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Chapter 1 has investigated the relationship between individuals and the nation through food using the frameworks of banal and everyday nationalism. These frameworks have enabled us to address Anthony Cohen’s concern that the largely structuralist and often uncritical assumption that individuals ‘by default’ derive their identity from their membership of a group would undermine their agency in discussing national identity (Cohen, 1996). In this chapter, we continue to apply banal and everyday nationalism frameworks to our exploration of the relationship between food and nationalism/national identity, but only that the focus shifts to groups. It is a truism that the nation is comprised not only of individuals but also of a vast number of groups, which mediate the members’ experience of the nation. However, the chapter does not subscribe to the assumption that the nation is a homogeneous entity with all sub-units falling neatly in line, but it adopts a pluralistic view that the nation consists of diverse ethnic and cultural groups who are in constant competition in their claim to nationhood. In other words, we take the view that the nation is a ‘zone of conflict’ (Hutchinson, 2005), a dynamic space where a variety of identities interact in the daily act of formation, revision and maintenance of the nation-ness.

The current volume has set out with two major aims: to investigate the relationship between food and nationalism, which has been largely neglected in the study of nationalism, and to demonstrate that the ‘food-and-nationalism’ axis provides a useful angle to study politics at various levels. We have argued in our Introduction that it is high time that the relationship between food and nationalism was taken seriously in the study of politics in general and in the study of nationalism more specifically. Food is essential to life and as such it is important in a multitude of ways; it literally sustains life; it is imbued with meanings; it is highly symbolic and emotive; and therefore it is highly political as a number of anthropologists have argued. Food features prominently in politics: in defining the problems that are important for a society (‘it is part of our cultural heritage to eat dog meat and therefore foreigners should not meddle with it’); in the contest over power and values in public as seen in the Zionist attempt to create new Jews through diet and the sometimes hostile responses to it; and in ‘the authoritative allocation of values, rights and duties for the community as a whole’ as seen in the European Union’s granting of a Geographical Indication (Huysmans, 2005: 75). On the other hand, politics today is permeated by the ideology of nationalism as a nation-centric worldview.

This chapter sets out to primarily examine the reasons and the ways in which food is articulated, constructed and reproduced as national by the private sector. Despite the advance of globalisation and the spread of multinational food corporations, in recent years there has been an increase in the articulation and promotion of food as national in the private sector. This has in turn helped to construct and reproduce food images, tastes and qualities as belonging to or originating from a particular national setting. The chapter explores this phenomenon through two case studies. The first case examines the rising tendency to construct and market food as national by the UK-based contract catering industry. Beyond the legal requirement to provide country of origin (CO) information for products, the chapter provides three additional reasons for this phenomenon: the celebration of diversity, cashing in on the sense of national responsibility and belonging, and the standardisation of operations and services. The second case study is on the Scotch whisky industry. Because the basis of the product’s identity coincides with the geographical framework of a nation, the industry is inevitably engaged with defining, maintaining and promoting the idea of a Scottish nation in its pursuit of profit, highlighting the entrenchment/permeation of the nation-state framework in the everyday life.

Over 10 years have passed since the current phase of devolution in the United Kingdom started and the article investigates its effects on Scottish political discourse on national identity focusing on the unionist version. Based on an analysis of recent political utterances in Scotland, the article argues that the current devolution settlement has revived and entrenched unionist nationalism in the Scottish political discourse. It also shows that one of the effects of devolution on the debate on national identity is a clearer sign of increasing contestation of Britishness, and suggests that devolution is a double-edge sword in management of multiple national identities.

It has been argued that owing to a number of social changes in the modern world, the nature of sovereignty has been substantially modified. This article explores the possible implication of the re-conceptualization of sovereignty to nationalism studies, given that there is a supposed strong link between sovereignty and nationalism, by examining contemporary Scottish political discourse. It was found that current Scottish political discourse has incorporated the re-conceptualization of sovereignty while it remains essentially nationalist, thus confirming that sovereignty and nationalism are two separate concepts. It suggests that a stricter conceptual separation of the nation and the state would be beneficial in order to enhance the quality of nationalism studies.

This essay investigates the effect of uses of history in shaping public attitudes to the European Union in the case of the United Kingdom. It argues that perceptions of historical experiences still exert a significant influence in forming public opinions on European integration. In order to illustrate this, it proposes to disaggregate the ‘British’ view to the Anglo-British and Scottish views of Europe. The essay notes that mobilisation of historical memory or ideas about the nation based on a particular perception of history in public discourses plays an important role in moulding particular public attitudes to Europe in the UK. It concludes with policy recommendations that pro-European aspects of the English past need to be sought and brought into the public discourse so as to nurture a European identity in the UK.

The Japanese case is doubly interesting in this project of re-examining nationalism based on the theory of multiple modernities. The Japanese case is frequently described as ‘exceptional’, ‘different’, or ‘unique’ in the studies of both modernisation and nationalism because it is customarily approached from the angle of the classical and conventional theories of modernisation. In terms of modernisation, the Japanese case is usually depicted as exceptional and unique in that it was the only non-Western society that achieved the degree of modernisation on par with Western powers by the early twentieth century. The speed with which Japanese society transformed itself from a sleepy premodern society in the backwater to one of the larger powers in the international arena — about fifty years (from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to World War I) — is usually described as ‘unparalleled’. The process of modernisation of Japanese society is typically described as ‘catching up’ and judged to have been exogenously induced. Japanese nationalism is also seen as a response to the perceived threat from the West, as a defensive move. For instance, John Breuilly has concluded that, compared to the Chinese and Turkish cases, only ‘the Japanese case can be regarded as a case of successful reform nationalism’ (Breuilly 1982: 218), thus highlighting the ‘exceptional’ aspect of Japanese nationalism in that it has ‘caught on’ with the Western experience before other non-Western cases did.

This book aims to re-examine the modernity of nationalism from the perspective of the theory of multiple modernities. The theory of multiple modernities proposes a fresh understanding of modernity by focusing on the workings of human agency. Modernity is a series of constitution and re-constitution of various cultural and political programmes which are proposed in order to fill the gap between the transcendent order and the mundane reality; it is a human endeavour to make sense of the environment and to bring about a better future by making changes to it. Nationalism is now conceptualised as a form of such cultural programmes that suggests a range of nation-centric world views, and is an integral part of modernity. The re-conceptualisation of nationalism is judged to be necessary because of the recent re-examination of the concept of modernity in social theory. If nationalism is inherently modern, any re-examination of modernity should invite a re-examination of nationalism as well.

The previous chapter has reviewed the ‘problems’ of conventional theories of modernity as a way of aiding our engagement with the theory of multiple modernities and has identified the teleological assumptions stemming from their inherent Eurocentricity as the major contested points. The chapter has also reviewed the modernity of nationalism as discussed in various theories of nationalism and found that the key to understanding the modernity of nationalism is whether nationalism is seen as a product of modernity or as a constitutive element of modernity. We are now ready to examine the theory of multiple modernities with a view to identifying what insights into the investigation of nationalism the idea of multiple modernities contributes. The review offered in this chapter is exploratory rather than systematic with the main aim to identify relevance of the theory of multiple modernities to the study of nationalism. The chapter then proposes a different perspective to nationalism as a quintessentially modern form of human self-reflexivity.

Chapter 4 reviews the Finnish case from the viewpoint suggested by the theory of multiple modernities. This is an exploratory attempt to see what a different angle on the understanding of nationalism can reveal. The Finnish case has been chosen as the subject of investigation mainly because Finnish nationalism is ordinarily seen as a typical case of nineteenth-century ethnocultural nationalism, which eventually led to Finnish independence in 1918 just like other nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to Scottish nationalism, and perhaps even to English nationalism, Finnish nationalism was the dog that barked at the right time. Just as important from this volume’s perspective, Finland is also seen as a late comer to modernity; the whole Nordic region was less urbanised until the late nineteenth century, when industrialisation, led by the timber industry, became noticeable in the 1870s (Strath 2012; Alapuro 2012; Kirby 2006). There is even an argument that the Enlightenment was ‘retarded’ in Finland, which Strath (2012) and others contest. The Finnish case, therefore, combines a various aspects this volume is interested in: the alleged stereotypical nature of Finnish nationalism; the apparent coincidence of the emergence of Finnish nationalism and modernity in the nineteenth century; and all these within the geographical area of Europe where modernity is said to have arisen.

In proposing the idea of multiple modernities, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (2000) declared that modernisation theories that were prevalent at the end of the twentieth century and, indeed, classical theories of modernisation proposed by Marx, Durkheim and ‘even’ Weber had not been successful in explaining the phenomenon of modernisation. Eisenstadt further articulated the focus of his opposition to these received theories as their implicit or explicit assumption of convergence of various societies to the standard set by European experiences. In order to examine the modernity of nationalism from an unconventional stance — the theory of multiple modernities — the first necessary step is to examine the modernity of nationalism according to ‘conventional’ modernisation theories. In order to take on this task, in turn, it is logical to outline these ‘conventional’ and classical theories first.

Predstavljanje izvjestaja sa projekta.

The current volume proposes a fresh angle to the study of European identities, ‘Europe as modernity’ drawing from works carried out for a collaborative research project funded by the European Commission.1 The project, ‘Identities and Modernities in Europe (IME)’ investigates a wide range of definitions about ‘us, the Europeans’ in Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Turkey and the United Kingdom in order to answer the question: ‘What is it to be a European now?’ The consortium set out to look into this question with an assumption that ‘Europe’ (as shorthand for a collection of related concepts such as the idea of Europe, various processes of Europeanisation and European identity), national identity and modernisation are intricately enmeshed. As research progressed, it has emerged that ‘Europe as modernity’ would be an angle through which the entanglement of ‘Europe’, nations and modernity could be meaningfully investigated. The volume thus presents the outcomes of our collective endeavour, a collective reflection on the entanglement of ‘Europe’, nations and modernity — so far. This is not a definitive and final account of European identities; in fact there will never be a definitive account in social sciences for the social world is continuously evolving, manifesting itself in a number of, sometimes contradictory, ways. What is presented here therefore is an interim report, but this is an interim report that introduces a fresh angle to the study of Europeanisation and a critical assessment of this approach.

The ‘Europe as modernity’ angle sheds an interesting light on an investigation into the relationship between ‘Europe’ — as a shorthand for a set of related ideas, such as European identity, the idea of Europe and Europeanism — and Britain, since it leads to a fundamental question: ‘is Britain modern in the same way as other European countries?’ This chapter first analyses the ways in which ‘Europe’ has been made sense of by the elite in British society through a review of literature on Britain’s relationship to Europe and demonstrates that there has been a shift in understanding as to what ‘Europe’ stands for in the British public discourse. It then proceeds to examine the role of the Whig history perspective as a way of explaining why the British case has developed in the way it has. Challenges to the Whig history perspective are briefly reviewed in order to place the British case in the context of the theory of multiple modernities. By doing so, the chapter demonstrates the ‘Europe as modernity’ angle provides a new line of inquiry into the question of Britain’s relationship with ‘Europe’ as well as modernity as British society has experienced it.

In the 1970's, the sudden rise of Scottish Nationalism had considerable impact on Britain, which had gained the reputation as the most integrated nation. In the same period, ethnic consciousness awakened elsewhere in Western Europe and has attracted attention from social scientists since then. This paper examines the social background of the rise of minority nationalism in Western Europe, mainly focusing on the Scottish case. It is found that although certain historical conditions helped ethnies to develop national consciousness, it was social changes experienced by Western European society after World War II that brought the ethnic resurgence there in the 1970's. These rises of minority nationalism in advanced industrial society pose challenging questions to Sociology : The persistence and function of ethnicity in modern society.

The chapter investigate the relationship between nationalism and religion by testing the hypothesis 'nationalism as a secular equivalent of religion' in the case of Meiji Japan.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between nationalism and supranationalism by examining the case of contemporary Scotland. Thus, the concern here is with the relationship between contemporary Scottish nationalism and the process of European integration. The starting point is the proposition that European integration is a form of supranationalism; this issue will be returned to later for further discussion.