Identity after Kosovo's independence: narratives from within the Kosovar Albanian diaspora

The nature of national identity after the establishment of Kosovo as an independent state was explored within a small group of Kosovar Albanians living in the UK. Although Kosovan identity was expressed at times in hybrid form, e.g. British Kosovan, identity at a deeper structural level was founded upon historical origins and culture inexorably linked to Albania and people of Illyrian descent and their territories. This was particularly the case in the discursive context of perceived threats to identity. Despite significant political developments providing the psychological space for an independent national identity, within this small group at least, identity was still strongly affiliated to, or assimilated within, an Albanian identity.     

Sharks and Shylocks: Englishness and otherness in popular discourse on ‘the City’ 1870–1914

Despite its hegemony as a financial centre, the City of London occupied a relatively minor place in the discourse of British imperialism. Periodic collapses and scandals made the City an inscrutable source of anxiety, engendering a need to distance it from the mainstream of national life. This distancing centred on doubts about the City’s national identity, stemming from its increasingly cosmopolitan interests and its contingent of prominent Jews, who were conventionally understood to have no nationality. Scrutiny of discourse on the City leads to a richer understanding of the role of ‘Semitic discourse’ in the construction of British national identity.     

Fuzzy frontiers of identity: The British case

Abstract

The author examines the formation of British identity, looking at the interaction of ‘the British’ with the Celtic fringe, the Dominions, the Commonwealth, Anglophone America, Europe and peoples described in immigration law as ‘aliens’. He argues that the core identity is constructed in the course of interactions (sometimes hostile) with these externalized identities. The frontiers between identities are often ‘fuzzy’, allowing a degree of penetration by outsiders. The concept of ‘fuzziness’ is elaborated. The shape and edges of British identity are shown to be historically changing, often vague and to a degree, malleable. It is suggested that the move away from the Dominions and Commonwealth to Europe has contributed to a crisis of national identity.     

美国瑶族的国家认同与文化认同

本文通过叙述美国瑶族的国家认同与文化认同过程,分析了美国瑶族国家认同与文化认同的特点。认为与一般的美国人及其他民族的认同发展历程不同,美国瑶族的认同发展历程没有遵循文化认同——民族认同——国家认同的发展规律,而是从国家认同到文化认同。     

Constructions of identity,belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state

This article investigates the conflict between a shared national identity and immigration, posed by liberal, instrumental nationalists. They worry that immigration will undermine a shared national identity that is needed to generate trust and solidarity within the democratic welfare state. The article consists of a qualitative study of Swedish and British respondents. The main conclusion is that people experience and interpret their shared identity, ideas of belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state differently, with different consequences for the proposed conflict. When identity and belonging was tied to contributions or to institutions, rather than a nation, the conflict between a shared identity and immigration was cushioned.     

Homicide and ‘Englishness’: Criminal Justice and National Identity in Victorian England

One venue for the formation of national identity that has received comparatively little attention in recent years, is that of the courtroom. In particular, the treatment of serious crimes in Victorian England involved a good deal of reference to notions of Englishness. In the course of their routine work, Victorian criminal courts promulgated particular and generally coherent views as to how ‘an Englishman’, as opposed to a foreigner, was expected to behave. This article examines how the judicial treatment of three types of nineteenth‐century violence – the duel, knife‐fighting and the killing of an adulterous spouse or his or her lover – contributed to reshaping the contours of male English national identity.     

The American melting pot: A national myth in public and popular discourse

This article traces the development of the “melting pot” narrative in the United States. Despite being the subject of significant scholarly critique, this narrative continues to be a central myth and symbol of American national identity. Congressional debates show that it has been useful for legitimating immigration policy, while popular discourse frequently references melting pot symbolism. The melting pot narrative resonates with the public because it simultaneously embraces the American immigration experience and national unity. The article also highlights how this myth is constructed almost entirely around culture, overlooking larger structural disparities that exist between racial groups.     

Cultivating an Australian Sentiment: John Christian Watson's Narrative of White Nationalism

Contemporary observers and historians have interpreted Australia's first Labor Prime Minister, John Christian Watson, as an ideal leader for Labor's early participation in nation-building following the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Little attention has been paid to the values Watson brought to Labor's participation in nation-building. Race, defence and the ‘cultivation of an Australian sentiment’ formed the recurring themes of Watson's national narrative. Compelled by a need to fix an identity from the peripheral territories of empire as a British subject and the leader of white Australians in a nation, as he claimed, that ‘we have made our own’, Watson's narrative provides insights into the anxieties of racialised white identity in the federation period—an identity tested by conflicting class and national loyalties.     

Looking forward into the past: Partido Nacionalista Vasco and the immigrant question in the Basque Country

ABSTRACT

This article examines the discursive and political response to immigrant-generated diversity by Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) in the Basque Country of Spain. A much-ballyhooed fact about PNV is that its founder, Sabino Arana, articulated a racist nationalist doctrine in the late nineteenth century. Alarm bells were raised in the early 2000s when the Basque Country became a destination for foreign immigrants arriving in Spain from Latin America and North Africa: do foreign immigrants pose a threat to Basque national identity? The PNV's answer to this question has been a clear ‘no’. Rather than distance itself from its past, however, party elites legitimate the inclusive and compassionate attitude towards foreign immigrants through selective discovery of the Basque national narrative. While sceptics of ideational variables are quick to suggest that nationalist elites manipulate the past to serve current purposes, this article suggests that such an interpretation does not do justice to the subtle ways in which symbols, myths, and images of the past have shaped the worldviews of PNV elites in the realm of immigration.     

Racial Identity–Related Differential Attributions of Inadequate Responses to Hurricane Katrina: A Social Identity Perspective

This study examines the attribution of responsibility for the problematic response to Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005. Based on social identity theory, the study compared the attribution with racism and non-racism factors (situational vs. dispositional attributions) between African American and European American students (n = 505). As hypothesized, African American identity was related to greater racism attribution, even after controlling for demographics, faith factors, and cognitive-emotional reactions to the hurricanes. European American identity was associated with more executive-responsibility attributions, but the effect vanished after adjusting other factors. The study underscores the importance of acknowledging group identity rather than an overarching American identity in exploring the race effect after a national collective trauma. The consequential implications for disaster planning, future research investigation, and social service delivery are discussed.     

Indigenous identity construction: enacted upon us,or within us

ABSTRACT

This commentary essay questions, theorizes, explores and grapples with the phenomenon of the creation of racial, social and cultural identity: in childhood as Native American identity is negotiated from others; and in adulthood as Native identity is constructed from within. ‘Indigenous Identity Construction: Enacted upon Us, or Within Us?’ is a commentary piece focused around Native American identity and how it is formed both through childhood and into adulthood. I analyze and interpret my experiences and understanding of my identity formation as an indigenous person- which usually is left out of the socio-political notions of modernity. Conceptualizations from ‘othering’ racial identities are discussed along with indigenous ontologies constructed within land and water. Through metaphorically revisiting past racializing incidents this piece continues working through the idea of othering and induction into whiteness in childhood, but also focuses on how indigenous identities might be constructed and sustained in adulthood. Efforts to model the indigenous assertion of self-determination and decolonizing the mind was used to re-present thoughts on the construction of Native American identity     

The Black,continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada

How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canada against notions of Canadian national identity, using the dialectical principles of negation and sublation. As the number of Black Africans continues to grow, it is important to understand the interplay between the social construction of ‘blackness’ and the national identity formation of Canada.     

'The Justice of Queen Victoria': Boer Oppression,and the Emergence of a National Identity in Lesotho

The growth of a national identity in Lesotho after 1910 was a direct response to the threat of incorporation into the Union of South Africa. The Basotho feared being governed by what they considered to be an unjust and hostile South Africa. The Basotho appealed to the justice of the British government - for them to continue to honour the protection that they had extended to the nineteenth-century Basotho chief, Moshoeshoe. The protection which Moshoeshoe had secured entrenched his position as the centrepiece of the Basotho's emergent national identity in the twentieth century.     

Education and national identity in a comparative context

A missing link in the voluminous chain of prior studies on Canadian versus American identity is a comparative analysis of the impact of social studies – especially civics – education on the construction of national identity in these two North American nation-states. This article analyzes curricular documents and secondary-level school textbooks to learn more about how social studies education contributes to constructing a sense of ‘being a Canadian’ versus ‘being an American’ north and south of the 49th parallel.     

论当前我国边疆治理中的民族认同与国家认同整合

我国是一个典型的多民族国家,这种国家的多民族在边疆表现得尤为突出,使得边疆地区的民族认同与国家认同也因此变得十分复杂。伴随着当前我国边疆地区现代化进程的加剧,边疆民族认同与国家认同的矛盾与冲突在一定程度上凸显出来,因此两者之间的整合也变得越来越迫切。在现实的认同整合过程中,必须调整我国当前的民族政策取向、转变边疆治理的思路、切实保障少数民族的正当权益,并通过国族建设实现边疆民族认同与国家认同的和谐共存。     

Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Political Character in Germany,Russia, and Quebec

National identity construction is a fundamentally rhetorical phenomenon maintained and transformed through public discourse. Through the analysis of dramatically rejected state speeches related to national identity and public responses to them, critics can compare competing articulations of national identity against the chronological historical record to identify various instances of strategic memory. By isolating dominant strategies of remembrance, the political character of emergent national identities can be outlined. In this essay, I explicate a critical rhetorical approach to controversial speech called limit work, providing examples of the public negotiation of national identity in 1988 West Germany, 1993 Russia, and 1995 Quebec that illustrate its utility.     

The Gent-rification of English masculinities: class,race and nation in contemporary consumption

The figure of the English gentleman is regaining traction in British society. This retrograde celebration of a type of masculinity articulating various intersections in class, racial and national identity provides not just a reliable identity-complex for contemporary British males but also imaginative solutions to the current cultural predicaments – notably, how to be English/British in the era of globalisation. This article will unpack this reformation of the gentleman and its paradoxical appearance and position at present through two consumer objects: clothing and cars. By first conceptually outlining the national, class and racialised background of the ‘gentleman’ for the British cultural imagination, the article will proceed to analyse Jack Wills' clothing aesthetic and the recent Jaguar F-Type coupe, ‘Good to be Bad’, adverts. The article draws upon Lévi-Strauss and Jameson to conceptualise this paradoxical, mythical resurgence of gentry/gentlemanliness. By focusing on how two artefacts utilise an Americanised mythical narrative of Britishness, I claim the contemporary landscape sees the oxymoronic return of an archaic character-type refigured in a manner appropriate for an increasingly plural, multi-cultural global landscape.     

Post-imperial democracies and new projects of nationhood in Eurasia: transforming the nation through migration in Russia and Turkey

This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-building around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the migration patterns between the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Russia, and Turkey reinforce these new projects of nationhood, aimed at reshaping society and building a new collective identity. By focusing on the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, most studies of nationalism and nation-building overlook the decisive transformations nation-building projects have been going through, particularly in Eurasia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an observable and major change in the definition of the nation not just in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus where it is somewhat less surprising but also in Russia and even in Turkey which was not part of the Soviet Union. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia and Turkey embarked on different nation-building projects. This article argues that despite, or perhaps because of, the stark differences in the policies adopted by various states in post-Soviet Eurasia, the patterns of emigration and immigration reinforced the new nation-building projects underway in Russia and Turkey.     

Redrawing the Boundaries of Italianness: Televised Identities in the Age of Globalisation

Two irremovable axes of national identity, race and gender are still pivotal parameters in contemporary attempts to redefine the existing boundaries of Italianness. While cultural identity is not strictly limited to notions of gender and race, I argue for the centrality of these two concepts in the Italian context. Indeed, more than class or religion, television adopts the lens of race and gender to visually codify the essence of national identity and promote unambiguous images of Italianness. In this paper, I will first summarize recent trends of immigration to Italy, which have turned the country from a land of emigrants to one of immigrants. This directional shift has coincided with a (patent or veiled) need to rephrase the limits of identity and belongingness. The second section of this essay focuses on some specific television programs that question the relationship between race and Italian identity. Here, attention will shift towards the insistent focus on the issue of colour to connote diversity. Decoding these programs in light of postmodernist understandings of race and nationalism will better assess their role in the Italian mediascape. In September 1996, Italian public television broadcast the election of the first black Miss Italy in the country's history. Denny Mendez, the controversial beauty queen, was an 18-year-old of Dominican origins at the time of the election. Mendez was a naturalized Italian who had moved to Italy in the early 1990s when her mother married an Italian citizen. Besides the age requirement, Italian citizenship is the only necessary prerequisite for all the contenders. Clearly, the official rules of the national beauty pageant do not emphasize the need for a particular skin colour, facial features, or command of the Italian language. As proven in 1996, the vagueness of the terms of participation leaves ample ground for unexpected endings, particularly at the end of the twentieth century when Italy, like much of Western Europe, could no longer eschew the ubiquitous presence of ethnically different citizens.