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In this article I consider the appeal of "grand" historical narratives of nationalism by focusing on the ways in which history and identity are contested in the context of Greek Cypriot society. I pay particular attention to diverse expressions of nationalism formulated by the state, political parties, and individual social actors. By examining how nationalism is articulated on these different levels, I propose an understanding of the dialectical process between "above" and "below" that accounts for the appeal of specific constructions of nationalism. I investigate this process by looking at how individual social actors discuss the past in ways that blend elements of personal, local, and national political history. Such an approach provides an alternative to theories that hold that nationalism's appeal lies in proposing a new kind of community as the local community collapses under the dislocating impact of the forces of modernity. In contrast, theories of nationalism phrased in terms of broad cultural ontologies are problematic for explaining the presence of multiple models of nationalism within a community, and the ways in which nationalisms can be internally contested, [nationalism, history, identity, narrative, Cyprus]

This article examines the issue of political commemoration, focusing on the commemorations organized by different political parties in the two sides of divided Cyprus. It suggests a new analytical framework for the study of ritual in contemporary nation-states that moves beyond the usual examination of any single ritual on its own terms. The use of comparison, both within each side and between the two sides, reveals how political actors stage commemorations of different historical events in order to propose contesting historical narratives. Hence, the meaning of any commemorative ritual can be understood only as part of the broader story that each narrative proposes. The historical narratives proposed by different political actors share certain common characteristics by virtue of all employing the narrative form: a beginning, a plot, certain categories of actors, the spatial location where history unfolds, the moral centre through which events are to be evaluated and the end. However, each narrative suggests a different story through which issues of identity and "otherness", self-justification and blame are negotiated in order to define the "imagined community" of the nation, its enemies and its pertinent history.

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