Towards Theory:

Abstract

level but is constantly reproduced, represented and reinterpreted at the most local level in ways that cause cross-level contradictions. Other approaches to national identity formation have attempted to reconcile these contradictions by awarding ontological priority to one of the levels, causing the problems outlined above. James argued that it is not necessary to reconcile these contradictions. Instead, locating and understanding the contradictions is an essential part of the study of national identity formation. The idea that the nation results from a variety of social contradictions is expressed in the oxymoronic concept of ‘abstract community’. According to James, ‘the nation is an abstract community which only becomes possible within a social formation constituted through the emerging dominance of relations of disembodied extension’. He moves from ‘imagination’ to ‘abstraction’ in order to emphasise that the processes he is describing are both material and ideational, unlike Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ which are essentially constituted in the realm of ideas. The oxymoron is completed with ‘community’, implying ‘direct relations of mutuality’, something which in turn implies spatial presence in contradiction to the processes of abstraction that seek to move away from such presence. James deliberately married ‘abstract’ and ‘community’ in order to emphasise the contradictions of ‘continuity-in-discontinuity’ and the ways that subjectivity both constitutes and is constituted by the abstract, and therefore the way in which identities can appear to persist or change depending on the ontology employed to study them. Paul James explicitly argued that his insights do not constitute a new research agenda for the study of national identity formation. Indeed, he argued MUP_Bellamy_03_Ch2 9/3/03, 9:21 26 Alex J. Bellamy 9781526137739 Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 04/26/2019 10:12:01AM via free access 27 R-   that he should consider writing a second volume that is more richly historical in nature. Although he raised many themes that enable us to move beyond the ‘great divide’, he did not suggest how these themes can be operationalised. If we are to use James’ account of the formation of abstract communities to study contemporary Croatian national identity, it is necessary therefore to elaborate on these themes. For this, we need the work of Katherine Verdery. Verdery accepted many of James’ insights, such as the problematisation of the ‘great divide’, and offers a series of research questions that combine the themes of continuity and change that are embedded in James’ work. All too often, Verdery suggested, national identity is reified so that it appears no longer to interact, compete, mould and be moulded by other forms of identity and different social settings. Furthermore, even after the complex processes of its formation, the nation continues to exist at more than one ontological level. Verdery pointed out that ‘nations, like individuals, are thought to have identities, often based in so-called national characters. National identity thus exists at two levels: the individual’s sense of self as national, and the identity of the collective whole in relation to others of the kind.’ Verdery outlined three ways in which previous accounts of national identity formation were fundamentally flawed before briefly suggesting a series of research questions that can overcome the problems and incorporate the ontological pluralism envisaged by James. The first problem is that students of national identity should ‘explore which sense of nation is apt to the context in question, rather than imposing a modern sense on a medieval reality’. Second, a study of national identity should appreciate that the nation can have multiple meanings. These divergences of meaning occur not only when different social ontologies are employed but also when the processes through which abstract ideas are internalised in the material experiences of individual subjects. The third pitfall is that the nation should be seen as both an ontological and epistemological problem. Verdery argued that scholars who are interested in national identity should not ‘treat nations as actually defined, for example, by culture, or descent, or history’. Instead, the student should constantly question what function these terms are fulfilling and in what context they are operating. Verdery built upon these general criticisms to pose five questions that can be used to inform a study of national identity formation. These are: • What underlies the notion of identity? • How do people become national? • How variously is the nation symbolised? • How can we understand the intersection of the nation with other social operators? • How does the dissolution of the nation-state affect the viability and deployment of nation as a legitimating symbol in politics? We can discard the first and last of these questions because they are not appropriate for this study. The first questions the notion of identity – an issue MUP_Bellamy_03_Ch2 9/3/03, 9:21 27 Alex J. Bellamy 9781526137739 Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 04/26/2019 10:12:01AM via free access T   C   28 that was addressed in the previous chapter and above, and feeds into the research questions that are explored in the following chapters. The last question locates the nation within the dissolving late-modern nation-state, an issue that is hardly appropriate for a study considering the formation of a new nationstate like Croatia. Croatia as an abstract community What are the processes through which abstract ideas about the national community become manifest in day-to-day social practices? This process is described by Radcliffe and Westwood as ‘internalisation’. What are internalised are the various narratives that nations tell themselves about who they are and who others are. Paul James views nations as entities that are both abstract (in terms of their size and the fact that most of its components will never know most of its other components) and communities (in terms of the communitylike shared sentiment between national subjects). To understand how these processes work within a contemporary case study it is first necessary to translate James’ insights into a series of research questions. The first question is, how do people become national? This question directs us towards the ‘big stories’ of national histories that appear to permeate the historical record by asking the questions that are addressed by innumerable nationalists: where do we come from, and how do we differ from them? These big stories mark one group out from others and make it possible to draw boundaries between different nations. Moreover, they provide a set of frames for national discourses. That is, these big stories or ‘frames’ shape what are considered to be appropriate statements or claims about a particular nation and provide a framework for the evaluation of such knowledge claims by the broader society. Thus, claims about Croatian national identity in the 1990s tended to be made and judged by reference to the frames provided by abstract stories of national identity. Political entrepreneurs seek legitimacy and create social resonance for their programmes by offering interpretations of these abstract narratives, which of course over time change the frames themselves. However, by themselves they tell us very little about what a nation is like and how it is evolving. The second question is, how is the nation symbolised? Another way of understanding this question is to ask how intellectuals, politicians and others attempt to give contemporary and material meaning to abstract ideas about national identity. This question frames the nation as something ‘whose meaning is never stable but shifts with the changing balance of social forces’. It raises the issue of how national symbolism and rhetoric renders some things visible and others invisible. It is through the rhetoric of the national self, as distinct from another, that intellectuals, politicians and others attempt to provide the nation with material meaning in contemporary contexts. This question highlights the MUP_Bellamy_03_Ch2 9/3/03, 9:21 28 Alex J. Bellamy 9781526137739 Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 04/26/2019 10:12:01AM via free access 29 R-   competing claims that attempt to be internalised and suggests that for abstract ideas about national identity to be properly internalised by individual subjects they have to be first made intelligible and relevant to the contemporary context. The third question addresses the context in which internalisation takes place. It asks, how can we understand the intersection of the nation with other social operators? It is based on the premise that the nation does not operate within a social vacuum. Recalling Radcliffe and Westwood’s insights once again, the nation is manifested in a host of identities and social situations, and national and non-national identities are not mutually exclusive. National identity forms at the intersection of a number of identities. While interpretations of national identity impact upon and transform other identities and social practices, these in turn impact upon understandings of the nation. It is therefore important to locate national identity within a matrix that appreciates its relationship with other social operators. These other forms of identity, be they regional, linguistic, gender, or others, affect the way that the nation is internalised by individual subjects and the meanings given to national identity in everyday practices. The way that contemporary symbols and rhetoric are understood by subjects depends upon the other identities, interests and loyalties that they hold. Furthermore, individual subjects also hold their own interpretations of the abstract ideas of national identity highlighted by Verdery’s first question. Th