From the “Faith to the Ideals and the Values of the Nation” to the “Ideological Extremeness” The Phenomenon of the Nationalism according to Greek University Students’ Opinions

Abstract

The aim of this research is to inventory the means used by a population group with specific social characteristics, which have to do, on the one hand, with the school and social trajectory of the subjects but which on the other might have evolved – given their attendance - into a freer educational institution and assess the nationalism phenomenon. The sample of our research was constituted by 200 students, males and females, of the Pedagogical School of the University of Western Macedonia, who were invited to answer spontaneously the questionnaire of this research during the academic year 2006-07.For the data analysis, the Factor Analysis Method was chosen which is widely used in the filed of the Social Sciences. The Factor Analysis was used so as to become aware of the pattern of the response of the social subjects – students, as it gives us the possibility to draw precious conclusions about a sum of variables while diminishing their number to a smaller number of factors from which each of whom corresponds to several of the initials. From the students’ answers in their total, five analysis axes are revealed, on the semantics of the nationalism, the historical semantics, the cultural provenience of the nationalism, the political functions and the social inequalities. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n9p522