1. Dr. Susan P. Mains Geography
GE21001 Dynamic Human Worlds Lectures 10, Political Geography: Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship
Dr. Susan P. Mains
Geography

2. Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship
Lecture Outline:
Case Study: Mexico City
What’s a nation?
Nation & nationalism
Forms of nationalism
Nation & territory

3. Nation, Nationalism and Citizenship
Mexico City Olympics, 1968
Tommie Smith, John Carlos & Peter Norman

5. Mexico City La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco

8. Understanding the Nation
Definition of Nation
A large group of people sharing common cultural traits:
Identify with one another
Believe that they belong with one another
Identify “insiders”
Identify “outsiders”
Key Concept:
A state must have borders
A nation never does (?)

9. Understanding Nationalism
What is Nationalism?
The expressed desire of a people to establish and maintain a self-governing political entity.
It has been a dominant social force in recent history, leading to both the creation and destruction of modern states.

10. Understanding Nationalism
Nationalism may be based on ethnic ties, but nationalism and ethnicity are not the same.
Nationalism involves three themes:
independence, unity, and identity

11. National Identities
Cooperation across large social and spatial scales involves shared beliefs and trust among strangers.
Successful nations require a set of agreed upon symbols that define who is and who is not part of the nation.
e.g., citizenship testing, requirements
Such processes facilitate the goals of independence and unity.
What identities are privileged/excluded?

12. Defining Citizenship
“Citizenship,  relationship between an individual and a state in which an individual owes allegiance to that state and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens have certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that are denied or only partially extended to aliens and other noncitizens residing in a country. In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship. The usual responsibilities of citizenship are allegiance, taxation, and military service.
Citizenship is the most privileged form of nationality.”
Encyclopædia Britannica

13. Constructing National Identities
Nations are not ‘natural’ entities, they are socially constructed, unstable, and in process
• How do people construct a national identity?
How are these identities linked with specific places/territories?
-Scottish Highlands

14. Imagined Communities
“It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. . . The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. . . It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.”
--Benedict Anderson, 1983, 15

15. Imagined Communities “Imagined” National Communities
Nationalism: ideology that links nation to state
Homogeneity of language (?)
Printing press: advent of popular literature
School textbooks
Standardization of time
High profile events/figures

16. Imagined Communities
Achieved through information: factual and mythical
“invented traditions” and stories of the nation
Creating continuity with ancient (and selective) pasts and places
Becoming central to national “culture”
BUT, these may be contested, multiple and/or conflicting claims to national identity

17. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Nationalism is subjective
Some people/places ‘belong’ and the rest are ‘others’
It is exclusionary
Linked to territory—and iconic landscapes
Places associated with aspects of national stories, events, figures

18. Iconic Landscapes

19. Iconic Landscapes
Visit Scotland

21. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Minority groups may be increasingly marginalised
Differential rights (e.g., voting, access to public funds, schooling, etc.,)
Monitoring of religions, dress, language
May be through legislation  force

22. Symbols of Nationalism
Language
Flags
Distinctive architecture
Monuments
Parks
Anthems
Uniforms
Events

23. Nations & Borders May be clearly visible Barely marked
May serve different types of political and physical functions

24. Separatism & Nationalism
Increasing ethnic nationalism
New claims to independent nationhood
Ethnic separatism:
Within multi-national countries
Some unrest
Varying degrees of violence
Forced deportations
Genocides
Military coups, secession

25. Separatism & Nationalism
Nationalisms are Unstable
Completely malleable – multiple, changing, disappearing, reappearing, never permanent, and always changeable
Those who belong to a nation may one day be ostracized from it due to new definitions of what comprise a nation.
• Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia
• Kosovar Albanians

26. Nationalism & Fundamentalism
Ridding the state of a minority nation within its borders to create a “nation‐state”
Done through:
-Expulsion (en masse)
-Eradication (en masse)
-Expansion (of state borders)
-Rape (genetic eradication)
1990s term: “Ethnic Cleansing”
“Genocide”