Custom term paper on How does a people small in numbers defend themselves against larger forces?

When adopting the ethnic identity, the members of discriminated minority can also choose a different strategy – to adopt the correct self-identification with the negative assessment of the group. Thus, they form a negative ethnic identity. But accepting a negative self-identification, an individual can react differently to negative judgments about his ethnos. He may refer such judgments to other members of his group, but not to himself establishing psychological boundaries between them and self.
Preserving minority ethnic group as a special group is open to various manifestations of ethnic nationalism, which includes elements of turning to the national culture of the people. This nationalism involves several principles (Kunovich 573-593):
1) The principle of the existence of nations.
2) The sovereign right of any nations to self-determination, i.e. national projects can be implemented only in their own country. A nation has the right to form own state, which should include all the members of the nation. A territorial-administrative unit of the political boundaries should coincide with cultural and ethnic borders (e.g., claims of Kosovo, Yugoslavia, South Ossetia).
3) National Identity. Nationalism considers it necessary to have common language and culture for the entire nation. People identify themselves with the nation for the sake of freedom and self-actualization.
4) Solidarity. Uniformity is achieved by bringing people together on the basis of love and brotherhood, rather than by imposing a certain culture. It is important that members of the nation feel the bonds of solidarity and act in unison.
Moreover, nationalism is considering the nation as the equivalent of an individual, as a social organism and supreme value. The equality in front the law regardless of social status or origin is similar to the equality of nations, regardless of their size or strength from the standpoint of international law. From this perspective, members of any nation should by united by a common heritage, language, religion, traditions, history, blood relationship based on common origin and emotional attachment to the land, so that together they form one people. Typically, this means that the minority people should by all means support the culture and language of ethnic group and promotion of ethnic identification in order to maintain uniformity in the nation (Kunovich 573-593).custom term paper
The emergence of nationalism had a significant impact on society throughout the world. Since it claims that people should be educated in their native language and speak that language in the society, many writers, poets and scholars began to focus on national culture and folklore, promoting the development of literary language and popularization of history. Nationalism pays particular attention to interpretation and teaching of history for bringing up a sense of identification of self with the nation. Many researchers believe that such attention is ideological and is carried out to create a mythological basis for their claims; therefore the progress of historical studies often constitutes a danger to nationality.
In nation-states new rituals emerged: festivals, holidays, flags, music, poetry, patriotic speeches. Over time, national elements started to appear in tales, architectural style, municipal laws, etc. The political role of religion gradually disappeared, and speaking the state language started playing a fundamental importance. The latter was associated with the development of communication technologies and capitalism which was interested in expanding the boundaries of a single market. However, nationalism not always has relied on the established linguistic tradition. In many cases, it promoted local dialects in the opposition to the language of aristocratic circles. Sometimes a revival of infrequent languages took place, sometimes the integration of several dialects into a new common language.
In most countries, nationalism has become part of the very structure of modern society. The population perceives it as a normal fact and doesn’t even react to nationalist rhetoric, if only it does not threaten public order or is not associated with some objective crisis. The society has developed a number of habits of ideological coloration, which provide a continuous reproduction of the nation and the subconscious confrontation of small nations to cultural assimilation. From our point of view, national identification is the main method of peoples small in numbers to identify existing foreign inclusions into their culture and the rational analysis of the prospects for further borrowing from other cultures for the benefit of their own nation.
Works Cited:
Kunovich, Robert M. “The Sources and Consequences of National Identification.” American Sociological Review 74.4 (2009): 573-593. Print.
Taylor, Donald M. The Quest for Identity: From Minority Groups to Generation Xers. Praeger, 2002. Print.