"Some of the main limitations of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism become apparent when social scientists try to make sense of the complex ways in which people (including nationalists) construct national identities. Do the frequent references to language in nationalist rhetoric invariably indicate ethnic nationalism in action? Does the prominent use of the State by political leaders signify a preference for civic as opposed to ethnic nationalism? And what about those national discourses that evoke a particular natural environment or landscape? The first part of the paper engages with these questions and proposes an alternative to the classical analytical framework.

The second part moves beyond the issue of identity construction and looks at the social contexts within which nationalist arguments were framed. Here I argue that the roots of much organic (rather than 'ethnic') nationalism have to be sought in the corporatist structures that have remained an important aspect of modern societies. Gellner's insistence that nationalism, while it borrowed its imagery and verbiage from Gemeinschaft, was based largely on the social reality of anonymous, atomized society, is problematic. Nationalism may well have received its main impetus from the forces commonly associated with Gesellschaft, but it had to do its work within contexts in which Gemeinschaft, both as a reality and a powerful ideal, was still very much alive. Existing corporations provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which European nationalism was experienced, imagined, and defined."

"Two factors dispose scholars to exaggerate the differences between so-called eastern and western or ethnic and civic nationalisms. The first is normative in character and relatively easy to correct once recognized: wishful thinking about the intrinsically benign character of 'our' form of nationalism in western liberal democracies. The second is explanatory in character and much harder to correct: reliance on the basic conceptual dichotomies of modern social theory, dichotomies that encourage us to divvy up the two main elements of national community, subjective affirmation and cultural inheritance, between opposing forms of association, such as tradition and modernity or Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. My paper takes aim at this second factor, arguing that we need to develop a new and more flexible understanding of community, free of the influence of these dichotomies, in order to make sense of the nation and its unexpected rise to prominence in modern political life."

Educating the Nation

Prof. Maya Khemlani David, & Mrs. Wendy Yee Mei Tien  (University of Malaya)

Malaysia is a multiethnic society with people of many religions and languages. Ethnic diversity and polarization among the young has made the creation of a sense of national identity not only important but also urgent. After independence, the government drew up a National Education Policy to inculcate and nurture national consciousness among the diverse ethnic groups by promoting a common curriculum and a common language across the different types of schools to foster national unity and national identity. Bahasa Malaysia, the national language is used as the medium of instruction in national schools while in national type primary schools; it is taught as a compulsory subject. Besides the promotion of the national language and educational policies, the promotion of national symbols are often perceived as being able to help develop a sense of nationalism and national identity among the many ethnic groups in the country. The Malaysian flag is often seen everywhere during the ‘Merdeka’ (independence) month to symbolize a sense of patriotism and nationalism. However, it is unclear if the use of the national language and the use of the national symbols (e.g. national flag) have impacted on the formation of nationhood among Malaysians. A research was conducted to compare the impact on two different groups of Malaysians (aged >45 and <30). The reasons for the focus on two different age groups will be explained. This paper will discuss the results and describe what nationalism and a sense of a national identity mean to these two groups of Malaysians.

 In South African history, the half-century that lay between the end of the Anglo-Boer War and the beginning of apartheid rule saw the birth and consolidation of a modern state based on racial exclusivity. Within the bilingual (Dutch/Afrikaans-English) all-white arena it is possible to distinguish between four nation-building projects: • the assimilationist imperialism of Alfred Milner; • the conciliationist nationalism of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts; • the bi-ethnic nationalism of Barry Hertzog; and • the ethnic exclusivist nationalism of D.F. Malan and the Afrikaner Broederbond. Of the three Afrikaner leaders, Hertzog and Malan were prominent activists for Afrikaans whereas Smuts was accused towards the end of his second premiership of never having done anything for the language. Yet contrary to traditional interpretations, the motivation behind Hertzog’s involvement in the so-called Afrikaans Language Movement of the early twentieth century was not identical to that of Malan. Hertzog was in principle opposed to exclusivism on the basis of language and his definition of the nation, however racial, was civic rather than ethnic. Nothing bears stronger testimony to this than his Education Acts which – like those of Smuts – supported the idea of dual-medium schools. Malan and the Broederbond, by contrast, propagated separate educational institutions for speakers of Afrikaans and after it came to power in 1948 the National Party made the use of the mother tongue as the sole medium of instruction in white schools compulsory. This paper argues that the vehemence with which the post-apartheid movement for Afrikaans opposes dual- or parallel-medium education suggests that the ethnic exclusivist Afrikaner nationalist project has prevailed.

History textbooks for the public schools construct and transmit an official version of a nation’s past. In the United States, in the absence of a national system of education, these books act as a sort of de facto national curriculum. Owing to the power they wield, both real and symbolic, they are highly contested terrain, with many pressure groups from both the right and left trying to influence their content. The teaching of history in the public schools was a primary locus of contention in the initial rounds of the ‘culture wars’ in the 1980s and 1990s, and it remains at the center of a great many debates to define national identity, debates which have been further intensified in the wake of September 11, 2001. This paper examines the evolution of this quasi-official image of national identity over the past 25 years through a study of American history textbooks selected for use in Texas (and sold nationwide) in 1982, 1997, and 2003. Analyses focus on the changes in national heroes depicted in the textbooks, the representation of discrimination and racial oppression in American society past and present, and the civic virtues promoted by the books through prose and through association with patriotic imagery. The author argues that the vision of the American nation presented by these textbooks reflects a move away not only from a traditional de facto (at times) genealogical/ethnic conception of the nation, but also from a purely civic conception of the nation.

Multination-States

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the virtues of the ‘multination state’. This concept has been used especially in relation to ‘sub-state nations’ in the West (Catalonia, Scotland, Quebec) but has also been proposed as a solution for divided societies in Eastern Europe. The advocates of multination states argue that traditional liberal theory has taken the concept of civic nation-state for granted and, thus, cannot cope with the demands for autonomy and recognition advanced by sub-state nations. If we agree that the world should avoid a (new) wave of secessions, then the multination state seems to be the only practicable solution.

The paper critically discusses multinationalist theses. It argues that the normative and empirical implications of the distinction between nation-states and multination states are flawed and unclear. By abandoning the liberal concept of civic nation-state, multinationalist theory runs the risk of implicitly (and often involuntarily) endorsing the ethnic conception of the nation. This risk might be less pronounced in the Western ‘sub-state nations’ like Quebec but it is acute in Eastern Europe.

The paper examines three major arguments advanced by the multinationalists: cultural neutrality (i.e. impossibility for a state to be culturally neutral), multiple identities, and the importance of recognising sub-state groups as ‘nations’. By focusing upon the case of Switzerland the paper demonstrates that on each of these issues the Swiss example of civic nation-state contradicts multinationalist theses. This, in turn, creates a tension in multinationalist theory, especially in relation to the ‘shared identity’ problem
 

From the Inside Out: Citizenship and Polyarchy in Multi-National States

 Since the fall of communism, democracy has come to be seen as the ‘only game in town:’ the only legitimate form of political system. Much of contemporary international politics revolves around the problems of promoting, establishing, and protecting democracy. Democracy is considered legitimate because it provides for individual rights and allows the people access to the resources of the state. If ‘we the people’ defines the limits of these entitlements, however, the next logical question is: who are ‘the people?’ Who is included in the group of individuals entitled to democratic rights? For scholars studying democracy and democratization, the assumption has long been that the establishment of democratic institutions requires a certain level of homogeneity—a shared identity and the social bonds this implies. Thus diversity, the existence of multiple collective identities, is a problem to be avoided or, at best, compensated for. In contemporary developed states, the problem of diversity is most often framed as a problem of immigration; the arrival of new groups threatens both the presumed homogeneity of established nations and their democracy. Such arguments take the boundaries of national political communities as fixed and stable. However, recent investigations into nationalism have shown that national identities are constructed and fluid over time. With this in mind, we need a new conception of democracy, which takes into account the constructed nature of ‘the people’ that democracy empowers. This paper attempts to provide such an account by advocating a new understanding of the relationship between nationalism, citizenship, and democracy.

"Confident" Majorities and Power Sharing in Multinational States

"In discussing accommodation in multinational states, many scholars place the burden of concession-making on the majority groups and their elites. Implicit in this literature is a normative assumption that the majority groups/nations, given their size and potential for political domination, must give minority groups/nations some means through which to protect their interests and ultimately group existence. Yet, this view of the situation is a construct not always shared by the members of the majority group itself.

I argue that the extent to which the majority group internalizes this view, as the precondition of acting on it, depends on two sets of factors. First, it depends on the majority sense of moral obligation towards the minority group, and second, on the extent to which members of the majority view the particular accommodation demand as feasible for their own group. The paper develops four possible options, with both of these factors either present or absent, and two combinations where one is present and the other is not.

The theoretical implications suggest the importance of majority group intersubjective understandings of the political dynamics in question, and thus a shift away from analytical overemphasis on minority claims. In terms of policy implications, the paper suggests that it is often as important to strengthen the majority group `confidence' as it is to fortify the political/economic/cultural defense capability of the minorities. Underlying this conclusion is the assumption that majority group dissatisfaction with the common state virtually guarantees instability and is usually the key factor contributing to violent political outcomes."

This paper examines the ethno-cultural and civic orientations of the constitutions of the nineteen post-communist states which, until 1989, had been part of the Soviet bloc, as either ‘satellites’ of the USSR or integral components of the USSR. Out of these, seven joined, in May 2004, the European Union. These were the East European states of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who refused to join the Commonwealth of Independent States, founded in 1991. By joining the EU, these seven states joined the West European world of national states – a world of deep historical consciousness, democratic institutions and free economy. At the same time, they rejected communist internationalist and class conceptions of human solidarity, identity and destiny, and Russian assimilationist ideology and cultural policies. The paper examines the extent to which the state symbols of the nineteen post-communist societies can be considered as evidence regarding the civic and ethno-cultural orientations of these societies. In so doing, it considers, state symbols in relation to a) the civic/ethnic content of the preambles of the post-communist constitutions which establish these symbols; and b) the civic/ethnic provisions of these constitutions. The paper draws on Hans Kohn’s typology of Western/civic and non-Western/ethnic paths to nation formation, as elaborated and qualified by Anthony D. Smith, Ernest Gellner, Rogers Brubaker and Taras Kuzio. It thus tries to establish the relative importance of civic as compared with ethnic principles in the formal making of post-communist nations.

This paper will attempt to answer the question of why some ceremonies are perceived as national and persist through time, while other fail to achieve that status. Why national ceremonies, almost as a rule, have to be annual?
It will be argued that while producers of national ceremonies ‘cannot control the ways in which images of the past are perceived’ (Savage 1994), national ceremonies are designed so as to appear, and would be perceived by the audience, as authentic. Based on Alexander’s theory of cultural pragmatics (Alexander, 2006), the paper will attempt to sketch a model of social interactions where the roles of the producers, actors and audience are examined within a specific cultural context and social structure. According to Jeffrey Alexander in a fused, successful performance of the ceremony, audiences identify with actors, and cultural scripts achieve verisimilitude through effective mise-en-scene. This perception of authenticity becomes the crucial point which determines whether the performance will be successful or not. Performances fail when this re-linking process is incomplete: the elements of performance remain apart, and social action seems inauthentic and artificial, failing to persuade. The level of persuasion will, on the other hand, be conditioned not by a so-called collective memory, but individual perception, formed within a specific social context, of what is authentic.
 

 This paper will explore the recent civic government initiatives attempting to renegotiate ‘Britishness’ and promote a civic notion of nationhood within the ceremonial sphere. The Home Office introduced a Citizens’ Day as a low key initiative in 2006 with the intention of breaking down barriers and offering an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to come together – in a first phase in ethnically divided parts of Britain. Mr. Brown went further suggesting that Remembrance Sunday would make a suitable Britain Day. The recent Citizenship Review (2008) concludes that a National Citizenship Day would provide a focus for the celebration of British values and promote community cohesion and social integration. Closely related to these suggestions we note that Citizenship Ceremonies have been in place since 2004 marking the new status for new citizens and that existing commemorations on Remembrance Sunday have been modified to recognise the contributions of the various faith communities in Britain. Similar civic community building projects to those mentioned above are in place in other in multi-ethnic states inside as well as outside Europe; thus it interesting to ask what these ceremonial initiatives are expected to accomplish? In Britain we need to explore these in relation to the steady decline of Britishness, the shy growth of Englishness and to highlight the challenges to a civic notion of Britishness both from within and from without. Ethnic conceptions of nationhood are associated with more authoritarian attitudes in defining membership of the nation. Thus, recent governmental initiatives must be understood in terms of reinforcing the civic conception of citizenship which is perceived as being more inclusive. The data used has been collected within the ESRC Identities Project exploring to what extent traditional identities are in decline. (Heath et al 2005; Heath & Elgenius 2007).

Ever since its formulation, the dichotomy ‘Eastern (ethnic) v. Western (civic) nationalism’ has been subject to constant academic debate. In a century of its existence, the ‘civic v. ethnic’ dichotomy in the studies of nationalism has often been revised, and each revision added a new flair to it. However, none of these modifications has significantly changed the initial postulates of Meinecke, Kohn and Plamenatz. The dichotomy juxtaposed the genealogical nature of nationalism in the East to the political one of nationalism in the West, by emphasizing the importance of race, blood, descent, language and religion for the former; and the accent on territory, participation, inclusion and constitutionalism in the latter. The explanation of differences between the two models has been grounded in the development of liberalism and individuality in the West, and the affiliation with the group in the East. This is indicative of the distinct historical routes two parts of the world have been experiencing in the past few centuries. Accordingly, this research compares various elements of the theory behind the dichotomy, in order to determine which of them could be useful for historical interpretation and modern policy-making. It seeks to assert that, although some segments of this analytical model can explain the phenomena related to nation formation in the modern world, the dichotomy itself needs to be carefully applied. Otherwise - its form will be misleading of its content.

"Hans Kohn's distinction of Eastern and Western nationalisms has been the one of a remarkable longevity. Our paper questions the reliability of this dichotomy when applied to nationalisms in the context of the present-day liberal democracy. Our case-studies of the Spanish Basques and Russians of Estonia suggest that at the level of the nation-state, nationalisms are perceived as ethnic because of inherent bind between one nation and `its' state. At the same time, when asserted in a context of multicultural Europe, minority nationalisms appear rather civic in their aspiration to redistribute democratic capital more liberally. In addressing these two cases of minority nationalism, we see several lines for comparison. First of all, we believe that respective minority groups have been consistent in providing Eastern-type nationalist response to the policies of cultural homogenisation by the state of their residence. At the same time, however, both groups have demonstrated their civic-mindedness, when appealing for EU interferences and support for their cause. Prior to discussing these similarities, we address the shortcomings of Kohn dichotomy to make clear that in both cases civic and ethnocultural nationalisms are aligned hand in hand. Our paper concludes with the review of Kohn's views, in arguing that while liberal democracy is a common-place aspiration today, we cannot categorise expressions of nationalisms in terms of dichotomy, but need to address the nationalist expressions in the context of negotiating its terms."

The paper critically examines the generation of discourses on Greek identity following the episodes that took place in northern Greece (Michaniona, 2000/2003), when an Albanian student was elected flag-carrier in a commemorative national parade. The symbolic exclusion of this student from the Greek ‘imagined community’ (Greek objections to his holding the flag during the parade) merits analysis as an expression of anti-European nationalist sentiment. Three versions of Greek identity emerged in this context: the first was grounded on civic understandings of identity, and adhered to contemporary principles of an ‘Europeanist’
project that promotes citizenship as a form of belonging. The second version mobilised a Greek civilisational model of belonging that echoed practices of assimilation as an antidote to national exclusion. This civilisational model promoted ideas of national-cultural ‘purity’ that have roots in Greek ethnogenesis. The third version of Greek identity suggested an understanding of the ‘nation’ in terms of racial affiliation, presenting thus nationhood as a ‘natural’ category and foreclosing inclusion of ‘others’ into the ‘nation’ under any conditions. The three versions crossed and interacted during the 2000/2003 episodes, but here are examined separately, because their historical resonance is not identical. The argument put forth is that these discourses of identity betray (a) the problematic economic and cultural position of Greece within Europe and (b) should read as a form of national resistance to processes of ‘Europeanization’ that threaten ‘imagined communities’ embedded in history.
 

"Hans Kohn the prolific writer has made significant contributions towards theorizing on the subject of Nationalism, not least the validity of the ethnic/civic distinction as two types of nationalism, even if this distinction is not always rational or geographically significant, or that the dichotomy can amount to a synchrony within multinational state scenarios. Indeed a monotony also commences with Kohn, whose thought actually equates nationalism with imperialism, a frame of mind that eventually sets out to invent an 'east/west' difference that has also proved to be not universal. By the nature of his busy itinerary in an unscientific terrain, the potential chore of checking against the trail he blazed means it was probably impossible to apprehend the obfuscation along the trail, until analysis would reveal over time. However, any tensions and contradictions within his works are perhaps part of the legacy which spurs on the debate. The paper goes on to discuss Kohn's two contributions towards the ten-point check list regarding the attributes of a modern nation: evidence of ideology or doctrine; and cohesion between the masses and the aristocracy."

The sharp distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nations has been exaggerated. Descriptions tend to be either too ‘thin’ in the case of civic nations or too ‘thick’ in the case of ethnic nations. This is because scholars often underestimate the role of culture in the formation of civic nations and conflate culture and ethnicity in the case of ethnic nations. In reality, most nation-states fall somewhere in between these two extremes. This is because civic nations tend to rest on a shared public culture, which may include some traits that are normally associated with ethnic nations, and many so-called ethnic nations actually rely on a linguistic qualification for naturalization, which encourages acculturation and thereby opens the community to members of other ethnic groups. We shall examine this role of culture in both types by examining the case studies of the United States (usually described as a civic nation) and Latvia (usually described as an ethnic nation). Rather than a strict dichotomy between civic and ethnic nations, we should conceive of different forms of nationhood existing along a continuous spectrum, with civic criteria at one end, cultural criteria in the middle, and ethnic criteria at the other end. As a result, we will be able to appreciate how civic and ethnic nations may differ from one another, but also what they have in common as nations.

Recent literature problematising the dichotomy between civic and ethnic forms of nationhood rejects the notion of a clear typology into which nations can be sorted. Rather, every nation represents a complex amalgam of voluntaristic and organic elements, mobilised toward varying functions. However, there have also been theories suggesting that ‘the nation’, as a social and ideological construct, represents a particular configuration of such elements. Some have argued, for example, that even the most ostensibly civic nations are built around a dominant ethnic core, a set of cultural values acceptance of which becomes a litmus test to membership. This paper explores the flipside of this phenomenon, for it is equally the case that even the most openly ethnic nations endeavour to represent themselves in conformity to the civic ideal-type. Three cases are examined where nations self-defined as pursuing self-determination for a named ethnic or racial group, enacting political/legal regimes privileging that group, nonetheless framed these actions according to voluntaristic, egalitarian principles associated with the civic ideal. Case #1 is the laws and legal decisions surrounding the construction of the ‘apartheid’ system in South Africa; case #2 is Israel’s ‘absentee law’ following the 1948 War of Independence; case #3 is the citizenship law enacted in Estonia following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. These discourses did not merely function to depict these actions in a manner defensible to outsiders. Rather, conformity to the ‘civic’ framework of nationhood was pivotal to the positive self-perception of even the most openly ‘ethnic’ of nations.

Ethnicity is often understood either as a synonym for an ethnic group or as a distinct cultural property of a particular collectivity. Such views start from the proposition that collective cultural difference is not only given but also an ultimate cause of a particular behaviour. Ethnic group solidarity is seen as almost automatic, normal and natural. However both of these perceptions are illusory: a) there is nothing automatic and self-evident in group formation and b) cultural similarity by itself is a feeble explanatory force. Max Weber was already well aware and recent scholarship made it apparent that ethnicity requires successful mobilization of social action to transform mere group membership into a conscious political association. Rather than being an outcome of the explanatory process, ethnicity is a phenomenon that requires explanation. However the dominant contemporary perspectives can not adequately address the processes through which cultural difference is politicised because they operate with the two largely incommensurable concepts of ethnicity: the temporal and the spatial. The main aim of this paper is to critically engage with these two dominant perspectives in order to articulate a more coherent sociological understanding of ethnicity. First I explore the vertical, macro historical view that focuses on the transformation and continuity of culture in time. Second I analyse the horizontal, mostly ahistorical, micro interactional view that centres on the majority and majority relations in a modern social order. Finally I outline an alternative position that attempts to transgress the existing macro/micro, time/space divide by identifying what is universal about ethnicity.

The paper will argue that Kohn provided too simplistic an argument when he put forward that civic identities are ‘good’ and ethnic identities are ‘bad’. Just because it is widely accepted that nation states are a product of Modernism does not mean that Modernist Liberal Democratic principles are causal factors in the differences between civic and ethnic nationalism. The case study of Cornwall will be used to illustrate this, using semi-structured interview data to show that the new discourses about Cornwall which redefine Cornish identity are entirely removed from ethnicity and therefore are ‘civic’ in Kohn’s terms. However for Kohn, ‘universality’ means that the identity could potentially be a part of a movement towards more ‘global’ forms of governance. Cornish civic identity is different to this idea, and is concerned with lifestyle and economics. Any Enlightenment principles retained are connected with a narcissistic interpretation of individual happiness alongside the freedom to engage in economic activities without restraint. In contrast, Cornish ‘ethnic’ identity contains Liberal Rationality, such as the desire for greater democracy and consent to government, individual dignity and humanitarianism, alongside an inclusive interpretation of Cornish national heritage. Further, rather than making claims to superiority, Cornish ethnic identity is more akin to cosmopolitan humanity than the egocentric civic version.

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of culture within the French civic nation-state. On the contrary to common descriptions of the political system in France as insensitive to cultural claims in its definition of citizenship, I will argue that the role of culture in the functioning of the Republic has been historically and theoretically under-estimated. This contribution will especially emphasize the existence and singularity of a specific form of nationalism through culture within the French Republican model. I will unfold my argument in two main steps. Firstly, I will discuss the accounts made on the French system by liberal and communitarian thinkers. I will argue that the main analysts of the French civic nation – even Republicans like Habermas – tend to underestimate the consideration concealed to cultural identities within the Republican model. Secondly, I will develop the idea defended by a generation of French Republicanism specialists, that culture has always been at the theoretical heart of the Republican ideal and conception of citizenship, and that the Republic used a form of cultural nationalism to sustain its unity. More than a tool of sedimentation of civic republican values, culture is the keystone of the Republican definition of national identity in France and allows its legitimacy. My contribution to this debate will insist specifically on showing the clear differences existing between this form of ‘cultural nationalism’ operated by the Republican State and the Volkgeist and Kulturgeist of the ethnic nation defined by Hans Kohn.

The aim of my paper is to rethink political nationalism in the context of Globalization. The thesis I want to defend is that nationalism can find today a new legitimizing principle in the notion of cultural diversity, in replacement of the self-determination principle. But in order for this new principle to achieve this purpose it however needs to be further developed; for it needs to be elevated as a coherent and autonomous world-view capable of competing with the most important world-view of our time, cosmopolitanism.

Despite the vast amount of theories aiming to explain the causes of ethnopolitically motivated violence, criticism has been raised that hitherto the social sciences lack any explanation of ethnic identities, relations between different identity groups and ethno-national conflict that will hold cross-culturally (Horowitz 1985; Fearon and Laitin 2000; Saideman et al. 2002). This need to find theoretical explanations on the outbreak of ethno-national conflict that bear cross-cultural validity serves as point of departure for the analysis at hand.
The theoretical framework investigates formal and non-formal institutions which influence the likelihood of ethno-national conflict, and is tested using cross-sectional and pooled time-series analysis. The statistical research is based on observations in 201 independent countries between 1955 and 2005. It will be argued that rather than treating formal and non-formal political institutions as separate entities, it is the specific interplay between them that has a major impact on the likelihood of ethnic conflict. The more political systems are based on premises of politics as a zero-sum game in its formal institutions – such as through a majoritarian electoral formula and a presidential system of government –, and the lower the degree of social integration in non-formal institutions – such as through dominant culture politics and a fragmented civil society –, the more likely is the outbreak of ethnic conflict. The appearance of politics as zero-sum game and low degrees of social integration are assumed to increase the divide between state and society which heightens the likelihood of ethnic conflict.
 

More countries become co-national in that they arrange their political institutions around distinct separations between ethnic groups. This means implementing political institutions to accommodate the political demands resulting from co-nationhood. There is no shortage of theories of how such co-nations should find ways of organizing their society politically. However, political frames no matter how democratic in design do not guarantee sustainability and thus democratic co-habitation. This paper aims to take Keating’s theory of plurinational democracy a step further by offering the beginning of a theory of co-nationship. This involves first a brief critical overview of existing approaches to nationhood which it is argued fail to represent the true nature of nationhood in complex societies as they fail to capture the non-essentialised groupness of nationhood. Instead it is argued that dynamics of co-habitation produce points of references that allow universal conventions to enter and thus may serve as contact points for co-nationhoods to meet ethically. Second, a framework is offered that generates research on openings of openness in terms of conventions of religion, language, history, territory, culture, rights and responsibility, education, economy, shared sovereignty, geo-politics and more and which would take co-nationhood beyond the essentializing point of closed nationhood and give prominence to a concept of democratic co-nationship. The specific purpose of this paper is thus to offer a research agenda that provides some conceptual tools of co-nationhood and supports an emerging theory of co-nationship.

Who decides who ‘deserves’ a state? Who sets the criteria for state-building? Aiming to answer these questions, the presentation is a comparative assessment of Western European attitudes regarding the nation state and the paradox that seems to prevail within the so-called old states vis-à-vis current state-formation. In recent times the world map has changed dramatically with the appearance of new states. However, the preparedness of western states to welcome the creation of these new countries has not been matched with the same will to accommodate long-lasting calls for self-determination from regions within their borders. The presentation focuses on this apparent paradox where the so-called old western states, although they were formed and largely remain ethnic-based, when their regions demand self-government, among the prevalent centralists’ counter-argument is that a new ethnic-based state would constitute a threat, be outdated and nonsustainable. Still, western states, including those facing protracted intrastate conflicts, embrace the formation of new ethnic-based states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Apparently, Western European states emphasize the need for a civic-based state to deplete self-government demands within some of their regions, while readily advocate and even facilitate the formation of new ethnic-based states as long as they are geographically afar and do not pose a threat. The presentation aims to attest this argument using the examples of France and Spain juxtaposing their attitudes towards their regions demanding self-government and the stance of these countries towards recent state-building.

This paper suggests that ‘Civic Nation Building’ as it has been conceptualized by scholarly works is only a theoretical case with no practical counterpart. To do so the paper engages with previous literature on nation building to discuss the very meaning of ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nation building using as case study the nation building project put forwards by Ukrainian elites since 1991.

Although open to criticism, Hans Kohn’s distinction between a Western (civic) and Eastern (ethnic) nationalism remains a powerful tool on the studies of nationalism, because it allows us to identify the main contents which are usually present on representations of national identity. In this paper we address the continued value of Hans Kohn’s typology. We mainly use data provided by Portuguese historical sources and data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2003 National Identity Study (NIS). In Portugal contemporary definitions of national identity both stress criteria of citizenship and ethnic ones. Although civic criteria were as important as the ethnic, seen in a comparative perspective the Portuguese definitions revealed a (‘western’) country where ethnic ties where particularly salient.
 

The work of Meinecke, Kohn, and Plamenatz developed the ethnic-civic divide by analysing a number of factors in the discourse of nationalist ideologues. Cultural nationalism was considered illiberal and backward and located in Eastern Europe, while its Western counterpart was portrayed as civic, liberal and capable of integrating different ethnies into the national ideal. An alternative to examining nationalist ideology is to focus on the changing nature of the discourse, myths and memories of the nationalist community. The nation-building process requires a series of unremitting revisions of patriotic myths and historical memories to keep the process of nation formation alive. While a number of myths and memories remain central to the nationalist discourse and rituals they vary according to changing historical circumstances. This paper examines the ethnic and civic national myths of the Basque, Catalan and Spanish nationalist movements and the means by which they have been commemorated in political rituals throughout the twentieth century. Rather than a unified bunch of core elements, different aspects are highlighted in accordance to the socio-political context (discovery of America, conversion of Arana, fall of Barcelona, etc). This fragmentation is significant as there is no unifying national myth and Spaniards cannot jointly remember any political event of their recent past. This is the case of the Civil War (1936-1939) and Spain's non-intervention in both World War I and II. Even the paradigmatic transition to democracy, which was peacefully negotiated by political elites, was problematic enough as not to become a national myth in the whole of Spain.

The recent debate on the new Charter of Autonomy for Catalonia has shown that the ‘Catalan specificity’ re-mains an unsolved question in contemporary Spain. However, some new elements have arisen in the debate. First, secessionism has become a relevant nationalist strategy in Catalonia. Second, the Charter proposal made by the Catalan parliament was dramatically cut in the Spanish congress. Third, Spanish nationalism seems exhausted to respond in accommodation terms to Catalan nationalism and is trying to redefine and modernize its national project. The paper examines to what extent contemporary Spanish nationalism is reinforcing the ‘ethnic’ elements of the nation as a response to Catalan demands for self-government. After 25 years of democracy where the references to national myths were burdened by the aggressive nationalism of Franco’s dictatorship, democratic Spanish nationalism is currently building a new consensus on the idea of Spain and its national identity project. In my view these processes show that, on the one hand, ethnic and civic elements are not exclusive of a particular kind of nationalism but they are present in any nationalist project, and, on the other hand, that they are an expression of the competitive character of nationalist projects.

"The main points of this paper are: 1. Kohn's studies of Nationalism were conducted entirely in the sphere of ideas. 2. Kohn's conception of two types of nationalism sprang from his personal experiences with national identity, moral principles and ideological convictions. 3. Once the idea of a 'good' and 'bad' nationalism became central in his thinking, he tended to subsume his historical interpretations to it, and subject movements, leaders, and nations to the test of whether they belonged to the enlightened or primitive, universal or particular, type of nationalism. 4. This obsession with the moral aspect of nationalism stifled Kohn's ability to break out of the conceptual framework with which his pioneering work on nationalism began. 5. One problematic result of Kohn's approach is the idealized version of a spiritual nationalism which he preached, cleansed of politics and roots, stateless, universalist, and in fact not a nationalism at all. 6. This form of a disembodied nationalism was modeled on his own early vision of spiritual Zionism. 7. The reaction against Kohn's moralizing raised theories which explained the rise of nationalism as an almost mechanical process. 8. When the tables turned again and debates about nationalism became partly ideological, Kohn's typology had a comeback in the more sophisticated terminology of ethnic and civic nationalism. 9. The new version of the old typology is equally flawed in its deterministic assignment of national characteristics, and in lacking concrete cases which reflect its ideal types."

Jewish nationalism is an interesting test case within the nationalist movement, offering a perspective on competing forms within one movement: Eastern and Western. During the 1880’s, the Eastern national Jewish movement Hibbat Zion was established. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the political Zionist movement arose, with a prominent Western emphasis. Hibbat Zion was founded by Eastern European Jews, among whom the ethnic, genealogical, and cultural element of the Jewish national movement dominated. By contrast, political Zionism, which arose in Basel in 1897, highlighted the civil and liberal element. Hans Kohn, drew the classic distinction between Eastern and Western nationalism. Based on Kohn’s definitions, I will evaluate the distinction between these two movements by characterizing the leadership within the two streams as well as the varying utopian visions of Western and Eastern Zionism. On either side of the dividing line stand Ahad Ha'am, the ‘Eastern’ Zionist leader, and Theodor Herzl, the ‘Western’ Zionist leader. To highlight the dichotomy between these two streams within the Jewish nationalist movement, I will analyze the conflict that broke out in 1902 surrounding the publication of Herzl’s utopian vision, Altneuland, which described the future Jewish state in a distinctly Western style. Ahad Ha’am, leader of Eastern cultural Zionism, attacked Herzl's Western approach and supported the Eastern Zionist vision. A close look at the controversy will enable me to characterize the vision held by both groups as well as to challenge Kohn’s dichotomy.

Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky was one of the most influential Zionist leaders and thinkers at the first half of the 20th century. Jabotinsky faced the issue of nationalism both in his theoretical writings, as well as in his political career. As a thinker, he combined romantic notions of nationalism with liberal ideas. His views saw the individual as the center of the social and moral order. The nation, however, is crucial in giving the individual the cultural context in which he can fulfill his potential. As a political leader Jabotinsky faced the issue of nationalism both in the Russian empire and in Palestine. He offered political solution to the status of the Jews, as a nation, in both cases. In Russia he advocated non territorial autonomy to all the nations in the Empire. In Palestine, he is one of the first leaders to acknowledge the relations between Jews and Arabs as the main problem of the Zionist enterprise. He is considered a ‘hard liner’, because of his refusal to permit any territorial compromise. However, his draft for a future constitution highlights the civic and group rights of both Arabs and Jews. I will argue that it is possible to find both civic and ethnic elements in Jabotinsky’s writings about nationalism. However, these elements complete, rather than contradict one another. It is therefore possible to find these two elements not only in the same national movement, but in the writing of the same man – a fact that weakens, in my opinion, the dichotomy between the two.

"This paper has a double objective. The first is conceptual clarification. I shall argue that what is usually claimed to be regionalism is but one form of nationalism. I shall question certain stereotypes that abound in the literature, such as assuming that minority nationalists are necessarily ethnic or that any preference short of independent statehood is not nationalism. The second objective is to argue that historical nationalist parties, such as Basque and Catalan parties, and recent ones, such as Andalusian and Canarian parties, are expressions of the same phenomenon, namely, the political mobilisation of nationalism. Nationalist parties, old and new, are being successful, not just in terms of votes, whose numbers are often quite modest. Minority nationalists have managed to alter the political agenda of parties and governments and to impose a centre-periphery cleavage in society. Their actions have brought profound changes to the territorial structure of the state and have pushed state parties to defend nationalist positions in the regions. This success, paradoxically, can have a perverse effect: it makes increasingly difficult to survive on a nationalist agenda when the nationalist cause has been assimilated and institutionalised. Competition with state-parties-turned-nationalists sets limits, in some cases severe ones, to the prospects of success of nationalist parties. Thus, moderate nationalist parties are tempted by more radical agendas, symbolic politics gain strength over more pragmatic considerations and the pressure to engage in nation-building policies and strategies increases. I propose to flesh out these arguments in Spain since 1979."

The paper will present how the conceptions of civic and ethnic nationhood meet and relate in Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy considering the interethnic relations between two national communities living in the area: the Italian majority with its State and the Slovene minority. Members of the Slovene minority are Italian citizens, but they consider themselves as part of the Slovene people, of which the majority lives in the bordering Slovenia. The civic conception is related to the Italian community and the Italian state, while the ethnic one is related to the Slovene national minority living in the provinces of Gorizia-Gorica, Trieste-Trst and Udine-Videm and its kin-state Slovenia. The paper will present the trajectories of nation and state formation in this region in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. A brief historical review will help to focus on some relevant psychocultural and structural dimensions of the interethnic relations between Italians and Slovenes in Regione FVG considering the processes of the Italian and Jugoslav, later Slovene nation-building and the formation processes of the border between these States.
 

This paper critically addresses the various ways in which the civic and ethnic categories have been used and misused in the literature on nations and nationalism. The accentuation and naturalization of differences between ethnic and civic national understandings, and between ‘East’ and ‘West,’ ignores the diversity that
exists within each region, and denies the negotiated coexistence of both models within individual nations. I argue that the problematic treatment of the dichotomy stems from a misunderstanding and misuse of ideal types, and from the common conflation, in the study of nationalism, of ideological representations (discourse), empirical reality (practice), and social scientific analysis (ideal types). If used properly, as value-free constructs that we compare with reality—both in terms of the actual discourses of the nation and the various practices that shape national life—ethnic and civic categories can be quite useful to understand the conceptions of the nation in various cultural, social, political and economic settings. I illustrate my position by using the ethnic and civic ideal-types as heuristic devices to analyze the evolution and transformation of nationalism in Quebec from the 1880s until the 2000s. Based on archival and ethnographic data, I show that while nationalism in Quebec has generally evolved from an ethno-religious type to a civic-secular one, different assemblages of ethnic and civic elements have been present at various historical periods and the tension between the types continue to shape national debates.

Trudeauian pan-Canadianism, which defines the Canadian national identity as a single nation bound by liberal-egalitarianism, ‘sea to sea’ bilingualism, multiculturalism, and provincial equality, has been heavily criticized in English-Canadian academe. The crux of the criticism is the insistence on defining Canada as one nation has exacerbated conflict by ignoring Quebecois and Aboriginal claims to nationhood. As a solution, theorists Philip Resnick and Will Kymlicka, in particular, argue for a multinational definition of Canada bound by mutual recognition, which would ostensibly create a better foundation for long-term unity. In making their case, Resnick and Kymlicka set about convincing English-Canadians to recognize that they share common ‘national’, or at least, ‘linguistic’ interests, to which pan-Canadianism is not necessarily best suited. The presumption is that if English-Canadians were to identify with a more limited ‘English-Canadianness’, this would create space for other collectivities to identify with Canada. Adopting an ethnosymbolic lens and focusing on the relationship between dominant ethnicity and civic and ethnic nationalisms in multinational states, the following paper takes issue with this argument. The suggestion here is that it fundamentally misconceives English-Canadian identity, resulting in a flawed argument that fails to account for why English Canadians have such difficulty articulating an ‘English-Canadianness’ distinct from ‘(pan)-Canadianness’. The paper concludes that pan-Canadianism should be viewed as a source of disunity and unity; insofar as Canada can be considered a success is a result of English-Canadians’ dominance, which allows them a degree of latitude vis-à-vis minority nationalisms, yet also renders their ethnic particularity ‘invisible’, setting the stage for an unselfconscious, universalising pan-Canadianism.

Western observers have been confused by the catastrophic results of attempts to introduce democracy into the ‘Arab world.’ I argue that this confusion is the product of Westerners applying the dichotomy between civic and ethnic nationalism as outlined by Hans Kohn to this area without realistically considering the ethnic situation there. According to this thinking, states (e.g. France, Germany) choose either civic nationalism or ethnic nationalism, and this is associated with democracy or dictatorship respectively; therefore, the overthrow of a dictatorship and the imposition of democracy should automatically lead to the development of stable institutions of civic nationalism. This theory seemed to receive support from developments in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. But this has not worked in the ‘Arab world.’ The explanation for this difference can be found in research in the framework of ethnosymbolism, which has shown that even in cases such as England and France, the institutions of civic nationalism only developed after the state had been built around a core ethnicity. Democracy caught on in Eastern Europe because the area had already been divided into political units (e.g. Poland, Romania, Lithuania, etc.) which were relatively ethnolinguistically homogeneous. ‘Arab nationality,’ on the other hand, is a recent and artificial creation, and its radical religious and linguistic divisions are not reflected in existing political borders. This suggests that democracy will only take hold in the ‘Arab World’ after political borders there have been redrawn along more ethnolinguistically realistic lines.

While the Islamic Republic’s foundational discourse was that of internationalism and borderless Islamic revolution, today the nationalist element is increasingly emphasized in the official conceptualization of Iranian nationhood. The Iran-Iraq War, the unsuccessful project of exporting the revolution and the isolation of Iran are among the contributing factors to this change. Meanwhile, the wave of reformism in the last decade has been accompanied by significant tension in border areas inhabited by non-Persian ethnic groups where unrest, protests and terrorist acts have flared up recently. Minority spokesmen claim that the state is marginalizing the non-Persians, and particularly the Sunnis; and on the other hand, the government claims the unrest is the result of foreign powers’ manipulation, and thus a threat to the integrity of the Iranian nation. By conflating the ethnic groups’ demands for greater autonomy with conspiracies to dissolve Iran, the Islamist leaders are utilizing historical fears in Iran. However at the same time, the ruling elite also seek to portray the ethnic minorities as inseparable segments of a harmonious, multicultural nation-state. Thus there is a two-pronged strategy of repressing dissent and accommodating the conformists, of inclusion and exclusion. An analysis of the language employed in statements by the Islamic Republic’s rulers in portraying two specific cases of ethnic unrest in the Iranian provinces of Khuzestan and Azerbaijan in 2005- 6 presents an interesting study in the nationalist-religious ideology of the establishment and its notions of ‘Iranianness’.

‘De-ethnicization’ denotes both an ideology and the nation-building project currently carried out by the Rwandan government. The attempt is to both forge a new, overarching sense of unified identity, and to suppress any lesser (e.g. ethnic or regional) sub-state identities. In terms of the Kohnian dichotomy, Rwanda remains in the eastern camp of ethnic ideas and projects of a ‘nation’ inasmuch as it is dominated by cultural as opposed to civic/political elements. At the same time as Rwanda does broadly follow the lines of an ethnic nationalism and does remain exclusive internally, the paper does not aim to affirm the validity of an idealized Kohnian dichotomy between ‘exclusive’ ethnic nationalism and ‘inclusive’ civic nationalism. To avoid the trap of a bi-polar and value-laden division, or final and exhaustive definitions of ‘the ethnic,’ and yet preserving the useful insights of Kohn, the paper calls for a re-conceptualization of nation-building projects along the continuum of their relative inclusiveness/exclusiveness, both internally (who shapes the ‘idea of nation’) and externally (who is allowed into the political project of nation-building). The case of Rwanda also does not aim to affirm some deep historical or cultural predisposition of countries for one or the other type. Most certainly, Rwanda does not represent a ‘failure to export the civic model.’ Nationbuilding in Rwanda might be sub-optimal but the optimum is both achievable and to be redefined.

Can the distinction sometimes made between ethnic and civic nationalism be fruitfully applied to cases outside Europe? This paper will take the example of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China to argue that the tensions between these two conceptions of nationhood are not confined to any particular region. Since the end of the nineteenth century, when a notion of nationhood first emerged during the late Qing, there has been a tension between an ethnic version of the nation – based on a conflation of ideas about descent, 'race' and culture – and a more civic version which recognises the huge diversity of human situations in the realm referred to as 'China'. While it is true that we are more familiar with the dominant version of ethnic nationhood enforced by the People's Republic of China, there are alternative histories which we should reclaim to pay respect to the general messiness, but also the extraordinary creativity and adaptability, of most human lives, in particular the many ones that have contested and resisted the ethnic and national lines policed by modern nation-states throughout most of the twentieth century – from the many migrants who left the empire to assimilate fully with local population groups overseas, to the 'King's Chinese' in Singapore who remained detached from all things 'Chinese', and to large sections of the population in Taiwan today. These tensions are not different in kind from the ones which have marked parts of Europe –Germany being a good example – and are related to the politics of the one party-state."

"Latin American nationalism has often been represented as 'civic' from independence until the late nineteenth century and increasingly 'ethnic' from then onwards, with the emergence of mass politics and the rise of US imperialism. While there is certainly some evidence to support this view, I will suggest that it underemphasises both the importance of ethnic elements throughout the nineteenth century and – even more strikingly – the continuing importance of civic elements throughout the twentieth century. This argument will be illustrated by discussion of two main topics: i) heroes; and ii) revolutionary traditions."

The Push and Pull of Ethnic and Civic Nationalisms for North African Immigrants in Europe Panel: The Challenges of Migrant Identity, April 16, 11:30-13:00 North African immigrants living in Britain, France and Spain define their identities through national pasts marked by colonial subjugation and narratives of independence. Despite these ethnic nationalist narratives, North African immigrants are also subject to pressures which promote civic identities, defined through culture and religion, including host-state pressures to integrate, and religious obligations to a broader Muslim Umma. For a small minority this can lead, in combination with a variety of other factors, to extremism and violence. In these cases, tensions between the forces of civic and ethnic nationalisms create dissonances in identity, creating a space for support for and participation in radical violent takfiri jihadism. Through specific examples drawn from North African immigrant experiences in Britain, France and Spain, this paper will examine how radical violent takfiri jihadist recruiters attempt to exploit this dissonance in immigrant identity, by simultaneously emphasising ethnic nationalism and obligations to the universal Umma, in order to ‘radicalise’ members of these populations; populations who are subject to such disparate forces on their identity.

In Japan, where the ideology of ethnic and cultural homogeneity was predominant since postwar period, notions of multiculturalism have been gaining currency since the 1990s. Formerly suppressed minority differences are increasingly displayed in a celebratory manner. Okinawans have been at the forefront of changing negative perceptions of their cultural difference as 'backward' to positive ones trough popular and media culture. The nationwide popularity of Okinawa-featured cultural and media products since the early 1990s, called 'Okinawa Boom', appears to be shift toward the increasing recognition and appreciation of Okinawan difference. At the same time, however, there are concerns that the Okinawa Boom leads to further

 North Korean migrants are one of the most exclusively categorized groups of ‘Korean newcomers’ who most critically display Korea’s past of national division; issues of boundaries of legal and cultural membership in South Korea; and the current trends of transnational movements. Their presence embodies the politics of sovereignty over the Korean peninsula and its hegemonic discourse of homogeneity which are ultimately influenced by South Korea’s conception of nation state. This paper explores two main dimensions of North Korean migrants’ conditions vis-à-vis the South Korean state. The first dimension examines their process of obtaining legal membership; and the second explores their cultural membership through their experiences and narratives of how they consent and dissent the process of incorporation into South Korean society. The South Korean state shows ambivalent dispositions toward North Korean migrants. While they are embraced as part of the greater Korean ethnic community, they are received as particular kinds of ‘Koreans.’ Such ambivalence displays an arbitrariness (or the transitional nature) of South Korea’s boundaries for legal and cultural membership. It further raises questions of national identity and future responses to increasing transnational movements. The direction of South Korea as a nation state, in times of transnational movements, is unclear. An evaluation of notions of citizenship, nationality and ethnicity is imminent in further defining its national identity and conditions of those residing in South Korea especially with increasing communications with North Korea, national global participation as well as increasing border crossers in and out of South Korea.

Following the War of the Pacific (1879 –1883), Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Ancón that dealt, in part, with settling a territorial dispute over the provinces of Tacna and Arica along the newly created border between the two countries. The treaty allowed Chile to administer the provinces for ten years, after which a plebiscite would allow the region’s inhabitants to determine their own nationality. The plebiscite never took place, however, and following nearly a half-century of intense diplomatic conflict, the two countries in 1929 simply divided the territory, with Chile retaining Arica and Peru reincorporating Tacna.

By using as a point of departure Hans Kohn’s classic distinction between the Western, political type of nationalism, and Eastern, genealogical nationalism, this paper examines the processes of nationalism and national identity formation in what became one of the most contentious frontier situations in South American history. The Chilean and Peruvian states, in anticipation of winning the plebiscite, attempted to inculcate their respective national identities in the inhabitants of the region. I argue that Kohn’s dichotomy remains highly useful in understanding the principles used by leaders in Chile and Peru in their ‘official’ appeals for national unity. However, popular responses to those appeals from diverse social sectors in the disputed territory, including those of the working classes, indigenous Aymara communities, and women, require alternative conceptions of nationhood and national identity formation.

The literature on nationalism has a long tradition of critiquing the limitations of the distinction between civic and ethnic conceptions of nationhood, yet without establishing a viable alternative to this dichotomy. Based on a comparative analysis of nationalism in early and mid-20th century Mexico, Argentina, and Peru this paper seeks to conceptualize such an alternative typology. The distinction between liberal and popular nationalism is introduced to identify critical aspects of state-sponsored national discourses found in these countries that are not captured by the civic-ethnic difference. Liberal nationalism combines a political understanding of the nation with an elite-centered, exclusionary view of national belonging. By contrast, popular nationalism complements a cultural understanding of national identity with a more egalitarian view of the national community, depicting the masses as national subjects and protagonists of national history. For the empirical analysis this paper uses primary evidence from school textbooks. The conclusion discusses the usefulness of the liberal-popular typology for the analysis of nationalism more generally.
 

"The Palestinian-Jewish conflict is typically depicted as a clash between two ethnonational movements, fighting over the same piece of land. The resolution would thus seem straightforward: a utilitarian settlement based on a material, mainly territorial, compromise. My paper challenges both the description and prescription. Analyzing the identity-polity complex characteristic of both sides, I argue that normatively, the conflict is profoundly asymmetric: while Jewish identity is genealogical, Palestinian identity is largely geographical. Thus, while Zionism is certainly ethnonational, the Palestinian movement is potentially civic-patriotic. Furthermore, while Israeli Jews are more concerned about the (future) viability of their polity, Palestinians are still engulfed by a deep-set insecurity about the (past-based) validity of their emerging identity.

A negotiated compromise on assets may therefore not be enough. It should be accompanied – possibly, even preceded – by ethical dialogue, a bi-lateral discourse that addresses the asymmetry. Such a dialogue can be either narrative or normative: the former aims at more mutual understanding; the latter, at a common ground of political ethics. My paper illustrates both paths. It suggests that while narrative dialogue may facilitate grassroots rapprochement, normative dialogue is needed to truly transcend the entrenched political rifts. I propose that this dialogue be built on the principle of self-determination."

Spanish and Basque identities experienced a turnover by the beginning of a democratic six-year period, in 1868-1874. The new regime developed a civic policy, which provoked the outbreak of a traditionalist rebellion. The rebels were particularly strong in the Basque territories. As a mobilising argument, Spanish liberal nationalism invented a new ethnic stereotype of the Basques, which became an internal enemy of the nation. This image of otherness was resurrected during the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936). It was extremely instrumental in the Republicans’ confrontation with the joint mobilisation led by Basque traditionalists and ethnonationalists. During the last transition to democracy (1975-1978), the ‘Basque problem’ was used again to imagine the existence of an ethnic group opposed to democratic Spain. The terrorist organisation ETA became the target of this discursive strategy. Throughout these three historical periods, the construction of a ‘Basque problem’ serves to underline how (Basque) ethnicity has influenced the making of Spain as a civic nation. Furthermore, it also illustrates the relevance of the cultural contents for all modern nationalisms in Spain.

  Nationalist Discourse in the Nineteenth Century

Dr. Marcel Stoetzler and Dr. Christine Achinger

This paper will explore two prominent cases of German National Liberals who significantly contributed to the growing hegemony of antisemitism in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, Gustav Freytag (1816-95) and Heinrich von Treitschke (1 834-96). Both were well-known writers (one a novelist, the other a historian), political journalists and editors of significant national-liberal publications (‘Grenzboten’ and ‘Preussische Jahrbücher’). In Freytag's novel ‘Soll und Haben’, the German nation is, on the one hand, pitted against the Poles as colonial 'external enemy', associated with pre-modernity. On the other hand, good ‘German’ modernity is set off against the Jews as ‘enemy within’, representing the negative and threatening aspects of modern society itself, while at the same time also evoking much older anti-Jewish imagery. In Treitschke’s writings, culminating in but not restricted to his contributions to the ‘Berlin Antisemitism Dispute’ of 1879-81, Jewish immigrants to Germany are specifically chided for their Polish background and thus represent both imageries rolled into one, not without paradoxical effects.
The discourses of each were shaped by a kind of de-dialecticized, liberal Hegelianism, which affirmed the rise of bourgeois society, but was wary of rapid political, economic and social change. In the specific form of nationalism they subscribed to, elements of what is usually described as ‘political’, ‘Western’ or ‘civic’ nationalism are intertwined with elements of what would usually be described as ‘romantic’, ‘ethnic’, ‘Eastern’, or specifically ‘German’ nationalism. This observation challenges the assumption that these supposed ‘types’ of nationalism are diametrically opposed.

This paper challenges the common distinction between a Western and an Eastern type of nationalism with regards to Russian nationalism. It argues that the type of nationalism that appears in a specific country has more to do with timing than with place, or social conditions. The paper discusses the appearance of two forms of nationalism in Russia – the civic nationalism of the Decembrists and the cultural nationalism of the Slavophiles. It is generally believed that the so-called Slavophiles first formulated a Russian national identity in the 1 830s-40s. In line with Kohn’s dichotomy, this nationalism has been regarded as belonging to the Eastern, cultural type. In contrast, this paper argues that while slavophilism was indeed based on a cultural idea of the nation, this fact does not distinguish it from nationalism in the West. On the contrary, slavophilism can be seen as a Russian example of the cultural nationalism that grew out of German Romanticism and dominated social and political thought in Europe and the United States in this period. A further challenge to Kohn’s assumption is that it was not the Slavophiles but the Decembrists who brought the idea of the nation to Russia. The notion of the nation which they introduced to Russia in the 1 820s was of a typically Western type, based on a civic notion of nationhood. It was representative of the intellectual tendencies that dominated Western thought in the Age of Revolution. Thus, a historical analysis of Russian nationalism indicates that the civic-ethnic divide needs to be linked to a temporal context. It also suggests that intellectual thought should be studied in an international rather than a national context and that the world of ideas has to be granted a considerable degree of autonomy from socio-economic conditions.

While theoretical discussion on nationalism tends to make a sharp distinction between civic and ethnic conception of nationhood, the present paper argues that such duality is too simple and schematic to offer an adequate analytical tool of the late 19th and early 20th Century Central European nationalism, especially in the case of Austria-Hungary. Although German liberals would initially define the German nation as open to everyone who accepted the basic liberal notions of Kultur (culture) and Bildung (education), regardless of their ‘ethnic’ or linguistic background, simultaneous competing notions of nationhood developed, based on language and/or religion. Hungarian liberals were rather more successful in that respect, turning the state educational system and bureaucracy into a well-oiled machine for assimilation. Yet both German and Hungarian concept of the nation would later change into one based on a much narrowly define social group, conditioned by religion or race. The second part of the paper focuses on the case of Slovene nationalism in the same time period and the role religion (in the Catholic case) and/or language (in the Catholic and Liberal cases) played in national identification. Yet, even in the era of narrowly defined and supposedly inherited national identities such categories were defied in several instances, a brief overview of which shall follow. Finally, the paper argues that perhaps a more refined theoretical apparatus is needed, in order to make sense of the intricacies of national, religious and political allegiances of the time.

Prof. Don Doyle(University of South Carolina)

The popular expression ‘anyone can become an American’ overlooks the brutal exclusion of non-whites in US history, but it summarizes an essential American belief that national belonging ought to be voluntary and open to newcomers. Paradoxically the Age of Nationalism that coursed through Europe and the Americas during the 19th century coincided with the largest international migration in human history. Millions of migrants not only changed citizenship, they also changed national identity. Instead of being treated as fixed primordial traits, language, religion, and other ethnic characteristics came to be understood as matters of choice in America's immigrant mélange.

Immigration to the United States, and its role in the creation of American nationalism, is a topic that has garnered an enormous amount of interest from scholars across many fields of sociological, cultural, political and historical enquiry. This paper explores how military service influenced the immigrant experience between 1861 and 1865 and the ways in which American nationalism was reconfigured around the figure of the soldier. The main focus of the paper will be on the Civil War, but comparative examples will be drawn from the Mexican War (1846-48) and the Spanish-American War (1898), to trace how warfare, immigration, ethnicity and race became reconceptualised within American nationalism; how the ideal of the ‘citizen soldier’ was modified to incorporate or exclude the ‘non-citizen’ soldier; and the extent to which, in the American case, blood sacrifice established more contested ground than scholars have yet appreciated.

Nationalism in the Himalaya

Given the debate between Civic and Ethnic Nationalism, my paper will argue for an alternative form of Nationalism. In this respect, both Ernest Renan and B.R. Ambedkar gain great importance. Both writers strove to construct a Nationalism that is coexistent and accountable to democracy by staying outside the two poles of Nationalist discussion. Both strove for a balance between the Cultural/Ethnic and Civic elements of the Nation without prioritizing one or the other. Finally, they argued for a Nationalism capable of including a larger political community by establishing and developing the dialogical link between Nationalism and Democracy. This alternative route to Nationalism is pursued by creating a more dual relationship between Democracy and Nationalism. In other words, creating a Nationalism that is always more accountable to a political community organised on the basis of equality. The dual relationship between Nationalism and Democracy avoids the pitfalls of both Civic and Cultural Nationalism by centralising concepts such as Reason, Selfdetermining agency, Democratic rights and institutions, and Citizenship. These concepts provide key ingredients to the creation of a certain moral universe (akin to Buddhism, as posited by Ambedkar) that will help construct institutions able to balance and hold accountable the inherent egocentrism and exclusive nature of Nationalism.

The present paper endeavours to analyse the use and scope of Western positivistic legal tools in the creation of the Nepali nation. This paper suggests a two-level analysis. Firstly, a historical analysis of Nepal’s political and legal developments shall be presented to investigate the rationale behind the use of law as a social engineering and homogenising tool promoting an identifiably Nepali national identity. Secondly, the paper shall focus on the current debates concerning constitutional change in Nepal. The debates about the demise of the 1990 Constitution in early 2007, and the forthcoming elections of a Constituent Assembly need to be investigated in the light of the growing politicisation of ethnicity in the country. The overarching demand for inclusion stems from the discontent of Nepal’s ethno-linguistic, religious, and regional minorities with their historical subordination. The marginality of many groups within the Nepalese polity has been legitimised by the constitutionally-sanctioned narratives defining the Nepali nation until 2006, namely Hinduism, the Shah monarchy, and the Nepali language. Such narratives have been perceived as an imposition of the dominant Parbatiya Hindu high castes. In this regard, Nepal’s Grundnorm has become the main battleground for identity politics, and – at the same time – its primary vehicle. Ultimately, the present paper aims to link the study of nation-building in Nepal with the theoretical debate the ASEN Conference concerns itself with. The Nepali experience seems to be somewhere between the civic and ethnic models of nationalism enunciated by Kohn, and this is what this paper aims to illustrate.

"The Tibetan nation is a nation that has had to live and thrive in India, and also, to a lesser extent, in Nepal and Bhutan, instead of in Tibet, for the last fifty years or so. But, as Lord Acton put it, exile is the nursery of nationality, which implies that, at first, exile can be seen less as an impediment than as a blessing for the nation, also in the Tibetan case. Yet, the specificity of the exile nation is a strong desire to regain, or, in the Tibetan case, to gain, an independent state. Indeed, in a world mostly composed of nation-states, the exile nation, which can at first be considered stronger than other nations, if we follow Lord Acton's argument, soon becomes an abnormality. Hence this strong desire to fit in the norm and move from the status of nation-in-exile to the status of nation-state. But the question remains as to the type of nation that the exile nation can, or, more exactly, has to, choose. I wish to contend here that, as a nation for itself, the exile nation has to be ethnic, while, as a nation to the outside world, the exile nation has to be, or at least, appear as, civic. I will use the Tibetan case to try and analyse the inherent tension as to the type of nation, and, consequently, as to the form of nationalism, to be retained by exile nations in general."

This paper discusses the practical implementation of the Jewish Labour Bund’s national program through an examination of its social and cultural activities in interwar Poland. The Bund’s national program both reconceptualized national relations according to Marxist (but non-Bolshevik) principles and advanced an original conception of the Polish Jews’ cultural and political status based on a secular understanding of Jewish national-cultural identity. The program’s central demand was that the Polish state must grant Jews — and all other national minorities — a national-cultural autonomy, that is, a limited self-government restricted to issues pertaining culture, language and education. In so doing, this program challenged the dominant paradigm of nationalism by demanding that Poland officially accept its character as a multinational state. Whereas nationalism (Jewish, Polish or otherwise) assumes that the political and national units must be congruent (each national group must live in and have control over its own sovereign state), the Bund’s notion of national-cultural autonomy rests on the idea that state and nation need not be congruent. While mobilizing the masses of Jewish workers to achieve changes in the Polish state’s constitution, the Bund actively endeavoured to promote Polish-Jewish national identity by developing a Yiddish socialist subculture. This subculture included a wide range of trade-unionist, cultural, educational and recreational activities, such as a school network, a publishing house, local workers’ libraries, women’s organizations, children’s and youth organizations, choirs and theatre troupes, health and mutual aid organizations, a daily newspaper, several journals, leisure and sport organizations, and the Bundist network of trade unions. In this paper I will discuss some of the Bund’s cultural activities and organizations, show how they were informed by the party’s national program, and explain why the Bund’s cultural efforts constituted a national-cultural autonomy in the making.

The distinction between Western and Eastern nationalisms (political/civic the first, genealogical/ethnocentric the second one) is not easy in European areas – as Spain and Carpathian basin – in which the development of the main nationhood – respectively Castilian and Hungarian – is in historical interaction with other nationalities and different phenomenons of peripheral nationalisms.

In the Spain framework, the regional nationalism of Catalans is inclusive phenomenon. By the time of big industrialization (end of XIX century) Catalonia have a lot of immigration (not only of Castilian people) and shows a trend of an inclusive aptitude, with language and way of life. On the other hand, by the beginning of Basque nationalism (at the end of XIX century, in the same period of urbanization/industrialization) the genealogy and the blood are the basic elements versus the Spanish people flows.

In the area of Carpathian basin – as former St Stephen crown of Hungary – Transylvania is a multinational region with a traditional autonomy. After the First World War, the regional soul of `Transylvanism' stands out among Hungarians but based on Transylvanian 'Nations'. In this perspective, the idea of 'Nation' is defined not by race but by culture and territory. This inclusive and 'regional' civic conception is popular until 1940, when the division of Transylvania let the political space to the ethno-nationalists in Hungary and in Transylvania too, particularly in the Land of Szeklers.

The paper explores the analytical utility of the typology of ethnic and civic nationhood by comparing the nation formation processes in Britain from the 18th century and in Japan from the late 19th century. In particular, the paper focuses on the comparison of the processes of integrating a periphery into the core: the Scottish Highland in the case of Britain and Okinawa in the case of Japan. The comparison will be based on a secondary analysis of contemporary documents written either in support of or against such integration in Britain and Japan. The documents and commentaries on them will be analysed to determine to what extent different conceptions of nationhood (a predominantly civic one in the British case and a predominantly ethnic one in the Japanese case) can account for differences in the processes and attitudes to integration of the periphery in each case. The paper will then examine the effects of differences in imperial ideology and different phases of racialist thinking to assess the utility of the distinction between ethnic and civic nationhood in understanding nation-formation processes. 1 The concept of Jus Soli (lat. ‘the law of the soil’) underlies the allocation of citizenship based territorial membership. For example, unconditional Jus Soli allocates citizenship to all persons born on the territory of a country. The concept of Jus Sanguinis stands in opposition to Jus Soli as it allocates citizenship purely based on descent. Since the Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (RuStG) of 1913, German citizenship had been granted strictly based on Jus Sanguinis to those of German descent only.

 For the Luyia of Western Kenya broadened ethnic identification, combining seventeen hitherto separate tribal groupings, did not exist until the 1930s. In 1931, the discovery of gold in Western Kenya galvanised this ethnic project, while also causing colony-wide land insecurity. Thus, the only recently imagined Luyia community was thrust into national dialogue with other ethnic groups. Prominent African leaders began protesting in national terms, previously insular ethnic associations signed joint petitions, and the first national African party, the Kenya African Union, soon formed. The formation of the Luyia ethnic identity ran concurrent with the growth of Kenyan nationalism, both projects using parallel logic and strategies. Luyia politicians navigated the complicated political waters of deeply engrained locational politics, more recently imagined ethnic politics and the new national political scene. The intervention of national politics and colonial policy into the formation of Luyia ethnic identity allowed a form of ethnic pluralism to develop that defied simple tribal categorisation. Decolonization, in its transition from colony to independent nation, from subjects to citizens, crystallised debates over ethnic autonomy, boundary disputes and national integrity. This particular ethnic history challenges Kohn’s classic dichotomous national theory. Ethnic and national imaginings for the Luyia mobilised both the ‘Western’ requisites of territorial limits and resource access and the ‘Eastern’ notions of descent and historically-informed cultural ties. Recent political events, including the 2007 elections and renewed calls for East African federation, accentuate the continuing interplay between nation and ethnicity, citizenship and belonging, in the political economy of the Kenyan nation.

Historically, multi-ethnic states have tended to place a great emphasis on the unity of their citizens, and have tried to crush any separatist feelings or sentiment on the part of a minority. Therefore, it might come as a surprise that the state of Israel not only allows, but actively encourages, certain separatist tendencies among one of its minority groups, the Druze, an off-shoot of a Shi’a Muslim community that has lived in the region for almost a thousand years. The state encourages a separate non-Arab Druze ethnic identity to negate and thus defuse any potential for an Arab national identity among them. This divide and conquer strategy is usually employed by colonial powers to hinder the abilities of multi-ethnic indigenous population to unite. The state while undermining the Arab identity of the Druze simultaneously encourages civic nationalism which incorporates an obligation and loyalty to the state from its Druze citizens. With the help of some Druze elites, the Israeli state has encouraged two forms of nationalism: civic and ethnic. Although most scholars have treated these two types of nationalism as diametrically opposed, this case study demonstrates that these two concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and in the case of Israel and its Druze population, they have successfully manipulated both to serve the perceived security needs of the state at the expense of a more inclusive indigenous Arab/Palestinian identity.

The khmei kraom are on a quest for recognition. Most people are unaware that millions of the inhabitants of southern Viet Nam and Cambodia – in what is known as Kampuchea Kraom, ‘Lower Cambodia’ - identify themselves not as Vietnamese nor as Cambodian (‘Khmer’), but as a separate ethnie. Originally inhabitants of the land known as ‘Funan’ to the Chinese in the third century, successive waves of immigrants and invaders have not made much of an impact upon the self-perception of the khmei kraom. The assimilation of Cochinchina into French Indochina in 1864 and increased Kinh settlement in the region throughout the twentieth century did little to distort this sense of autonomy. Rather, they welcomed a seemingly endless succession of new neighbours over the centuries, secure that their sense of identity was not rooted in territoriality. Yet recently the khmei kraom have been forced into action. The Vietnamese government appears to be conducting a silent campaign of cultural elimination by moving khmei kraom from their fields or even destroying their Theravada Buddhist wats in the name of infrastructural improvement. A mysterious sickness that blinds only khmei kraom and no other ethnicity in the Vietnamese provinces has appeared. In response, khmei khieu communities in Viet Nam, Cambodia and in diaspora have begun a global appeal for recognition as a separate nation. Yet how do a people who have managed to exist beyond the confines of western sovereignty for centuries now engage with this same institution in order to maintain their identity?

"This paper interrogates Hans Kohn's characterization of Britain as a nation of inclusive 'civic nationalism' via an analysis of citizenship law from 1608. I argue that British citizenship law was characterized by a tension between a doctrine stressing inclusion and equality on the one hand, and the practice of exclusion and inequality on the other. The most important precedent in British citizenship law was a powerful statement of equality and inclusion. This was a judgment arising out of the union of the crowns of England and Scotland. Would the law recognize two distinct classes of subjects, Scots and English, or would all the adult male subjects of the Crown enjoy equal status? The judges ruled in favor of equality: Both Scots and English were born in the dominions of the crown, owed the same allegiance to the king, and should enjoy the same status. This precedent stood for more than two and a half centuries as the definitive statement of British citizenship law. In theory, the same logic that applied to Scotsmen applied to the inhabitants of other territorial acquisitions: all colonial subjects enjoyed equality with white Englishmen as British subjects. In practice, however, legislatures and administrators spent those two and a half centuries hollowing out British citizenship: in other words, the status of a British subject was willingly granted, but it meant little in practice. The argument of this essay is that the status of a British subject could be distributed so widely only because it was so cheap."

 The objective of this paper is to adopt a popular perspective on the historical roots and formation of modern Swedish nationalism. Based on studies of primary sources such as court rolls from the Swedish Danish borderland, council protocols from two towns and petitions to the king ca. 1500-1700 I problemize the dominant interpretation that the formation of modern Swedish nationalism was a ‘lateral’ process. That is a nation created from above by a political and intellectual elite who, with the help of a military, fiscal and judicial state-apparatus, gradually succeeded to disseminate their values, symbols, memories and traditions to broader layers of the society. I also call in to question that Swedishness on a popular level first and foremost was politically imagined and that that the emergence of a cultural imagined Swedishness is a historical latecomer. I suggest that the modern Swedish ‘ethno-civic’ nation was not constructed from the ‘top’ or from ‘below’, it was neither ‘lateral’ nor ‘vertical’, but rather ‘reciprocal’, i.e. a consequence of a long, dynamic and non-linear process of negotiations between and shared experiences by rulers and subjects within existing political frames.

Across the Spanish monarchy during the War of Independence (1808-1814), liberals established a foundational narrative of civic nationalism that served as a template for all competing political forces. From 1808 onward, narratives of popular resistance situated the people at the center of political discourse and the struggle against Napoleon. In charting the plurality of nationalist positions advocated by Spaniards, the concepts of civic and ethnic nationalism are useful tools. Civic nationalism appeared as an outgrowth of the French revolutionary model of the sovereign people as national citizens. Ethnic nationalism, on the other hand, has often been tied to Germany and an exaltation of the uniqueness of a particular people. In order to avoid a false dichotomy, however, this paper problematizes the notion that civic and ethnic nationalisms are tied to specific national histories. Instead, the case of the Spanish monarchy demonstrates the confluence of competing discourses of nationalism which merged notions of civic and particularist identity. In building a new state, Spaniards drew upon a civic nationalist idiom during the Wars of Independence. Defenders of the Ancien Régime, to the contrary, discursively circumscribed the boundaries of a particularist notion of national identity as a corollary of the Catholic faith and continued to shape an ethnic Spanish nationalism. Yet both civic and ethnic aspects of Spanish national identity ultimately became enshrined in the Constitution of 1812, which articulated an inclusive citizenship for all Spaniards while maintaining the exclusivity of the Catholic faith as the true measure of national identity.

The paper examines how the current needs of the PRC’s domestic and especially foreign policies force the country’s officialdom to modify its rhetoric on Chinese nation. It takes the example of independent Mongolia as a case study and demonstrates that this ‘difficult case’ of nation building in the PRC affects the construction of the official identities of Mongolia and the Mongols vis-à-vis China and the Chinese nation. Until recently, the official discourse in the PRC would represent not only the Mongolian minority and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China, but also independent Mongolia and its people as firmly positioned within the paradigm of the ‘genealogical’ concept of Chinese nation. The concept presupposes the common ethnic origin and the uninterrupted common cultural and historical tradition of all the 55 nationalities, including the Mongols, which together for the Chinese nation. The concept also lies in the heart of the so-called ‘Mongolia question’, the idea that refers to Mongolia as a ‘historical part’ of China and traditionally backed up first the irredentist intentions of the Republican China and later the ‘Motherland reunification project’ of the PRC. The paper demonstrates that the PRC’s recent official publications often abolish the nationalist definition of Mongolia as ‘a part of China’ and emphasise the ‘civic’ characteristics of Mongolian nation – attributes of its statehood, independence and international position. The paper argues that these shifts in the official discourse signify that the orthodox discourse on the Chinese nation is losing its dominant authority.

Ethnic and religious violence has often obstructed the smooth flow of democracy and sustenance of cultural pluralism in India. Vested interest and vote bank politics has mobilized identities against one another. Civil society, which once was boasted for its democratic contribution, now is playing sectarian politics and standing as a threat to the very secular, democratic and multi-ethnic culture of Indian society. Based on intensive fieldwork in tribal dominated southern Rajasthan (India), the paper makes an attempt to explore the relationship between an ethnic Hindu(tva) organization called the Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP) and its role among the tribals. It argues that utilizing development as a medium, the RVKP has managed not only to ‘sanskritize’ and then to assimilate the tribal groups into the Hindu fold but also to gain their political support during the elections. By redefining ‘indigenous identity’ and by claiming to represent the tribal interests, the RVKP has established itself as a ‘counter-hegemonic force’ against, what it calls the alien anti-nationalist forces, the Muslims, the Christians and the Communists in the region. Though named as the tribal welfare forum, the RVKP is grounded on the foundations of Brahminical Hinduism with hidden agendas of ‘Hinduising the tribals’ and ‘saffronizing the tribal heartland’ for making India a Hindu nation. This sectarian politics of RVKP (ethnic and religious organization) has developed a ‘culture of fear and violence’ in the tribal areas, which threatens the secular democratic ethos of Indian society.

The paper offers a framework for analyzing citizenship in India in an effort to improve the understanding of Indian nationhood and its resilience. I argue that India, one of the most diverse countries in the world, is built and survives by negotiating and balancing principally three dominant notions of citizenship that coexisted and have remained in tension with each other since independence. The analysis focuses as a lens on the Muslim citizens of India, who are among the most excluded and alienated members in the body of the Indian citizenry.

"I will argue that the development of civic nationalism has repeatedly been thwarted by the articulation of national identity in racialised forms and by the unfolding of a politics around immigration control that has brought race and nation into close alignment. These problems have been compounded by the consolidation of security as the key context in which national belonging is to be settled and by the widely shared notion that 'multi-culturalism' is no longer viable."

Immigration and Convergence of Identities - Baron Bhikhu Parekh (University of Westminster)

"I shall argue that integration is a two way process requiring negotiation and accommodation on the part of both the receiving society and the immigrants. This requires that the identity of the receiving society should be so defined as to make immigrants an integral part of it. It also requires that immigrants should over time so define their identity that the receiving society becomes an integral part of it. When such convergence of identities take place, a common sense of belonging develops between the two. I shall explore how such convergence can be brought about."

 Anthony D. Smith has emphasised how nations are bound together by a sense of common history and a shared ethnic memory. To this end myths of a ‘golden age’ of the nation are told. In this paper I will use Christos Tsiolkas’ 2005 novel, Dead Europe, to show how this notion of a shared ethnic memory is complicated in a multicultural society, where people may not share a common history. Dead Europe does not follow traditional approaches of examining Australia in comparison with its motherland England. As the Australian protagonist Isaac’s journey takes him across seven countries, a pan-European heritage of Australia is explored instead. In a Europe where nations are in the process of losing their geographic boundaries, Isaac encounters a place full of migrants and ghosts where a ‘golden age’ cannot exist. In this novel it ceases to be clear whether the dead Europe of the title is the European landscape or Australia itself. I will argue that this reflects contemporary attitudes towards nationalism and that Dead Europe offers a new perspective of nationalism formed from multi-ethnic origins. This paper will offer a clearer insight into the active role which literature plays by pointing out the wellobserved fissures within Australian nationalism, while also offering a means of imagining a collective future. Stein Tønnesson has argued that nations need national global policies to deal with globalization. Examining Australia in Dead Europe, and also Europe through the lens of Australia, may be the first step towards this process.

 Solomon Islands, an island nation in the Western Pacific has a population of approximately 500,000 people with an annual population growth rate of 2.8 percent. Melanesians accounted for 80 percent of its population occupying the larger islands with Polynesians, Micronesians, Chinese and others making up the remaining 20 percent. With about 90 distinct languages and 1000 islands, ethnic identities are critical considerations for nation building in this archipelago. Nationhood and national identity emerged with the alignment of these islands into the global economy through activities by early traders, planters, missionaries and British colonisation since 1893. Colonisation amalgamated distinct and diverse ethnic groups and practices into a single governable entity. Affiliation to one’s ethnic, island and linguistic group (wantok) made nationhood and national identity delicate business. The systematic suppression of distinct ethnic differences exploded into confrontations in 1998 when militia groups from Guadalcanal, Malaita and Western province clashed, shaking the foundations of this 30 year old nation. National identity and unity are challenging as ethnic interests usually supersede national considerations. Moreover, nation building could not be divorced from land and resources rights and their attachments to ethnic identities. Solving ethnic conflicts and amplifying national consciousness calls for solutions to land problems, ethnic relations and the creation of some kind of homogeneity in this fragmented country. To understand nationhood in Melanesia, one must acknowledge conflicting dichotomies like ‘Our country, my island’.

Analyzing one ethno-revivalist ritual in south-east Poland, the paper investigates the way a once proscribed religious-national group can become a commoditized national minority valued by tourists and locals for its `authentic tradition', 'distinctive culture', and 'closeness to nature'. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that the 'ethnic' narrative on religious-national cultures fits well with the demands of tourism and heritage preservation, as well as with Europe-wide and nation-state policies and discourses on national minorities and multiculturalism. The return or revaluation of tradition in Europe in recent decades is connected with the decentralization of policy-making and the increasing role of regionalism and cultural policies. Illuminating the relationship between nationalism and social change, the paper argues that the `civic' ideas of nationhood driven by the policies of the modern nation states and of the European Union in Eastern Europe give rise to a particular mobilization of 'ethnic' tradition and culture. Reorganizing group identifications in relations to territory and 'peoplehood', this unexpected paradox of overwhelmingly rational-secular Europeanization indirectly assists in evolving of a type of modern ethnonational culture based on a non-urban social structure and imagined rurality.

 

For long, studies of nationalism have analysed empirical cases according to few master dichotomies, among which the civic-ethnic divide has played a prominent role. Despite nuanced usages of this dichotomy in recent years, some scholars have highlighted its inherent ambiguities and argued for its dissolution into several analytical dimensions better suited to do the workload formerly assigned to but one root dichotomy. This paper follows this argumentation, suggesting the two dimensions ‘autochthony’ and ‘activism’ as better suited for analysis and as yielding deeper understandings of nationalism. The argument proceeds in three steps: initially, a case study is presented on Irish language revivalism and identity discourses in the North of Ireland. Framing these results in civic-ethnic terms, locals thereby seem to be both ‘civic’ nationalists and ‘ethno’-cultural revivalists. Deviating from such a reading, however, the paper then suggests treating these aspects as belonging to two distinct dimensions: the first is concerned with the causal logic underlying the reproduction of nationhood in terms of autochthony, distinguishing between an ‘individualised’ and a ‘collectivised’ form. The second dimension contrasts ‘political’ with ‘cultural activism’, with the former referring to practices (re)constituting the nation as politically autonomous, while the latter aims at practices (re)constituting the nation as culturally distinctive. Finally reinterpreting the empirical case in terms of these two dimensions, it is shown that the type of activism is dependent upon the specificities of ‘threats’ to the nation rather than upon the underlying type of autochthony, which further substantiates the necessity to disambiguate the civic-ethnic distinction.

The split between open/good/civic nationalism and closed/bad/ethnic nationalism places (Western) Europe squarely in the ‘civic’ camp. The European response to Islamic migration—especially as it unfolded during the Danish cartoon controversy—raises questions about this. Some supporters of the cartoons used the opportunity to link Muslim migrants to poverty and criminality, which suggests there may be ‘ethnic’ nationalism in Europe after all. A second group of cartoon supporters faulted Muslims for failing to appreciate and adhere to European liberal traditions of freedom of speech and secularism. In so doing, they created a European liberal ‘nationalism’ that does not easily fit into the ‘civic’ or ‘ethnic’ categories. However, other voices pushed the debate in the direction of a more genuine civic nationalism by i) relying on abstract defenses of freedom expression and ii) explicitly challenging the contrast between an enlightened Europe and an intolerant Muslim other.

 This paper tries to make the case for a model of national identity based on an optical metaphor. It thereby builds upon Zimmer’s notion of resources and mechanisms of national identity construction as well as Alon Confino, Celia Applegate and John Hutchinson's observations about the distortions introduced into national identity by the different geographical and social locations of the ‘consumers’ of national identity. Human vision can be separated into sentient object, lenses and inbuilt mental Ideas. This corresponds well to identity processes in which ‘light’ from a bounded territorial referent is refracted through various lenses (ideological, geographical, material, psychological) to focus in certain ways on particular symbolic resources like genealogy, history, culture or political institutions. Distinguishing between referent, lenses and resources helps us to more precisely situate many hitherto disparate problems of national identity. These include the ‘ethnic-civic’ dilemma, the mystery of national identity before nationalism, and the relationship between local and national, and individual and collective, identities. The model also clarifies the place of universalist ideology, which currently fits poorly within the leading culturalist and materialist theories of nationalism.

This paper will explore the legal aspects of the contradiction between particular and universal dimensions inherent in the nation-state. Based on a comparative approach to constitutional law, I will address the nature of the link between cultural identity and human rights. In particular, I will assess how expressions of national identity can favour or oppose respect for human rights. Referring to ‘social contract’ theories, as well as recent theories of nationalism, the paper will show that the nation-state has been conceived as providing a universal and equal protection to all its individual members, defined as citizens, while at the same time protecting a particular cultural character. The key issue is therefore to articulate universal and particular dimensions which are in constant tension within the nationstate. I will then turn to the integration policies developed by the state in order to build a cohesive society. I will show the continuity between recent integration policies developed to manage migration and earlier policies conceived to foster internal cohesion. In contrast, multiculturalism has been developed as an alternative to the domination of a particular culture within the state. However, neither approach adequately addresses the contradiction between particular and universal: on one side, universal rule tend to mean majority rule, while on the other side, minority rights are seen as particular rules, which effectively set minorities apart from the mainstream. I will thus look at the sources of legitimacy outside the state needed to square this contradiction and what this entails for a conception of the state as the location where human rights and identity can be reconciled.

 Drawing on the Canadian and international modules of the 1995 and 2003 ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) data sets on national identities, this exploratory paper will assess the extent to which there has been change or stability in Canadians’ conceptions of national identity over this period. Have degrees of attachment to different levels of community remained stable, with feelings of attachment to the nation still paramount, or has the relative preference for national over other attachments decreased somewhat? Has there been a shift in the direction of a more civic conception of nationalism and a less ethnic conception? Has there been a change in the way the two dimensions combine in shaping other attitudes? Briefly, it is found that in Canada as in most other national settings, while attachment to the nation coexists alongside attachment to one’s local community, one’s city, one’s province or region, and one’s continent, attachment to the nation is almost uniformly stronger than attachment to the other levels of community in both periods. In addition both ethnic and civic criteria are important in different ways: civic criteria of nationhood are judged to be more important than ethnic or ascribed criteria, but the ethnic criteria have a greater impact in shaping attitudes towards immigrants. The paper closes with an attempt to locate the attitudes of Canadian respondents in comparative perspective.

Minority nationalism has a tendency to be of the ethnic rather than civic type, because what distinguishes the national minority from the majority national group is usually based on historic and ethnocultural characteristics. However, in the long run, it is foreseeable that the national minority can begin to define itself also using civic conceptions of nationhood, even when striving for some political independence, mostly because the civic type of discourse is often perceived as more legitimate. I believe that the appearance of such civic definitions of minority nations is made possible by the existence of a distinct political space for the national minority. This autonomous political space is required both to give voice to debates about the substantive content of core values and because such a space can confer a legal status of membership to the nation. In this paper, I propose to explore the links between the existence of an autonomous, distinct political space for the national minority and the types of definitions of membership within national minorities, by comparing three different cases of francophone national minorities within Canada: Quebec, Acadia and Fransaskoisie, all of which wish to integrate more immigrants. Policy implications of these findings are that, contrary to intuitive thought, it seems possible that a productive way to develop civic conceptions of nationhood within national minorities is to recognise and give in to their claims for autonomy and distinction from the generic state.

Using data drawn from 200 interviews conducted in the cities of Toronto and Montreal, this paper addresses issues of belonging, citizenship education and political participation among Latin American immigrants to Canada. Many Latin American immigrants bring with them a valuable and rich body of social and political capital, and extensive experiences of civic and political involvement, but once they settle in Canada, they face a number of challenges that entirely reshape their civic and political attitudes and perceptions. This paper particularly explores the extent and nature of the ‘civic changes’ that occur through the process of becoming Canadian residents (either as refugees or landed immigrants) and eventually Canadian citizens. I focus my analysis on the relationship between political participation and a wide range of variables such as language proficiency, SES, political literacy and previous political experiences.

In Soviet times, the policy of nationalities used the language, along with other cultural criteria, to differentiate ethnic groups and reinforce their collective consciousness. Most citizens were consequently guaranteed an access to information in their native language. Since 1991, the media are viewed as a tool to develop national identity and promote statehood among multiethnic societies. The paper proposes to address the issue of ethnicity in the press of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan from a comparative perspective and with three different levels of analysis: 1) From a top down approach, we examine the treatment of ethnic minorities in the media policy of each state. We focus on existing legal frameworks, as well as on the content of minority language state-owned newspapers. 2) From a community approach, we analyze how ethnic leaders and activists address the issue of the access of their minority to information. We propose a content analysis of ethnic minorities’ newspapers. 3) Finally we consider the independent press that was mostly promoted by international organizations and donors. Focusing on minority language private newspapers, we try to understand what lays behind the language facade. Is the content addressing an ethnic or a civic approach of the nation? In a broader objective, the paper seeks to enlighten the place of ethnic minorities within Central Asian societies and the process of integration or exclusion that they are experiencing in the target countries.

Since the June 1997 Peace Agreement that put an end to the bloody Tajik civil war, a key state policy project aimed at rebuilding the nation-state and its unity has been to redefine national identity. The new official discourse on nationhood strives to articulate conflicting strategic choices and legacies: a Soviet inspired Tajik ethno-nationalism with a multiethnic society, transnational references to historical places and cultures, and to the Samanid state tradition with the inherited state territory, and references to pre-Islamic religions and cultures (zoroastrism and Aryanism respectively) to oppose the essentialization of Islam as the main component of Tajik culture and identity.

Drawing on field research and interviews conducted with intellectuals, students and members of national minorities in Dushanbe between March and June 2006, this paper questions the coherence as well as the integrative capacity of the state discourse on nationhood to bolster up national reconciliation and unity (given its ethnic basis and its stance toward Islam), and analyzes its reception by the population. Three specific questions are addressed: First, do national minorities and Pamiris (who are officially considered as Tajiks although they speak an East-Iranian language and are Ismaeli Shiites) feel integrated in the nation? Second, do the Samanid underlying myth and transnational cultural references meet success among ethnic Tajiks and minorities despite apparent contradictions with present state borders? Third, what are the tensions over the place devoted to Islam in national identity?

This paper explores the various aspects of the national mobilisation in Tatarstan from the late 1980s onwards. Claiming that the Soviet policy has brought the Tatar people to the edge of destruction, a heterogeneous Tatar national movement began to fight for a Tatar nation state and privileges for the Tatars. When negotiating with Moscow these demands were instrumentalised by Tatarstan's plenipotentiaries. They argued that only more rights for the Tatars could minimise separatist tendencies and violence in Tatarstan. Taking into account that a republic where Tatars made up 48.5 percent and Russians 43.3 percent of the population could not develop successfully without the co-operation of the latter, the government in Tatarstan later gradually shifted from ethnic to civic nationhood. Equal rights for all citizens are declared in Tatarstan's new constitution. But this is more political rhetoric than practice. In fact, ethno-national protectionism is on the agenda. The Russians in Tatarstan meet this without significant opposition. The satisfactory economic situation in Tatarstan obviously ranks higher for them than a policy in the spirit of equal rights for the entire population.

This paper examines the worldview and the material circumstances of Caribbean Rastafari men and women who have ‘returned home’ to Ethiopia. One aspect of the Rastafari re-definition of self in response to colonial ethnocentric constructs is a worldview that has an embodied concept of self, humanity and God. I explore the ways in which this aspect of worldview has enabled repatriates to negotiate the convergence of the symbolic Ethiopia with the nation-state of Ethiopia in which they now live. This research is situated in the historical and current movements to and from the Caribbean and the formation of Caribbean societies and worldviews.

The Kingdom of Tonga (Tonga) has a population of approximately 106,000 people and is located in the Pacific Ocean, in the cultural area known as Polynesia. Tonga is commonly referred to as a ‘small island developing state’ (SIDS), and as a consequence, is said to experience vulnerabilities and challenges that hinder its development in a globalised world. This paper considers evidence of Tongan transnationalism, which includes significant levels of migration and remittances sent by migrant Tongans. Drawing on this evidence, this paper contests the pessimistic view outlined in the small states and SIDS literature by proposing an alternative concept of the ‘deterritorialized Tongan nation-state’. This concept describes a process by which people can live anywhere in the world, yet retain economic, cultural and political ties to their nation-state of origin. Applying this approach it becomes possible to see that while the ‘state’ may remain the geographically-bounded territory of Tonga; the ‘nation-state’ can be seen as all Tongan people, including those living overseas. This challenges both the Westphalian focus on the territorially-bounded state as the sole site of development, and the dominant perspective of the literature on nationalism, which characterises nations as contained within a territorial space. This paper concludes by arguing that seeing Tonga as a deterritorialized nation-state provides a more optimistic view of Tonga’s development potentialin a globalised world. This is as it may enlarge Tonga so that its territorial borders become less important than the areas across which its people (and their resources) are spread.
 

Marcin Galent (Jagiellonian University) Between Family and Culture: The Legacy of a Stateless Nation Panel: Transnationalism and Diaspora, April 17, 14:30-16:00 Much has been said and written to criticize the differentiation between Eastern and Western nationalisms. It is often claimed that such a view, which was born among Western intellectuals, is simply ethnocentric. But it is also difficult not to notice that there are still certain differences in importance of the role which civic and ethnic aspects of nationhood play in the creation of national identity among Eastern and Western European countries. This paper is to show to what extent the lack of state in the 19th century, and then, the situation where the state was perceived as alien by the majority of the Polish society until the 1989, has determined the construction of Polish national identity, where ethnic conception of nationhood seems to predominate civic elements. Firstly, the legacy of that situation will be described through analysis of the current condition of civil society in Poland. The level of trust in people and public institutions, and involvement in any sort of membership of social organization will serve as indicators. This part of the paper will be based on quantitative surveys available in Poland. Secondly, the process of re/constructing of the national identity among Polish migrants who lives in Belgium will be analyzed. This part of the paper will concentrate on determining what kinds of elements are used in renegotiating it: ethnic or civic, and will be based on qualitative research conducted among the Polish migrants in Leuven, Belgium.

"Racial mixture posed a distinct threat to European American perceptions of the nation and state at the turn of the twentieth century, exposing and disrupting the racial categories that organized political and social life in the United States. This session will introduce this argument through case studies focused on indigenous people of 'mixed' descent that I discuss in my new book entitled, 'White Enough to be American? Race Mixing, Indigenous People and the Boundaries of State and Nation.' Offering a provocative conceptual approach to the study of citizenship, nationhood, and race, my book explores how racial mixture challenged and sometimes changed the boundaries that defined what it meant to be American.

By focusing on political, legal and press debates concerning the racial and national identities of specific individuals, my book reveals how the ambiguous status of indigenous people of 'mixed' descent underscored the problematic nature of policies and practices based on clearly defined racial boundaries. Contributing to timely discussions about race, ethnicity, citizenship, and nationhood, it demonstrates how the challenges to the American political and legal systems posed by racial mixture helped lead to a new definition of what it meant to be American—one that relied on institutions of private property and white supremacy."

Since September 11, 2001, a discourse concerning immigrant integration has developed in many liberal democracies: that ‘security in some sense is increased the more that an individual is integrated into the society.’ States have rationalized a host of new integration policies on the basis of this assumption; however, it remains unclear how – if at all – the threat of terrorism has substantively affected their design. In this presentation, I intend to consider to what degree the threat of terrorism has affected the design of recent immigrant integration policy reforms in the United States, if at all. My argument is that the construction of national identity in the US, and not the threat of terrorism, is the key factor which has driven integration policy development. My presentation begins with a discussion of the key elements of purported national identity – including the ‘American Dream’ and the ‘melting pot’ – which explain the limited U.S. activity on integration policy. I then will briefly map out policy changes in relevant areas of integration – including citizenship, induction programs, and Muslim-targeted initiatives. I will summarize the origins of particular policies (such as the naturalization test reorganization and a proposed commission on homegrown radicalization), contrast key policy components, and trace the passage of the policies into law. This evidence confirms that the US has made relatively few changes to integration policy, and the changes that have been made appear to have been driven by concerns other than security.

This paper examines Russian intellectuals’ discourse on civilizationist nationalism. By constructing national narratives through historical and cultural myth-making (Bhabha, 1990; Kennedy and Suny, 2002), proponents of this discourse articulate their vision of a Russian nation that is destined to again become an empire and to assume its messianic mission in the world. Clashing in opinion with a still relatively unpronounced civic nationalist discourse in Russia that conceptualizes Russia as a civic (rossii ’skaia) nation, as well as with a more popular ethnic Russian (russkii) nationalism, civilizationist nationalists view the Russian Federation (RF) as a multinational state bound by Russian culture and religion, a state that should expand beyond its current territory to bloom from a ‘truncated’ (Pain, 2007) into a full empire by repossessing territories of the former USSR. I argue that there is a link between the civilizationist nationalist discourse of intellectuals and state re-centralization efforts such as Vladimir Putin’s introduction of federal districts and the central nomination of envoys to the regions that replaced the elections of regional governors, as these state policies and the discourse of civilizationist nationalists both rest on the assumption that the RF is a multiethnic empire disguised as a nation. Far from leading to national cohesion, I suggest that government re-centralizing creates a market for civilizationist nationalist ideas. These ideas, in their turn, legitimize state policies, and the two cross-fertilize to lead Russia yet further away from eventually becoming a civic nation-state.

This paper examines Russian intellectuals’ discourse on civilizationist nationalism. By constructing national narratives through historical and cultural myth-making (Bhabha, 1990; Kennedy and Suny, 2002), proponents of this discourse articulate their vision of a Russian nation that is destined to again become an empire and to assume its messianic mission in the world. Clashing in opinion with a still relatively unpronounced civic nationalist discourse in Russia that conceptualizes Russia as a civic (rossii’skaia) nation, as well as with a more popular ethnic Russian (russkii) nationalism, civilizationist nationalists view the Russian Federation (RF) as a multinational state bound by Russian culture and religion, a state that should expand beyond its current territory to bloom from a ‘truncated’ (Pain, 2007) into a full empire by repossessing territories of the former USSR. I argue that there is a link between the civilizationist nationalist discourse of intellectuals and state re-centralization efforts such as Vladimir Putin’s introduction of federal districts and the central nomination of envoys to the regions that replaced the elections of regional governors, as these state policies and the discourse of civilizationist nationalists both rest on the assumption that the RF is a multiethnic empire disguised as a nation. Far from leading to national cohesion, I suggest that government re-centralizing creates a market for civilizationist nationalist ideas. These ideas, in their turn, legitimize state policies, and the two cross-fertilize to lead Russia yet further away from eventually becoming a civic nation-state.

The ‘missionary nationalism’ which promoted the hegemony of dominant ethnic or national group(s) within most European empires encouraged the subsuming and conflation of civic and ethno-cultural dimensions of nation within broader imperial vehicles to mollify competing nationalist discourses. This was particularly true of the British and Russian/Soviet imperial experiences, where nation-, state- and empire-building were concurrent. The intensity of national-imperial identity was defined by ethnic, social and religious hierarchy in which proximity and commonality to the respective English or ethnic Russian core was pivotal. The historical legacy of such approaches has ensured that civic and ethnic conceptions of nationality have remained largely conflated within each cauterised post-imperial multi-national state. As such, attempts to construct post-imperial civic national identities have continued to draw on national-imperial constructions of identity. The paper will assess the legacy of national-imperial state-building on the development of post-imperial citizenship and identity in the UK and the Russian Federation. It will explore how and in what ways imperial decline encourages a process of transition where civic and ethnic nationalism merge within competing (and conflated) post-imperial and post-colonial discourses within the former imperial core. It will conclude by assessing the enduring influence of empire on the post-imperial British and Russian states.

Defining the sense of belonging to a European human community has often been depicted as a battle between deeply rooted memories and the still vague features of a forthcoming identity that would be shared above national borders. The prospects of a European identity illustrate how uneasy it is to dissociate civic and ethnic perceptions of nationhood. In this debate, post-nationalism shed a specific light on the way to deal with multiple references and national histories in the European context. This theoretical assumption suggests to develop a political identity which would be based on the general principles of democracy and human rights. It supposes to build an identity that could emerge beyond ethnic ties or specific traditions determined by a particular national history. But the main critics of post-nationalism point out that it somehow lacks the passionate, historical dimension, conveyed by the ethnic conceptions of nationhood. Following this point of view, principles of freedom and human rights may be essential, but they would fail to catch the emotive engagement carried by national identities, which have a thicker ethnic dimension than what post-nationalism could ever suggest. From a non-normative, strictly analytical perspective, post-national theory conducted at a European level precisely underlines the kind of tension between the universal prospects of human rights and the local conditions where they apply. Post-nationalism then specifically highlights the difficulty to find an alternative path between the civic and the ethnic forms of belonging to a political entity.
 

The great loss of human life as well as the political and economic chaos resulting from the Second World War led the European political elites to create a body of supranational institutions with view to obstructing the re-emergence of ethnic nationalism in Europe. The EU has created a type of civic supra-nationalism to which the extreme right party family is opposed due to its strong ethnic nationalist characteristics. This party family has thus far been understood as a monolithic entity in terms of its Euroscepticism. Contrary to this, this paper demonstrates that in fact it adopts varying positions on Europe. Theoretically, party positions on Europe are conceptualised as a three-fold dimension, namely positions on first the principle, second the practice, and third the future of EU cooperation. From this, three types of Euroscepticism are derived. First, the ‘uncompromising’ type comprising parties wholeheartedly against all abovementioned dimensions; second, the ‘conditional’ type containing parties not against the principle of EU cooperation but against its practice and its future; and third, the ‘compromising’ type including parties accepting both the principle and the practice of EU cooperation but oppose further cooperation. In accounting for this diversity the paper argues that the extreme right displays three diferent patterns of nationalism in its political discourse, which lead to these three different types of attitudes towards the EU. The importance of this paper lies in first, demonstrating policy divergence within an otherwise similar party family; and second, explaining how different patterns of nationalism cause this divergent stance.

This paper will begin by presenting an overview of modern nationhood in New Zealand, including its founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), and the different interpretations observed by the State and Māori. Second, the paper will discuss the notion of civic inclusiveness and how it is deployed by the State through political concepts of individualism, citizen-equality and ideological slogans of ‘we are one people’. Third, this paper will discuss the notion of ethnic chieftainship advanced by Māori. In providing an indigenous trajectory of nation formation it will describe the narrative of Māori nationhood (chieftainship), namely their historical tribal structure and the socio-politics of genealogy, and outline the current debates over the establishment of a national Māori body politic. It will also take note of the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how nationhood vis-à-vis self-determination has located Māori as non-State actors.
Overall, it will be argued that the States notion of civic inclusiveness perpetuates existing asymmetrical power-relations between ethnic groups in society, and in New Zealand, privileges the dominant Pakeha while systematically marginalising Māori. Drawing on the distinction between individual-liberalism and collective-liberalism articulated by Charles Taylor (with original material from an interview) it will be argued that notions of civic inclusiveness are neither neutral nor universal but are culturally particular. Yet, such a repositioning should not be necessarily problematic, but offer a point of departure for both the State and Māori to establish a more just and balanced conception of nationhood.
 

The Mexican Constitution, anchored in the definition of indigenous peoples given by ILO Convention 169, establishes specific rights for indigenous peoples; 12% (62 language groups) of the total population of 106 million. The paper analyses the way law has helped to shape how Mexicans view their nationality and ethnicity, as well as the contributions and setbacks made by legal discourse and public policies in the effective enjoyment of rights by indigenous persons. Mexico shares some aspects of the ‘Western’ concept of nationalism as a means of political unity, and some of the ‘Eastern’ conception based more on ethnic lines. The first was used in Mexico’s independence in 1821, reflected in its first Constitution and in legal and political documents today; while the second was enhanced by recent indigenous demands for recognition of cultural and linguistic differences. Because of its rich cultural and ethnic diversity Mexico is called ‘the extreme West’. The paper examines the current situation of autonomy in indigenous communities, its implications for the people in those communities – especially women and minorities, the interrelation among indigenous people and the rest of the population, and the links between the various indigenous legal systems and the national legal system. It explores the effectiveness of multiculturalist policies to peacefully accommodate ethnic and cultural differences, and it compares the multiculturalist view with classic liberalism, egalitarian liberalism, and value pluralism. This paper will propose possible solutions to respond to the challenge of coexisting views, among them conceptions of justice, in a pluriculturalist Nation.

During the last decade, along with the decline of state-sponsored, assimilationist policies, indigenous identities in Bolivia have emerged as a political force, permeating other official and subaltern spheres and inspiring indigenous groups to frame their political and territorial claims in terms of ethnic sovereignties at a national level. This phenomenon has challenged the liberal model of the Bolivian state, its politics of identity, and the very foundations of the ongoing nation-building process. As such, it has also generated radical reactions from the hegemonic Creole and mestizo sectors of society. Reactions that, at best, continue to advocate for the homogenisation of the nation-state through the ‘integration’ of the indigenous society and, at worst, promote attitudes of fascist-racist characteristics. The election of an indigenous man as the Bolivian national president in 2005 has radically intensified expectations of structural reform and fears of reversed racism, thus, polarising society even further. This paper explores the structural contradictions between ethnic and national identities in Bolivia that lie behind this process of apparent mutual exclusion, or mutual ‘othering’. By looking at indigenous communities in the north of Potosí, an overwhelmingly indigenous area in the Bolivian Andes, the paper contests the notion that political difference in Bolivia stems from opposing ethnic ideals of what the nation should look like, and suggests that an analysis on competing nationalisms and national reforms in this context, must depart from definitions of the state’s nation, and consider how diverse and competing notions of the State itself coexist in the Bolivian rural indigenous margins.

This paper begins with a brief discussion of the lecture of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, on Islam in English Law, and the alarmingly ill-informed way in which it has been received. I shall briefly argue that contemporary European Muslims appear to receive the treatment reserved to Jews in the interwar period, and thus contemporary European Islamophobia is a variant of European anti-Semitism. The Archbishop of Canterbury argues that civic secular nationalism asserts that common citizenship requires from individual citizens only to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state, and all other commitments belong to the realm of the private. This, Dr. Williams argues, is an unsatisfactory account of political life, for social, and indeed state identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of loyalties and modalities of belonging. In this vein, I shall further argue that the distinction between ‘civic’ vs. ‘ethnic’ nationalism cannot be sustained because most civic nationalisms universalise secular mores derived from a particular (ethnic) culture which becomes coercive by rendering invisible its cultural origins under the hijab of universalism. Militant secular ‘civic’ nationalism could be as oppressive as its inverted image, ethnically based religious fundamentalist nationalism. Multicultural Nationalism in contrast, attempts to deconstruct the project of the nation state by suggesting a model for a multi-nation state that allows for differential democratic representation of its constituent religious and ethnic communities. This project aims to secure the institutional recognition of ethnic diversity and the recognition of democratic collective rights and of supplementary multicultural jurisdictions of its minority communities.

The idea of acknowledging or even protecting minority groups certainly is quite novel a phenomenon in the political debates in France and Germany. After a few decades of active mobilization and political visibility of immigrant minorities, France for the first time moved towards implementing official anti-discrimination measures in 1998/1999. Despite the assimilationist strategies of the state, immigrants in France remained quite visibly immigrants instead of turning into Frenchmen. They marched for their equality in spite of their difference, demanding their ‘droit à la difference’ and the acceptance of hyphenated identities by the state. Germany, with the beginning of the 21st century finally realized that it was – and had been for many years – a country of immigration. Along with that realization went the implementation of a new citizenship law, which, for the first time since the codification of a common German citizenship law in 1913, acknowledged the principle of Jus Soli.1 These important developments are slowly paving the way for an equally important question: What role will immigrants play as new, legitimate members of German society? Approaches toward implementing policies of multiculturalism have been half-hearted at best in both countries. Though France has at least rhetorically moved beyond the assimilationist approach, both France and Germany have so far coped poorly with acknowledging difference. Difference, is not only not recognized but (in the case of Germany) blatantly discouraged. This paper will explore the barriers as well as possible avenues toward a state-directed multiculturalism in France and Germany.

The distinction between civic and ethnic nationhood and citizenship was already established several decades ago, and it continues to dominate the study of citizenship, nationalism and identity. In recent years, various authors have questioned the dichotomous character of these concepts. In this article, we investigate the empirical validity of this dichotomy, based on analysis of survey data from 13 OECD countries in the 1995 (n = 16,644) and the 2003 (n = 14,846) waves of the ISSP survey. The analysis demonstrates that this dichotomous structure indeed can be detected by means of confirmatory factor analysis. We can also observe, however, that both concepts can be defined in a negative manner: for the ethnic concept of citizenship, obeying the laws of the country clearly is not a sufficient condition; while for the civic concept there is no need to be born in the country. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, including the criterion of ancestry does not lead to a stable dichotomy. Moreover, further analysis reveals that the measurement of both concepts is not equivalent cross-culturally, so that findings on civic and ethnic citizenship should not be directly compared across societies.
 

External forces (such as Hitler’s expansive politics) are usually seen as a main source of the break-up of Czechoslovakia before the WWII. The paper, however, argues that no less significant a factor was the tense internal relationship between the Czechoslovak nation and national minorities (mainly German and Hungarian). One of the rare Czech political thinkers who saw the fragility of Czechoslovakia was Emanuel Radl. Radl’s critique of the inconsistent founding conception of the Czechoslovak state based on so-called ‘Czechoslovakism’ is the focus of the paper. The author firstly examines Radl’s two concepts of nation (political and organic) and then she proceeds to his two concepts of nationality (tribal/racial-cultural and ideological/political). Finally, she introduces Radl’s proposal of contractual state and a volitional model of nationality, a theory applied in the Czechoslovak practice. In each case, Radl’s ideas are contrasted with actual situation and documents such as the Czechoslovak constitution, so-called ‘language law’, and census results. The author criticizes certain limitedness and incongruousness of Radl’s theoretical suggestions. Nevertheless, she appreciates Radl’s endeavour to include German national minority into the Czechoslovak political system so that Czech Germans can become constitutive parts of Czechoslovakia. Moreover, the author finds Radl’s vision that the solution of the relation between Czechs and Germans would affect the development of the entire Central European region rather prescient.

The overall focus of the present paper is to investigate the challenges of the politics of multiculturalism in new European states, particularly the clash of the official paradigm of multiculturalism and prevalence of the traditional national framework of thinking. I am going to discuss the banal nationalism in the Czech Republic, which is typically considered one of the most successful democratic transitions among other CEE countries. Despite the fact that it is quite a homogeneous national state, there are still national minorities, increasing number of immigrants and guest workers from Eastern Europe. All that contributes to the growth of tensions within the society. Based on the analysis of several Czech mass media and forum discussions, interviews, speeches and statements of the Czech officials, as well as of the official polls and already existing studies on the similar subject, I am going to look at the Czech popular perception of German national minorities and the Germans and attitudes towards them. There is a number of acknowledged and widely discussed problems (such as the Czech Roma issue), however, as even a mere talk with some Czechs shows, the object of banal nationalism is much wider, and the acceptance of policy of multiculturalism is much more problematic. The explanation to this, which I propose, is on the one hand, the incomplete process of the formation of national identity or its (trans)formation under new conditions and on the other the fact that national framework of thought and discussion is deeply rooted in the minds of intellectuals, politicians, and average people.

Romani communities offer a challenge to theorists of minority rights because they do not fully fit models of national minorities, immigrant communities or transnational minorities. Further problems ensue from the reluctance of many Roma to register their ethnicity officially. The actual size of Romani communities across Europe is unknown and as a result, it is difficult to measure their needs or to assess the effectiveness of programmes designed to support socially excluded Roma. The Czech government has recognised the need for support specifically targeting ethnic minorities but given the lack of data about Romani communities, such programmes are difficult to implement. Therefore, the state has opted for a combination of programmes, some targeting Roma specifically and others tackling social exclusion more generally. However, my research has revealed problems which emerge when local authorities choose not to follow official guidelines and develop their own interpretations of how policy should be implemented.

Based on the case study of a city in the Czech Republic, this paper first outlines the debates about whether specific programmes or general anti-exclusion policies are more effective in terms of supporting Romani integration. It then discusses the problems which arise when policies are implemented at the local level.

Multinational states often propagate a conception of individual identity which is inclusive of the members of all its national or ethnic groups. Since such a conception of is usually superimposed on existing national identities, one can call it 'supranational' identity. Such identities are often embedded in particular political – supranational – ideologies which aim to legitimize the state and mobilize the multinational population in its support. In its Program of 1958 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia articulated a supranational ideology which promoted a non-ethnic Yugoslav identity. In the late 1 960s, however, the communist leadership denounced Yugoslavism as a pernicious nationalist (that is, ethnic) ideology and denied Yugoslavs the status of a recognized national group in Yugoslavia. The younger generation of communist leaders shared no common national or supranational identity and saw in the Yugoslav identity a potential obstacle to the mobilization of their national constituencies. The latter identity flourished outside the confines of any political ideology: in 1981, 1.2 million citizens (out of the population of around 20 million), to the dismay of the communist leaders and ideologues, declared themselves to be Yugoslavs. This suggests that Yugoslavism, as a non-ethnic identity, had a potential to develop into a civic identity resistant to communist or nationalist manipulation. As nationalist mobilization and conflict grew apace in the 1980s, Yugoslavism simply had no chance to emerge as a civic alternative to the exclusive national identities.