Search

Two principal dimensions are commonly identified within the complex phenomenon of national identity: national boundaries and attachment to the nation. Few studies have sought to examine them together. By their combination, this study is based on the premise of the tension between a more open and inclusive view of the nation, as reflected in civic identity and patriotism, and a more closed and exclusionary conception, as reflected in ethnic identity and nationalism. The findings from a cross-national analysis provide only partial support for a comprehensive model of national identity and are discussed in light of the limitations of the measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s, Aotearoa New Zealand very much identified itself as a British country and an integral part of a wider British World, which had the UK at its heart. However, by the 1970s, this British World had come to an end, as had Aotearoa New Zealand's self-identification as a British nation. During this period, citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand was redefined in a significant way from being an ethnic (British) based one to a more civic founded one - which was more inclusive of other ethnic groups and apparently Māori. This article will argue that this redefinition of citizenship took place primarily in the context of this major shift in national identity. After having established the context of the end of the British World in Aotearoa New Zealand (with a focus on the UK's application for entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) and the British military withdrawal from 'East of Suez'), it will explore the British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act of 1959 and the Citizenship and Aliens Act of 1977 to illustrate the ways in which citizenship became more inclusive of other ethnic groups in the country. It will then study the Māori Affairs Amendment Act of 1967 and the subsequent Māori Affairs Amendment Act of 1974 to highlight the ways in which citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand also attempted to incorporate Māori, but this proved highly problematic and at this stage, unresolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges and difficulties faced in using a peasant model to create a national matrix for Belarus. The sense of belonging to a nation generated by the 'community of the soil' [Foucher, M. (2007). L'obsession des frontières [Obsession of the Frontiers]. Paris: Perrin] has a special significance for 'community of destiny' [Weber, M. (1995). Économie et société: tome 2 [Economy and Society: vol. 2]. Paris: Plon] for the Belarusian nation in that Belarus is a peasant nation. 'The peasantry is the most authentic expression of the relationship between a nation and its land; peasant customs become ethnic symbols and referents' [Thiesse, A.-M. (1999). La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe-XXe siècles [The Creation of National Identities. Europe XVIIIth-XXth centuries]. Paris: Seuil, 159]. By studying the origin of the sense of belief in a community, Weber (1995) notes that it may originate from the similarities of the exterior habitus [Bourdieu, P. (1964). Le déracinement [Uprooting]. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit] adaptation to external conditions, and imitation of a neighboring group. These assumptions are of significant importance for the study of Belarusian identity, an understanding of which cannot be reached without taking into account the fundamental role played by the peasantry in the history of Belarus. Historical analysis indeed bears out the importance of the peasant stratum in the Belarusian socio-political and identity structure. Many scholars insist on the fact that identity-building process are inherently territorial Foucher (2007), relating to the 'soil' of the nation [Balibar, E. (2005). Europe. Constitution. Frontière [Europe. Constitution. Frontier]. Paris: Editions du Passant], which is particularly important for peasant nations, as Belarusians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on the biographical narrative Leila, a girl from Bosnia and the recorded narratives by adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina we illustrate the difficulties and symbolic implications associated with negotiating hybrid identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina against the dominant post-conflict discourse based on 'pure' ethnicities. We argue that in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, hybrid identities are marginalized by official politics and societal structures as a legacy of the war. However, they simultaneously embody the symbolic tools through which ethnic divisions could be overcome, envisioning and recalling a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina as a supra-national designation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Books are arguably fundamental to national identity and scholars across various theoretical perspectives perceive books as being integral to the creation, perpetuation, and myths and symbols of nations. This article uses interview data with leaders of Scottish heritage organizations to investigate the role of books in Scottish diasporic identity. This article concludes that books can be a binding force in diaspora communities, and lived diasporic Scots and ancestral Scots consume different types of Scottish books that reflect personalization of myths and symbols presented in these books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contentious nature of national identity has been welldocumented, and the difficulties and challenges associated with self-understanding, particularly in a ‘stateless nation’ context, have undergone profound scholarly exploration. As part of this exploration, the idea of ‘multiple identities’ is prominent; one nation member can simultaneously hold a number of ideas, for example, Welsh and British. This had also led scholars to suggest that the same nominal identity, for example Welsh, may in itself have multiple meanings. Yet this accepted multiplicity of the same nominal identity often masks the hard truths: it is plausible that certain nation members may rank each other on a continuum, or sliding scale, of national identity, wherein some are considered more or less worthy of claiming that identity than others. This paper explores this concept in relation to Wales and the Basque Country. It begins by situating this phenomenon within the relevant theoretical context, subsequently exploring its analytical purchase through examination of focus group discussion in both nations. Finally, it considers the consequences of a continuum, or sliding scale, of identity for national unity, in particular its implications for the on-going development of a coherent national consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Biafra as the most critical project in Igbo nationalism in Nigeria, this article examines the interpretations and appropriations of the Nigeria-Biafra War. It focuses on the meaning and significance of the war, and how contemporary neo-Biafran movements have appropriated and transformed the Biafran project into a basis for political action in their bid to resuscitate Igbo ambitions for self-determination. The article expatiates on the deployment of Biafra as a symbolic marker that captures the realization of an authentic Igbo national spirit, the ultimate act of Igbo self-determination and quest for nationhood in the Nigerian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the conflict between closely intertwined specific ethnic and universal religious practices that affect the formation and maintenance of ethnic group boundaries in the society of simultaneous Islamic and ethnic renaissances: contemporary post-Soviet Tatarstan. I argue that the negotiation of this conflict produces both reinforcement and erosion of the titular ethnic group boundaries. I pay special attention on ethnicity performance and ethnicity consumption practices. Thus, I conclude that practices of performing and consuming ethnicity serve as effective mechanism of boundary formation not just between various ethnic groups in the multi-ethnic republic but also inside the group itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contentious nature of national identity has been welldocumented, and the difficulties and challenges associated with self-understanding, particularly in a ‘stateless nation’ context, have undergone profound scholarly exploration. As part of this exploration, the idea of ‘multiple identities’ is prominent; one nation member can simultaneously hold a number of ideas, for example, Welsh and British. This had also led scholars to suggest that the same nominal identity, for example Welsh, may in itself have multiple meanings. Yet this accepted multiplicity of the same nominal identity often masks the hard truths: it is plausible that certain nation members may rank each other on a continuum, or sliding scale, of national identity, wherein some are considered more or less worthy of claiming that identity than others. This paper explores this concept in relation to Wales and the Basque Country. It begins by situating this phenomenon within the relevant theoretical context, subsequently exploring its analytical purchase through examination of focus group discussion in both nations. Finally, it considers the consequences of a continuum, or sliding scale, of identity for national unity, in particular its implications for the on-going development of a coherent national consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses specifics of the process of ethnic identity formation in the Balkans in some comparison with Western European national identity construction. It ascertains that Balkan nationalism is based not on assimilation of local communities into the national whole as in the West but on dissolution of local communities by constructing out of them ethnic communities. Ethnicity construction was born from a severe rivalry around which one of the ethnic definitions would be imposed on a single local group. The article concludes that civic vs. ethnic models of nation-formation are applicable for the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates that American national identity is symbolic, subjective and ambiguous to the extent that it encapsulates senses of both similarity and difference. Citing evidence from life-history interviews with American military veterans from different ethnic groups, the article shows how some Americans can identify with being racially excluded and still share in a sense of national belonging. It is argued here that this feature is and has always been embedded in the processes of American national identification. In making this argument, this article rejects Ramsey Cook's notion that achieving a sense of similarity between universal and particular interests within a national community is hallmark of postnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the process of national identity formation among ethnic minorities in the Crimea - specifically, the moderation effects of concepts of national identity on interrelations between conflict indicators and readiness for conflict or compromise for two ethnic minorities in Crimea. Based on a survey in the Crimea, results show that concepts of national identity moderate the effects of ethnic identity, ethnocentrism and economic deprivation on individual conflict behaviour. Research show that civic concept of national identity significantly reduces readiness for conflict among ethnic minorities. The position of a minority within the nation regulates impact of ethnic and multicultural concepts on readiness to fight with other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1963 the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah formed the Federation of Malaysia. In the same year Indonesia gained control over West Papua. In the first case the integration was accomplished participatory and peacefully, in the second violence reigned supreme. I argue that different visions of community, nation and state, developed during the decades of decolonisation and the early years of state- and nation-building, are responsible for the different outcomes. Contrary to the expectations of the predominant theories on nationalism the ethno-cultural variant of nation-building in Malaysia proved to be much more integrative than the civic variant espoused by the Indonesian nation-builders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Louis Riel was the late nineteenth-century leader of the Metis, an indigenous, North American people of mixed descent. His political protests challenged conventional notions of Canadian identity and earned him a prestigious place in Canadian national history. His challenges to US national identity, however, have been almost totally overlooked. This article examines how the responses of US press members and policy makers to Riel's politics and racial status reflected and contributed to changing understandings of what it meant to be a member of the US nation and of civilisation more broadly. It suggests that ascriptive criteria such as race, ethnicity, religion and language were central aspects of US national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ brands of nationalism are frequently contrasted, the origins of the civic/ethnic dichotomy remain under-theorised. By building upon Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 , this article argues that, during the eighteenth century, the articulation of power shifted across the board from a pre-modern control over the ending of life, to a modern expression of power as control over the production of life (dubbed ‘bio-power’ by Foucault). Given the Foucauldian claim that power is built upwards from ‘its most infinitesimal mechanisms’, it is suggested that expressions of bio-power were first enacted in that social structure most amenable to biological manipulation—the family—and then expanded upwards towards the widest understanding of a kin collective—the ethnic group. As the shift to bio-power took hold, so too did visions of the political nation-state begin to take shape in Eastern Europe. A fusion of doctrines of self-determinism with the expression of power as ‘control over the production of life’, then saw the ethnic nation-state gain credence as a social and political construct in Central and Eastern Europe. This article takes Romania as a case study through which the mechanisms of this exploratory argument can be illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines gendered and ethnicised discourses of national identity in Australian and Japanese television advertisements. Both content analysis and audience response research are used to argue that such symbolic representations of the nation routinely reflect and reinforce, and occasionally challenge, the marginalisation of women and ethnic Others in Australia and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the Cold War has caused a reassessment of the future basis for conflict and identity. While Samuel Huntington predicts that super-national 'civilisations' are becoming the basis for identity and conflict, many dispute this arguing that either past ethnic and national bases for identity and conflict will remain the norm or that world integration and interdependence will cause the world to unite. This article examines an aspect of this debate using data on ethnic conflict from the Minorities at Risk data set, as well as data collected independently. Specifically, it assesses whether post-Cold War ethnic conflict, and by inference ethnic identity, is more influenced by civilisational or ethnic variables. The analysis shows that separatism, a nationalist variable, is considerably more strongly associated with ethnic rebellion than are civilisational differences. Furthermore, in the multi-variate analysis civilisational differences are, if anything, associated with less ethnic rebellion. Also, separatism and various political variables more strongly influence ethnic rebellion than do civilisational differences. Thus, this study strongly supports the contention that, at least as of the late 1990s, identity continues to be based on national end ethnic factors rather than civilisational ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]