2nd Global Conference
Wednesday 3rd September - Saturday 6th September
2008
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 3: Nations, National Identity & Nationalism
Chair: Patrick Loobuyck
Ethnocentric Liberalism or Ethnic Nepotism? - The Reinvention of Western Nation States as Bounded Communities/ Post-multicultural ‘Realism’, Immigration and the 21st Century Nation State
Bryan Fanning
School of Applied Social Science University College Dublin (UCD)
This paper proposes two intersecting explanatory factors for the new ‘realist’ politics of opposition to multiculturalism and mass immigration. These concern the reinvention of essentialist nationalism as pragmatic ethnic nepotism and the apparently post 9-11 ascendancy of ethnocentric liberalism in defence of the public sphere as imagined community. Both depict recalibrated forms of defensive bounded community as nation state liberal realist responses to the social and political dislocations of globalisation. Three case studies are examined each presenting distinctive intersections between ethnocentric liberalism and ethnic nepotism; the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
English Language in a Nationistic State: The Crisis of National Integration in Nigeria
Ifeoma
Obuasi
Use of English Unit,
School of General Studies,
University of Nigeria Nsukka, Nigeria
The socio-linguistic picture of Nigeria, as a developing nation with so vast economic, political and human resources and potentials is handicapped by her geo-linguistic landscape with regard to national integration. It is known that this country has over 450 different registered languages within this geo-polity. Nigeria is therefore a politico-geographical linguistic lump begging for unity and the good will of the citizenry. Can the various ethnic groups and diverse cultural groups establish common understanding by means of any possible inter-and intra ethnic communications and media? It is a fact that ethnic diversities are often in line with isoglosses; this paper projects such existence as basically antagonistic in the interests of national integration. Obviously, language is one of the most enduring artifacts of a people’s culture, and unless a people is forced by any system of dominance or conquest, their language can always determine the people’s social physics and history.
On the grounds of the above, there is an obvious crisis between the potencies of nationalism and the act of nationism. Nationalism, here, is a type of credo that advocates the interest of the state above that of any person or group of persons. Nationalism calls for the assertion of a common identity above any other ethnic inclinations and loyalties. But nationism is an opposing factor to nationalism serving as an instrument of exclusion, marginalisation, dominance and minority attribution. Based on the above conflict situation in Nigeria, English language, though a colonial code of linguistic conduct, serves as an instrument that unites rather than divides. The modest proposal of this paper is therefore, the projection of English language teaching and learning as an option that creates linguistic disposition for national development, integration and better projection into the global world. In spite of these, the dividends of democratization call for national language policies that would not neglect the local language development.
Download Draft Conference Paper - 
The Ghost of the Nation: A Methodological Discussion
Joan Ramon Rodríguez-Amat
Departament de Comunicació digital. Facultat d’Empresa i Comunicació. Universitat de Vic. Barcelona. Spain
For centuries now, the ghost of nationalism wanders around Europe. Some tried insistently to catch it in order to study, experiment, analyse it. But from the “shopping list” (Yuval-Davis, 1997) to the “terminological chaos” (Ozkirimli, 2000) theoretical discussions on nationalism navigate in debates more political and strategic than symbolic or philosophical. Similarly to other methodological discussions in social sciences theories of nationalism tend to fall into a recidivist debate. The confrontation of arguments about the “antiquity” of the nations (Ozkirimli, 2007) keeps the historical axis alive and fundamental: often anthropologists discuss against political historians. But the widespread awareness that the question of nationalism is not something left behind with other traditions of the Ancient Regime the concern has precipitated into a rush for its study. But the hurry lead to a pathologic literary reductionism that hides more than discovers and shows more intentions than solutions.
With a revision of the major literature about theories of nationalism and the current debates this article seeks to demonstrate that behind the discussions there is a methodological problematic: the tendency to reification (Brubaker, 1996) clashes against the discursive need of foundational fictions (Bhabha, 1990) to legitimate the state.
Far from suggesting any of the sides as the good one, this article tries to point to the usual methodological problems on which the different classifications, debates and perspectives often fall. By paying attention to some approaches usually omitted in the mainstream theoretical revisions (see e.g. Smith, 1998) the current text will end suggesting a “methodological shift” that might help redefining previous researches and findings as well as opening new fertile fields of discussion.
Probably this is the only way to avoid the obsessive need to solidify the ghost of nationalism –in order to measure it- but to consider it in its ghostly completeness and complexity.