Team Arab: al‐Jazeera and the flagging of everyday Arabism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The linking of living rooms across state borders by al‐Jazeera and other pan‐Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a ‘new Arabism’ that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the ‘hot’ Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al‐Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation‐states within a given ‘Arab arena’ of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a ‘supranationalism’, not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of ‘everyday nationalism’ by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of ‘banal nationalism’ in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.     

The limits of constructedness: memory and nationalism in the Arab Middle East

Abstract. This paper examines the influence of the historical trajectory on the creation of nationalism in the twentieth century Middle East. While it is not claimed here that everything was decided in preexisting history, the paper claims that history was important. If the story of Middle Eastern nationalism is the story of the tension between ethnic Pan‐Arabism and geographical state nationalism, the fact is both these phenomena are highly distinct in the sources used for this study, mainly seventeenth‐ and eighteenth century biographical dictionaries. The modern countries (Egypt, Syria) are in daily use, serving partially as terms of identity, non‐political though it might have been. A sense of Arabism existed as well, probably surviving from the early Islamic period. It had much to do with the survival of Arabic literary genres as the preoccupation of the intellectual elite. The Ottomans did their bit in this regard, by treating the Arabic‐speaking Middle East as substantially one unified unit, their provinces being superficial and unimportant barriers, mentally no less than physically. Thus, when the Ottoman Empire disappeared in the early twentieth century, the ambivalence between Arabism and state‐based nationalism already existed, and was by no means invented by colonialism. The later success of this or that version of nationalism could only be explained by reference to modern factors, but the repertory owed much to the cultural history of the region.     

‘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.     

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.     

The orange and the ‘Cross in the Crescent’: imagining Palestine in 1929

Abstract. This article analyses a public discussion held in Palestine during the last months of 1929 over proposals for a particular Palestinian flag. Based on readers' reactions published in the daily newspaper Filastin and on letters sent to the Arab Executive, the article examines the character of Palestinian identity as it was imagined by a certain segment of the Palestinian elite. The three main leitmotifs of the flag proposals – the four colors of the Arab flag, the color orange and the ‘Cross in the Crescent’ emblem – serve as a starting point for discussing the tensions between Palestinian particularism and pan‐Arabism, as well as the status of Muslim‐Christian partnership in a period of increasing Islamisation of Palestinian identity. The second part of the article incorporates a comparative discussion that aims to explain the failure of the color orange and the ‘Cross in the Crescent’ to be accepted as emblems in the national flag. By comparing the unsuccessful proposals with the Arab flag (that eventually became the official Palestinian flag) and with the Lebanese flag, the article suggests their failure was due to three main reasons: (a) they reflected the interests of relatively marginal social groups; (b) they were not raised at a time of sweeping change in the socio‐political order; and (c) they lacked a profound basis in local tradition and the potential to be attached to an ancient past.     

The Anti‐Essentialist Choice: Nationalism and Feminism in the Interaction between Two Women's Projects

Abstract. Two cross‐national women's organisations, one in Northern Ireland the other in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, are observed here in interaction with each other. The article explores the connection between their ability to sustain such cross‐community alliances and their choice to be women's projects. In so doing, it addresses the question ‘are feminism and nationalism compatible?’ Not all the women are ‘anti‐nationalist’ in philosophy, but they draw distinctions between variants of nationalism, and may be described as ‘anti‐essentialist’. The article distinguishes between variants of ‘feminism’, recognising it, too, as a plurality of movements. An anti‐essentialist understanding of ethnicity and nation is partnered in both the Network and Medica by an anti‐essentialist feminism, in which a woman's family role is minimised and value placed instead on her autonomy and agency. Certain forms of feminism and nationalism are thus compatible – but the configuration may be progressive or retrograde.     

Anti‐cosmopolitan liberalism: Isaiah Berlin,Jacob Talmon and the dilemma of national identity

ABSTRACT. The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post‐war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxonian liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) and the Israeli historian Jacob L. Talmon (1916–80). I use their examples to argue that the dividing line between cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism should not be regarded as signifying the distinction between liberals and anti‐liberals; in fact, this debate also took place within the camp of the liberal thinkers themselves. I divide my discussion into three parts. Firstly, I examine Berlin's and Talmon's positions within the post‐war anti‐totalitarian discourse, which came to be known as ‘liberalism of fear’. Secondly, I show how a sense of Jewish identity, combined with deep Zionist convictions, induced both thinkers to divorce anti‐nationalist cosmopolitanism – which they regarded as a hollow, illusionary ideal associated with impossible assimilationist yearnings – from the liberal idea. I conclude by suggesting that, although neither man had ever developed a systematic theoretical framework to deal with the complex interactions between ethno‐nationalism, liberal individualism and multiculturalism, Berlin's vision of pluralism provides the foundations for building such a theory, in which liberalism and nationalism become complementary rather than conflicting notions.     

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     

The bi‐national idea in Israel/Palestine: past and present

Abstract. This article reviews four different advocacies of bi‐nationalism in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Despite the differences in their context, content and style, let alone in motivations and implications, the four advocacies – the ‘old school’ and the ‘new school’ of Jewish bi‐nationalism, contemporary Palestinian bi‐nationalism, and bi‐nationalist advocacy that comes from outside observers – present certain similarities which reduce their chances of becoming a mainstream option: (a) in all cases bi‐nationalism is not the most desirable option; (b) they all gained momentum on both sides in periods of instability – due to transformations in the power relations between them or when the conflict reaches a point where the violence seems to become unbearable; (c) all these bi‐nationalisms present a rather uneasy mixture of moralistic arguments and pragmatic ones; (d) in all cases the people who embrace the bi‐national model are intellectuals. This gives their recommendations a touch of ‘ivory tower’ overrationalisation, further reducing thier public appeal.     

Nationalism studies between methodological nationalism and orientalism: an alternative approach illustrated with the case of El Greco in Toledo,Spain

Methodological nationalism is still dominant in nationalism studies. When studying the construction of national identities, scholars generally limit their study to the borders of one nation‐state, while only paying attention to members of that particular nation. Implicitly, foreign actors and influences are left out of the picture. I will challenge this methodological nationalism with a case study, which demonstrates that the place of Toledo within the Spanish national imagination, and more particularly that of El Greco, the most important representative of the city's artistic heritage, was largely determined by foreigners. During the nineteenth century, El Greco was rediscovered primarily by foreign scholars and artists. Moreover, it would be the rise of international tourism in the early twentieth century that convinced Toledans to adopt El Greco as the city's main artistic icon. This case, thus, clearly shows that in nationalism studies methodological nationalism can be avoided by also including foreign actors.     

Stateless and Citizenship Rights in the Middle East: the Case of Kuwait

This article examines Kuwaiti citizens' views towards expanding citizenship rights to disenfranchised groups. Using survey data from 1581 Kuwaiti citizens in 1998, the author focused on the influence of Kuwaitis' social statuses, cultural affiliations, social networks and religious beliefs. Are attitudes toward inclusion specific to the national origin of the excluded? It was found that variables connoting status decrease support for the stateless. Cultural adherence to Islamic nationalism and Pan‐Arabism and those who follow the media regularly positively influence support for the stateless. These findings suggest that citizens' attitudes about inclusion/exclusion are specific to the national origin of the dis‐enfranchised.     

Examining the Impact of Turkey's Approach Vis‐à‐Vis Syria into Turkey's Iraq Policy

The tension between “international order” and justice has long been a focus of critical attention of many scholars. Today, with the rise of the humanitarian crises, the debate is once again visible, and Turkish foreign policy is one of the most important areas of observation of this tension. Indeed, the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 paved the way for Turkey to actively engage in regional affairs. Meanwhile, the need to bring human justice into world politics makes Turkish foreign policy decision makers operate on a much more humanitarian basis. Nevertheless, active humanitarian engagement poses an important challenge to traditional Turkish foreign policy as it is mainly based on the notion of “non‐interference,” as well as on the elementary components of international order, by raising suspicions on the intentions of the Turkish authorities. This article aims to explore the challenges Turkey has been facing since the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq, and diagnose Turkish foreign policy vis‐à‐vis Iraq in the shadow of the Syrian civil war from Hedley Bull's framework of “order” and “justice.” It argues that Turkey's recent fluctuations in the Middle East could be linked to Turkey's failure to reconcile the requirements of “order” with those of “justice” and the Turkish governing party's (AKP) attempts to use justice as an important instrument to consolidate its power both in Turkey and in the Middle East.     

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.     

The ethno‐religious ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the ascendancy of communism in post‐war Poland (1945–50)

ABSTRACT. This paper differentiates between centrifugal and centripetal aspects of ethno‐nationalism to help account for the ascendancy of communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Poland. It argues that the directing of social antipathy to defined out‐groups allowed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) to manage social anger and that the Roman Catholic Church's ethno‐religious agenda was aligned with the PPR's ethno‐nationalist policy. Furthermore, it is contended that the Church's toleration of hostile actions directed at minority communities supported the PPR's management of social anger. The paper concludes that the Church, despite its manifest intentions and contrary to contemporary perceptions, played a role in the PPR's achievement of hegemony.     

Sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state: Québec and Canadian federalism

ABSTRACT. This article examines the relationship between sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state through the case of Québec in Canada. It argues that social policy presents mobilisation and identity‐building potential for sub‐state nationalism, and that nationalist movements affect the structure of welfare states. Nationalism and the welfare state revolve around the notion of solidarity. Because they often involve transfers of money between citizens, social programmes raise the issue of the specific community whose members should exhibit social and economic solidarity. From this perspective, nationalist movements are likely to seek the congruence between the ‘national community’ (as conceptualised by their leaders) and the ‘social community’ (the community where redistributive mechanisms should operate). Moreover, the political discourse of social policy lends itself well to national identity‐building because it is typically underpinned by collective values and principles. Finally, pressures stemming from sub‐state nationalism tend to reshape the policy agenda at both the state and the sub‐state level while favouring the asymmetrical decentralisation of the welfare state.     

Pax Ottomanica No More! The “Peace” Discourse in Turkish Foreign Policy in the Post‐Davutoğlu Era and the Prolonged Syrian Crisis

Turkey's eight years between 2008 and 2016 has been dominated by Ahmet Davuto?lu's vision of foreign policy, which was derived from his multi‐edition book Strategic Depth (2000). In order to be able to present itself in its larger periphery as a pro‐active, trustworthy actor, Davuto?lu argued, Turkey needed to change the foreign‐policy paradigms with which it was stranded. As the Strategic Depth vision unfolded, it drew explicit parallels between modern Turkey and the Ottoman neighborhood policy. Turkey‐Syria relations since 2008 had been providing the seekers of neo‐Ottomanist tendencies in the contemporary Turkish foreign policy with abundant examples, because Syria, once an Ottoman territory and always a challenge to modern Turkey, came to be the first poster country in the shift towards Turkey's imperial awakening. In the post‐Davuto?lu era, however, the rhetoric and practices of the past eight years seemed suddenly to disappear from the use of the Turkish agents of foreign policy; the new code of terms and actions to replace the Strategic Depth version is yet to be decided. This study seeks to pin down the neo‐imperialist character of Turkey's foreign‐policy discourse of the aforementioned eight years and contribute to discussions of the Turkish aspiration of neo‐Ottomanism with focus on the Syrian crisis through the Justice and Development Party's re‐invented peace discourse. In doing so, it aims to find out and elaborate on the current tendencies of Turkish foreign policy, which are no longer as explicit and articulated as they were during Davuto?lu's ministry and prime ministry. As Turkey's cross‐border operation to Syria — the Euphrates Shield — ends and another one in Idlib begins, a discursive analysis stretching from Davutoglu's diplomatic “zero problems” with Damascus to the military use of ground troops and air force is timely. Such an endeavor would be essential in understanding the spectacular swing from one edge to the other in Turkey's inclination over a phantasmagorical empire.     

The ideological roots of failure: the application of kinetic neo‐liberalism to Iraq

This article argues that American policy towards Iraq went through four major shifts between the invasion in 2003 and the announcement of the surge in 2007. The best way to understand the Bush administration's evolving policy towards Iraq is by examining the ideological parameters within which it was made. The article assesses various approaches to understanding the relationship between ideology, policy making and foreign policy, concluding that ideology shapes the paradigm and analytical categories within which foreign policy is made. A major change in foreign policy originates either from the decision‐maker consciously recognizing and attempting to rework the ideational parameters within which policy is made or in reaction to ‘discrepant information’ or ‘anomalies’ that destabilize the paradigm and its analytical categories. The article goes on to examine the extent to which both neo‐liberalism and neo‐conservatism shaped George W. Bush's foreign policy. It identifies a series of major analytical categories that originate from within these two doctrines and shaped policy towards Iraq. The article argues that the four major shifts in Bush's policy towards Iraq were forced upon the administration by the rising tide of politically motivated violence. Ultimately this violence forced Bush to abandon the major analytical categories that, up to 2007, had given his policy coherence. In order to extricate his administration from the quagmire that Iraq had become by 2006, Bush totally transformed his approach, dropping the previously dominant neo‐liberal paradigm and adopting a counter‐insurgency doctrine.     

Creating a country through currency and stamps: state symbols and nation‐building in British‐ruled Palestine

ABSTRACT. Recent studies have examined the use of currency and stamps for nation‐building in various contexts, with these artefacts seen as vehicles for indoctrination and gaining legitimacy by ruling elites – as a form of “banal nationalism”. This article goes further to argue that in moments of geopolitical upheaval, these symbolic artefacts can play a crucial role in shaping the very framework of nationhood. This article focuses on the Middle East during World War I and its aftermath, and on British efforts to shape public opinion through the issuing of Palestine postage stamps and currency (1920–7), which were intended to convey Britain's commitment to Zionism. Parallels are drawn to the introduction of Arab stamps and flags during the Arab Revolt (1916–18). The benefit to Zionist nation‐building and “Hebrew Revival” is discussed, as well as the strikingly different reactions of local constituencies – Arabs and Jews – to the political message of these symbolic objects.     

Performing the nation in anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco

This article applies a process approach to the study of nationalism, analysing anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco to address how and why elite‐constructed national identity resonates for larger audiences. Using Alexander's social performance model to study nationalist contention, it examines how a Muslim prayer ritual was re‐purposed by Moroccan nationalists to galvanise mass protest against a French divide‐and‐rule colonial policy towards Moroccan Berbers that they believed threatened Morocco's ethno‐religious national unity. By looking at how national identity was forged in the context of contentious performances and why certain religious (Islam) and ethnic (Arab) components were drawn on to define the Moroccan nation, this study offers a model for answering why national identity gets defined in specific ways and how the nation gains salience for broader publics as a category of collective identity.