GE21001 Dynamic Human Worlds Lectures 10, Political Geography: Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship

1. GE21001 Dynamic Human WorldsLectures 10, Political Geography:Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship Dr. Susan P. Mains Geography

2. Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship Lecture Outline: • Case Study: Mexico City • What’s a nation? • Nation & nationalism • Forms of nationalism • Nation & territory

3. Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship Mexico City Olympics, 1968 Tommie Smith, John Carlos & Peter Norman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAaacHuPgTE

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UnQP1F4Njg

5. Mexico City La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/2/newsid_3548000/3548680.stm

8. Understanding the Nation • Definition of Nation • A large group of people sharing common cultural traits: • Identify with one another • Believe that they belong with one another • Identify “insiders” or “us” • Identify “outsiders” or “them” • Key Concept: • A state must have borders • A nation never does (?)

9. Understanding Nationalism • What is Nationalism? • The expressed desire of a people to establish and maintain a self-governing political entity. • It has been a dominant social force in recent history, leading to both the creation and destruction of modern states.

10. Understanding Nationalism • Nationalism may be based on ethnic ties, but nationalism and ethnicity are not the same. • Nationalism involves three themes: • independence, unity, and identity

11. National Identities • Cooperation across large social and spatial scales involves shared beliefs and trust among strangers. • Successful nations require a set of agreed upon symbols that define who is and who is not part of the nation. • e.g., citizenship testing, requirements • Such processes facilitate the goals of independence and unity. • What identities are privileged/excluded?

12. Defining Citizenship • “Citizenship,  relationship between an individual and a state in which an individual owes allegiance to that state and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens have certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that are denied or only partially extended to aliens and other noncitizens residing in a country. In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship. The usual responsibilities of citizenship are allegiance, taxation, and military service. • Citizenship is the most privileged form of nationality.” • Encyclopædia Britannica

13. Constructing National Identities Nations are not ‘natural’ entities, they are socially constructed, unstable, and in process • How do people construct a national identity? How are these identities linked with specific places/territories? -Scottish Highlands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lbz03AP44c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYSsK7vnRzI

14. Imagined Communities “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. . . The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. . . It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.” --Benedict Anderson, 1983, 15

15. Imagined Communities “Imagined”NationalCommunities Nationalism: ideologythat links nation to state Homogeneity of language (?) Printingpress: advent of popular literature Schooltextbooks Standardization of time High profileevents/figures Subjective & exclusionary

16. Imagined Communities Achieved through information: factual and mythical “invented traditions” and stories of the nation Creating continuity with ancient (and selective) pasts and places Becoming central to national “culture” BUT, these may be contested, multiple and/or conflicting claims to national identity

17. Iconic Landscapes Linked to territory and iconic landscapes

18. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ • Minority groups may be increasingly marginalised • Differential rights (e.g., voting, access to public funds, schooling, etc.,) • Monitoring of religions, dress, language • May be through legislation  force

19. Symbols of Nationalism Language Flags Distinctive architecture Monuments Parks Anthems Uniforms Events http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/centenary-scotch-whisky-association

20. Nations & Borders • May be clearly visible • Barely marked • May serve different types of political and physical functions

21. Separatism & Nationalism • Increasing ethnic nationalism • New claims to independent nationhood • Ethnic separatism: • Within multi-national countries • Some unrest • Varying degrees of violence • Forced deportations • Genocides • Military coups, secession

22. Separatism & Nationalism • Nationalisms are Unstable • Completely malleable – multiple, changing, disappearing, reappearing, never permanent, and always changeable • Those who belong to a nation may one day be ostracized from it due to new definitions of what comprise a nation. • Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia • Kosovar Albanians

23. Nationalism & Fundamentalism • Ridding the state of a minority nation within its borders to create a “nation‐state” • Done through: -Expulsion (en masse) -Eradication (en masse) -Expansion (of state borders) -Rape (genetic eradication) • 1990s term: “Ethnic Cleansing” “Genocide” • Nationalism is complex, contestsed and dynamic