The Internal Other: Exploring the Dialectical Relationship between Regional Exclusion and the Construction of National Identity
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Corey Johnson, Assistant Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: Societies have historically sought to spatialize difference—to other—even within the boundaries of supposedly unified polities. Drawing on previous scholarship on the spatialization of difference in published case studies, we examine the dialectical relationship between the formation and institutionalization of regions on the one hand, and the nation-building process more broadly on the other. Certain regions become repositories for undesirable national traits as part of a dialectical process of nation- and region-building. The processes of othering are rarely as linear and tidy as proposed in some current formulations of the theory; rather, othering involves a host of concomitant processes that work together to produce economically and culturally differentiated regions. The processes by which particular places or regions become “othered” are not only interesting in the abstract, but also carry with them enduring material consequences. To demonstrate this effect, we visit two historical case studies that examine the formation of internal others in 19th century Europe (Italy and Germany).
The Internal Other: Exploring the Dialectical Relationship between Regional Exclusion and the Construction of National Identity
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Created on 10/15/2013
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Language: English
- Date: 2012
- Keywords
- regionalism, nationalism, othering, Italy, Germany, geography