Page 155 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

only political formations but also systems of cultural representation whereby
national identity is continually re-produced through discursive action. Since
cultures are not static entities but are constituted by changing practices and
132 meanings that operate at different social levels so any given national culture is
understood and acted upon by different social groups. That is, governments, ethnic
groups and classes may perceive national identity in divergent ways.
Representations of national culture are snapshots of the symbols and practices that
have been foregrounded at specific historical conjunctures for particular purposes
by distinct groups of people.
National identity is a way of unifying cultural diversity so that, rather than
thinking of nations and national cultures as a ‘whole’, we should understand unity
or identity to be the consequence of discursive power that covers over difference.
Nations are marked by deep internal divisions and differences so that a unified
national identity has to be constructed through the narrative of the nation by
which stories, images, symbols and rituals represent ‘shared’ meanings of
nationhood. Thus national identity involves identification with representations of
shared experiences and history as told through stories, literature, popular culture
and the media.
Narratives of nationhood emphasize the traditions and continuity of the nation
as being ‘in the nature of things’ along with a foundational myth of collective
origin. This in turn both assumes and produces the linkage between national
identity and a pure, original people or ‘folk’ tradition. As such the ‘nation’ can be
grasped as an ‘imagined community’ and national identity as a construction
assembled through symbols and rituals in relation to territorial and administrative
categories. Thus national identities are intrinsically connected to, and constituted
by, forms of communication.
Links Globalization, identification, identity, imagined community, narrative, nation-state

Nation-state The modern nation-state is a relatively recent historical invention so that
most of the human species have never participated in any kind of state nor
identified with one. Though we speak of the nation-state it is necessary to
disentangle the couplet since national cultural identities are not necessarily
coterminous with state borders. Various global diaspora – African, Jewish, Indian,
Chinese, Polish, English, Irish etc. – attest to the existence of national and ethnic
cultural identities that span the borders of nation-states.
The nation-state is a political concept that refers to an administrative apparatus
deemed to have sovereignty over a specific space or territory within the nation-state
system. The requirement to defend their territory and to control their population
has led modern nation-states to develop increasingly sophisticated forms of
surveillance and military power. As a political apparatus and a symbolic form the
nation-state has a temporal dimension in that political structures endure and
change while the symbolic and discursive dimensions of national identity narrate
and create the idea of origins, continuity and tradition. The modern nation-state
can be seen to have three critical functions: namely, external defence, internal