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Performing the national territory: The geography of national‐day celebrations
Author(s) -
N'Guessan Konstanze,
Lentz Carola,
Gabriel MarieChristin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/nana.12332
Subject(s) - nationality , ethnic group , state (computer science) , ethnography , performative utterance , variety (cybernetics) , gender studies , nation building , sociology , media studies , geography , political science , anthropology , law , politics , immigration , aesthetics , philosophy , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
The nation is a relatively abstract imagined community that is visualised through a variety of symbols as well as communicative and performative practices. In this paper, we explore how the national territory, one of the foundations of the nation‐state, is performed on national‐day celebrations and brings the nation into being. Drawing on ethnographic research on national days in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, we show how the state's internal administrative divisions and ethnic differences are at once made explicit but also subordinated to the nation. Moreover, we show how in such celebrations, potentially disruptive or competing affiliations such as ethnicity and regional loyalties are re‐imagined. Both the rotation of the central celebration and its replication all over the national territory carry the nation into the regions and integrate the regions into the nation‐state. The ‘co‐memoration’ turns participants and spectators from locals into national compatriots and thus not only performs nationality but also performs the relationship among nation, state and citizen, set within a particular territory.