State Theories And National Identity

Prior to the French and Indian War, colonists were somewhat satisfied with Great Britain. The laws imposed on the colonies were usually unenforced giving the colonies free reign over most aspects of their life. Despite the distance between North America and the mother country, colonists considered themselves equal with British citizens living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. At this point, the colonists had no intentions of breaking off from the mother country. As John Murrin says in his essay “The Dilemma of American National Identity”:

What would have happen if america never went through any problems? Now you may be thinking america has always been great. Well that’s not the case. We wouldn’t have become a more stronger independent country if we never had to solve problems. During the time of the early 1800s many different events were happening to contribute to America's situation of nationalism and sectionalism.

The word "identity" inspired many writers in our contemporary world, toarticulate their ideas and state their suggestions in a way to find a precise definition for such a word, especially where the globalization has become a fact which produces with it many effectual consequences. Some writers had linked Identity with the original culture to which a person may belong, others dealt with it as a changing factor transformed according to every ones status,however a third category characterized the Identity from another angel in view of religious or ideological background. Huntington being one of the leading writers in this sphere has imagined a future world witnesses a clash of civilizations.According to his categorizationfrom a cultural perspective however; the world shall be divided into eight civilizations. This essay shall shed a light into the different understandings of theidentity and culture as in relation to Islam and the West having reference to different arguments and visions presented in the following scholarly sources.

In the excerpt from “The Crisis of American Nationality” Susan-Mary Grant describes the northern viewpoint and its strong disapproval of southern ideology and how it “took on the attributes of a sectional” identity.

The reading Paradox of National Identity: Region, Nation, and Canadian Idol by Boulou Ebanda, and Ruth Middlebrook focuses on the 2006 season of Canada Idol and how it manufactures the Canadian identity.

George Orwell, 20th century award winning novelist of 1984 wrote, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” This idea is the fundamental basis under which lies various identity surrounded disputes within modern communities. The influence of the Spanish conquest on Native Americans and their struggle to reconstruct their identity today, and the Ayodhya dispute between the Hindu and Muslim people depicts the consequences of the Western idea of White Man’s burden and the importance of a nation-state’s interpretation of the past to assert a political agenda. The past’s concept of civilization greatly affects modern perception of identities today, thus leading to contention in the identity struggles

Perhaps one of the biggest points of contention in Serbia is nationalism and identity. Serbian nationalism is especially unique due to its particular ethnic implications. It can be traced back to the rise of nationalism in the Balkans during Ottoman rule. Serbia has existed between various empires and nation states. Many Serbians voice the need for self-autonomy, often citing being ruled by outsiders for hundreds of years. Today Serbia seen by its people as an unfinished state. Thus, the need for creating autonomous identity is especially relevant.1 Ristic in her essay on Serbian identity, that the formation of a nation-state 's identity is crucial to its wellbeing. In general, identity is built upon three “essential interdependent elements: 1. birth, which creates ties to family, nation and to a concrete geographical space; 2. culture, which forms individuals and groups spiritually and emotionally; 3. acceptance of common values which help creating communities of values.” Hence identity can be determined on the basis of the following categories: place of living (town or district of town, country, continent etc), religion, family, profession, nation, age-class, ideology etc.2

The theme I intend to do for this essay is a systematic analysis of how one’s situatedness, or one’s place in society – geographical, or in sense of belonging – largely dictates the knowledge they have access to and the impact this has on their perceptions, which dictates their identity. Furthermore, the impact of ignorance, more specifically willful ignorance, on the formation of identities and the impact this can then have on different groups of people and how this creates pressure for other groups to fit a specific identity. Lastly, that collective and individual

“In the post-Cold War world,” said Samuel Huntington, “the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural” (21). Although some of his notions have caused a big controversial debate, his foresight on the importance of culture has been proofed. Homi Bhabha in his The Location of Culture (1994) has paid a special attention to cultural identity, and Stuart Hall in his article, “The Questions of Cultural Identity,” has divided identity into two categories—personal identity and community identity—claiming that the latter one is social or cultural identity. And as far as I am concerned, personal identity in a sense can be counted as cultural identity. Inhabiting in a cultural and social world

Identity as a crisis is seen through a broad view of world literature, through books read this term, and through specific quotes from the books. Throughout the texts we have read this term, identity

In the second half of the 1990s, the problem of conceptualization of national identity is characterized by the shift of emphasis on definition like national identification in the countries of democratic post-socialist transit. The considerable group of the researchers specializing in the field of the political analysis of nationalism in post-socialist "New Europe" remained on former positions and referred to the features of national identity of the countries of this region to ethnic type. It is possible to determine such prominent experts in nationalism problems in countries of Eastern Europe as Rogers Brubaker and George Schopflin.

Through searching different books, articles and documentaries on internet and media resources it can be deduced that National Identity is a subject that is mostly dealt indirectly by Media. A huge amount of literature and media projects are available all around the world on the subject but it addresses only specific regions and characteristics of national identity. For example rather than defining what National Identity itself is, most of the work is done about National language, National Heroes and National Heritage etc. National identity is a vast subject which directly or indirectly touches huge number of variegated subjects.

According to Rourke (2008) the most important way people have identified themselves politically for five centuries is through nationalism (p. 102). Nations are formed when people who “share demographic and cultural similarities [who identify themselves] as a group distinct from other groups and want to control themselves politically” (p. 103) band together in a national political identity which has “a soul, a spiritual quality” (Rourke, 2008, p. 103). Feelings of nationalism can be very intense and difficult to put aside because of this. For the concept of globalization to continue to spread and grow nationalistic feelings must be tempered with cosmopolitan ideals.

How can the development of national identity lead to loyalty and conflict for an individual?

According to Morgan (1997) the national identity can be defined by simply as how a country think about them in reality. The literature review of the Paper gives the reader an idea of the peoples national identity as the sense of belonging to, and identification with, the nation; it is an incarnation of