In Search of the Authentic Nation: Landscape and National Identity in Canada and Switzerland

Abstract

. 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.

From Objective Environmental Problems to Subjective Environmental Concern: A Multilevel Analysis Using 30 Indicators of Environmental Quality

“…Most lay people are ignorant of variations in biodiversity, but they are likely to roughly identify the richness of biodiversity of their countries. Probably they are proud of it as well (some examples of reflections on nature and national pride are Nash [1982] and Kaufmann and Zimmer [1998]). The national biodiversity index is unfortunately not available in the latter versions of EPI.…”

Nationalism, nation and territory: Jacint Verdaguer and the CatalanRenaixença

“…Several authors have highlighted the importance of territory for nationalism in general; see, for example, Johnston, Knight and Kofman (1988); and Anderson (1988); Kaiser (2001); Yiftachel (2001); Jan Penrose (2002) has discussed the role of territory in nationalist thought from Rousseau and Herder onwards; while Margaret Moore (1998; has analysed, from a normative point of view, nationalist claims over territory. At the same time, numerous studies exist that emphasize the spatial dimension of national identity; see, for example, Osborne (1988);Lasserre (1993); the contributions in Hooson (1994); Kaufmann (1998); Kaufmann and Zimmer (1998);Nogué I Font and Vicente (2004). 3.…”

Nature, environmentalism, and the politics of citizenship in post-civil war Lebanon

“…As Kaufmann and Zimmer remark, the search for 'authentic' landscapes was integral to the 'search for national pedigrees', which 'had come to form the centrepiece of most European nationalisms and national identities' by the late 18 th century. 4 The proliferation of hiking and nature preservation groups throughout Europe at this time indicated the ways in which Western thought endowed nature with transformative capabilities. It was not simply that the natural landscape embodied national identity and national character, but that by going into nature, people would undergo personal and collective transformation.…”