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.

“Happy at Last”

2019 ◽  
pp. 124-136
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Q. McCune
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Image ◽  
Nation States ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Sexual Economies

“Branded Beautiful” examines the relationship between individual pop celebrity, the promotion of a national identity, and the use of sexuality while branding each. Barbados promotes itself as a site of controlled abandon straddling performances of modernity while cashing in on imaginaries of “primitive” exoticism. Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty’s pop stardom is built on an ever-changing boldness that often includes in your face sexuality. The relationship between Rihanna and representations of Barbados is fraught with ambiguity. Using Rihanna’s August 2011 LOUD tour concert in Barbados, “Branded Beautiful” argues that the events surrounding the show shed light on the differing sexual economies of pop stardom and national tourism; that such divergences highlight the insecurities of nation-states seeking to make a name for themselves within a global market; and that despite the distinctions it is quite hard for a nation-state to divorce celebrity focused attention from an ideal national image.

The Old Story: Sovereign Nation-States and Myths of National Identity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Catholic Churches

When members of a society coordinate their activities based on a broadly disseminated and reinforced set of dogmatic beliefs in their mythological or religious traditions, anthropologists refer to these beliefs as useful myths. The aim of this chapter is to reveal that the dogmatic beliefs associated with the construct of the sovereign nation-state are useful myths that can no longer be viewed as useful because they are effectively undermining efforts to resolve the environmental crisis. This situation is greatly complicated by the fact that the sovereign nation-state is a normative construct, or a construct that is assumed to be a taken-for-granted and indelible aspect of geopolitical reality. The large problem here is that this normative construct constitutes one of the greatest conceptual barriers to resolving the environment crisis. This brief account of the origins and transformations of the construct of the sovereign nation-state is intended to accomplish four objectives. The first is to demonstrate that the construct of the sovereign nation-state emerged in Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries in a series of narratives that transferred the God-given power and authority of sovereign monarchs to the states governed by these monarchs. The second is to reveal that the narratives about nationalism and national identity that emerged during and after the Protestant Reformation abused the truths of religion in an effort to convince core populations living within the borders of particular nation-states that they were a chosen people possessing superior cultural values and personal qualities. The third is to show that the dogmatic beliefs legitimated and perpetuated by these narratives eventually resulted in the creation of churches of state with sacred symbols, rites, and rituals similar to those in Protestant and Catholic churches. And the fourth objective is to provide a basis for understanding how these dogmatic beliefs eventually became foundational to a system of international government, the United Nations, predicated on the construct of the sovereign nation-state. The history of this construct is much more complex and far more detailed than the brief account in this chapter suggests.

Imagined democracy? Nation-building and elections in Central Asia

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donnacha Ó Beacháin ◽  
Rob Kevlihan
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Weak States ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Central Asian Countries ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
Nation State Formation

Is an imagined democracy more important than actual democracy for nation-building purposes? After 20 years of independence, Central Asian countries present a mixed bag of strong and weak states, consolidated and fragmented nations. The equation of nation and state and the construction of genuine nation states remains an elusive goal in all of post-Soviet Central Asia. This paper examines the role that electoral politics has played in nation-state formation. We argue that electoral processes have been central to attempted nation-state building processes as part of efforts to legitimize authoritarian regimes; paradoxically in those few countries where (for brief periods) partial democratization actually occurred, elections contributed, at least in the short term, to nation-state fragmentation.

Complicating the Relationship Between Sport and National Identity: The Case of Post-Socialist Slovenia

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mojca Doupona Topič ◽  
Jay Coakley
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Sociology Of Sport ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Relationship

Sociology of sport knowledge on national identity is grounded in research that focuses primarily on long established nation-states with widely known histories. The relationship between sport and national identity in postsocialist/Soviet/colonial nations that have gained independence or sovereignty since 1990 has seldom been studied. This paper examines the role of sports in the formation of national identity in postsocialist Slovenia, a nation-state that gained independence in 1990. Our analysis focuses on the recent context in which the current but fluid relationship between sport and Slovenian national identity exists. Using Slovenia as a case study we identify seven factors that may moderate the effectiveness of sports as sites for establishing and maintaining national identity and making successful global identity claims in the twenty-first century. We conclude that these factors should be taken into account to more fully understand the sport-national identity relationship today, especially in new and developing nations.

Sovereignty and Territory: Stakes and Perspectives

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (02) ◽  
pp. 179-185
Author(s):  
Nicolas Barreyre ◽  
Geneviève Verdo
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Homogeneous Block ◽  
The One

Over the course of the last twenty years, two historiographical movements have challenged the notion of sovereignty, particularly that of the “natural” anchoring of an absolute, statal form of sovereignty in a uniform territory as its perfected model. On the one hand, the experience of globalization that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall—and which fed talk of the “end of nation-states”—led to a new examination of the political organization of the contemporary world, which in part “deterritorialized” the issue of political control. On the other hand, the extraordinary rise in studies of colonial empires has established that sovereignty, far from being the homogeneous block of the jurist’s refined concept, could be exercised in varying degrees and even be conceived as multiple and “layered.”

The Pashtun Borderlands: Development, Nation, and Agency 1947–55

Afghanistan ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-141
Author(s):  
Robert Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Units

Histories of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the North-West Frontier summarize the borderland events of 1947 and the next years as concerned with several enduring issues. The nation-states of Afghanistan and Pakistan became rivals. Each projected different, contested claims to sovereignty over border territories and populations. The Afghan government, especially Sardar Muhammad Daud, used the Pakhtunistan issue to consolidate an Afghan national identity, attract borderland Pashtuns, and extract advantages from an economically weak, politically vulnerable Pakistan. Within the tribal agencies, the government of Pakistan at first withdrew regular military units from forward bases, nominally to exhibit nation-building unity in a new country for Muslims. 1 In both countries, economic development and political integration were policy goals intended to build human capital and legitimate the nation-state, but also to maintain established internal hierarchies of authority and power. 2 By 1955 despite such efforts, borderland residents continued to negotiate relationships with state officials now recruiting signatures on documents of national loyalty. 3

Spanish Experience of Interethnic Relations and Foreign Migration Regulation

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (12) ◽  
pp. 80-89
Author(s):  
I. Prokhorenko
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Regional Authorities

The article addresses social and political conflicts with a clearly defined ethnic component in the modern Spanish society. Assessing the experience of regulating interethnic and interterritorial relations between Spanish nationalities and regions, the mass immigration of diverse cultural backgrounds in the asymmetric State of Autonomies, the author examines competitive identity politics and public discourses on nation, nationalism and nation-building. Voiced by the central and subnational authorities, it frequently assumes a conflict character. This is especially customary for Catalonia, but also applies to the Basque Country and several other autonomous regions. Education and language policies are a sphere of clashing perceptions and a key priority for politics of identity involving central and regional authorities, political parties and civil society groups. The increasing phenomenon of the ethnicity politicization in the State of Autonomies complicates the formation of the civic (national) identity and enhances the potential of ethnopolitical conflicts in the country, where particularistic sentiments are sufficiently strong in the historical perspective, while the mass foreign migration introduces new interethnic and intercultural contradictions and challenges. The Spanish experience of interethnic and interterritorial relations regulation and of positive civic identity construction in the context of the federalizing State of Autonomies may be useful for the Russian Federation having some similar problems on the agenda and a continuously developing model of federal structure. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation [grant no. 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 Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO).

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.

How Nation-States Create and Respond to Refugee Flows

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 1046-1066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles B. Keely
Keyword(s):  
Forced Migration ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Political Values ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Nation States

The ideal type of political organization is the nation-state, which leads to a presumption of state legitimacy when the state represents a community, based on ethnic origin or shared political values, that claims a right to persist. A nation-state tends to produce forced migration for three reasons: it contains more than one nation; the populace disagrees about the structure of the state or economy; or the state implodes due to the lack of resources. This paper elaborates a theory of refugee production and policy formation based on the dynamics of the nation-state. It concludes by addressing international refugee policy and practice in light of this theory and political changes following the end of the cold war.

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.

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