Week 5, Collective Identity and Nationalism Flashcards
Personal Identity
Cultivation of selfhood
Collective Identity
Can exist in tension with personal identity
Particular ways of imagining and instituting social groups and group belonging
Sameness
Must seek to maintain its culture over time
Membership in group creates tension
Community
Social religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics, and/or interests that perceives itself or is perceived by others as distinct from larger society.
Collectivities
Different from communities
Temporary groups for political purposes
Like Black Lives Matter
Nation
Key forms of identity many of us might connect ourselves to.
Nationhood
Benedict Anderson
Nation is an imagined political community
Socially constructed
Shared values
How is Canada an example of an imagine community?
How do we create a national sentiment among disparate groups of people including indigenous societies and settlers upon whom “Canada” has been imposed?
- Railroads
- Cultural symbols: RCMP and CPR
- Broadcasting
Nationalism needs
continual maintenance
Pop culture becomes a vehicle for
nationalism
Building a railroad throughout Canada to connect the nation is also referred to as
technological nationalism
How did Canada break down local barriers to create a national identity? How did this work?
Broadcasting.
Through radio broadcasting a “national spirit” was encouraged so that people may identify as Canadian as opposed to just living in Canada. People all received the same news and the same narrative, stories were constructed as distinctly Canadian, thus creating shared values across the nation.
Radio broadcasting in Canada created large audiences that share content, what did this do?
It fostered a Canadian identity.
