scholarly journals National Textbook Narratives and Historiography: Presenting a Same That is Never the Same

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Gotling
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Nation States

National textbook narratives are written from particular national perspectivesand goals. Thus, “the same is never (or at least not always) the same” and whatwe learn depends on the context of when and where we are learning it. When itcomes to major conflicts between nations or states, how one handles the telling ofthe same conflict event can be especially poignant. Starting from the writing ofnational events, this text looks back to another large-scale (inter-)national conflict,the Prussian Wars (1864-1871), to discuss how the four different developing nationstatesof Germany (via Prussia), Denmark, Austria, and France elaborated uniquehistorical narrative trajectories (from the 1860s to 1910s) for their own nationalcurricula and future citizens. From the findings, which discuss the ways thesedeveloping nation-states represented their national ideals, identity, and goals intheir national Prussian War narratives in textbooks, we then come back to thepresent with a better understanding of how to approach current internationalevents and nation-building processes.Keywords: historiography; national identity; national narratives; nation-building;Prussian Wars; textbooks.

Nations, Nationalism, National Identity: New Dimensions in Academic Discourse

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (11) ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
I. Semenenko
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Nation States

Analyzing discourses on interethnic relations can contribute to a clearer understanding of the focal points of tensions in contemporary political communities sharing a common territory and common political institutions. These discourses represent the complex of problems related to nation-building and are generated both in the public sphere and in academic discussion. As such, they often develop separately one from the other. Assessing the current academic discourse on nations and nationalism, on nation-building and the nation-state, on citizenship, cultural diversity and interethnic conflict can contribute to the formation of the agenda of a politics of identity aimed at building a civic nation. Memory politics deserve special attention in this context, as the interpretation of historic memory has today become a powerful instrument that political elites can use to consolidate the nation and, in different contexts, to politicize ethnicity and deepen cleavages in existing nation-states. The affirmation of a positive civic (national) identity is a reference framework for modern democratic societies, and it is in meeting the challenges of politicizing ethnicity that political priorities and academic interests meet. However, the current domination of politics over academia in this conflict prone sphere contributes to its radicalization and to the formation of negative and exclusive identities that can be manipulated to pursue elitist group interests. Evaluating models of political organization alternative to the ones known today (such as “the nation-state”) does not aspire to “write off” the nation, but this can help to come up with visions and ideas politics can take up to overcome the conflict potential that contemporary societies generate over ethnic issues. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support provided by the Russian Science Foundation [research grant № 15-18-00021, “Regulating interethnic relations and managing ethnic and social conflicts in the contemporary world: the resource potential of civic identity (a comparative political analysis)”]. The research was conducted at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), RAS.

scholarly journals NATIONAL NARRATIVES OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE STUDENTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (172) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Jorge Sáiz Serrano ◽  
Isabel Barca
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Temporal Orientation ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Orientation Data ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Nation States

Abstract This study aims at understanding how the master narratives conveyed by the national accounts given by 14 to 18-year-old Spanish and Portuguese students converge or differ from one another and how they relate to national identity and temporal orientation. Data analysis was carried out in a qualitative approach inspired by Grounded Theory. The results suggest a parallel but conceptually convergent schematic template focused on initial conquests, a golden period of maritime discoveries, and a recent dictatorship overcome by the restoration of democracy. Some particularities of students’ accounts linked to specific historical situations in each country, as well as diversified attitudes of the young people toward “their” nation-states are also discussed.

scholarly journals Working Lives on the Mississippi and Volga Rivers. Nineteenth-Century Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-105
Author(s):  
Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Western World ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Aesthetic Appeal ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Nation States

Throughout the nineteenth century, major rivers assumed multiple roles for the emergent nation-states of the western world.  The Thames in England, Seine in France, and Rhine in Germany all served as fodder for a growing sense of national identity.   Offering a unity and uniqueness, the rivers were enlisted by poets, artiss, and writers to celebrate their country's strengths and aesthetic appeal.  The Mississippi and Volga Rivers were no exceptions to this riverine evolution.  At the same time, however, less vocal populations experienced the rivers differently.  To African Americans--enslaved and free--laboring on the Mississippi offered a freedom of movement unknown to the land-bound.  While employed on steamships, African Americans escaped the vigilance of an overseer with the possibility to escape bondage.  Still the work was demanding and relentless.  To the burlaki, the Volga was taskmaster and nurturer.  But for both groups, laboring on the rivers resulted in connections that were immediate, intimate, exacting, often tedious and brutal concomitant with marginalized lives, consigned to society's fringe.  Still, the lives shaped by working on these rivers, produced rich cultures revealing alternative riverine histories.  In these histories, the rivers possessed an agency, enshrining an ambiguity in humans' kinship to the environment; a complexity often missing in the national narratives. 

Huguenot Immigrants and the Formation of National IDENTITIES, 1548–1787

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNE LACHENICHT
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
North America ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Host Society ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
State Culture ◽  
Nation States

This article addresses the extent to which Protestant states in Europe and North America depicted the French Protestants who had found refuge in these states, as having contributed to the process of nation building and the formation of national identity. It is shown that the arrival of Huguenots was portrayed positively as the historians of these nations could contend that Huguenots had been absorbed readily into the host society because their virtues of frugality and industry corresponded admirably with the ethic of their hosts. The article demonstrates that, in no case, did this depiction correspond with reality. It shows that within those countries of refuge, Huguenots fostered a distinctive French Protestant identity that enabled them to remain aloof from the culture of their host society. In all cases Huguenots asserted themselves as a self-confident minority, convinced of the superiority of their language and culture who believed themselves to be privileged in this world as in the next. When national histories came to be composed, this dimension to the Huguenot minorities came to be expunged from historical memory as was also the fact that the Huguenots were but one of several minorities whose distinctiveness had contributed largely to the shaping of the state, culture, and society of the emerging nation-states.

The national question, identity and the crisis in South Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Yanano Mangani ◽  
Richard Rachidi Molapo
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
National Question ◽  
The Government

The crisis in South Sudan that broke out on the 15th of December 2013 has been the gravest political debacle in the five years of the country’s independence. This crisis typifies the general political and social patterns of post-independence politics of nation-states that are borne out of armed struggles in Africa. Not only does the crisis expose a reluctance by the nationalist leaders to continue with nation-building initiatives, the situation suggests the struggle for political control at the echelons of power within the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement.  This struggle has been marred by the manufacturing of political identity and political demonization that seem to illuminate the current political landscape in South Sudan. Be that as it may, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) hurriedly intervened to find a lasting solution however supportive of the government of President Salva Kirr and this has suggested interest based motives on the part of the regional body and has since exacerbated an already fragile situation. As such, this article uses the Fanonian discourse of post-independence politics in Africa to expose the fact that the SPLM has degenerated into lethargy and this is at the heart of the crisis.

National Security and Public Anxiety: Our Changing Perceptions

2010 ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Sir Richard Dearlove
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
Full Force ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the changing perceptions on national security and civic anxiety. During the Cold War and its aftermath, security was rather a simple and straightforward issue. The countries knew their enemies, where they are and the threats they presented. On the event that, the enemies's secrets were unknown, probing techniques were employed to determine the weaknesses of the enemy. This formulaic situation which seeped through in to the twenty-first century left little room for innovation. In fact, in some countries, security maintained at the Cold War levels despite criticisms that new and emerging national security threats should be addressed at a new level. Of the powerful nations, America maintained the role of a world policeman and adapted its national security priorities according to its perception of a new series of strategic threats; however these new security strategies were without a sense of urgency. However, the perception of global threats and national security radically changed in the event of the 9/11 attack. The sleeping national security priorities of America came to a full force which affected the national security priorities of other nations as well. In the twenty-first globalized world, no conflict remains a regional clash. The reverberations of the Russian military action in Georgia, the Israeli intervention in Gaza, and the results of the attacks in Mumbai resonates loudly and rapidly through the wider international security system. While today, nations continue to seek new methods for addressing new security threats, the paradox of the national security policy is that nation-states have lost their exclusive grip of their own security at a time when the private citizens are assailed by increased fears for their own security and demand a more enhanced safety from the state. Nation-states have been much safer from large-scale violence, however there exists a strong sense of anxiety about the lack of security in the face of multiplicity of threats. Nations have been largely dependent on international coordinated action to achieve their important national security objectives. National policies and security theory lack precision. In addition, the internationalization of national security has eroded the distinction between domestic and foreign security. These blurring lines suggest that the understanding of national security is still at the height of transformations.

scholarly journals Gender and Migrant Roles in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Films: Cinema as an Apparatus of Reconfiguration of National Identity and ‘Otherness’

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines an ensemble of gender and migrant roles in post-war Neorealist and New Migrant Italian films. Its main objective is to analyze gender and placemaking practices in an ensemble of films, addressing these practices on a symbolic level. The main argument of the article is that the way gender and migrant roles were conceived in the Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Cinema was based on the intention to challenge certain stereotypes characterizing the understanding of national identity and ‘otherness’. The article presents how the roles of borgatari and women function as devices of reconceptualization of Italy’s identity, providing a fertile terrain for problematizing the relationship between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies. Special attention is paid to how migrants are related to the reconceptualization of Italy’s national narrations. The Neorealist model is understood here as a precursor of the narrative strategies that one encounters in numerous films belonging to the New Migrant cinema in Italy. The article also explores how certain aspects of more contemporary studies of migrant cinema in Italy could illuminate our understanding of Neorealist cinema and its relation to national narratives. To connect gender representation and migrant roles in Italian cinema, the article focuses on the analysis of the status of certain roles of women, paying particular attention to Anna Magnagi’s roles.

scholarly journals Problematizing Olympic Nationality

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 374-379
Author(s):  
Peter J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Olympic Athletes ◽  
Nation States ◽  
International Solidarity

One can hope that the convening of the Tokyo Olympics will be a cause for global celebration. Tokyo could prove a focal point for international solidarity, a moment of relief and release after all of humanity faced down an insidious, invisible, and largely indiscriminate attacker. Unified as we otherwise may be, athletes will still come to the Games as representatives of nation-states. That may be an unavoidable organizing principle. Less justifiable will be the requirement that athletes be nationals of the states they play for. Under the Olympic Charter and the rules of particular sporting federations, athletes are subject to a non-state nationality regime that restricts the capacity of individuals to compete for countries for whose delegations they would otherwise qualify. This regime looks to maintain the putative integrity of Olympic competition by maintaining the unity of sporting and sociological national identity. But that legacy of the twentieth century no longer works in the twenty first. Nationality and associated criteria for participant eligibility undermine the autonomy of athletes and the quality of participation. The rules can no longer guarantee any affective tie between athlete and nation, instead arbitrarily enabling some, but not all, to compete on the basis of citizenship decoupled from identity. We don't require that athletes playing for our professional sports teams hale from the cities they represent. There's no reason why we need to require more of our Olympic athletes.

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