visualising nationhood a grand theory of national identity eric kaufmann, birkbeck college,...
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Visualising Nationhood
A Grand Theory of National Identity
Eric Kaufmann, Birkbeck College,
University of London
A Grand Theory
• Parsons' 'filing cabinet'
• Agnostic re source of changes
• About effects rather than causes
• Heuristic Device rather than positive theory
• Builds upon work of Zimmer (2003); Hutchinson (2005); Confino and others
Helps Clarify Major Issues
• Ideology and national identity• 'Ethnic-Civic' Nations• 'Nations before Nationalism'• Universalism (Islam, Neoconservatism) as
nationalism?• 'Nations as Zones of Conflict' (Hutchinson 2005)• Local vs National• Relationship between individual identity and
collective identity (ie. 'consumption v production')• Ethnosymbolism: continuity of nations or revival
of resources?
Optical Metaphor
• Referent: Frame of Reference for the Individual (Territory, Population). Can change for subjective and geopolitical reasons
• Lenses: Ideologies, Location (Social, Geographic), Interests, Psychological predispositions
• Resources: Landscape, History, Genealogy, Institutions, Values, Culture, Economy (Zimmer 2003)
• Ideology and Nationalism
• Ethnic-Civic
• Ideology and the Nation
• 'Nations before Nationalism'
• Universalism (Islam, Neoconservatism) as nationalism?
Values
Lens: British Unionist Ideology
Lens: Multicultural Ideology
• Note that collective representations of the nation are also ideologies, albeit particularist
• Must distinguish Ireland as referent from collective ideology of Irish national identity produced by intellectuals/elites, and this is then different from an individual's image of their Irish national identity
• Can have individuals identifying with Ireland before the ideology of Irish national identity has crystallized
• People may see Ireland through prism of other ideologies (i.e. Catholic, Unionist)
• Social Location: 'Nations as Zones of Conflict' (Hutchinson 2005)
• Geographic Location: Local vs National
Aristocratic-Upper Class Social Location
Whig-Middle Class Social Location
• Interests and the construction of national identity
• Psychology and individual's national identity
• Relationship between individual identity and collective Identity
• Ethnosymbolism: continuity of nations or revival of resources?
• Can locate the underpinnings of any theory
• As well as elements which do not easily fit within established theories (i.e. ideology, social location)
Read All About It……..
• 'The Lenses of Nationhood: An Optical Model of Identity', Nations and Nationalism, forthcoming
• "Dominant Ethnicity and Dominant Nationhood: Empirical and Normative Aspects" in Lecours, A. and G. Nootens (eds.), Dominant Nationalism, Dominant Ethnicity: Identity, Federalism and Democracy (Berlin: Peter Lang, forthcoming)
• http://www.sneps.net/NNE/n&e.htm
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