(Social) Democracy in the Blood? Civic and Ethnic Idioms of Nation and the Consolidation of Swedish Social Democratic Power, 1928–1932

This paper attempts to explain Swedish Social Democrats' consolidation of power between 1928 and 1932 through an examination of idioms of nation. Qualitative analysis of articles and editorials from a Social Democratic and a liberal newspaper is carried out. The analysis focuses on how civic, ethnic and, a mixed civic‐ethnic idiom of nation were deployed in order to expand the Social Democrats' electoral base. The Social Democrats could combine egalitarianism/democracy with ethnic nationalism because ethnic bases for the nation were more inclusive than other, especially class, bases available to them. Two challenges for the literature on nationalism and the welfare state are raised: (1) the civic‐ethnic distinction must be rethought to accommodate the Swedish case, wherein ethnic nationalism was used for “civic” ends; and (2) the focus on the Social Democrats as promoting working class interests may be misplaced given the party's mobilization on the basis of nation.     

Birth,blood and belonging: identity claims in post‐devolution Scotland1

Scotland is often seen as a good example of a civic/territorial rather than an ethnic/cultural form of nationalism. From the 1970s the campaign for a Scottish parliament stressed an inclusive, residence based, civic sense of being Scottish, and more recently, Scotland's political elites have seen the new parliament as an endorsement of territorial belonging. How valid are these assumptions? To what extent is political ideology at odds with people's sense of their national identity? Using a qualitative approach, we explore different identity claims currently being made in post‐devolution Scotland – those based on blood, birth and belonging. We argue that these are better conceptual tools for the purpose of unravelling the complexities of identity politics in this context than the contrast between civic and ethnic. Our data come from the Scottish part of a study in England and Scotland, and focus on three sets of respondents: English migrants to Scotland making blood or birth claims to Englishness and/or Britishness; English migrants making belonging claims to Scottishness; and Scottish nationals making claims for themselves as well as assessing migrants’ claims. We also explore the significance of constitutional change in the context of respondents’ identity negotiations, and examine whether it has affected their understandings of Scottishness.     

Despite the crisis: The resilience of intercultural nationalism in Catalonia

Interculturalism provides the core framework for immigration‐related policies in Catalonia, while remaining deeply intertwined with Catalan nationalism. We first identify ‘intercultural nationalism’ as the core doctrine through which Catalan nationalist discourse has been articulated in relation to immigration. We trace interculturalism's origins to nationalism in Quebec and argue that, in Catalonia also, regional immigration policies have been constructed in opposition to those of the central state, while attempting to involve immigrants closely in subnational belonging and social cohesion. Second, we investigate whether interculturalism is durable during economic and political crises, arguing that intercultural policies did not change following the economic recession of the 2010s. This harmonises with broader interpretations that de‐emphasise the role of economic factors in ethnic conflicts. In conclusion we note how the continuing resilience of interculturalism in Catalan policies on immigration contrasts sharply with the rise of xenophobia elsewhere.     

Personal values and the acceptance of immigrants: why national identification matters / Los valores personales y la aceptación de inmigrantes: ¿Por qué es importante la identificación nacional?

: The study focused on the relations between Italian nationals’ personal values and their expectations towards the way ethnic minorities should acculturate. The main aim was to understand whether nationals’ personal values predict their acculturation preferences towards immigrants, both directly and through national identity. Four hundred and forty-six Italian high school students (M_age = 19.1; SD = 0.57; females = 54.4%) completed a self-administered questionnaire assessing personal values, nationalism, patriotism, acculturation preferences and demographics. An SEM model with bootstrapping estimations was tested. As expected, the results highlighted that personal values predict acculturation preferences towards immigrants in two ways — directly and also through an indirect effect on nationalism — supporting the claim that ingroup and outgroup definitions are closely intertwined. The results also highlighted the need to differentiate between nationalism and patriotism, with the latter having no influence on Italian nationals’ readiness to accept immigrants. Overall, the research demonstrates the relevance of personal values in studying intergroup relations and draws attention to the potential value of communication policies centred on self-transcendence values to improve interethnic relations.     

Nationalism in America: The case of the Populist movement

As a marker of national identity, the term American is culturally meaningful but also difficult and contradictory. In the first part of this article, we develop the claim that analyzing nationalism as discourse provides a meaningful lens for the study of this boundary-making process. In particular, the distinctions between civic/ethnic and inclusive/exclusive forms of nationalism have proved nettlesome for a consideration of American nationalism. In the second half of the article, we use data from the Southern Populist movement of the late nineteenth century to provide both relational and cultural analyses of the use of the term American. Although its use was primarily civic, it had important but complex racial implications.     

The New Malaysian Nationalism: Infirm Beginnings,Crashing Finale

Malaysia waged no heroic war of liberation against its colonial overlord. On the contrary, its indigenous Malay aristocrats, having been favoured as intermediaries under indirect rule, mobilised mass followings against independence, until finally their statuses were renewed. Nor did Malaysia afterward break boldly with the formal democracy and liberal economy in which it had been 'tutored', espousing new socialist defiance and autarkic development. Indeed, even the notion of 'Asian democracy' that Malaysia would one day endorse retained the legitimation of the democratic idiom, while fluctuating policies of import substitution, affirmative action, and evident cronyism were softened by pledges of economic orthodoxy and 'openness'. In cultural terms, Malaysia's ideologues had little access to complex local heritage, inscribed in high literatures, agrarian empires, and the tracelines of grand ruins. Nationalist myth-making had instead to depend on some dispersed royal lineages emanating from dank stockades and river mouths, an aphoristic lore recorded in the Malay Annals, the faint commercial din of the Melaka Sultanate, and an Islam conveyed by merchants and wayfarers from the Indian subcontinent, then palely refracted through local animism, Hinduism, sorcery, and curing. What is more, even to the limited extent that nationalism was generated in Malaysia, it was asserted less on the world stage than between rival ethnic communities. In brief, through the free labour migration policies of British colonial rule, the 'indigenous' Malays came to share their territory with the 'Overseas' Chinese, thereby producing a prototypical 'divided' or 'plural' society. The country was articulated also by smaller collectivities - partly authentic, always constructed - that were variously labelled 'Indian', 'Iban', 'Eurasian', 'Kadazan-Dusun', 'orang asli', and the like. During the process of decolonisation and the first decade of independence, these ethnic communities were managed along consociational lines. Toward the end of the 1960s, however, they erupted in sectarian violence. But either way, whether ethnic sentiments were modulated or uncorked, they diminished Malaysia's prospects for nationalism, at least of a kind that could bind the country together in addressing the rest of the world. Hence, in surveying the record in Southeast Asia, Nicholas Tarling adjudges that while nationalism helped shape the emergence of most of the region's new countries, its impact in Malaysia remained quite 'equivocal'. In short, uniquely in the region, Malaysia possessed little congenial soil in which nationalism might take root. Instead, nationalism was weakened by important continuities between indigenous élites and the colonial power, as well as sharp divisions between indigenous and migrant communities. And yet, atop this infirmity, Malaysia would suddenly bristle during the 1980s to 1990s with great nationalist vigour. At first, this took the form of aspirations to industrialise, made manifest in arousing slogans like 'Look East'. Later, as economic growth gathered pace, Malaysia gained new pride, encouraging still higher aspirations of full socio-economic development, enshrined in a declaration of 'Vision 2020'. And finally, though growth rates slowed toward the end of the decade, the new nationalism altered in tone, but did not fade. Instead, it reverberated in deep nationalist resentments, the prime minister railing against the architecture of international finance while invoking new refrains of Malaysia boleh ('Malaysia will overcome'). One notes also that globalisation posed no impediment to these latest nationalist expressions, its putative homogenising processes instead enabling Malaysia to highlight the distinctiveness of its policy responses. The paper begins with a discussion on nationalism, enumerating briefly some debates over its origins and character. Next, it sketches the ethnic forms of nationalism that emerged in Malaysia, enervating any wider loyalty to state institutions and symbols that could be asserted internationally. This paper's main task, however, is to analyse the rise of a broader nationalism over the past decade or so, made possible by the partial moderation of prior ethnic rivalries.     

Synthesising Gellner,Smith, and Barth: building a preliminary analytical framework for exploring the relationships between ethnic groups,nations, and nationalism

This review article synthesises Gellner's, Smith's, and Barth's ideas about ethnic groups and nations. It redefines the concepts of the ethnic group, nation, and nationalism. An ethnic group can be defined as a group of people who are self-differentiated from other groups. A nation can be defined as an ethnic group or groups politically mobilised by elite-made nationalism. Furthermore, nationalism can be defined as an ideology which demands that an ethnic group or groups should have their own state. In effect, a conceptual framework is formulated, although how useful the framework can be is subject to further empirical research.     

Positivism and Nationalism in 19th Century France and Mexico

Abstract This article explores the relationship between positivism and nationalism in 19^th century France and Mexico, arguing that positivism cannot be understood without considering it in close relation to the rise of collectivistic and civic nationalism in each society. To elite intellectuals in both France and Mexico, positivism seemed to resolve the apparent chaos generated by the political-conceptual revolution that nationalism had given rise to, and to provide the background to an historical narrative that served nationalist aims, by seeming to assure the ultimate triumph of the nation.     

‘English… it's part of our blood’: Ideologies of language and nation in United States Congressional discourse

Utilizing a combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, the article describes ideologies of United States (U.S.) national identity based in civic and ethnic nationalisms. These ideologies circulated during debates and hearings in the U.S. Congress concerning the 2006 reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act requiring that multilingual voting materials be made available for language minorities in certain jurisdictions. The article argues that although those legislators supporting the use of multilingual voting materials construct an ideology of civic nationalism that promotes inclusion of language minorities, they are still greatly influenced by the dominant language ideology. Those opposing multilingual voting materials construct a U.S. national identity that places stringent requirements on newcomers to assimilate and learn English. These legislators simultaneously attempt to avoid the suspicion of ethnic nationalist ideologies by arguing that English is a neutral entity, detaching it from its dominant linguistic community. The findings suggest that despite Congressional support for multilingual voting materials, the language ideologies present in Congress are not necessarily favorable to the rights of language minorities. These findings have language policy implications in that they suggest opposition to a right to language for linguistic minorities in the U.S.     

Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Religion,Politics, and Traditionalist Gender Ideology

Recent research shows that Americans who adhere to Christian nationalism—an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life—tend to hold authoritarian and exclusionary attitudes, particularly regarding ethno‐racial minorities and nontraditional family forms. Such findings suggest a fundamental connection between Christian nationalism and rigid symbolic boundaries, which would likely extend to Americans’ understanding of gender roles. Drawing on notions connecting religious nationalism with defenses of patriarchal norms and utilizing a recent national, random sample of American adults, the current study examines the link between contemporary Christian nationalism and traditionalist gender ideologies. Our analyses reveal that Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor of holding a more traditionalist gender ideology, even after taking into account a host of political and religious characteristics. Moreover, the relationship between Christian nationalism and gender traditionalism holds across religious traditions, including more gender‐egalitarian groups like Mainline Protestants and even the unaffiliated. We conclude by highlighting the implications of these findings for understanding contemporary populist support for Donald Trump, which previous studies have shown is undergirded by both Christian nationalism and sexism.     

Shaimiev's 'Khanate' on the Volga and its Russian Subjects

This paper examines some aspects of post-Soviet transition in Tatarstan, one of 21 ethnic autonomous republics of the Russian Federation, the population of which is almost equally divided between Tatars, Russia's largest ethnic and religious minority, and Russians. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Tatarstan together with Chechnya championed a fundamental reform of the rigid 'centre—periphery' relations with Russia. The Tatarstan leader Mintimir Shaimiev has exploited the post-Soviet weakening of the federal centre, as well as the incompetence of successive Yeltsin governments in national and regional policies, to secure a special relationship between Kazan and Moscow. In 1994, Tatarstan's special status was legitimised by a power-sharing Treaty which, both within post-Communist Russia and internationally, has been termed the 'Tatarstan model'. The Treaty secured for the Tatarstan leadership considerable independence from the Kremlin and allowed Kazan to establish direct economic and political links with the outside world. Domestically, the 'Tatarstan model' has been presented as a more viable and less painful form of transition to a post-Communist society. In the inter-ethnic sphere also, it has claimed to represent a model of transformation into a modern, democratic, civic nation of Tatarstanis. The widely accepted image of Tatarstan as a society successfully negotiating the transition from Communism conceals, however, far less attractive political, economic and cultural realities. This analysis, which is based on 2 years of field research, offers evidence that President Shaimiev has used Tatarstan's unique status to create an authoritarian regime, to manipulate and neutralise the forces of Tatar radical nationalism and to discriminate at all levels against the Russians of Tatarstan.     

Self,other and world: Discourses of nationalism and cosmopolitanism 1

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism has been understood as a postnational identity. This conflates the distinction between nation and nationalism. Most accounts of cosmopolitanism emphasise its legal form (e.g. Habermas’ constitutional patriotism) or its cultural dimension (transnational communities) or its political (e.g. democratic cosmopolitanism). This paper argues for a civic dimension to cosmopolitanism, conceived of in terms of discourses of self, other and world. This is tied to a notion of nations without nationalism.     

Economics: A Teaching Aid to History

Numerous studies have highlighted a clear civic achievement gap between students from different ethnic and economic backgrounds in countries such as Singapore and the United States. Concurrently, researchers from both countries have noted that access to government and civics classes and curricula differs considerably across and within schools and school districts. Drawing on research studies conducted in both countries, this article compares the provision of citizenship education in two very different education systems: the United States and Singapore. The article also analyzes some of the explicit and implicit arguments that have been used in support of these policies and examines the potential implications of these policies for the education of young citizens. In both countries, studies strongly indicate that the formal and de facto differentiated access to citizenship education as a result of sorting students into different education tracks implicates students’ ability to be full and equal citizens.     

Civic,ethnic, hybrid and atomised identities in Central and Eastern Europe

While the topic of identity of ethnic minorities abounds in theoretical insights, most discussion is still clustered around the civic–ethnic divide while assuming conclusions with limited empirical evidence. By contrast, this article uses a four-category typology of identity that considers both in-group and out-group attachments to address hypotheses about competing identities and about factors influencing minorities to adopt one identity type over others. Based on unique data evidence of 12 ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, this study concludes that the ‘hybrid’ identity, rather than the literature-assumed ‘ethnic’ identity, tops the identification preference of minorities, although there are differences in levels and patterns when controlling for various covariates. The choice of identity depends on the socialisation process, the economic status, the perceived discrimination and intergroup tensions, reflecting variations in the system of values common to a region with complex ethnic dynamics.     

Anti-War Initiatives and the Un-Making of Civic Identities in the Former Yugoslav Republics

This paper describes the emergence of anti-war initiatives in the former Yugoslavia against the background of the official nationalism of Communist elites and their post-1990 successors. The author argues that anti-war activism in the disintegrating state was a mobilization of the most articulate segment of a widespread, all-Yugoslav, urban, cosmopolitan and genuinely non-ethnonationalistic cultural identity. One of the reasons behind its easy suppression by the official rhetoric of ethnic homogeneity is its purely cultural stance and lack of experience in alternative forms of political organization. Dominant approaches to ethno-nationalism in former Yugoslavia are criticised for essentializing ethnic identities, and contrasted with some interpretive approaches that analyze the structural preconditions of ethno-nationalism as top-to-bottom projects of the ex-Communist middle-to-high ranking functionaries in search of legitimacy and forced to create a 'democratic electorate.'     

Populist things. A study on the materiality of political ideas

Is there such thing as a populist thing? This article tries to answer this question by comparing two iconic populist objects: the Make America Great Again (MAGA) cap and the yellow vest. Despite their centrality to populist politics, there is remarkably little systematic examination of these objects' populist affordances, let alone a comparative study. We propose to address this lacuna by performing a pragmatic analysis of each object's role in the populist politics of the United States and France, respectively. Our comparison uncovers two findings, which, in turn, help us answer our research question. First, our study of the MAGA cap reveals how nationalism and populism can be combined into a powerful political message. Second, the yellow vest exemplifies how populism functions on its own that is, as a way of doing politics that is centred on feelings of resentment. Either in conjunction with other political phenomena (e.g., nationalism) or by itself, populism emerges from our analysis as a logic of action that involves both linguistic claims and physical objects. Things, in this reading, are surprisingly central to how populism operates.     

Pathways to Adolescent Political Participation across Race and Ethnicity

This study assesses impacts of racial/ethnic identification on adolescent civic development to inform interventions to counter civic disconnect on the part of ethnic minority youths. Analyses of 4 years of national Monitoring the Future data find that Black and Latino adolescents hold negative political attitudes and low rates of political behavior. Structural equation models find dissimilarities in paths between political attitudes and behaviors for White, Black, Latino, and Asian adolescents. Findings suggest that political attitudes may operate as precursors to political behavior in different ways across races/ethnicities. Implications for civic interventions and future minority youth civic development research are discussed.     

Masculinity and Fahrenheit 9/11

This paper aims to uncover Turkish Cypriot women's war experiences and integrate that knowledge into the public discourse. We argue that the omission of women's war experiences thus far has served to sustain the mutually reinforcing alliance between patriarchy and nationalism, which we call patriarchal nationalism. Building on feminist standpoint theory, deconstruction of the official and hegemonic ‘his'tory of war poses challenges to the stronghold of patriarchy and ethnic nationalism in society by engaging women in the re-construction of history. Narratives of twenty women from different regions and backgrounds revealed common experiences that have been systematically silenced, memories that have been socially forgotten but could not be erased despite the dominant discourse that has denied their existence for decades. These experiences defy images of the ethno-national Glorious Self, protected by heroic and righteous men, and the Villainous Other. They also identify types of insecurity and victimization that have been excluded from traditional, gendered definitions of security. As these narratives contest fundamental tenets of patriarchy and nationalism, their contributions to the reconstruction of ‘reality’ and history carry prospects for the transformation of both gender and ethnic relations.     

Young people as global citizens: negotiation of youth civic participation in adult-managed online spaces

With the proliferation of new media technologies, online spaces for civic engagement are being used as new sites by the young people for enacting global citizenship. Some of these online civic spaces are managed by parent organizations and guide the participants towards accomplishing goals that align with the institutional policies. We use Stuart Hall’s theoretical framework to ground the two methods we used for empirical research- textual analysis of the selected online spaces and in-depth interviews with young bloggers. Our analysis shows how negotiated reading of the encoded messages on the online platforms for youth civic engagement marks a political moment of signification in which there lies a possibility of challenging the dominance of the adult centered notions of civic engagement. Shelat’s online civic culture framework [2014. “Citizens, Global Civic Engagement on Online Platforms: Women as Transcultural Citizens.” Dissertation] helped us examine how these managed platforms encode global citizenship with pre-designed participatory practices that reinforce the hegemonic definition of youth political participation. Interviews of young bloggers on two online global spaces foreground the process of negotiation with the dominant definitions and the use of decoding strategies to create scope for subjective, more local definitions, as well as practices of civic engagement and global citizenship. Though literature suggests that adult-management of online youth spaces perpetuate a gap between the adult-centric notions of participation and the youth oriented ideas of civic engagement, our study reveals that the young participants find ways of articulating their ideas and enter these spaces with plans on how to fulfill their civic goals.     

Nationalism and democracy in post‐communist Central Asia

The paper evaluates misconceptions of the so‐called transitologists in terms of the relationship between nationalism and democracy in the post‐Soviet Central Asian context. The analysis looks at only four of the five Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The paper puts forward two main arguments. First, contrary to the argument by some political scientists that nationalism is compatible with, and indeed is the same as, democracy, the author argues that there is a significant degree of trade‐off between nationalism and democracy. Second, contrary to the transitologists' assumptions that an incipient trend would enforce a regime change from communism to liberal democracy in all post‐communist cases, the author argues that it is indeed nationalism, not liberal democracy, that is the real successor to communism at least in Central Asian countries. The paper provides evidence indicating the pervasiveness of ethnic nationalism and the deficiencies of liberal democracy in post‐Soviet Central Asia.