What does Nationalism mean today?
I attended a discussion panel on nationalism yesterday and have been pondering the issue all day.
Where do I feel that I belong? At an emotional level nationalism is about where I feel at home. It is a sense of identity with a group larger than my immediate household or family. But which group? With the internet I can be as close to a friend in Panama or Paris as a friend on the other side of town. I was born in England but have lived in Scotland for twelve years. After the May 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections the question of my feelings about where I live is an important one. If I were into cheering for a sports team, which team would I support? Nationalism has to be based on a positive attitude for something rather than be defined by who we are different to or those with whom we have historic disagreements. The latter sort of nationalism is a destructive and festering resentment that is unfortunately present in England amongst groups claiming to be most patriotic.
I belong to the world. I travel. I can feel at home in many different places. The United Nations gives focus to this world identity. As a human being I belong to the earth.
But the world is just too big to identify with. I belong to continental Europe and felt at home on recent travel to Croatia, even though it is outside the EU, for we share much history and culture with the central European states. Then there is the EU which encompasses the part of Europe where I live and which has control and influence on many parts of modern life. If I say I feel a European do I mean an EU citizen or a citizen of the area including the countries outside the Union. The list goes on.
Within the EU we live in The British Isles (which includes the whole of Ireland) within the British Isles we are The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Within this we are Great Britain. In GB we are in Scotland. I am in Central Scotland. In that region I am in Stirling and within that local authority area I am in the parish of Blairlogie. Somewhere in this hierarchy of subsidiarities is my primary nationalist impulse.
I can be passionate and exhibit emotions equivalent to nationalism at several different levels. At various times and concerning various issues I will express these feelings relating to different entities. I can be Parochial and I can think globally. But at which level do I feel most nationalistic? It is an emotional decision rather than a legal or logical one. And at present my answer is that I don't really know. It is an issue that needs considerable further reflection before the promised independence referendum.
The Scottish Debate: Essays on Scottish Nationalism
Labour and Scottish Nationalism
Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707-2000
I confess I've never been able to relate to the concept of nationalism. I'd be more inclined to speak about cultural identities, and those tend to be as individual as people's biographies. As a person with a dual cultural identity (I've spent more than half of my adult life in Scotland) I feel more German at times and more Scottish at others, depending on the situation. I find this by no means confusing or disorientating. It is just the result of an organic development. Of course, there are people whose biography has been disrupted and who have experienced involuntary dislocation, and their feeligns could be quite different.
ReplyDeleteVirtuella, I agree with you up to a point about cultural identity. When I put on my kilt it is a statement of cultural identity rather than an expression of ethnicity. But my concern is that cultural identity is often used synonymously with ethnicity. The logical conclusion of an over emphasis on ethnicity has been ethnic cleansing. Perhaps we need to distinguish clearly between self identity and the pigeon holing of people into categories. Martin Buber pointed out a category is a non-human "it" which is open to being treated in a sub-human way.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough. Perhaps the more "patch-work" identites we get, the less people will feel the need to have these categories?
ReplyDelete