Nationalist Meaning Research Articles

Narrative harmony: Empowering students through the national anthem in social studies education

This study explores the integration of the national anthem into social studies education. It is essential, considering that the coverage of IPS material is related to the fighting spirit of citizens. The article describes the relevance of the national anthem and the material in social studies learning. The article was prepared by utilizing 20 pieces of literature. The literature is devoted to studies relevant to the national anthem used in learning. The research results show that social studies education's relevance in integrating the National Anthem plants the seeds of lifelong civic responsibility. This study argues that once used only in classrooms, national anthems now serve as a guiding force, empowering students to contribute to their nation's ongoing narrative actively. The Indonesian national song "Dari Sabang to Merauke" examines its geographic and nationalist meaning. Using this song as a resource will increase meaningful social studies learning, including aspects of Indonesia's geography, history, and cultural diversity. This study identifies the impact of integrating the national anthem on student engagement, emphasizing the instillation of civic responsibility.

Uniforms and Commercial Culture: Constructing a Vision of Warfare in Pre-Great War Britain

Uniforms carry cultural meaning shaped by their interaction with military realities. They can communicate tradition but also anticipate change. Prior to the Great War, British Army uniforms had developed from the familiar red tunic to khaki, but the manner of their representation in the mass culture confirmed a continuity and correctness of the British way of war that ran against the emerging industrialization of warfare. Wearing familiar uniforms linked to the past and concurrently fighting what seemed like anachronistic ‘small wars’ in empire as reported in the press, what awaited the volunteers of 1914–15 could not have been anticipated by those consumers of the commercial culture. This article uses a variety of sources, from the illustrated adult and juvenile press, paintings, and toys, to reveal the link between uniforms and the representation of warfare in the fifty years prior to the Great War. In that representation we see not just the glorification of war that cultural historians attach to gendered, imperialist, or nationalist meanings. This article argues that the role of uniforms in the representation of warfare was a means by which to make it knowable and worthwhile for the consumer public. But by representing past and contemporary uniforms quite accurately, the writers and artists imposed a sense of military continuity at a time when war was changing.

The Canadian landscape as Art. Stanley Thompson, Golf Course Architecture, the Group of Seven, and the Aesthetic of Canadian Nationalism

ABSTRACT Golf Courses symbolise more than the relationship between player and landscape. In Canada, where the landscape historically is tied to national identity, golf courses can take on nationalist meanings as well. This paper investigates the relationship between landscape and nationalism through Canadian golf architect legend Stanley Thompson’s golf courses. In particular, Thompson’s creation of the Heroic School of Golf Architecture represents a Canadian adaptation to the Strategic School of Golf Architecture. Thompson allowed the landscape, in particular the dramatic landscape, to dictate the courses and in doing so imbued popular Canadian nationalist ideas in these courses. Using his contemporaries, the famous Group of Seven landscape artists, as comparison shows how different types of artists used the landscape to express Canadian national ideas.

The Israel BBQ as national ritual: performing unofficial nationalism, or finding meaning in triviality

Concerned with how nationalist cultural codes are embedded in everyday life, studies of “nationalism-from-below” mistake nationalist meanings for the contents of official messages. Rather than studying the reception of spectacles and symbols produced from above, the article suggests looking at unofficial nationalism and focusing on the nationalist meanings of traditions and customs—especially those related to ritual and food—that are common to broad strata of the population but have almost no state involvement. Using the anthropological history of Israeli Independence Day as an exemplary case, and focusing on how people spend their country’s national day, the article examines the failure of official nationalism to design the holiday’s popular traditions. Next it surveys the development of what has become the popular mode of celebrating the day—the picnic and cookout. In due course, this practice was ritualized and iconized as representing “Israeliness,” an identity that is more ambivalent than the seamless images circulated from above. I argue that the meanings of unofficial practices, because of their triviality, lie not in the symbolic codes they enact, but rather in the synchronicity that ritualizes and iconizes a “way of life,” forms national solidarity, and imbues the performance with nationalist meanings.

The monumental landscape from below: public statues, popular interaction and nationalism in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam

ABSTRACT:Public monuments are considered an important tool in the nineteenth-century nation-building project. Yet while the intended (nationalist) message of the monumental landscape is often clear, the popular perception of the statues and memorials has been little problematized. This contribution analyses the popular interaction with public monuments in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam and questions whether ordinary people understood the nationalist meaning. With the help of visual sources – engravings, lithographs and the novel medium of photography – we become aware of the multilayered meanings and usages of the monuments in daily urban life, thus tackling the methodological challenge of studying the monumental landscape from below.

German Thoroughness in Baltimore: Epistemic Virtues and National Stereotypes

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in “epistemic virtues” as a prism for historical study of the sciences and the humanities. Although most of the literature is still confined to single fields or local cases, the potential of comparing scholars across the academic spectrum from an epistemic virtues point of view has already been recognized. Yet as soon as historians embark on such a project, they face a potential complication. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, language of virtue was often imbued with nationalist meaning. Scholars habitually appealed to stereotypical images of “French lucidity,” “German profoundness,” and “American enterprise.” Without, of course, endorsing such nationalist rhetoric, this article argues that nationalized virtues are useful material for comparative histories of the sciences and the humanities, given that they served as commonplaces on which scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds could draw. Consequently, commonplaces could do what discipline-specific idioms could not: enabling transdisciplinary conversations about the marks of a good scholar. Phrases like “German thoroughness,” the use of which this article examines for the case of Johns Hopkins University in the first three decades of its existence (1876–1906), offer historians a unique opportunity for tracing epistemic virtues across disciplinary boundaries.

Masculinity and nationalism in East African hip-hop music

East African music aligns itself with nationalistic desires while attempting to create a transnational and regional agenda that goes beyond individual nation-states. Hip-hop music appears at pains to define itself as different from the western art-forms with which it is hastily associated by instantiating localized forms and creating a different locution. This paper surveys East African hip-hop to demonstrate that the music is a productive site upon which the local, the national, and the global contest and negotiate. We demonstrate that central to the music's identity politics is the notion of masculinity, in which the construction of community is interpreted as a masculine enterprise. The audiences also invest the music with political and nationalist meanings that are fraught with sexualized readings. On the whole, the music rejects hostile nationalism but male artists tend to represent women negatively in their grand national, regional, and pan-African projects. Indirectly indicating the depth of the hegemonic masculinism they operate under, women artistes express a desire to deconstruct male constructs. At the same time they suggest that, in spite of themselves, their critique has to be cautious and subtle.

Steven Fine. The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. 279 pp.

Reviewed by: The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel by Steven Fine David Biale Steven Fine. The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. 279 pp. In 1948, Gershom Scholem published his pathbreaking article on the Magen David in which he demonstrated that this ostensibly eternal symbol of Judaism only became such a symbol in modern times. What had originally been a magical image in various kabbalistic traditions was only adopted by Jews en masse in the nineteenth century. From there it made its way onto the Zionist flag, but, argues Scholem, only acquired real content when the Nazis made the Jews wear it on the road to destruction. If the Magen David is a modern symbol masquerading as ancient, the seven-branch menorah, adopted by the new State of Israel as its official seal shortly after Scholem published his article, had the opposite career: its origins are in the Bible [End Page 207] and it disappeared after the destruction of the Second Temple, only to resurface in various forms in the modern period. As a symbol of Judaism, it was always available but not always deployed. Steven Fine has given us the most comprehensive history of the menorah in this erudite and sumptuously illustrated book. Indefatigable, Fine has seemingly found every reference to the menorah from late antique historians to modern novels. Who knew, for example, that Hemda ben Yehuda (the wife of Eliezer ben Yehuda) coined the term ḥanukiyah from an obscure Balkan usage to distinguish the seven-branch menorah from the eight-branch candelabra of the Hanukah holiday? Fine is a charming guide to this history, introducing his own adventures as an archaeologist in pursuit of the menorah, always alert to urban legends and learned frauds. Fine’s book revolves around the famous Arch of Titus in the Forum in Rome, which he has analyzed for fragments of color painting. The menorah of the arch has aroused controversy throughout the ages, since its base (differing from the three-legged base in Jewish texts) contains images of dragons. Was the image on the arch constructed by non-Jewish artisans to conform with Roman iconography or did the Jews themselves fail to be concerned about what might be construed as idolatrous images? No definitive answer is possible. The history of the menorah and the other temple vessels and utensils is shrouded in mystery after the first century CE. Coins from the two Jewish revolts against Rome surprisingly lack any images of the menorah. Did this mean that Jews of this period did not ascribe any nationalist meaning or even religious centrality to the menorah? And what happened to these utensils after they were transported to Rome? Some traditions claim that the rabbis were able to view them there in the second century, while other traditions say that they were plundered by the Visigoths. Meanwhile, the Byzantine historian Procopius reported that the emperor Justinian sent them to a church in Jerusalem. In modern times, rumors circulated that they were variously buried in the Tiber River in Rome or hidden in the Lateran Church of St. John at the Vatican. Fine is properly skeptical of all these stories. The Talmud three times forbids fashioning a seven-branch menorah, although not ḥanukiyot, which it seems Jews began to light publicly in synagogues only in the twelfth century. The late-sixteenth-century Sefer minhagim suggests that seven-branch menorahs may have already been countenanced, although they only began to appear in synagogues in the eighteenth century. How traditional Jews justified this violation of the talmudic prohibition is not clear from Fine’s text. However, it was with Reform Judaism with its edifices named temples that the menorah enjoyed a true renaissance, in both three- and two-dimensional representations. Many of these drew directly from the Arch of Titus menorah with its distinctive base. Increasingly, the figures from the arch were represented not as Romans (which is what they seem to be on the original) but as heroic Jews. Ironically for an archaeologist of antiquity, Fine’s story becomes the most interesting in the twentieth century. In the Zionist movement, the Bezalel School and Vladimir Jabotinsky’s...

Al-Jazeera and the Arab Uprisings: The Language of Images and a Medium's Stancetaking

This study (a) investigates the complex set of emergent meanings from Al-Jazeera's visual narratives about itself, and (b) analyzes how Al-Jazeera's visual texts articulate a broader set of nationalist meanings concerning Qatar, its home country. Rather than a content analysis of language, visual elements are emphasized, which transcend the news story or program content. The “content” here involves not just events themselves but the metatextual meanings emerging from the images woven among programs, promotional videos, and commercial advertisements.

Alfonso <i>el Regenerador</i>. Monarquía escénica e imaginario nacionalista español, en perspectiva comparada (1902-1913)

This article studies the links between monarchy and Spanish nationalism in the first decade of Alfonso XIII’s reign. It uses a comparative perspective to analyse the Spanish case in the context of the performing monarchies than emerged in Europe in the period 1870-1914. It focuses on three different aspects: the great monarchical ceremonies, specially the royal oath to the Constitution —or coronation—; the royal trips, extraordinarily developed; and the military ceremonies containing a strong nationalist meaning as the annual swearing of loyalty to the national flag by new soldiers. Through those performances, the crown was integrated in a national imaginary dominated by discourses and practices of regeneration of the fatherland in the aftermath of the colonial disaster of 1898: in such a regeneration, the king was thought as a necessary force. In fact, Alfonso was known as el Regenerador (the regenerator). At a lower level of pomp and splendor than other european monarchies, the Spanish king was perceived as a national symbol by different groups. Among them, local elites, various associations and the heterogeneus public of the royal spectacles, shown by the mass media. Those performances reinforced the political role of a king that enjoyed constitutional executive powers, like most of the European monarchs, and whose decisions were highly controversial.

Monarchia in scena e discorsi nazionalisti nella Spagna del Rigenerazionismo (1902-1913)

This article studies the links between monarchy and Spanish nationalism in the first decade of Alfonso XIII’s reign (1902-1913). It focuses on three different aspects: the great monarchical ceremonies, specially the royal oath to the Constitution or coronation; the royal trips, extraordinarily developed; and the military ceremonies containing a strong nationalist meaning as the annual swearing of loyalty to the national flag by new soldiers. Through those performances, the crown was integrated in a national imaginary dominated by discourses and practices of regeneration of the fatherland in the aftermath of the colonial disaster of 1898: in such a regeneration, the king was thought as a necessary force. At a lower level of pomp and splendor than other european monarchies, the Spanish king was perceived as a national symbol by different groups. Among them, local elites, various associations and the heterogeneus public of the royal spectacles, shown by the mass media. Those performances reinforced the political role of a king that enjoyed constitutional executive powers.

Erasing Tamil Eelam: De/Re Territorialisation in the Global War on Terror

This paper considers the Sri Lanka/Tamil Eelam conflict with attention to how its dramatic end can be explained through postcolonial territorial politics. I argue discourses of postcolonial nationalism and global terrorism aligned along domestic, regional, and international political levels to enable a military victory for the government of Sri Lanka. At the domestic political level, there was a change in government along with a split and defection within the LTTE command. At the international level, there was a turn away from Western allies due to their perceived inability to understand the needs of the Asian front in the global war on terror (GWOT). This led to a geopolitical realignment with China, a state sympathetic to fighting terrorism and secession movements. The case is studied under a theoretical lens of “de/re territorialisation” from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. De/re territorialisation reveals simultaneous efforts to inscribe nationalist meaning into territory in a constant process of “becoming.”

Colonial Malariology, Medical Borders, and Sharing Scientific Knowledge in Mandatory Palestine

This article focuses on the specific ways in which Zionist scientists studying malaria in Mandatory Palestine (1920-1947) presented their work to international scientific circles, moving between the transnational aspects and the local aspects of their work on malaria while suffusing that work with nationalist meanings. This slippery yet seemingly unproblematic movement between the general and the specific, between the colonial world and Palestine, was a necessary mechanism of scientific exchange. In the Zionist case the work on malaria for these scientists was both a marker of their belief in progress and also a sign of their devotion to a specific political and social project. The knowledge imparted by Zionist malariologists and the international reception it received lent scientific legitimacy to the Zionist project while it advanced the goals of settling the land and defining the communal borders within Palestine between the Arab population and the Jewish one. In this way, the Zionist anti-malaria project in Palestine holds a unique place in malaria research of the time.

Masculinity and nationalism in East African hip-hop music

East African music aligns itself with nationalistic desires while attempting to create a transnational and regional agenda that goes beyond individual nation-states. Hip-hop music appears at pains to define itself as different from the western art-forms with which it is hastily associated by instantiating localized forms and creating a different locution. This paper surveys East African hip-hop to demonstrate that the music is a productive site upon which the local, the national, and the global contest and negotiate. We demonstrate that central to the music's identity politics is the notion of masculinity, in which the construction of community is interpreted as a masculine enterprise. The audiences also invest the music with political and nationalist meanings that are fraught with sexualized readings. On the whole, the music rejects hostile nationalism but male artists tend to represent women negatively in their grand national, regional, and pan-African projects. Indirectly indicating the depth of the hegemonic masculinism they operate under, women artistes express a desire to deconstruct male constructs. At the same time they suggest that, in spite of themselves, their critique has to be cautious and subtle.

“Our Dear North Country”: Regional Identity and National Meaning in Ontario’s Georgian Bay

The maturation of regional perspectives, and the accompanying development of distinct regional identities based on landscape, is a story that lies at the heart of Canadian history. With time and experience, people gradually came to think of the east shore of Georgian Bay - an archipelago known as the “Thirty Thousand Islands” - as a separate place, distinct even from adjacent sections of the Great Lakes and Ontario’s “near north.” This essay looks at this process of adaptation from three angles. Artists and writers struggled to create a language appropriate to the place, most famously in works by the Group of Seven. Residents on the islands developed a community identity that emphasized the differences and practical concerns of life in a rugged maritime environment. As this Shield landscape became laden with nationalist meaning, however, place-specific images like the leaning pine were exported as generic symbols of the northland.

Cooees across the strand: Australian travellers in London and the performance of national identity

Over the nineteenth century, the European ‘cooee’ in Australia shifted from being a functional colonial bush call to being a means of performing a specifically Australian nationality. This article examines the particular circumstances—in literature and music, in trade, war and, most critically, in travel—in which the ‘cooee’ took on selfconsciously nationalist meanings. The cooees of Australian travellers in London predated its entry into a nationalist repertoire in the later nineteenth‐century, part of the process whereby Australian identity was forged out of the relationship between Australia and Britain.

Performing National Culture in a Bolivian Migrant Community

Folklorization of traditional Andean culture by a universalizing nation-state appropriates indigenous ceremony for political ends, but at same time creates spaces within which indigenous people can assert their own claims to be true custodians of national cultural patrimony. In a local fiesta modeled on Bolivia's famous Carnaval, residents of one migrant barrio in city of Cochabamba labor to produce a collective identity based on their control of national folklore, in order to enhance legitimacy of their community and to foster integration with Bolivian nation. (Folklore, carnival, state formation, Bolivia) In 1968, Bolivian state nationalized popular culture. In presidential decree number 08396 of that year, military government of General Rene Barrientos Ortuno declared that folkloric music, defined as music produced by peasant groups and folk in general (grupos campesinos y folk en general), was now property of state (Guerra Gutierrez 1990:43). This same decree created a national Department of within Ministry of Education and Culture, specifically to promote cataloging and regulation of Bolivian folklore in its various manifestations. By 1970, government of General Barrientos had been twice replaced (first by that of General Ovando and then by that of General Banzer) (Klein 1992), but state's commitment to ownership and bureaucratization of national folkloric culture remained steadfast. In a decree of 1970, Banzer's government spelled out duties of national Department of and its regional subcommittees, most of which involved compiling registers and inventories of various dances and musics classified by state as folkloric, and promoting and sponsoring folkloric performances. Especially important in this was recognition of and support for annual carnival fiesta, Carnaval de Oruro, now elevated to a national folkloric celebration. In yet another presidential decree of 1970, Bolivian state declared city of Oruro to be Folklore Capital of (Guerra Gutierrez 1990). This series of presidential decrees can be read as part of a strategy by Bolivian state to incorporate popular cultural expressions such as music and dance as components of a national cultural patrimony (c.f. Garcia Canclini 1995). Occurring at a moment in Bolivian history when state stability and legitimacy were in doubt, state's declaration of ownership of all that is culturally produced by its folk represented an attempt to extend national dominion over most public and performative elements of indigenous popular culture, thereby fostering national consolidation and defining Bolivian state itself as legitimate representative of that totality, the natural embodiment of history, territory and society (Cohn and Dirks 1986: 12). Despite many changes that occurred in composition of Bolivian state over next two decades, consequences of this nationalization of popular culture endured. The national significance accorded to Oruro as Capital of Bolivia raised that city's Carnaval to status of national cultural event, and its associated dances, costumes, and musical styles have come to serve as indices of Bolivian nation wherever they are performed. Oruro thus has become a folkloric place within Bolivian national space (c.f. Carter et al. 1993; Gupta and Ferguson 1992), a key site for maintenance of an often fragile Bolivian national identity (Abercrombie 1991). This essay looks at production of a national culture of folklore in Bolivia and at attempts by subordinate groups, specifically urban migrants of Oruro origin, to manipulate discourses of folklore and national culture in contesting state hegemony and their own sociopolitical marginalization within contemporary Bolivian society. It is concerned with ways in which people of Villa Sebastian Pagador, a barrio of Oruro migrants in city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, creatively reappropriate nationalist meaning of folklore to characterize their own expressive culture. …