To Create A Nation: Folk Culture and the Construction of Identity
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Date
2018-05-10
Department
Center for Humanities -- History
Program
Bachelor's Degree
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Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
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Abstract
In 1999, the newly elected Scottish Parliament opened. During the opening ceremony, the entire body sang together for the last verse of the performance of Robert Burns’ “A Man’s A For A’ That.” Both unionist and nationalist politicians embraced it as an expression of Scottish national identity. In February 2018, the Winter Olympic games were held in PyeongChang, South Korea. During the closing ceremony, music played a large role, including traditional Korean drumming. These two instances exemplify the way folk culture, especially music and dance, are utilized in conceptions of national identity. This thesis seeks to more deeply explore this relationship. To do so, the thesis compares three cases – Scotland, Korea, and Belgium – and argues that folk culture is deployed in identity construction when it is used to internally unify a group as well as develop an identity in opposition to an outside group.
In this analysis, the thesis utilizes the ethno-symbolic approach to national identity, which focuses on the roles of symbols and their use in construction of identity. Through this theory, the thesis focuses on the ways symbols were deployed and redeployed in different conceptions of identity. The redeployment of symbols becomes especially important in chapter three, where the reconstruction of each identity is explored with attention to how symbols were deployed differently or left out as circumstances changed. While these cases have not been considered together before, other scholars have built a substantial literature around national identity construction for each case study. After surveying this literature, chapter one will then provide historical background on each place and its identities.