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?     

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.     

Forging the nation as an imagined community

This article examines the ways in which young Canadians represent the ‘the War on Terror’ in their narratives. I explore how a hegemonic nationalist narrative enters into this representation in different ways and positions itself in a dynamic tension with the USA, at times eliding the difference and at times affirming it. I illustrate that these students do not simply tell the narrative of the war, but use the deixis of ‘we/us/our’ or ‘them/they/their’ in a way that constructs multiple imagined communities. I argue that these presumably benign representations of Canadian involvement in the war produce banal nationalism that excludes ‘others’, and binds human imagination into a framework that works against critical thinking.     

CALIFORNIA IRREDENTA

Kevin Starr's Golden Dreams is the culmination to some forty years of scholarship on the unfolding theme of a “California Dream,” that imaginal component to the growth of the self‐identity and increasing international economic power of the most populous state in the American Union. Indeed, the period 1950–1963 that the book meticulously covers forms in many ways the most imposing manifestation of that Dream. This essay reviews the central features of Starr's account, particularly the infrastructural foundations in transportation, water supply, and higher education realized by a triumvirate of California governors, both Republican and Democrat, who regarded themselves as nonpartisan members of the “Party of California”; the expansion of California's major cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco; the characteristics of the Silent Generation and the culture of “cool Jazz” that dominated the period; as well as the rise of dissident elements among environmentalists, minorities, and Beats, that foretold the protest period of the 1960s. This essay then asks whether Starr has avoided the larger implications of his own narrative that California from this period on had become in most respects a putative nation‐state in its own right. From the global impact of its major media industry—Hollywood—to the continued advances of its economic clout throughout the rest of the century as at times the fifth largest economic entity in the world, California may need to be increasingly regarded as a world civilization in itself rather than as a regional civilization to which Starr's historical narrative has so far constricted it.     

Transnational Muslim solidarities and everyday life

ABSTRACT. Discussions of globalisation and identity have focused on the renewed relevance of various post‐national frameworks of belonging, including the Muslim umma. This article argues against the idea that the umma has come to constitute a primary referent in contemporary Muslim debates about identity or a form of globalised political consciousness. Furthermore, the advent of ‘post‐Islamism’ means that Islamic political mobilisation rarely seeks to establish alternative political orders within the container of the nation‐state. However, this does not mean that we are seeing a reaffirmation of the nation in Muslim contexts today. Rather, transnational Muslim solidarities represent an intermediate space of affiliation and socio‐political mobilisation that exists alongside and in an ambivalent relationship with the nation‐state. I point to two different socio‐religious movements that, without positing the primacy or exclusivity of the umma/Islamic identity, express discrepant visions of the relationship between Islam and the nation: (1) the Fethullah Gülen movement, which serves simultaneously as the vehicle for a particular vision of neo‐Ottoman Turkish nationalism and a critique of the Kemalist national order; and (2) the neo‐Salafist movement, read here as an effort to embed conceptions of public morality and accountability within the discursive tradition of orthodox Islam rather than the institutional framework of modern polity.     

The question of national identity and the institutionalisation of the visual arts in Grenada

ABSTRACT. This article argues for a close relationship between national identity and the institutionalisation of the visual arts in Grenada. Art, which is intrinsic to all humans, predates its institutionalisation: it is only institutionalised in societies with a strong sense of national identity. In order to explain the role of national identity in the formation of national art, the article begins by examining the period following World War II, when Grenada – still under British colonialism – was undergoing intense social and political changes. To understand these changes, the analysis of the stratification system is paramount. The article delineates three groups on the basis of the value systems developed historically: the elite, the masses and a small, growing middle class situated between these two groups. The works of three prominent Grenadian artists illustrate the argument that institutionalisation of art requires a strong sense of national identity, and through this process the artistic development of a society occurs. Furthermore, understanding this process requires a focus on the ways in which social and political groups or classes impeded the development of a national identity, preventing the institutionalisation of the arts.     

The symbolism of the Arab flag in modern Arab states: between commonality and uniqueness*

ABSTRACT. The national flag, anthem and emblem are the three symbols through which an independent country proclaims its identity and sovereignty. Although each state has its distinctive flag, there are similarities in the flags of certain countries, such as in Scandinavia (the cross) and Africa (colours). These symbolise certain propinquity in terms of ideology, culture and history. Similarity is also to be found in the flags of the Arab countries: out of the twenty‐two current members of the Arab League, ten share the same colours on their flags (green, white, black and red), while a certain Islamic symbol (eagle, star) in some flags represents the uniqueness of that country. Of the other twelve countries, most rely on one colour of the four (usually red or green) while nine use Islamic symbols (stars, crescent and sword) on their flags. In spite of the importance of this national symbol, the study of the modern Arab flag is almost non‐existent. This article explores the modern evolution of the Arab flag and the reasons for the similarities in many Arab flags. In particular, it will deal with the pan‐Arab flags of the Hashemites Kingdom of the Hijaz (1916–26), Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Egypt.     

A Swiss anomaly? A relational account of national boundary‐making

ABSTRACT. This article reviews how major theorists of nationalism – from Ernest Renan to Benedict Anderson – have tried to come to grips with the puzzle that Swiss nationalism and the Swiss state present in view of the monoethnic states that surround it. I will argue that this puzzle disappears when assuming a political sociology perspective that highlights the networks of political alliances underlying nationalist movements and the power structure of recently formed nation‐states. Studying an ‘outlier’ case such as Switzerland helps us to gain insight into the general processes and mechanisms at work in the rise of nationalism and the nation‐state.     

Excavations at Bishop's Street Without: 17th Century Conflict Archaeology in Derry City

Abstract

Excavations on this site, undertaken by Paul Logue for EHS: Built Heritage DOE: NI, produced evidence for at least two phases of occupation outside Bishop's Gate, Londonderry during the 17th century. This occupation came to an end with a phase of activity dated to the commencement of the Jacobite siege in A.D. 1689. Further evidence of that siege was uncovered in the form of a ravelin ditch 2.8 m wide and 0.57 m in depth, constructed in early 1689 to front Bishop's Gate. The extant remains of a sally port interrupted the ditch. A nearby larger ditch, scarped from the sloping ground outside Double Bastion, measured a maximum of 8.4 m in width and 1.4 m in depth. This larger ditch may have been part of efforts to improve the City defences in the wake of the 1641 rebellion. Further evidence of conflict archaeology was recovered in the form of lead shot, weapon furniture and flint gunspalls.     

The Moral Theologian,Oliver O'Donovan and International Law

Abstract

Oliver O'Donovan renders a singular contribution to the theory and history of international law by identifying the spiritual impoverishment of the discipline following the triumph of state-centred contractarianism in the theory of international relations, with Hobbes, Locke, Kant and, for the present, John Rawls. This contractarian approach to international society has an inherent tendency, which O'Donovan highlights, to ground international order in the hegemonic claim of one or two countries to represent the values of the whole of humanity. With a combination of rational moral theology and biblical interpretation (Revelation), O'Donovan reasserts an international order grounded in the autonomous identities of the nations, which God has recognized as equal. With a theory of political legitimacy which rests upon representation of national identity, O'Donovan points the way to an international order based upon mutual respect among nations under natural law, in the classical medieval sense finally represented by Grotius and Suarez. This article describes again what the natural law tradition meant in the hands of Aquinas and Vitoria, in order to highlight the fact that the ontological dimension of natural law theory provides a way to meet the intolerable insecurities which theories of nationalism appear to generate. Then the article goes on to offer one way to bring natural law thinking up to date for contemporary audiences by drawing upon Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological theory of mutual recognition and respect among the nations as a way of going beyond the contractarian tradition in contemporary international law and relations theory.