This article argues that the classical distinction between civic and ethnic forms of national identity has proved too schematic to come to terms with the dynamic nature of social and political processes. This has caused difficulties particularly for those historians and social scientists studying particular national movements rather than concentrating on a handful of thinkers and intellectuals or taking a broadly comparative approach. As an alternative to the classical model, I propose to distinguish between, on the one hand, the mechanisms which social actors use as they reconstruct the boundaries of national identity at a particular point in time; and, on the other, the symbolic resources upon which they draw when they reconstruct these boundaries.

. While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity‐forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation‐states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration.

Arguably the fulcrum of Anthony Smith's research is the ethnie-nation link. One axis of this debate is represented in the early contributions to this special issue, namely, what are ethnies, when did they arise, and what has been their historic relationship to nations. A second -perhaps more contemporary -offshoot of this thinking is the role played by ethnicity within nations in the so-called 'modern' period up to the present time. This is the main problematic with which this article will concern itself. Within this framework, two strands of research recommend themselves. These include a) the place of dominant-group ethnicity 1 within contemporary nations; and b) the nature of the 'ethnic versus civic nation' conceptual dichotomy and the dialectic between these two ways of constructing nationalist arguments.One of the most distinctive vistas which Anthony Smith's work opened up for us as postgraduate students at the LSE in the mid-1990's was the novel way in which he conceptualised ethnicity. Those of us from a sociological tradition, particularly in the English-speaking world, come from an environment in which ethnicity is a difficult phenomenon to study. To begin with, there is the classical-cum-Orientalist and anglo/euro-centric tradition of viewing ethnicity as residing exclusively in the exotic 'Other'. 2 This has then been overlaid by a strongly normative, New Left discourse which sought to reverse the patronising and negative tendencies of Orientalism.Though the new radicalism claimed to be making a sharp break with the anglo-centric tradition, it actually represents a continuation of many of the earlier exoticist themes.Thus, for example, the idea of exotic cultures as repositories of mystery and meaning 1 (in opposition to a dessicated western rationality) remains in both romantic and radical versions. One subtext is that authenticity and ethnicity -a relatively new term in the English language -resides in those strange foreign peoples who have retained something that we western moderns have lost. 3A second, related theme is that ethnicity is possessed by those who are politically or geographically marginal. Hence the link between ethnicity and an egalitarian politics. Here it must be stressed that many early Orientalist writers and travellers were far from the intolerant crusaders or rationalistic imperialists of caricature. Many were among the more cosmopolitan and tolerant of their timethough they are judged differently today. Take the American example. The so-called

Elias Canetti, in a brief passage of his Crowds and Power (first published in German in 1960), argued that neither language, nor territory or history are at the heart of what today we would call national identity. What nations can not do without, however, and what has contributed most to turning different individuals into conscious members of a particular nation, is a national "crowd symbol." Canetti then went on to show that most European nations possessed one such symbol around which a popular feeling of national belonging could be generated and sustained. In the case of England, he maintained, it was the sea that took this function; while for the Germans it was the forest. In France, on the other hand, it was the Revolution that came to play this very role. And in Switzerland-the case Canetti probably knew best from his own experienceit was the mountains (see Canetti 1960:191-203). While it would be difficult for me to judge the accuracy of Canetti's comments on national mass symbolism in the English, German, and French cases, I broadly agree with his statement about the important role of Alpine symbolism in Swiss national identity. But why the mountains? Here his admittedly thumbnail explorations need some qualifying. First, there was nothing inevitable about the Alps becoming Switzerland's most salient national symbolan impression that one could easily get from reading Canetti's text. On the contrary, it was under particular circumstances and as a result of context-bound ideological activities that the Alps evolved into a national mass symbol of the Swiss.

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