Nate, Eugene ,all
>I have to admit that I'm lost again. If you think that taking native
>American children at the beginning of the 20th century and coercively
>putting them in boarding schools is naturalization or "internalization" --
>Ok let's it be. But I can't see how Vygotsky is relevant here.
Nationalism and cultural identity are, of course not satatic, the need to
be reproduced. The conditions of reproduction are complex, and
Russification, or Globalisation(nee Americanisation) are not singular
imposed phenomena but complext cultural historic activity systems (am I
preaching to the converted here?). Nationalism or ethno-nationalism
presuppose the existence of a nation state, which is of course a very new
phenomenum, and the definition of ethnicity or cultural alegience as
cultural artefacts are reconstructed from generation to genreation.. I
enclose a lengthy clipping from an essay by Edward Tiryakin, whose writing
deserves attention from anywon interested in Nationalism and ethnicity. I
think the questions he raises in the second paragraph my answer questions
of why is Vugotsky relvant here, although my Vygotskyan erudition is
outmatched by many other subscribers who can perhaps point me to where I
should look for specific support in the discussion.
the whole essay is on http://www.asanet.org/Sections/chsfall98a.htm
While in Paris on a sabbatical, I chanced to see a poster
proclaiming a coming festival of
"minority nations". I attended the festival, consisting of different
singing troupes from Corsica, Brittany,
the Basque region, Catalonia, Quebec and so on. What
particularly caught my attention was the
recurrent theme of being "colonized" victims, deprived of
expressing themselves in their own
language and culture by that of the dominant state. Having (after my
Philippines project) worked on another
part of the Third World, late colonial Africa, to hear the
discourse of the "colonial situation" in
reference to long-established Western democracies was
challenging. It led to my doing fairly
extensive study of settings like Quebec, Wales and Scotland,
utilizing both historical data, field
interviews, and (in the case of Quebec) participant-observation. I
became convinced that the "colonial
situation" (having intersubjective as well as objective dimensions)
and movements of independence, in Africa
and in Western societies had significant structural features in
common, and perhaps dynamic elements in
common. The uncoupling of overseas "colonies" from
"empires" seemed to have a cognate in
the autonomous movements (that became labeled
"ethnonationalism") seeking to uncouple
"nation" from "state". This was taking place even as leading
political sociologists (such as Skocpol
and Tilly) were giving primary attention to "bringing back the
state" to the forefront of comparative
and historical analysis. With a group of social scientists intrigued
by the "anomaly" of Western countries
being seats of regional autonomy movements against the central
state, we eventually brought out a
volume seeking a comparative understanding of the phenomenon that
had little place in the accepted
sociological wisdom of modernity.
This project is not ended. It got a new
impulse in 1989-1990 with the implosion of the Soviet Empire,
with a plethora of nationalist movements
springing up from the Baltics to the Balkans and points east as
unintended consequences of perestroika.
I have come to consider the nationalist movements of Eastern
Europe, those of Western societies, and
those of Africa as one large interrelated set, one large
"laboratory" for comparative and
historical analysis. The ones in Western societies have political
formations in the vanguard of autonomy
which are essentially social democratic in their orientation and
may or may not achieve in the next
half-century their goal by peaceful means. Certainly this is an
opportune time for comparative,
collaborative studies with counterpart colleagues East and West, North
and South. As a frame for this on-going
research project, I find heuristic the set of questions "What is
our national identity?"; "Who is ‘the
other’?"; and "Under what conditions will ‘the other’ be accepted
and accept to become an ‘insider’?"
This, in my way of thinking, is a key problematic of national
development in the post cold-war era. I
cannot think of any country where the set of questions does not
apply, whether Great Britain, Germany,
France, Russia... or the United States. Obviously, there is
great variability in the details of the
questions, but sorting that out is certainly part of the challenge of
cross-national analysis.
>
Martin O
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>
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