TY - JOUR

T1 - The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments

AU - Mann, R.

AU - Fenton, S.

PY - 2009/5/1

Y1 - 2009/5/1

N2 - There is an important strand of scholarship which argues that we need to explain ‘ethnicity’ within the social and personal contexts in which ethnic identities and sentiments are created and enacted. But there has been little attempt to consider whether, and if so how, attitudes to the nation may be informed by experiences and events at the personal level. Adopting a case-study approach, this paper focuses upon the lives of four ‘white English’ individuals. Treating each respondent's account of his or her social milieu as the analytical starting point, the paper investigates how wider self-understandings and personal experiences inform a particular orientation towards nation, place and the country. In further exploration of this, it argues that the salience of ‘resentful nationalism’ is intensified when articulated through a sense of personal or social decline and failure. This is then demonstrated through reference to those with both ‘resentful’ and ‘indifferent’ orientations.

AB - There is an important strand of scholarship which argues that we need to explain ‘ethnicity’ within the social and personal contexts in which ethnic identities and sentiments are created and enacted. But there has been little attempt to consider whether, and if so how, attitudes to the nation may be informed by experiences and events at the personal level. Adopting a case-study approach, this paper focuses upon the lives of four ‘white English’ individuals. Treating each respondent's account of his or her social milieu as the analytical starting point, the paper investigates how wider self-understandings and personal experiences inform a particular orientation towards nation, place and the country. In further exploration of this, it argues that the salience of ‘resentful nationalism’ is intensified when articulated through a sense of personal or social decline and failure. This is then demonstrated through reference to those with both ‘resentful’ and ‘indifferent’ orientations.

U2 - 10.1080/13691830902764882

DO - 10.1080/13691830902764882

M3 - Article

VL - 35

SP - 517

EP - 534

JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

SN - 1369-183X

IS - 4

ER -