Analysing the Prospects of Forging an Overarching European Collective Identity

By George Yiangou

Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 37-49

Introduction

European political science has in the last couple of decades witnessed the project of European unification take entirely new dimensions. Since the signing of the Treaty of European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) in 1992 by the member-states of the European Community (EC) and the creation of the European Union (EU), what was originally conceived as an economic cooperation started to emerge as a very subtle sociopolitical unit. National borders began to be transcended with increasing ease, the economic sector was gradually transformed into an independent Europe-wide web and policy-making set out to be viewed in more collective terms. On top of all this, the new institutional framework that had broken through challenged the very foundations upon which the European nation-state system was built and, thus, questioned the very sovereign nature of the nation-states on the continent.

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Britishness in Trafalgar Square: Urban Place and the Construction of National Identity

By Shanti Sumartojo

Volume 9, Issue 3, pages 410-428

Abstract

This article argues for the importance of urban public place in exploring how contemporary national identity is constructed. I take Trafalgar Square as my case study, exploring how Britishness was reinvented in two events that took place there in 2005: the celebrations for London’s successful Olympic host city bid and the commemorative vigil for the victims of the 7 July London bombings. I contend that during these events, Trafalgar Square contributed to the discourse of national identity in three distinct ways: firstly, as a podium for the promulgation of official messages about the two events; secondly, as a tableau that demonstrated the ‘diversity in unity’ that official messages emphasised; and finally as a physical frame that accessed a version of British history to contextualise the events. More generally, the use of the square helped illuminate some important tensions at the heart of contemporary national identity in Britain, such as the question of multiculturalism and the role of London in the national imagination.

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Performing Identities on a Dutch River Dike: National Identity and Diverging Lifestyles

By Kees Terlouw

Volume 13, Issue 2, pages 236-255

Abstract

The creation of a national identity shared by the whole population becomes increasingly difficult in individualizing and globalizing national societies. The national population fragments into many lifestyle groups with very different social and cultural orientations. The enactment of these different lifestyle identities during leisure activities accentuates these differences. However, these different identities are sometimes performed on the same spatial stage. The main part of this article analyses the use of the dike along the river Linge, a part the Rhine estuary, which, lined with apple trees, cuts through an iconic Dutch river landscape with polders, old villages and meadows with quietly grazing cattle. Especially during the weekends, it is a stage crowded by walkers, cyclists, classic car drivers, and motorcyclists. The importance attached to this river dike is linked to a shared traditional form of Dutch collective national identity. The different uses of the river dike are based to the diverging values on which the different lifestyles are based. This results in conflicts over the use of and access to the dike. The role of the state in regulating these conflicts results in a more limited form of national identity.

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Motherhood as Armenianness: Expressions of Femininity in the Making of Armenian National Identity

By Sevan Beukian

Volume 14, Issue 2, pages 247-269

Abstract

This article explores the discourses on gender roles and the place of Armenian women in the Armenian nation-building process, especially focusing on the changes since the 1988 national movement formation. This study is based on extensive interviews conducted in Armenia and Karabakh in 2011. Although Armenian women were praised for their role during the nationalist movement of 1988 and the Karabakh war, they went back into their ‘traditional’ role in the aftermath. Motherhood is a strong concept in Armenian women’s (self-)identification with their nation, constructing it as a unique Armenian trait that distinguishes Armenian women from ‘others’. The self-expression of women highlights the authenticity of Armenian constructions of femininity as motherhood, embedded in the national and ethnic self-identification of Armenian women. The concept of Armenian motherhood is therefore a particular expression filtered through a distinct history of national struggle and genocide, and upheld by Armenian women through that perception.

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Tastes and Fragrances from the Old World: Memoirs by Egyptian Jewish Women

By Nefissa Naguib

Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 122-127

Introduction

History tells us that cosmopolitanism for the Jews has been an adaptive instrument for a persecuted people without a homeland, a people who always had to be prepared to flee and move on to another refuge. It is also true that cosmopolitanism is a deeply rooted feature in classical Arab-Islamic cultural heritage. The geographical location of the Arab Mediterranean, extending across frontiers and in different historical periods, from Spain to the Levant and beyond, has always made it a commercial, intellectual, strategic and sacred place visited by merchants, scholars, soldiers and believers of many ethnicities and cultural traditions. As such, it has served as a virtual cauldron of globally significant and critical events. The historical record tells us that cosmopolitan qualities and this region’s identity as a cross-roads of global encounters rendered it particularly tolerant to the Jewish presence. Arab Andalusia is, of course, particularly exalted as embodying Arab cosmopolitanism. Recently, scholars of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arab world have been keen to point to the Mediterranean basin as more richly embodying cosmopolitanism than might be suggested by certain events witnessed during that period: phenomena such as the rise of geographically specific nationalisms, such as Egypt’s, belie the cultural, political, economic and intellectual inclusiveness that in fact attracted Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews to the region, and that housed the Karaaite Jewish community for centuries. […]

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