Spectacle and Space in the Creation of Premodern and Modern Polities: Toward a Mixed Ontology of Collective Identity1

Abstract

Acuff, Jonathan M. (2012) Spectacle and Space in the Creation of Premodern and Modern Polities: Toward a Mixed Ontology of Collective Identity. International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1111/j.1749‐5687.2012.00155.x © 2012 International Studies Association Much recent work on culture and identity in International Relations (IR) has emphasized the causal role of ideas and institutions. I articulate a broader socialization process for collective identities via material elements of identity construction. I argue that combined with rituals and linked to myths and symbols, material representations of culture such as monuments and architecture form the collective memories of polities in a similar manner to the socializing effects of educational institutions and vernacular literature. I illustrate these claims with a comparison of materiality and praxis elements of identity construction in imperial Rome and late‐modern Austria–Hungary, with concluding analysis of the role of material culture in the future of “European” identity in the EU.

The People's Paving Stones: The Material Politics of International Human Rights in the Baldosas por la Memoria of Buenos Aires

“…Things are signs, as much as signs are things (Bartelson 2006, 48). And the baldosas are things that materially signify and hyper-localize memories, which are generally erased or otherwise sanitized by official histories (Acuff 2012). They articulate messianic heroism and mundane equivocation, like the unofficial heroes who were once part of the life of the city.…”

State identity in Europe today: Some determinants

“…Therefore, individualistically understood state identity has a social characteristic in the sense that it is socially endowed and confirmed in the course of everyday interactions. It is derived from some normative patterns included in statedisseminated ideologies through, for example, the education system (Acuff, 2012).…”