This essay examines the debate that arose in connection to the sale of Carl Larsson’s monumental painting Midvinterblot in 1987. My main purpose is to examine which meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot and in which way the debate influenced the paintings significance as cultural heritage. I will therefore argue that the debate initiated a renegotitation of the paintings meaning as cultural heritage. In the debate the debaters emphasized the National Museum’s responsibility over cultural heritage, Midvinterblots aestethic, the paintings economic value and its national implications. The controversies concerning the painting shows that its meaning as cultural heritage was not constituted by the painting itself but by the meanings which the debaters placed upon it. The debate also sheds light on that there may be a wide variety of opinions concerning what it is that constitutes as cultural heritage. The meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot related, however, in a crucial way to each other. My examination of the debate also show how cultural heritage is created to fill a specific purpose, for example, to maintain cultural values, to attract tourists or as a resource in the formation of group identities.

Intentionen med detta arbete är att uppmärksamma citizenship education som blivit allt mer betydande när det gäller skapandet av nationell enighet/identitet i Kenya. Mer specifikt innebär det att arbetets syfte var att undersöka hur utvalda kenyanska gymnasielärare arbetar med att förmedla kunskapen om citizenship education för att skapa nationell identitet och vilket innehåll som presenteras. Bifrågan blir om lärarna därefter uppmanar eleverna på något sätt att praktisera den kunskap som förmedlas i skolan om demokratiska rättigheter i samhället. För att besvara undersökningens frågeställningar har jag granskat dokument, i form av litteratur och databaser samt genomfört intervjuer, vilka sedan har analyserats. Respondenterna i intervjuerna har fått svara på likvärdiga frågor och ämnesområden där sedan dessa har satts i kontrast mot varandra för att frambringa eventuella differenser. En av slutsatserna visade att citizenship educations betydelse är stor när det gäller att bilda en nationell identitet bland eleverna. Lärarnas arbetsmetoder bestod av enkel traditionell klassundervisning där eleverna inte alls praktiserade innehållet utan lärarna uppmanade sina elever att använda kunskapen som förmedlades utanför skolans värld, till exempel i olika föreningar. Innehållet kretsade kring att försöka förmedla kunskaper om vilka rättigheter och skyldigheter en kenyansk medborgare har, förespråka nationalism samt patriotism. Det visade sig att nationalism och patriotism var de viktigaste delarna när det gällde att bygga upp en nationell enighet/identitet i det demokratiska Kenya.   Nyckelord: citizenship education, nationell identitet, demokrati, Kenya, lärare, samhälle. / The intention of this work is to draw attention to citizenship education that has become increasingly important in the creation of national unity / identity in Kenya. More specifically, it means that the work was to examine how selected Kenyan secondary school teachers are working to convey the knowledge of citizenship education to create national identity and what content is presented. Second reflection is to see if the teachers in any way invite the students to practice the knowledge that they conveyed in school on democratic rights and practice these in the society. In order to answer the survey questions, I examined the documents in the form of literature and databases, and conducted interviews, which were then analyzed. Respondents in the interviews have been asked similar questions and issues where they have been contrasted with each other to bring forth any discrepancies / affinities. One of the findings showed that citizenship educations are of immense importance in terms of forming a national identity among students. Teachers' practices consisted of simple traditional classroom where students didn’t have the chance to practice the content. Instead the teachers asked their students to use knowledge that was transmitted outside the school context, for example, in various compounds. The content revolved around trying to convey the knowledge of rights and obligations that a Kenyan citizen is holding, and also advocating nationalism and patriotism. It turned out that nationalism and patriotism were the main fragments when it came to building a national unity / identity in democratic Kenya.   Keywords: citizenship education, national identity, democracy, Kenya, teachers, society.

This study argues that the American citizen’s choice to perform or not perform sacrificial national duties has been heavily mediated by sentimental representations of sacrifice in popular narratives. Through an analysis of the American captivity narrative from its origins in the seventeenth century up to its current state in the contemporary period, this project also asserts that race plays a central a role in defining the type of citizen who should perform the most traumatic and costly of national sacrifices. Based on the implied reader’s sentimental identification with the suffering, white female captive, clear racial and cultural demarcations are made between the captor and the captive. These strong demarcations are facilitated through the captive’s choice to perform sacrifices that will sustain her social and racial status as a privileged and authentic identity. Her successful defense of her cultural and racial purity from a racialized threat heightens her ethos, investing her marginalized identity with power and influence. This representation of the suffering, sacrificial female captive who gains legitimacy via her fulfillment of national duty offers a sentimental model of civic duty for American citizenry to emulate. In addition, the sentimental representation of sacrifice in the captivity narrative not only stabilizes an authentic national collective, but also suggests to marginalized persons that national sacrifice can supply legitimacy and privilege. In opposition to this narrative representation of legitimacy gained through sacrifice, Indigenous authors Mourning Dove and Leslie Marmon Silko depict the sentimental performance of sacrificial duty as a dangerous discourse that internally colonizes those who desire legitimacy in the United States. These Indigenous counter-narratives show clearly that the narrativization of sentimentality and sacrifice more often than not defines America and its authentically pure citizens as worth the price of death.

This essay examines the debate that arose in connection to the sale of Carl Larsson’s monumental painting Midvinterblot in 1987. My main purpose is to examine which meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot and in which way the debate influenced the paintings significance as cultural heritage. I will therefore argue that the debate initiated a renegotitation of the paintings meaning as cultural heritage. In the debate the debaters emphasized the National Museum’s responsibility over cultural heritage, Midvinterblots aestethic, the paintings economic value and its national implications. The controversies concerning the painting shows that its meaning as cultural heritage was not constituted by the painting itself but by the meanings which the debaters placed upon it. The debate also sheds light on that there may be a wide variety of opinions concerning what it is that constitutes as cultural heritage. The meanings the debaters ascribed Midvinterblot related, however, in a crucial way to each other. My examination of the debate also show how cultural heritage is created to fill a specific purpose, for example, to maintain cultural values, to attract tourists or as a resource in the formation of group identities. / Tintin Hodén

<p>This dissertation uses film to explore shifts in conceptions of race, cultural identity, and national belonging in Germany from the 1950s West Germany to contemporary reunified Germany. Through the analysis of several German productions featuring black characters in major narrative or symbolic roles, it identifies narrative and cinematic techniques used to thematize and problematize popular German conceptions of race and racism and to utilize race as a flexible symbolic resource in defining specific identity borders. The dominant discourse around the concept of race and its far-reaching implications has long been impeded by the lack of a critical German vocabulary. This gap in mainstream German language is in large part a consequence of the immutable association between &ldquo;race&rdquo; (in German, <italic>Rasse</italic>) as a term, and the pro-Aryan, anti-Semitic dogma of National Socialist ideology. As Germany struggles to address racism as a specific problem in the process of its ongoing project to rehabilitate national identity in a post-colonial era indelibly marked by the Second World War, the films discussed in this work &mdash; <italic>Toxi</italic> (R.A. Stemmle, 1952), <italic>Gottes zweite Garnitur</italic> (P. Verhoeven, 1967), <italic>Angst essen Seele auf</italic> (R.W. Fassbinder, 1974), <italic>Die Ehe der Maria Braun</italic> (R.W. Fassbinder, 1979), <italic>Alles wird gut</italic> (Maccarone, 1998) and <italic>Tal der Ahnungslosen</italic> (Okpako, 2003) &mdash; provide evidence of attempts to create counter-discourses within the space of this language gap.</p><p>Using approaches based primarily in critical race and film studies, the following work argues that these films' depictions of racism and racial conflict are often both confined by and add significant new dimension to definitions of Blackness and of conceptions of race and racism in the German context. These attempts at redefinition reveal the ongoing difficulties Germany has faced when confronting the social and ideological structures that are the legacy of its colonialist and National Socialist history. More importantly, however, the films help us to retrace and recover Germany's history of resistance to that legacy and expand the imaginative possibilities for creating coalitions capable of affecting social change.</p> / Dissertation

The experience and history shaped by various political groups in the modern history of Taiwan has left a significant mark in the hearts of the island¡¦s citizens. Ever since the 1990¡¦s, even the KMT, a party that had always regarded China ethnicity as the essence of localization, has gradually altered its insistence towards a less constrained attitude. As a result of this, the difference in national identity and the notion of culture emerges, leading Taiwan into an era of liberated ideas about national identity. Lee Teng Hiu was the first citizen elected president of Rublic of China, Taiwan. He was brought up during the Japanese occupation, but accepted the radical political changes brought by the national government after the war. During his political career, he had experienced colonial, autocratic, authoritative, and democratic government systems. The combination of Japanese, Chinese, and American education during his academic pursuit had opened up his unique perspective of the world. Profoundly influenced by Kitaro Nishita¡¦s topical philosophy, the samurai spirit of Nitobe Inazo, Christian doctrines, and Marxism and Hegel¡¦s logical thinking, Lee found the motivation to authenticate his principles. In fact, the personal biography of Lee himself, is pretty much a representation of the modern history of Taiwan. Because Lee is one of the most influential political elites in the history of Taiwan, his notion of the awareness of Taiwan and his comprehension and treatment of Mainland China also had a profound influence on the people of Taiwan in terms of their memories of history and collective identity. Thus, to understand how this collective identity had developed and transformed throughout the history of Taiwan, it is essential to scrutinize Lee¡¦s awareness of China, and the origin of his learning. This research seeks to discuss the formation of Lee¡¦s concept of identity, whether or not the key of this identity has evolved, and how that sense of identity has roamed. This will be done through the analysis of the Taiwanese social structure during Lee¡¦s upbringing, restoring the Taiwanese society during the Japanese occupation of the Taisho and Showa dynasties, where the origin of his historical perspective on Mainland China came from, and also his concepts and experiences during adulthood. Lastly, the same notion of identity of his contemporaries will be compared in order to comprehend the origin of influence of the identity of Taiwan in Lee. After all, this sense of identity of the political elites will conceptualize, theorize, and the electoral issues will continuously influence the public notion of national identity. Thus, the clarification of the elite¡¦s notion will allow the understanding the identity at a subterranean level.

This dissertation aims to investigate the shaping of a national literature within travel narratives written by William Bartram, Washington Irving, George Catlin, Thomas L. McKenney, Thomas Jefferson Farnham, and Francis Parkman. I focus attention on two issues: (1) National and racial identity, and (2) Territorial, cultural, and capitalist expansionism. National and racial identity construction is examined by clarifying how the narratives’ underlying voices—the National Symbolic and the Racial Symbolic—encourage the reading public to embrace the values vital in forging American collective identity. Identity invention is also seen in romantic representations of the American landscape and Native Americans. Between 1790 and 1850, the widespread trope of the Noble Savage and “distantiation” working in the Burkean aesthetics of the sublime were used as ideological frames for viewing “Others,” crucial in defining the American “self” by making the white Americans’ shift of association/dissociation with their primitivized Others possible. In order to analyze the narratives’ representation of expansionism as a national desire, this study investigates how romantic rhetoric and the appeal to morality (or the Law) were employed as decisive ideological foundations for rationalizing expansionism. Chapter I establishes the legitimacy of evaluating travel narratives as a significant part of America’s national literature. Chapter II reveals that democracy, masculine robustness, and the myth that Americans are a chosen people of progress are featured aspects in the portrayals of American pathfinders. Chapter III shows that the racial identity of “civilized whites” is forged in accordance with a miscegenation taboo informing negative portrayals of half-breeds and racial boundary crossing. Chapter IV illustrates that American freedom, simplicity, wholesome civilization, and youthfulness are presented as national characteristics through adapting the romantic tropes of the Noble Savage and the aesthetics of the sublime. Chapter V investigates the perverse mode of desiring in the iterative triangular relationship between romanticism, morality, and expansionism—the nation’s civilizing project par excellence. Chapter VI appraises the travel narratives’ roles in defining American selfhood and reflecting (and promoting) an imperialistic desire for expansion.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the concept of &lsquo / European identity&rsquo / within the context of the European Union (EU) in terms of constructivist approach. This thesis is based on the idea that European integration project needs a shared identity / it is essential means for the success and continuity of an &lsquo / ever closer Union&rsquo / . In this context, the aim of the thesis is to find out the answers to the questions of whether the EU has a European identity / whether a post-national European identity is viable and desirable / if so, which model of identity is more viable and desirable. Through adopting the constructivist approach the main argument of this thesis is that a European identity is as a process and project. The thesis further argues European identity as a &lsquo / thin&rsquo / identity is still in the process of formation and its uncertain content and &lsquo / future-oriented&rsquo / character is open to new codifications. Accordingly, the thesis contains three main parts / the viable and desirable post-national European identity / the EU&rsquo / s identity building strategies / the impact of European integration and the effects of identity-building strategies on both national and European identities since the 1950s to present.

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the oscillation between different identities and nationalist discourses during Hafez Al Assad era in Syria. Syrian Arab Republic has been facing with an identity crisis ever since its independence due to several dynamics. Throughout the decades, there emerged several different self-images of Syrians. The major clash subsists between loyalty to Arabness and Syrianness. In order to find out the perceptions of politically relevant elites concerning this clash and the roots of identity crisis, a fieldwork was conducted during the spring 2006 in Damascus. An exploration of the nationalist ideologies &ndash / Arab nationalism, Greater Syrian nationalism, Pan-Islamic nationalism and liberal nationalism &ndash / during the Hafez Al Assad&rsquo / s era in Syria gives us the clues of the identity crisis. Moreover, the insights of Syrian politically relevant intellectuals exemplify and explain the current debate on the identity crisis in Syria.

Present dissertation aims to achieve three related objectives. First, it is aimed at investigating the theoretical view of Reicher and Hopkins (2001) that some people called &lsquo / identity entrepreneurs&rsquo / actively try to re-define the limits and the contents of the social categories. For this purpose social political milieu of Northern Cyprus is chosen as it is intended to achieve the ingroup members&rsquo / support by portraying national/ethnic identity constructions of National Unity Party, which acknowledges supporting the independence of Turkish Republic of North Cyprus and the Republican Turkish Party, which acknowledges supporting the unification of Cyprus. In accordance with the first objective, the official documents of two parties were analyzed by Structural Analysis of Group Arguments (SAGA) technique. The results confirm that the definitions of Northern Cypriots, the Cyprus Problem, the solutions of the problem, and collective threats and interests were constructed by these parties in the service of their own political projects. Second study purposes to explore the identity constructions of lay Northern Cypriots in order to investigate the relationship between political and lay constructions. By the second objective 19 Turkish Cypriots who were not involved in politics actively (classified as anti and pro-integrationists iv based on their votes at the Referenda of Annan Plan) were interviewed. The results indicate that the lay Northern Cypriots narrated three identities when defining themselves as &lsquo / Turkish&rsquo / , &lsquo / Turkish Cypriots&rsquo / and &lsquo / Cypriots&rsquo / , each of which implicated different constructions of the Cyprus problem, its possible solutions, and perceptions of collective threats and interests. All the constructions were made in accordance with their identity definitions and their votes at the referenda. The analysis also shows that the political and lay constructions are convergent at a great extent. Lastly, present work aims at investigating the relationship between national/ethnic identities and collective projects, quantitatively. Regarding the third objective a questionnaire study was conducted in North Cyprus, with 206 participants. The data confirmed the model, which proposed that social identities (Turkish, Turkish Cypriots and Cypriots) influenced attitudes towards unification through perceived collective interests and threats.