scholarly journals Citizenship, National Identity, and Nation-Building in Azerbaijan: Between the Legacy of the Past and the Spirit of Independence

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ayça Ergun
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Citizenship Identity

Abstract 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.

The Ottoman “other”: (Re)Framing the Past of the Modern Turkish Nation

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-97
Author(s):  
Iulia Oprea
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Essential Requirement ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Process

Abstract The paper examines the process of the Turkish nation building process starting from the premises that whether we talk about culture, religion, ethnicity, language, traditions or other elements nations identify with and take pride in, continuity in time is an essential requirement to legitimize the bases of national identity in the nationalist discourse.

scholarly journals Nomads, warriors and bureaucrats: nation-building and film in post-Soviet Kazakhstan

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rico Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Building Process ◽  
A Site ◽  
Modern Perspective

Nation-building is a process which is often contested, not just among different ethnicities within a nation-state, but also among the titular ethnic majority. This article explores the contested nature of the nation-building process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan through examining cinematic works. Utilizing a post-modern perspective which views nations and national identity as invented, imagined and ambivalent it identifies four discursive strands within recent post-Soviet Kazakh cinema pertaining to nationhood and national identity (ethno-centric, civic, religious and socioeconomic). Rather than viewing government-sponsored efforts of identity formation in cinema as a top-down process in which the regime transmits its version of nationhood and identity, the discursive strands revealed in this article illustrate there are varying understandings of what constitutes the nation and national identity in Kazakh cinematic works. Furthermore, the strand which focuses on the socioeconomic tensions of modern nation-building in Kazakhstan uncovers how film is used as a site for dissent and social critique of Kazakhstan's modern political condition. What the article illuminates is how discourses related to nation-building can be both competing and complementary and that nation-building is a fluid and transgressive process in which among the titular majority there is no fixed unambiguous understanding of nationhood and national identity.

‘Een homo is minder verdacht dan een held’ : Literaire verbeeldingen van Michiel de Ruyter en het nationale-identiteitsdebat na 2001

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-194
Author(s):  
Marc van Zoggel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
National History ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract Historically, the glorification of the past and the eulogizing of national heroes in art and literature have been constructive elements in the process of nation building. In the postmodern era, however, a cultivation of national history and its great men and women is often regarded outdated or even suspect and regressive. The ‘nine eleven’ terrorist attacks in the United States and the rise and assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn intensified an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the meaning and value of a shared ‘Dutch national identity’ in a multicultural, diversified society. In this article, I argue that several novels and poems about Dutch naval hero Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), published in or in the wake of the ‘De Ruyter year 2007’, both reproduce and challenge a wide range of voices, viewpoints and sentiments within the hot topic of national identity in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Longitudinal change in East Timorese tertiary student attitudes to national identity and nation building, 2002-2010

2012 ◽  
Vol 168 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 219-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Leach
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Student Attitudes ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Longitudinal Change ◽  
Tertiary Student ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Timor Leste

The attitudes of the tertiary students who are likely to comprise the next generation of leaders are pivotal to understanding the challenges of nation-building and national identity formation in post-conflict settings such as Timor-Leste. This article examines post-independence debates over national identity in Timor-Leste, presenting the findings of a longitudinal survey (Dili, 2002, 2007 and 2010) of East Timorese tertiary student attitudes to national identity. In particular, in the wake of the 2006 political-military crisis, the paper examines the evidence for differences in attitudes between students from eastern and western districts, concluding that the few significant differences in attitudes peaked in the 2007 survey, and were associated with the overt politicization of regional identity within Dili, and concerns over post-independence leadership, rather than any genuine ‘ethnic’ or ‘regional’ variation in attitudes. The paper also examines significant changes in some youth attitudes since independence, including a significant increase in the acceptance of the co-official status of the Portuguese language in the tertiary student demographic since the early years of independence. The survey also highlights the ongoing importance of tradition and adat in understandings of political community, but reveals significant gender differences in attitudes towards the role of traditional authorities.

scholarly journals Learning National Identity Outside the Nation-State: the Story Of Latvian Primers (Mid-1940s – Mid-1970s)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iveta Ķestere ◽  
◽  
Baiba Kaļķe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
National Language ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
National Identity Formation

In order to understand how the concept of national identity, currently included in national legislation and curricula, has been formed, our research focuses on the recent history of national identity formation in the absence of the nation-state “frame”, i.e. in Latvian diaspora on both sides of the Iron Curtain – in Western exile and in Soviet Latvia. The question of our study is: how was national identity represented and taught to next generations in the national community that had lost the protection of its state? As primers reveal a pattern of national identity practice, eight primers published in Western exile and six primers used in Soviet Latvian schools between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s were taken as research sources. In primers, national identity is represented through the following components: land and nation state iconography, traditions, common history, national language and literature. The past reverberating with cultural heritage became the cornerstone of learning national identity by the Latvian diaspora. The shared, idealised past contrasted the Soviet present and, thus, turned into an instrument of hidden resistance. The model of national identity presented moral codes too, and, teaching them, national communities did not only fulfill their supporting function, but also took on the functions of “normalization” and control. Furthermore, national identity united generations and people’s lives in the present, creating memory-based relationships and memory-based communities.

National identity-building and the “Ustaša-nostalgia” in Croatia: the past that will not pass

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 772-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stevo Đurašković
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
National Reconciliation ◽  
Better Than

Most scholarship on post-Communist Croatia claims that the first Croatian president, Franjo Tuđman, intentionally rehabilitated the legacy of the World War II (WWII) Croatian Ustaša and its Nazi-puppet state. The rehabilitation of the Ustaša has been linked to Tuđman's national reconciliation politics that tended toward a particular “forgetting of the past.” The national reconciliation was conceptualized as a joint struggle of both the Croatian anti-fascist Partisan and the Croatian WWII fascist Ustaša successors to achieve Croatian independence. However, the existing scholarship does not offer a comprehensive explanation of the nexus between national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of the Ustaša. Hence, this article will present how “Ustaša-nostalgia” does not stem from Tuđman's intentions, but rather from the morphological gap occurring in Tuđman's nation-building idea. Namely, Tuđman's condemnation of the entire idea of Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia eventually brought about the perception that any historical agent advocating the idea of an independent Croatia is better than any form of Croatian Yugoslavism. Finally, the article will present how contemporary Croatian society is still seeped in “Ustaša-nostalgia” due to the hesitation of the post-Tuđman Croatian politics to come to terms with the legacy of his national reconciliation politics.

TENSIONS OF NATIONALISM: THE MZABI STUDENT MISSIONS IN TUNIS AND THE POLITICS OF ANTICOLONIALISM

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amal N. Ghazal
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
National Movements ◽  
Student Missions ◽  
National Identity Formation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis article examines the significant yet largely overlooked role of the Mzabis, a community from the northern edges of the Algerian desert, in Algerian and Tunisian anticolonialism and nationalism. In so doing, it pursues two aims: first, to shed light on the importance of Tunis to the politicization of the Mzabis in the 1920s and to their induction into local and regional anticolonial and national movements; and second, to highlight the tensions of subsuming regional identities into overarching national identities by focusing on Mzabi political activists’ negotiation of the relationship between the Mzab and Algeria as a national project. The article also explores the spectrum of political possibilities and alternatives envisioned by Mzabis as they participated in religious reform, anticolonial, and nationalist movements. This spectrum, I argue, conveys the fluid relationship between local, national, and regional identities, thus undermining teleological readings of national identity formation.

From Destruction to Reconstruction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingjie Guo
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Past Century ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Confucian Values

The preservation and expansion of the ‘Three Confucian Sites’ at Qufu are no doubt driven by tourism, but a more important reason is the Chinese Communist Party’s change of heart about China’s cultural heritage and national identity since 1989. In 2013, President Xi Jinping unequivocally abandoned the Party’s decades-long tradition of iconoclasm and confirmed its return to Chinese cultural roots. Governments at various levels have now set about promoting Confucian values and fostering a Confucian identity. While the effects of the state’s nation-building remain to be seen, there is no denying that China’s disremembered Confucian heritage is being re-materialised, re-interpreted and re-invented as never before in the People’s Republic of China or during the past century.

Taking Responsibility for the Pasts

Pólemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Svend Erik Larsen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
The Past

Abstract One of the most significant connections between power and responsibility occurs in relation to the past. The post-revolutionary political powers of the new nations in the nineteenth century reinterpreted or, less politely formulated, invented their past to fit the process of nation building and only then take responsibility for future development of the nations. And they were not alone: pre-nineteenth century periods and the 20th and 21st centuries abound with examples. In our personal lives, self-empowerment often depends on the capacity to take responsibility for one’s past, including all its happy and traumatic moments. In a court room the forensic evidence of past events alone gives the judges the power to decide the fate of the defendant. In neither of the cases power and responsibility can work together without activating individual and collective memory and without finding a language to express responsibility as a manifestation of political, formal and personal power in a process of political legitimization, legal affirmation of justice and personal identity formation. With literary examples from South Africa this article discusses power and responsibility in their relation to a troubled political, legal and personal past.

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