Ethnicity, Nationalism

Question 1

Ethnicity

Answer 1

• A social classification based on a common cultural heritage and selected cultural features such as language, religion, or dress
• Concept emerges from historical processes that incorporate distinct social groups into a single political structure under conditions of inequality
  E.g. Fulbe identity in Northern Cameroon; Rwandan genocide
• Ethnicity can be fluid, malleable, ignored, or acknowledged in different situations

Question 2

Example of Fulbe identity

Answer 2

Fulbe identity in Guider as something that could be claimed even if not born into it, by:
Learning language
Practice religion (Islam)
Practice way of life (high culture of western Sudan)

Question 3

Nationality

Answer 3

Nationality is a sense of identification with and loyalty to a nation-state; membership, defined by citizenship, in a geopolitical sovereign state

Question 4

Nation

Answer 4

Groups of people believed to share the same history, culture, language, and even the same physical substance

Question 5

Nation-state

Answer 5

An ideal political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide

Question 6

Nationalism

Answer 6

Government’s attempts to instill a sense of nationality into the citizens of a state

Question 7

Nationalism

Answer 7

• Sometimes groups resist attempts at ‘nation-building’
  They present a different kind of identity that persists within the boundaries of the nation-state
  E.g. Quebec sovereignty movement, Parti Quebecois
• To try to limit this, nationalist ideologies will often incorporate some aspects of subordinate cultural groups
  E.g. French and English as official languages
• Sometimes there is disagreement over what kind of ‘nation’ people are trying to build
  Example of post-colonial Fiji, and continued strife between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians

Question 8

Nationalism in Australia

Answer 8

• Founded by the British as penal (exile) colony, then settler colony
• Land claimed as terra nullius
• Australian identity founded on racial and and cultural features of British colonists
• Ignored the existence of Aboriginal peoples
• Significant gain with Mabo court decision in 1992
• Similar to gain won by Aboriginal people in Canada in 2014 Supreme court decision

Question 9

Nationalism in Ukraine

Answer 9

• April 26, 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine
  Chernobyl as key to the foundation of Ukraine as nation-state
• Revised idea of citizenship – from a kind of ‘natural’ category based on birth to a kind of negotiated category Petryna calls biological citizenship, where citizenship is mediated by science and technology
• So the damaged biology of population became grounds for social membership and basis for citizenship claims and claims for compensation