Nationhood is a concept that has throughout the years been notoriously difficult to define. Ideas on this have varied along lines of culture and politics. Cohen, in his article titled Personal Nationalisms: a Scottish view on some Rites, Rights and Wrongs has presented a concept of ‘personal nationalism’, that nationhood cannot completely construct individual identity; it is the individuals themselves that construct the meanings of what the nation is on a personal scale. This essay will argue that the strength of Cohen’s approach to nationhood is in his distinction between cultural and political nationalism that previous work in this field have glossed over and in his leaving room for interpretations of nationalism on a personal scale allowing modern notions of multiculturalism to flourish. Despite these strengths, however, his viewpoint does have some weaknesses; mainly, that his ideas on locality are outdated and overly simplistic in their accounts of globalization, that national sentiments are felt by diasporas and sub-nations within larger nations despite being away from the home nation, that he fails to account for the creation of a national person embodying and internalizing national values and culture as expressions of self-identity, and on his overly Western leaning discourse on individualism and rights.
Cohen's approach to nationhood is one in which he states that individuals, through their own agency, construct their views on nationalism and membership to a nation as one of the resources used, whether consciously or unconsciously, to create a coherent sense of self-identity. By inscribing and intertwining the sense of individual agency and nationalism, along with his ideas of the ‘rights’ of persons to construct their o...
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Seagrave, S. A. (2011). How old are Modern Rights? On the Lockean Roots of Contemporary Human Rights Discourse. Journal of the History of Ideas, 72(2), 305-327.
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"The Nationalism Project: Ernest Renan Defining the Nation." The Nationalism Project. http://www.nationalismproject.org/what/renan.htm (accessed April 4, 2014).
One example of this is the Olympics. The Olympics is where different nation-states go to compete against each other in sports. The people who go, represent the country that they come from. During the Olympics, people feel proud for their nation-state when their representatives win, or sad when they lose. They embrace their nationalism through competition.
In Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights novel, she focuses on revealing the various incidents in which the discussion of human rights were created, critiqued and defined. She asks the question, “If equality of rights is so self-evident, then why did this assertion have to be made and why was it only made in specific times and places?” Her question is ideal. Why would something that is allegedly so self evident have to be discussed and debated about when clearly anyone that is a “human being” is entitled to equal rights?
...dward Taylor. “Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium”. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.print
In fact, sometimes it is actively encouraged as part of preserving the culture and the traditional aspects of the nation in question; for example, routine celebrations of national holiday and the wearing of cultural clothing demonstrate moderate forms of nationalism. However, it is when extreme pride in one’s nation leads to acts that contravene common decency that the forces of nationalism become dangerous. A historical example of such an event was the Bosnian war and the resulting Bosnian genocide that occurred shortly after the partition of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s. In this event, extreme Serbian nationalism called for the unity of the Serbian peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina - an event that echoes the words of the source. Serbian leaders and followers believed that their culture and people were superior to that of the neighbouring ethnic groups - the Bosniaks and the Croatians - and thought that they needed to be eliminated because of the potential threat they posed to the establishment of an autonomous Serbian Republic, or “Greater Serbia”. In the course of the war, and the ethnic cleansing that followed, more than 100,000 Bosniaks and Croatians were to be killed in a mass act of genocide. This appalling and gruesome figure shows the extent to which extreme nationalism is unacceptable and how unification of a people by force is both detrimental and wrong on all
Nationalism at its core is the support of a country. The goal of a country is to have some sort of resonance within the individuals that reside there that call themselves citizens. If the citizens don’t feel any connection with their country, they may move to find one that they feel closer too. Once found, they may support the country over others, defend it within conversations of politics or just find groups that have the same ideals they do about the country. This papers purpose is to illustrate the pros of nationalism as well as its cons.
Cohen, Jeffrey H, and Sirkeci Ibrahim. Cultures of Migration the Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility. Austin Texas: University of Texas Press, 2011.Print
The idea of human rights has arguably been the most debated and controversial subject in history. Who gets them, what do they consist of, and how do we enforce such a subjective idea? Answers to these questions have been given tested by the greatest leaders and brightest philosophers, yet in modern times parts of society still contests what constitutes as a human right and who gets them. The six primary documents we read this past week allowed us an insight into how the idea of human rights has been discussed throughout time.
DeParle, J. (2010, June 25). Global Migration: A World Ever More on the Move. The New
The debate about British Identity has been prominently featured in recent years as a public concern. The foundation of British Identity was based on the act of union in 1801 between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland that created Great Britain. Heath and Roberts describe this identity as “a relatively recent construct and was gradually superimposed on earlier national identities of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish” (2008:4). The four nations were unified mainly because of the political and economic project of the British Empire that developed a shared agenda and The Second World War which melted the distinctive differences between the constituent nations (Ward, 2004). According to Colley, the interests that unified the nations do not exist and even if they do” they are less distinctive” (1992). Although there is identification with Britishness, it is noticeable that Britons hold a stronger allegiance to their primary nation. The British Identity is decreasing as many writers suggested, and this is due to many different trends and influences such as globalization, immigration and communication (Heath and Roberts, 2008). This essay highlights some of the reasons of the decline in the British national identity and the rise of the consentient nation’s sentiment. This is approached by firstly considering the internal factors of the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales, and secondly the external factor of immigration and will analyze the relationship between age and identification with a nation.
The most important value of nationalism to democracy lies in the fact that it has the capacity to unite individual citizens into a single entity with shared beliefs. Democracy requires a definition of demos or who are included in the game and who are not (Nodia 6). Wherever the boundaries of the playing field are in dispute, democratic institutions (such as participation, representation, or cooperation) simply cannot function. Thus, for democracy to o...
Nationalism is what justifies nations. Without nationalism there is no need to distinguish between two neighboring countries, no need to establish political unions, no need for xenophobia. Nations are the product of small groups banding together to form one larger “imagined community.” Thus it disrupts a said community when an outsider moves in and attempts to assimilate: this is the issue with immigration. No longer does the nation share a common history. The nation is now defined by a citizenship rather than a sense of culture. Civic nationhood is associated with the United States, but can be increasingly seen seen in modern Europe. Civic duty is a more becoming a more prevalent form of nationalism; the US developed it as part of American
Sweet, William (2003). Philosophical theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. University of Ottawa Press. p. 4.
As a point of introduction to the issue at hand, Werbner gives a short literature review describing the ways in which her colleagues had grouped and defined certain migrant groups, with the intention to then critique these classifications. She begins by discussing Ulf Hannerz, who creates three general groups: cosmopolitans; who mix culturally with others, locals; who are indicative of the more Westphalian classifications of culture and nation, transnationals; who travel frequently ...
The nature and meaning of the term ‘nationalism’ has many different facets and dimensions. At times, deconstructing the different theoretical literature can become confusing and complicated process. These ambiguities arise from the different meanings scholars attribute to the term, while also the nature and meaning of nationalism is constantly being contested. To Primordialists, the *path to nationalism