Scaling Identities

This comprehensive book examines the crucial connections between national identity, territory, and scale. Providing a powerful theoretical and organizational framework, the volume identifies four ways in which scale operates dynamically in the formation and maintenance of national identity. Consolidating identities considers the strategies necessary to keep all parts within the fold through educational systems, minority policies, immigration controls, and other forms of traditional state power. Magnifying identities examines the consequences of shifting the scale up and unifying territories that have a sense of a larger, supranational identity. Connecting identities assesses how nations can bridge physical distance, water barriers, or sovereign boundaries. Fragmenting identities looks into the disintegration of national identities and those forces that have the potential to unravel a nation or block its effective formation. Nationalism and national identity remain critical flashpoints in the geopolitical order, as we have seen in the development of a quasi-independent Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, the resurgence of Native American identities in response to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Chinese crackdown on its minority regions. Offering a rich set of case studies from around the world, this essential book affirms the global importance of national identity and scale.

Guntram H. Herb is professor of geography at Middlebury College. David H. Kaplan is professor of geography at Kent State University.

Introduction: Scaling the Nation
David H. Kaplan and Guntram H. Herb
Part I: Conceptual Issues
1: Power, Territory, and National Identity
Guntram H. Herb
2: National Identity and Scalar Processes
David H. Kaplan
Part II: Consolidating Identities
3: The Changing Context of German Nationhood
Corey Johnson
4: Sociocultural and Territorial Aspects of Argentine Identity
David Keeling
5: Construction of Postcolonial Tanzanian National Identity
Kefa M. Otiso
Part III: Magnifying Identities
6: Toward a Meaningful European Identity
Alexander B. Murphy
7: Greater Caribbean Regional Identity
Gary S. Elbow
8: Imagining the Arab Homeland and Palestine
Karen Culcasi
Part IV: Connecting Identities
9: Native American Resurgence and Scales of Identity
Steven E. Silvern
10: The Reinstitutionalization of Island Identities in Japan
Takashi Yamazaki
11: Chinese National Identity and Social Networks
Susan M. Walcott
Part V: Fragmenting Identities
12: Partition and National Fragmentation of Kurdistan
Carl T. Dahlman and Sanan Moradi
13: Contested Identities in Transylvania
George W. White
14: Indian Diasporas and the Creation of Subnational Identities
Pablo Bose
Afterword: Transcending Scale?
Jouni Häkli
Index
About the Contributors