The Rise of New Europe
Nationalism and
Cultural
Identities
Introduction
Europe as a region of relatively stable
though fragile nation states
Each characterized (to varying degrees) by
both centripetal and centrifugal forces
Centripetal: Nationalism (Sports, War, History)
Centrifugal: Devolution, Globalization, politics of
difference
For N. Johnson (citing Agnew) the complexities
and fragility of nation-states have become
more pronounced in Post-Cold War era
Question of the geographical ‘scale’ of
cultural identity
Max Weber, Sociologist
“. . . a nation is a community of
sentiment which would
adequately manifest itself in a
state of its own; hence, a
nation is a community which
normally tends to produce a
state of its own.” (quoted in
Johnson, 1998: 86)
Nations + States=Nation-states
European nation-states emerged with the rise
of industrial (economic) power and expansion
of global empires
Nations are a culturally similar groupings of people
States are political institutions for organizing nations
Nation-States are the products of a socio-political process
of ‘nation-building’
Nation-states are territorially based. Why?
Nation-state as a way of containing power
Economic: national currencies, taxation, infrastructure
Political: representation (hence need for National
Censuses)
Means of normalizing extent of institutions
Nation-states foster “imagined” community
Benedict Anderson (1983: 15)
“It is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellowmembers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the
minds of each lives the image of their communion. . . .
The nation is imagined as limited because even the
largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion human
beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which
lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous
with mankind. . . . It is imagined as sovereign because
the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment
and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the
divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.”
“Imagined” National Communities
Nationalism: ideology that links nation to
state
Homogeneity of language
Printing press: advent of popular literature
School textbooks
Standardization of time
Achieved through information: factual and
mythical
“invented traditions”
Suggest continuity with ancient (and significant) past
Become essence of national “culture”
“Imagined” National Communities
Imperial Encounters with the “Other”
Sense of community through encounter
with colonial subjects
Appropriation of “exotic” culture
Food
spices; crops: tea
Architecture
Fabrics
Nationalism as Xenophobia
Summary
Nationalism ideology of nationhood:
belonging to state (citizenship)
State nationalism challenged by
devolution and Supranationalism of
EU
Nations as imagined communities are
being reimagined