This summer the Israeli government adopted a new basic law, called the nation state law, which states that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. The aim of this thesis is to study the construction of nationalism in the recently adopted nation state law and in the commentary of Amos Oz and David Grossman on the law and the Israel Palestine conflict. The expressions of nationalism and the way religion is used to legitimize nationalism is studied in order to contribute to the knowledge about how nationalism can be construed. Religious education teachers need to know how religion can be used to construct nationalist ideas, as nationalism seems to have a core role in modern societies. To be knowledgeable about the underlying conceptions that construct othering is especially important for teachers who will meet pupils that consider themselves members of nations.   A qualitative content analysis is carried out in order to explore the expressions of nationalism. The analysis is descriptive, with the aim to categorize the phenomenon. The theoretical framework is based on a synthesis between Andersons and Gellners theories on nationalism. Andersons definition of the nation and Gellners definition of nationalism is used to create a coherent analytical tool. The analytical tool constitutes the foundation of the thesis, in accordance with the study’s deductive approach. Two definitions of religion as well as Antonio Gramscis theory on Cultural Hegemony is used as a complement in order to illustrate the character of nationalism. The conclusion of the thesis is that ideas about “the nation” and the construction of nationalism in interaction with religion – in this case Judaism – is given a hegemonic, social and symbolic function and expression. Nationalist conceptions are presupposed in a way which demonstrate that they are ideas that do not need to be discussed or questioned. The existence of the nation is given, it’s seen as a natural prerequisite for a good society.

This thesis presents a specific case study of the developing relationship between religious pluralism and national identity in Scotland by focusing on a particular high-profile group - Interfaith Scotland (IFS) - the country's national interfaith body, which has received little scholarly attention. This thesis argues that IFS represents religious pluralism as interrelated with contemporary Scottish national identity through its organisation and its literature: representing Scotland as one nation of many faiths. This discourse of unity in diversity presents a structured and limited religious pluralism based on the world religions paradigm (WRP), and is compatible with a civic-cultural form of nationalism. The WRP involves a model of religion which focuses on broad global traditions such as Christianity, Hinduism and Islam, over specific local communities and distinct denominations. These global traditions are defined by coherent, intellectual and ethical dimensions represented as closely equivalent. This paradigm is evident from the governing structures within IFS itself which represents individual religious bodies according to the world tradition into which they can be classified and affords a secondary, non-governing status to those who are not recognised as part of one of these traditions. Their world religions approach is also evident from representations of 'religions' in their literature, which emphasise broader intellectual and ethical traditions even in relation to communities outside the major traditions they recognise and the 'Non-religious' Humanist movement. This demonstrates their reliance on these categories in depicting Scotland and its population. The chapters of this thesis will explore how IFS depicts the Scottish nation and its population through the category of 'religion': the Christian majority, religious minority groups and the Non-religious. It also examines how IFS draws on civic and cultural resources to construct a common Scottish national identity compatible with their structured and limited pluralism. This civic-cultural nationalism is often banal or implicit, reinforcing the conception of interfaith relations taking place within a Scottish national framework through innocuous references to Scotland as a bounded society and the use of common cultural symbols of Scottishness to represent the 'unity' encasing that religious diversity. This can be classified as a form of nationalism because it represents the overarching secular national political framework of Scotland as supremely authoritative, as the legitimate basis for the political representation of the population rather than any specific religious identities. IFS' nationalism was especially evident during the lead up to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence during which they consistently affirmed the right of the Scottish population to national self-determination without endorsing either position. The key themes of IFS' expressions of nationalism and the world religions paradigm are related. The conception of religions as of global importance as intellectual and ethical traditions rather than specific political movements at the local level means that religious identifications do not conflict with the territorially limited authority of the nation. Through these discourses 'religious' and 'national' identities are represented as compatible and non-competitive. This thesis relates to the wider comparative study of the changing relationship between religion, secularism and nationalism in the contemporary world. It makes a contribution to the critical social scientific study of interfaith groups and the role they play in governance, processes of national integration, the reinforcement of national identity in civil society, and the construction of religious identities. It provides evidence that the relationship between nationalism and religion is not always either wholly separated or related to religious exclusivism as with certain forms of religious-nationalism, but that religious pluralism can also be related to forms of nationalism despite assumptions of their incompatibility.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study seeks to uncover the non-coercive, intricate and insidious ways which have generated both the 'willing' acceptance of and resistance to the rule of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe. I consider how popular culture is a site that produces complex and persuasive meanings and enactments of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Zimbabwe and focus on 'agency,' 'subversion' and their interconnectedness or blurring. The study argues that understanding nationalism's impact in Zimbabwe necessitates an analysis of the complex ways in which dominant articulations of nationalism are both imbibed and contested, with its contestation often demonstrating the tremendous power of covert forms of resistance. The focus on the politics of popular culture in Zimbabwe called for eclectic and critical engagements with different social constructionist traditions, including postcolonial feminism, aspects of the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. My eclectic borrowing is aimed at enlisting theory to analyse ways in which co-optation, subversion and compromise often coexist in the meanings generated by various popular and public culture forms. These include revered national figures and symbols, sacrosanct dead bodies and retrievals, slogans and campaign material, sport, public speeches, the mass media and music. The study therefore explores political sites and responses that existing disciplinary studies, especially politics and history, tend to side-line. A central thesis of the study is that Zimbabwe, in dominant articulations of the nation, is often constituted in a discourse of anti-colonial war, and its present and future are imagined as a defence of what has already been gained from previous wars in the form of "chimurenga." I argue that formal sites of political contestation often reinforce forms of patriarchal, heterosexist, ethnic, neo-imperial and class authoritarianism often associated only with the ZANU PF as the overtly autocratic ruling party. In turning to diverse forms of popular culture and their reception, I identify and analyze sites and texts that, rather than constituting mere entertainment or reflecting organized and party political struggles, testify to the complexity and intensity of current forms of domination and resistance in the country. Contrary to the view that Zimbabwe has been witnessing a steady paralysis of popular protest, the study argues that slogans, satire, jokes, metaphor, music and general performance arts by the ordinary people are spaces on which "even the highly spectacular deployment of gender and sexuality to naturalize a nationalism informed by the 'efficacy' of a phallocentric power 'cult' is full of contestations and ruptures."

Cette étude se concentre sur la construction de musées en Turquie sous le parti de la Justice et Développement (AKP). Celle-ci se développe à partir d'un ensemble d'études existantes qui prouvent un changement dans la politique culturelle du AKP qui, guidé par la devise Yeni Türkiye (Nouvelle Turquie) vise à créer une différence entre un avant et un après AKP. La nouvelle Turquie s'appuie sur une nouvelle idéologie nationale : le Nationalisme Musulman Turc (White 2009), qui met l'accent sur l'héritage ottoman, turc et islamique de la Turquie plutôt que sur d'autres patrimoines culturels également importants tels que le grec, le romain, le byzantin et le plus récent passé de la Turquie républicaine tourné vers l'ouest. En fonctionnant comme des vitrines qui représentent l'idéologie nationale du parti au pouvoir, les nouveaux musées parrainés par l'État reflètent le rêve de l'AKP: une nouvelle Turquie, technologique, capitaliste tout en restant nationaliste et islamiste. J'ai ainsi examiné trois de ces nouveaux musées et j'ai étudié les liens entre l'État, qui sous la direction de l'AKP favorise cette idéologie nationale, et les musées qui exposent un récit national musulman turc. En développant un cadre théorique sociologique-politique original basé sur la Théorie des champs de Pierre Bourdieu, je cadre les musées dans des champs dominés par les relations de pouvoir. Je soutiens que le champ du musée est inextricablement lié à d'autres champs tels que le champ de la production culturelle, de l'économie, de l'éducation ainsi que le champ politique. De plus, comme dans tous les autres champs, le champ du musée existe dans le champ national. Je dirais que les musées et les personnes travaillant dans / pour les musées font parties intégrantes des États-nations qui les gouvernent à travers les pouvoirs législatif, judiciaire et exécutif. Ils les financent, réglementent leurs fonctions et appliquent ces règlements. En s'appuyant sur la littérature récente et moins récente, sur le musée (Crooke 2016 et 2007; Newmann et Mclean 2006; Macdonald 2003; Fyfe 2011), j'ai tenté de fournir d'autres preuves que l'analyse du nationalisme (l'idéologie qui caractérise notre monde des États-nations) au sein du musée, révèle des aspects clés du musée. Les musées et les États qui embrassent le nationalisme semblent être strictement liés, de sorte que tous les musées sont soumis au symbolisme national, et des changements dans un champ, comme celui du politique par exemple, peut se répercuter sur le domaine du musée. Le nationalisme sous sa forme variée, incarné par les agents sociaux, objectivé dans les objets du musée ayant une signification nationale, ou institutionnalisé dans les bâtiments de musées à symboles nationaux, semblait être la puissance qui absorbe entièrement le musée. Sur la base de mes données, je proposerai une conclusion hétérodoxe selon laquelle tous les musées sont des musées nationaux. Je ne veux pas insinuer que tous les musées racontent et enseignent l'histoire nationale, mais que tous les musées fonctionnent comme des symboles de l'État-nation et certains créent même des symboles nationaux sous la forme de récits nationaux, de mythes, de héros, de discours des grands hommes, de drapeaux et de l'histoire nationale. En se concentrant sur les musées récemment construits en Turquie, j'expliquerai les récits nationaux au sein des musées en termes de ressources et d'approvisionnement, où le musée fonctionne comme une ressource et une multitude de discours nationaux toujours positifs, d'identité nationale et d'histoire nationale fabriqués par la classe dirigeante turque (ou "champ de pouvoir" selon Bourdieu) pour les Turcs. Par conséquent, le musée est considéré ici comme un engrenage d'un système d'identité, alors que le nationalisme, en particulier le Nationalisme Musulman Turc, est l'idéologie (ou logique doxique comme Bourdieu l'appelle) derrière cela. / This study focuses on recently build museums in Turkey under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It develops from a body of existing studies providing evidence about a change in cultural policy carried out by the AKP that, guided by the motto Yeni Türkiye (New Turkey) aims to set a divide between pre-AKP and post-AKP era. The Yeni Türkiye builds on a new national ideology, Turkish Muslim nationalism, which emphasizes the Ottoman, Turkish, and Islamic heritage of Turkey rather than other likewise important heritages, such as the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and the more recent, Western-oriented past of the Republic. By functioning as performative cabinets exhibiting the national ideology of the ruling party, new state-sponsored museums mirror the AKP’s dream of a new Turkey: technological, capitalist, and yet nationalist and Islamist. I looked into three of these new museums and investigated the links between the state which ruled by the AKP advertises this national ideology and museums exhibiting Turkish Muslim national narrative. By developing an original sociological-political theoretical framework based on Bourdieu’s theory of field, I frame museums in fields of changing power relations. I argue that the museum field is inextricably linked to other fields such as the field of cultural production, the field of economy, the field of education, and the political field. In addition, as with any other field, the museum field also exists within the broader national field. I will argue that museums, and people working in/for museums, exist as integrated into nation-states through the legislative, judicial, and executive powers that rule them, fund them, regulate their functions and enforce said regulations. By drawing upon the works of museum studies scholars (Crooke 2016 and 2007; Newmann and Mclean 2006; Macdonald 2003; Fyfe 2011), I attempted to provide further evidence that the analysis of nationalism (as the ideology that characterizes our world of nation-states) within the museum reveals key aspects of the museum’s significance. Museums and states embracing nationalism seem to be strictly connected, so much so that all museums are subject to national symbolism, and changes in one field, e.g. in the political field, carry potential changes in the museum field. . Nationalism in its variety of forms, embodied in state (and non-state) social agents, objectified in museum artefacts which were given national significance, or institutionalized in museum buildings with national symbols, was the force which absorbed the museum. On the basis of my data, I will suggest the rather heterodox conclusion that all museums are national museums. Not in the sense that all museums display national history but in the sense that, as I will point out, all museums function as symbols of the nation-state and some even create national symbols in the form of national narratives, myths, heroes, discourses of the big men, flags and national history. By focusing on recently built museums in Turkey, I will explain national narratives within museums in terms of resources and supply, where the museum functions as a resource and host of ever-positive national discourses, national identity, and national history manufactured by and within the Turkish ruling class (or field of power in Bourdieu’s terminology) to be supplied to the masses. Hence, the museum is seen here as a gear of a system of identity-making, whereas nationalism, particularly Turkish Muslim nationalism is the ideology (or doxic logic as Bourdieu called it) behind it.

This dissertation traces the emergence of a State-sponsored revolutionary culture in Mexico during the late 1920s and early 1930s through an eminently literary corpus of works. The analysis opens by highlighting the role played by literature in the formation of a politically and culturally homogeneous national identity in the years that followed the Revolution. An identity that was politically construed by the nationalist discourse of the Revolution, socially imagined as rural and peasant, and culturally characterized by machismo, secularism, and political unawareness. In this way, the dissertation argues that the consolidation of a national identity and political hegemony in those terms entailed the removal of marginal subjectivities and spaces: like the urban space of Mexico City and its inhabitants, the villista revolutionaries, the Cristero rebels and communist militants from the body politic because those subjectivities problematized the horizontality of Mexican identity, a process I call the Excisions from the National. In order to problematize these Excisions, I examine the representation of some of those marginal subjectivities and antagonistic identitary positions namely those found in key works of urban revolutionary, Villista, Cristero, and communist literatures. The dissertation traces how these subjectivities challenged revolutionary culture’s narrative of identity and of the nation itself and them moves on to construe what I call the Sutures of the National, a term I have coined to designate the manner in which these marginal subjectivities were later reincorporated to the body politic of the nation in a neutralized way once the revolutionary regime had stabilized during the 1940s and 50s. My analysis concludes by examining how the process of re-incorporating these subjectivities into the symbolic order of national identity led to certain unintended paradoxical binarisms of Mexican culture.

No description available.

Forming an identity or a national identity is a long process every country in the world has gone through. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate how the Finnish identity has been portrayed in media between the years 1836-1893. The aim is to uncover how the Finnish epic, the Kalevala has influenced the creation of a Finnish national identity, which will be done through discourse analysis of five newspaper articles published over a timespan of about 60 years. The results showed that there were some changes over time in how the Finnish are portrayed in relation to the Kalevala. However, this difference was not applicable to all the studied categories. In conclusion, identity is something individual and through the individuality a common identity could be formed in Finland in the 1800s.

Sub-state nationalist parties mobilised and saw an increase in electoral support in the 1960s and 1970s. A heterogeneous group of parties, they are united by their claims upon the state in favour of self-government. However, sub-state nationalist parties advance a variety of goals, ranging from more moderate forms of recognition and cultural or political autonomy, to more radical restructuring of the state along federal lines, to even more radical demands for political independence. The language, content, and arguments in favour of these goals varies - both between parties and within individual parties - over time. As a result, we know less than we should about self-government goals themselves. This research asks two core questions. Firstly, what do sub-state nationalist parties want? And more importantly, operating from the assumption that sub-state nationalist parties are strategic actors, how do their goals reflect strategic considerations, understanding of the contexts in which they are expressed, and their historical positions? By comparing three cases, a third question can be explored, assessing the ways in which variation in the empirical contexts in which these goals are articulated may manifest in variation in the framing of self-government goals. In this research, I argue the self-government goal presented by a given sub-state nationalist party can be considered a reflection of the 'art of the possible', a pragmatic articulation of what might be achieved under a system of constraints rather than the single-minded pursuit of self-government, regardless of its costs and consequences. In order to fully capture the complexity of self-government goals and the contexts in which they are expressed, three case studies, in two territorial contexts, are studied in depth. The first is the Scottish National Party, which seeks political independence for Scotland. The other two are parties which emerged in Flanders, the Volksunie, which existed between 1954 and 2001, and its successor, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie. These cases represent some of the most successful sub-state nationalist parties, both in electoral terms, particularly in recent years, and arguably in making progress towards their self-government goals.

No description available.

This is a comparative analysis of two German-speaking Mennonite colonies. One group of 1,800 migrants voluntarily left Russia for Canada in the 1870s and departed Canada for Paraguay’s Gran Chaco in 1927 to preserve their communal autonomy. Another group of 2,000 Mennonites remained in Russia until 1929, when Stalinist persecution forced them to flee as individual refugees through Germany to the Gran Chaco. Here, the colonies negotiated their relationships with each other and crafted different responses to German Nazis and American Mennonites who desired global German or Mennonite unity. Comparing the groups’ collective narratives—as voluntary migrants and refugees—reveals problems faced by individuals who do not fit into prescribed national or religious molds. This work engages global forces—such as nationalism and displacement—and universal conditions affecting mobile groups—including how they negotiate group identifications and perpetuate local cultures. It begins from the premise that group identifications are not immutable and objective but are tied to fluid, subjective narratives. This framework shapes three arguments: 1) Faith-based diasporas are some of the most tenacious carriers of national cultural features—such as languages and folkways—but they often maintain these features for their own ethnoreligious purposes. 2) Governments and aid agencies benefit from the existence of migrants and refugees by advancing mythologies that are inclusive or exclusive of these populations. 3) Mobile faith-based communities use national and religious concepts to interpret new environments but they formulate their collective narratives differently—on a spectrum from faithful disciples to exiled victims.