by Che Tibby 

OK, I’m afraid of losing you on the first couple of lines, so I’ll say this really quickly and move on: ‘I wrote my PhD on theories of nationalism.’

Now, in the world outside of academia nationalism has a pretty bad reputation. This is almost entirely because people automatically associate nationalism with racism, jingoism, militarism and other poor behaviour. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Nationalism is often adopted by the jingoistic or the racist, but in practice it is just the everyday process of identifying with your fellow citizens.

You ever hear that Southern comedian from the US? He’d go, ‘If your gun-rack has a gun-rack on it … you miiiight be a red-neck.’ Here in New Zealand you could say, ‘If you can name at least one All Black captain, you miiiight be a Kiwi’, or, ‘If you can name the guy on the $5 bill, you miiight be a Kiwi.’ I could go on.

With lots of people talking about nationalism and national identity these days I thought I’d chip in my two cents worth here on Lively. Identity politics is pretty complicated stuff, and nationalism is the part of it that sees people identifying with other citizens and the symbols of nationhood. So you can identify with your favourite sports team by seeing yourself as a dyed in the wool supporter, but this is a different identity to the one you share with the people who live in your city or town.

Alternately, it’s possible to be both and Aucklander and a New Zealander, while someone else is a New Zealander and a Wellingtonian. The two metropolitan identities are mutually exclusive, but the national identity supersedes them. It’s not a controversial thing to say that everyone has multiple, overlapping layers of identity. Church-you or atheist-you, parent-you, sibling-you, I could go on.

Theories of nationalism argue that a national identity is one shared by a group of people that overlays other types of identity. It can be shared by people who never meet, but consume the same aspects of a social culture. What this means in practice is that watching the same national TV programming over a number of years will give a group of viewers a degree of mutual association. In other words, Shortland Street is a nationalistic vehicle. Seriously. Ask an Australian about the show? They’ll struggle to associate those immortal words about Dr. Ropata.

What’s great about this model of nationalism is that you don’t need to have every citizen of a country identify with the same cultural norms or artefacts. People can identify with a range of things, from different sports, to different shows, to different types of music, and they’ll all share a common identity as New Zealanders. It doesn’t matter what race you are, although certain races tend to be more commonly accepted as ‘authentic’, and it doesn’t matter what religion you are, for the same reason.

But, sometimes things like race and religion do get made into important markers of belonging. And that’s where the negative association with nationalism starts. It’s also where good governmental leadership is important.

While nationalism could trundle along on its own, and be ‘left to the identity market’, as it were, the experiences of a number of different countries demonstrate that good leadership is important. Nationalism is an iterative process. People need to be able to talk about their identity, to share their own understanding of what it means, and the mutually accept each other’s version of what ‘New Zealander’ means. But, people being people, it is very easy for this ‘national conversation’ to fall into excluding person who aren’t members over identifying who could or should be members.

Remember the days when Māori were told they had to assimilate? That was an act of exclusion. But good leadership over a number of decades has asserted in the national consciousness that Māori is not an ‘outside’ identity. I argued in my thesis that that’s the kind of nationalism we all need to see more of. Inclusive government that deliberately seeks to turn ‘New Zealander’ into an all-encompassing, welcoming identity.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under National identity, Guest blogger - Che Tibby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.