Search

Over the past few years, the National Council on Public History (NCPH)'s annual meeting has given attention to the forthcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. NCPH has worked with the National Park Service (NPS) to present a scholar's roundtable with different annual themes. The roundtable at the 2023 meeting examined "The Rhetoric of Freedom." This essay opens with an exploration of the theme. What follows is an introduction to the scholars who participated in the roundtable; a description of their suite of programming; and a summary of their findings. I close with a "best practices" case study of the Aiken-Rhett House, an urban plantation mansion in Charleston, South Carolina. The case study answers a reoccurring question that emerged from roundtable discussions: How do historians engage public(s) in narratives of freedom, bondage, and nation building? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the 1968 Olympic Games as a lens to explore everyday forms of citizenship and nation building in Mexico City. To do so, it contrasts the political objectives of the federal government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with Mexico City’s citizenry. I use archival documents, the press, and semistructured interviews, as well as audiovisual records, to understand from a bottom-up approach the alliances and conflicts among these actors. The article claims that, by engaging with the institutional campaigns of the Olympic Games, the citizenry also took part in the nation-building process. At the same time, these interactions reflected debates regarding Mexico’s place during the global Cold War in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Helmut K Anheier and Andreas Wimmer discuss his work on methodological nationalism, nation building, democracy, war, and longer-term economic, socio-political developments. They also explore the post-colonial debate and the decolonization movement in the academy. They touch upon foresight methods and review the state of the social sciences, in particular anthropology and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the past and present trajectories in African decolonization and a resurgent and insurgent push for decolonization in 21st century. Topics covered include the significance of nation-building and world remaking projects in 21st decolonization, how Pan-Africanism and the outbreak of the Congo Crisis in 1960 disrupted the trajectory of African decolonization, and the five overlapping phases or trajectories of decolonization.

The novels Margarita de niebla (Jaime Torres Bodet 1927) and El réferi cuenta nueve (Diego Canedo 1943) follow the lives of well-to-do mestizo/ criollo Mexican males who find themselves in love triangles that force them to choose between a Mexican mestiza or a white, German woman. In both cases, the men opt for the foreigner, but they soon regret their decisions when they realize that they are incompatible with their mates. For this reason, I view these novels as failed foundational fictions. Doris Sommer coined the term "foundational fictions" while analyzing literature that imagined a national reconciliation through heterosexual romance and marriage between people from different sectors of society. These novels do the opposite because they view romances between Mexican elites and foreign Others as antithetical to the nation-building project of official mestizaje. As such, both Torres Bodet and Canedo depict those men who eschew interracial marriage as a hindrance to the institutionalization of a nationalist communion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the mechanisms of legitimation in non-democratic and linguistically divided states? How do regimes in these states use and manipulate the ideology and nation-building for the purposes of regime legitimation? The article focuses on the concept of compartmentalized ideology in non-democratic regimes with substantial divisions in the so-called titular and minority group where socio-linguistic divide allows regimes to construct diverse audiences and even political communities with their own distinct narratives and discourses about the nation, state and the regime. The compartmentalized ideology is only sustainable under the conditions of the regime's power to control and facilitate these discourses through the system of authoritative presidential addresses to the nation and/or other forms of regime's communication with the polity. The shifting of these discourses and themes contribute to the regime stability but also may constitute its re-legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Nomads are positioned outside of the modern conception of nations, which is based on a traditional or modern hierarchical model (Kuzio, 2001) which tends to "dehistoricize and essentialize tradition" (Chatterjee, 2010: 169). Using an analysis of the narrative construction of nomadic Kalmyk nationhood, particularly through historiography and culture, this article demonstrates that in spite of nation-destroying efforts from the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, the Kalmyk nation has been flexible with reinventing cultural strategies in charting the nomadic national imaginary from Chinggis Khan to the Dalai Lama. It argues that nomadic nationhood contains a deeply imaginary response to nomads' cultural and intellectual milieu which provided a way of freeing itself from Tsarist and Soviet modular narratives of national imagination, demonstrating how nomadic nationhood exists as a non-modular form of nationhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The deterioration in Russian-Ukrainian relations heightened in 2014 but did not begin then and has deeper roots. Both Russian presidents have had troubled relations with all five Ukrainian presidents irrespective if they were described as 'nationalist' or 'pro-Russian.' This article is the first to explain why the roots of the crisis go deeper and it does this by investigating three areas. The first is the different sources of elites in 1991 when independent Russia captured Soviet institutions and undertook top-down state building while Ukraine inherited far less and set course with bottom up state-building. The second is divergent Russian and Ukrainian national identities. The third is the resultant different transitions with Russia reverting to great power imperial nationalism and Ukraine quadruple and post-colonial transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the choice Bosnia-Herzegovina had to make when Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. It also discusses the Dayton Peace Agreement that brought an end to the Bosnian war. Topics include Bosnia's state-building project, high levels of unemployment and unpaid employment, and ethnic barriers faced by citizens.

The article discusses the nationalization of Islam in Muslim countries through its incorporation in state institutions. Topics include political Islam and its nationalistic origins, the institutional relationship between religion and state, and the history of nation-building in Muslim countries and the homogenization of different ethnic and religious communities.

This article focuses on the participation of local citizens in Kosovo in the process of state-building and their engagement with the institutions imposed by the international community. While previous literature focuses either on the constitutional and institutional framework or on the more direct forms of local resistance to international intervention, this article looks into more subtle forms of resistance whereby local citizens change the meanings of imposed institutions. To this purpose, this article examines the process of adoption of two minority-relevant laws: the Law on Historic Centre of Prizren and the Law on the Village of Velika Hoča/Hoçë e Madhe. By employing a critical frame analysis, this paper points to the very subtle forms of resistance to the international rule such as: exclusion of citizens from participation in decision-making, defining citizenship in ethnic terms or changing the meaning of minority relevant legislation by framing it from the perspective of state- and nation-building. All of these actions resist the international efforts to build Kosovo as a multiethnic state and impugn the legitimacy of the system. These findings indicate the important role of local citizens in creating the sustainable peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On February 2, 1965, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam kidnapped Gustav Hertz, Chief of Public Administration for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Hertz's captivity set in motion an intricate series of diplomatic gestures that involved several governments, including those of Algeria, Cambodia, and France, and numerous prominent individuals, such as Senator Robert Kennedy, Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk, and Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella, in an effort to win his release. This article examines the Hertz kidnapping to illustrate that South Vietnamese politics heavily influenced and thwarted U.S. nation-building efforts. The case reveals that when perpetuating the impression of South Vietnamese sovereignty conflicted with saving the life of a USAID leader, U.S. officials chose the first objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst most of the literature focusing on the Korean peninsula has concentrated on how to achieve unification through confidence-building measures, dialogues, negotiation and diplomacy, little attention has been paid to how a unified Korean identity, a core component of any potential reunification scheme could develop and be sustained. The paper addresses this gap by: (1) defining what national identity is, and how Korean identities have been formed, (2) outlining how both South and North Korea have understood and used the concept of national identity, (3) suggesting possible grounds on which the two Koreas could build a new, common national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Mexico in the early 1920s, gubernatorial elections chronically failed, and the steps that the federal government took to resolve these crises often provoked further political upheaval. This pattern of electoral failure and the controversies it inspired are testimony to the prevailing uncertainty within the political class as to where the boundaries of power truly lay in postrevolutionary Mexico. This comparison of two failed gubernatorial elections reveals the significance of state politics to national political consolidation, and the formative role of political parties in the immediate postrevolutionary period, preceding the founding of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in 1929. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evolution of the state in Ukraine from an object of elite predation in early 1990s into a dominant actor in relations with non-state actors under Kuchma, an instrument of elite struggles for power and rents under Yushchenko and a return to a centralized state authority under Yanukovych. Despite its different transformations the state in Ukraine has been continuously characterized by the prevalence of informal levers of power and the absence of strong formal institutional foundations. As a result, after twenty years it still lacks the prerequisites of effective governance in a modern state - an impersonal bureaucracy, rule of law and mechanisms of accountability. This institutional void produces Ukraine's vicious cycling between hybrid types of authoritarianism and democracy leaving the state dysfunctional and incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of "informal institutionalization" in post-Communist Russia in theoretical and comparative perspective. It is devoted to critical analysis of existing explanations of the dominance of subversive institutions - that is, those rules, norms, and practices that at first sight partly resemble institutions of modern democracy, good governance and rule of law, but in fact inhibit them, While "pessimists" focus on cultural and historical embeddedness of subversive institutions in Russia, "optimists" draw their attention to patterns of post-Communist state-building, and 'realists" point out the major role of special interests groups in turning growing pains of informal governance in Russia into its chronic deceases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the national security of the U.S. in 2012, an era of national decline and post-American exceptionalism. The authors trace the rise of the U.S. economy and its emergence as a world power from 1815 through the Cold War, commenting on its economic and natural resources. Topics include the financial cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars according to economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes and its impact on the U.S. ability to operate globally in economic and military senses. Also mentioned are the U.S. government's ideology of nation building under the assumption of a world political teleology towards democracy, and ways in which international cooperation and partnerships should change to accommodate the U.S. decrease in power in the global arena.

As Communist rule weakened across East Central Europe and new governments emerged, the Baltic region differed from the Balkans in two ways that need to be explained. The first difference was the near absence of ethnic violence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - compared to civil and cross-border war in most of the former Yugoslavia. The second contrast was the rapid consolidation of democracy and market economics in the Baltic countries compared to halting movements toward political and economic freedom in most Balkan polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses U.S. involvement in nation building in Vietnam, specifically in the Mekong Delta section of An Giang, following the Vietnam War. The author begins by detailing nation building in U.S. foreign policy. Aspects of nation building discussed in the article include military-run programs in counterinsurgency, psychological operations, and police training. The historiography of this subject is also talked about.

In this article the author discusses events that took place in Afghanistan during 2008. She notes that the nation-building activities undertaken in the country were in significant danger during the year. According to the article the Afghan state was threatened by a variety of factors including the drug trade that drove the underground economy, the degree of political corruption in the Afghan bureaucracy, civilian casualties as a result of the Afghan War and the economic failures of the government. Also examined is the pressure put on authorities to negotiate with members of the Taliban.

The year 2007 witnessed a continuation of a five-year dynamic momentum evident on several fronts, notably a fast-growing economy and a vivid sociopolitical landscape, coupled with an active diplomacy. People's standard of living has improved and a sense of confidence and hope in a better future has permeated the populace. Viet Nam's scorecard on the diplomatic front continued to show impressive gains. Yet, momentum can be sustained only if limitations in institutions, education, and infrastructure can be addressed effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The breakdown of law and order in Timor-Leste in 2006 has two important dimensions: internal power struggles and regional differences. This article discusses how the competitive development of the armed forces and the police and the reemergence of regional differences affected the process of creating a democratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three political arenas in East Timor are examined regarding the goal of consolidating peace: governance under Fretilin leadership, the issue of official languages, and the security sector. The article finds that inclusiveness, transparency, and efforts to minimize conflict are lacking in current policies and political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Several theories of nationalism argue that ethnic and regional cultural heterogeneity are a source of conflict and alienation in a state, and therefore impede nation-building. This article tests this assertion with respect to ethnic and regional differences in Ukraine. Using a 2001 mass public opinion survey developed by the author, the article engages in bi-variate and multivariate statistical analysis of the relationship between perceived ethnic and ethno-regional diversity in Ukraine and various measures of national identity and national unity. The results of this analysis suggest that subjective cultural differences in Ukraine do not substantially undermine national identity, but they do weaken national unity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses the changing role of the European Union (EU) and the United States in the civilian side of nation building and development in the Balkans. EU's development of a policy designed to resist unilateralism from the United States; Link of the growing Europeanization of the Balkans in terms of EU attention, assistance and military involvement to the shift in United States priorities, as well as to the logic of EU enlargement momentum.

Analyzes the limit and scope of the shock and awe policy of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Ideals and notions of spreading freedom and democracy as rooted in Kantian philosophies; Facts and information of the U.S. democracy project in post-Saddam Iraq; Contention of the authors that the results of the elections will be the interim verdict of the U.S. nation-building efforts in the nation; Threat of the rise of the Shiites, terrorism, continued insurgency, and the Iranian intervention as hindrances to the stability of the country.

Comments on the U.S. government's involvement in nation-building efforts in Iraq. Challenges faced by nation builders in finding replacement government; Direction of the U.S. government's leadership in the promotion of nation building; History of nation building.

The author discusses a series of articles published in the current and previous issues that have examined how architectural history is taught throughout the world. The author offers his opinion on what the accumulation of this knowledge has brought to architectural history. The author notes that certain factors appear to have influenced the teaching of architectural history in all the countries examined including the impact of regional and national identity with nation and empire building.

Excerpts from the articles "Pakistan and the Islamists" by Husain Haqqani in the April 2007 issue, which discusses Islamist militants in Pakistan, and "A Blueprint for Afghanistan" by Barnett R. Rubin in the April 2002 issue, which discusses rebuilding in Afghanistan, are presented.