Discourses Of National Identity Research Articles

Who defines moderation? Adapting Islamist and Salafi identities in Tunisia to a changing religio-political field

ABSTRACT The idea of Tunisian ‘moderation’ as an essential constituent part of national identity has been historically used by autocratic governments as an instrument of securitization, investing the state with the unique authority to suppress movements – in practice, usually the Islamist opposition – deemed antithetical to this identity and thus threatening to the nation and its people. This paper explores how, after the Arab Uprisings in 2010–2011, diverse groups of Islamists responded to pre-existing discourses of Tunisian national identity as moderate. After the revolution, Tunisian Islamists and Salafis initially both contested the assumptions behind pre-revolutionary conceptualizations of national identity that had previously excluded them from the boundaries of normative citizenship by reframing the nature of the threat or attempting to redefine and expand the nature of moderation. Both groups encountered different outcomes in their attempts to recalibrate the notions of identity, religion and the state. These divergences can be traced to their differing ideologies, political situations and incentives. Nevertheless, the fact that each group engaged with – rather than dismissed – this discourse suggests the centrality of the state-moderation-security nexus in structuring past and present conceptualizations of Tunisian moderation.

Defining Swedishness: When Swedes Without a Migration Background Are a Local Numerical Minority

In this study, we examine how people without a migration background living in majority–minority neighbourhoods in Malmö, Sweden, define national identity in daily life. This setting provides a look into the intersection between the dominant position these people occupy in the Swedish national context and the confrontation with ethnic diversity as a result of becoming a local numerical minority. We address articulations of what being Swedish means in interviews with 22 Swedes without a migration background. We find that people mostly reproduce the national identity discourse that is nationally dominant. Most people explicitly articulate an achievable national identity, presenting Swedishness as accessible to everyone, in line with how Swedish integration policy is framed, and the current dominant political discourse. However, when talking about Swedishness as an identity and an attribute, the Swedishness of Swedes without a migration background is taken for granted, which indicates that despite changing local hierarchies, the establishment of the Swede without a migration background as the dominant Swede remains unchallenged. Swedishness might be achievable, but only because the dominant Swede defines it as such. Nonetheless, some respondents engage critically and reflectively with their own position of power as the nationally dominant group. This discourse is mostly expressed by raising the issue of white privilege and acknowledging it as a hindrance to the social positioning of people with a migration background in Swedish society. This reflexivity might be a result of confrontation with diversity and becoming a minority.

‘Diffuse Support’ and Authoritarian Regime Resilience: Azerbaijanism vis-à-vis Azerbaijan’s Talysh Minority

Abstract This article asks what role does the official national identity discourse play in building authoritarian resilience in Azerbaijan, and how do alternative narratives of particular historical events impact such resilience-building efforts? The discourse of Azerbaijanism is a source of diffuse support legitimizing the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan. This is largely due to the role played by the ruling family in Azerbaijanism and the emphasis that is placed upon that family’s ability to resolve internal and external threats to the developing nation-state. Alternative narrations of historical memories – such as those regarding the establishment of the Talysh-Mughan (Autonomous) Republic during the summer of 1993 – act as ‘hidden transcripts’ that shed light upon the cracks in the regime’s façade, challenging its claims to historical and other ‘truths’. In so doing, ‘hidden’ alternative transcripts challenge the legitimacy of the governing regime, testing the first of Gerschewski’s (2013) three pillars of authoritarian regime stability (i.e., legitimation, repression, and co-optation).

Between Jerusalem and Babylon: Catholic Discourses of Israel and National Identity in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (ca. 1560–1625)

Abstract This article examines how English Catholics imagined Jerusalem and Israel in relation to themselves, their nation and their Church. While English Protestant uses of Jerusalem imagery have been well-studied, their inter-confessional context has received less attention, and yet it was crucial to shaping them. Catholic deployments of Old Testament images and typology were no less sophisticated and significant than Protestant ones; English Catholic texts show how multivalent imagery of Jerusalem and its antithesis, Babylon, could be used both to express and to attempt to resolve tensions between the officially Protestant nation and the “true” Church. Exploring Catholic conceptions of Jerusalem, England and the Church is valuable because it offers insight into the culture that formed English Catholic recusants, missionaries, exiles and politicians, but also because it is important to a properly integrated account of the religious politics of England.

Museum Discourse in the Conditions of Information Warfare: problem statement

The article is devoted to the consideration of the position of museum discourse in the communicative system of modern Russia and, more broadly, in the national security system. In the context of geopolitical challenges and the development of political discourse in the semantics of the pervasive cancel culture in the format of applying new ethics as a symbolic act of oblivion, the national museum discourse acquires a particular significance. The “memory war”, the purpose of which is to delegitimize the previous discourse using techniques of rewriting, ignoring, neutralizing, and denying, actualizes the study of museum discourse in the context of national security strategy. Considering museum discourse as an imperative to strengthen national security, the authors identify a separate research area of socio–humanitarian sciences – “memory studies”, and introduce into the scientific categorical apparatus rather interrelated concepts of political discourse: “identity politics”, “memory politics” and “memorial politics”. The authors implement a strategy for analyzing the communicative effects of ensuring cultural sovereignty and overcoming the cancel culture, and conclude that museum discourse and the discourse of memory in the logic of cognitive and structural aspects represent mental constructs with the potential for dialogism and conversion (including the conversion of cultural capital into political capital), and determine the multilevel combinatorics of various communicative effects in the development of national identity. Hence, the authors propose to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of the state policy of memory – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to the modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

Whither Willkommenskultur? National identity discourses and the arrival of refugees in Germany in 2015/16

ABSTRACT How do media discourses on German national identity differ before and after the arrival of refugees in 2015/16? National identity discourses are often closely linked to immigration dynamics, inter alia due to boundary making through the othering of immigrants. While this relation is well documented in the case of Germany, scholars have yet to study how the arrival of refugees in 2015/16 has been integrated in discourses on national identity in more detail. In this paper, we conduct an inductive qualitative content analysis of Die ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bild am Sonntag in 2014 and 2019 and find an important shift within the media representation of German national identity. While in 2014, a self-understanding of Germany as an immigration country dominated the media landscape, by 2019, national identity discourses became more fragmented and neither the idea of a tolerant Germany nor the idea of an anti-immigration Germany clearly dominated. Based on this analysis, we argue that 2015/16 can be understood as a turning point for discourses on German national identity.

In Search of “Good Russians”: Ukrainian-Russian Encounters in the United States During the First Cold War

The article is devoted to the topic of Ukrainian-Russian intellectual encounters in exile during the Cold War. The author focuses on Ukraine’s and Russia’s mutual representations in historical narratives in connection with their respective discourses of national identity. The article also describes sporadic attempts at establishing Ukrainian-Russian public dialogue in exile starting in the early 1960s. All of them were initiated and conducted by Ukrainian public activists and intellectuals. The author concludes that participants on both sides ascribed opposing meanings to historical terms. Russian authors, on the one hand, consistently used the modern designation “Ukrainian” as a synonym for “Little Russian,” which automatically situated Ukraine within the “pan-Russian” historical framework. Ukrainian historians, on the other hand, tried to reinterpret “Russian” as a modern national designation rather than an imperial one. Hence the Ukrainian-Russian dialogue had no chance of succeeding unless Russian participants agreed to rethink their discourse of national identity. It is no wonder that many American observers remained confused about the nature of Ukrainian-Russian debates: to them, they looked like a dead-end situation. Thus, rather than trying to find alternative interpretations of Ukrainian and Russian history, most Western specialists followed either one or the other respective national narrative.

Anglo-British exceptionalism and the European “Other”: white masculinities in discourses of British national identity

ABSTRACT Gender as a concept is essential for understanding British/English national identity. Feminist and queer scholars note that gender and sexuality are central to politics, yet frequently omitted from political analysis. Some scholars have highlighted the hegemonic masculinities that underpinned Brexit campaigns, but the role of gender in the construction of national identity in Europe has not been analyzed in depth. Combining the literature on national and European identities with feminist theories of gender and nationalism, I outline four discourses of Anglo-British exceptionalism: (1) British sovereignty and military power; (2) the British as defenders of liberty; (3) Britain as a global trading nation; and (4) England as a white Protestant “island nation.” Constructed in relation the European “Other,” these discourses are underpinned by gender-based hierarchies that intersect with class, race, and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the need for feminist and gender analysis not only of the UK’s relationship with the European Union (EU) but also more broadly within political science and EU studies.

Divided Self in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark

This paper discusses the problems of identity, time and place in Jean Rhys’ 1934 novel, Voyage in the Dark. It analyses Rhys’ aesthetics concerns in the creation of a subjective construction of the imperial metropole and the colonial space. In doing, this paper suggests how Rhys builds a bridge between contemporary modernist narrative techniques and a preceding Post-colonial perspective. The constant juxtaposition of time and place makes of Rhys’ protagonist, Anna Morgan, an elusive self. By means of this fragmented self, the author aims to reformulate colonial power relations and raise crucial questions about discourses of gender and national identity. As a result, this paper engages in a Post-colonial thought, arguing how issues about gender and race issues are articulated in Rhys’ novel. Rhys creates the subjectivity of a marginalized woman showing the effects of colonization and creating a metropolitan female identity based on fragmented and juxtaposed memories.

Ukrainian Discourses on NATO: Securitization, Otherness, and Their Effects on Russo-Ukrainian Relations

Abstract Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO membership have been a source of contention between Russia and Ukraine for decades. At the same time, domestic debates in Ukraine on relations with NATO have also been a divisive issue for Ukraine’s ruling political elites. These conflicts culminated in 2022, when Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine claiming that its movement towards NATO was an existential threat to the Russian state. This paper summarizes some of the results of my longitudinal research of ruling elite discourse on NATO in Ukraine between 1997 and 2018. It focuses on the changes in national identity discourse and contestation, pinpointing their constitutive role for Ukrainian foreign policy.

DISCURSIVE OPPORTUNITIES AND THE MOTIVATIONAL FRAMING OF HUMAN-RIGHTS ACTIVISM FOR EAST TIMOR: A CROSSNATIONAL ANALYSIS

Drawing from previously untapped archival data, our research undertakes a crossnational analysis to understand how critical organizations within the global solidarity movement for East Timor in Canada, the United States, and Australia adapted their human-rights claims and rhetorical interventions to their specific national contexts to produce politically and culturally resonant motivational frames aligned with their states’ discourses of national identity and foreign policy to support humanitarian intervention in East Timor. We identify crossnational differences in the framing of their political discourse: (1) Canadian groups mobilized a humanitarian-peacekeeping frame, (2) U.S. solidarity groups tapped into a democratic-exceptionalist frame, and (3) Australian activists drew from a remembrance-moral debt frame. We conclude by underscoring the importance of discursive opportunities and national historical contexts for studying the mobilization of human rights and crossnational variations in motivational framing.

The Bush Doctrine redux: changes and continuities in American grand strategy since ‘9/11’

This article examines the ideational dimension and political performance of American grand strategy since ‘9/11’ and explores to what extent the strategic assumptions, ideological dispositions, and security practices of the Bush Doctrine have endured since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It advances a constructivist understanding of American grand strategy as a nexus of national identity discourses and security practices. The article will first explore the significance of American exceptionalism in the ideational dimension of the Bush Doctrine and its practical impact in the pursuit of US national security. The article will then focus on the Obama Doctrine, arguing that its embrace of cooperative engagement and multilateralism represented a limited strategic course correction within the paradigm of liberal hegemony. Finally, the article will contrast grand strategy discourses under Bush and Donald Trump, exploring their shared foundations in Jacksonian nationalism and unilateralism that demonstrate the continued relevance of Bush’s strategic vision of US primacy.

Negotiated belonging in sub-state nationalist contexts: young adult migrant narratives in Scotland and South Tyrol

This contribution investigates the intersection between macro-level political narratives on diversity and micro-level lived experience of social inclusion and everyday interaction. The case studies for analysis comprise of two regional sub-state nationalist contexts, Scotland and South Tyrol, Italy. Scotland is a nation state that defines itself vis-a-vis the rest of the UK and where a discourse has emerged that Scottish nationalism is both civic and inclusive. South Tyrol is an autonomous province in northern Italy which remains a liminal space between Austria and Italy and is presented as a model to protect minorities. We argue for developing a critical stance on diversity narratives identified in these two-regions. Based on in-depth narrative interviews with young adult migrants, we use an ontological security framework to examine the relationship between macro-narratives and micro-level lived experiences of everyday social interactions. Firstly, we address how macro-level national identity discourses manifest themselves in micro-level everyday interactions. Secondly, we look at how young adults interpret these narratives when retelling their everyday experiences, sometimes to the point of excluding their own experiences of discrimination. In this way, we trace the negotiation of belongingness in these two contexts.

Мегапроекты как инструмент политики идентичности в регионах России (на примере универсиад в Казани и Красноярске)

Introduction: identity is a significant intangible resource for territorial development, the actualization of which is possible through large-scale, high-status megaprojects. Their results contribute to the development of infrastructure, tourism, business activity and investment attraction of the territory. Such events form a certain identitarian discourse, which, due to the scale of the projects, is constructed at two levels – regional and federal. The article presents the results of the identitarian discourse analysis of the Universiades held on the territory of Russia in the federal and regional context. Aims: based on the analysis of constructed identity discourses correlation at the federal and regional levels, to determine the specificity and potential of megaproject activity as a new trend in the identity policy of the Russian Federation regions (the cases of the Universiades in Kazan and Krasnoyarsk). Methods: content analysis of the materials contained at the official websites of the regional and national executive authorities, leading media covering the XXVII World Summer Universiade 2013 and XXIX World Winter Universiade 2019. Results: the case of the Kazan Universiade showed a sports-ethnic model correlation of national and regional discourses. The sports marker is dominant in terms of the number of references in the context of national identity analysis of the Kazan Universiade, while ethnicity marker has become dominant in the discourse of the regional identity. The case of Krasnoyarsk showed a sports-natural (Siberian) model of national and regional Universiade discourses correlation. The sports marker, as well as in the context of the Kazan Universiade, prevails in the national identity discourse of the Krasnoyarsk Universiade and the “natural” marker – in the context of the regional identity of Krasnoyarsk. Conclusions: The content analysis revealed the similarity of the federal and regional identitarian discourses of the Kazan and Krasnoyarsk Universiades. The predominance of social and cultural-historical markers of identity in the discourses of the Universiades in Kazan and Krasnoyarsk has been identified. The model of discourse correlation has been termed as congruent. The differences manifested themselves in the correlation markers of the regional agenda. The research novelty lies in the development of research tools for analysing identities at different levels (federal and regional) using content analysis of news sources. The work done shows the prospects of using symbolic projects in the identity policy of the regions for building an integrated discourse of national identity.

Unity in diversity: constituting and constructing Pakistan’s national identity

ABSTRACT This article critically explores the evolution and expression of a Pakistani national identity as a project of assertion in the post-colonial period. While the initial years of Pakistan’s independence were marked by ambiguity over the religious versus secular direction of the Pakistani identity, there was no dithering over an absolutist national identity (Pakistani) that was to be strictly followed and ordained in contrast to sub-national, ethnic identities. The article presents three elemental positions of Pakistan’s national identity discourse: the nationalist/primordialist, the perennialist and the social constructivist. Rooting its argument in the social constructivist episteme but also moving beyond it by indulging in a normative approach, the article argues in favour of a humanist-centred interpretation that eschews differentiation and normalises an inclusive, tolerant and diversity-acceptant definition of Pakistani identity.

(Un)representing Belarus(ianness): Ihar Babkoŭ’s Adam Klakotski and His Shadows (2001)

ABSTRACT National identity discourses and narratives of history and memory are highly politicized in post-Soviet Belarus. While official narratives stress the idea of brotherhood with Russia and the importance of the Soviet cultural legacy, counter-narratives focus on the idea of a national revival and on mourning for the pre-Soviet past. In the late 1990s and early years of the new millennium, authors of counter-narratives began to work with philosophical models in their rethinking of “Belarusianness.” The peak of this philosophical turn was marked by Ihar Babkoŭ’s Adam Klakotski and His Shadows (2001). Under the influence of post-colonial theory and post-structuralist/deconstructive philosophy, and with the help of narrative fragmentation devices, the novel proposed a unique reconceptualization of Belarusianness. Based on the assumption that every identity has a negative fundament, Adam Klakotski deconstructs the linearity of national(ist) narratives on different levels. In this article, the author analyzes the philosophical aspects of Adam Klakotski and the role the novel has played politically, and he compares it to the works of two other key figures of Belarusian counter-culture: Little Guidebook to the Sun City by Artur Klinaŭ, and Valiantsin Akudovich’s There Is No Me and The Code of Absence.

National Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Birmingham

ABSTRACT Most current academic investigations of national identity by Linda Colley and Peter Mandler et al, are substantially based on the experience of London. This article focuses on how national identity was perceived and represented by four individuals in mid-nineteenth-century Birmingham. Birmingham’s significance as an international manufacturing centre; a centre for campaigns for franchise reform and the abolition of slavery; and a location for migration meant that national identity was a matter of great interest. These four individuals were Joseph Sturge, a middle-class radical abolitionist; John Bright, the Liberal MP; George Edmonds, a campaigner from an artisanal background; and George Dawson, an influential preacher. The article draws out similarities and differences in their views by investigating how they saw the nation and who they thought belonged to it. The article moves beyond the London-centric historiography of national identity by assessing national identity discourses in an important provincial town.

Fields of corruption: heritage and politics in Brazilian football

ABSTRACT Football has never been free of politics. This is particularly the case when football is considered part of a nation’s cultural heritage. Although heritage recognition and designation are often sought by sports organisations to enhance particular political, ideological and economic agendas, it is unusual for organisations to refute designation to address the same agendas. Influenced by Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, this article examines how and why political agents influenced by the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) have rejected football-based heritage nominations in the Brazilian National Congress (BNC) since 2005. Often considered an administrative decision made by heritage experts at Heritage Committees following technical criteria, in Brazil, heritage nominations have also been proposed at the Legislative branch by politicians. In this context, this paper presents the nine proposed legal recognitions of football and the Brazilian National Team as part of the nation’s cultural heritage and discusses how and why these proposals were rejected. The results demonstrate that a well-organised group of approximately 40 politicians who received direct or indirect benefits from the CBF to protect the economic and management interests of the football entity – benefits that would have been adversely impacted had heritage nominations been successful. As such, it revealed that national identity discourses linked to football on heritage nominations can be activated and manipulated for political gain but also neglected if they pose a risk to football directors in power.

Comparing national identity discourses in history, geography and civic education curricula: The case of France and Ireland

National identities have been challenged by European integration, globalisation, migration and regionalisation. More recently, there has been a resurgence of nationhood and national identity which begs the question how education systems, and curricula in particular, are responding to this. This article explores how national identity is reflected in history, geography and civic education curricula in France and Ireland. More specifically, it examines how national, European and international aspects are intertwined in these state curricula. This question is explored through a case study of curriculum units and subunits as well as discourses of how identity is being promoted in the curriculum. Our analysis highlights that French curricula privilege national topics, especially in history and civic education, whereas Irish curricula veer between national, European and international (global) notions. Our analysis explores the extent to which macro-political discourses around national identity are reflected in the shaping of the subject curricula in two countries. While the article focuses on France and Ireland, the discussions are also of interest to other jurisdictions regarding the civic expectations and role of schools in promoting national (or other) identities.

Interrogating Trot, Situating the Boom: New(tro) Nostalgia, Old Songs, and National Identity Performance

Across 2019–2020 a number of South Korean TV competition shows branded their musical identity as “trot.” This term denotes a perceived genre of popular music considered normative to South Korea’s developmentalist decades and thereafter as the music of older generations, yet the surprise success of the TV shows seemingly indicated a younger uptake heralding a “trot boom.” However, in much of their choice of repertoire, the shows transgressed pre-existing expectations of the genre. The notion of a trot boom premised on a reified genre discourse is thus overly reductionist and fails to explain adequately the performed aesthetics and socio-musical phenomenon engendered by the shows. This article problematizes the received narrative(s) of “trot,” while highlighting three alternative trans-genre elements and aesthetic trends that operate in close proximity to trot discourse: “old song” collections, kug’ak (traditional music) fusion, and a discourse of Korean vocal affect. It analyzes the repertoire and performances of three of the most noted trot-branded television series, and juxtaposes them with two further case studies: YouTube channel Chu Hyŏnmi TV and a sample of “old song” collections dating 1969–1989. It argues that all three cases variously intersect and diverge from reified trot, while simultaneously exhibiting their own interrelations collectively bound by performed retro and newtro aesthetics, and national identity discourse.