Official Nationalism Research Articles

“It’s time”: revolution and evolution in Australian political advertising

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine two significant political advertising campaigns which used the “It’s Time” slogan and to reflect on how these related to official, popular and commercial nationalism in Australia. The paper is primarily concerned with two main issues: identifying and examining the variety of images of Australia in two key television advertisements, and exploring the methods by which advertising agencies created positive images of Australia and Australians in the two campaigns. It specifically highlights the significance of the “It’s Time” campaign, which is relevant for scholars and advertisers seeking to understand effective political communication. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines television advertisements by using semiotics as the principal methodology. The research methodology devised for the advertisements consists of two main components: a shot combination analysis, also known as a shot-by-shot analysis, and a semiological reading of the visual and acoustic channels of the advertisement. Findings This paper examines the use of commercial nationalism in television advertising. As one of many social and cultural influences, advertisements assist the individual in understanding their notion of themselves and their relationship with the wider community – be it local, national, regional or global. The primary focus of this research is the phenomenon of commercial nationalism – the adoption of national signifiers in the marketplace. However, by examining the more general discourse on nationalism, particularly the voice of official nationalism – the promotion of nationalism by the nation-state (or those aspiring to power), the symbiotic relationship between these two complementary brands of nationalism is explored. Originality/value The methodology adopted for analysing the two political advertising campaigns offers conceptual and practical value. It provides a consistent set of terms and concepts for further research to build upon. The paper provides insights for the marketing or examination of advertising campaigns. The paper demonstrates the power of market research to inform a framing strategy for a political campaign. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge in this area and thus society’s understanding of these important periods in the nation’s history. In particular, the paper provides an exploration into the “It’s Time” campaign and how it mobilised a broader cultural awakening to engineer success at the ballot box in 1972. The two case studies examined in this paper are relevant to political scientists and media and communication scholars.

UNDERSTANDING TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES THROUGH STORYTELLING WITHIN A POSTCOLONIAL FRAMEWORK

This study provides an account of my doctoral research with respect to the methodological choices that I have made. It focuses on the heuristic value of storytelling for English teachers within a postcolonial setting like Indonesia to construct meanings and understand their experiences ‘consciously within and against accepted forms’ (Miller, 1995, pp. 25-26). It inquires into the finding of ourselves - to understand who we are, who we have been and who we will become for the benefits of the young people in our care. First, I write and construct my autobiographical narrative and then solicit further stories from my teacher interviewees. Our stories allowed us to understand how our professional identities have been influenced and shaped by the social, political, cultural and historical contexts that surround our lives. Placing my study within a postcolonial framework, I was prompted to investigate the ‘heteroglot’ nature (Bakhtin, 1984) of Indonesia as a language community shaped by the history of colonization and the globalization of English. Our stories highlight our efforts to ‘speak back’ to not only our own habitual practices but also to the hierarchical structure of power perpetuated in English. They are not simply told in response to the ‘imagined communities’ of Indonesia as they shape the struggles of those who fought for independence from Dutch rule but are also in conflict with the New Order attempts to impose an ‘official nationalism’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 83) on Indonesians at the expense of any recognition of their regional languages, dialects and cultures. Key words/phrases: storytelling, professional identities, English teachers, postcolonial framework, habitual practices,

“Being Accepted” and “Being Accepted”?

I am by official nationality Australian but born of Chinese heritage. Most of the time I call myself “later generation Australian-born Chinese,” though this is changing. I left Australia nearly 10 ...

Faith in China: religious belief and national narratives amongst young, urban Chinese Protestants

AbstractThis paper investigates the national narratives of young, urban Protestants in contemporary China. Based on 100 interviews conducted in Beijing and Shenzhen, it argues that in constructing their national narratives, Chinese Protestants display critical selectivity in adopting the values of official party‐state nationalism. They display affection towards China, a sense of responsibility for improving the country and a concern for society's morality, all of which echo official nationalist priorities. However, they are critical of China's political arrangements, dispute the primacy of economic growth and are less hawkish on international and territorial issues. They see no contradiction between their Protestant and Chinese identities, but generally prioritise the former. This selectivity is explained by the fact that Protestantism generally attracts those less satisfied by the social and political status quo, and because of, in Carlson's terms, the ‘boundary‐spanning’ nature of the Protestant identity and morality to which these converts then subscribe.

How international law impacts on statelessness and citizenship: the case of Kurdish nationalism, conflict and peace

AbstractThis paper argues for a new approach to understanding statelessness. It explores the limits of international laws on statelessness and the relationships between statelessness, diaspora and nationalism. It discusses how the condition of statelessness has affected Kurds, and how statelessness has been constructed and experienced at an individual and collective level in the diaspora. It argues for an expanded definition of the international laws of ‘stateless’ person: adding to the accepted de jure and highly contested de facto definitions, by also suggesting a third, new, category of ‘socially stateless’ people. The paper examines the concept of diaspora itself from the perspective of Kurdish interviewees and explores how, for stateless groups like Kurds, ‘living in diaspora’ can mean more than one place, including their land of origin. It will suggest the concept of ‘double’ or ‘multiple’ diasporas, where stateless people do not feel that they belong either to their country of origin or to the country in which they now live. The paper discusses the idea that when an ethnic community is stateless, then even those individuals who have an official nationality, citizenship or passport may often describe themselves as stateless. The relationship between statelessness, diaspora and nationalism is highlighted; and the impact of this on diaspora involvement in homeland politics, conflict and peace is explored. The paper also argues that the lack of protection which international law(s) offer around statelessness paradoxically create new forms of nationalism.

The Arabian Nights in the English Popular Press and the Heterogenization of Nationhood: A Print Cultural Approach to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities

this article mainly aims to investigate publications of the Nights for lower-class readers in nineteenth-century England, in order to offer a heterogenized picture of the formation of modern English nationhood. In particular, I will explore the print circumstances of Edward Lane’s translation of the Nights as well as some reproductions of, and responses to, the Nights in nineteenth-century British cheap popular periodicals, to develop a critical dialogue with Anderson. This dialogue includes revisiting, challenging, and complicating some dimensions of Anderson’s discourses on print capitalism, the formation of the modern nation as an imagined community, and official nationalism.

Assia Djebar: Writing between Land and Language

The death of assia djebar on 7 february 2015 marks the end of an era in literary and world history. The last survivor of the generation of Algerian writers who took up the pen in the mid-1950s as their country embarked on its historic struggle for independence from France, Djebar continued writing long after the deaths of Mouloud Feraoun (1962), Kateb Yacine (1989), Mouloud Mammeri (1989), and Mohammed Dib (2003). With her death, the age of decolonization and African revolution as it resonated in literature seems truly to have come to a close. Djebar was the only woman among the Algerian literary pioneers, and her work, which includes novels, essays, documentary films, and plays, explores, above all, the experience of Algerian women. Challenging official nationalism, these counternarratives tell stories about women's roles in war in which the political doesn't efface the personal and victory doesn't signal the end of suffering or the fading of loss. This oppositional stance was carried even into the rituals observed in the aftermath of her death. Official services conducted at the airport and the Palais de la Culture in Algiers were shadowed and indeed overshadowed by less-formal ceremonies in which family, friends, and members of Algerian women's movements recited poetry and chanted Berber songs.

Remembering Lee Kuan Yew: politics, heritage and political heritage in Singapore

The paper discusses issues of political heritage and the commemoration of notable figures within the context of the small city state of Singapore, a former British colony which celebrated 50 years of full independence in 2015. Particular reference is made to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, hailed as the founding father of the modern republic, who also died that year. Heritage overall is shown to occupy an important place in official nation building efforts, including political heritage dominated by the narrative of the success of the government formed by the party created and led by Mr Lee. Approaches to remembering the man and his legacy are considered, focusing on debate about turning his home into a memorial and possibly a national monument. The case confirms the generally observed manner in which formal depictions of political heritage, encompassing stories of influential individuals, are inextricably tied to contemporary politics. It also reveals the particular challenges of heritage management in Singapore arising from its history and official endeavours to shape public and private memories.

Images and Voices from Beyond the National: How the ‘Trans’ Affected Spanishness in the Cinema of J.A. Bardem

Juan Antonio Bardem (1922-2002) is a key cineaste if one wants to understand the evolution of Spanish cinema and its place in the history of European and World cinemas today. Since the 1950s, Bardem contested official nationalist cinema with often hermetic and symbolic narratives that spoke about Francoism’s cultural backwardness, its rigid religious and moral values, and its strict repression against those who lost the Civil War. With major critical and commercial successes as Muerte de un ciclista/Death of a cyclist (1955), Calle Mayor/Main Street (1956), Bardem achieved world recognition as an auteur, and started a career characterised by a clear fetish, hybridised transnational aestheticism. His cinema’s promiscuous relationship with Italian Neorealim and the conventions of the Hollywood genre film would eventually favour a hybrid cinema, which influenced the representation and the expression of identity within the national environment of Francoism. Due in part to the implications of European co-productions and in part to Bardem’s prolific use of intertextuality and obsessive focus on the “other cinemas” as an aesthetic and cultural starting point that both suited his political vision of nationhood and his vision of cinema as an industry, the national character or Spanishness of his films was gradually compromised. Using Mark Betz research on European co-productions during the 1950s and 1960s, this article also explores how the use of foreign actors and intra-national dubbing bespoke a political and aesthetic detachment, and how commercial and marketing strategies might have ended up suffocating identity and political detachment. I argue that while the Francoist’s enforced policy of dubbing foreign films into neutral Castilian Spanish helped nationalise foreign cinema and avoid international cultural and political intoxications, the use of foreign actors to represent Spanish roles in the films of Bardem contributed to a cancellation of the nationalistic purposes of such policies. Bardem’s cinema, although maintaining a detached position vis-a-vis Francoist official national narratives and aesthetics, was able to communicate Spanishness from the perspective of dissidence as long as his films were read as art cinema that contested other national cinema. On the other hand, the increasing tendency of co-productions with the purpose of counteracting or levelling up with the hegemony of Hollywood in Europe proved that the imbricate hybridised internalisation not only cancelled national discourses but also the identity of films, and as a consequence, of the director.

中国の公定ナショナリズムにおける反「西洋」のダイナミズム

中国の公定ナショナリズムにおける反「西洋」のダイナミズム

Benedict R. O'G. Anderson. Exploration and Irony in Studies of Siam over Forty Years. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2014, 166 p.

Exploration and Irony in of Siam over Forty YearsProfessor Crocodile Who Blocks CanalHelpfully compiled and arranged both chronologically and thematically in one volume, various essays, articles, and reviews that make up this book reflect wonderful skepticism, relentless questioning, daring iconoclasm, contrarian perspective, critical intelligence, penetrating insight, mordant humor, wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of country, its people and beyond, and above all, tender and deeply-felt love and care which Professor Ben Anderson, worldrenowned doyen of nationalism and Southeast Asian at Cornell University, has consistently brought to study of Siam/Thailand over past 40 years. Like Jorakhe khwang khlong or a crocodile who blocks canal (and thereby obstructing smooth flow of canal traffic) in a traditional Thai saying, this body of his work was indeed widely recognized as a paradigmatic watershed in Thai studies that has altered and shifted hitherto dominant, conservative, elitist, state-centric, royal-nationalist mainstream to an inundation of revisionist counter-streams and sub-streams since 1990s.I first encountered Khruu Ben's (or Teacher Ben as he likes to be called) path-breaking, seminal literature review essay of Thai State: The State of Thai Studies (first published in 1978, Chapter 1 of this volume) shortly after I leftthe communist-led maquis in northeastern Thailand in early 1980s when I was asked to translate it into Thai by editor of Pajarayasan Magazine, an independent intellectual periodical under patronage of Sulak Sivaraksa, a well-known conservative Buddhist intellectual who happened to be one of two commentators of this essay when it was first publicly presented. Still fresh from jungle and blinkered by rigid Maoist ideological frame of reference, I could hardly fathom groundshaking impact of its message, which attempted to overhaul in toto axiomatic foundations of Thai studies as practiced up till then by both Western scholars and their Thai official nationalist counterparts. Argued defiantly, systematically, solidly, and meticulously, review essay contains Ben's central revisionist vision of modern Thai history that has proven to be most thought-provoking, stood test of time, and rendered it an indispensable item in any serious reading list on modern Thai politics in past four decades. This central vision was subsequently expanded upon and developed further in other writings of his also included in this volume. Let me lay it out point-by-point here as briefly and succinctly as I can for readers' benefit.1. In order to properly understand essence and trajectory of modern Thai history, it is imperative to conceptually separate Thai nation from its monarchy. Not only are two non-identical and not only do they have different interests, but in many cases their interests also clash (p. 21).2. The state built by Jakri dynasty during reigns of King Rama V to VII (A.D. 1868- 1935) was by no means a modern nation-state but an absolutist dynastic auto-colonial one that carried out modernization in some aspects to a certain degree but delayed and/or obstructed it in others, particularly those that were related to vested interest and position of monarchy itself. Hence, rise of Siamese absolutist state did not amount to successful building of a modern nation-state. On contrary, it hindered latter alongside coming of Siamese nationhood (pp. 28, 34).3. In contrast with erstwhile European absolutist states, Siamese one was too short-lived (lasting about 40 years from 1892-1932), and reach and effects of its power were too shallow. Since it had not transformed Thai society and economy widely and profoundly enough, political reaction that finally came about in form of a constitutionalist putsch, staged by self-styled People's Party of junior military officers and government officials, was merely the partial, mystified revolt . …

What Kind of Burden is the Burden of History? How Young Adults in Serbia and Kosovo Use History to Understand and Experience Nationalism

The role of history in popular understandings and experiences of nationalism remains a puzzle of nationalism scholarship. Existing approaches are polarized between constructivist and elite-driven explanations that neglect nuanced instrumentalizations of history. This study investigates uses of history vis-à-vis nationalism by Serbian and Kosovo Albanian students. The author argues that historical themes are evoked in two distinct ways: lived history and abstract history. The former embraces official nationalist narrative, ignores the ethnic out-group, and deduces historical lessons for individuals. The latter rejects official nationalist narrative, makes clear connections with the out-group (favorable and unfavorable), and deduces historical lessons for collectivities.

The battle of Gallipoli: The politics of remembering and forgetting in Turkey

Las diferencias entre las versiones opuestas del recuerdo público de la Batalla de Gallipoli se han vuelto más pronunciadas al acercarnos al 18 de marzo de 2015 (en Turquía es el 18 de marzo, la batalla naval, el que marca el aniversario, no el desembarco del 25 de abril). Durante muchas décadas la narrativa nacionalista oficial representaba Gallipoli como un «ensayo» de, o incluso parte de, la Guerra de la Independencia (1919-1922). La victoria se debió casi prácticamente al ingenio militar de MustafaKemal. Este recuerdo público puede haber sido el dominante durante décadas, pero también se han desarrollado versiones rivales. Este artículo tratará en gran medida de lo que se puede denominar el recuerdo islamizado o «religionizado» de Gallipoli. Para algunos que se aferran a este punto de vista, Gallipoli es donde el soldado «turco» contuvo a los últimos Cruzados. Para otros, su versión de la batalla no incluye a MustafaKemal. Aún así, ambas partes tienen algo en común mientras se preparan para celebrar la victoria. Tanto los recuerdos nacionalistas como los islamistas ignoran las posibles conexiones con otro acontecimiento que se rememora el 24 de abril, el día antes del desembarco de la Entente en Gallipoli: la orden dada para deportar a los armenios anatolios. La «celebración» del uno posiblemente supere el recuerdo y el duelo del otro.

Maintaining and Strengthening a Shaky Regime with Mnemonic Work: Inventing a Chinese National Day from 1949 Through 1987 in Taiwan

This paper investigates the invention of a Chinese National Day from 1949 through 1987 in Taiwan to illuminate the significance of mnemonic work in nation‐building. The 1949 Retreat after the Chinese Civil War resulted in a serious legitimacy crisis for the government of the Republic of China; thus, (re)inventing the National Day became an important mission to maintain and even strengthen this shaky regime. While the role of the standardized commemorative narrative in influencing people's collective memory is granted, this article emphasizes the aspect of embodied memory in nation‐remembering. I point out that the official Chinese nationalism constructed its National Day as “inevitably” bustling, memorialized, accepted, heroic, familial‐ized, blessed, and pivotal‐ized to shape the impression of a sacred and memorable day. This paper—while essentially consistent with Billig's argument of banal nationalism—suggests that national identity is accumulated by many symbolically encoded elements found in daily life; it goes further to argue that banal nationalism needs the “hot” nationalism found in special occasions to encode, refresh, and redefine the symbolic meaning of entities. That is, the oscillations between sacred and profane are needed to guarantee that patriotic emotions can be continually created and maintained.

The Mulatto Republic: class, race, and Dominican national identity

The Dominican Republic was once celebrated as a mulatto racial paradise. Now the island nation is idealized as a white, Hispanic nation, having abandoned its many Haitian and black influences. The possible causes of this shift in ideologies between popular expressions of Dominican identity and official nationalism has long been debated by historians, political scientists, and journalists. In The Mulatto Republic , April Mayes looks at the many ways Dominicans define themselves through race, skin color, and culture. She explores significant historical factors and events that have led the nation, for much of the twentieth century, to favor privileged European ancestry and Hispanic cultural norms such as the Spanish language and Catholicism. Mayes seeks to discern whether contemporary Dominican identity is a product of the Trujillo regime--and, therefore, only a legacy of authoritarian rule--or is representative of a nationalism unique to an island divided into two countries long engaged with each other in ways that are sometimes cooperative and at other times conflicted. Her answers enrich and enliven an ongoing debate.

The Discovery of Alsatian Space in the Regionalist Art Historiography of the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract Our paper tries to analyse the way in which the regional identity of art historiography in Alsace came into being in the 20th century. Similarly to Transylvania, Alsace represented a highly disputed territory, being claimed by two hostile nations. We shall focus upon the regionalist point of view, which used to be overshadowed by the official nationalist discourse of the centres, Paris and Berlin. We shall examine the way in which a regional identity was invented through works of art. Regionalist art historians did no longer speak of the existence of French or German art in Alsace, but of the existence of an Alsatian art individualized within European art. We shall also emphasise the role the genius loci and regional geography played in forging this new identity.

Canada’s Invisible Nationality Policy: Creating Ethnicity, Managing Populations, Imagining a Nation

This article explores the process of national identity construction at Canadian borders in the 1930s. Based on the examination of customs declaration forms (transatlantic ship manifests) of arriving passengers at the port of Quebec in the first half of the 1930s, as well as Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) files, I suggest that the Canadian bureaucracy, informed by social Darwinist views of race and ethnicity, and the Anglophone bourgeois concern over modernization brought upon by the forces of industrialization and urbanization, developed an elaborate system of categorization of Canada’s population according to prescribed criteria of ethnicity, nationality, and race. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I argue that in efforts to “know” and control its growing population, the Canadian state developed a rigid, albeit an invisible nationality policy. Although there was never an official nationality policy in place in Canada in the 1930s, public officials, the media, and security agencies not only operated with an acute awareness of national and ethno-racial differences in the society, but also worked to reinforce such divisions in attempts to maintain the social order and the cultural, social, and economic status quo. In this work, I imply that border officials were directly responsible for constructing specific representations of Canada’s ethnic populations, all within the context of an impending need to control the population of a rapidly modernizing society, where the Canadian community had to be made “knowable,” familiar, and recognizable in the official discourse.

A Sacred Bastion? A Nation in Itself? An Economic Partner of Rising China? Three Waves of Nation‐Building in Taiwan after 1949

AbstractAgreeing with the constructivist approach to nationalism, this article argues that the prevailing ambiguous attitude towards nationality among people in Taiwan is a reflection of different waves of nation‐building − each led people to imagine a distinct nation − and the mixture of these waves during past decades. Whereas all nations are artificially imagined, ‘the style in which they are imagined’ should be examined. This article aims to distinguish three waves of nation‐building in Taiwan after 1949 and address the issue of superimposition of contradictory elements in producing nation‐ness to highlight that nation‐building is a path‐dependent process. Three suppositions can be derived from the investigation of Taiwan's case. First, people are not empty vessels and the new national imagination has to compete and coexist with vestiges and crystallizations of former imaginations. Second, the content of a single nation‐building programme may be reinvented according to the external and/or internal environment. Third, depending on the social atmosphere, official nationalism may adopt a different method to instil the national imagination.

Two bullocks, a ladder and a lamp: electoral symbols in Nehruvian India

There is a substantial body of literature on nation-building that, from a variety of theoretical approaches, examines the role of symbolic constructs in the process of construction and consolidation of new nation-states. Among these works, the dramatic and symbolic aspects of election and their function in the nation-building project have been investigated by political scientists and anthropologists alike. However, analysis of electoral emblems as constitutive elements in the nation-building process has been largely missing from most studies of nation-building and official nationalism. A case study of postindependence India suggests how national belonging was also made to hinge upon on competent democratic participation of the masses in the political life of the country. Central to this process of identity work was the establishment of an independent Election Commission and of strict rules for the design, selection and allotment of election emblems. Conventional accounts have argued that these procedures were introduced primarily for the benefit of the uneducated masses who were suddenly invited to participate in India's democratic process. I argue against this simplistic interpretation. Far from being only tools for the simplification of electoral processes, India's election symbols were one of India's institutional mechanisms designed to nurture the development of a correct democratic conduct and therefore ultimately contributing to the Nehruvian national project.

Myanmar. Reconfiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma. By Chie Ikeya. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011. Pp 239. Illustrations, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index.

Reconfiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma By CHIE IKEYA Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011. Pp 239. Illustrations, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000702 This is one of the most important books on colonial Burma to have emerged in the last century. It addresses aspects of modernity originating with certain categories of local women, thus altering the male-dominated past; furthermore, it is derived from indigenous sources as well as colonial records, going beyond the archives of British Burma to reinstate a sense of agency and dynamism with which to counter notions of colonial passivity. Ikeya states in the beginning that her study will 'broaden the understanding of colonialism and modernity in Burma beyond the level of politics and enable a fundamental revision of the reigning nationalist and anticolonial master narratives of political culture and society in colonial Burma' (p. 4), and she does not disappoint the reader. This is the first in a triumvirate of scholarly works on in Burma to emerge more or less simultaneously (the others are Jessica Harriden, The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history [Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2012] and Tharaphi Than, Women of modern Burma [London: Routledge, 2013]). One is a longue duree perspective (unsettling to North American-trained historians who are encouraged to direct their focus narrowly but with depth) that necessarily has a broader purview than the current work under review, and the other has not been released; yet their existence shows that there has been a momentum building over the past decade to augment the history of in Burma from 'a footnote in the official nationalist Burmese history' (p. 4). Ikeya has achieved exactly that with Reconfiguring women. Those of us who engage with themes of gender in Southeast Asian and world history more broadly in our teaching have been hard-pressed for material for Burma with which to oppose the dominant trope of male nationalist heroism. For this reason, Ikeya has carried out a great service to the profession in conceiving of and writing this book. Throughout the carefully researched and engagingly written monograph, the roles that played in consuming and performing modernity--as 'khit kala, women of the times' (p. 2), known by various names, not all of them complimentary--are located, examined, explained, and restored to history. In so doing, the idea of the Burmese incompatibility with 'foreignness' is exposed as a fallacy and Furnivall's 'plural society' becomes too simplistic (p. 5). Chapter 1 provides the historical context for the British takeover of Burma whilst stressing the precolonial cosmopolitan nature of the coastal areas and regional economic integration already in place. A key emphasis is the demographic breakdown for immigration into urban areas and where the migrants came from. This provides an excellent overview of a diverse population that was predominantly composed of male immigrants--and the local whose partners they became. There is also a taste of the consumption of foreign products by Burmese as a consequence. Chapter 2 tackles the question of 'high status' versus autonomy and analyses the degree to which in colonial Burma could access education and political agency. …