Synopses & Reviews
Over the past decade, immigration and globalization have significantly altered Europeandrsquo;s cultural and ethnic landscape, foregrounding questions of national belonging. In
Blood and Culture, Cynthia Miller-Idriss provides a rich ethnographic analysis of how patterns of national identity are constructed and transformed across generations. Drawing on research she conducted at German vocational schools between 1999 and 2004, Miller-Idriss examines how the working-class students and their middle-class, college-educated teachers wrestle with their different views about citizenship and national pride. The cultural and demographic trends in Germany are broadly indicative of those underway throughout Europe, yet the countryandrsquo;s role in the Second World War and the Holocaust makes national identity, and particularly national pride, a difficult issue for Germans. Because the vocational-school teachers are mostly members of a generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and hold their parentsandrsquo; generation responsible for National Socialism, many see national pride as symptomatic of fascist thinking. Their students, on the other hand, want to take pride in being German.
Miller-Idriss describes a new understanding of national belonging emerging among young Germansandmdash;one in which cultural assimilation takes precedence over blood or ethnic heritage. Moreover, she argues that teachersandrsquo; well-intentioned, state-sanctioned efforts to counter nationalist pride often create a backlash, making radical right-wing groups more appealing to their students. Miller-Idriss argues that the stateandrsquo;s efforts to shape national identity are always tempered and potentially transformed as each generation reacts to the official conception of what the nation andldquo;oughtandrdquo; to be.
Review
andldquo;Blood and Culture is an extremely important ethnographic account of a phenomenon that is often examined in a quantitative or theoretical manner. Cynthia Miller-Idriss talks to working-class German youthandmdash;high-school students in the process of studying for a andlsquo;tradeandrsquo;andmdash;and elicits from them their experience of what it means to be German in a country that is increasingly diverse and where the memory of World War II can no longer serve as an andlsquo;excuseandrsquo; for not expressing national pride. She makes a convincing case that nation-ness differs not only across nations but across generations within the same nation-state.andrdquo;andmdash;Mabel Berezin, author of Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe
Review
andldquo;In this rare work on andlsquo;everydayandrsquo; understandings of citizenship and nationhood, Cynthia Miller-Idriss helps to dispel stereotypes about allegedly andlsquo;bloodandrsquo;-based and andlsquo;racialandrsquo; ideas of German nationhood. She shows that ordinary people (even those particularly suspected to hold andlsquo;racialandrsquo; ideas, such as working-class youth), espouse a cultural and behavioral, rather than biological, idea of nation. Moreover, in making generational experience key to national self-conceptions, she proposes a dynamic, change-centered notion of nationhood.andrdquo;andmdash;Christian Joppke, author of Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State
Synopsis
Ethnographic study that examines how patterns of national identity are constructed and transformed across the generations of working-class youth in Germany and how generational gaps in national understanding inadvertently increase the appeal to neo-Nazism
About the Author
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Assistant Professor of International Education and Educational Sociology at New York University.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction: Citizenship and National Belonging as Cultural Practices 1
1. Who Belongs to the Nation? 23
2. Being and Becoming in Germany 46
3. Germany's Forbidden Fruit: National Pride and National Taboos 63
4. Raising the Right Wing: Educators' Struggle to Confront the Radical Right 93
5. Teaching and Un-teaching National Identity 122
6. Blood, Culture, Birthplace 149
7. Generational Change and the Re-Imagining of Nations 169
Appendix A. Overview of the Case Studies 182
Appendix B. Methodological Overview 188
Notes 201
Bibliography 207
Index 229