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Overview
Interest in the study of national identity as a collective phenomenon is a growing concern among the social and political sciences. This book addresses the scholarly interest in examining the origins of ideologies and social practices that give historical meaning, cohesion and uniqueness to modern national communities. It focuses on the various routes taken towards the construction of cultural authenticity as an inspirational purpose of nation-building, and reveals the diversity of the themes, practices and symbols used to encourage self-identification and communality. Among the techniques explored are the dramatization of suffering and tragedy, the exaltation of heroes and deeds, the evocation of landscape, nature and the arts, and the delimitation of collective values to be pursued during reconstruction in post-war periods.Contents: Introduction: The study of national identity. Dimensions of National Identity: Interpretations of national identity; Theories of national personality revisited: Anglo-American models and French conceptions; National identity and modernity. Symbolizing the Nation: Forging the authentic nation: Alpine landscape and Swiss national identity; Folk culture and the construction of European national identities between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries; The shaping of a nation: Catalan history and historicity in Post-Franco Spain; Recreating the French nation: the teaching of history at the cole Libre des Sciences Politiques at the end of the nineteenth century. Teaching National Identity: National identity construction and the teacher's unions of the Germanys and Japan, 1945-1955; Hindu nationalism and the socialwelfare strategy. Disrupted National Identities: Nationalism and the politics of national identities in Latin America: gender, power and racism; The difficult stabilization of Turkish national identity; Between mimesis and rebellion: the vicissitudes of Romanian nationalism. Conclusion: Culture and national identity.