Cultural Identities and National Borders
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CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND NATIONAL BORDERS Edited by Mats Andrén Thomas Lindqvist Ingmar Söhrman Katharina Vajta 1 CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND NATIONAL BORDERS Proceedings from the CERGU conference held at the Faculty of Arts. Göteborg University 7-8 June 2007 Eds. Mats Andrén Thomas Linqvist Ingmar Söhrman Katharina Vajta 2 CONTENTS Contributers Opening Addresses Introduction 1. Where, when and what is a language? Ingmar Söhrman 2. Identity as a Cognitive Code: the Northern Irish Paradigm Ailbhe O’Corrain 3. Language and Identity in Modern Spain: Square Pegs in Round Holes? Miquel Strubell 4. Struggling over Luxembourgish Identity Fernand Fehlen 5. Language Landscapes and Static Geographies in the Baltic Sea Area Thomas Lundén 6. The Idea of Europa will be Fullfilled by Muslim Turkey Klas Grinell 7. National identity and the ethnographic museum The Musée du Quai Branly Project: a French answer to multiculturalism? Maud Guichard-Marneuor 8. Främlingsidentitet och mytbildning av den utländske författaren [English summary: Mythmaking of the Foreign Author and a Reflection on the Identity as a Stranger: The Case of the Swedish Author Stig Dagerman in France and Italy] Karin Dahl 9. Den glokale kommissarien: Kurt Wallander på film och TV [English summary: Kurt Wallander on film and TV] Daniel Brodén 10. Staden, staten och medborgarskapet [English summary: Studying “undocumented immigrants” in the city with Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a point of departure] Helena Holgersson 3 11. Digging for Legitimacy: Archeology, Identity and National Projects in Great Britain, Germany and Sweden Per Cornell, Ulf Borelius & Anders Ekelund 12. Recasting Swedish Historical Identity Erik Örjan Emilsson 4 Contributers Mats Andrén is professor in The History of Ideas and Science at Göteborg University from 2005. He is author of books on the history of economic ideas, on Central European identities, on citizenship. Latest publications include Local Citizenship (ed.) 2007 and Den europeiska blicken (2007). Ulf Borelius Sally Boyd Daniel Brodén Per Cornell Per Cramér Karin Dahl Anders Ekelund Erik Örjan Emilsson is active as a researcher and teacher of economic history and general history. His special fields of interest are comparative global and European history; in particular questions pertaining to the implacement of Swedish history into a comparative international context. This includes the polystructural dynamics of feudalism and the political and economic role of the Swedish peasantry in a context of competitive statebuilding – monarchic vs oligarchic centralization Fernand Fehlen Université du Luxembourg, Unité de recherche IPSE (Identités, Politiques, Sociétés, Espaces) Klas Grinell Maud Guichard-Marneuor Helena Holgersson is a doctoral student at the Department of Sociology at Göteborg University. Her main areas of interest are urban sociology, migration and social exclusion. She is currently working on a doctoral thesis in which she focuses on the paradoxical presence of “undocumented immigrants” in the city of Göteborg. E-mail: [email protected] Thomas Lindqvist Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University College Ailbhe O’Corrain Ingmar Söhrman Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Department of Languages and Cultures 5 Katharina Vajta 6 Opening Addresses On behalf of the Faculty of Arts, I would like to welcome both guests and colleagues to this two day conference on National identities and cultural borders I would like to begin by asking whether the choice of days for this conference was random, or whether it was considered appropriate to hold the conference directly after Sweden’s newly-instituted national holiday, 6 June. This is a holiday I have had very mixed feelings about in the past. My view was that Sweden didn’t need a national holiday, as Sweden had no history of freeing itself from another state. Moreover, I have tended to regard national identity as rather unimportant or irrelevant. As an example of an ”imagined community”, according to Benedict Anderson, I thought it could be ”imagined away”. I was an internationalist, so I believed it was relatively unimportant which passport you carried, where you voted in national elections, whether or not there were special letters on your driver’s license or not. My research interests in multilingualism in Sweden have led me to study the Swedish immigration and integration policies to some extent. Their goal has traditionally been intended to treat citizens and resident non-citizens in a uniform manner, although the ease or difficulty in becoming a resident or citizen have varied over time. This goal is laudable. My view was that Sweden didn’t need an occasion on which Swedes could wave the flag and express their satisfaction in being Swedish. In 2001, I became a Swedish citizen myself and I changed my mind to some extent about the importance of national (in the sense of nation-state) identity, but the change was more emotional than rational. I experienced a very special feeling when I opened the envelope and pulled out my proof of Swedish citizenship, even though I said I applied for citizenship mainly for practical reasons. I was also thrilled when I went to vote in the national election of 2002 with my son, who voted for the first time, even though I had voted in the municipal elections numerous times previously. The 6 June holiday has also taken on a very inclusive qualitiy, at least in the past couple of years. The sub-dean of the faculty, Martin Todtenhaupt, told me this morning of his experience at the ”new citizens” celebration in Kungsbacka yesterday. He was also 7 proud and thrilled to be the object of attention, together with other new citizens. Many other events arranged on the 6 June have been about diversity, with persons of other national origins featured in their capacity as Swedes. So I’m starting to change my mind about this holiday and perhaps also about the importance of passports and voting rights. The question continues to occupy my thoughts as a researcher as well. I am currently writing a paper with a colleague in Stockholm for a volume entitled Handbook of Language and Space. There we argue that the assumed ”natural” connection between languages and nation states, territories, neighborhoods and communities, well, even the connection between languages and individuals must be questioned and thoroughly investigated. It is no longer the case that we can assume that a person who has grown up or who lives in country/region/neighborhood X speaks language X, nor that there is a sharp distinction between speaking a language natively or as a second language, between speakers and non-speakers of languages, between monolinguals and multilinguals. A simple, single connection between language and geographical space has been an ideal which has seldom if ever been realized on the national level nor, I would venture to say, on the local or even individual level. Variation and diversity in the relation between languages and spaces have been and continue to be much greater than previously acknowledged, even among researchers. So I hope you all have a rewarding two days together discussing these and related questions and issues. I only wish my duties as Dean of the Faculty did not prevent me from participating actively in the discussions. Sally Boyd Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Göteborg University +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Colleagues and friends! On behalf of the Centre for Research on European Affairs at Göteborg University I would like to wish you very welcome to this conference on Cultural identities and National borders. 8 The Centre is a multidisciplinary research network with the objective to strengthen research on European issues at our university. It includes researchers in humanities as well as social sciences and has over the years developed into a dynamic arena for academic communication and co-operation. Ever since the rise of a European state system, the theme for this conference has been a central issue for European thought and debate on ideas for the structuring of society. In contemporary European debate, the issue has gained an immediate importance where lingual and other cultural specificities has gained weight as instruments for strengthening a perception of belonging to a collective. Cultural identities could thus be used as instruments for inclusion as well as exclusion; a strengthening of us in contrast to the others. Moreover, the strengthening of cultural identities could both emphasize and erode national borders. This is depending on to which degree the culturally identified us is congruent to the us as defined by national citizenship. The ideas of identity and borders are also reflected on the level of the European Union in the ongoing debate on the definition of a Union identity. In this context, the formulation of a Union identity has become closely related to the question of future enlargement of the Union: Should the potential geographic scope of the Union remain undefined or ought the final borders be defined, thereby setting a clear limit to possible enlargement? This relation between the aspiration of formulating a Union identity and the geographic borders of the Union is well illustrated by the position expressed by the German chancellor Angela Merkel in her speech on European affairs before the Bundestag in May 2006. At this occasion Merkel argued strongly for the definition of a value based Union identity in order to strengthen internal cohesion and popular legitimacy for the process of integration within the Union. This, according to Merkel, presupposes the definition of the Union’s final geographical borders: In our interaction with other religions and cultures it will be important for us Europeans to be able to clearly define our cultural identity. This is what others expect from us. How can we defend our values if we cannot define them first? An entity that does not have borders cannot act coherently and with adequate structures. We must be aware of this and must therefore set out these borders.1 1 ”European Policy statement by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel in the German Bundestag”, 11 May 2006, at www.bundesregierung.de.