in the invented traditions that underpin American, as many other nationalisms. Determined by warfare and by the desire for land, and frequently defined in racial terms, they have undermined more than they have stabilized the nationalist structures they seek to support through what they have excluded from the national imaginary. In common with other settler nations, in fact arguably with most Western nations, America's nationalist narratives struggle to serve as cohesive foundation myths. They represent the lasting legacies of national trauma derived from the nation's violent colonial past and the severing of the imperial bond in the eighteenth century, chattel slavery, and the civil war it caused, and westward expansion and the imperative toward hemispheric control. Through the mapping of a topography of national trauma predicated on these national traditions and located within the tensions arising from warfare, land, and race, scholars can better comprehend the still frequently acrimonious debates over American nationalism that persist today.     

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.     

Anatomy of the national myth: archetypes and narrative in the study of nationalism

This paper argues that recognising types of underlying narrative form which repeatedly occur across cases is critical to the study of nationalism. It proposes a method borrowed from the literary theory of Northrop Frye – archetypal criticism – for identifying the four basic forms of emotional architecture that characterise the myths of particular nations: tragic, romantic, comic and satiric. The study of nationalism has long acknowledged the importance of narrative in political behaviour. But consideration of how distinct types of narratives affect specific emotions is missing. The ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences, which has responded to instrumentalist scepticism, has thus far focused on the cognitive functions of narrative. That is, how narrative influences the acquisition and interpretation of information and how stories are used to construct or reinforce a collective understanding of events. The undertheorised dimension of narrative in nationalism relates to the emotional structures embedded within narrative. This is where this paper makes its contribution.     

Celebrating the prophet: religious nationalism and the politics of Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals in India

The traditional honoring of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed (Milad‐un‐Nabi) has shifted in numerous Indian cities from private prayer and ritual meals in the home to grand public festivals that bear resemblances to Hindu religious processions. In 2010 in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, large‐scale Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals became implicated in Hindu–Muslim nationalist riots that erupted weeks later at the commencement of a Hindu festival for Hanuman Jayanthi. This paper explores the political production of Muslim ethno‐nationalism and the intra‐community debates over the legitimacy and piety of Milad‐un‐Nabi celebrations. It argues that Milad‐un‐Nabi as a public performance is a (re)invented tradition that is part of the struggle for material, political and symbolic goods of the nation‐state. It is shaped by local party politics and history of anti‐Muslim discrimination. However, as the festivals highlight community divisions and religious ambiguities, they ultimately reveal the fragility of ethnic groups.     

Seeing for the state: Kemalist long‐distance nationalism in Australia

The recent literature on Muslim organisations in the Turkish diaspora context is voluminous as is analysis of Kurdish and Alevi grassroots politics against the Turkish state. Yet nothing has been written on those whose political orientation is in line with the secularist‐nationalist ideology of the Turkish Republic, that is, of Kemalists. As a contribution to this endeavour, this paper explores Kemalist actors' mobilisation in Australia. The paper argues that their current activism is related to a threatened economic privilege, a loss of cultural capital and a waning political dominance in the ongoing social life of Turkey.     

The Parthenon Marbles as icons of nationalism in nineteenth‐century Britain

Theories of nationalism place native culture at the core of national self‐fashioning. What explains a state's adoption of foreign objects to sustain national identity? In this paper, I argue that the incorporation of the Parthenon Marbles into British public life is an early example of supranational nationalism. The nineteenth‐century ‘art race’ was a competitive field in which European nation‐states vied for prestige. Of the thousands of art trophies that were brought to Britain from Mediterranean and North African countries, the Parthenon Marbles were uniquely iconicised. Using data from period newspapers and official documents, I assert that this was because they were assiduously presented as prenational by British authorities. In this way, they belonged simultaneously to no nation, to every nation, and to Britain. The case demonstrates the emergence of a particular form of national distinctiveness that transcended the smallness of particularity and rose to the level of universal civilisation.     

Irish language education and the national ideal: the dynamics of nationalism in Northern Ireland

Since the beginning of the Northern Ireland conflict in the late 1960s, Irish nationalism has been identified as a prominent force in the political culture of the state. Recent studies have suggested, however, that the ‘Nationalist’ population has become increasingly content within the new political framework created by the peace process and the aspiration for Irish unity diminished. In placing the Northern Ireland situation within the theoretical framework of nationalism, this paper will analyse how these changing priorities have been possible. Through an analysis of Irish language study in Northern Ireland's schools, the paper will examine how the political ideals espoused by the nationalist Sinn Féin Party reflected the priorities of the ‘nationalist community’. It will be contended that the relationship between the ideology and ‘the people’ is much more complex than is often allowed for and that educational inequalities are a significant contributing factor to this.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

‘Buy and promote the national cause’: consumption,class formation and nationalism in Mandate Palestinian society1

ABSTRACT. This article deals with patterns of consumption and of advertisement, as a field for the analysis of two major processes in the Palestinian society of Mandate Palestine: the growth of an urban middle class and the consolidation of the Palestinian national movement. The advertisements, sampled from the popular daily paper Filastin, analysed in the context of political and economic events, highlight the complex interplay between nationalism and class formation, and the contradictory tensions between the two processes. A smaller sampling in al‐Difa' points to similar, though not identical, trends. This analysis also highlights new dimensions of the Jewish–Arab conflict by drawing attention to the semi‐private sphere of consumption which appears to have been less segregated than the more often studied political and economic spheres.     

Excesses of nationalism: Greco‐Turkish population exchange

This article studies 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey through a case study of its experience in Izmir. It traces the ways the early Republican state engaged in the project of reshaping the population by eliminating the non‐Muslims who were rendered as ‘excesses’ in the spatial and discursive matrices of the nation‐state. Through the experience of the exchange in Izmir, it argues that the process of the accommodation and assimilation of the exchangees played a significant role in shaping the modalities of Turkish nationalism by creating new lines and fissures, further dividing the ‘Muslim brethren’ into ever restrictive constructions of Turkishness. It also underlines that this forced displacement is not just a significant episode in Greek and Turkish histories but that it represents a turning point in the project of nation formation in general.     

International regulation of historic buildings and nationalism: the role of UNESCO

This article focuses on the (ambiguous) relationships between nationalism and international regulation of historic buildings, namely, the activity of UNESCO in this field. It studies two different forms of UNESCO intervention: the creation of a list of world heritage sites of outstanding universal value, which includes several historic cities and buildings; and UNESCO Recommendations aimed at protecting historic urban landscape. The article shows that UNESCO seems to favour both political and cultural forms of nationalism and can significantly affect the nationalistic use of historic buildings and, more broadly, affect on the very idea of Nation and nationalism.     

Borders and banknotes: the national perspective

Replacing a banknotes series is meaningful for politicians and the general public even today, while most transactions are executed through virtual means. The choice of images carried on banknotes represents the limits of the State's sovereign border and becomes a means of banal nationalism. Moreover, by utilising scopic regimes, the hegemony portrays the cultural and political borders: historical figures from the country's past on one side, and an imagined or physical border, expressed through the illustrations on the back. This paper addresses the latter and examines the case of the State of Israel. The analysis of sites and landscapes that appear on national banknotes can decipher the construction process of a ‘territorial identity’ which, along with struggles for maintaining identity, provides the basis of the nation‐state. Using Williams's typology of selective tradition, we argue that Israeli banknotes demonstrate a mixture of residual and new cultural content.     

The Lilliputian dreams: preliminary observations of nationalism in Okinawa,Taiwan and Hong Kong

This paper is a preliminary comparative analysis of three polity‐seeking nationalisms that emerged in the contiguous peripheral areas – the overlapping ‘spheres of influence’ of three contending imperial centres: Taiwan, Okinawa and Hong Kong. Specifically, it examines and compares the pattern of nation‐formation and the form, ideology and politics of nationalism in each case, and in doing so it tries to suggest a possible explanatory framework for the rise of these nationalisms. Its tentative conclusion is that the rise of nationalism in Taiwan, Okinawa and Hong Kong should be understood as a macro‐historical sociological phenomenon caused by both the short‐term penetration from centralizing colonial and geopolitical centre(s) that triggered nationalist mobilization in the periphery and the long‐term process of peripheral nation‐formation that created the social basis for mobilization. The three cases also demonstrate some other traits of anti‐centre peripheral nationalism: they all adopted a similar ideological strategy of indigeneity, and all developed a differentiation between radical and pragmatic lines characteristic of minority or peripheral nationalisms. A final observation is that while the geopolitics of states in the region is powerfully shaping the development of the three nationalisms, interactions on the societal level may over time create a counterforce from below.     

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.