Original article
Judith Byrne,
MA (History), Director, Aoibh Consulting, Dublin, Ireland
Address: 7 John Field road, Dublin 8, D08 W6N7, Ireland
E-mail: jsbyrne.the.sage@gmail.com
Natalia S. Moiseeva,
MSc (Mathematics), Post-graduate student, Moscow State University (branch), Milan, Italy
Address: Viale Luigi Majno, 23, 20122 Milano, Italy
Konstantin S. Sharov,
PhD (Philosophy), Senior Lecturer, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Address: Leninskie Gory 1 bld 12, Moscow 119234, Russia
Article ID: 010410001
Published online: 1 June 2018
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.1.010410001
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.1.010410001
Quoting (Chicago style): Byrne, Judith, Moiseeva, Natalia S., and Konstantin S. Sharov. 2018. “National identity as an ideological construct.” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 1, 010410001. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.1.010410001
Language: English
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In the paper, we demonstrate that different types of communities related to the base group identification (kins, tribes, clans, peoples, ethnic groups, nationalities, nations) may be constructed as the products of ideological actions of local elites. This may well explain why in the modern times national identification undergoes the serious crisis. The principles of grouping the human beings change due to tremendously increased Earth population and ideological narratives creating these social groups, change as well. The ideological nature of national identification provides a satisfactory explanation of the shift from ideologies addressed to the national communities, to ideologies created for ‘everyday citizens.’ Key words: nation, people, nationality, ethnic group, kin, tribe, clan, national identification, ‘everyday citizen’, ideological influence
In the paper, a historical constructivism concept is elaborated on the basis of Wolfgang Sassin’s theory of WE formation.
The basic provisions of our concept of historical constructivism, are the following: 1. The nations are social constructs. 2. Not only the nations, but also kins, clans, tribes, ethnic communities, nationalities, peoples are products of ideological unifying the human beings. All the types of group identification are of the ideological nature, from clans in the most ancient eras, to the modern national communities in our times. 3. The architects of aforementioned social groups are political, economic and religious elites. 4. Nationalism is an ideological apparatus. 5. Nationalism is a phenomenon unrelated to modernisation. It can be found in most historical eras. This interpretation includes a wider view than just nationalism “in the name of the nation,” that seemed to emerge as recently as in the eighteenth century. 6. The communities that existed in ancient times and belonged to the national ascription, e.g. disparate ethnic groups, centralised ethnic groups, peoples, can (and in our understanding, should) be thought of as ideological products that have a quasi-historical foundation or do not have, “realistic” or “imagined,” but necessarily constructed by very few social architects from elites. 7. The constructivist nature of peoples, ethnic groups and nationalities means that they did not exist primordially. Many peoples of the ancient origin, such as the Jews, Persians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Macedonians, Romans, and some others were formed under the influence of ideological ethnocentrism, “pre-national” nationalism, and did not exist from the beginning of human society.
Sometimes not only the imaginary continuity of “ethnic group – nation” was used by the elites in the creation of modern national communities, but also many other types of continuity, e.g. “nationality – ethnic group,” “tribe (kin) – nationality,” “family – kin,” “clan – ethnic group,” etc. The use of such pairs in the ideologies of national identification was used much more widely in pre-modern times. It was the case for the formation of ethnic groups, peoples, nationalities, and that suggests the constructivist character of pre-national communities.
Historical constructivist theory enables us to explain modern processes of loosening the national picture of the world. It may also convincingly explain the emergence of such surrogate concepts as “everyday citizens” introduced by Hillary Clinton. Instead of an ordinary American, Mrs Clinton began to address to an “everyday citizen.” In the twenty-first century, the population rate on the planet Earth has changed radically in comparison with the beginning of the twentieth century. The ideological programmes of forming the peoples and nations were not adapted to the changed circumstances. The idea of national world allowed people to co-exist well when there was one billion people in the world. However, when there are eight billion people at the present time, different hybrid forms of social grouping begin to take over territories that once belonged to peoples and nations.
The status quo of national states fixed after WWII is coming to an end. The concept of nation is ceasing to exist for network human beings who live tens of thousands miles away from each other and communicate in real time in social networks and messengers, i.e. with the rate of an eye-blink. The products of such networked cultures are the cosmopolitan social groups whose representatives may have no idea of their national identity at all.
© 2018 Judith Byrne; Natalia Moiseeva; Konstantin Sharov. Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
