Revisiting the concept of national identity (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Construction of National Identity in Modern Times : Theoretical Perspective
2013
Identity politics can be seen as the general framework of today’s world politics. Ethnic, sectarian, religious and national identities are prominent as the referential points of international politics. Nevertheless, it is not so easy to comprehend what is identity and how the national identity can be built in different socio-political circumstances. In this context, this study argues that identity is a construction and formed in accordance with the exigencies of the existing conjuncture. In line with this argumentation we attempt to elaborate the transition from the ethnic identities into the national one in accompanying the identity formation mechanism and national building strategies in theoretical perspectives.
Constructing national identity in the public space. The discursive transformations of the semiotic-linguistic landscapes of Pristina, Kosovo, 2022
This paper focuses on the discursive transformations of the semiotic-linguistic landscapes of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo as brought about by successive sociopolitical transformations and against the reversed power relations of the Albanians and Serbs. The study departs from the underlying assumption that the ethnic Albanian image the cityscape emits today does not coincide with the vision of civic inclusion and multi-ethnicity painted in the Constitution (2008) after the Declaration of Independence (2008). By means of a diachronic examination of successive alterations made to iconic landmark establishments at different political phases in time, it is posited that an appreciation of the contemporary discursive landscape requires an understanding of its dialogic relationship with the past. It is contended that semiotic changes reacted to the past by demarcating barriers that limit access to the previously dominant ethnic other. With reference to the ethnically segregated context of the 1990s in Pristina, attention is brought to the transgressive and invisible dimensions of the landscape for the construction of the city’s identity today.
Getting Real on Fluctuation National Identities
Antipode
The discursive-constructivist accounts of identity have made a significant contribution to our understanding of how national identities change. Unfortunately, they have also turned our attention away from the role that the global economic system plays in the constitution and transformation of collective identities. This article draws attention to the shortcomings of discursive-constructivist approaches by scrutinizing the identity transformations that took place within the Turkish-Cypriot community in Northern Cyprus in the last decade. It suggests that within the context of contemporary globalization and EUropeanization, the (trans-)formation of national identities cannot be fully understood without taking the functioning of the global capitalist system into account.
National identity: banal, personal and embedded
Nations and Nationalism, 2007
This article examines the theoretical problem of understanding the relationship between personal and social dimensions of national identity. It does this by relating ethnographic data collected during a study of a merger between a Scottish and an English bank to three conceptual frameworks. First, it considers Michael Billig's thesis of 'banal nationalism'. Then it addresses Anthony P. Cohen's concept of 'personal nationalism'. Finally, it adapts a conception of the relationship between personal and social identity found in the recent work of Derek Layder. Based on this it argues that national identities, like all identities, are rendered salient for persons when they seem to address personal issues of power over one's life, and that the various social organisational settings through which people realise control over their lives (in this case, the bank) are thus crucial contexts for understanding people's attachments to identities, national and otherwise.
Interrogating Naturalness of National Identity
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and social sciences , 2020
Nation-state has been considered both an intellectual brainchild and a practical offshoot of the European Enlightenment. The liberal philosophy as an intellectual representative of the Enlightenment tradition and the modernists who emphasize modernization as the practical derivative of it not only deliberated on the simultaneousness and coexistence of the two happenings-the rise of national consciousness on the one hand and appreciation for modern values such as equality, liberty and justice on the other, many theorists argued that these modern values could be realized within a nation-state model (a modern institution). Hence, they contributed to naturalization and de-politicization of the nation-state model. Naturalization/secularization of the nation-state idea without deliberating on the possibilities of politicization and construction of national identities legitimize exclusion of people from national space, drives toward homogenization and nation-building process producing refugees and stateless people. Further, nation-states do not feel the urgency in meeting the normative demands of the international order that strive to defend human rights and address the problem of statelessness. In this context, the article seeks to interrogate the naturalness of national identity of individuals by examining the factors that tend to secularize and naturalize it and by unraveling the real socioeconomic forces that engender and shape national identity and help it look the way it does.
The Informalization of National Identity
1995, 1995
Eu ro paca 2!>: f>-l!'i. The phenomenon pejoratively known as the new " cthno-n ation a lism" concea ls a rich array of' cultural processes. Havin g seen how this ideology can be used t .o manipulate , can we then take the leap down to everyday life to sec how people usc it. in pradice? On the basis of' Nordic experience, the article discus:;es how the nat ional is infimnalizcd and wrested f'rom t.hc ha n ds of' power, how it is appropri ated by individuals, groups, and local communities to articulate a cul tura l ident ity that. doc::; not. need t.o have so much to do with the nation. It is used to con vey mcRsag<'s that. can bP about. t.hc relat ion of peri phery to centre, about yo11ng people's relations to ad ultR, tho relations of' Swedes to i mmigrants, etc. By giving a temporary cultural identity, the national can be used to highlight li(e policy 'I'll's! ions about how we should live in late modernity. In this way, it becomes a ch annPl for rcmorali:�,ing everyday life. The caRe with which people seize national sy m bol� is partly due to infbrmalization: hardly a single bi rthday, annual fe�t iv;tl , sports contest, or other event passes without the flag being used-literallyto decorate the cake. But this is a type of national iden tity wh ich people can allow themselves to play with, without being exposed to anything deadly serious. The article discusses how national identity can also become a tool in the servi ce of cul tural complexitynot of homogenization-and it can contribute to the n egotiati on of new collective identities and deeper reflexivity.
Social representations of national identity in culturally diverse societies
2015
The concept of identity, although quite recent in the social sciences (it was popularised by Erikson in the 1950ssee Gleason, 1983) is one of the few concepts that has been so widely studied and theorised. Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, even political philosophers, have used the term to shed light on a variety of socio-political phenomena, ranging from belonging to exclusion and from stability and homogeneity to social change and cultural pluralism. As such, identity has acquired an array of conflicting meanings, from essentialist notions which focus on unity and distinctiveness to conceptions which emphasise the fragmentation of the modern subject (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). The challenge in defining identity stems from the fact that it refers to both an individual's sense of self as well as an individual's relations with others. It is, in other words, a concept that resists the individual/social dichotomy which has traditionally dominated the social sciences, in general, and social psychology, in particular. In this chapter we adopt a social representations perspective to theorise identity at the social/individual interface. We focus on national identities which have been particularly problematized in the context of growing cultural diversity within nation-states and are often seen as declining or changing.
Critical Thoughts on National Identity
Sharif Kanaaned (Ed.): The Future of Palestinian Identity. Cambridge Scholar Bublishing, 2018
This paper is based on the argument that the Palestinian identity suffers from a serious terminological problem, in the sense that it is perceived by its carriers as one thing while it is depicted in scholarly work as something totally different. This problem is most clearly manifested in the fact that the vast majority of Palestinian researchers and scholars subscribe to the paradigm that makes identity equivalent to awareness when postulating that " identity is the awareness of self. " I strongly disagree with this notion of identity, simply because it is a tautology, and a tautology is a logical fallacy. For, when we say that " identity is the awareness of self " , we actually say that "self is the awareness of self". The true logical ramification of this postulation goes this way: Identity is the awareness of self. F 0 A E National identity is the awareness of the national self. F 0 A E