Session description: Nations are political constructions that are created and maintained within specific socio-historical circumstances. Our understanding of national identities are similarly developed and maintained. This sense of national identity, of history and possible futures, is communicated by cultural and institutional forces and integrated, individually and collectively, into our sense of a common shared nationhood. Papers included in this session will explore the content of national identities and political cultures, and the processes by which those identities are communicated and contended.

Organizers: Allan Rachlin (Bradford College, USA), Andrey Deriabin (Novosibirsk State University, Russia)

Presentations:

Allan Rachlin (Bradford College, USA), 'Getting Past' Vietnam:  The Rhetoric of the Gulf War as Regeneration

The paper considers the idea of the American myth of regeneration through violence as a frame for understanding media and administration presentation of the Gulf War. The marshaling of forces against Iraq and the 'successful' campaign was repeatedly suggested as the opportunity for the U.S. to finally 'get past' Vietnam. Vietnam would be understood as an anomaly rather than part of a continual pattern of policy and priorities. The successful war would enable Americans to reconstruct/resurrect/regenerate an identity of moral integrity and military supremacy.

The paper addresses the mechanisms and effects of social propaganda in the current Russian context. Through a semiological analysis of television texts, it is demonstrated how, by a re-interpretation of Russian history, new cultural and national identities are constructed. Particularly, it is discussed how the First National TV-channel's series 'Russian Project' undo both Soviet "heroic past" discourse and "orwellian" one of Perestroika period. Masking those periods of national history that are "inconvenient to remember", 'Russian Project' and other propaganda explore the myth of generations succession, and interpret the past as a straight, unbroken line, consistent and progressive movement toward well-being. It is argued that, on the one hand, what may result from this is "social amnesia", and on the other, such a shaping of popular memory creates resources of positive meaning of both past and present Russia, which the audience uses to construct their national and cultural identities in the transitional period.

Cultural mediation of history in the "Macedonian case" (formation of a nation and national identity) is extremely interesting. At the beginning of the 20 th century Macedonia as a region in the declining Ottoman Empire was known as a "cag of powder" or an "apple of discord" between the Balkan nations- Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, which had aspirations over Macedonia: The excuse was that Macedonia in national sense, is however, a mixed "salad". Today, some scholars find that the situation at the end of 20 century is different and politically much more stable, among other things, because of one new fact: the existence of a Macedonian nation. It is interesting to study the historical and political circumstances (the balance of power) which contributed to the formation of the new nation. As a matter of fact, behind that mixed "salad" was hidden a bloody process through which, the Macedonians have built their nationl conscious and national identity. Shared destiny, the creation of a state and the standardization of a Macedonian language have played a crucial role in this process.

The topic of the paper is the construction and definition of Finnish identity with national symbols in the early 1900's (flag, law book, coat of arms) in five patriotic postcards from 1902-1906 featuring Maiden Finland, the personification of Finnish nation and state. In this paper it is maintained that national symbols are myths - i.e. narratives by which a culture understands reality, as they were defined by Roland Barthes. With their symbolism the five postcards tell three stories which relate to Finnish national and political history. These three narratives became national myths which manifested themselves in writing of history that had become a national project in the 19th century Finland. Using history Finnish nationalist idealogues were able to justify Finland and its people culturally distinct, separate and finally an independent nation-state from Sweden and Russia.

This paper looks at the preserved cultural landscape of Dalarna county in Sweden. It charts the emergence of a homeland movement, dedicated to the preservation of a folk culture expressed in the landscape and material culture. The emergence of this movement at the beginning of this century is seen as bringing together heterogeneous spaces: advancing modern and industrial Europe and a premodern folk culture in an era of rapid transition for Sweden. The search for a specifically Swedish identity led to the nationalisation of the Dalarna landscape as a symbol of Sweden. This intersects with a localist homeland movement which preserve folk types through open air museums. The paper questions how forms of interpretation and belonging at different scales have intersected in this one preserved landscape. And how it now figures in times of changing identities.