national identity Flashcards
(13 cards)
Stuart Hall: shared experiences
(1992)
- every nation has a collection of stories about shared experiences, sorrows, triumphs and disasters e.g British Empire, Florence Nightingale, royal deaths, Darwin
- UK: sense of identity about being British as well as identities of being English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish
James Fulcher: globalisation and national identity
(2000)
- despite the development of a ‘global society’, national identity is still important
- argues that we now live in a ‘multi-level society’ that has a global level of organisation but also regional, national and sub-national levels
- e.g Disney, UN, the internet
Benedict Anderson: ‘Imagined Communities’
(1983)
- visualises the nation as an ‘imagined community’ as we will never meet all the people who share our sense of nation, so our national community is imaginary in the sense of existing in our minds
- a shared language/culture gives the preconditions for the development of modern national identity
Anthony Giddens
(1985)
- argues national identity is relatively benign whenever it is taken for granted
- when national identity is threatened, people embrace the idea of ‘we group’ and ‘then group’
- e.g conflict between Serbs, Bosnians and Croats stemmed from the fact that they no longer identified themselves as Yugoslavians
Guibernau and Goldblatt
(2000)
British national identity is based on:
- geography: island status separates Britain from Europe e.g Brexit
- wars: particularly against other European countries, developing characteristics like stiff upper-lip, self-sacrifice
- British Empire: Brits view themselves as culturally superior
- royal family: seen by the mass media as the heart of British identity
what did the NatCen Sep 2024 tell us?
- 64% of Brits are proud of Britain’s history compared to 86% in 2013
- shows that the country has become less nationalistic and less supportive of the nation’s political and economic achievements
- some of these results are generational, with 70% over 65 believing that it’s important to be born in Britain with only 41% under 35 agreeing showing that the attitudes revolve around ‘civic identity’
Obradovich et al
(2024)
- ditching the monarchy would represent a ‘loss of identity’ for many Brits
- mourners of QEII linked their national identity to the monarchy
what is Hirsch’s (1992) definition of ‘nostalgia’
a longing for a sanitized impression of the past
Boakye
(2022)
'’we won the second world war’’ but we are not responsible for the bad things that came along with it
- ‘‘we’’ take collective glory but not collective responsibility
what did the 2011 census tell us?
- 91% identified with at least one UK national identity
- English most common identity (61%)
- British common (29%)
Bowie: Wales
(1993)
- points out that non-Welsh people think of Wales in terms of broad stereotypes (rugby, male-voice choirs, sheep farming etc)
- however, there are huge cultural divisions e.g between non-Welsh and Welsh speakers, North/South Wales
- reality of most nations is that they’re cultural hybrids
- sense of not being English can unite many people to identify with being Welsh, Scottish or Irish
Richard Weight: England
(1999)
- feels that the English football team is a crucial icon in binding the English together
- national identity is about emotional and cultural attachments
name and explain the two types of nationalism
civic nationalism: unites groups of people so that they feel pride in their country e.g USA school children saluting flag at school
extreme nationalism: pride in one’s country coupled with intolerance of others’ e.g German nationalism in early 20th century led to the rise of Nazism
