Representation/Sport&

National Identity

Lesson 2

Your National Identity

• Take 5 minutes to consider your own national identity?

• How do you define yourself? Is it by the country you were born, the country where your parents were born or by where you live now?

• Is it important to you?

My Example: Scotland

• What does this word actually mean? How do we define a nation state?

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Benedict Anderson

• Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism first appeared in 1983.

• Looked at how nation states are represented and coined the phrase ‘imagined communities.’

• He suggested that we will never meet most of the people within a nation state.

Ernest Gellner

• Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.'

• "Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

Rob Roy

• Tartanry- How many representations of Scotland have you seen like this?

Kailyard

• What about representations such as this?

Sporting Narratives…

• Think of a sporting narrative (story) which has engaged/interested you in recent years?

• Why was it interesting? How did the media mediate this story?

Arsenal v Manchester United• Managers dislike one another (they are

the longest lasting managers in the Premier league). Both will constantly score points over the other with psychological games.

• Manchester United defeated Arsenal in the league and cup by the narrowest of margins in 1999.

• In 1998, the game at Old Trafford led to an infamous mass brawl.

Gary Whannel- Sport as live storytelling!

• The outcome is never entirely predictable!

Muhammad Ali & Don Bradman- National Icons…

Sport, News & War

• To look for useful modern case studies which relate to national identity, look no further than the 3 headings above.

• The Olympics and world cup are hugely important sporting events in terms of defining a sense of national patriotism.

• News teams edit information so as stories of national concern or interest come first. For instance, if a plane crashes today and contains people from Hong Kong it will be catapulted up the order of significance on local news stations.

• War also brings nations together although they also fragment nations. Look at the US & UK involvement in Iraq!

Don Bradman

• To Australian’s, Bradman is one of the key figures in establishing national pride back in the 20s/30s and 40s.

• His phenomenal batting average of 99.40 is still by far, the best the world has seen. (By a mile)

• He was a Working class, Aussie icon.

Cathy Freeman- Aboriginal representation

Lance Armstrong- The cancer community & TOT (triumph over tragedy) based American dream!

Emirates- 2006 Unification World Cup Message

• Emirates advertised their brand as pro-unification through the language of football.

• Think about the implications of this in terms of middle-Eastern politics and perceptions from the west.

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=6-xbBLnvkPA