Red Mitten Nationalism
Red Mitten Nationalism

Author: Estée Fresco

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0228015154

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When Canada hosted the 1976 Montreal Olympics, few Canadian spectators waved flags in the stands. By 2010, in the run-up to the Vancouver Olympics, thousands of Canadians wore red mittens with white maple leaves on the palms. In doing so, they turned their hands into miniature flags that flew with even a casual wave. Red Mitten Nationalism investigates this shift in Canadians’ displays of patriotism by exploring how common understandings of Canadian history and identity are shaped at the intersection of sport, commercialism, and nationalism. Through case studies of recent Canadian-hosted Olympic and Commonwealth Games, Estée Fresco argues that representations of Indigenous Peoples’ cultures are central to the way everyday Canadians, corporations, and sport organizations remember the past and understand the present. Corporate sponsors and games organizers highlight selective ideas about the nation’s identity, and unacknowledged truths about the history and persistence of Settler colonialism in Canada haunt the commercial and cultural features of these sporting events. Commodities that represent the nation – from disposable trinkets to carefully curated objects of nostalgia – are not uncomplicated symbols of national pride, but rather reminders that Canada is built on Indigenous land and Settlers profit from its natural resources. Red Mitten Nationalism challenges readers to re-evaluate how Canadians use sport and commercial practices to express their patriotism and to understand the impact of this expression on the current state of Indigenous-Settler relations.

Blood and Belonging
Blood and Belonging

Author: Michael Ignatieff

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0374114404

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Until the end of the Cold War, the politics of national identity was confined to isolated incidents of ethnics strife and civil war in distant countries. Now, with the collapse of Communist regimes across Europe and the loosening pf the Cold War'd clamp on East-West relations, a surge of nationalism has swept the world stage. In "Blood and Belonging," Ignatieff makes a thorough examination of why blood ties--inplaces as diverse as Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Germany, and the former Soviet republics--may be the definitive factor in international relation today. He asks how ethnic pride turned into ethnic cleansing, whether modern citizens can lay the ghosts of a warring past, why--and whether--a people need a state of their own, and why armed struggle might be justified. "Blood and Belonging" is a profound and searching look at one of the most complex issues of our time.

Discursive Construction of National Identity
Discursive Construction of National Identity

Author: Ruth Wodak

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2009-01-19

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0748637354

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How do we construct national identities in discourse? Which topics, which discursive strategies and which linguistic devices are employed to construct national sameness and uniqueness on the one hand, and differences to other national collectives on the other hand? The Discursive Construction of National Identity analyses discourses of national identity in Europe with particular attention to Austria.In the tradition of critical discourse analysis, the authors analyse current and on-going transformations in the self-and other definition of national identities using an innovative interdisciplinary approach which combines discourse-historical theory and methodology and political science perspectives. Thus, the rhetorical promotion of national identification and the discursive construction and reproduction of national difference on public, semi-public and semi-private levels within a nation state are analysed in much detail and illustrated with a huge amount of examples taken from many genres (speeches, focus-groups, interviews, media, and so forth). In addition to the critical discourse analysis of multiple genres accompanying various commemorative and celebratory events in 1995, this extended and revised edition is able to draw comparisons with similar events in 2005. The impact of socio-political changes in Austria and in the European Union is also made transparent in the attempts of constructing hegemonic national identities.

Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe
Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe

Author: Philip V. Bohlman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-13

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 1136920501

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Two decades after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and one decade into the twenty-first century, European music remains one of the most powerful forces for shaping nationalism. Using intensive fieldwork throughout Europe -- from participation in alpine foot pilgrimages to studies of the grandest music spectacle anywhere in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest -- Philip V. Bohlman reveals the ways in which music and nationalism intersect in the shaping of the New Europe. Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe begins with the emergence of the European nation-state in the Middle Ages and extends across long periods during which Europe’s nations used music to compete for land and language, and to expand the colonial reach of Europe to the entire world. Bohlman contrasts the "national" and the "nationalist" in music, examining the ways in which their impact on society can be positive and negative -- beneficial for European cultural policy and dangerous in times when many European borders are more fragile than ever. The New Europe of the twenty-first century is more varied, more complex, and more politically volatile than ever, and its music resonates fully with these transformations.