Category Archives: SEN Article Spotlight

Article Spotlights

Today’s Article Spotlights consider the role of regional identities and centre-periphery relations in relation to contemporary nationalism, as well as the conceptual challenges facing scholars of nationalism as its meanings are necessarily being redefined. These Spotlights will introduce further writing from SEN Online that will take stock of the recent Scottish independence referendum result and its implications.

Anthony Smith’s essay from 2008 surveys the state of scholarship on nationalism and its likely future directions.

Anthony D. Smith, The Shifting Landscapes of ‘Nationalism’, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2008, pp. 317-330.

The field of study that comprises nations and nationalism is often seen as riven by a conflict between ‘modernists’ and their opponents. In fact, the field is far more fragmented than such a characterisation suggests. From the very first normative critical essays 150 years ago, it has been composed of shifting landscapes in which different approaches and perspectives overlap and cross-cut each other like intersecting monologues. While there was a short period of engagement in the 1980s, a ‘classic debate’ between modernists, perennialists and ethno-symbolists who embraced a macro-analytic framework and a causal-historical methodology, the familiar landscape has radically shifted to reveal a series of deconstructionist strategies and techniques; and while rational choice theories, among others, continue to embrace causal-historical analysis, there has been a rejection in many quarters of both macro-analytic narratives and causal-historical analysis. The new anti-essentialist strategies include feminist critiques, the study of everyday nationhood, the hybridisation of national identities, and debates about the ‘ethics of nationalism’ which echo earlier critiques. Above all, there is a new concern with the application of globalising trends to nations and nationalism, and especially with the role of nations without states, and the impact of supranationalism, large-scale migration and ‘religious nationalisms’.

Kees Terlouw’s essay considers the relationship between contemporary regional identities and globalization, with a comparative focus on the Netherlands and Germany.

Kees Terlouw, Rescaling Regional Identities: Communicating Thick and Thin Regional Identities, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2009, pp. 452-464.

Novel forms of regional identities emerge in response to global competitive pressures and challenges to the nation-state. Regions have to react and position their identity in relation to the rescaling of statehood. Especially, the growing autonomy of regional administrations makes support from local stakeholders more important. Communicating a specific regional identity is one of the instruments regional administrations use for mobilising support. However, at the same time old, traditional regional identities become more fluid. Regional identity traditionally focuses on shared past and specific social and cultural characteristics. Especially globalisation and individualisation undermine this traditional thick regional identity. Regional administrations have to adjust their communicated regional identity. By communicating the image of a future oriented region that can face the challenges of global competition, they increasingly use a thin regional identity. This paper analyses different case studies from the Netherlands and Germany.

Alberto Spektorowski’s essay considers the role that regionalism has played in the discourse of contemporary right-wing and extremist nationalism in Europe.

Alberto Spektorowski, Ethnoregionalism, Multicultural Nationalism and the Idea of the European Third Way, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2007, pp. 45-63.

While the idea of a Europe of its peoples, or a post-nation-state ‘regionalist Europe’ is largely applauded by liberal, radical democratic, and post-colonial theorists, who welcome this development as an antidote to narrow nationalism, ideologues of the New Right had adopted this idea to their exclusionist political design. Based on what can be defined as ‘multiculturalism of the Right’, the New Right proposes a new European nationalist resurrection based upon the idea of the reemergence of multiple European organic identities that would set a cultural barrier against immigrant communities. In order to elaborate this plan the New Right makes use of the intellectual contribution of old anti-liberal integralist sources at the fringes of fascism. The latter set the path for a European ‘third way’ in the 1930s and the New Right attempts to reestablish this trend in a post-modern Europe. This article does not claim that Europe of the peoples is an anti-liberal project, but asks to heed ‘unexpected’ political uses of the idea.

Finally, this piece from Diego Muro and Alejandro Quiroga considers the nation-building process in modern Spain from a centre-periphery perspective. This essay will prove especially interesting to those thinking about the implications of the rise of Scottish nationalism for regional nationalist and secessionist movements in Spain, such as that of Catalonia.

Diego Muro and Alejandro Quiroga, Building the Spanish Nation: The Centre-Periphery Dialectic, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2004, pp. 18-37.

This paper provides an historical overview of Spain’s nation-building process from the nineteenth century to the present time. Using Stein Rokkan’s centre-periphery paradigm, the paper argues that a pervasive feature in contemporary Spanish history is the dialectical relationship between the Spanish nation and the peripheral nations of Catalonia and the Basque Country. From this perspective, the Spanish nation-building process is understood as one of the main triggering events for the emergence of peripheral nationalisms at the end of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, tensions between the core and the periphery help to explain why Spain has a quasi-federal institutional structure. Recent interest in ‘constitutional patriotism’ for example, can only be understood in relation to Catalan and Basque initiatives to reform their autonomy status.

Article Spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.

Article Spotlights

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on recent SEN News Bites. Here we focus on diaspora nationalism and processes of ‘othering’ in response to immigration.

Giorgio Shani’s article deals with diaspora Sikh nationalism, and the degree to which the concept of a territorial Sikh homeland is a diasporic ‘invention’.

Giorgio Shani, The Territorialization of Identity: Sikh Nationalism in the Diaspora, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2002, pp. 11-19.

This article seeks to examine Sikh nationalism in the diaspora. It will be argued that Sikh diaspora nationalism is concerned with instilling a sense of the global unity of all Sikhs through an involvement in the politics of the homeland. This is achieved through the articulation of a Sikh nationalist discourse disseminated through the internet for consumption by the diaspora.

Professor John Hutchinson’s essay focuses on the Irish community in London between the turn of the twentieth century and the achievement of Irish independence.

John Hutchinson, Diaspora Dilemmas and Shifting Allegiances: The Irish in London between Nationalism, Catholicism and Labourism (1900–22), Volume 10, Issue 1, 2010, pp. 107-125.

Focused on the London Irish, this article discusses the diasporic dilemmas of Irish Catholics in England who oscillated between four claims to loyalty in the early twentieth century. Liberals and later the labour movement sought to mobilise them for radical political and socialist goals; the Catholic Church to support religious education against secularist threats; a homeland nationalism to advance the prospects of Irish parliamentary autonomy; and a diasporic nationalism to defend their ethnic interests in England. These pressures peaked during the First World War and the Irish War of Independence. The overall effect of this nationalist mobilisation may have been to advance their integration into English social and political institutions.

Adrienne Kochman’s piece deals with the role of Ukrainian museums in producing a ‘culturally authentic history of Ukraine’, focusing in particular on the United States.

Adrienne Kochman, The Role of Ukrainian Museums in the United States Diaspora in Nationalising Ukrainian Identity, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2008, pp. 207-229.

Ukrainian museums in the United States diaspora have attempted to construct a culturally authentic history outside Ukraine itself where, for the better part of the twentieth century, Ukrainian artistic endeavors were defined within a russified Soviet framework. Established largely by third wave post-World War II Ukrainian immigrants interested in seeing an independent Ukraine, these museums have been a symbolic testament to democratic self-definition. A separate Ukraine pavilion at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago of 1933 set an earlier precedent in its representation of Ukraine as an autonomous nation. This affirmed later permanent museums which collected indigenous Ukrainian folk art and artifacts as well as modern art – created by native Ukrainians and those of the diaspora – in opposition to the official Soviet Socialist Realist canon. Ukrainian independence in 1991 and increased national awareness after 2004 elections realigned these museums’ mission from a cultural refuge to active participants in the new nation-building process.

Article Spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.

Article Spotlights

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on recent SEN News Bites. Here, we focus on the significance of political and constitutional processes to nationalism, national identity, and responding to ethnic conflict (and its causes, such as deficit of political representation), potential or actual.

Mara Malagodi’s essay address this area focusing on Nepal, and more specifically debates surrounding constitutional change there since the ‘demise’ of the 1990 Constitution as of 2007.

Mara Malagodi, Forging the Nepali Nation through Law: A Reflection on the Use of Western Legal Tools in a Himalayan Kingdom, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2008, pp. 433-452.

The present article endeavours to analyse the use and scope of Western positivistic legal tools in the creation of the Nepali nation. It suggests a two-level analysis. First, a historical analysis of Nepal’s political and legal developments is presented to investigate the rationale of using law as a social engineering and homogenising tool promoting an identifiably Nepali national identity. Second, the article focuses on the current debates concerning constitutional change in Nepal. The debates about the demise of the 1990 Constitution in 2007, and the election of a Constituent Assembly need to be investigated in the light of the growing politicisation of ethnicity in the country. The overarching demand for inclusion stems from the discontent of Nepal’s ethno-linguistic, religious, and regional minorities with their historical subordination. Ultimately, the article aims to demonstrate that the Nepali experience is situated somewhere between the civic and ethnic models of nationalism Kohn enunciated.

Michel Dormal’s piece considers the role of ‘representative relations as the site of a negotiation of collective identity’, in the context of Luxembourg.

Michel Dormal, Political Representation and Imagined Community: The Case of Luxembourg, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2012, pp. 498-516.

Discussions of nation-building often focus on political elites, who are considered the makers of new communities. This article seeks to sketch out a different approach. It suggests thinking of representative relations as the site of a negotiation of collective identity. Drawing on recent discussions in political theory, the first part of the article discusses conceptual implications of this assumption, arguing that representation should be analysed in terms of its symbolic structure. The second part offers a historical case study of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. It explores how processes of political democratisation and imagination of national community were deeply interconnected in the period from 1890 to 1939. The article illustrates how the representative politisation of social conflict may trigger nation-building.

Didier Ruedin’s article considers the relationship between ethnic and group representation in different national parliaments.

Didier Ruedin, The Relationship between Levels of Gender and Ethnic Group Representation, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2010, pp. 92-106.

This article examines the relationship between levels of gender representation and levels of ethnic group representation in national parliaments. Taagepera (1994) and Lijphart (1999) predicted that because of shared mechanisms and covariates levels of representation in the two forms should be positively correlated. Whilst this paper can identify a number of shared covariates, there is no evidence of an association between levels of gender and ethnic group representation. The lack of negative association suggests that increasing levels of representation in one form does not necessarily come at the cost of the other. Instead it appears that the salience and politicisation of divisions – approximated by the make-up of society – may shape the relationship between levels of gender and ethnic group representation: representation scores tend to be higher in the forms of representation that are thought to be more salient.

Article Spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.

Article Spotlights

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on recent SEN News Bites. Here, we focus on the significance of religious and ethnic conflict to nationalism in South Asia.

Sadia Saeed’s essay deals with this relationship in the context of Pakistan.

Sadia Saeed, Pakistani Nationalism and the State Marginalisation of the Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2007, pp. 132-152.

This paper examines the relationship between nationalism, state formation, and the marginalisation of national minorities through an historical focus on Pakistani state’s relationship with the Ahmadiyya community, a self-defined minority sect of Islam. In 1974, a constitutional amendment was enacted that effectively rendered the Ahmadiyya community a non-Muslim minority, in spite of claims by the community that it was Muslim and hence not a minority. This paper attempts to account for this anti-Ahmadiyya state legislation by arguing that the genealogy of the idea of a Pakistani state is key for understanding the politics of exclusion of the Ahmadiyya community from ‘Muslim citizenship’ – that is, who is and isn’t a Muslim.

Mara Malagodi considers the transition from Hindu monarchy to secular republic in Nepal.

Mara Malagodi, The End of a National Monarchy: Nepal’s Recent Constitutional Transition from Hindu Kingdom to Secular Federal Republic, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2011, pp. 234-251.

The article analyses Nepal’s transition in 2007 from the constitutional definition of the state as a ‘Hindu monarchical kingdom’ to a ‘secular federal republic’, followed by the abolition of the Shah monarchy in 2008. Nepal’s institutional change in 2007–2008 invites reflection on the role of Hindu kingship in informing Nepali nationalism in its constitutional formulation. The developments of the Shah monarchy are interpreted as the product of both the institution and the various historical figures that have occupied that institutional place. However, it is argued that the more or less charismatic qualities of individual Shah kings were ‘contained’ within and minimised by the prevailing institutional dimension of the monarchy in defining the Nepali nation. The nationalist legitimacy of the Shah monarchy as Nepal’s core political institution rested upon the notion of Hindu kingship, which transcended the single historical personalities of the Shah kings and proved so pervasive that it has shaped the constitutional definition of the nation even in republican Nepal.

Sarbeswar Sahoo considers ethnic Hindu politics in India.

Sarbeswar Sahoo, Ethno-Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society: A Case from India, Volume 8, Issue 3, pp. 453-480.

This paper analyses the role of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), an ethnic Hindu(tva) organisation, among the tribal populations in south Rajasthan. It argues that the RVKP has been able to enhance its legitimacy and expand its socio-political support base among the tribals through a well-articulated and planned process of ‘ethnification’. This process has been carried out in four basic ways: (1) utilising development projects as means to spread the ideology of Hindutva, (2) bringing religious awakening and organising mass re-conversion programmes, (3) redefining indigenous identity and characterising certain communities as ‘the other’, and (4) with the support of the various state institutions. The paper concludes that by ethnicising indigenous identity, the RVKP has not just created a ‘culture of fear and violence’ in the tribal regions but also threatened the secular democratic ethos of Indian society.

Subhakanta Behera considers region, religion, and nationalism from a theoretical perspective.

Subhakanta Behera, Identities in India: Region, Nationality and Nationalism – A Theoretical Framework, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp. 79-93.

Given the complexity of identity in India, where ethnicity alone can only inadequately define constituent regional communities such as the Oriyas, Bengalis, Tamils and Keralites, a regional perspective provides a more useful analytical approach. In India, a territorially defined region is the most inclusive segment, which has linguistic, historical and socio-cultural connotations. Apart from the historical importance of region, it has now taken many ethnic characteristics within its ambit. While discussing the importance of ‘region’ in India, this article tries to show the weakness of an ethnic perspective in defining the identity of various language-based, but geographically confined, communities of India. The article also tries to explore how regional identities can be reconciled with a pan-Indian ideology. Perhaps in the post-modern world, this is the greatest challenge that India has to grapple with, and one that requires judicious policies and practices.

Article Spotlights Round-Up – June News Bites

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Read on for Article Spotlights from the SEN Archives focusing on SEN News Bites from June. Here, we focus on the significance of performance in the popularization and strengthening of national belonging and nationalist movements. The articles spotlit here are all from 2012’s special edition on ‘Forging the Nation: Performance and Ritual in the (Re)production of Nation’, which itself arose from the 2011 annual ASEN Conference.

Chiara De Cesari’s article focuses on how artistic performance has been used to popularize a sense of Palestinian nationalism in the absence of a Palestinian state.

Chiara De Cesari, Anticipatory Representation: Building the Palestinian Nation(-State) through Artistic Performance, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 82-100.

This article aims to illuminate the ways in which artists and cultural producers can participate in forging the nation(-state) by performing its institutions, and by mocking its operations. It explores two experiments in setting up a Palestinian national museum, which are also art projects in themselves. It also discusses the recent Palestinian art biennials, organised by a Palestinian non-governmental organisation in 2007 and 2009 in various locations across the Mediterranean. It is my argument that the experiments with the Palestinian national museum and the biennials constitute a kind of artistic practice that does not just represent or imitate the social world: they are artistic practices that purport to produce new social arrangements – in particular, a set of new ‘state’ (art and cultural) institutions under conditions of statelessness. I also discuss how such a tactic of anticipatory representation, which calls into being, by representing them beforehand, institutions that do not yet (fully) exist, bears resemblance with recent policies adopted by the Palestinian political establishment.

Jasper Dag Tjaden’s essay deals with the significance of the Chilean independence centenary of 1910 for Chilean national identity.

Jasper Dag Tjaden, The (Re-)Construction of ‘National Identity’ through Selective Memory and Mass Ritual Discourse: The Chilean Centenary, 1910, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 45-63.

Social constructivist theories regard the nation as ‘imagined’ (Anderson), ‘invented’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger), and ‘narrated’ (Bhabha). National narratives use mass rituals, performances, and selective national history to reinvigorate collective identity. This article examines the 1910 centennial festivities in Chile as a collective and discursive quest for national identity in a changing society longing for stability. The article uses a discourse analysis approach to study a series of Chilean national history abstracts and coverage of the centennial festivities as presented in Zig-Zag, the most relevant political magazine at the time. The study finds that selective memory and mass ritual discourse are a constitutive part of national identity. Through the process of selective memory, the sources depict Chilean history as a series of linear, coherent, and meaningful events to foster collective identification with the nation. The images of mass ritual discourse of the centennial celebrations reinforce common national characteristics and confidence in the nation. Mass performances provide emotional self-affirmation and an endowment of meaning for individuals within their national group as they restage current national membership with reference to a common past. The study identifies themes of national representation along which the nation is narrated, and suggests that this typology can be generalised beyond the case of Chile. In doing so, this article underscores the need for further research on the concept of discursive national identity formation and its relevance in contemporary politics.

Erika Kuever’s article examines the celebrations around the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of the People’s Republic of China, in 2009.

Erika Kuever, Performance, Spectacle, and Visual Poetry in the Sixtieth Anniversary National Day Parade in the People’s Republic of China, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 6-18.

The sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 2009 was marked with a massive parade in the heart of Beijing viewed on hundreds of millions of television screens across the nation. English-language media coverage focused primarily on what it saw as the event’s explicit message: the Communist Party’s celebration of the nation’s military might and continued economic growth, and its origins in a coherent and uniquely Chinese ideology. Such coverage largely reflected international fears of China and thus misread the parade’s import and impact on its domestic audience. I argue that the National Day events are better understood as a form of visual poetry that relied on performance to emotionally conflate party, nation, and state. Both the speeches of party leaders and the scripted remarks of state media commentators relied on language and ideas that the Chinese public has heard numerous times. The visual elements of the parade, in contrast, were unprecedented in both scale and spectacle. Hundreds of thousands took part in displays of collective harmony, unified patriotic sentiment, and ethnic unity. The distinctive style and rhythm of the parade depicted a vision of nationhood without the ethnic fractures, labour unrest, and massive inequalities that constitute the greatest threat to the power of the party-state as it embarks on its seventh decade of continuous rule.

Article spotlights compiled by Dr Shane Nagle.