HI , my Phd thesis is connected with nationalism and far right parties of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. Have the same problem here. This specific topic is out side of interest of Geography in Slovakia. So i have to use terminology and definitions defined by disciplines that talk about it more Sociology or mainly Political science

But how can one detect the nationalist ideology within the content of geography textbooks? On what should one focus his/her attention in order to evaluate if a map or other territorial representation is betraying nationalistic characteristics? And how could one measure the degree of nationalism residing in geography textbooks? Maybe you could inform me on this specific questions. It will definitely help my project.

Sorry misread the question!!!LINGUISTIC DISCRIMINATION is what i see. When it comes to Slovak geography text books what i am able to see is linguistic discrimination when it comes to naming of parts of slovakia that have other than Slovak majority (for ex Hungarian- south, Goral- North east....). State language Slovakia is preferred in all parts of geography. We have strong regional influence of Hungarian minority, but their language is not used at all.

Lucas, thank you for your suggestion, but I have to be sincere with you and admit that I don't know what SIT stands for. Please be more specific, because this acronym does not ring any bell in my mental abbreviations database.

My definition of nationalism is the conventional one: an ideological movement that seeks to exercise political power in the name of a putatively historical nation defined as a collectivity sharing the same "blood," culture, religion, ethnicity, collective memory, and so on.

Hello Lucas,

I'm quite familiar with Henri Tajfel's social identity theory (I taught a social psychology course for one semester at my university), but I'm affraid it is problematic to extrapolate the findings from social psychology experimentation to macro-cultural analysis (textbook analysis included). Of course, the process of categorization, which is the building block of social cognition in Tajfel's conception, can be seen at work in macro-cultural settings. But SIT is developed exclusively within controled laboratory enviromnent, and I find it difficult to imagine a way of converting it into a theoretical tool of analysing geography textbooks. I don't say it is impossible, just that, for the moment, I am in a kind of imaginative deficit. But I'll take your suggestion as a methodological challenge.

Dear Mihai, it is indeed a very interesting phenomenological view (Nationalism - Geography - Territory)!! There are many insteresting ways to view this subject, from the construction of geography and the kraft of the landsape to the identitary idea of Nation on a M. Iliade perspective, to the invention of history on a W. Benjamin perspective, passing through the sublime of territory on a historical talassocracia sense to a modern and contemporary sense of ahistorical territory of the XIX sionism and post colonial states.

Very interesting!!

Sound really interesting! Given that you will have a relatively big sample (I guess), I would use content analysis, in concrete with programs such as Atlas.ti. There you can enter the different text-parts in question and analyze them for different concepts, discoursive formations or whatever your theory may be.

I think, important items in order to study "text-book-nationalism" could be issues of frontiers (when talking about a region that "really" belongs to one's country) or international relations (when talking about the "bad influence" of this or that country).

There is a very common apotheotic misticism that exalts the historical map as a legitimation of the historical ideal of nation. But historic XIX and XX century romanticism idea tended to overcome and overflow the own idea of "historical map" to a whole economic view of diversity that would enable a big national system. This can be related on from F. List National System on to Marinetti, Salazar, De Gaulle....

It could be said as H. Broch would put it, on Kitsche "aestetication" of ethics or any modern Marxist would see it as a pure sham of the advancing mercantilism!!

There are a lot of possible views going from the theme geography textbooks to Nationalism!! Very interesting...much to say...

Hello Marco and Philipp,

thank your for your comments and suggestions.

Marco, can you please specify to me in what work does Walter Benjamin develop him view on history? I would really like to read something from him after I read his description of Paul Klee's painting, "The Angel of History."

I have indeed a sample of several Romanian geography texbooks that I would like to analyze. As I read through them, I was really struck by the fact that all the authors go to great lentghs to push the idea of symmetry and armony. They insists time and again that there are "natural borders." Moreover (and I think this is very important), they argue that there is also a natural fit between geographical territory and the ethnoscape. This is evidently not the case, Romania being a multi-ethnic society, especially in Transylvania.

So this has become my focus point: the "fit" of the ethnic dimension with the territorial landscape. I think that this is one way of how nations are made through geography textbooks.

Dear Mihai - Greetings

You have "Barbarism and Civilization" and many other readings of Benjamin where history is seen as a mistification that one needs to demistify. I can not assure the term "invention of history" was coined by Benjamin but it is known as a term that attached to him.

The painting of geography and the domination of the landscape was mostly used in order to portrait some regions and people as more productive and developed than others (even in the same country) as a sort of affirmation or claim that the cradle of that country or realm is a certain region and that all others should take it as standard. This can be crossed with Ethnicism but was not the main point of the Nationalist idea of XIX and XX century that i believe had more to do with histrionic modernism and economic development than Ethnic aprouch...but there were historic elements of the opposite...but even so in general thesis we can identify Nationalism more with the plentitude and geographical diversity in order to enable diferent economic activities and produce wealth. Geography fits well there!! But i am not, also, sure i agree with me!!

Just a quick thought--how about looking at the dates the versions of maps show changed boundaries over time?--was ethnic conflict a reason for re-drawing the map? Sounds like a wonderful project.

History text books may be a better way for understanding nationalism than geography ones; so look at British, German and French history school books for the 20th century; or for 19th century British and American history text books in the Opie collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, or perhaps in the London Museum of Childhood Bethnal Green. When travelling I try to buy history books, so that the basic material is available for such a study, from Ethiopia, Fiji, Botswana, Peru, France and so on.

Could you use geopolitics as a method of studying nationalism. State interests come from the space in which each state has developed. What surrounds that state will have influences on state interests and the nationalism in that state. Rhetoric can influence state interests. Just some things to look into.

Good ideas above. I agree that doing that kind of research on the basis of geography (rather than history) textbooks is more of a challenge, and perhaps you need to take a more qualitative look as well to achieve your aim. Rhetoric seems a good perspective too. As a linguist and discourse analyst I suggest that after establishing the frequencies of placenames or collocates of the word "Romanian" (or any keywords that you think actualize national themes in texts) you might analyze the contexts, argumentative schemata, evaluations they are part of. I also think that doing a comparative (diachronic) study might alert you to other discursive realizations of nationalism. I believe that a close analysis like that might be useful in substantiating (verifying) larger theses and arguments. Good luck