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In one paradigm nationalism is defined as a historically recent and novel formation which is grounded in the modern state and tends ordinarily to eliminate or marginalize premodern communities, identities, and loyalties. Another approach, however, while taking nation-states and national cultures to be historically unique in significant respects, also sees them as partly rooted in and connected to pre-national polities and cultures. For this approach, nationalism is as much a cultural phenomenon as a political movement, and the first dimension may antecede the latter. In this course, after first reviewing some major theories, we will focus on the cultural dimensions of nations and nationalism, with special attentions to the continuities and discontinuities between nationalist identities and pre-nationalist cultural forms. Among the questions we will pursue are: How do heterogeneous, often ethnically diverse local groups come to imagine themselves as members of a nation? How have pre-existing cultural traditions been used to construct as well as to contest the idea of the nation? In what ways have gender identities and relations both shaped and been shaped by nationalist movements? Is the nation an essentially Eurocentric concept or has it been indigenized and transformed in significant respects? Are disasporic movements and identities replacing nationalism or reconfiguring it? Is nationalism now becoming obsolete, as some critics have argued, or is it being continually reinvented in new forms out of hybrid resources? The course is comparative but it will give special attention to Southeast Asia and will draw extensively on the professor's recent ethnographic experience with nation formation in East Timor.
COURSE FORMAT: Seminar
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-21-2005
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459