Media, Nationalism and European Identities

Chapter 7: The Politics of Belonging: Identity Anxiety in the European Union

CHapter 7 the politics of Belonging: identity anxiety in the european union Farrel corcoran Questions of identity and its relationship with location, space, time and memory, are crucially important in today’s fragmented world of ethnic conflict, guest-worker migration and the widespread displacement of large numbers of people who become refugees, all needing cultural space (as well as, of course, physical and economic space) for forms of ethnic or religious identity previously only gazed upon by host populations in their anthropology museums. in many parts of the world, traditional forms of belonging are in retreat in the face of increasingly rapid rates of social change associated with modernity and with what Hallin and Mancini (2004) refer to as “secularization,” that is, the separation of citizens from attachments to religious and ideological “faiths” and the decline of institutions that once structured broad swaths of social life. Global economic and cultural processes erode the significance of local structures that once had the potential to determine the socialization and behaviour of whole populations and the solid and stable identities they could once support: neighborhood communities, churches, trade unions, the nuclear family, the nation state. Where now do people get a secure sense of who they are, their place in society and the times in which they live? identities are constructed, not in nature , but in specific cultural contexts, where sameness and otherness, belonging and difference are produced and reproduced, and where the markings of us/them are first structured, then policed. this chapter will reflect on the juxtaposition of national identity with forms of identity that may be taking shape at the european level. there is at present little academic consensus on how to conceptualize the slowly emerging sense of belonging to be found at this complex and difficult border area, situated between national and supranational polities, despite persistent scholarly raiding of a range of disciplines— i4 Jakubowicz.indb 199 2011.03.21. 14:26 200 National and transnational identities history, cultural studies, international relations, political science, sociology , social psychology, media studies, anthropology - for theoretical insights into what kinds of cultural identity might possibly be evolving among citizens of the expanding european union (eu). the situation is not helped by the interest among some political elites in laying on what smith calls a “memoryless, artificial culture” (65–66), based on top-down initiatives similar to those typical of some versions of nation building. seen by some commentators as artificial and contrived, the rhetoric of european identity-construction parallels steps taken in nation states in earlier periods in history to harness the power of the media , shape educational policies, standardize language, and where necessary , use political power to strengthen national consciousness. this can be done by controlling cultural memory to appropriate the past for political purposes, using state funerals, anniversaries of battles, monarchy -related rituals and so on (Corcoran, 2002). in many ways, the debate about european unity and collective identity is derived from theoretical approaches used in the literature about national consciousness and state formation, so we begin here, in exploring what is meant by identity in ethnic and national contexts. We then examine ways in which this approach has been applied to the question of european identity and the degree to which it may or may not be a good fit. Finally, we explore recent thinking, influenced by postmodern ideas about the demise of nationalism and the urge to find new forms of post-national identity within a global culture of consumer capitalism and the increasing sense of cosmopolitan consciousness associated with it. National and religious identity the core of the anthropological question of identity is the human propensity of individuals to want to bond with groups of fellow human beings, rather than, like some animal species, to live a lonesome, isolated existence. a peculiar problem arises once the size of the group expands beyond the direct face-to-face capacity of an organic tribal or small, closed village unit, once the transition from “Gemeinschaft” to “Gesellschaft” (tönnies, 1957) has to be made. reliance on a dense network of personal relationships based on kinship, robust family ties, i4 Jakubowicz.indb 200 2011.03.21. 14:26 201 The Politics of Belonging strong cultural memory and fixed social roles, is replaced by more formalized and impersonal social relationships, bound together by relatively weak social institutions disconnected from tradition, where individuals depend far less on each other and are much...