In Search of the Authentic Nation: Landscape and National Identity in Canada and Switzerland

Abstract. While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration.     

高丽政权的自称抉择、记忆筛选与中国认同

一个政权对自称的抉择,反映的是其对现实中自我的定位与认知。"高丽"尽管由"高句丽"而来,却最终变成了"朝鲜"便是由此所决定。王建最初以"高丽"为国号标榜政权的合法性,可统一之后,由于正统来自新罗,又尽力摆脱"高句丽"的记忆与身份意识,而强调自身"三韩"的属性。但有时为了某种利益,高丽人又会对"高句丽"这一历史记忆与身份意识加以利用。高丽人的自称抉择是通过对历史记忆的筛选进行的,特定政治形势下的中国认同则是其主要标准。在"历史"力量的影响与现实话语的引导下,半岛政权真的由"高丽"经"三韩"而变成了"朝鲜",成为在政治与文化上高度认同中国天子的一方诸侯。     

Sport,National Identity and Public Policy

Abstract. The paper examines the use made of sport by governments to help manage identity. It begins with an exploration of the relationship between sport and ethnic culture and continues with an analysis of the ways in which sports can be used to aid the state and achieve its objectives of legitimacy, territorial integrity, and citizen commitment. This introduction is followed by an examination of the particular problems of identity faced by Canada, Ireland and Britain and the sports policies adopted by the governments of the countries is evaluated. It is concluded that while sport possesses a powerful symbolism that can be exploited on occasion to great effect, the malleability of sports symbolism often undermines its capacity to exert a lasting effect on national identity.     

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

In Comes I: Performance Memory and Landscape

HANDWOERTERBUCH DES DEUTSCHEN MAERCHENS. Herausgegeben unter besonderer Mitwirkung von JOHANNES BOLTE und Mitarbeit zahlreicher Fachgenossen von LUTZ MACKENSEN. Band I. Berlin und Leipzig, 1931. Verlag Walter de Gruyter &; Co. Reviewed by M. Gaster.

THE HILL BHUIYAS OF ORISSA. By RAI BAHADUR SARAT CHANDRA ROY, M.A., B.L. Ranchi: Man in India Office, 1935. 8¾″x5¼″. Pp. iv+320+xxxviii, with 17 Plates. Price, Rupees 8. Reviewed by F. J. Richards.

ORPHEUS AND GREEK RELIGION: A STUDY OF THE ORPHIC MOVEMENT. By W. K. C. GUTHRIE, M.A., Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, with 16 plates and 19 text illustrations. Pp. xix, 287. Methuen and Co. Price 21s. nett. Reviewed by R. M. Dawkins.     

华夏民族与国家认同意识的演变

华夏民族与国家的演进和互动走着一条与西方不同的发展道路,由此形成古代中国民族认同与国家认同的同一性传统及民族意识中的民族与国家认同相一致的深层价值结构,同时也导致古代中国独特的政治地缘与民族地缘的特征。它使中国在国家与民族认同上呈现重要特点:即族别上的兼容性、民族统一与国家安全的一致性、文化的开放性。近代以降,传统家天下的国家与民族意识受到严峻挑战,其认同观念面临断裂和重新阐释、再塑的问题。以孙中山为代表的近代仁人志士积极探索民族国家的重建途径,创造性地提出政治革命与民族革命相统一的思想,并以此为核心构建近代中华民族国家中民族认同与国家认同新的一致性。     

Performing Hospitality in Moldova: Ambiguous,Alternative, and Undeveloped Models of National Identity

This paper examines performances of hospitality in everyday life to explore the lived experience of “being Moldovan”. National identity in Moldova can only be understood by reference to the peculiarities of history—to the presence of a neighbouring kin-state (Romania), a multiethnic population, Soviet ideology, and successive efforts at nation-building. The instabilities, contradictions, and ambiguities of national identity are also experienced and interpreted, as they are regularly performed in informal and formal settings. The “hospitality” of Moldovans—performed daily through linguistic code-switching, in practices of buying and selling, in life-cycle celebrations such as weddings, and in the official greeting and welcoming of dignitaries and visiting delegations by folk-costumed performers—is, paradoxically, an important site of this experience of ambiguity. The same set of practices both renders its performers “masters of their own houses”, while at the same time revealing the limits of the metaphor.