During the latter part of the nineteenth century, European powers acquired large territorial areas in Africa. These territories ignored the boundaries of old African tribal kingdoms and the African modes of life, because the new countries were to serve as ‘common market’ areas supplying Europe with the wealth of the tropics. Nigeria is an example of the new superstructure which in operation fails to become a homogeneous entity after the assumption of political power by the Africans. There are problems of existing tribal kingdoms, of geographic distribution of ethnic groups and of traditional values. The British colonization of Nigeria also brought about regional distribution of Western ideas and differing attitudes among Nigerians. The problems, politically, sociologically and economically, are imbedded in present day Nigerian society. The British attempt to build Nigeria as an economic area has produced certain centripetal forces which are revealed in the growth of urbanization with resulting detribalization, means of communication with the concomitant social mobility, and the educational facilities with its new breed of Nigerians. The building of national consciousness and political stability are faced with centrifugal forces which are really problems of change introduced by the Europeans and accepted by the Africans. At the same time, the forces of change are challenged by traditional factors which still weigh on the Nigerian mind.

This thesis will explore how divisions within ethno-nationalist communities affect nationalist/separatist movements. While some scholars characterize ethno-nationalist groups as homogeneous social and political units, through the examination of the Basque community in Spain as a case study, I will show that there exists a considerable plurality of interests within ethno-nationalist movements. This study highlights intra-group divisions based on regionalism, immigration, and ideology and argues for a more nuanced approached to the study of ethno-nationalist groups. / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph.D)--Boston University. / This study is concerned with an investigation of hostile expression and Jewish group identification. The design of the study included the development and factor-analysis of a scale of Jewish identification. Specifically, the study dealt with four main issues: the relationship between Jewish group identification and the expression of hostility, a comparison of hostile expression in Jews and non-Jews, an investigation of the multi-dimensionality of Jewish group identification, and a study of the relationship between the derived factors of Jewish identification and the expression of hostility. [TRUNCATED]

This thesis explores the role of the phenomenon of Sevres Syndrome in the construction of the populist antagonistic relation of "us" versus "them" in Turkey. Not only does it look at its role in populist discourse, but it also highlights how it has been used throughout Turkish history by different hegemonic entities to exclude groups from the Turkish nation. It begins by briefly looking at the origins of Sevres Syndrome in the Treaty of Sevres and its manifestations throughout the history of the Turkish Republic as a fear of outside powers and their domestic collaborators intent on dividing and destroying the Turkish nation. It continues by providing an in-depth analysis of the populist discourse regarding the specific events of the July 2016 coup attempt and the April 2017 constitutional referendum to explore how Sevres Syndrome informs the development of the populist relation of "us" and "them". The thesis argues that the Sevres Syndrome fear narrative acts as a historic background narrative, which informs the discursive categorization of which groups belong to the populist "us" of the Turkish nation as opposed to the populist "them" of foreign powers and their domestic collaborators. / Master of Arts / The discursive construction of the populist "us" versus "them" relation has played a role in Turkish politics since the founding of the Turkish Republic. Following the Ottoman defeat in World War II, the Treaty of Sevres signed between Allied powers and representatives of the dying Ottoman government divided the Anatolian peninsula between various entities until the country was united under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the newly declared Turkish government in Ankara. However, the memory of national division under the Treaty of Sevres left a lasting impact on the country that has continued till today. Political discourse contains numerous references to vague outside powers who are supposedly aiming to divide and destroy the Turkish nation with the aid of domestic traitors. As argued by this thesis, this narrative has become the foundation for the discursive construction of the populist "us" versus "them" relation in which groups are associated as being either on the side of the Turkish nation or on the side of supposed dark forces plotting to nationally and territorially divide Turkey.

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Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony Smith, all have differing theories pertaining to the origins of nations. While Gellner suggests nations are products of industrial societies, Anderson argues they are rather the consequences of print capitalism and Smith proposes nations are a modern phenomenon, which are generally, built upon pre-modern ethnic identities. As enlightening as these theories are, they fail to explain how a nation could form amongst an illiterate and culturally dissimilar enslaved population, namely Haiti. In pursuant of a framework to explain how the Haitian nation was theoretically constructed, this thesis postulated three primary stimuli propelled the emergence of a nation amongst Saint Domingue’s Black populace. First, via the deconstruction and reconstruction of their African ethnic identity the culturally diverse population became more homogenous. Second, the grapevine communication system within the Black population parallels the phenomenon achieved through Anderson’s conception of “print capitalism”. Third, the institutions of colonization/slavery in Saint Domingue, in and of, themselves created a unique environment in which nationalism and thus nation formation could occur.

In this dissertation, I examine the political shift or reorientation of Arabs and Muslims from the supranational Ummah to the Western form of nation-state by attending to modern Arabic novel in the period between World War I and World War II. I explore the emergence of secularism in Arab national formation. One of my central arguments is that Arab nationalism is indeed a misleading phrase as it gives the impression of unity and coherence to a complex phenomenon that materialize in a number of trends as a form of struggle. In the first chapter, I defined the scope of my argument and the underlying structure and function of nationalism as a form of representation masked by nationalist ideologies. To investigate the reorientation of Arabs and Muslims from Ummah to adopting nation-state, I utilize Spivak's criticism of the system of representation along with Foucault's theorization of discourse. I argued along Edward Said that although the Western national discourse might have influenced the Arab nationalists, I do not believe they prevented them from consciously appropriating nationalism in a free creative way. I also explained that the Arab adoption of a secularist separatist nationalism was more an outcome than an effect in the dissolution of the supranational Ummah, since according to Hourani that "explicit Arab nationalism" did not emerge until the end of the nineteenth century. I wrote this dissertation with the hope that I could, to use Masood Raja's literary concepts, inundate the modern Arabic novel with "silenced knowledge" to not only prevent the untrained Western readers from reducing these works to a set of assumptions, prejudices, or preferences but also to shift the texts from being a point of arrival to a being a point departure.