This essay seeks, by applying to theories of nationalism, to explain the reasoning behind the Russian annexation of Crimea and to understand the ideology and nationalistic influences in Russian foreign policy in the case of the Ukraine crisis and the annexation of Crimea. The argumental analysis exemplifies the nationalistic tendencies of Vladimir Vladimirovitj Putin and the Russian foreign actions and attempts to specify a nationalistic motif in the case of Crimea and in Russian foreign policy. The study seeks to illustrate tendencies in Russian foreign policy and to show what can be expected of Russia in the near future. / Denna uppsats söker att förstå argumenten för den ryska annekteringen av Krim genom att två teorier om nationalism, samt att förstå ideologiska och nationalistiska influenser i rysk utrikespolitik. Genom en argumentationsanalys exemplifieras nationalistiska tendenser i Putin tal och kartläggandet av ett övergripande nationalistiskt motiv förklaras genom kategorisering i fyra olika nationalistiska ideologier som i forskning om rysk politik och Putin som president har framtonats. Denna studie försöker att ge svar på vilka tendenser det finns inom rysk utrikespolitik och ge en bild av vad vi kan förvänta oss i framtiden.

This thesis examines the 1Malaysia campaign, an initiative by the Malaysian state that seeks to address ethnic and religious divisions and economic inequality in the country to for continued political stability and economic growth. This campaign seeks to promote unity among the nation’s diverse population. The thesis uses the concept of political technologies to analyze the 1Malaysia campaign and show how it draws on, but also differs from other similar strategies in the nation’s history. I will analyze the ways that the state in colonial and post-colonial Malaysia created political tools to manage diverse ethnic and religious groups. This thesis addresses a shift in state policy that may offer insights into the strategies pursued by other postcolonial governments that have diverse ethnic and religious groups. I argue that the political technologies prior to the 1Malaysia campaign had created and maintained ethnic and religious divisions in Malaysia, particularly leading to the implementation of affirmative action policies that benefitted only specific ethnic and religious groups. I contend that the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) party views ethnic and religious divisions as a problem and hindrance to economic growth and modernization. It is also trying to define what it is to be Malaysian by creating and fostering its definition of unity and tolerance to be practiced by its citizens. Lastly this work will also examine opposing views of unity and multiculturalism from emerging film movements and public demonstration in Malaysia. This will highlight that the ruling government is facing opposing views to creating solidarity and further highlighting that this nation is going through a period of transition in defining multiculturalism. / Graduate

This thesis analyzes the Seattle and Winnipeg general strikes of 1919, and represents them as two analogous ideological struggles for national hegemony in the post-First World War period. It argues that a comparative analysis of the pro- and anti-strike press during these two strikes reveals that the “form” of nationalism enveloped the “content” of each group’s ideological foundations, conceptions of class, and conceptions of justice, and that this “content” – when extracted from its national “form” – reveals a shared sense of progressive vision among the two groups of strikers, and a shared sense of conservative vision among their opponents. / Graduate / 0578 / 0615 / vanmull@unbc.ca

A protean doctrine, claiming cultural pride and demanding self-expression for those who espouse it, nationalism yet casts its defining symbols and reserves its privileges and powers according to gendered criteria. Nationalism, if seen as symbolically constructed, may be interpreted as a gendered discourse in which subjects in history and also in literature are assumed to be male. Especially in the Manichean worlds of colonial and newly post-colonial societies, nationalist narratives - such as those produced at the time of African independence - read as family dramas in which honour and duty are patrilineally bequeathed, and national sons honour iconic mothers. The invisibilities in nationalist discourse, often left obscure in the interests of an ironic 'liberation', may be redressed both through the displacement of dominant subject positions in literature - where 'non-nationals' tell their own fictions - and through the remoulding of inherited tropes and symbolic scenarios. In this way new plots are written into history; nationalist romances give way to literary fictions. An investigation of the status of nationalism as symbolic language of gender, this thesis concentrates first on the inscription of nationalist icons in post-colonial African literature and on the gendered tropic patterns which govern that inscription. Writers considered include Peter Abrahams, Leopold Senghor, Camara Laye, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The iconic role of artist as nationalist hero is explored in particular in a discussion of essays and plays by Wole Soyinka. In its latter half, the thesis looks at African women's writing - novels by Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Mariama Bâ and Bessie Head - and the work of a second generation of African writers, considering the ways in which this literature has begun to rescript the dramas of nationalism, to redream its visions of wholeness and healing.

The thesis analyses social and political change in twentieth-century Ukraine and its impact on the development of the national consciousness of Ukrainians. In the pre-revolutionary era Ukrainians had a weak sense of national identity because the strategic sectors of society were dominated by non-Ukrainian minority and because the infrastructures of national life were poorly developed. The 1917 revolution saw the rise of a Ukrainian national movement which, while unable to achieve independence, proved strong enough to force major concessions, such as the creation of a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and acceptance of the principle of Ukrainization policies, from the Bolsheviks. The transformation of socio-economic relations in the course of the revolution facilitated the entry Ukrainians into the socially-mobilised sectors of society, which, together with the development of the infrastructures of national life, brought Ukrainians to the threshold of nationhood by the end of the 1920s. During the first five-year plan Stalin's policies generated much opposition in Ukraine. The purges, the abandonment of Ukrainization, the great famine and the imposition of a totalitarian socio-political order in the 1930s, destroyed much of the fabric of Ukrainian national life. However, the rapid urbanization and industrialization saw Ukraine emerge as a majority of the socially-mobilised population. Also, the fact that many republican institutions survived, at least in form, facilitated the resurgence of Ukrainian national assertiveness in the post-Second World War period. Ukraine lagging economic development, large-scale Russian immigration and the Russification of Ukraine's educational system created a highly competitive environment in the republic which served as the social backdrop for a recrudescence of Ukrainian nationalism in the post-Stalin era. While the Ukrainian intelligentsia were the most vocal exponents of national claims, they were often backed by the new generation of Ukrainian political leaders who, having been trained for responsible positions, were anxious to assume them free from excessive interference from the centre. The Russian leadership's response to this new autonomism was to accelerate Russification and central control of the republic. These policies generated new national conflicts rather than resolve old ones.

This thesis is an attempt to document and explain the manifest changes that have been taking place in Welsh identity since 1979, and the political consequences thereof. It is presupposed that before any autonomist outbursts and other, related political changes take place in a sub-national region such as Wales, some sort of identive change has to occur. This 'identive change' is posited to take place in two stages - identity transformation followed by identity mobilisation. Central chapters deal with this process in two, non-exclusive, dimensions - institutions and individual agents. Alongside institution-building, certain policy areas are deemed to be of crucial importance in relation to the maintenance and dissemination of Welsh identity, namely education and broadcasting. In addition, the relationship between endogenous and exogenous forces affecting Welsh identity is considered in the context of civil society, political praxis, the economy and the European Union. These events are charted and analysed by means of primarily qualitative techniques which emphasise the importance of the positional and strategic confluence of individual 'gatekeepers', who are able to influence policy and, perhaps more importantly, affect the perception and reception of new ideologies and institutional exigencies.

Italian opera gained an odd resonance in eighteenth-century British sensibility. By turns loved and hated, it acted on the British imagination as a catalyst both for some of the age's most brilliant satire, and for some of the century's most unusual musical extravagances. This dissertation argues that, despite (or in some ways because of) the eventual failure of Italian serious opera and its English hybrid forms to attain status within the musical canon, the progress of opera played a vital role in shaping and reflecting the formation of British national identity, and that, reciprocally, attempts to find a national identity played a large part in opera's fate in Britain. For the competing forces and factions of Italian and English opera in 1730s London, the bid for supremacy was inevitably linked with an appeal to authority (whether that of royalty, the nobility, the populace, or ideologies of the nation) that involved stressing their link with the national interest. The first chapter examines the relationship between the consistently politicised language used to discuss opera and the mode of civic action and public spiritedness still requisite amongst the Nobility, charting ways in which aristocratic support of this foreign genre might be reconciled to British concerns. The second chapter looks to a particularly problematic instance of opera's apparent politicisation in the 1730s Lord Hervey's analysis of the division between Handel and the 'Opera of the Nobility' to propose a possible 'solution' through the two Ariannas of 1734. In so doing, it shows opera's role within a culture of emulation, emphasising the flexibility and social contingency of operatic interpretation. Coterminous with Italian opera, but of a lower status, were ballad and burlesque opera, their critique of national cultural identity all the sharper for their role as cultural and formal boundary markers. Chapter three demonstrates though exploration of the curious and much-criticised English 'opera', Hurlothrumbo (1729), that British dislike of opera was bound up with the deep-seated fear of luxury. While 'Hurlothrumbo' was used as a derogatory epithet until the end of the century, this operatic work also provides a fascinating example of how opera producers might try to negotiate British unease. Chapter four examines the concerted attempt in the 1730s to associate English opera and musical theatre with topics of national interest through composers' and playwrights' appropriation of the stories of historical British ballads as the local equivalents of the venerable texts of Italian opera. The fact that many of the works discussed are 'problem pieces', considered generically, authorially or hermeneutically unstable, points not only to the reason for indigenous opera's failure to achieve canonical status, but also to a more fundamental problem with the role of opera (and, indeed, music in general) in the still-forming British identity. In the final chapter I turn from the problems of opera to the undoubted success of Handel, who himself made the transition from opera to oratorio; I evaluate the composer's apotheosis as a national hero through examining manifestations of his image in the 1730s and at the time of his death.

The historical narrative constructed by John of Fordun in the last quarter of the fourteenth century was used as an outline by the majority of Lowland historians for the next century and a half. Only the earliest of the authors studied, John Barbour, can safely be said to have escaped being influenced by Fordun's Chronica; even Andrew of Wyntoun and the other vernacular authors, generally more independent than those who wrote in Latin, took some of Fordun's material. In the sixteenth century, John Major tried to cast aside the traditions inherited from Fordun, but his history was as unpopular as his proposal for union with England. On the other side of the debate which must have flared up after Flodden, Boece turned away from Major's proposals, took up the cherished traditions, and demanded that the Scots defend their independence as they had always done. Although most of their narratives were based on the same material, the authors' reorganization of it, what they chose to add or omit, is a reflection of their attitudes toward their nation or kingdom and of how they saw themselves within it, how they envisaged the relationship between the king and the kingdom, and their opinion of their nation. These attitudes varied from author to author, and there was seldom a neat progression from first to last thanks to the differences in personality, background, and circumstances. One broad change during the period studied was in the attitude toward the king. For Fordun, to be a Scot meant to be loyal to the person of the king, the cornerstone on whom the welfare of the kingdom depended; later authors divorced the person of the king from the crown and thought in terms of loyalty to the kingdom, state or nation. Another striking change came just with the last author to be discussed, Boece. Until his work was published, there had been no mention of a Golden Age or of such a retrogression by the Scottish nation as he harped upon. His sense of insecurity and false bravado had had no place in the earlier narratives whose authors were not only proud of their nation's independence, but were sure the Scots had the strength to maintain it.

While football is legitimately regarded as the ultimate global game, its significance to Scotland is even more exaggerated, in historical, social and cultural terms. Scots were at the forefront of 'globalising' the sport, teaching the English and other foreigners to play a highly technical and 'passing' game, only to abandon this later with characteristic complacency. Within Scotland, 'the only game' has provided its inhabitants with a cultural obsession, in which sectarian, regional and national animosities and inequalities may be contested and unsatisfactorily resolved. Consequently, the Scots are credited with gifting the world the phenomenon of 'football hooliganism', primarily at domestic club level, although the authorities latterly claim to have 'solved' such fan disorder. Upon the national stage, some argue football's social and political impacts have been markedly more pernicious, in being a dubious receptacle for the tartan-coated 'sub-nationalism' of a nation still denied a protective State. Therefore, this thesis examines the culture of these two particular, polarised categories of Scottish football fans, namely the contemporary hooligans (the 'soccer casuals') and the national team's supporters (the carnival or ambassadorial 'Tartan Army'). The thesis draws heavily upon qualitative fieldwork with these supporter groups, undertaken over the course of five years (1990-1994). To achieve this, the thesis is divided into three parts. The first part contextualises the discussion, by looking at previous explanations of football hooliganism and the extent to which these fit with initial evidence from the opposing, Scottish fan cultures. The second and third parts then introduce sustained fieldwork and analyses of these supporter groups.

The growth of sub-state nationalism in the 1960's provoked considerable academic speculation. The case of Scotland was a prominent focus of interest. One neglected area however, was the systematic study of S.N.P. strategy on two issues--North Sea oil and devolution--it is argued that small producers face particular problems in establishing themselves in the marketplace. From the standpoint of 'rational choice' theory, the party was unable to maintain a rational orientation to the electorate even under the most favourable circumstances. The constraints on rational behaviour ultimately isolated the party from the mass of the electorate, and it experienced what amounted to a 'reverse process' of maturation from relative rationality to relative irrationality. This growth cycle suggests that there are particularly severe problems afflicting the leaderships of such parties which need further study.