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?     

Nationalism and the Internet*

ABSTRACT. The territorial integrity of nations is often taken as the premise for a functioning, unifying national identity. Yet, the economic and technological developments of recent decades have made it necessary to question this assumption. It can no longer be taken for granted that the people who identify with a given nation inhabit the same space, nor can it be assumed that cultural homogenisation takes place at the level of the nation through mass media. When the Internet appeared, many social scientists and commentators predicted that it would threaten the cultural integrity of nations; that the non‐territorial character of the Internet would lead to fragmentation and unprecedented cultural differentiation, making it difficult, eventually impossible, to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, myths and so on. Although it is too early to draw any conclusions regarding the long‐term effects of the Internet, experiences so far suggest that such predictions were mistaken. In fact, nations thrive in cyberspace, and the Internet has in the space of only a few years become a key technology for keeping nations (and other abstract communities) together. Nations which have lost their territory (such as Afrikaner‐led South Africa), nations which are for political reasons dispersed (such as Tamil Sri Lanka or Kurdistan), nations with large temporary overseas diasporas (such as Scandinavian countries, with their large communities in Spain during winter), or nations where many citizens work abroad temporarily or permanently (such as India or Caribbean island‐states), appear in many sites on the Internet – from online newspapers and magazines to semi‐official information sites and ‘virtual community’ homepages. In a ‘global era’ of movement and deterritorialisation, the Internet is used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities.     

Welshness in ‘British Wales’: negotiating national identity at the margins

Popular interpretations of national identity often focus on the unifying qualities of nationhood. However, societies frequently draw hierarchical distinctions between the people and places who are ‘most national’, and those who are ‘least national’. Little attention is paid to these marginal places within the nation and the experiences of their inhabitants. This article helps to address this by analysing the ‘less Welsh’ British Wales region of Wales, a country that has traditionally possessed a hierarchical, regionally constituted nationhood. The article studies the British Wales region both ‘from above’ – considering how some areas develop as ‘less national’ – and ‘from below’, introducing empirical ethnographic work into ‘everyday Welshness’ in this area. Whilst previous work on hierarchical nationhood focuses on how hierarchies are institutionalized by the state, this article demonstrates how people at the margins of the nation actively negotiate their place in the nation. Whilst people in this area expressed a strong Welshness, they also struggled to place themselves in the nation because they had internalized their lowly place within the national hierarchy. The article demonstrates the importance of place and social class for national identity construction and draws attention to the role of power in the discursive construction of hierarchical nationhood.     

The historical dynamics of ethnic conflicts: confrontational nationalisms,democracy and the Basques in contemporary Spain*

ABSTRACT. All the historical moments in which the Basque debate reached political protagonism in contemporary Spain coincided with political contexts of institutional democratisation. The debate on patriotism in the Basque Country is connected with a uniform narrative regarding the Basques and their moral distance from the Spanish nation: the ‘Basque problem’. This narrative has fostered a confrontational discourse between Spanish and Basque nationalism. It has also promoted recourse to specific stereotypical images of the Basques, which bind ethnicity to collective identity. Such representations reveal that the invention of the Basque country as a uniform ethnic collective had much more to do with the internal contradictions of Spanish national identity – and later of Basque identity – than with the existence of a secular conflict between Basques and Spaniards. The Basque case shows that every ‘ethnic conflict’ requires adequate contextualisation in order to avoid simplifying its origins and past pathways to make it conform to present uses.     

Cuban Landscapes: Heritage,Memory, and Place

Growing individual mobility has been a key element in the re-evaluation of the links between (national) place and identity in what has been labelled a'borderless world'. In this paper, an alternative perspective is provided by exploring the ways in which discussions around travel are used to redefine the nation as a bounded, familiar and homely place.

In the first section, a number of key themes in the wider literature on ‘home’ are identified and applied to the nation, notably the idea that ‘homely spaces’ are imagined and experienced in relation to journeys elsewhere. This idea is then evidenced by a range of empirical data, which shows how individuals are often made aware of their own national identity and allegiances, when negotiating encounters with other people and cultural forms.

In discussing the discomfort and uncertainty they experience in ‘foreign’ locales, the national home is defined as a secure base from which to proceed and, most importantly, to return. Interestingly, these types of views were expressed by a range of social actors, ranging from college students, who travelled widely and with great enthusiasm, to retired people, who were increasingly restricted in their ability to visit foreign locales.     

Footprint or fingerprint: international cultural policy as identity policy

This article focuses on government policy aimed at the presentation of the nation abroad through cultural activities and its relation to national identity, external cultural policy. The methodological framework is offered by the discourse analysis of Wodak and the notion of identity of Laclau and Mouffe, treating policy as a discourse. A closer look is taken at the concept of cultural diplomacy and the closely related term nation branding. This article will show how the shift in paradigm also changes the role of ‘the other’ in the construction of national identity and how this influences the role of the arts in international cultural policy.     

From revolutionary heroism to cultural heritage: museums,memory and representation in Laos

ABSTRACT. Museum exhibitions in Laos represent two main strands of Lao national identity discourse. First, they glorify the ‘liberation struggle’ of the so‐called ‘Lao multiethnic people’ under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and therefore serve as important ideological tools for the current regime's self‐legitimisation. Second, they display the history and cultural heritage of the Lao nation, providing the postcolonial state with a narrative of historical continuity and civilisation that is focused mostly on the dominant ethnic Lao culture. This article explores the contradictions within official images of the Lao nation‐state and how these opposing strands of national identity compete or interact. Museums as key arenas of ideological tensions constitute illuminating fields of research on discourses of national identity in Laos.     

The rediscovery of ‘the national’ in the 1990s – contexts,new cultural forms and practices in reunified Germany

This article examines how and in which societal and political contexts nationhood is expressed and symbolised in reunified Germany. This ‘rediscovery’ of nationhood since the 1990s mixes new and old motifs of the cultural repertoire of ‘the national’ for different purposes. Three main contexts triggered a rediscovery of ‘the national’ after 1989: reunification, immigration and the retrenchment of the social state. I argue, by analysing ethnographic material and political discourses, that these contexts, on the one hand, rearticulate old forms of ethnic and cultural nationalism and, on the other hand, create new images and symbols of an open civic society and immigration country. There are ‘playful’ forms, such as campaigns of nation branding, that symbolically include the ‘productive’ and ‘useful’ immigrant into the national project. Moreover, such campaigns serve to legitimatise the downsizing of the national state that – according to a neoliberal attitude – relies on a new community spirit of entrepreneurial, ‘activated’ citizens who ‘help themselves’. Thus, focusing on these pluralised renationalisation processes makes evident how polyvalent ‘the national’ still is. It can be employed by those who attempt to ‘reunite’ the East and West Germans, by businesses to sell their goods and ideas and by almost any political orientation, be it right‐wing or left‐wing.     

Erotic Attachment,Identity Formation and the Body Politic: The Woman‐as‐nation in Canadian Graphic Satire, 1867–1914

Using depictions of ‘Miss Canada’ in editorial cartoons and political campaign posters published in English Canada between 1867 and 1914 as a case study, this article argues that the repetitive deployment of feminised and eroticised images of the nation summoned particular gender, sexual and political identities into being and entangled viewers’ psychic investments in masculine, heterosexual and nationalist subjectivities. It also considers how Miss Canada's normative representation as white conflated racial whiteness and Canadian‐ness, and how images hailed viewers into racial subjectivities that were leashed to national identity. Rather than querying how or why the woman‐as‐nation trope elicited nationalist sentiment in an already‐constituted subject, this analysis examines how imagery provoked viewers’ identification with subject positions that were co‐constituted with nationalism. Impassioned and even violent nationalism becomes more comprehensible when we consider that the woman‐as‐nation was capable of producing attachments to national identity that, for some, were inseparable from and tantamount to psychic investments in gender, sexual and racial identities. While Canadian scholars have recognised that Miss Canada was a significant popular culture icon during the long nineteenth century and acknowledged this icon's embeddedness in gender, sexual and national discourses, studies have tended to describe Miss Canada's role in consolidating hegemonic ideologies and power relations and underestimate visual culture's constitutive capacities. The extent of Miss Canada's hetero‐erotic coding has also largely escaped historians’ notice. Although a few scholars have explored visual culture's role in Canadian national identity formation during this era, this study makes a unique contribution by foregrounding the productive work of popular imagery in co‐constituting and entwining national and sexual subjectivities.     

Indifference towards national identity: what young adults think about being English and British*

ABSTRACT. National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often suggest that national identity is fundamental to individuals in contemporary societies, empirical investigation of people talking about national identity uncovers some broad strands of indifference and hostility towards national identity in general, and towards British and English identities in particular. This may reflect young adults' wish not to appear ‘nationalist’ just as many would wish not to appear racist. But the level of apathy and antagonism towards national identity among young adults suggests that we ought to reconsider any assumption that national identity is ‘normally’ a powerful and important marker, embraced with enthusiasm.     

Deterritorialising the nation? Internet and the politics of the Greek‐American diaspora

In this article, analysis focuses on the websites of Greek‐American diaspora organisations. The aim is to study these media outlets on two levels: (1) with regard to their communication function(s), in order to understand the spectrum of usages they offer to their visitors; and (2) with regard to the way they signify identity specificity at the crossroads of a parallel ethnic or national adherence. The low interactivity constitutes one of the general features of the media analysed. The persistence of the nation as the framework to apprehend collective belonging and the interaction with the ‘other’ is another recurrent and important element. The ‘identity specificity’ of the Greek diaspora community is not presented in articulation to the host society, but in terms of a continuous attachment to a ‘mother‐nation’, as a historic and cultural entity. The nationhood claimed and promoted in this manner is ethnic and cultural, and it espouses the form of an ecumenical and transcendent Hellenism.     

A fine instrument: two nation‐building strategies in post‐Soviet Belarus*

Abstract. This article pursues two aims. On the empirical level, it challenges the view of Belarus as a ‘denationalised’, or ‘failed’ nation, and exposes the country as an area of intensive nation‐building. The article demonstrates that, unlike most post‐communist states, two versions of national identity have been advanced in Belarus since 1989, with divergent results for their proponents. On the theoretical level, such an atypical experience places qualifications on the instrumentalist approach, that regards nation‐building as a political tool. The analysis of identity creation in Belarus suggests that nation‐building as a political strategy may be limited by the existing attitudes in the society in question, the socio‐economic structures, as well as by the influence of foreign actors.     

Diverse unity: creole contributions to interethnic integration in Guinea‐Bissau

The paper explores how creole categories of people who have constituted a small but influential minority in Guinea‐Bissau for centuries contributed to a countrywide, integrated national culture since the eve of independence in 1974. Since independence, several cultural representations previously exclusive to creole communities have been – driven by the nationalist independence movement and the early postcolonial state – transformed into representations of a new national culture, crossing ethnic and religious boundaries. The fact that creole identity and culture had been transethnic – i.e. creole identity brings together individuals of heterogeneous cultural, ethnic and geographic descent – during the colonial period, has fostered in postcolonial times the countrywide spread of previously exclusively creole cultural features. I argue that this ‘transethnicisation’ of creole cultural representations has unified Bissau‐Guineans across ethnic lines, causing a strong commitment with their nation ‘from below’.     

National identity,devolution and secession in Canada,Britain and Spain*

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it examines whether devolution fosters the rise of dual identities – regional and national. Second, it considers whether devolution encourages secession or, on the contrary, it stands as a successful strategy in accommodating intra‐state national diversity. The article is divided into three parts. First it examines the changing attitudes towards Quebec's demands for recognition adopted by the Canadian government from the 1960s to the present. It starts by analysing the rise of Quebec nationalism in the 1960s and the efforts of the Canadian government to accommodate its demands within the federation. It then moves on to consider the radically new conception of Canadian unity and identity embraced by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and its immediate impact upon Quebec. The paper argues that Trudeau's ‘nation‐building’ strategy represented a retreat from the pro‐accommodation policies set in place to respond to the findings of the 1963 Royal Commission on Biculturalism & Bilingualism (known as the B&B Commission). Trudeau's definition of Canada as a bilingual and multicultural nation whose ten provinces should receive equal treatment alienated a significant number of Quebeckers. After Trudeau, various attempts were made to accommodate Quebec's demand to be recognised as a ‘distinct society’– Meech Lake Accord, Charlottetown Agreement. Their failure strengthened Quebec separatists, who obtained 49.4 per cent of the vote in the 1995 Referendum. Hence, initial attempts to accommodate Quebec in the 1960s were replaced by a recurrent confrontation between Canada's and Quebec's separate nation‐building strategies. Second, the article explores whether devolution fosters the emergence of dual identities – regional and national – within a single nation‐state. At this point, recent data on regional and national identity in Canada are presented and compared with data measuring similar variables in Spain and Britain. The three modern liberal democracies considered here include territorially circumscribed national minorities – nations without states ( Guibernau 1999 ) – endowed with a strong sense of identity based upon the belief in a common ethnic origin and a sense of shared ethnohistory – Quebec, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Scotland. Third, the article examines whether devolution feeds separatism by assessing support levels for current devolution arrangements in Canada, Spain and Britain. The article concludes by examining the reasons which might contribute to replacing separatist demands with a desire for greater devolution.     

Articulating national identity in Turkmenistan: inventing tradition through myth,cult and language

A study of myth, cult, and language as tools of state power, this paper analyzes ways national identity was constructed and articulated in one state. When Türkmenistan became independent in 1991 its first president, Saparmyrat Nyýazow, promoted himself as the ‘savior’ of the nation by reconceptualising what it meant to be Türkmen. Myth, public texts and language policy were used to construct this identity. While they were the targets of the state's cultural products, Türkmen citizens contributed to the processes of cultural production. Nyýazow legitimised his authoritarian leadership, first by co‐opting Türkmen citizens to support his regime, and then by coercing them as participants in his personality cult. The paper concludes that Nyýazow used the production of culture, ‘invented tradition’ in Hobsbawm's sense, to bolster his agenda and further his own power. It also argues that the exaggerated cult of personality Nyýazow cultivated limited his achievements, rather than solidifying them.     

Belonging to the nation: Negotiating narratives of national identity in Aotearoa New Zealand

One of the most important yet complex contemporary political projects of belonging relate to rapidly diversifying societies. While prior research has tended to focus on how young people work to fit into the nation, this study sought to examine the processes by which ethnic minority young people (re)produced, reimagined and challenged narratives of national belonging. Underpinned by feminist theoretical understandings of citizenship and everyday nation, the study examined how young people (n = 180) attending four superdiverse high schools in Aotearoa New Zealand deliberated and negotiated the parameters of who belonged to the nation. The use of a qualitative participatory strategy – self-directed peer focus groups – opened up opportunities for young people to debate and contest complex ideas about belonging and national identity. Ethnic minority participants expressed widespread dissatisfaction with traditional narrow, monocultural narratives of national identity and drew on illustrations from their own everyday encounters with diverse others to offer more inclusive alternatives. Many employed affective notions of national belonging that centred on ‘feeling’ like, or choosing to be a ‘Kiwi’, rather than being chosen. Their deliberations and dialogue demonstrated agentic ways in which ethnic minority young people were ‘rewriting’ the narratives of national belonging to ensure that they and their peers were located as legitimate citizens of the nation, and in doing so, revealed the formation of their citizenship subjectivities.     

Knowledge and professional identity in engineering: code‐switching and the metrics of progress

When nations redefine their priorities and re‐plot their directions of travel, engineers get worried about the contents of their knowledge. The cultural and historical specificity of their responses illustrates the extent to which the questions of what counts as engineering knowledge and what counts as an engineer are linked tightly together, and also suggests that both may be tied to local images of the nation. After summarizing recent historical work comparing national patterns in engineering knowledge and engineers' work, this essay outlines how a focus on professional identity may provide a way of accounting for national and transnational influences on engineers while avoiding the specter of determinism. Offering brief case studies drawn from France, the UK, Germany and the USA, the authors describe engineers as ‘responding’ to codes of meaning that live at different scales, including contrasting metrics of progress and images of private industry. The paper is concluded with a brief assessment of some further implications of the analysis of professional identity for work in engineering studies.     

Body Language: The Somatics of Nationalism in Tamil India

The modern nation resides, literally and symbolically, in the bodies of its citizenry. These bodies in turn constitute the national body politic. The female embodiment of the nation is frequently the ground on which the two bodies intersect. This essay explores this intersection through the analytic of the ‘somatics of nationalism’, with examples drawn from Tamil-speaking India in this century. Through an analysis of how images of the shared womb, blood, milk, and tears of the female embodiment of the nation were circulated by nationalist narratives, the author suggests that these were somatic building blocks with which the nation and its constituency were constructed in southern India. In turn, Tamil citizens were called upon to demonstrate their loyalty by putting their own bodies on line, shedding their own blood and that of their enemies, for the sake of the embodied nation. Nations and citizen-patriots may relate to each other politically, materially and emotionally, but they also do so somatically.     

Soviet rule,nation and film: the Kyrgyz ‘Wonder’ years

ABSTRACT. What happens if a community is encouraged to imagine itself visually when its political vessel is a modernising nation‐state within a multinational communist federation? Cinematic works, in their distillation of time and space, contribute to the kinds of imaginings that sustain nation‐states. How this cultural technology reflected and promoted nation‐building in the Soviet era is the subject of this article. It explores how the tensions within the diktat ‘national in form, socialist in content’ played out in practice in the Soviet cultural landscape of 1960s Kyrgyz film, dubbed by Soviet critics as a ‘wonder’.     

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.