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