Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism. This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.

First published in 1999 in this study the author uses the annual Latino Festival as a framework for focusing the action and integrating many important informal and formal aspects of the Washington D.C. Latino Community. She demonstrates how the festival became a stage where relationships were defined, networks established, and identity enacted, and provided my window into the history and development of the community. For this study, she was interested in an interpretative framework appropriate to festival which would reflect the multiple voices and points of view found within the community. Seeking the voices of leaders and community members in interviews and in Spanish- and English-language newspapers.

Volume 4 of The Oxford History of Historical Writing offers essays by leading scholars on the writing of history globally from 1800 to 1945. Divided into four parts, it first covers the rise, consolidation, and crisis of European historical thought, and the professionalization and institutionalization of history. The chapters in Part II analyze how historical scholarship connected to various European national traditions. Part III considers the historical writing of Europe's 'Offspring': the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, and Spanish South America. The concluding part is devoted to histories of non-European cultural traditions: China, Japan, India, South East Asia, Turkey, the Arab world, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the fourth of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world. This volume aims at once to provide an authoritative survey of the field, and especially to provoke cross-cultural comparisons.

A chronological scholarly survey of the history of historical writing in five volumes. Each volume covers a particular period of time, from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world.

"Tracing the story of Red Lodge from the 1880s to the present, Christensen tells how a mining town managed to endure the vagaries of the West's unpredictable extractive-industries economy. She connects Red Lodge to a myriad of larger events and historical forces to show how national and regional influences have contributed to the development of local identities, exploring how and why westerners first rejected and then embraced "western" images, and how ethnicity, wilderness, and historic preservation became part of the identity that defined one town."--BOOK JACKET.

The consolidation of Taiwanese identity in recent years has been accompanied by two interrelated paradoxes: a continued language shift from local Taiwanese languages to Mandarin Chinese, and the increasing subordination of the Hoklo majority culture in ethnic policy and public identity discourses. A number of initiatives have been undertaken toward the revitalization and recognition of minority cultures. At the same time, however, the Hoklo majority culture has become akin to a political taboo. This book examines how the interplay of ethnicity, national identity and party politics has shaped current debates on national culture and linguistic recognition in Taiwan. It suggests that the ethnolinguistic distribution of the electorate has led parties to adopt distinctive strategies in an attempt to broaden their ethnic support bases. On the one hand, the DPP and the KMT have strived to play down their respective de-Sinicization and Sinicization ideologies, as well as their Hoklo and Chinese ethnocultural cores. At the same time, the parties have competed to portray themselves as the legitimate protectors of minority interests by promoting Hakka and Aboriginal cultures. These concomitant logics have discouraged parties from appealing to ethnonationalist rhetoric, prompting them to express their antagonistic ideologies of Taiwanese and Chinese nationalism through more liberal conceptions of language rights. Therefore, the book argues that constraints to cultural and linguistic recognition in Taiwan are shaped by political rather than cultural and sociolinguistic factors. Investigating Taiwan’s counterintuitive ethnolinguistic situation, this book makes an important theoretical contribution to the literature to many fields of study and will appeal to scholars of Taiwanese politics, sociolinguistics, culture and history.

David Tobin analyses how Chinese nation-building shapes identity and security dynamics between Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

In the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, this volume examines the relationship Russia has with its so-called ‘compatriots abroad’. Based on research from Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Ukraine, the authors examine complex relationships between these individuals, their home states, and the Russian Federation. Russia stands out globally as a leading sponsor of kin-state nationalism, vociferously claiming to defend the interests of its so-called diaspora, especially the tens of millions of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who reside in the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. However, this volume shifts focus away from the assertive diaspora politics of the Russian state, towards the actual groups of Russian speakers in the post-Soviet space themselves. In a series of empirically grounded studies, the authors examine complex relationships between ‘Russians’, their home-states and the Russian Federation. Using evidence from Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Ukraine, the findings demonstrate multifaceted levels of belonging and estrangement with spaces associated with Russia and the new, independent states in which Russian speakers live. By focusing on language, media, politics, identity and quotidian interactions, this collection provides a wealth of material to help understand contemporary kin-state policies and their impact on group identities and behaviour. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

How did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchange presents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this fascinating exploration into the history and meaning of holidays and rituals. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, one of the most influential social and political thinkers of our time, this collection provides a compelling overview of the impact that holidays and rituals have on our family and communal life. From community solidarity to ethnic relations to religious traditions, We Are What We Celebrate argues that holidays such as Halloween, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day play an important role in reinforcing, and sometimes redefining, our values as a society. The collection brings together classic and original essays that, for the first time, offer a comprehensive overview and analysis of the important role such celebrations play in maintaining a moral order as well as in cementing family bonds, building community relations and creating national identity. The essays cover such topics as the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday; the importance of holidays for children; the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa; and the controversy over Columbus Day celebrations. Compelling and often surprising, this look at holidays and rituals brings new meaning to not just the ways we celebrate but to what those celebrations tell us about ourselves and our communities. Contributors: Theodore Caplow, Gary Cross, Matthew Dennis, Amitai Etzioni, John R. Gillis, Ellen M. Litwicki, Diana Muir, Francesca Polletta, Elizabeth H. Pleck, David E. Proctor, Mary F. Whiteside, and Anna Day Wilde.