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Traditional assumption: national identity coherent and fixed. essential quality of a group of people guaranteed by the nature of a particular territorial space. http://bonnvoyage.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/bus-queue.jpg?w=500.
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Traditional assumption: national identity coherent and fixed essential quality of a group of people guaranteed by the nature of a particular territorial space http://bonnvoyage.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/bus-queue.jpg?w=500
“... the nation ... 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 ...” regulated imagining: nationality forms part of culture
“... culture is ... a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour ... the characteristic forms through which members of the society communicate.” culture: network of meanings
“... culture as a realized signifying system ...” “... it would ... be wrong to suppose that we can ever usefully discuss a social system without including, as a central part of its practice, its signifying systems, on which, as a system, it fundamentally depends” (Williams, Culture). within culture actions/objects/events have meanings
“... culture as a realized signifying system ...” “Signification, the social creation of meanings . . ., is then a practical material activity; it is indeed, literally, a means of production.” “What is decisive is not only the conscious system of ideas and beliefs, but the whole lived social process as practically organized by specific and dominant meanings and values.” cultural meanings and values establish norms of behaviour
Storey, John. „Raymond Williams and Articulations of British Identity.“ University of Vienna, Department of English. 1 June 2010. “Signification is, therefore,fundamental to a sense of national belonging.There is not anything natural about nationality:one is not born British, one becomes British.” (Beauvoir: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”)
“National identities consist of the accumulation of what is outside (i.e. in the culture) in the belief that it is an expression of what is inside (i.e. in the very ‘nature’ of our nationality). As a result, national subjectsonly become recognisable as national subjects through conformity with recognisablestandards of cultural intelligibility.”
“Does being female constitute a ‘natural fact’ or a cultural performance, or is ‘naturalness’ constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex?”
“Does being [British] constitute a ‘natural fact’ or a cultural performance, or is ‘naturalness’ constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce [identity] through and within the categories of [nationality]?”
“National identity is created through repeated and sustained social performances and involves citations of previous performances of nationality.” “Our national identities depend upon the successful performance of our nationalities, and there is, therefore, a whole array of rituals, symbols and institutions that work to ensure that our sense of national belonging is mostly unconscious and successful.”
“The author asks why people do not forget their national identity. He suggests that in daily life nationalism is constantly flagged in the media through routine symbols and habits of language. Small familiar turns of phrase, like the flag which hangs unnoticed outside a public building, are reminders that often operate mindlessly, beyond the level of conscious awareness.”
fair play orderliness, politeness ‘Blitz Spirit’ (“we are all in it together”) the ‘stiff upper lip’ (self-restraint) http://bonnvoyage.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/bus-queue.jpg?w=500
“Fast forward to the present day, where we have unlimited choices and plenty of food, yet we're living in a world of junk food, additives and preservatives. Our war is now against obesity, as most people have little or no idea about how to cook and what makes a balanced diet. We need to learn from the past. We need to look back at the way our grandmothers and great-grandmothers cookedwholesome, tasty food that was simple and quick to prepare.”
World War II post-war Britain (‘Austerity Britain’) frugality and ‘Blitz Spirit’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-548277/Jamie-Oliver-teach-poor-cook-basics-town-mums-opposed-school-dinners-campaign.html
http://cdn0.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/candy.jpghttp://cdn0.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/candy.jpg
Britain’s Imperial Century (1815-1914) Queen Victoria, Empress of India exoticism, worldliness upper class http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/British_empire_1886.jpg
Britain’s Imperial Century “Splendid Isolation” insularity, n. 1. The state or condition of being an island, or of being surrounded by water. 1802J. Pinkerton Mod. Geogr. (L.),The insularity of Britain was first shown by Agricola, who sent his fleet round it. 2. The condition of living on an island, and of being thus cut off or isolated from other people, their ideas, customs, etc.; hence, narrowness of mind or feeling, contractedness of view. 1893Earl of Dunmore Pamirs II. 135The proverbial insularity of the average Briton. http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/21/eu/201021eud000.jpg http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/97223?redirectedFrom=insularity#eid
Review the nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson) culture as a “realized signifying system” (Williams) performativity: “cultural performance” (Butler) “Banal Nationalism” (Billig)
