This thesis attends to the major question ‘how is Jewish identity created and maintained in contemporary Britain?’ To answer this question, I have done one year of ethnographic fieldwork in Britain, which included 121 interviews with Jewish people of various ages and across different religious as well as non-religious denominations. This thesis identifies four major elements informing the creation and perpetuation of Jewish identity: One, a sense of difference from the majority population creates and maintains the identity. Jews can perceive themselves to be different religiously, nationally, ethnically and/or culturally from white Christian British people. Two, trauma memory has an impact on the creation and sustenance of this identity. Vicarious group trauma, meaning trauma experienced by proxy of previous generations, can inform identity through its influence on everyday experiences. Three, community affiliation plays a role in creating and particularly reinforcing the identification. The Jewish community provides resources, social interaction and thus signalled attention, and regard; all of them respond to innate human needs that a person aims to have satisfied. Four, a group norm of continuity is important in the perpetuation of this identity within and across generations. This norm is created and sustained by its members through their focus on endogamy. Wanting to have a partner from one’s own group, have Jewish children and raise them in a Jewish lifestyle can, thereby, reinforce and maintain a sense of Jewishness (inter-) generationally. Without members marrying within the faith and having children that are raised with Judaism, it would be difficult to preserve Jewish identity in a country where the group does not constitute the majority. The thesis concludes that there are two reasons why Jews in diaspora have been able to sustain as a group and maintain their identity over time. Firstly, the multi-dimensionality of the Jewish group and respective affiliation platforms have allowed its members to create a multi-faceted meaning of being Jewish, and, secondly, continuous external challenges to the group’s security together with constant reminders of those challenges; both have prevented the group from assimilating into mainstream society.

This study examines the moral regulation of the Swedish-speaking Martha Organization in Finland during the 1930’s, from two aspects; the construction of the ideal female citizen and the mobilization of minority nationalistic identity. The ideal female citizen was supposed to develop traits such as work ethics, piety, compassion, motherly care and peacefulness. The ideal female citizen should also encourage temperance, thus the sobriety of men was viewed as a womanly responsibility. Due to mothers’ decisive impact on the moral health of the youth, the Martha Organization aimed at shaping the attitudes of the members. Women’s roles as mothers and housewives prepared them for citizenship, since women had the same duties in society as they had in the household. During the 1930’s Finland was marked by the pragmatic gender order of the agrarian society, even though the modern gender order of industrial society gradually grew in importance. The Martha Organization aimed at mobilizing minority nationalistic identity, as well as encouraging binational Finnish patriotism amongst its members. This survey analyses the mobilization of the Swedish-speaking minority nationalistic identity in general, as well as the particular minority nationalistic identity of Åland. These mobilization processes took place in relation to each other, accordingly they were similar in nature. The public sphere was understood as a continuation of the private one in the Martha ideology. Consequently, the love of the home and the fatherland were important values for both these minorities. The Swedish-speaking minorities shared the love of freedom, Western rationality and mother tongue, as well as the notion of being a national elite. The minority nationalistic identity of Åland resembled that of Swedish-speaking Finland. Even so, minority nationalism on Åland was built around a self-image of being an unique ethnicity, while underlining the close cultural connections to Sweden. Apart from the years around the implementation of Åland’s autonomous status in 1922, the minority nationalistic identity of Åland has been neglected in previous research. The Finnish 1930’s were marked by conflicts between the Finnish-speaking majority and the Swedish-speaking minority, clashes that never reached Åland. The language question was practical in nature — especially on Åland, where the population hardly spoke Finnish — but even so, it was framed in ideological terms. Thanks to the Martha ideology, gaps between the Finnish-speaking members and their Swedish-speaking counterparts could be bridged, as well as those between Åland and the rest of Swedish-speaking Finland.

Given the importance that entrepreneurship and start-up businesses operating in technology-intensive sectors (biotechnologies, life sciences, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, information & communication technologies, software, etc.) have come to play as part of the processes of economic development and jobs creation, the access of such entrepreneurs and businesses to appropriate levels of corporate finance has become a major focus of policymakers in recent decades. Yet, this gave way to a wide variety of policy models across nation-states and even within nation-states, as levels of government and market actors adapted to those new challenges by refining or transforming pre-existing policies and institutions as well as by crafting new policy tools to address specific needs or interests. This thesis investigates the roots of such policy diversity within countries, offering in-depth accounts of the evolution of Quebec’s and Scotland’s policy strategies in the sector of development capital and sub-sector of venture capital since 1990. As compared to other regions’ or provinces’ in the United Kingdom (such as South East England) or Canada (such as Ontario), Quebec and Scottish regional venture capital ecosystems rely on a high degree of state intervention, either direct (through public investment funds) or indirect (through government-backed, hybrid or tax-advantaged funds). Hence the description of these two regions as “sponsor states,” heavily involved in the strategic backing of innovative businesses. Whereas most of the literature on venture capital has focused on economic variables to explain variations in such public sector involvement across polities however, this thesis seeks to explain policy divergence in Quebec and Scotland through a political and ideological lens. Its main argument is that the development of the venture capital ecosystems in these regions was underpinned by Québécois and Scottish nationalisms, which induced perceived imperatives and ideological preferences for policy autonomy, policy divergence, and state intervention. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis investigates the impacts of political ideas on economic policymaking. More specifically, it is a study into the effects of Québécois and Scottish nationalisms on regional policies in the sector of corporate finance, and subsector of venture capital. The question it was devised to answer is as follows: why is it that Quebec and Scotland developed particularly dynamic regional venture capital ecosystems, in which the state (through public investment funds) or state-backed investors (such as hybrid or tax-advantaged funds) play a leading role as compared with other Canadian or British regions? Through an in-depth process-tracing effort aimed at the uncovering of rationales underpinning major policy initiatives in this sector since 1990 and beyond, this thesis shows that minority nationalism contributed to the development of such ecosystems in key ways, notably by inducing perceived imperatives and preferences for policy autonomy, policy asymmetry, and state intervention.

L’Écosse est une vieille nation européenne. Autrefois indépendante, elle s’est unie à l’Angleterre et au Pays de Galles en 1707 au moyen d’un traité d’Union. Aux termes de ce traité, elle a conservé une Église propre (l’Église d’Écosse), ainsi que des systèmes éducatif et juridique distincts de ceux de l’Angleterre. En 1998, de larges transferts de pouvoirs lui ont permis de ré-ouvrir son Parlement, dissous au moment de l’Union, et de voter ses propres lois dans les domaines qui lui sont dévolus, comme la santé, l’éducation, l’environnement, les questions rurales. Cette dévolution de pouvoirs lui a également permis de maintenir et de renforcer sa présence au sein de l’Union européenne. En effet, l’Écosse, forte d’un ancien rayonnement européen au moyen-âge, et bénéficiant de fonds structurels de la Commission européenne afin de rattraper ses retards de développements, a, dès le milieu des années 1980, compris le bénéfice qu’elle pouvait tirer de la Communauté économique européenne puis de l’Union européenne. Parallèlement au processus de dévolution des pouvoirs du Parlement britannique vers le Parlement écossais, le parti national écossais, le Scottish National Party, a ancré son projet d’indépendance de l’Écosse dans le cadre rassurant d’un maintien au sein de l’Union européenne. Lors du référendum sur l’indépendance de 2014, la question de la place de l’Écosse en Europe s’est invitée dans la campagne de manière insistante. Dans le cadre des négociations sur le Brexit, la possibilité d’un accord distinct pour l’Écosse (qui a refusé la sortie de l’Union européenne) se pose, alors qu’un second référendum sur l’indépendance se profile. Pour l’Union européenne, la question des nationalismes minoritaires provoque des difficultés, puisqu'il lui faut satisfaire les aspirations à la représentation démocratique soulevées par ces mouvements, tout en évitant à la fois la fragmentation des États membres et l’afflux de petits États membres, qui risqueraient de bloquer la mécanique institutionnelle communautaire. / Scotland is an old European nation which remained independent until the 1707 Treaty of Union under which it was united to England and Wales. Under the terms of this treaty, it has preserved a Church of its own (the Church of Scotland), as well as distinct educational and legal systems. In 1998, large transfers of powers enabled it to re-open its Parliament, which had been dissolved at the time of the Union, and to vote its own laws in certain devolved areas, such as health, education, the environment and rural matters. This devolution of powers has also enabled Scotland to maintain and strengthen its presence in the European Union. As early as the mid-1980s, Scotland, whose influence in Europe dated back to the Middle Ages and which benefited from structural funds from the European Commission that were intended to make up for some of its under developed regions, realised the benefit it could reap from the European Economic Community and later on from the European Union. As powers were being devolved from the British Parliament to the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish National Party anchored its Scottish independence project within the comforting framework of a maintained membership of the European Union. During the run-up to the referendum on the independence of 2014, the question of the place of Scotland in Europe was often raised. In the context of the negotiations on Brexit, the possibility of a separate agreement for Scotland (which refused to leave the European Union) is being considered, while a second referendum on independence is looming. For the European Union, the issue of minority nationalisms is a source of difficulties, since it must satisfy the aspirations to democratic representation that are fostered by these movements while avoiding the breaking-up of the Member States and the influx of small Member States which may block the Community's institutional machinery.