National Identity and Belonging

2024/2025

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

3

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

School of Sociology

Course type:

Elective course

When:

1 year, 4 module

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The course is dedicated to key conceptual and methodological issues in resrearch on national identity and belonging. We will cover the following topis: (1) mapping the field (key concepts, theories, and empirical findings and their relation to broader areas of comparative research); (2) current research agenda (key debated issues in national identity studies, unresolved disputes, specific research questions); (3) measuring national identity (national identity related items in key cross-cultural survey datasets, their pros and cons, ways of designing survey items capturing various facets of national identity; comp;ex national identity indices, their rationale, replicability, and (non-)invariance; (4) modeling national identity (national identity as a dependent and independent variable, national identity at individual and country levels in multilevel models);(5) studying national identity discourse (textual and visual sources on national identity, data collection, CDA and its alternatives, normative issues and (limits of) self-critical distancing); 6. studying national identity narratives (collecting individual narratives of national identity formation, selecting national history narratives, comparative narratives analysis within and across countries); (7) national identity in big data (sources, varieties of content, reliability); (8) presenting comparative research on national identity: things to highlight and things to avoid, typical questions and model answers. The course participants will get the first-hand knowledge of the ways academic knowledge on national identities is produced and decisions it entails. Each participant will learn in what ways comparative social research on national identity makes use of his/her preferred research methods and relates to his/her sphere of academic interest.

Learning Objectives

• To master key concepts and methodology of national identity tsudies, to design and implement rthe use of various methods in conducting comparative research on national identity and belonging

Expected Learning Outcomes

• to learn key concepts and theories in nations and nationalism studies
• to learn the key issues in contemporary research on national identity
• to learn the existnig ways of meaasuring national identity and databases containing national identity related quantitative data
• to learn the ways of including national identity measures in statistical models as dependent and as indeoendent variables
• to use various kinds of discourse analysis in comparative research on national identity
• to use various kinds of narrative analysis in comparative research on national identity
• to incorporate techniques of big data analysis in national identity research
• to learn the ways of and ooportunities for presenting research on national identity to academic and wider audiences

Course Contents

• Mapping the field
• Current research agenda
• Measuring national identity
• Modeling national identity
• Studying national identity discourse
• Studying national identity narratives
• National identity in big data
• Presenting comparative research on national identity

Assessment Elements

• Activity
  Students should actively participate in all in-c;lass activities offered during the seminars.
• Research Project
  Students should describe a plan of their individual project of a research on national identity. The deswcription should consist of the formulation of a reserach question and its justification, hypotheses, data and methods.
• Research results and discussion
  Students should conduct the research they outlined earlier in the research project for this class. The text should present the results and discuss their implications.

Interim Assessment

• 2024/2025 4th module
  0.4 * Activity + 0.2 * Research Project + 0.4 * Research results and discussion

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Big Data analytics with R : utilize R to uncover hidden patterns in your Big Data, Walkowiak, S., 2016
• Contested communities : communication, narration, imagination, , 2017
• Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Anderson, B., 1991
• K Amber Curtis. (2014). Inclusive versus exclusive: A cross-national comparison of the effects of subnational, national, and supranational identity. European Union Politics, (4), 521. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.a.sae.eeupol.v15y2014i4p521.546
• Making identity count : building a national identity database, , 2016
• Nations and nationalism in a global era, Smith, A. D., 1996
• Nations and nationalism, Gellner, E., 1983
• The invention of tradition, , 2013
• The science of stories : an introduction to narrative psychology, Laszlo, J., 2008
• Understanding national identity, McCrone, D., 2015

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• National matters : materiality, culture, and nationalism, , 2017
• Nations and Nationalism (Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism. V..., , 2008
• Theories of nationalism : a critical introduction, Ozkirimli, U., 2010
• When is the nation? : towards an understanding of theories of nationalism, , 2005

Authors

• FABRIKANT MARGARITA SAULOVNA