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Nationalism has reasserted itself today as the political force of our times, remaking European politics wherever one looks. Britain is no exception, and in the midst of Brexit, it has even become a vanguard of nationalism's confident return to the mainstream. Brexit, in the course of generating a historically unique standard of sociopolitical uncertainty and constitutional intrigue, tore apart the two-party compact that had defined the parameters of political contestation for much of twentieth-century Britain. This book offers a wide-ranging picture of the different theoretical accounts relevant to addressing nationalism. It briefly repudiates the increasingly common attempts to read contemporary politics through the lens of populism. The book explores the assertion of 'muscular liberalism' and civic nationalism. It examines more traditional, conservative appeals to racialised notions of blood, territory, purity and tradition as a means of reclaiming the nation. The book also examines how neoliberalism, through its recourse to discourses of meritocracy, entrepreneurial self and individual will, alongside its exaltation of a 'points-system' approach to the ills of immigration, engineers its own unique rendition of the nationalist crisis. There are a number of important themes through which the process of liberal nationalism can be documented - what Arun Kundnani captured, simply and concisely, as the entrenchment of 'values racism'. These include the 'faux-feminist' demonisation of Muslims.
attempts to give civic nationalism the upper hand are outlined. The questions provoked by attempts to redeem civic nationalism concern the coherence and practicality of civic solidarity. Is it possible to have a strong solidarity that does not descend either into chaos or into ethnic cruelty? Can we say ‘we’ without presupposing some sort of common character? Civic nationalists think we can, and they argue for a renewal of
3 Valuing the nation: liberalism, Muslims and nation-state values A special brand of not uninviting hubris swept through political theory in the 1990s and early 2000s. Much has already been said elsewhere about the more general ‘end of history’ thesis and its claims about the triumph of liberal market democracies. But a less noted parallel current was a similarly confident claim about the nature of democratic nationalism. This was the claim regarding a historical shift towards a civic nationalism, wherein a liberal value base respectful of difference would set
that nations are ‘invented’ either by the literary endeavours of poets or the processes of state power. Nationalism nevertheless assumes that the ‘people’ or ‘the nation’ is an entity with sovereign rights and a fundamental unity of ‘blood’, ‘culture’ or ‘citizenship’. We shall now consider these elements of nationalism: sovereignty of the people; Ethnic nationalism and Civic nationalism. Sovereignty of
construction, an invention or even fabrication by which cultural and linguistic groups should be dissolved and replaced by a common culture. The end state of civic nationalism is meant to be achieved through processes of assimilation or integration (Gellner 1990 ; Hobsbawm 1990 ; Smith 1991 ). It was probably this approach to nation-building which inspired the idea of a Rainbow Nation, but as we shall see the contemporary political parties have various understandings and experiences of the Rainbow Nation. The second approach, sometimes referred to as multiculturalism
citizenship; without citizenship, there can be no democracy’. 42 The notion of citizenship is also central to the idea of ‘civic nationalism’; in a civic national identity it is one’s citizenship that determines national identity. Where civic nationalism prevails, the focus is on the individual rather than any collective ethnic identity: In a liberal
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
and the Divided World: PostAgreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 53. 3 Cited by J. McGarry, ‘Northern Ireland, civic nationalism and the Good Friday Agreement’, in McGarry (ed.), Northern Ireland and the Divided World, p. 106. 4 At the time of writing, the Assembly had just been suspended due to allegations concerning spying within the Northern Ireland Office by members of Sinn Féin and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. 5 A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performances in Thirty
the following chapters tend simultaneously to combine their recognition of alterity and difference with Lentin’s politics of interrogation, because of their constant urge to reassess insular and monocultural conceptions of Irishness. Regardless of the level of explicitness with which they address the presence of migrant communities in Ireland, what is clear is that these writers believe that it is no longer credible to adhere to a monolithic, monoethnic Irish identity. In this sense, they tend to defend a more inclusive form of ‘civic nationalism’, a notion
long noted the contested nature of American nationalism. Civic nationalism – the core political ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – is imagined to be the foundation of the United States as a democratic society. Racial nationalism, on the other hand – the white supremacy that Griffith believed was necessary for national unity – has simultaneously been at the core of American society