Before you start reading the meat of my post, watch these two videos.
This week in class, we very briefly touched on the subject of nationalism. What happened last weekend on September 11th is an incredible outpouring of nationalism, the likes of which the United States has not seen in recent years. In each of these videos you see people - American Citizens - screaming, chanting, waving signs, and making their voices heard at a the newest place of national and patriotic significance in our nation's history. What really makes this significant to me, is the battle over whose cause is more "right," or who has the claim to the nationalist cause. Really, though, both individuals who are against the Ground Zero Mosque (Tea Partiers, Conservatives, and Fundamentalists mostly), and those who support its construction/location (generally more liberal or moderate groups), both have a claim.
The conflict here comes from what Manuel Castells calls The Crisis of Identity, one of four crises of governance that he states are the hallmarks of the conflict between nation-states and the progress of globalization. The second video, showing the burning of a Koran at Ground Zero, is particularly telling in this regard, and also demonstrates some of the realities of the limits of a nation state in the Youtube Age. The man in the video is gleefully destroying the holy book while enduring criticism and warnings from the photographers and videographers around him, all while declaring his right to free speech and pride as an American. While Terry Jones' organized event might have been a ploy to gain notoriety, based upon his dubious past, the individual burnings on September 11th are pure expressions of nationalism from Americans who feel like the country has gone astray.
The US government's pleas to refrain from burning Korans are inconsequential to these individual actors. The resulting diffusion of the videos on Youtube and other social media websites illustrates two other hallmarks of the nation-state/globalization conflict. The first, a Crisis of Efficiency, in that the government s unable to manage the conduct of its citizens - possibly jeopardizing its diplomatic efforts, if the angry reactionary protests in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern nations are any indication. The second is the Crisis of Legitimacy. The traditional political parties seem to be losing touch with their constituencies as the culture and beliefs of the United States seem to be under assault from foreign sources; the current upsurging of support for the Tea Party also bears this out.
It's an interesting and exciting time to be living in the nation's capital, and it bears noting that our Congress is currently in the electoral process. Given that there is so much activism going on right now, there could be some fundamental changes in the composition of the next legislative body. The eyes of the world are on us, to a certain extent. Interesting times indeed.
It is a very good point what you mention Geoff. Your example is very appropriate because -thanks to the ICTs- the repercussion of an relatively isolate act of someone burning the Koran (Terry Jones) have produced a great repercusion, like Muslins demonstration against the West and US interest in some places around the world almost inmediatly and simultaneosly. As explain by Elizabeth Hanson (first week reading, in page 1 of her book) the “new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is affecting not only the relations of nation in war and peace but also human activity at every level and, indeed, the nation state system.”
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that the next class is going to be a lot of fun when we (at long last) get to talk about Nationalism. I've been waiting for it for a couple weeks now. There are a lot of lessons about public diplomacy to be learned from these events.
ReplyDelete