Nation and Identity


Book Description

Nation and Identity provides a concise and comprehensive account of the place of national identity in modern life. Ross Poole argues that the nation became a fundamental organising principle of social, political and moral life during the period of early modernity and that is has provided the organising principle of much liberal, republican and democratic thought. Ross Poole offers us a new and urgently needed analysis of the concept of identity, arguing that we are now in a position to envisage the end of nationalism. We see that the impact of issues like multiculturalism, republicanism, and indigenous rights have made it very difficult to see how the possibility of a postnational cosmopolitanism could not degenerate into a nihilistic moral universe. Nation and Identity will be a fascinating read for all those interested in issues of national identity, both politically and philosophically.




The Creation of National Identities


Book Description

From the barbarian epics to the ethnographic museums, from the national languages to emblematic landscapes or typical costumes, this book retraces the cultural fabrication of the European nations. National identities are not facts of nature, but constructions.




Nature and National Identity After Communism


Book Description

In this groundbreaking book, Katrina Schwartz examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in a small East European country: modern-day Latvia. Based on extensive ethnographic research and lively discourse analysis, it explores that country's post-Soviet responses to European assistance and political pressure in nature management, biodiversity conservation, and rural development. These responses were shaped by hotly contested notions of national identity articulated as contrasting visions of the "ideal" rural landscape.The players in this story include Latvian farmers and other traditional rural dwellers, environmental advocates, and professionals with divided attitudes toward new European approaches to sustainable development. An entrenched set of forestry and land management practices, with roots in the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras, confront growing international pressures on a small country to conform to current (Western) notions of environmental responsibility—notions often perceived by Latvians to be at odds with local interests. While the case is that of Latvia, the dynamics Schwartz explores have wide applicability and speak powerfully to broader theoretical discussions about sustainable development, social constructions of nature, the sources of nationalism, and the impacts of globalization and regional integration on the traditional nation-state.




National Identity


Book Description

National identity is often cited as a major contributing factor to many of the world's worst trouble spots, for example Palestinians versus Jews in Israel, the troubles in Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Armenia and Tibet. This book addresses the issue of why national identity is so important. It examines how it differs from racial, ethnic and regional identity and how it originated in both the West and the Third World. The relationship between national identity and language is shown by the author to be important, but crucial to an enduring sense of national identity is religion and it capacity to separate groups of people.




Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe


Book Description

The resilience of nationalism in contemporary Europe may seem paradoxical at a time when the nation state is widely seen as being 'in decline'. The contributors of this book see the resurgence of nationalism as symptomatic of the quest for identity and meaning in the complex modern world. Challenged from above by the supranational imperatives of globalism and from below by the complex pluralism of modern societies, the nation state, in the absence of alternatives to market consumerism, remains a focus for social identity. Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe takes a fully interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the 'national question'. Individual chapters consider the specifics of national identity in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Iberia, Russia, the former Yugoslavla and Poland, while looking also at external forces such as economic globalisation, European supranationalism, and the end of the Cold War. Setting current issues and conflicts in their broad historical context, the book reaffirms that 'nations' are not 'natural' phenomena but 'constructed' forms of social identity whose future will be determined in the social arena.




National Days


Book Description

The book shows how national days are best understood in the context of debates about national identity. It argues that national days are contested and manipulated, as well as subject to political, cultural and social pressure. It brings together some of the most recent research on national days and sets it in a comparative context.




Design and National Identity


Book Description

This important study introduces the key theories of national identity, and relates them to the broad fields of product, graphic and fashion design. Javier Gimeno-Martinez approaches the inter-relationship between national identity and cultural production from two perspectives: the distinctive characteristics of a nation's output, and the consumption of design products within a country as a means of generating a national design landscape. Using case studies ranging from stamps in nineteenth century Russian-occupied Finland, to Coca-Cola as an 'American' drink in modern Trinidad and Tobago, he addresses concepts of essentialism, constructivism, geography and multiculturality, and considers the works of key theorists, including Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Doreen Massey. This illuminating book offers the first comprehensive account of how national identity and cultural policy have shaped design, while suggesting that traditional formations of the 'national' are increasingly unsustainable in an age of globalisation, migration and cultural diversity. Javier Gimeno-Martinez is Lecturer in Design Cultures at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.




National Collective Identity


Book Description

Hall illustrates how centuries-old dynastic traditions have been replaced in the modern era by nationalist and ethnic identity movements.




Nation-Building, Identity and Citizenship Education


Book Description

A major aim of Nation-Building, Identity and Citizenship Education: Cross-cultural Perspectives is to present a global overview of selected scholarly research on global and comparative trends in dominant discourses of identity politics, and nation-building in comparative education research. It provides an easily accessible, practical, yet scholarly source of information about the international concern in the field of nati- building, identity and citizenship education. Above all, the book offers the latest findings on discourses surrounding national identity, nation-building, and citizenship education in the global culture. It offers a timely overview of current issues affecting the formation of social identity and citizenship education in the global culture. More than ever before, there is a need to understand and analyse both the intended and the unintended effects of globalisation and the forces of globalisation on nations, organisations, communities, educational institutions and individuals around the world. This is particularly relevant to the evolving and constantly cha- ing notions of nation-states, national identity, and citizenship education globally. Current global and comparative research demonstrates a rapidly changing world where citizens are experiencing a growing sense of alienation, uncertainty, and loss of moral purpose. In this stimulating and important book, the authors focus on discourses surrou- ing three major dimensions affecting the national identity, nation-building, and ci- zenship education debate in education and society: ideology, democracy, and human rights. These are among the most critical and significant dimensions defining and contextualising the processes surrounding the nation-building and identity.




Dynamics of National Identity


Book Description

Globalization, immigration and economic crisis challenge the conceptions of nations, trans-national institutions and post-ethnic societies which are central topics in social sciences' discourses. This book examines in an interdisciplinary and international comparative way structures of national identity which are in conflict with or supporting multi-ethnic diversity and trans-national connectivity. The book’s first section seeks to clarify the concepts of national identity, nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitism and to operationalize them consistently. The next section regards the diversity within national states and the consequences for the management of identity and intra-national integration. The third section focuses on external integration between different nations by searching for the "squaring of the circle" between the bonding with co-patriots and the critical reflection of one's own national perspective in relation to others. The last section explores to what extent and in which ways media use shapes collective identity.