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An expanding literature on money and identity is built around the assumption that political elites deliberately use currency design to foster national identities. However, the empirical evidence in favor of this assumption has been fragmentary. Drawing on detailed primary sources we demonstrate nationalist intentions of political elites involved in currency design. We also examine how political elites use banknotes as official pronouncements on who is and who is not part of the nation and what the official attitude toward foreigners is. By tracing changes in the inclusive and exclusive messages directed at an intra-state or international audience we document that there is no connection between ingroup (national) love and outgroup (foreigners, minorities, opposition) hate. The amount of exclusive messages to outgroups culminated in conditions of perceived threat when political leaders tried to mobilize pre-existing identities to secure or maintain political power. In contrast, the officials deliberately tried to broaden ingroup boundaries in order to build international communities. Finally, we document that in the case of limited support for the new conception of identity, officials tried to depict the old and the new identity as complementary, embedding the new identity in existing discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the political and cultural processes of nation-building over thirty years of independence in Belarus. It argues that in becoming a nation-state Belarus has faced challenges similar to the other post-Soviet nations but has proved an exception in the choice of strategies it used to address them. The paper examines how, on the eve of independence, the nationalist elites devised policies aimed at consolidating statehood around the national revival in opposition to the Soviet past. It explores the role played by linguistic policy and historical memory as the two main arenas for implementing their visions of Belarusian identity. The paper then maps a shift in this trajectory from Lukashenka's rise to power to a national project based on reappropriation of Soviet legacy. Up until 2020, the state effectively navigated a geopolitical environment and adjusted its sociocultural parameters to preempt the society's shifting expectations. Finally, the paper reflects on how protests in 2020 demonstrated both the lack of support for Lukashenka and his reliance on the violent repression and external support for remaining in power. The war in Ukraine revealed limits of Belarus's sovereignty, while the society's ability to consolidate for its defense has been seriously undermined by the repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan’s Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet’s birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society’s past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet’s iconicity, this paper compiles 2014's celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia’s spectacles of public culture and their role in nation-building and identity-formation. Rather than merely resulting from any top-down decision specifying required activities nationwide, the year’s events involved numerous synergies as artists, museum and theater administrators, composers, and other cultural-sector workers benefited by responding to the potential of aligning their work with a theme as broad, as widely appreciated, and as eligible for various forms of support as this one. In addition, Turkmenistan’s strong central leadership benefited from this widely shared and highly visible celebration, especially emphasizing one element within Magtymguly’s eighteenth-century vision, an end to his people’s tribal conflicts within a unified Turkmenistan under one leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a post-structuralist, post-Marxist discursive approach to nation, this paper aims to (1) explore the constitutive elements of the national ideology of Polish ultras, (2) study what means of expression are used in their choreographies in order to disseminate their vision of the nation, and (3) map the events that stimulate the production of choreographies related to national issues. The study is based on the content analysis of ultras' displays using data from a print fanzine devoted to football fandom culture in Poland. The results indicate that the national ideology of Polish ultras can be viewed as a resistance ideology. They also reveal that the national ideology of ultras is only presented in particular contexts and is not a dominant issue in their performances. The study introduces the concept of occasional nationalism, which can be a useful analytical tool to map and quantify the presence of nation in practices of articulation of a particular community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents an attempt to study national identity in the post-Soviet context through the lens of everyday life practices. Building on ideas of banal nationalism and consumer citizenship, and with support of empirical evidence collected in L'viv, Ukraine, this paper demonstrates how national identity becomes materialized in everyday life through consumption practices and objects of consumption. While exploring objects and practices that are not originally national in scope but infused with national meanings by ordinary people, it will be shown how consumption becomes an arena for the expression and renegotiation of national self-portraits. Differences in national meanings among residents of L’viv belonging to two different language groups will highlight the diversity of ways and means by which people express their national sensibilities. By exploring national meanings in everyday consumption practices of Ukrainian citizens, this study aims to provide an alternative perspective on post-Soviet nation-building and contribute to the current debate on the position and identity of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the Rose Revolution (2003), Georgia has encountered an unprecedented scale of institutional reforms concomitant with the rise of American and European involvement in the “democratization” process. Various scholars have suggested that Georgian nationalism developed from an ethno-cultural basis to a more civic/liberal orientation after the Rose Revolution. This paper analyzes Georgian nationalism under President Mikheil Saakashvili to demonstrate the significant divergence between political rhetoric on national identity, the selection of symbols, and state policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church versus state policy toward ethnic minorities. The aim of this article is to examine the at times conflicting conceptions of national identity as reflected in the public policies of Saakashvili’s government since the Rose Revolution. It attempts to problematize the typologies of nationalism when applied to the Georgian context and suggests conceptualizing the state-driven nationalism of the post-Rose Revolution government as “hybrid nationalism” as opposed to civic or ethno-cultural. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the built physical landscape and places of cultural heritage were deliberately targeted and destroyed as part of the strategy of ethnic cleansing. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement recognized the potential for cultural heritage to contribute to postwar reconciliation and rebuilding; Annex 8 established a commission to preserve national monuments. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage in post-Dayton Bosnia and the ways in which it has been (ab)used to propagate a narrow, exclusivist identity. It focuses on the struggles to control the Commission to Preserve National Monuments as well as the fates of two monuments in particular—Vraca Memorial Park and the Partisans' Memorial Cemetery—whose abandonment signifies the wider struggles over memory and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post- Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were "re-written," brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. "Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture." European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its "localization" through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own "imagined community" and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh- Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post- colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the "continuity" and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead of thinking about “national identity,” scholars of nationalism would do well to study nationalism as a process of classification, treating national conflict as disputes over nationalized categories. Disputes over national classification take various forms: patriots argue over which category applies, which categories exist, and which categories have which status. Techniques for imposing classificatory categories also deserve attention. The contributors to this themed issue of Nationalities Papers illustrate the power of analysis based on classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1848, Habsburg Trieste became the target of German nationalists gathered in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt parliament, born out of the revolutions of 1848, has been widely depicted as a liberal experience. Yet its nationalist stances, which included the creation of a unitary German state through the absorption of vast multiethnic regions of the Habsburg monarchy, whose Austrian crownlands were part of the German Confederation, bear witness to the illiberal nature of the Frankfurt parenthesis of 1848–1849. Notwithstanding the assimilatory tendencies of the Frankfurt parliament, Italian activists in Trieste supported the inclusion of the Habsburg port in an enlarged Germany, hoping to break away from Habsburg rule, which they portrayed as oppressive. This article argues that the contradictory Italian support for the German Confederation highlights the paradoxes at the basis of nationalist movements at their onset, while also pointing to the difficulty that nation-states would soon witness in dealing with other ethnic groups within their borders. On the contrary, it was the Habsburg monarchy that, in its centuries-long tradition of accommodating different ethnicities into its fold, represented what to present-day observers comes closer to political liberalism than the so-called liberal national parties that opposed Habsburg rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the influence of the economic crisis on national identity in Slovenia. It first analyzes the creation of the contemporary national identity following independence in 1991 that was established in relation to a negatively perceived Balkan identity, which represented “the Other,” and in relation to a “superior” European identity that Slovenia aspired to. With the economic crisis, the dark corners of Slovenia’s “successful” post-socialist transition to democracy came to light. Massive layoffs of workers and the bankruptcies of once-solid companies engendered disdain for the political elites and sympathy for marginalized groups. The public blamed the elites for the country’s social and economic backsliding, and massive public protests arose in 2012. The aftermath of the protests was a growing need among the people for a new social paradigm toward solidarity. We show that in Slovenia the times of crisis were not times of growing nationalism and exclusion as social theory presupposes but, quite the contrary, they were times of growing solidarity among citizens and with the “Balkan Other.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two main trends in the field of nation-building studies. One subset of the field focuses on democratic nation building, seeking to answer questions of how people can live together in divided societies and presenting institutional recommendations. The other subset examines autocratic nation building, or how those in power utilize nation building to maintain their position of dominance. Scholars examine both types of nation building from above, examining government policies and elite action, and from below, analyzing the practices and emotions of non-elites. While there has been much progress in the field of nation-building studies, I suggest that we focus more on the conceptual differences between democratic and autocratic nation building, address the interactions of elites and non-elites in nation-building practices, and disaggregate analyses to take into account in-country variation in nation building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the national identity argument in unsettled times by using the COVID-19 pandemic as a test case. It uses a longitudinal survey among Jewish Israelis to examine whether the pandemic influenced levels of national identity and solidarity and whether it altered their relationship. The findings indicate a clear reduction in levels of solidarity, national attachment, and national chauvinism over time. They also show that the positive connection between national attachment and solidarity grew stronger, while the connection between national chauvinism and solidarity became weaker and insignificant. These findings provide complex evidence for the national identity argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of nationalism in North America has focused heavily on national identity. Much of the scholarship in the region indicates that most individuals define their respective national identities as attainable and inclusive. In contrast to these findings, other evidence from nationalism and ethnic politics scholarship in North America suggests a strong racial link to national understandings. Focusing on national identity research in North America, primarily the United States, but also findings from Canada and Mexico, I try to address the connection between national identity, its political effects, and the boundaries of national identity content. This article identifies important findings from research in North America and proposes that scholars look beyond the current research to study national development – understood both historically and through the study of individuals' constructive deployment of nationalism in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the difference between the construction of national and local identifications related to the new place of residence. It shows that local identification is more inclusive than national, and therefore may be a key to strengthening social cohesion. National and local identities can both be seen as forms of place identification (i.e., of spatial or territorial identity). The article builds on qualitative research on highly skilled migrants living in Wrocław, Poland. The empirical data shows that these migrants would rather obtain a city identification and call themselves Wrocławianie (inhabitants of Wrocław), and do not want, or only partially want, Polish national identity. Living in and experiencing Wrocław makes them feel like insiders, while experiencing Poland positions them as outsiders. While national identity is built around the difference between "us" and "them", local identity focuses on gaining knowledge about the particularity of a place and therefore allows for acceptance of heterogeneity and is easier for migrants to obtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International football is a field for national identity performances in which narratives of national belonging are articulated. Games of belonging capture discourses on and debates over national belonging. Up-and-coming national football team diversity, and its public promotion, was expected to facilitate boundary blurring in the politics of belonging; however, it caused highly contentious debates revolving around the question of who belongs to Germany and Turkey and who does not. For this reason, we ask how (ethnoculturally) diverse national football teams challenge established narratives of national belonging and, thereby, trigger debates over national belonging across time and space. We compared the media discourse on national team diversity in Germany and Turkey with a special focus on players who disrupt conceptions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, namely Mesut Özil and Nuri Şahin. Our study illustrates that upcoming international football events constitute games of belonging. Actors from the media, football associations, and politics largely demanded unilateral national belonging from the disrupters, Özil and Şahin. Both players' reactions, however, draw on conceptions of (trans-)national belonging which challenge and conflict with established narratives of (ethno-)national belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a comparative inquiry into the roles of Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907) and Taras Shevchenko (1818–1861) as national poets and anti-tsarist intellectuals within the context of their respective national traditions (in Georgia and Ukraine). During the period of their activity (19th and the beginning of 20th century), both Ukraine and Georgia were under tsarist imperial rule (albeit the two poets lived in different periods of Russian imperial history). Through their major works, each called for their communities to awaken and revolt against oppression, rejected social apathy caused by tsarist subjugation, and raised awareness about the historical past of their nations. By comparing the works and activities of the two poets and examining their impact on national mobilization in tsarist Ukraine and Georgia, this article argues that (lyric) poetry rather than prose (novel) constituted the agency of common national imagining. It was lyric and not epic poetry or novel, this article shows, that laid the foundation of nationalist mobilization as it framed the revolt of the "I" against colonialism as a revolt of the "I" against an oppressive society under which the cultural grounds for common imagining had been constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among various features of Ukrainian society that the world has started paying more attention to since the beginning of Russia's full-blown invasion in February 2022, many commentators have pointed to a surprisingly strong and encompassing national identity. However, scholars of Ukrainian language and identity matters had for years demonstrated an increased civic attachment of Ukrainian citizens, including Russian speakers, and its greater salience compared with ethnic, linguistic, and regional identifications. This article seeks to highlight the main accomplishments and challenges of research on Ukrainian ethnic and national identity. It focuses on a gradual shift from the essentialist understanding of ethnicity as embodied in bounded groups to the interest in individuals' contextually determined identifications by categories with a changing meaning. Another prominent part of the analysis is the relationship between Ukrainian ethnic and national identity and the amalgamation of these two apparently distinct phenomena into what I propose to call ethnonational identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1991, the absence of the concept of a Ukrainian nation and national identity has led to a controversial, often ambivalent process of identity formation. The aim of this paper is to analyze and map the widely shared concepts about national identity that exist in Ukrainian society after 20 years of independence. Analysis of 43 interviews with Ukrainian political and intellectual elites reveals five different shared narratives: (1) dual identity; (2) being pro-Soviet; (3) a fight for Ukrainian identity; (4) a recognition of Ukrainian identity; and (5) a multicultural-civic concept. Each narrative is characterized by three main features: a coherent structure with strong internal logic and justification of its legitimacy; connection to a specific conception of power and morality; and an opposition to other narratives. All these features lead to the perception of society as a zero-sum game where one narrative must prevail over all others. At the same time, all these features ensure that there can be neither an overwhelming victory of one narrative over others nor a satisfying compromise between them. The results shed light on the complex process of narrative construction of identity and power in newly independent states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explains how the Turkish nation's composition has changed under Justice and Development Party rule. Turkish nationalism and Turkish national identity have dramatically changed since 2010, when the Kurdish Opening process was started by former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Syrian refugee crisis and the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey created another change in Turkish national identity. Increasing religiosity in Turkey and the use of Islam by the Justice and Development Party created a flexible nation, where all Sunni Muslims can be considered members even though they are not ethnically Turkish. The author uses primary sources, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speeches since 2010, to show how his discourse became more embracing of non-Turkish Muslim groups and created a dynastic understanding of nationalism based on religion rather than the idea of an ethnically homogenous, secular Turkish nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of media nationalism has had a curious history. Some of the "classic" studies of nationalism have placed the media at the heart of their work but say very little about media theory or research. More recently, studies of populism and nationalist parties have talked quite a lot about the impact of digital technologies but have very little to say about nationalism. This piece first provides a brief overview of some of these classic studies before noting how insights from the study of media, and in particular audiences, began to filter through to nationalism research in the 1990s and early 2000s. It then addresses both the discursive and digital turns that influenced wider debates around the relationship between media and nationalism over the past decade or so, before outlining the limitations of such work and possible avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to shed light on the process of nation-building and the formation of national identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The peculiarity of Azerbaijani nation-building is that the debates on how to build a nation and define national identity were nourished by two discourses: Azerbaijanism (Azerbaycançılıq) and Turkism (Tűrkçűlűk). The article focuses firstly on the discourses on national identity and nation-building in the pre-independence period while elaborating on the roots and premises of the nationalist independence movement. Secondly, it highlights the discourses of nation-building in the post-independence period while discussing the meanings attributed to national identity and nationhood. It shows how these two discourses shaped the existing identity formation in Azerbaijan with a particular emphasis on citizenship identity, marked by multiculturalism, hospitality, tolerance, and patriotism. Yet one can still categorize the country as having an incomplete nation-building process, due the violation of territorial integrity as a result of the Karabakh conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the determinants of individual support for independence in Montenegro. We outline five theoretically distinct groups of factors covered by the literature and evaluate their impact on individual preference for independence. Using observational data obtained from a nationally representative survey conducted in Montenegro in 2003–2004, we find support for several hypotheses, showing that identity, income, and partisanship significantly impact individual opinion about independence. We also investigate and discuss the relative effect size of different factors associated with preference for independence. Additionally, we test variables with hitherto unexplored implications for opinions on independence, including the impact of support for EU membership, as well as support for democratic principles. Our logistic regression analyses reveal that attitudes towards EU integration and minority rights are strongly associated with support for independence. By systematically analyzing existing and new hypotheses with data from an understudied case, our findings contribute to the nascent literature on individual preferences for independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study represents an application of the concept of national indifference in the Post-Ottoman Balkans. It addresses the question of why two minority communities in Northwest Bulgaria in the first half of 20th century – the Protestant Voyvodovo community and the Catholic community of Bărdarski Geran, both marked by a strong principle of religious endogamy, intermarried. The author maintains that the main reason why these two communities intermarried was – despite all the differences between them – their national indifference, a parameter that both communities shared. These marriages did not cross the ethno-national boundary (the communities were nationally indifferent and thus ethno-national borders did not divide them). Contrary to standard understandings of the concept of national indifference, the author emphasizes that national indifference can be said to have two sides. On the one hand, nationally indifferent groups represent those in which the "we-they" opposition does not follow national lines, while on the other hand these groups identify and organize themselves on the basis of principles other than national ones. In the example of the inhabitants of Voyvodovo and Bărdarski Geran, this principle was religion. The appreciation of the "positive" side of national indifference enables us to grasp "the native's point of view," how people themselves perceived and understood their reality, their identities, and loyalties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a popular survey on national identity in Poland. However, the analysis of the survey is a pretext to remind one of the limitations of crude quantitative methods and to look at the Polish national identity itself. The article shows that the survey questions are far from unambiguous, and respondents might attribute different meanings to them. The survey does not "measure" national identity existing in the world, rather it serves to maintain the hegemonic concept of Polishness. It diminishes the significance of Catholicism and the perceived biological dimension of Polishness. It ignores public sentiment linking Whiteness and Polishness, contributing to maintaining the dominant image of Polishness as free of racism. Under the guise of objective research, the survey is one of the elements sustaining the image of a relatively open and inclusive Polishness. Referring to my own qualitative research and recent literature on the topic, I argue that Polish identity must be seen in terms of selective racism without racism—that is, it is an identity based on racial premises but which at the same time neglects its racial character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second decade of the 21st century, the practices, discourses, and implications of nation branding have attracted growing interest from scholars in the humanities and social sciences seeking to understand the linkages between national identities, reputations, governance, and the phenomenon of nation branding. This strand of critical research, as opposed to instrumentalist approaches, is the focus of this review. In line with the scope of the journal, the review looks at nation branding research that relates to the countries of the former communist bloc. The analysis finds that the state of the field is fragmented due to its multi-disciplinary nature. It is also argued that the field may be suffering from methodological nationalism. The discussion identifies epistemological and theoretical approaches, pointing out gaps and limitations along the way. It is suggested that research in the field can be grouped into "identity studies" and "practice studies" as a way to better understand key theoretical influences. Finally, it is proposed that future research should look at nation branding both as a field of practice that merits critical examination in its own right and as a lens that can be used to investigate changes in the state of nationhood today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast body of inquiry into nationalism has traditionally seen Europe as a main center for the emergence of nationalism, but scholars of "national indifference" have countered with the idea that nationalism may not matter much at all as a motive for most people. The concept of national indifference calls into question the power of nationalism as a motive for action and the mass appeal of nationalism. Studies of national indifference have constructed an alternative non-national narrative, but face particular challenges accounting for major themes and episodes of discrimination and violence. At its core, national indifference paradoxically both rejects and accepts binary notions of identity and incorporates binary assumptions about motives. It is tempting to resolve the contest between parallel accounts of pervasive, powerful nationalism and national indifference by choosing a victor, but this contrast between models shows the fluidity and dynamism of nationalism. The debate between the now classic accounts of nationalism and the alternative of national indifference points to the importance of often overlooked variables: frames and sense of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first comprehensive biography based on unique archival sources about Gregory Ignatius Zhatkovych, a Pittsburgh-based lawyer, who in 1918–1919 was instrumental in the creation of Czechoslovakia and the inclusion of its far eastern region, Subcarpathian Rus'/Ruthenia, into the new country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1918, the birth of independent small states in Central Europe was a common point of reference in Ireland. This article aims to provide a more complex understanding of Irish images of postwar Austria, highlighting the coexistence of some elements of Austria's imperial legacy and new characteristics of the independent small state. Irish commentators focused heavily on the newly drawn borders in Central Europe, including the redistribution of nationalities, which was considered a significant factor in the formulation of identities in the newly independent, self-declared nation-states. This article discusses how Irish intellectuals, journalists, and politicians connected the issues of changing borders and the ethnic composition of Austria to actual Irish problems, especially in relation to the question of (greater German) unity. In addition, this article also explores how the significance of religion in Irish national identity determined perceptions of postwar Austria. Catholicism came to symbolize more than the everyday religion of the majority of the Irish population, and it manifested itself in Irish perceptions of the wider world, including the small successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces changes in Polish administrative approaches toward indigenous Upper Silesians in the 1960s and 1970s. By commissioning reports from voivodeship leaders in 1967, the Ministry of Internal Affairs recognized that native Silesians held reservations toward Poland and, moreover, that postwar "Polonization" efforts may have backfired. These officials further understood the need to act quickly against "disintegration" trends. Although administrators in Katowice and Opole noted that relatively few Silesians engaged in clearly anti-Polish activities, these leaders still believed that West German influence threatened their authority in Silesia. Increasing West German involvement in the area, particularly through care packages and tourism, seemed to support this conclusion. In response to fears of West German infiltration and the rise in emigration applications, local authorities sought to bolster a distinctly Silesian identity. Opole officials in particular argued that strengthening a regional identity, rather than a Polish one, could combat the "tendency toward disintegration" in Silesia. This policy shift underscored an even greater change in attitude toward the borderland population: instead of treating native Silesians as an innate threat to Polish sovereignty, as had been the case immediately after the war, the administration now viewed them as essential for maintaining authority in western Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. It also includes several symbolic and operative provisions which are designed to strengthen the Jewish character of the state. The Basic Law purports to legally define and entrench the particular rather than universal values of Israel—the values that distinguish Israel from other nations rather than those that are shared by other nations. It anchors the Jewish identity of the state in its formal constitutional structure. My aim in this article is to present the history of the constitutional evolution of Israel and then to describe the conservative reactions to the constitutional liberalization of Israel. Then, I turn to examine the Basic Law, its provisions, and the arguments of advocates and opponents. Last, I evaluate its impact on the Israeli legal system. I shall argue that the Basic Law is part of a systematic attack on democratic liberties in Israel that may eventually transform Israel from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on more than 100 interviews in European Russia, this article sheds light on the bottom-up dynamics of Russian nationalism. After offering a characterization of the post-2012 "state-civilization" discourse from above, I examine how ordinary people imagine Russia as a "state-civilization." Interview narratives of inclusion into the nation are found to overlap with state discourse on three main lines: (1) ethno-nationalism is rejected, and Russia is imagined to be a unique, harmonious multi-ethnic space in which the Russians (russkie) lead without repressing the others; (2) Russia's multinationalism is remembered in myths of peaceful interactions between Russians (russkie) and indigenous ethnic groups (korennyye narodi) across the imperial and Soviet past; (3) Russian culture and language are perceived as the glue that holds together a unified category of nationhood. Interview narratives on exclusion deviate from state discourse in two key areas: attitudes to the North Caucasus reveal the geopolitical-security, post-imperial aspect of the "state-civilization" identity, while stances toward non-Slavic migrants in city spaces reveal a degree of "cultural nationalism" that, while sharing characteristics with those of Western Europe, is also based on Soviet-framed notions of normality. Overall, the article contributes to debates on how Soviet legacies and Russia's post-imperial consciousness play out in the context of the "pro-Putin consensus." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between nationalism and sport seems at once both obvious and manifest, with the most lavish praise of the nation often arising at sporting events. While a sizeable body of academic literature exists on the connection between the two concepts, it remains overlapping and unstructured. This state of the field review essay accounts for the major works in this field and categorizes it according to the function it fulfills in the subfield. Specifically, it focuses on sport as a mechanism for the diffusion and creation of nationalism, sport under conditions of globalization at Sporting Mega Events (SMEs), and the connection between sport and the distinction between civic and ethnic definitions of nationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Stalin's interpretations of the Lenin's thesis on the merging of the nations, the Yugoslav communists first needed to "push" all nations to the same level of development. After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, the soft Yugoslav nation-building project was accelerated. During the 1950s, national Yugoslavism was stimulated in a latent way through language, culture, censuses, and changes in the constitutional and socialist system. By the end of the 1950s, the Yugoslav socialist national idea reached its peak with the 1958 Party Congress. Nevertheless, with the economic crisis in the early 1960s, and the famous Ćosić-Pirjevec debate on Yugoslavism, the Yugoslav national idea declined. This was evident on the level of the personal, national identifications of the Party members, but also in the ideological shift of the Party's chief ideologue Edvard Kardelj. Yet, the concept of Yugoslavism was redefined in the second half of the 1960s without ethnic or national connotations. Two Yugoslavisms were created: a socialist one propagated by the Party and a national one that lived among the population in small proportions. Although the Yugoslavs were never recognized as a nation, that did not stop them from publicly advocating for their national rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the debate on the modernity of nations considering recent critical approaches to national phenomena. It proposes an alternative model that addresses the existence of empirical evidence about nations before the 19th century without erasing key changes in the history of nationhood, such as the rise of the principle of national sovereignty. The model draws on existing literature and a corpus of British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese ego-documents from the Age of Revolutions. The study of patterns of usage of national languages in these life narratives supports the abandonment of the premodern/modern antinomy and the implementation of a more complex account. The proposal distinguishes republican, genetic, nonpoliticized ethnotypical, politicized ethnotypical, liberal, romantic, biological, cultural, and democratic forms of nationhood. It then develops the genetic and the ethnotypical forms using source materials and readdresses the issue of "modernity" in the light of this evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on "everyday nationalism" foregrounds constructivist practice theory as well as interpretivist methodologies. Our project—Making Identity Count—does something similar but with an aim to advance the study of International Relations rather than the study of nationalism. Here, we suggest that these two approaches are basically complementary, and that a theoretical and methodological cross-fertilization between them may yield new insights in both fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study in comparative global history sheds light on a largely ignored forum for the politics of transition from monarchical empire to nation-state in the Middle East and Central Europe—religious festivals at sacred shrines. It compares the role of key pilgrimage festivals at politically important sacred shrines: (1) the Islamic Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) pilgrimage to the Haram esh-Sharif and Nabi Musa Tomb near the Dead Sea in Mandatory Palestine and (2) various Catholic pilgrimages to Jasna Góra in Częstochowa in interwar Poland. The author demonstrates how these events served as sacred forums for secular politics, where various political factions contested their partisan ideas of the nation, which included the elite nationalism of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini and the Catholic-Endecja nationalism of Polish clerical leaders. Moreover, I examine the role of these pilgrimage festivals in some of the major conflicts afflicting their respective areas, such as Arab–Jewish violence and hostility in Palestine and wars for borders as well as anti-minority sentiment, especially anti-Semitism, in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National pride is a group-based and sometimes collective emotion that people feel toward their nation-state. It is often measured by the general national pride item in cross-national surveys. Czechs are among those nations whose members express low levels of general national pride in comparison with those of other nations in the European Union. Scholars debate the extent to which general national pride is influenced by social desirability or other identifiable reasons. The goal of this article is to identify the specific reasons that influence general national pride in the Czech Republic. Using data from the October 2015 round of the survey Naše společnost, I examine what makes Czechs proud of their country. Among frequently mentioned reasons for national pride are the country's beauty, nature, cities, and history, as well as respondents' family and friends. Results of an ordinal regression analysis based on the European Values Study 2008 data confirm that general national pride is significantly influenced by political interest, confidence in government and satisfaction with the development of democracy, happiness, and social trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tells the story of the construction of Turkish national identity in the early republican era by addressing two canonical novels about occupied İstanbul: Sodom ve Gomore (“Sodom and Gomorrah”) by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and Biz İnsanlar (“We People”) by Peyami Safa. Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Turkish nationalist intellectuals attempted to offer certain formulations and implemented various mechanisms to create a national self. The study aims to focus on the ways in which Karaosmanoğlu and Safa create the new Turkish national identity and deals with the questions of how occupied İstanbul was perceived by these intellectuals and how the memory of the Allied occupation of İstanbul, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the National Liberation Struggle shaped Turkish elites’ self-identification as well as their formulation of the national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the status of difficult historic events in Ukrainian collective memory. Difficult elements of collective memory are defined as those which divide society on basic matters, such as identity and national cohesion, and events which are being actively forgotten because of the role of Ukrainians as perpetrators. Three such issues were analyzed: World War II and the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Holocaust, and the ethnic purge of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1945. Utilizing data from quantitative and qualitative studies, the author showcases the significance of these issues for contemporary Ukrainian identity and Ukraine’s relations with its neighbors. In particular, the evaluation of World War II and the role of the UPA in Ukrainian history polarizes Ukrainian society to a great degree. At the same time, this element of national history is used to construct a common, anti-Russian identity. The difficulty of relating to the memory of the Holocaust and the ethnic purge in Volhynia is of a different character. These events are problematic for Ukrainian collective memory because they demand a painful settling of accounts with the past. At present, only Ukrainian elites are willing to work on these subjects, and only to a limited degree, while the common consciousness either denies or ignores them altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the official narrative on representation of Estonian identity and Estonianness through the tourism strategy implemented by Estonia from 2007 to 2015. Gathering material from brochures and documents targeting foreigners produced by the Estonian Institute and “Enterprise Estonia” (EAS) and analyzing the logic behind the interior design of Tallinn Airport, we engage with current debates on identity construction in post-Soviet spaces. In particular, we suggest that along with an established body of literature looking at the role of state actors in the construction of identity, studies should consider the role of nontraditional or non-state actors in identifying and promoting identity markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to explore the common ground between biopolitics, fashion, patriotism and nostalgia. Taking off from the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics as a control apparatus exerted over a population, I provide an insight into the modern construction of the Russian nation, where personal and collective sacrifice, traditional femininity and masculinity, orthodox religion, and the Great Patriotic War become the basis for patriotism. On carefully chosen case studies, I will show how the state directly and indirectly regulates people’s lives by producing narratives, which are translated (in some cases designers act as mouthpieces for the state demographic or military politics) into fashionable discourses and, with a core of time, create specific gender norms – women are seen as fertile mothers giving birth to new soldiers, while men are shown as fighters and defenders of their nation. In the constructed discourses, conservative ideals become a ground for the creation of an idea of a nation as one biological body, where brothers and sisters are united together. In these fashionable narratives, people’s bodies become a battlefield of domestic politics. Fashion produces a narrative of a healthy nation to ensure the healthy work- and military force. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes discursive representations of Lithuania and of Belarus as Lithuania’s “Other” in the context of the recent political crisis in Ukraine. Focusing on the media discourse of Lithuanian intellectuals regarding the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) and its legacy, it examines how Belarus and its role vis-à-vis Lithuania have been depicted. The analysis is informed by the discourse-historical approach within critical discourse analysis, using thematic content and argumentation schemes for studying the images ascribed to the GDL, Belarus, and Lithuania in the selected texts. Focus in the discourse of intellectuals on the GDL as a historical homeland is found to shift from history as a scholarly endeavor to the politics of history and the uses of the past in today’s political projects. Belarus and the GDL emerge as topics not only historically and politically salient but also potentially dangerous for Lithuania within the setting of the events in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The People’s Front of Tajikistan (PFT), one of the parties to the country’s civil war, was instrumental in bringing the government of President Emomali Rahmon to power. The article examines the official strategies of memorialization of the PFT from the early 1990s to the present. It discusses the emergence of a canon of the PFT heroes and martyrs and locates it within the nascent national mythology after independence. It argues that the maintenance of this canon was rendered impossible by the imperatives of consolidating presidential authority and securing national reconciliation following the 1997 peace deal. It concludes with an examination of the growing tension between the official line of historical amnesia on the one hand and resurgent social memory on the other. People in Tajikistan are increasingly interested in revisiting the events and protagonists of the war to develop a sense of the past, and remembering the PFT forms an essential part of their search for shared history and a sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aims to identify the attempts to form a Jordanian national identity from the establishment of the Jordanian state in 1921 to date. This study reviews the efforts of the Jordanian state, which was subject to internal, external, political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances, and variables that led to change the Jordanian national identity to incorporate religious, national, regional, ethnic, and tribal aspects. The regime has been unable to address and resolve the issue of national identity; instead, it has tried several means to circumvent the problem of national identity. The identity card is a means that the regime has used to achieve its goals. These policies led to the state’s failure to define, establish, and maintain a comprehensive national identity for its citizens. The formation of a national identity has been a dilemma for Jordan since the establishment of the state; there is almost no known national identity. This situation calls for the construction of the Jordanian national identity on a fixed and clear basis to prevent its disintegration, to facilitate the process of social integration, and to build a final national identity that is both inclusive and representative. Without this identity, division and conflict may prevail in Jordanian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested – “hyphenated” – with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy – an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Azerbaijan's complex history has weaved a tapestry of linguistic, cultural, and national identities among Azerbaijanis through centuries of political, social, and linguistic integration. In the current post-Soviet era, this identity is undergoing another period of change, with influences from intra-state ethnic, religious, and sociopolitical institutions as well as from regional and international powers. This article centers on linguistic identity among Azerbaijani youth at three types of schools: Azerbaijani-medium, Russian-medium, and English-medium. The authors seek to discover whether and to what extent the language of instruction in each type of school affects linguistic identity, which in turn has implications for national identity. The article first discusses the existing literature on language and identity in second language acquisition and socio-educational linguistics. It then examines Azerbaijan's linguistic and political history through the lens of the latter framework, as a context for an analysis of the data from surveys and focus groups. The article analyzes the relationship between medium of instruction in school and students' perceptions of language and identification with various language groups, and discusses the findings of a significant correlation between language of instruction and linguistic identity, with its implications for national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates the evolution experienced by the identity-making strategies pursued through the propagandistic exploitation of Kazakhstani foreign policy. Periodical readjustments in the focus of foreign policy rhetoric led the Kazakhstani regime to reshape the identity of the population, in order to promote forms of self-perception almost exclusively associable with the leadership that ruled the country in the post-Soviet era. Identity-making, in this context, became a crucial link in (and a key driver for) the progressive subjugation of foreign policy rhetoric to the logic of regime-building, intended here as the ensemble of concerted efforts aimed to increase the population's compliance with the leaderships' authoritarian outlooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I explore the ways in which the internal Albanian politics of memory in Kosovo rely on a longer, lived history of militant self-organisation than the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) war period alone. On the basis of recent ethnographic research, I argue that the memory of prewar militant activism is symbolically codified, ritually formalized, and put on the public stage in Kosovo today. Not only has this process effectively rehabilitated and consolidated the personal, social, and political status of specific former activists, it also has produced a hegemonic morality against which the actions of those in power are judged internally. On the one hand, this process reproduces shared cultural references which idealise ethno-national solidarity, unity and pride and which have served militant mobilisation already before the 1990s. On the other, it provides the arguments through which rival representatives of the former militant underground groups (known as Ilegalja) compete both socially and politically still today. Although this process demarcates some lines of social and political friction within society, it also suggests that international efforts to introduce an identity which breaks with Kosovo's past and some of its associated values, face a local system of signification that is historically even deeper entrenched than is usually assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National identity is constructed through successive identifications with significant Others. This article discusses the phenomenon of change and continuity in Czech identity. It is focused here on the identification towards the EU, which has become the most significant Other of today in two ways: (a) (change) contributing to overcoming the identity crisis provoked by the drastic changes that occurred between 1989 and 1993 (change of regime, disappearance of the USSR and the break-up of Czechoslovakia), and therefore the subsequent drastic changes in relations with past significant Others: communism, the USSR, and the Slovaks; and (b) (continuity) reaffirming one of the fundamental elements during the national revival in the nineteenth century, democracy, upon which the various identifications towards the EU have been aligned. According to the differing interpretations of what democracy means, and three other criteria of the “levels of Othering,” the EU has been “imagined,” on the one hand, as an entity where Czechs can flourish in their identity and ensure their freedom and democratic values (positive Other), and, on the other, as an “oppressor” entity which portrays democratic deficit, restricts freedom, and threatens Czech national identity (negative Other). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]