Nationalism,party political discourse and Scottish independence: comparing discursive visions of Scotland's constitutional status

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely, the pro‐independence Scottish National Party, and two pro‐union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation's past and future espoused by each political party vis‐à‐vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse and are thus not simply theoretical abstractions.     

Diaspora and nostalgia: travelling Jewish tales in the Mediterranean

The article addresses narratives that tell of a member of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel who comes to the rescue of a Jewish community. The tales were documented at the Israel Folktale Archives, in the second half of the twentieth century, and were told by informants from Morocco and Greece. While it is probably impossible to trace the exact routes of these “cultural possessions”, around and across the Mediterranean, the texts nevertheless provide a glimpse into the ways in which a network of Jewish communities shared a meta-narrative while adapting it to their own regional contexts. Although these tales are quintessentially diasporic, they also provided a platform for negotiating post-exilic identities in the new Israeli national context.     

Canadian geopolitical culture: Climate change and sustainability

Considering recent formulations of geopolitical culture in combination with concerns that environmental change be included in contemporary geopolitical analysis, this paper examines the implicit geopolitical formulations in recent Canadian federal political discourse both in Stephen Harper's Conservative government and the subsequent Liberal administration. Contrasting earth system science ideas about global transformations with Canadian nationalist rhetoric concerning petroleum production and notions of unlimited resource extraction as parts of national identity sharply highlights the contours of Canadian identity. If sustainability is to be taken seriously, the official nationalist formulation will have to be drastically changed, but as the widespread rejection of the LEAP manifesto suggests, such ideas of a sustainable mode of globalization have yet to substantially influence Canadian political discourse, despite the rhetorical support offered to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.     

重商观念与晚清利权意识的演进

在近代中国,利权概念的核心内涵是经济主权,是对经济独立权的诉求。利权意识在20世纪初年的变化加重了晚清重商观念内在矛盾。利权意识的强化虽显示了晚清经济民族主义的勃发,但也展现了重商观念存在着偏差和不成熟的成分。     

民族主义内在的困境——陈独秀国家观从民族主义到自由主义的转变

在近代中国思想史上,陈独秀堪称思想历程最为曲折的人物之一.早年他服膺民族主义,后来转奉自由主义(民主主义),又转而信仰社会主义(共产主义),晚年他的思想走向社会主义、自由主义和民族主义的大综合.本文所考察的,是陈独秀从民族主义到自由主义的转变,以及这次转变所呈现的民族主义的内在困境.     

Changing the national past: re‐creating the democratic Polish nation after 1989

ABSTRACT. Poland provides a critical example for studying how national identity is transformed to fit new domestic and global circumstances. While Poles must re‐identify themselves as a democratic nation, they have a choice of whether to incorporate aspects of the communist experience or to ignore it and draw solely from other historical sources. A comparison of holiday newspaper articles from before and after 1989 provides an opportunity to observe this process through the lens of national commemoration. This review shows that themes of national identity are influenced by political context and their potential to unify without contestation. In addition, while the communist period remained a salient unifying historical experience for Poles, democratic values did not act as a unifying theme during the first ten years of Polish democracy.     

Constitutional democracy and civic nationalism

ABSTRACT. This article seeks to bring to the fore the intrinsic link between constitutional democracy and the civic nation, relying on Jürgen Habermas's theory of democracy. This theoretical framework will serve as the basis for a communicative understanding of civic nationalism, underscoring the notable role played by language. Attention will be given to the normative dimension that allows for the legitimisation of national divisions of a civic space bound by universal rights. The prime motivation behind this article is thus political‐philosophical, although empirical examples, drawn particularly from the French revolutionary discourse, will be brought to bear. And since a civic nation construed in communicative terms has necessary linguistic implications, cases of multilingual and multinational states will be examined.     

Neither ‘America’ nor ‘Québec’: constructing the Canadian multicultural nation

ABSTRACT. Although researchers have deconstructed the myth of stark social differences between the various North American sub‐societies, an assimilating American melting pot and an ethnically oppressive monocultural Québec are still popular representations within Canadian majority discourses, such as the English‐language mainstream media and parts of academia. In this paper, I argue that images of ‘America’ and ‘Québec’ play important roles for the multicultural reconstruction of Canadian nationhood. Examining selected op‐ed articles from two Toronto‐based mainstream newspapers during the 1990s, I develop and exemplify a theoretical understanding of how national identities are constituted and transformed within inter‐ and intra‐national relations of power and alterity. I pay special attention to the particularisation of Canada through the confrontation with American nationhood, the ambiguities of recognising the distinctiveness of Québec inside Canada, and the consequences of projecting Québec's supposedly ‘ethnic’ nationalism outside the boundaries of Canadianness.     

Reframing Bi‐nationalism in Palestine‐Israel as a Process of Settler Decolonisation

This paper examines some of the emerging critical civil society debates in relation to the one‐state solution being the most appropriate geo‐political arrangement for the articulation of freedom, justice and equality in Palestine‐Israel. This is done with reference to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ 2012 statement in support of a bi‐national state and the ensuing critiques it attracted from Palestinian supporters of the one‐state position. Drawing on these debates which have largely revolved around Jewish Israeli rights to political self‐determination in Palestine‐Israel, this paper proposes that alternative versions of self‐determination as cultural rights for the established Hebrew‐speaking national community represent a more inclusive form of self‐determination in the eventuality of decolonisation.