Montserrat Guibernau

The Identity of Nations (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

What is national identity? What are the main challenges posed to national identity by the strengthening of regional identities and the growth of cultural diversity? How is right-wing nationalism connected to the desire to preserve a traditional image of national identity? Can we forge a new kind of national identity that responds to the challenges of globalization and other deep-seated changes? In this important new book, Montserrat Guibernau answers these and other compelling questions about the future of national identity. For Guibernau, the nation-states traditional project to unify its otherwise diverse population by generating a shared sense of national identity among them was always contested, and was accomplished with various degrees of success in Europe and North America. Such processes involved the cultural and linguistic homogenization of an otherwise diverse citizenry and were pursued by different means according to the specific contexts within which they were applied. At present, the impact of strong structural socio-political and economic transformations has resulted in greater challenges being posed to the idea that all citizens of a state should share a homogeneous national identity. Diversity is increasing, and plans for further European integration contain the potential to generate significant tensions, casting greater doubt on the classical concept of national identity. As a result, we are faced with a set of new dilemmas concerning the way in which national identity is constructed and defined. The book offers a theoretical as well as a comparative approach, with case studies involving Austria, Britain, Canada and Spain, as well as the European Union and the United States of America. The Identity of Nations will be essential reading for advanced students and professional scholars in sociology, politics and international relations.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. April 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780745674483
• Artikelnr.: 38399799

Autorenporträt

Montserrat Guibernau isProfessor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. What is national identity?
Identity
National identity
The dimensions of national identity
Constructing national identity
Challenges to a homogeneous national identity
National identity and citizenship
Finding new common enemies
Media and education
2. National identity, devolution and secession
The rise of modern Quebec nationalism
Accommodating Quebec
Canadian nation building: Trudeau's vision
Failed attempt to recognize Quebec as a 'distinct society' within Canada
Quebec nationalism: a recurrent phenomenon
Canadians: For federation in spite of dissatisfaction with the government
Spain: symmetric devolution
Britain: asymmetric devolution
Does devolution promote single or multiple identities?
Does devolution foster separatism?
3. The impact of migration on national identity
What is an ethnic group?
Ethnicity and the nation state
Immigration, citizenship and national identity
Integration models: ghettoization, assimilation and multiculturalism
The birth of Austrian national identity
Austria's migrants: origin and numbers
Migrants' contribution to the economy
On Austria's internal diversity: autochthonous minorities and immigrants
On Austria's special relationship with South Tyrol
Migration: 'cultural enrichment' or 'cultural threat'?
Immigrants as permanent 'outsiders': the FPÖ
4. On European identity
The cultural frontiers of Europe
On what divides Europeans
On what unites Europeans
Towards a European identity?
On how Europeans regard the EU
The EU: a 'non-emotional' identity
Challenges to a EU identity
5. Rethinking American Identity
The melting pot metaphor
African-Americans: an unresolved question
Native nationalism in the USA
European-Americans: The new ethnicity
What does it mean to be American?
6. Reactions to the end of 'pure' national identities
Globalization as a transformation agent
The new radical right and identity in Western Europe
The Dream of a 'white Europe'
Against immigrants
For 'pure' national identities
Against multiculturalism
Ethnopluralism: a response to 'too much diversity'
7. National identity versus cosmopolitan identity
Cosmopolitanism: a multi-level theory
On global culture
On cosmopolitan culture
On cultural cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism: a Western theory
On cosmopolitan identity
'National' versus 'cosmopolitan' identity
Cosmopolitanism versus nationalism
On cosmopolitan nationalism
Conclusion
Bibliography

Rezensionen

"Guibernau paints a broad panorama of national identities and their political mobilization in North America and Western Europe and argues for a "cosmopolitan nationalism" that reconciles moral universalism with a sense of national belonging. The Identity of Nations is an important and thoughtful contribution to current debates on multiculturalism, the rise of the radical right and the relation between national, European and global identities."

Rainer Bauböck, European University Institute, Florence

"Montserrat Guibernau brings together a vast experience of the study of nationalism and national identity. Since her original work on Nations without States, based upon her experience of her native Catalonia, she has gone on to study these topics in a variety of situations, especially in the United Kingdom and Canada. This book brings together her perceptive conclusions."

John Rex, University of Warwick

" The Identity of Nations is a trenchant analysis of the nature of national identity and contemporary challenges to its continued primacy by a scholar with impeccable credentials."

Walker Connor, Middlebury College