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: Ident
ity, Federalism and Democracy
(Berlin: Peter Lang, forthcoming)
• http://www.sneps.net/NNE/n&e.htm