The Ambiguous Legacy of Adwa as a National Symbol

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam
Keyword(s):  
National Symbol

Revitalizing the medina of Tunis as a national symbol

Erdkunde ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Escher ◽  
Marianne Schepers
Keyword(s):  
National Symbol

Good Shepherd, Bumpkin Shepherd

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
K. Meira Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Spanish Society ◽  
National Symbol ◽  
Dramatic Narrative

In Christmas pageants staged throughout the Spanish Empire, the pastor bobo (foolish shepherd) asked rude and impertinent questions, making Christian doctrine comprehensible to the humblest audiences. The bobo’s comic confusion—Will he or won’t he see the light of Christ?—was danced with obscene gambols and cacophonous footwork, manifesting the perilous invisible stain of impure blood. Yet these sharp-tongued dramatizations of redemption simultaneously undermined the determinative dogma of blood purity which governed Spanish society. Aristocrats thus asserted their status, enacting the post-epiphany bobo by refining transgressive gambols into virtuosic caprioles. Ironically, eighteenth-century Spaniards adopted the imaginary Gitano—an outlaw Other which inherits the bobo’s dramatic narrative of redemption—as a national symbol. Spain’s identification with this figure, often described euphemistically as a proto-romantic “orientalization,” is in fact a racialized downgrade. With the advent of the fandango, Spain, reduced to performing itself for tourists, came to dance Blackness for Europe.

Modern Bulgarian Society and Culture through the Mirror of Bai Ganio

Slavic Review ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 530-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roumen Daskalov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fictional Character ◽  
National Symbol

This article deals with the fictional character Bai Ganio, who was created by the Bulgarian writer Aleko Konstantinov at the end of the nineteenth century and who has become a sort of national symbol in Bulgarian society and culture. Daskalov presents the various interpretations of Bai Ganio, explores their assumptions and implicit meanings, and then employs the character to illuminate some of the major problems and concerns within Bulgarian society. Metaphorically one might say that the various interpretations of Bai Ganio serve as a mirror for a modernizing Bulgaria or, even better, that Bai Ganio and Bulgaria mutually reflect each other. Yet although the mirror retains the trace of the mirrored object, it obfuscates and distorts it.

scholarly journals Nation in a sheep’s coat: The Icelandic sweater

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gudrun Helgadottir
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
English Only ◽  
National Symbol ◽  
Icelandic Sheep ◽  
Current Design ◽  
Bank Collapse ◽  
Wool Industry ◽  
Made In

The Icelandic sweater is presented and received as being traditional—even ancient—authentically Icelandic and hand made by Icelandic women from the wool of Icelandic sheep. Even so, the sweater type, the so-called ‘Icelandic sweater’ in English, only dates back to the mid-20th century and is not necessarily made in Iceland nor from indigenous wool. Nevertheless, the sweater is a successful invention of a tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983), popular among Icelanders and tourists alike since its introduction in the mid-20th century. It has gained ground as a national symbol, particularly in times of crisis for example in the reconstruction of values in the aftermath of the Icelandic bank collapse of 2008. I traced the development of the discourse about wool and the origins of the Icelandic sweater by looking at publications of the Icelandic National Craft Association, current design discourse in Iceland and its effect on the development of the wool industry. I then tied these factors to notions of tradition, authenticity, national culture, image and souvenirs.

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