National identity and globalization

1
National identity and globalization

• Nation, nationality and nationalism

2
What is a nation?

• Complexity
• Only Western nation state ?
• Nation

3
Western nation state

• control over a definite geographical territory
• independent, relatively centralized
  administrative apparatus
• a distinct political structure, legal code,
  economy, currency, educational system
• a culture defined by language, arts, customs,
  religion and/or race
• rituals of identification enforced solidarity

4
Max Weber

• .. A lot of Frenshmen did not know that they
  belonged together until the long didactic
  campaigns of the late nineteenth century told
  them that they did.

5
Nation state and ethnicity

• Unity
• Homogenizising
• Language
• Ethnicity
• Memory
• National history
• Invented traditions
• Resurrection of past event

6
Nationalism

• Doctrine or political movement supporting the
  right of a nationality to form an autonomous
  nation
• Chauvenistic pride in ones nation and xenophobia
  towards other nations

7
Primordialists versus modernists

• Primordialists
• Ethnicity and ethnic history has played a
  significant role in shaping modern nation state

• Modernists
• Modern capitalism, industry, and communication
  have been responsible for the nation states
  apperance

8
A.D. Smith

• Nation
• Invented / constructed or real historical
  process?
• Did nations exist in the pre-modern world?
• Political unit or a social/cultural entity ?

9
Smith working definition

• A nation is a named community of history and
  culture, possesing a unified territory, economy,
  mass education system and legal rights

10
Smith National identity

• Vital for any nation is the growth and spread
  of a national sentiment outward form the centre
  and usually downwards through the strata of the
  population. It is in an through the myths and
  symbols of the common past that such a national
  sentiment finds its expression and these too may
  develop over long periods.

11
Smith The ethnic core

• Common name for the unit of population
• A set of myths of common origins and descent
• Some common historical memories of things
  experienced together
• A common historic territory of homeland
• Element of common culture language, customs,
  religion
• A sense of solidarity

12
Smith 2 types of Ethnie

• Lateral (aristocratic) incorporate lower class
  culture through expanding bureaucracy
• Vertical (passive) religious defined
  communities, mobilized by intellectuals into a
  political state

13
Benedict Anderson

• From inventing to imagine and constructing
• Nation-state as result of specific socio-economic
  conditions, but recognizes the national sentiment
  of solidarity as a rationale as real as anything
  else

14
Anderson

• Nation-ness and nationalism are cultural
  artefacts of a particular kind
• How have they come into historical being ?
• Why such profound emotional legitimacy ?

15
Benedict Anderson

• Members of a nation
•  
• .. will never know most of their fellow-members,
  meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds
  of each lives the image of their communion.

16
Anderson

• Nation
• .. It is an imagined political community and
  imagined as both inherently limited and
  sovereign.

17
Anderson

• Nation
• Imagined
• Imagined as limited
• Imagined as sovereign
• Imagined as community

18
Anderson

• The origins of national consciousness
• Vernacularizing thrust of capitalism
• change in the character of Latin
• impact of the Reformation
• expanding vernalularizing of administration and
  instruments of centralisation

19
Anderson

• Print languages bases for national consciousness
• created a unified field of exchange and
  communication
• new fixity to language
• created languages-of-power of a new kind

20
Inge Adriansen Dannebrog symbol of the state
or of the people ?

• Dannebrog
• Party, joy, happiness
• privat and official
• Commercial
• State

21
Peter Faber Dengang jeg drog afsted, 1848Højt
fra Træets Grønne Top, 1849

• For the girl and our country
• We are fighting altogether
• And woe to that good-for-nothing
• That doesnt love his language
• And will not sacrifice blood and life for old
  Dannebrog
• Know it is an honor to carry Dannebrog

22
Minister for Refugee, Immigration and Integration
Affairs, Bertel Haarder, Berlingske Tidende,
20.9.2003

• Normal Danes are subjected to different forms
  of social control. We go to work, among others
  because we consider what the family and the
  neighbours will say, and because we want to make
  a good example for our children. But foreigners
  do not have these same inhibitions. They live in
  a sub-culture outside of the Danish tribe. Thus,
  they are very quick in acquiring benefits without
  making an effort

23
Bertel Haarder, Minister for Refugee, Immigration
and Integration Affairs in Weekendavisen,
1.3.2002

• Danish culture is more important than other
  cultures. When I, as Minister of Education,
  placed the Biblical narrative as the centre of
  the study of Christianity (in the school system),
  it was clear discrimination. One has to be
  well-versed about the Biblical narrative, and
  one must have knowledge of the other religions.
  It is discrimination, and that is how it should
  be. And the same should hold for Danish
  instruction. There, one studies Danish literature
  it is more important than foreign literature.
  Therefore I am saying, that all this talk about
  cultural equality and religious equality this is
  nonsense. It is the culture radicals who want
  cultural and religious equality, they cannot
  possibly have reflected on it. Denmark is by all
  intents and purposes a Danish society. It is the
  Danes who decide in Denmark. It is us who decide
  how many we want to come in. It is not at random
  that it is not only in our Constitution, but in
  all other countries constitutions where it
  states that it is the Parliament that decides who
  should be able to come in. Is this
  discrimination? Of course, it is discrimination.