The twentieth century has been called the century of the refugee. The sheer size, scope and persistence of refugee movements was a defining feature of that century because at no other time in history have people so regularly been forced to flee their homes in search of safety. The plight of refugees - both in their flight from home and in their search for a place of exile - is suggestive of the power of ideas about identity in deciding who belongs and who is displaced, stateless and alien. This study explores the significance of these ideas about identity through a case study of the arrival, settlement and experiences of two groups of Spanish and central European refugee children in Britain between 1937 and 1945. It begins by tracing a discourse on Englishness that betrays a contemporary concern for the future survival of the English nation and goes on to investigate how these concerns shaped negotiations for the arrival of refugee children. The principal aim of these negotiations, it is argued, was to ensure the protection of English national identity. The specific form of protection required varied according to the specific group of children under discussion and was based on stereotypical representations of the two groups of children. These representations of the children inscribed them with identities, measured them against the qualities of Englishness and justified the intervention of government in order to guarantee the continued health, peace and prosperity of England. For the Spanish/Basque children the government priority was to protect national health and the political stability of national life. For the Jewish children the aim of government policy was not to stimulate anti-Semitism by exceeding the national 'absorptive capacity'. The resulting carefully controlled settlement of the children, drawn up with various refugee agencies and covering housing, health and education, is analysed in detail throughout this study. In this study attention is also given to the role that the children's cultural and educational capital played in their adaptation to exile. It analyses how children were able to adapt to their experiences in exile by drawing on their own cultural and educational agency. In doing so it questions accounts of migration that focus on assimilation and explores instead the hybrid identities that were developed by refugee children who became adept at negotiating with the culture of Englishness.

This thesis explores the symmetry between theatres and museums, and investigates how a museum experience is similar to a theatrical event. Particularly, this project examines how the Canadian War Museum performs historical narrative through its use of three performative elements of a theatre production: space, objects and actor’s body. Firstly, this thesis analyses how creating a historical narrative is similar to fiction writing and play writing. It follows the argument of Hayden White and Michel de Certeau who recognize a historical narrative as a performative act. Accordingly, this thesis examines the First World War exhibit at the Canadian War Museum as a space of performance. I apply Lubomír Doležel’s literary theory on possible worlds, illustrating how a museum space can create unique characteristics of a possible world of fiction and of history. Secondly, this thesis employs Marie-Laure Ryan’s theory of narrativity to discuss how museum objects construct and perform their stories. I argue that the objects in museums are presented to the public in a state of museality similar to the condition of theatricality in a theatre performance. Lastly, this thesis investigates the performance of people by applying various theories of performance, such as Michael Kirby’s non-acting/acting continuum, Jiří Veltruský’s concept of the stage figure, and Freddie Rokem’s theories of actors as “hyper-historians.” In this way, this thesis explores concrete case studies of employee/visitor interactions and expands on how these communications transform the people within the walls of the museum into performers of historical narrative. Moreover, according to Antoine Prost, the museum as an institution is an educational and cultural authority. As a result, in all of these performative situations, the Canadian War Museum presents a historical narrative to its visitors with which it can help shape a sense of national identity, the events Canadians choose to commemorate and their personal and/or collective memories. In its interdisciplinary scope, this thesis calls upon theories from a variety of academic fields, such as performance studies, history and cultural studies, museology, and literary studies. Most importantly, however, this project offers a new perspective on the performative potentials of a national history museum.

This study examines the progress of young adult (YA) literature in the twenty-first century, as influenced by Web 2.0 social networking technology and sliding structural temporalities of age and maturity in these digital times. The context is Stephenie Meyer’s popular Twilight saga, a pioneering example of an author purposefully engaging with online social networking communities and there encouraging derivative creativity, including Twilight fan fiction. This successful integration of YA literature with Web 2.0 is considered by first appraising tensions between traditional theoretical notions of the genre (and its readers) and contemporary manifestations of the same. Second is an investigation of the genre’s evolving readership and textual practices using the Twilight series, focusing on literary activities of Digital Natives (young adults) in online social arenas. A concentration on the integration of national identity into Canadian Twilight fan fiction examines such evolving practices in reference to an American product (a threat of Americanization) being re-coded in a Canadian reader’s personal, public and online spaces.

Die Antrittsvorlesung untersucht die Beziehung zwischen Fußball und nationaler Identität in Schottland unter drei Gesichtspunkten. Zunächst wird aus soziologischer Perspektive danach gefragt, ob Fußball in Schottland die nationale Identität eher bestärkt (etwa durch die eigene schottische Nationalmannschaft) oder schwächt (durch die Stärkung innerschottischer Konfliktlinien – z.B. religiöser Konflikte in Celtic vs Rangers). Aus semiotischer Perspektive wird danach nach dem spezifischen Schottland-Bild gefragt, das der schottische Fußball vermittelt. Zuletzt werden aus historischer Perspektive die wesentlichen Wandlungstendenzen der identifizierten Wechselbeziehung nachgezeichnet. Die Vorlesung zeigt dabei am Beispiel des Fußballs in Schottland, dass die volle Bedeutung kultureller Praxis nur über einen pluralistischen Ansatz zu verstehen ist. / In his inaugural lecture Klaus Stolz investigates the relationship between football and national identity in Scotland. From a sociological perspective he asks whether football can be seen as strengthening or weakening a specific Scottish national identity. In a second part he asks, employing a semiotic approach, what kind of Scottishness is reflected, reproduced and projected in Scottish football. Finally, a historical perspective reveals the changes this complex interrelationship has undergone over time. Taken together the lecture uses Scottish football to exemplify that the meaning of cultural practice can only be fully grasped by a pluralistic approach of Social and Cultural Studies

This dissertation critically analyses New Zealand’s National Museum Te Papa Tongarewa. Since it opened in 1998, Te Papa, arguably the world’s foremost exponent of the ‘new museology’, has been popularly and critically supported for its innovations in the areas of popular accessibility, bicultural history, and Maori-government management arrangements. As the first in-depth study of Te Papa, I examine and problematise these claims to exceptionality. In producing an analysis that locates the museum within cultural, political, economic and museological contexts, I examine how the museum’s particular institutional program develop, and point to limitations in its policy and practice.

[Truncated abstract] Many historical accounts acknowledge the ‘reverberations’ of the Second World War that are still with the British today, whether in terms of Britain’s relationships with Europe, the Commonwealth, or America; its myths of consensus politics and national unity; or its conceptions of national character. The term ‘reverberations’, however, implies a disruptive, unsettling influence whereas today’s popular accounts and public debates regarding national identity, more often than not concerned with ‘Englishness’ as a category distinctive from ‘Britishness’, instead view the Second World War as a time when the nation knew what it was and had a clear understanding of the national values it embodied a time of stability and consensus. This thesis demonstrates that, in the postwar period, ‘British’ was not a homogeneous political category, ‘Britishness’ was not a uniformly adopted identity, and representations of the nation in popular cinema were not uncontested. British national identity in the postwar 1940s and 1950s was founded upon re-presentations of the war, and yet it was an identity transacted by class, gender, race and region. Understandings of national identity ‘mirrored’ by British films were influenced by the social and political context of their creation and reception, and were also a reflection of the cinema industry and its relationship to the state. Both ‘national cinema’ and ‘national identity’ are demonstrated to be fluctuating concepts dominant myths of the war were undermined and reinforced in response to the demands of the postwar present.

Sweden and Finland were one country for more than 600 years and there are many remaining links between the two countries. Throughout the period, but even today there are Swedish and Finnish populations on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia. When Russia conquered the Finnish part of the country in 1809, the state and its population were separated and the situations for the language groups changed and developed differently in Sweden and Finland. During the period studied in this thesis, 1866-1939, a new type of nation emerged in Europe, based on versions of nationalism constructed on ethnicity and language. Elementary schools played an important role in this nation building, spreading the mother language and the nation’s history. Elementary school textbooks were designed in relation to nation building, language and ethnic identification.  The thesis compares how Swedish and Finland-Swedish textbooks describe ethnicity and common history in Sweden and Finland in a period of nationalism. The main aim of the thesis is to compare how two textbooks-traditions describes their Swedish and Finnish populations and if, or how, the textbook history is to be seen as related to these descriptions. The textbooks examined were written for elementary schools from 1866-1939 to be used in the teaching of history and geography. The research question focuses on descriptions of Swedes and Finns and whether it is possible to see differences in the nation’s historiography. Patterns of reproduction or transformation are also analysed in the textbooks. In the study 105 textbooks were examined and the quotations from the textbooks connected to the aim are sorted and analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis.  The results show that Finns are rendered invisible in Swedish history textbooks. The geography textbooks describe Swedes as cultural and civilised with a peace-loving national character, while Finns are described as uncultured, peripheral and stubborn. This pattern is similar in Swedish and Finland-Swedish geography textbooks. At the beginning of the study it is a positive stubbornness, portrayed as brave and truthful to Sweden. Later on, the stubborn Finn is described negatively as old-fashioned and clinging to old habits. The Swede´s are described as more flexible through time; they have refined their national character and developed cultivation and democracy.  The historiography differs in what is described, and how. One example is that the Finns´ contribution to the common country is quite hard to find in the textbooks.  Swedish textbooks also seem to want to steal the honour from any Finnish success by placing Swedish ethnicity before Finnish national identity in cases where Swedish-speaking Finns have done great things. These types of descriptions are both reproduced and transformed as the actual relations between Finland and Sweden change and it is obvious that textbook history does not tell about the past but rather the story that the present wants to propagate.

The end of the Second World War found the city of Thessaloniki devastated by the loss of nearly its total Jewish population in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. A few survivals return to their city just to realize that their fortunes have been confiscated either by the local authorities or by their Christian neighbors. Some Jews decide to leave their former homeland and some others take the decision to remain and start their life from scratch. For the following decades, the Jewish history of the city is being carefully and on purpose hidden and the collective memory erases the traces of Jews. In this part of the story, the Jews by themselves kept a low public profile and remained silent, struggling to survive and rebuild their fortunes. It was in 2013, when a heterogeneous group of people decided to launch the Memory Walk “Never Again” for the 50.000 Jews of Thessaloniki who lost their lives in the Shoa (Holocaust). The Memory walk had to deal with the barriers of the strong nationalistic profile of the city and of its local population. However, the Memory walk came to be established as an institution which exists and grows until today. The current paper examines how local digital media approached the first Memory walk taking into consideration the Jewish history, the stereotypes regarding Jews, the antisemitism and the strong nationalist and deeply religious profile of the city. The first part describes the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki under the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of the Hellenization of the city in 1912, the national identity formation process and the mobilizing role of the Orthodox Church in the political and cultural homogenization. In the second part, digital media articles related to the first Memory Walk are being analyzed according to the CDA (critical discourse analysis) and a critical reflection on how media approached the Memory walk is finally presented. The analysis results will be finalized with the conclusions which derive from in person interviews with key stakeholders of the Memory Walk.

This paper investigates the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants. It examines three countries with different history of nation building and immigration: Finland, Great Britain and the USA. It is assumed that the differences in nation building and immigration across the countries have led to a different understanding of national identity and attitudes towards immigrants. The hypothesis is that the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants is not consistent but is dependent on how belonging to the nation is defined. This paper uses eight different aspects to measure the understanding of national identity. Attitudes towards immigrants are explored on six dimensions: criminality, economy, labor market, society, culture and the number of immigrants. The paper uses the theory of ethnic and civic types of national identity as a basis for the analysis. The ethnic definition of national identity is assumed to be related to anti-immigrant attitudes while a more civic definition may even lead to more open attitudes towards immigrants. Ordinal logistic regression has been used to estimate these relationships. The data used comes from the International Social Survey Programme’s ‘National Identity’ module from 2013. The results show clear differences between the countries both in the general attitudes towards immigrants and the prominence of anti-immigrant attitudes. In all countries ethnic definition of national identity is connected to more negative attitudes towards immigrants. However, there are differences in how individual aspects of identity correlate with different dimensions of attitudes towards immigrants. The number of people viewing the ethnic aspects of national identity as important is larger in Great Britain and anti-immigrant attitudes generally more widespread than in Finland and the USA. Additionally, the results from ordinal logistic regressions show that while the majority of aspects of national identity correlated with anti-immigrant attitudes, some of the civic aspects were connected to more positive attitudes. The results differed between the countries suggesting that the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants is not consistent and that it does depend on the definition of national identity.

Cette thèse porte sur la mise en scène des répertoires traditionnels ouïghours, dans sa forme musicale, chorégraphique et théâtrale. Depuis plusieurs décennies, les grands spectacles pluridisciplinaires mettent en scène l’héritage culturel ouïghour. Ces spectacles, créés par les artistes de la communauté eux-mêmes, visent cette même communauté. Ils passent par des processus de réarrangement, de canonisation et surtout de théâtralisation (à l’occidentale) pour rendre l’art traditionnel brut présentable sur une scène. Ces constats mènent à s’interroger sur la manière dont la société ouïghour contemporaine écoute ses musiques et regarde ses danses. Les questions du rôle de l’art et de la culture dans la vie quotidienne et de leur impact sur le sentiment d’appartenance nationale sont au cœur de ces réflexions. Ce travail s’intéresse à l’origine de la professionnalisation issue des mouvements réformistes dans les années 1920-30. La création de troupes artistiques a joué à la fois un rôle éducatif et divertissant, mais aussi de symbole de résistance. Au cours du siècle, ce mouvement artistique a traversé plusieurs périodes, parfois même douloureuses. Mais aujourd’hui, la scène artistique est productive et de plus en plus active. Cette thèse s'appuyant sur l’étude de sources, sur des enquêtes de terrain, l’analyse des discours et des spectacles, essaye de dégager les mécanismes de représentation de soi des artistes ouïghours, en tant que peuple et nation, aux yeux du monde extérieur. En affirmant l'identité ethnique, ces mises en scènes participent efficacement à la construction nationale, un combat qui touche toute la communauté ouïghour, et tente de dresser une image reconnue tant par ses membres qu’aux yeux du monde. / This thesis focuses on the staging of Uyghur traditional art in its musical, chorographical and theatrical forms. For decades, large multidisciplinary performances depicted the Uyghur cultural heritages. Distended to share with their own, these performances are created by the artists of the community. Rearrangement, canonization, dramatizing (in Western style) are used to transform traditional art, to be more attractive on stage. This created an outstanding “bricolage” of all aspect of one culture, to be put in one space and in a limited time. These findings lead to questioning the ways of listening to music and watching dance in contemporary Uighur society. Equally, this phenomenon questions the role of art and culture in their everyday life. Furthermore, the impact of all these transformation on the sense of national identity is at the heart of our reflections. This thesis is interested in the origin of artistic professionalization established by the reform movements in the 1920s-30s, which played a role of educating and at the same time entertaining the population/poeple, and became a symbole of resistence in the region. Today, the stage represents an important aspect of uyghur society. After many years of fieldwork, analysing the discourse and different kinds of professional performances this thesis identifies the self- representation mechanisms of Uyghurs, as one nation, one ethnic group, to the outside world. It relies on historical sources, years of fieldwork in different regions of Xinjiang, includes different kinds of professional or amateur performances, and interviews of the actors and experts's discourse.