Social Construction Of National Identity Essay

Principally it is the position of this essay to posit that myths and symbols are an essential component in the social construction of national identity. However, it is also the contestation of this exercise that cultural artefacts and tropes, generally instigated ‘from above’ to produce political authority, are in essence malleable and particularly susceptible to the process of socialisation ‘from below’. In other words, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of the symbols and myths of nationhood are characteristically perpetuated by political elites to affect hegemonic values of national identity across space and time; nevertheless, as a consequence of the socialisation of the family unit and local communities, more often these codified artefacts are subsume at the social level and thus, they continue to proliferate autonomously of the state. Put simply, myths and symbols are fundamental pillars in the

Members of a shared society generally understand their culture ‘as reality without change’. Yu and Kwan argue that it is these shared experiences ‘… taken for granted …’ deliver a ‘… fundamental source of legitimacy and power’ to the nation and nationalism. And it is through these internalised collective memories that ‘a common stock of knowledge’ is formed, which they contend gives rise to the nation and the acceptance of the similar “they” in the community as “we’’; and thus the emergence of a national identity. (Yu and Kwan, 2011, p. 36). Furthermore, they suggest that ‘national identity is a foundation of an independent state’ in which the citizens observe and compare themselves with those in other nations, who have in turn developed from their own ‘common stock of knowledge’. Ultimately they argue that both nations and national identity are ‘socially constructed, reproduced, reconstructed, and deconstructed’ and essentially in a constant state of