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The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments: Class, Indifference and Resentment. Dr Robin Mann University of Oxford. The subjective sense of national identity. Increasing focus upon documenting national identity and belonging as constituted within everyday life and social interaction.
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The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments:Class, Indifference and Resentment Dr Robin Mann University of Oxford
The subjective sense of national identity • Increasing focus upon documenting national identity and belonging as constituted within everyday life and social interaction. • In the UK, there is an established body of work aimed at both quantifying and qualifying the nature and extent of national attitudes and imaginations. • But little attempt to consider how national sentiments relate to contexts, experiences and events relevant to an individual’s life. • National identities are commonly treated as free-standing social facts. • We know little of the personal contexts, experiences and events that inform particularly meaningful orientations towards nation and country.
National Identity in Everyday Life • Existing qualitative literature suggests there is considerable heterogeneity in everyday discourses of the nation. • Billig (1995) and Smith (1991): Explanations for the pervasiveness of national identity in everyday life. • Interactionist/Discursive approaches point to the taken for granted assumptions in ethnic/national identity constructions. • No convincing argument as to what distinguishes those who articulate strong, emotion-laden accounts from ordinarily weak or banal expressions.
Beyond the Nation:Ethnicity and social experience • To study ethnicity in isolation from other social experiences is “to risk adopting an over-ethnicised view of social experience” (Brubaker et al 2006:15). • Understanding ethnic and national sentiments requires reference to the context of “that which is not ethnic” (Eriksen, 1993). • Intense ethnic sentiments are dependent upon a combination of individual and collective experiences (Ruane & Todd 2004).
National Sentiments and Social Context – The Social Milieu • Expressions of national belonging, particularly emotional or resentful expressions, need to be understood not simply in terms of objective social differences but with reference to a more nuanced social milieu. • Bourdieu (1999) – One cannot understand ones position in the macro social order without reference to the directly experienced effects of the social microcosm. • Narratives of personal suffering are influenced by the socially embedded “habitus” of expectations, self-understandings and values, and which are themselves shaped by objective class position. • Consequently, the personal unease and resentment emerging form unfulfilled expectations and status frustrations can be found amongst both middle class and working class segments of the population.
Methodology and Research • Leverhulme Programme on Migration and Citizenship (2003-2008) held by Bristol University and UCL. • Research carried out between July 2004 and August 2005 • 100 qualitative interviews and 10 focus groups with “white English” respondents. • Conducted across two research sites – small rural town and urban inner city. • Topic Guide: Home, Work, Nation and Multiculturalism
Data and Analysis • i. A sense of home and familial belonging. • ii. A sense of getting on/or having got on in life. • iii. A particular orientation to nation and a view of social decline • Aim of analysis is to explore how (iii) national sentiments are informed by their (i) sense of home and (ii) getting on. • To be illustrated here through four case studies.
Small Rural Town – Mary and Paul • Mary is defined by her and her husbands professional middle class occupations which have drawn them into a Europe wide labour market; the disappointments of this (having to return to England) and maybe the sacrifice of her own career, are a source of tension and some anger. She couples this with a disdainful status attitude towards low status English people whose behaviour is not acceptable by her standards. • Paul is similarly defined by his middle class opportunities, a successful career and a sense of having achieved what he has sought after, and an ability to control his own destiny.
Multi-ethnic City - Brian and Karen • Brian is working class in origin but frustrated by a non-mobile unrewarding working class occupation. He combines this with resentful attitudes towards incomers. • Karen is working class in origin and in ‘status’ terms, that is, she is proud of her background. Equally she is upwardly mobile working class, achieving mobility within the horizons of many working class people, and satisfied with her gains. Like Paul, she has a sense of control and a democratic sense of accepting others.
Case 1 – Mary“Home” and belonging • “We came back for my husband’s work. We finished the job in France and couldn’t find another comparable job there…so we came back because there was an opening here…that was the only reason we came back at all. We didn’t want to come back…I mean who would? But we came to Westown because of the school…this area had the best state school. And we didn’t want to put them into private education…plus we like the aspects, because of the local community…still got a post office just…I would say that Weston is perhaps a little behind the rest of England I wouldn’t expect to go into some of the bigger towns and see that same sort of community” • And would you say that you belong here? • “Not particular no…I don’t feel very Westownian…no we were here for two specific reasons as I say we wouldn’t be in the country if it weren’t for this…I don’t particular like some aspects of British life, which aren’t anything to do with Westown”
“Getting on” • “I think I’ve had a great opportunity by leaving the country and going to live and work and bring children up in a different society…I was working in a hospital in France it was sort of part time work and office work and when I went out there I didn’t speak any French and it was difficult and I had two babies so I umm and I didn’t need to work so it was it was a really nice change actually…Yes, I think that’s I think is a great plus when I left not many people were doing that. Not many people were leaving…I know lots of people are now but it felt good to see how the rest of the world lives”
Britishness, resentment and social decline • “I’m English yeah can’t get away from it. I’m not terribly proud to be English but I am English…I think people have, people have lost a sense of pride in the country. They’ve had responsibility taken away from them by legislation and the government…and I just don’t think people give a shit anymore about the reputation of the country, and you know, they treat themselves as individuals. I don’t think people have a sense of Britishness anymore the younger age groups they don’t give a monkey about anybody or anything…the media likes to group us all together and make sweeping statements about Britain and Britons behaviour abroad...put umm England in a bad light…because we were on down the south of France and we were getting a huge influx of British in the summer…there were a lot more English families coming down to work that weren’t integrating terribly well, which didn’t go down to well in the local community…people didn’t have a very high opinion of the British population” • “The town’s filthy…its something we’re not used to in France even though our people chew gum and smoke just as much in France but I mean its filthy…I mean its shocking you know…its most striking its just little things like that…and the way people dress…It doesn’t make you feel very proud when you see, you know, British holiday makers coming down”
Case 2 – Paul“Home” and belonging • “For me it’s home I suppose, the biggest thing is that my father’s family has been in Westown for as far back as you can trace…Westown is a place I have got roots, you know… my grandfather was born in this street, my father was born in the next street up, I was born just up there and my father was one of six children: one went to Canada and the rest live in the town… there are quite a lot of people in Westown who I suppose haven’t seen anything else, who have been here and that is it…I have got the luxury I suppose of being here because I want to be here, because of what it can give me, not just being here just because I was born here and I haven’t bothered to go anywhere else…I made a very conscious decision to be here, you know… there aren’t many people you can talk to these days, there aren’t many people to whom you can say ‘I come from there’ you know and they can say you know, their family is there for 400 years and the people say ‘I was brought up there’ and that gives I think security, that belongingness”
“Getting on” • “I have probably done better than I would have expected…but equally I could have done better if I had carried on from the career side… so the decision to come back here was also really requiring me to give up the career and really get a job instead of a career because when I was with them, I, you know…the next move would probably have been up to Newcastle or it could have been Manchester or it could have been abroad…and yes you could say ‘no’ at times but you can’t keep on doing it…I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t want my kids to grow up just anywhere and I can remember at the time a lot of people at the company said ‘you are so brave doing that!...but I didn’t think I was because it just seemed the right thing to do…they wanted me to move over to Germany to work at the European HQ a few years ago and become the IT manager there and I said no…so, ye, that had a cost on my career…there is a balance…but equally it does mean that I get home on time”
Cosmopolitan indifference and Europe • “I’m a bit mixed up. No I do consider myself to be English. I am probably English before British although nothing against the rest of the United Kingdom …especially coming from somewhere like Switzerland, everybody thinks you are English and you almost have to tell them: ‘yes I am English’ but actually it is Britain, you know there are other people there as well. …but yes I do feel myself to be English, I feel myself to be British and as I say I do feel myself to be Swiss as well…I think that that’s coming back to this thing about the Empire which the English aren’t very good at doing, it’s kind of ‘here we are take us or leave us but this is the way we do things’…one thing that does frustrate me is the whole big Europe issue, it’s feeling that we are not part of Europe…we actually have more in common with the French than the Germans have and we have got more in common with the Germans than the French have…and yet they get on…we don’t realize that we are kind of a melting pot of Europe…we kind of ignore that…and that frustrates me because you know I consider myself also obviously to be European”
Conclusions • A key contradiction is whether everyday discourses are articulated through a mode of indifference and/or resentment. • How class- and place-based experiences are translated into nation-relevant attitudes. • The theme of resentment, commonly articulated through a sense of decline in the country, is associated with experiences of frustration and immobility in these domains. • The theme of indifference is characterised by personal security and upward mobility in these domains and an attendant autonomy of the individual from potentially undesirable changes in the local and national context.
