Discourse, Narrative, and National Identity: The Case of France

2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Greenwalt
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
French Nation ◽  
French National Identity

France provides an ideal context for beginning to understand how schooling affects students' understanding of their national identity. In this article, Kyle Greenwalt examines the discursive practices through which a group of French secondary students constructed their national identity. Following an appraisal of the historiographical literature of nineteenth-century French nation-building, the author proceeds with a phenomenological analysis of the discourses students used to make sense of their lived experiences with teachers and schooling. Greenwalt evaluates the continued presence and salience of traditional versions of French national identity, suggesting the need to reconsider the relationships among social solidarity, pluralism, and national identity and calling into question the contemporary relevance of structural representations of the nation-state.

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 Inequalities in Private Tutoring of English: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study Based on Bangladeshi Higher Secondary Students

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monjurul Islam ◽  
Shams Hoque ◽  
Kazi Enamul Hoque
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Private Tutoring ◽  
Financial Capability ◽  
One To One ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Insight Into

This phenomenological qualitative study analyzes the lived experiences of eleven Bangladeshi higher secondary students in mainstream schools to provide insight into their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, and assumptions of private tutoring in English (PT-E). The study also focused on PT-E that contribute to inequalities between students who have access to private tutoring and those who do not. Each participant participated in a one-to-one in-depth semi-structured interview. Using phenomenological analysis, 321 significant statements and three themes emerged. The data show that unequal practice, discrimination due to financial capability, and social psyche for PT-E that influences students to widen the negative impacts of PT-E between students, particularly those who do not have an access in private tutoring of English (PT-E).

scholarly journals Whose game is this? An overview at the role of football in the construction of national identity

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Ivan Đorđević
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Transitional Country ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Ideal

In this paper I will consider the ways in which national identity is constructed through football, by analyzing different case studies foremost in the countries of Western Europe which are, in public narratives, signified as “developed”. I will attempt to point out the fact that, despite the weakening of the prerogative of the nation-state, the identity which refers to such a state is still strong, and that football is one of those cultural elements though which such identification is encouraged and supported. On the other hand, through analyzing the “nation building” through football project in countries which, supposedly represent the ideal for a transitional country like Serbia, in both the economic and political sense, it is my intent to point out that the ideology of nationalism and its instrumentalization in the media, such as that given in the examples, is by no means locally specific nor connected to so-called “insufficiently modernized societies”, where this term, in itself has the ideological weight in context – that we could thus refer to certain societies as “enough” or “completely” modernized. On the contrary, these models, more or less, function the same way everywhere, only they are historically determined, and greatly dependent on momentary power relations, or that which the dominant discourse in continual hegemonic struggles defines as the desirable image of “nation”, “economy” or anything else.

scholarly journals Nomads, warriors and bureaucrats: nation-building and film in post-Soviet Kazakhstan

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rico Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Building Process ◽  
A Site ◽  
Modern Perspective

Nation-building is a process which is often contested, not just among different ethnicities within a nation-state, but also among the titular ethnic majority. This article explores the contested nature of the nation-building process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan through examining cinematic works. Utilizing a post-modern perspective which views nations and national identity as invented, imagined and ambivalent it identifies four discursive strands within recent post-Soviet Kazakh cinema pertaining to nationhood and national identity (ethno-centric, civic, religious and socioeconomic). Rather than viewing government-sponsored efforts of identity formation in cinema as a top-down process in which the regime transmits its version of nationhood and identity, the discursive strands revealed in this article illustrate there are varying understandings of what constitutes the nation and national identity in Kazakh cinematic works. Furthermore, the strand which focuses on the socioeconomic tensions of modern nation-building in Kazakhstan uncovers how film is used as a site for dissent and social critique of Kazakhstan's modern political condition. What the article illuminates is how discourses related to nation-building can be both competing and complementary and that nation-building is a fluid and transgressive process in which among the titular majority there is no fixed unambiguous understanding of nationhood and national identity.

scholarly journals Schooling, nation building and industrialization

2020 ◽  
pp. 095162982096319
Author(s):  
Esther Hauk ◽  
Javier Ortega
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Regional Production ◽  
Regional Education

We consider a Gellnerian model to study the transformation of a two-region state into a nation state. Industrialization requires the elites to finance schooling. The implementation of statewide education generates a common national identity, which enables cross-regional production, while regional education does not. We show that statewide education is chosen when cross-regional production opportunities and productivity are high, especially when the same elite holds power at both geographical levels. By contrast, a dominant regional elite might prefer regional schooling, even at the loss of large cross-regional production opportunities if it is statewide dominated. The model is consistent with evidence for five European countries in 1860–1920.

Re-Mapping the Nation: Cartography, Geographical Knowledge and Ecuadorean Multiculturalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH A. RADCLIFFE
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Scale ◽  
Geographical Knowledge ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
State Projects

AbstractStarting from an understanding that maps of an entire nation-state territory reflect and regulate state projects and expressions of national identity, rather than providing detailed technical information for decision making, this paper examines the national maps of race/ethnicity produced under Ecuador's state-led multiculturalism. Using national-scale cartography as a means to examine contested processes of rearticulating state, citizen and nation, the paper analyses recent transformations in cartography, nation building and geographical knowledge in Ecuador. Directing a critical analysis towards the ways maps of indigenous populations are produced, circulated, authorised and read provides a distinctive lens by which to explore postcolonial questions of belonging, rights and presence. The paper discusses how, despite the emergence of innovative maps, the plurinational project envisaged by indigenous cartographers remains stymied by a series of material, cultural and postcolonial limitations.

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