Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity

Cross National and Comparative Perspectives

Russell F. Farnen, Russell F. Farnen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351503617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Nationalism, national identity, and ethnicity are cultural issues in contemporary Western societies. Problems in the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Poland, Croatia, Ukraine, Hungary, and Bulgaria illustrate both large-scale internal variations in these phenomena and their cross-national relevance for teaching, research, and educational development on such subjects as multiculturalism, ethnic diversity, and socialization.Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity, now in paperback, reflects the consequences of rapid change as well as the impact of longstanding social values. Contributors from a number of different countries use a variety of methodological approaches (empirical, quantitative, qualitative, historical, and case study, among others) to analyze important issues. These include anti-Semitism, stereotyping, militarism, authoritarianism, postmodernism, moral development, gender, patriarchy, theory of the state, critical educational theory, Europeanization, and democratic public policy options as related to competing choices among monocultural and multicultural policy options.In addition, contributors examine the situation of minorities in their respective national settings. Chapters cover the impact of mass media, culture, patriotism, and other universal values. This cross-national study is a unique addition to the literature on multiculturalism.

PART I

Setting the Context: Basic
Concepts, Stereotyping, and
Authoritarianism

1

Introduction

Russell F. Famen

The Present as Seen from the Past

In the first years of the 1990s, the old enmities and rivalries that were frozen for half a century in the Cold War glacier have come to life once again. Limited war has once more become an instrument of worldwide politics. The revival of nationalism has enlivened longstanding hatreds and affected supposedly "uninvolved" countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas through new security threats, immigration and economic pressures, and other perilous means. Security questions, economic and trade issues, and intercultural contacts are now linked as never before in the new search for cooperative international structures and political processes. Instead of the post- Cold War death of liberal history, we actually see the return to an older history as well as the re-creation and re-invention of it. After a hibernation of fifty years, the interethnic and intertribal tensions of Eastern Europe are awake once again. These regional conflicts have produced chaos, instability, bloodshed, and new powerful warlords to such a degree that they are found unacceptable in the West.

As a case in point, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) comprises eleven nations with 290 million people and 100 different ethnic nationalities, yet with many pressing border disputes still unresolved in the vast majority of these countries. For example, twenty percent of both Russians and Ukrainians live outside their countries. Thirteen thousand nuclear weapons and their targets, once under the control of the former United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), are now divided among four states. This arsenal is supplemented by tactical, biological, and chemical weapons stores, and there are real threats of selling nuclear secrets, materials, and even weapons themselves to unstable powers. All of these factors serve to increase insecurities both there and throughout the world. Although we often focus on the forty million potential immigrants who are poised to move from East to West at a moment’s notice, these security questions also hang in the balance. Regional conflicts, new security threats, and varying response modes to these issues all contribute to an international climate of insecurity and uncertainty. Uniform Western responses to the August 1991 and October 1993 old-guard "Moscow coups" differed considerably from divided Western reactions to the Balkan bloodbath in what was Yugoslavia or to the violence in other parts of the former USSR. More and more, the pattern of competing national versus common interests in determining international cooperation or cross- national conflict in decision making rings true.

In large measure, the growth of international security and political and economic cooperative systems provide the backdrop (or global environment) within which ethnic and national rivalries will be resolved or allowed to run riot. There are now three major economic blocs, the post-Maastricht European Union (formerly the European Community or EC), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the US, Canada and Mexico, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). EC Units (ECUs), the US dollar, and the Japanese yen are the common world hard currencies used in international trade. The old pillars of this system were the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) but these three new trading blocs have more recently taken on new management functions to ensure international economic stability.

The host of international organizations used to manage Northern and Western commerce and security issues, e.g., United Nations (UN), NATO, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), (Treaty on) Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), Western European Union (WEU), CIS, European Economic Community (EEC), "Group of 7" and "G24," Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), IMF, World Bank, etc. proves the importance of these two aspects of human life. By contrast, the minimum number of intercultural, intereducational, and international peace, cooperation, and social development organizations on the world scene testifies to the lesser importance given to positive mutual confidence-building approaches for ensuring world peace, democratizing societies, and furthering educational progress. That is, not only is Eastern Europe light-years behind the West in its development of civil societies, but its whole educational infrastructure (from preschool to university level) is in a shambles. It is also technologically primitive and ideologically frozen in the old command style of authoritarian pedagogics. Clearly, part of any New World Order will have to address democratizing education in the Eastern and Southern nations as well as ensuring their basic survival and security needs. If wars really do begin in the minds of human beings, then what we may actually need is an intellectual and educational Robert Schuman or Marshall Plan for the citizens in the vast majority of the world’s nations that are not governed by democratic institutions. Perhaps this plan should first be directed at reducing the influence of the new four horsemen of the twentieth-century apocalypse: rabid nationalism, exclusive national identity, provincial ethnicity, and excessive monoculturalism. These issues are too important to be left only to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the US Information Agency (USIA), the US Agency for International Development (AID), the Council of Europe, the Soros and Erasmus Foundations, and other eleemosynary organizations whose money is limited and whose long-term influence is as problematic as their charity is probably short-lived.

Instead, new formal institutional devices must be forged to link American, Western European, Asian, African, and Eastern European institutions in university reform, curriculum development, teaching improvement, and teacher training. This may prove to be the best way to establish a coherent plan for Eastern European infrastructural, organizational, institutional, and individual reform and development. For example, the current rector of Cluj University in Romania, Professor Andrei Marga, has written a piece on "The University and Politics" that was published in a collection of his articles, Philosophy in the Eastern TraFition. Marga (1993,183-190) has identified promoting university autonomy, basing instruction on universal values, and depoliticizing academic life as three primary goals to achieve a scientific, questioning, reasonable, responsible, and "rational-critical" approach to humanizing Eastern European universities. He maintains that universities must play a role in creating "a genuine ‘centrist’ culture, organized around a liberal political program that favors pluralism, critical rationalism, modern humanism, Europeanism, and universalism." He believes this can be accomplished by recognizing "that, more than ever before, it is necessary to develop those disciplines essential for genuine political discourse, emphasizing political sociology, descriptive economy, and, especially, political sciences" to develop a new generation of intellectuals who can bridge the gap between the citizenry and their representatives and the new civil societies in the making in Eastern Europe (Marga 1993, 118-119). In these societies, "antidemocratic, nationalistic, communist and fascist projects are not in the least feeble," as he says, and "primitive nationalism flourishes under the name of liberalism" instead of endorsing "that type of liberalism that promotes not only individual goals but also goals of the state, that are compatible with individual liberties and relying on them." That is, such a "substantive" and "reflexive" liberalism should use pragmatism, a "philosophical framework that best allows the transition to and the articulation of a liberal society in Eastern Europe nowadays" (i.e., "a pragmatic reconstruction of philosophy") in the Pierce, James, and Dewey traditions of a "public philosophy" (Marga 1993, 175-182). Although Marga’s observations directly echo the philosophical debates long under way in the US and Western Europe, the interesting observation is that an Eastern European university rector is speaking about reconstructing the Romanian higher education and cultural system along pluralistic lines in order to combat the forces of resurgent nationalism and provincialism that are so especially rife in his country and region. Consequently, who would--or could--object to any plan that proposes that the West should help their newfound partners in the East to do what nearly everyone agrees is a good idea, especially if it does not cost very much to implement?

Socialism in practice developed a political socialization system at the macrolevel, which fostered loyalty, identity, and obedience (subject orientations) to the state, party, and leadership apparatus. This elite system required its own replication and reproduction in order to ensure its self-fulfilling sense of legitimacy. With the death of the old regime, a struggle between authoritarianism and ethnonationalism on the one hand and economic/political liberalization on the other has, thus far, been in favor of the former, while the prospects for an integrated democratic culture and civil society grow more dim each day. The chance to develop an existing, practicing, and functioning civil society may take at least another half century. However, after the explosive eruption of intense nationalism (of the exclusive rather than liberation type) in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, these countries must pass through this developmental phase before going on to the next stages.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to the major outlines of this book and summarizes the major findings on a chapter-by-chapter basis. By way of introduction, this book has four major parts, which deal with basic concepts reflected in related material throughout the volume. These include topics such as nationalism, ethnicity, political socialization, stereotyping, and authoritarianism (Part I); relevant intellectual currents such as historical traditions, theories of the state, and critical theory (Part II); national case studies on Germany (eastern and western), the US, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, the Ukraine, and Bulgaria, in addition to Europeanization, the European Union, the EC, and other internationalization trends and movements, such as the European Parliament (Part III); and a concluding section (Part IV).

In the first part, chapters by Famen, Hagendoom and Linssen, and Meloen treat, respectively, the overall topics of nationalism, ethnicity, political socialization, and public policy options (Chapter 2); the results of a seven-nation comparative study of national characteristics and stereotypes (Chapter 3); and the major trends in authoritarianism research from 1950 to 1990 (Chapter 4).

Famen’s piece (Chapter 2) focuses on trends in topics of overall concern to the theme of this book, with particular application to the US, but also referencing England, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, and some other countries in Eastern and Western Europe not fully discussed elsewhere in this volume, such as the former USSR. He also discusses some general and current observations regarding the force of nationalism, minority status, ethnicity, and national identity. The particular utility of this piece is its treatment of political socialization findings on youth and nationalism in the US, Hungary, and Australia. It also covers some of what we know from the US social science literature on African Americans, Latinos, and Korean Americans, and their political socialization to the nation-state, as well as the perceptions of others toward them. Perhaps the two other most useful parts of this chapter are a critical review of multicultural education efforts in a few countries along with a delineation of hopeful signs found in an OECD cross-national school innovation study and several English, Dutch, and Swedish curriculum projects. The chapter also includes a summary of a recently initiated research project that links militarism, nationalism, authoritarianism, democratic values, and other variables to choices about traditional, monocultural, and multicultural public policy educational alternatives.

Hagendoom and Linssen’s contribution (Chapter 3) reports some interesting findings from a seven-nation comparative study of national character and national stereotypes. Using a criterion of unanimous agreement among the target population and all perceivers to indicate national characteristics and perceiver disagreements to indicate stereotyping, consensus was found on twenty-two attributions to nationalities. Consensus between external and internal observers occurred on some one-third of 154 characterizations, with the remaining two-thirds classified as stereotypes, for which sources and determinants are discussed.

Meloen’s piece (Chapter 4) concludes that Cold War mentalities have set back research on the authoritarian personality for forty years. Until just recently, the critical conservative attack on the validity of the F-scale and the ruse of "left-wing authoritarianism" held sway. Conservative reductionism prevailed despite convincing evidence over the years that the construct was both valid and useful for cross-national research in Europe, the US, and other regions and countries of the world, such as the former USSR. Meloen labels this phenomenon a "structural reductionist bias," primarily attributable to Cold War attitudes, which polarized research. It also proved the critical theory assumption that social science and social context are inseparable, thus debunking any claims for such "value-free" research. The force of ideology, politics, conventional wisdom, and prejudice all combined to put F-scale research in the deep freeze from which it has emerged only as a result of the post-Cold War thaw in East-West relations.

The second part of the book includes work on postmodernity, historicism, the state, critical theory, and intellectual currents that help to inform our major topics of study.

Maislingeťs work (Chapter 5) deals with the various approaches for coming to terms with the past. He suggests that historical disputes and quarrels about one’s national legacy are counterproductive for coming to terms with vile deeds, such as genocide or politicide. Instead, the realities of genocide, democratization, reparations, and retribution (primarily through public trials, memorials, payments, and international gestures of good will) are required for their expiation. This process was more easily accomplished through the vehicles of religion and mass media in the West than in the East, which has yet to come to terms with its past. Eastern Europeans must first remember and then deal with what is remembered in at least an equally constructive manner.

Magala’s (Chapter 6) discussion of the theory and role of the state in political socialization is especially significant because this basic topic is usually ignored in socialization research and discussions of nationalism. Magala lays out the relationships among class conflict, cultural capital, state bureaucracies, hegemonic control over the state, and educational-socialization processes in a provocative and challenging fashion. Using his concept of "stateization," he critiques Lawrence Kohlberg’s moral stages as being a much-too-neat categorization of the liberal, democratic, American WASP as the ideal type. As an alternative conception, Magala points to Emmanuel Todd’s work in France, which links family types to political values such as equality, liberty, authority, and the "good life." He concludes that the state’s present role in the distribution of life’s "chances" and in the political socialization process may give way to the more powerful contemporary forces of technological democracy, citizens’ movements, new market mechanisms, and suprastate globalization trends.

Sünker (Chapter 7) challenges New Left critical theorists to rethink contemporary relationships between the middle class and modern democracy. A question he poses is whether or not democracy is compatible with what he calls the "bourgeois passion" for bureaucracy, standardization, technology, consumption, materialism, and the pleasure principle. The result of these hegemonic and ruling values is a citizenry bereft of a public purpose, one in which excessive individualism, privatism, passiveness, and alienation characterize their daily lives. As a contrary set of moral and reasonable goals, the values of autonomy, social action, contextual meaning, social context, enlightenment, and democracy are posited as more worthy pursuits for the intellectual "keepers of political culture."

The third part of this book focuses on studies of nationalism, national identity, ethnicity, political socialization, and political education in national contexts. The concepts that inform Part III are political culture, xenophobia, racism, minority status, anti-Semitism, stereotyping, emigration and immigration, class, region, and core (or political center) and periphery.

Reuter’s (Chapter 8) discussion of three specific German minority groups (Danes; Sinti/Roma or Gypsies; and "guestworkers") lays out the variation in historical treatment and discriminatory and legal practices, as well as their separate and common integration, identity, and socialization experiences. He applies the concept of minority differentiation (through ascription and self-identity) while assessing each minority’s social, economic, and political rights and their "life chances," or potential opportunities. Moreover, Reuter treats the general topic of immigrant rights in an EC context as well as prospects for successful intercultural education, which will develop an appropriate political consciousness among the majority and these three groups as well as other ethnic/national minorities.

Fritzsche (Chapter 9) examines the remnants of racism that are still extant in the five new eastern German Länder where former German Democratic Republic (GDR) citizens (unlike the western Länder) have not yet had to come to terms with past and present prejudice and xenophobia. The task before these former GDR citizens requires a steady hand to prevent an "escape from freedom." This would happen if they rely on old animosities toward the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) rather than renounce their long history (since 1933) of fascist and totalitarian influences. The present economic, social, and political insecurities in eastern Germany make it all too easy to resort to aggressive, scapegoating, and ethnocentric tactics in the treatment of national and ethnic minorities living in these five new Länder. Now, eastern Germany will necessarily have to use toleration, self-confidence, and democratic practices to create a new national identity in tune with Germany’s role in the new internationalism and globalism of the twenty-first century. Reflecting on the post-Hoyerswerda and Rostock eastern Germany, Fritzsche believes a combination of authoritarianism, stress, and former socialization practices have caused this right-wing violent extremism to rise up out of eastern German political culture. Political education can help eastern Germans to mitigate stress, handle conflict and risk, and avoid accepting the authoritarian option.

The topic of mass media and ethnic/racial minorities in the US is the subject of German’s (Chapter 10) piece on this significant topic. He assesses...