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Kenneth Harttgen (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and Matthias Opfinger (Leibniz University Hannover) have developed an index of National Identity based on survey responses to eight questions. Things like interest in politics, confidence in the parliament and justice system, and interest in politics - as well as more obvious things like willingness to fight for your country, and national pride.
Using this index, they set out to discover which factors were most closely linked to a high level of national identity (here's their Working Paper).
Some factors are interesting, but fairly readily understood. High levels of democracy promote national identity (not surprising, given the definition), as do good roads and lots of phones (this is independent of wealth, and is probably to do with the ease that communication within a country). More populous countries also have a higher national identity.
But they also found that religious diversity was linked to increased national identity. On the other hand, religious polarisation (when a country is split into 2 or three large religions) was not.
Now, the really interesting thing was that the strongest link was not between current diversity and national identity, but between religious diversity in 1900 and current national identity. This is evidence that high levels of religious diversity in the past actually seem to strengthen national identity now (or, alternatively, given the number of new countries over the past 100 years, that only a really strong national identity can forge a new nation in the face of religious diversity!).
What Harttgen and Opfinger propose is that religious identity and national identity are flip sides of the same coin. When you have a country with mostly a single religion, people define themselves in terms of a shared religion. But in countries where your neighbours are likely to be of a different religion, religious identity becomes less important, and so people begin to identify themselves in terms of their shared nationality.
However, another interesting finding was that there was no link (positive or negative) between ethnic diversity and national identity. Their explanation for this doesn't make sense to me:
Two simple examples can make this more easily understandable. First, take two persons of the same nationality, say German. These persons will identify with their religious group as long as they adhere to the same denomination. They share a common set of values, which is based on their religious beliefs. Two persons of the same nationality might not be able to identify with their religion if they adhere to two different denominations, say Protestant and Catholic. Hence, higher religious diversity decreases the importance of religion. But still these people share a broader set of values or cultural beliefs which are based on their national heritage and lets them form a national identity. As a consequence, higher religious diversity, which leads to less importance of religion, increases national identity.
As a second example, consider two US American citizens where one is Caucasian and the other is African American. No matter what their religion is these persons can at least identify on a national level. They share a common set of values which is based on being a US national. This example can help understand why ethnic differences might not affect the formation of a national identity.
Just swap 'ethnicity' for religion in the above and you'll see what I mean. It makes just as much sense (or as little, depending on your perspective). Nevertheless, it does seem to be the case ethnic diversity does not affect national identity (since other studies have found something similar), whereas religious identity does.
It's also hard to reconcile these findings with previous research that found that religious fervour and national identity were closely linked in countries with a low religious diversity.
I suspect that the somewhat odd definition of 'national identity' used in this study is skewing the results!
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
Makes sense to me. Religion and national identity both imply a set of values. Abortion is wrong, apple pie is American, yay Jesus, yay baseball, that sort of thing. But ethnicity doesn't carry with it an implicit set of values in most countries. Research shows that we seek common ground with people who are different from us. If a German and Hungarian are both Catholic, they'll have a set of values in common regardless of their political situations. If the German and Hungarian are Protestant and Catholic, respectively, despite the fact that they are both relatively ethnically the same, they have no common ground in values (theoretically).
ReplyDeleteThe lack of effect of ethnic diversity could also be evidence of settling of cognitive dissonance. Sort of, "I don't like their race, but we seem to both like apple pie. We must be American!" Just a theory.
And to answer your comment about the Voicu study. I think Voicu tapped in to a definition of indivdual identity, while Harttgen and Opfinger tapped in to a group identity. These two identites can work together if they must. People use religious identity and national identity to define themselves on an individual level. Some people prefer to identify with a group (religion/nation) while others prefer a self-based definition (non-religious/non-nationalistic). When one of their individual definitions does not match up with another person's, they're willing to use the other half of it. But so few people identify as "I'm white" these days that ethnicity is not as strong as a factor.
I think this all made sense....
Carla, I take your point, although there are examples of, say, protestants of different ethnicity and different values. Afro-Carribean evangelicals, high church CofE, lutherans etc. So it depends how you cut it but you rapidly reach a point where religious sect and ethnicity are synonymous.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, religion is better able to create a common set out values across ethnicities, but ethnicity is poor at creating a common set of values across religions.
I think I see what you're getting at re Voicu :) I think yes, it is something to do with individual vs national identity. ALthough Voicu's was amuch cleaner definition of nationalism, whereas the the current study seems to tap into feelings on national participation.
I think there is a typo-type mistake in this article in this section: "When you have a country with mostly a single religion, people define themselves in terms of a shared religion. But in countries where your neighbours are likely to be of a different religion, religious identity becomes less important, and so people begin to identify themselves in terms of religion."
ReplyDeleteThe last word should probably be "nationality."
Fixed!
ReplyDelete