Ambivalence, Pride and Shame in German Nationalism

NATIONS AND J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N AS
NATIONALISM
FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY
A N D N AT I O N A L I S M EN
Nations and Nationalism ]] (1), 2011,
18 (]]), 2012, 124.
132155.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00498.x
Ambivalence, pride and shame:

conceptualisations of German
nationhood
CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISSn AND
BESS ROTHENBERGnn
n
New York University
nn
Independent Consultant
ABSTRACT. This article examines complex everyday expressions and understand-

ings of nationhood in Germany, focusing on citizens articulations of national pride
and their relationship with the nation. Through an analysis of ninety semi-structured
interviews with ordinary Germans conducted between 2000 and 2002, we argue that
the prevailing, elite-centred approach to studying nationhood has not adequately
captured the complex relationships that individuals have to the nation. We examine
how individuals actively process and interpret nationhood in ways that reveal
ambivalence, confusion and contradictory emotions towards the nation. Such indivi-
dual variation is not neatly captured by ofcial, elite, public or institutional presenta-
tions of the nation. We argue for further research on everyday understandings of
nationhood and on ordinary peoples views on national pride and national identity.
KEY WORDS: everyday nationhood, Germany, nation, national pride, national shame.
Introduction
In the spring of 2001, a controversial debate1 about national pride broke out
in the German parliament, in the media and, eventually, in classrooms, living
rooms and on the streets of German cities and towns. Embedded in the
broader context of over a decade of intense public and parliamentary
discussions about issues of immigration and asylum, German unication
and the reform of citizenship and naturalisation laws, this particular con-
troversy began when Laurenz Meyer, the General Secretary of the right-of-
centre Christian Democratic Union, commented that he was proud to be
German. In response, Green politician Jurgen Trittin accused Meyer of
having the mentality of a skinhead and equated his remarks with those of
a racist hooligan. Trittins remarks and the ensuing debate about whether
his or Meyers remarks were uncalled for made front-page headlines around
the country.2 Within a few days, politicians, academics, writers, athletes,
ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2011

Ambivalence, pride and shame 133
military ofcers and other public gures were scrambling to issue statements
on how they felt about the German nation.3
The wide range of responses to the issue included outright rejections,
cautiously articulated desires for national pride and staunchly defended
afrmations of the existence of such pride (Beste et al. 2001). Clearly, the
contested nature of this debate, as evidenced in the public statements of elite
gures, revealed the complexity of German national pride as a whole. But it
also positioned the elite political leadership and other public gures as each
having clear and denitive understandings of their relationships to the nation.
The image put forth in public statements by elite individuals was one of
concrete and bounded notions of national identity. Each individual is thus
seen as occupying a singular position on national pride; while the content of
each opinion might vary, its character does not. In the case of Germany: one
either is proud, or is not.
However, as we argue in this article, this characterisation of ones relation-
ship to the nation as representing a xed and clearly dened position along a
spectrum of other such positions does not very adequately reect how
ordinary people grapple with their relationship to the nation. When we spoke
to ordinary citizens4 about their feelings about the German nation or national
pride, we discovered something quite different. We found that ordinary
citizens dont always express very clear ideas about how they feel about the
nation; instead, their feelings about the nation are often characterised by
ambivalence, confusion and contradiction. Their feelings about Germany
cannot be characterised easily as proud or not proud; rather, they are
sometimes proud and sometimes ashamed, simultaneously dismissive of and
inexplicably drawn to the nation. They struggle with the very notion of pride
and of how to capture and explain their own emotional attachment to the
nation. Their feelings, in other words, are not black and white as are the
public statements of many elites but rather, are many shades of grey.
These shades of grey have been overlooked and ignored by most scholars
who study the nation and national identity. In part, this is because relatively
few scholars have spent time talking to ordinary citizens about their relation-
ships to the nation. During the national pride debate in Germany referenced
earlier, surprisingly little attention was paid to non-elite perspectives or to
ordinary citizens more generally by the media, policy-makers or academic
analysts who studied and talked about the debate. Indeed, this is true of the
theoretical literature on nations as well. Existing theories of nationhood have
been centred largely on ofcial and elite perspectives (Fox and Miller-Idriss
2008a, 2008b; Smith 2008), leaving little room for analysis of how ordinary
citizens or individuals mediate national narratives and process complex
emotional relationships with the nation.
In this article, we argue that a focus on ordinary citizens perspectives
reveals deep layers of complexity in their relationship to the nation that have
not been attended to adequately in prior scholarship. We make one primary
and one secondary argument, drawing on in-depth interviews with ninety

134 Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Bess Rothenberg
Germans. First and most centrally, we argue that ordinary citizens under-
standings of the nation are often characterised by ambivalence, confusion and
contradiction, revealing layers of complexity that are neither well documented
in the literature nor adequately captured by the prevailing reliance on ofcial
and elite perspectives on nationhood. Ordinary citizens expressions of
national identity and national pride, we show, can be contradictory and
confusing even to themselves. This nding extends and deepens an emerging
tradition of studies of everyday nationhood.
Our secondary argument draws on the theoretical implications of our
primary argument about the complexity of individuals relationship to the
nation. We suggest that the deep grey areas in most ordinary Germans
feelings about the nation show how the relationship between political elites or
institutions and individuals is a nonlinear one characterised not only by
individuals (linear) reception and resistance of national narratives, but also
by their (nonlinear) processing of contradictory and complex emotions in
reaction to state efforts to shape their national consciousness.
Institutional and individual perspectives on nationhood
In our effort to examine the ways in which ordinary citizens construct and
understand their relationship to the nation, we seek to recognise the place of
the individual in the imagined community (Anderson 1991). Most academic
work on nationhood and national identity has thus far examined how the
state and particularly its elite members construct the nation through the
establishment of social institutions and national narratives that uphold and
maintain national identities (Berezin 1997, 1999; Billig 1995; Cerulo 1995;
Handler and Gable 1997; Lukose 2009; Miller-Idriss 2009). In such efforts, for
example, scholars have drawn upon empirical data from parliamentary
debates, public school textbooks and presidential speeches in their analyses
of national narratives and identity (see, for example, Olick 1998). This
approach has shed light on the ways in which the nation-state and its elites
have made national world-views publicly available for its citizens, but it has
largely overlooked the place of the individual in validating or integrating such
world-views. By emphasising the ways in which institutions form national
consciousness, scholars have not always left enough room for understanding
the place of individuals in constructing national identity.5
In studies of the role of schooling in shaping citizenship and nationhood,
individuals have been understudied. Much of the scholarship has focused on
the ways in which a fairly unitary and rational state educational actor the
public school shapes the political participation and national identity of its
citizens, as part of broader nation-building efforts (see Kamens 1988; Meyer
et al. 1997), for example, or by imposing hegemonic ideologies during
processes of political socialisation (Althusser 1971; Apple 1995; Luykx
1999). In this vein, scholars have focused on everyday practices such as

ag-raising ceremonies or the collective performance of national anthems in

schools (Rippberger and Staudt 2003), or have examined textbooks, curri-
cular frameworks, ofcial school and educational policies or school demo-
cratic structures in an effort to trace the transmission and mediation of
conceptions of citizenship and national identity (Lisovskaya and Karpov
1999; Marciano 1997). With only a few exceptions (Hahn 1998; Miller-Idriss
2009), scholars of nationhood and schooling have not focused on teacher
practice or on the role of individual students, teachers or administrators in
shaping national consciousness, identity or political participation. Despite
broad interest in the role that schools play in shaping future citizens
relationships to the nation, we know very little about how students and
teachers actually interact and engage with national questions or topics in
school and classroom settings.
However, the heavy focus on elite and institutional perspectives in the
literature on nations is beginning to shift. A growing body of literature has
begun to explore the ways in which ordinary individuals interpret, respond to,
identify with and distance themselves from the nation (Brubaker et al. 2006;
Condor 2000; Fox 2006; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008a; Miller-Idriss 2009;
Phillips and Smith 2000; Thompson 2001). Hearn (2007), for example, shows
how the organisational settings that are salient in individuals lives such as
the banks where he conducted ethnographic research are important sites
where national identity is produced and reproduced. Such work recognises
that individuals are a crucial component for understanding the ways in which
the imagined community is made possible. It is through the internalisation of
national narratives into the consciousness of individuals that national identity
is lived on the ground in the thoughts and minds of citizens. However, this
process is not automatic, nor does it simply involve the passive reception of
state narratives by citizens. Indeed, scholars who privilege the role of
individuals argue that individuals function as active interpreters of their
social worlds (Berger 1972; Eck 2003; Griswold 1987; Liebes and Katz 1990;
Press 1991; Radway 1991; Shively 1992), relying on lived experience and their
own social location (such as gender, race, age, ethnicity, social class,
education) to make sense of the larger social and cultural world.
The shift from elite perspectives to ordinary citizens understandings in
studies of the nation is part of a broader tradition of scholarship that has
examined how ordinary people construct their identities and everyday life
experiences. But this tradition has not focused very directly on the nation per
se. For example, several scholars have examined ordinary citizens by focusing
in particular on regional and local concerns, examining how issues like local
myths, dialects, kinship networks, regional ethnicities or community practices
help foster distinct local identities (Petro 2004; Phillips 1986). Other scholars
have focused on everyday life (Abrams and Brown 2010), but this body of
scholarship has focused less on broader collectivities like the nation than it has
on the quotidian experiences of individuals in their homes, workplaces, places
of worship and communities (see Riley 2008). Moreover, scholarship on

everyday experiences that has attended directly to nationalism or national

identity has not consistently examined individual perspectives directly.
Rather, such scholarship generally focuses less on ordinary citizens perspec-
tives than on the relationship between everyday practices and the nation, in
studies ranging from a focus on street signs (Azaryahu and Kook 2002) and
postage stamps (Cusack 2005) to the body and food (Palmer 1998), religious
or national symbols (Zubrzycki 2006) or the everyday constitution of national
subjectivities through activism and protest (Jean-Klein 2001), or else reect on
the everyday life experiences of aggregate populations without talking to
individuals directly (Mavratsas 1999). In practice, we know very little about
how individuals actively interpret, reinterpret or struggle with understandings
of nationhood in the contemporary setting (for historical cases, see Jones
2008; Jones and Fowler 2007).
Even scholars who focus on the role that ordinary citizens play in the
construction of national identities have not focused as much on individuals
per se as they have on individuals as representatives of particular groups who
can be compared to other groups across ethnic, regional, racial, gendered or
generational lines. Miller-Idriss (2009), for example, examines how young,
working-class Germans and their older, middle-class teachers differ in terms
of their understandings of Germanness and national pride. But this focus on
similarities within particular segments of populations may inadvertently
position individuals as relatively static entities who hold consistent and
largely unvarying viewpoints, which, in turn, represent their particular
population or segment of their population. As Anthony Cohen argues, We
seem generally to have assumed that individuals bearing the same culture
have imputed the same meanings to their shared linguistic and behavioural
forms (Cohen 1986: 11). While we do not wish to argue that these similarities
do not exist, we call for more attention to the potential for variation and
contradiction within each individual in other words, to the sometimes
contradictory and incompatible statements about the nation made by the
same respondent in the same interview or series of interviews. Surprisingly
little attention has been paid to the potential for variation within individuals,
either longitudinally or in terms of complex and contradictory relationships to
the nation within a single individual at any given standpoint.
Nationhood in Germany
For non-Germans, the larger public narrative about the place of pride in
German national life can seem quite alien (Jarausch 1997; Markovits and
Reich 1997; Rothenberg 2002). Since the end of World War II, the question of
German national identity has been highly contested, discussed and debated.
This interest has only heightened since German reunication in 1990 (Borne-
man 1997; Fulbrook 1996, 1999; Glaeser 2000; Peck 1996; Rothenberg 2002).
Throughout the post-unication period, a prevailing ofcial narrative

presented pride as an unwelcome or even right-wing extremist expression of

national belonging (Miller-Idriss 2009; Rothenberg 2002). Indeed, the phrase I
am proud to be a German has routinely been used in German social science
survey research as an indicator of right-wing extremist attitudes (Miller-Idriss
2009; Schweikert 1999). This, of course, is one of the legacies of the Third
Reich, by which any strongly felt expressions of patriotism are automatically
equated with fascism or extremist nationalism. But it is also a result of a public
narrative that argued that pride could only be expressed for individual, not
collective, accomplishments (Rothenberg 2002: 124). In the midst of the
controversy about pride discussed at the opening of this article, President
Johannes Rau stated publicly that one cannot be proud of something that one
has not achieved oneself. Being glad or thankful that one is German is
acceptable, he contended, but one cant be proud of it (Hops 2001).6
A civics textbook used in a classroom observed by Miller-Idriss (2009)
explains:
One can only be proud of something if there is an element of ones own accomplish-
ment in it if one has personally earned it. To be German means, rst and foremost, to
be a descendent of German parents. Only very few German citizens become citizens via
naturalisation. There is no cause to be proud of things that one cant do anything
about.(Von Becker et al. 1998: 344)
Having rst emerged in the political culture of the newly emerging West
German government of the 1950s and carrying over into unied Germany
after 1990, this taboo on national pride was very much rooted in a rejection of
nationalism because of its connotations with Nazism (Miller-Idriss 2006;
Berghahn et al. 1997; Miller-Idriss 2009; Rothenberg 2002). As Fulbrook
observes, an unthinking national pride or taken-for-granted patriotism was
no longer possible after Auschwitz (Fulbrook 1999: 2). Although there have
always been alternative national narratives that advocated, among other
things, a sense of Germanness or pride grounded in a commitment to de-
mocratic principles what Habermas called constitutional patriotism (Ash
1993; Habermas 1992: 91) in the notion of the Kulturnation (Huyssen 1995)
or in consumerism and economic progress (Levy 1999), the prevailing
consensus was an anti-nationalist one (Huyssen 1995: 77). Even the existence
of alternative concepts (such as constitutional patriotism) was seen by some
as the most sublime variation of the tabooisation of the nation (Bohrer 1992:
69). Although there has been some softening of the pride taboo in recent years
(Miller-Idriss 2009), in large part, political and cultural leaders have con-
tinued to reject images of German nationalism, viewing pride as largely
undesirable (see, for example, Maier 1997: 45).
There are, of course, other alternative narratives that coexist with the
prevailing one prohibiting expressions of national pride. For example, right-
wing extremists proudly lay claim to a German nation, while members of a
younger generation have tried to reclaim a normalised sense of national
identity and national pride (Miller-Idriss 2009). By speaking of a prevailing

narrative here, we refer to the fact that the taboo on nationhood emerged in
Germany as the most broadly representative public narrative during the sixty
years following World War II as evidenced in presidential speeches and
civics textbooks, for example, as the earlier excerpts illustrate even as
alternative and contradictory narratives coexisted with the prevailing one.
Survey research with Germans suggests that the prevailing national
narrative interdicting pride is reected in low levels of national pride among
Germans (Blank and Schmidt 1993; Evans and Kelley 2001; European
Opinion Research Group 2001; Smith and Jarkko 2001). According to one
survey, only thirty per cent of all German citizens claim pride in their nation,
and less than nine per cent of those younger than thirty claim they are proud
to be German (Beste et al. 2001). An April 2001 survey also found that
seventeen per cent of Germans claim themselves to be very proud of being
German, as opposed to fty per cent who were only fairly proud, twenty per
cent who were not at all proud and seven per cent who did not know
(European Opinion Research Group 2001). In the same survey, polled
Germans were asked how attached they felt to Germany: thirty-three per
cent answered very attached, fty-two per cent fairly attached, twelve per
cent not at all attached (European Opinion Research Group 2001). These
numbers contrast markedly with a 1998 Yomiuri-Gallup survey of the USA,
in which respondents were asked How proud do you feel to be American?.
Seventy-seven per cent answered that they were very proud, an additional
eighteen per cent were somewhat proud and almost four per cent not very
proud. One per cent of respondents chose either not to respond, did not know
or claimed to be not proud at all (Yomiuri-Gallup 1998).
Such research would appear to indicate that Germany is a classic case of a
nation with consistently low levels of national pride and that ordinary
Germans have a clear, and negative, understanding of their relationship to the
nation. But as we argue here, ordinary Germans feelings towards their nation
are far more complex. We turn now to a brief summary of our data and
methodology, before providing analysis of our interviews with Germans.
Although we introduce larger themes that appeared and reappeared through-
out the interviews, we pay particular attention to the ways in which
respondents resist being categorised in clear-cut ways. As they work through
their responses to our questions, the respondents often rely on a number of
ways of thinking and conceiving of their nation. The breadth and complexity
of these categories illustrate the tremendous variation and contradictions
that can exist within individuals in terms of their levels of national pride and
relationship to the nation.
Data and methodology
Between May 1999 and May 2002, we interviewed ninety Germans born
between 1945 and 1983 as part of two separate studies about national identity

in Germany. The participants were between the ages of seventeen and forty-
four at the time of their interviews and were recruited from vocational
schools, by word of mouth, by direct solicitation of strangers and from
referrals by acquaintances. The vocational school students were part of a
broader ethnographic study that included extensive classroom and school-
based observation, curricular analysis and interviews with teachers. The
samples were not intended to be random. Instead, we adopted an approach
similar to that used by Phillips and Smith (2000: 208), whose research on
national identity sampled average, ordinary and typical Australians. In
choosing to study ordinary citizens, we join a growing number of scholars
who recognise the importance of understanding the ways in which individuals
process and interpret the nation and their relationship to it (Condor 1996,
2000; Schwartz and Heinrich 2004; Schwartz and Kim 2002).
We consider the Germans we interviewed to be ordinary for a variety of
reasons. They came from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, but
none would be categorised as being extremely wealthy or extremely poor.
None were public gures; they encompassed members of the blue-collar
working class as well as white-collar professional managers, small business
owners and service workers. In referring to these individuals as ordinary, we
mean to create a contrast with studies that have focused on constructions of
the nation from more elite perspectives, such as in parliamentary debates,
presidential speeches or national textbooks.
There were more men than women in the sample, and all ninety individuals
were part of the workforce or were training full-time toward that end; there
were no full-time homemakers, retirees or unemployed individuals. Sixty of
the participants were currently in full-time apprenticeship training pro-
grammes for a future occupation, twenty-eight were working either full- or
part-time in the labour force, and two others were full-time students. Twelve
participants were not ethnically German or were born outside Germany,7
although all but one were German citizens. The majority of the sample was
living in Berlin and its surrounding suburbs at the time of interview, although
approximately ten per cent of the participants came from smaller towns in the
former West and the former East. Approximately sixty per cent of the sample
was born in the former East Germany, although the students and apprentices
were quite young at the time of unication. This sample is not meant to be
representative of Germans more broadly, although we believe it is likely that
others experience similar kinds of complexity in their relationship with the
nation. Rather, we focus on these individuals as rich case studies that illustrate
the ambivalence and complexity expressed in ordinary peoples renderings of
the nation and their relationship to it.
During the interviews, which ranged in length from thirty minutes to three
hours, participants were asked questions that focused on their feelings and
thoughts about, and relationships to, their nation. The design and structure of
the interview varied slightly between the two studies, but the fundamental
nature of the interview questions was the same, and focused on teasing out

how these individuals think about Germanness and their nation. The ques-
tions we asked aimed to discover what the participants associated with
Germans and Germany, what it means to be German, how they view the
nation and their relationship to it, how they understand and express their own
sense of national belonging, and how they see themselves in relation to
foreigners in their own country and relative to other nations and peoples. For
example, participants were asked to dene nationhood and Germanness, to
explain the concept of citizen to an alien who had just landed in a spaceship,
to talk about their understandings of good and bad citizens, and to discuss
their own sense of belonging in Berlin, Germany and Europe and the meaning
of Germanness for them personally. The interviewees also responded to
questions about current political issues, including dual citizenship, right-
wing extremism and immigration.
Direct solicitation of talk about the nation has both advantages and
disadvantages, as discussed extensively in Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008a,
2008b). The in-depth ethnographic observation of school classrooms that
took place as part of Miller-Idrisss study is discussed in greater detail in
Miller-Idriss (2009). The ndings in this article illustrate the usefulness of
formal interviewing by showing how transcripts can capture contradictory
and complicated statements by participants in ways that might be overlooked
in a (non-recorded) observation. In addition, by asking open-ended questions,
we were able to have Germans determine the categories we would later
analyse. All interviews were conducted and transcribed in German and
relevant quotes were then translated into English by the authors.8 The coding
of the transcripts took place in two stages. First, all interviews were coded
using a qualitative research software program in order to create categories of
the ways in which respondents addressed and discussed a variety of issues
related to national belonging and national pride. We then analysed all
transcript portions and quotes related to issues of national pride in order to
map out the complexity of Germans relationship to the nation in this
particular area. During this stage of the analysis it became clear that some
of the same individuals often had quite contradictory things to say about their
relationship to the nation. The themes that emerged during this process
became the fundamental basis for interpretation, comparison and further
analysis. The complexity of German respondents views on national pride and
their relationships with the German nation are discussed in greater detail in
the following sections.
Findings and discussion
The kinds of responses Germans give to questions about pride and allegiance
are not easily condensed into distinct categories. Some Germans are unable to
relate to the concept of pride at all; others make semantic or symbolic
distinctions that make pride inapplicable to their lives. Some express

appreciation for their nation but make clear that they do not want their
feelings understood as pride. Still others express dissatisfaction with what they
perceive to be a national taboo on pride and suggest that such feelings should
be acceptable, even if they personally do not have them. Regardless of how
they vocalise their feelings, virtually every respondent revealed complex
feelings toward their nation that have not typically been captured in previous
research about citizens national identities. The themes we present here are not
intended to delineate rigid boundaries between individuals responses, but
rather to tease out distinctions and identify some of the permeable edges of
what are deep and multidimensional layers of meaning.
Some respondents provided answers to the questions about their nation
that seem to offer the kind of clear-cut positions evidenced in statements by
public gures and elites. The responses they give to questions about their
nation suggest a wariness and even distrust towards the very concept. For
example Ina, a thirty-six-year-old real estate worker, explained that she
cannot speak in terms of pride, because the term does not seem relevant
to her experiences as a German. Tilo, a thirty-ve-year-old ofce worker, also
noted that the concept of national pride had no meaning for him, adding
that the very idea left him with a strange aftertaste. Clara, a twenty-year-old
apprentice cook, commented that being German doesnt mean anything to
me at all. Im not proud of it. Ali, a thirty-ve-year-old fruit stand owner,
explained that theres really no such thing as pride for the Germans . . . I
dont know any Germans who are proud. Such sentiments symbolise an
emotional distancing from the nation that is echoed time and again by a
number of respondents. Lars, a twenty-three-year-old systems electrician
trainee, noted that he had never been particularly happy to be German
while Manuela, a forty-two-year-old daycare worker, claimed that she would
like nothing more than to get out of Germany. Ulrike, a forty-four-year-old
dentist, also explained that she was not bound to her country, adding that
she had never really felt German. Karin, a thirty-two-year-old waitress,
concluded: I wouldnt live here if I could live elsewhere. There are nicer places
on earth. In making such claims, a number of the respondents demonstrated
a feeling of deep distance if not outright rejection towards their nation. Such
responses do represent clear positions, even though their justications for
rejecting pride vary quite widely and reect as much a sense of deep
ambivalence as of clear rejection.
However, for other respondents their ambivalence towards the nation was
not so much a rejection as a deeply felt sense of indifference that was more
difcult to categorise. These respondents demonstrated an emotional distance
to their nation, seeing Germany as a place they happen to be rather than a
place to which they felt a deep connection. In answering a question on her
feelings towards Germany, Ilke, a twenty-six-year-old ight attendant,
commented: I couldnt choose where I was born. I could have just as well
have been, say, an Indian. Sarah, a twenty-year-old construction apprentice,
claimed that being German means nothing to her: if I was born in Russia,

then Id be a Russian citizen and then I would probably perceive it just the
same . . . Daniel, a nineteen-year-old apprentice concrete worker, commen-
ted: Im a German, ok . . . I cant do anything about that, in that sense. Well,
I am proud to be German, but I wouldnt be weeping if I was English or
something. Here, Daniel made a claim to feeling national pride, but he
simultaneously positioned himself as indifferent to his nationality. Although
he is proud to be German, he is not attached to it. This combination of pride
and indifference which does not map easily onto classic understandings of
national pride or of rejections of that pride is not typically captured in the
kinds of research that privilege elite and ofcial representations of the nation
or statements about national pride.
A striking number of respondents claimed that their lack of pride had less
to do with their feelings towards their nation and more to do with the specic
denitions of what pride actually means. In doing so, a rather fascinating
phenomenon emerged. As they repeatedly explained, it was not so much that
they had no pride, but rather that they believed that pride cannot be
applicable to the experience of a citizen thinking about his or her nation.
Many respondents rejected the notion of national pride by arguing that pride
is something only individuals can feel for that which they themselves have
accomplished (Rothenberg 2002). Evocative of the national narrative ex-
pressed by President Rau and the civics textbook quoted earlier in this article,
many of the Germans we interviewed equated pride with achievement and, as
respondents explained repeatedly, they had virtually nothing to do with the
creation or maintenance of a nation-state. For example, Ilke, a twenty-six-
year-old ight attendant, claimed that she could not answer the question
because in order to be proud, it has to be something that I accomplished
myself. Martin, a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer, echoeds this: I think
proud is the wrong word because I can only be proud of things that I
personally inuenced. Where I can say, that was my achievement. That I
was born here, I had nothing to do with that . . . Im much more comfortable
talking about my own accomplishments since birth. Sarah, a twenty-year-old
construction apprentice, drew from a discussion in her civics class in which the
class largely agreed that:
The phrase Im proud to be a German is total crap, one cant be proud of something
that one hasnt done anything for, one is simply born here and is a German citizen
[deutscher Staatsburger] and thats it . . . We were all in agreement, that one cant be
proud of something like that. Because thats exactly as if you were to say, Im proud of
being born.
The responses of these Germans suggest that, to their mind, national pride is
simply not an option because one can only take credit for that which one has
personally accomplished (Rothenberg 2002). They reject national pride not so
much because they personally do not feel it but because of its theoretical
impossibility. This dismissal at base is a rejection of many scholars under-
standings of how individuals relate to the nation. It is a further problem for

empirical measurements or approaches that do not allow respondents to

dismiss national pride as a viable option for thinking about the nation.
There is a further striking way in which Germans distance themselves from
the concept of national pride, by claiming that pride is the wrong term for
their feelings towards their nation even when the same respondents still
demonstrate a form of afnity for Germany. In their efforts to distance their
expressions of national belonging from the actual word pride, many Ger-
mans indirectly (but purposefully) distinguish their thoughts on Germany
from any references that could be associated with (neo-)Nazis (Miller-Idriss
2009; Rothenberg 2002).9 For example, Harry, a thirty-three-year-old travel
agent, took issue with the terminology of pride: I would say that I have a bit
of a problem with the pride thing. I would say I am glad to be German.
Klaus, a twenty-two-year-old trainee construction worker, also explained that
proud [stolz] is the wrong word for his feelings towards his nation, before
choosing the term patriot [Patriot] and then quickly correcting himself again
with the phrase a patriotic feeling [patriotisches Gefuhl]. Enrico, a twenty-
four-year-old information technology apprentice, sought a redenition of
national pride so that he could simply claim to be conscious of his identity.
Peter, a twenty-ve-year-old information technology apprentice, explained
that he felt more comfortable with the term happy than proud: the
sentence I am happy to be a German is totally different than I am proud
to be a German because thats a right-wing extremist sentence.
Through such semantic sidestepping, the respondents left open the possibility
for positive feelings towards their nation, revealing layers of complexity that
have not been captured fully by previous research at least in part because of
their uneasiness with the concept of pride itself. Indeed, the majority of our
respondents, at rst glance, appeared to have little or no feeling of national pride
but many of these individuals expressed a connection to or afnity for
Germany as their homeland or an emotional attachment to the German nation
more generally. Their relationship to the nation demonstrates a sense of
allegiance that is not easily categorised as pride.
Many of the Germans suggested that national pride is and should be a
desirable way of relating to the nation, although many did not claim to feel it
themselves. These respondents turned to examples of other nations relation-
ships to pride to suggest that the phenomenon of pride can be normal or
even natural. They described their own dissatisfaction towards the restric-
tions they feel on their ability to demonstrate pride for fear they will be
misunderstood as neo-Nazis themselves. Kai, a nineteen-year-old information
technology trainee, expressed his frustration that claiming pride in Germany
automatically equates one with Nazism because that makes it hard. The
French, the English, the Spaniards are all allowed to [be proud] and we are
not allowed. He added that:
The French and [others] have a we-feeling and Germans should also have that, even if
I dont know how I should express it. But you should have the permission to maintain

a certain we-feeling . . . because a person cant exist without a we-feeling, clearly. A

person has to know . . . why he is there and who is there for him. Thats important for a
person.
With this statement, Kai established his desire for pride but also suggested
that he was unclear what form pride in Germany would take even if it were
tolerated or encouraged. Stefan, a twenty-one-year-old apprentice mason,
also advocated such a connection to the nation: you should know where you
come from and what you [stand] for . . . somewhere you have ideals for your
country or a little bit of pride and you should be allowed to represent that.
Everyone has that. In claiming that everyone should have a little bit of
pride, Stefan argued that Germans, presumably including himself, should
have at least some feelings of pride. Manuela, a forty-two-year-old daycare
worker, also commented: one really should be proud of ones country: of
your compatriots. Although I, as a German, am not proud of my fellow
Germans . . . But you should really be able to be proud of your people and
nationality . . . Sometimes you just have to be ashamed to be German.
Manuela may not feel pride herself and in fact feels shame but she argues
for the desirability and benets of such feelings. It is worth noting how each of
these respondents used the term should to talk about how one should feel
about the nation, implying or directly stating that Germans are not permitted
to be proud and ought to be allowed to express pride.
Several turn specically to their perceptions of the USA as a way of
demonstrating the naturalness of national pride,10 although many also
contrast the American example to their own to illustrate why such pride is
not possible in Germany. Jochen, a twenty-one-year-old apprentice cook,
contrasted American demonstrations of pride to the German experience:
[In the USA] almost anyone can run around with an American ag on his jacket. If I
put a German ag on my jacket here, Ive already lost. And thats, those are the little
things. I mean, it doesnt work here, it isnt possible. As an American one can be proud
of his country and isnt necessarily right-wing, rather is simply a proud American, and
that isnt possible here and thats not good.
As Jochen explained, demonstrations of pride may be typical for the USA but
such feelings are not plausible or possible in the German context. Harry, a thirty-
three-year-old travel agent, described the enormous ability to stick together in
the USA that was seen so strongly after September 11 as particularly enviable:
. . . this family togetherness, and national pride and patriotism. When something
happens against America, suddenly all the Americans stand together. That would
never happen in Germany. We just take a quick look and say, oh, theyre doing badly.
Thats too bad. . . . I think that really makes America America. And thats why theyre
all proud of their country.
Harry suggested that the connection Americans have to one another is the
necessary ingredient for establishing national belonging and pride, and he
lamented its absence in Germany. Matthias, a thirty-one-year-old political
consultant, also expressed frustration with the idea that Germans cannot be

proud of their own nation, particularly on the political level. Although he too
shied away from actually using such language himself, he repeatedly cited the
healthy American pride and the absent German sense of self. He explained
with a touch of envy: its taken for granted for Americans and the British in
politics [and] international relations, that ones national interest is clear . . . I
think it would work a lot better if Germans did the same. I really think it
would do good. But . . . In trailing off his sentence, Matthias also suggested
that although there is something desirable in German national pride, there is
also something improbable or unlikely in that proposition.
For all of these respondents, there was a recognition that pride is expressed
far more easily in other nations, and that its presence in Germany could
strengthen the positive aspects of being German. Its absence, they claimed,
means that Germans do not have the we-feeling, a sense of national interest
or feelings of national connection that other nations not only enjoy but take
for granted. Yet, even for these respondents who expressed such yearnings for
pride, there was an implicit caveat in many of their discussions that recognised
how difcult pride is in the context of Germany. This illustrates the
complicated, ambivalent and sometimes confused nature of many of the
respondents views on national pride. Although on the surface, their responses
conveyed that they did not have a strong sense of national pride, they did not
dismiss connections to their nation completely. A striking number did
demonstrate a sense of allegiance, even if it could not be called pride.
In fact, a number of the Germans expressed appreciation for certain
aspects of being German despite resisting the language of pride. Although
they chose their words carefully to express this appreciation, they did seem to
nd positive feelings towards their nation. Like many respondents, Daniel, a
nineteen-year-old apprentice concrete worker, expressed his appreciation for
the whole social system, adding that in Germany youre not neglected, that
youll not be left on the street, in the sense that there are ofces that do
something for you, and thats typical of Germany. Marcel, a nineteen-year-
old trainee communications electrician, rst distanced himself from any pride
that could be associated with Nazism, before adding his appreciation for the
education system, the social system. I could say that everything is well
organised. Im also proud to live here, of the human rights, the politics.
Barbara, a forty-year-old non-prot worker, rst questioned whether Ger-
mans can be proud, before noting the shaper [sic] environmental conscious-
ness. Maybe through history a more sharpened awareness of problems . . .
And a certain ability to consider and reect, although that too is rather
broken and difcult. Stefan, a twenty-one-year old construction apprentice,
explained that one can be a little bit proud of ones nation, adding: if I were
to say I am proud of Germany or Berlins cultural aspects, then one can
look back in history at some people, where one says, OK, they have done
good things. For these and many other respondents, Germans social rights
and depth of character are worthy of a sense of allegiance, even if it is
tempered with qualications.

These respondents expressed a very complicated afnity for their nation. In

other cases, interviewees who initially expressed a clear relationship to the
nation subsequently tempered their opinions or even contradicted them. This
was true even for some of the respondents who were most adamant about
their lack of patriotism, yet who later in the interview made a comment or two
that suggested some form of loyalty to their nation. For example, Tilo, the
thirty-ve-year-old ofce worker who was very clear in his assertion that
pride had no meaning for him noted that: I have to live here and I want to
live here. Martin, the twenty-seven-year-old lawyer who argued that pride
could only be taken in individual accomplishments, nonetheless explained:
There are aspects [of Germany] that I know and trust. And that I nd very dear . . .
Since I was raised here and this country inuenced me, I cant imagine anything else.
And I notice that every time Im abroad that Im happy to come back because this is
what I know.
Perhaps the best example of this complexity came from a rather unlikely
source: international sporting events (Fox 2006; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008a,
2008b). As becomes painfully clear, Germans have a difcult time rendering
their explanations for why they root for Germany but most do, in fact,
support their country in international athletic competitions. Alexander, a
twenty-four-year-old trainee skilled hotel worker, gave a lengthy analysis of
why he supports German athletes in the Olympics to work through his own
complex feelings about German national pride:
. . . because I am also a patriot, a German patriot, because I usually cross my ngers for
all the German athletes even when I dont really like them and not for other
[national teams]. And then when Germany loses, I get upset. Well, I simply get upset. I
dont know where that comes from, what causes that in me, you know? Why, when
Germany loses, even though they have played badly, why dont I root for Brazil? Why
do I get upset when Germany loses get sweaty hands and why am I then in a bad
mood? . . . When Germany wins, I get this feeling, ah, we did it. We. This feeling, we
did it comes, although those are just some soccer players, you know? And thats what
patriotism is, a patriot.
This remarkable response suggests how deeper feelings of ambivalence
towards his nation emerge when Alexander attempts to justify his instinct
to support German teams. Lars, a twenty-three-year-old trainee systems
electrician, also verbally processed his justication for such support:
Ive never been particularly happy that I am a German. Well, Im happy, of course,
[about] athletic achievements . . . When Germany wins in soccer, thats great, Im
happy. When Michael Schumacher wins Formula One, you say, oh, great, hes
German. Although he hasnt lived in Germany for a long time now, youre happy
about it. But when you look at it closely, its really totally not important . . . Youre
happy about it only because its someone who speaks the same language. You could be
just as happy because an Austrian won or someone from Holland, who can speak
German just as well . . .
The fact that Lars was happy that the winner was a German and not an
Austrian, Dutch or other German-speaking athlete, made him, upon analysis,

uncomfortable. He was unsure what grounds he had for such happiness. Yet,
ultimately, Lars roots for Germany and not for Austria or The Netherlands.
He may not be entirely clear why, but it does not stop him from celebrating
German athletes achievements as though they were his own. Tobias, a thirty-
four-year-old public relations specialist, also demonstrated this sense that
international sporting competitions are an appropriate place to feel pride,
although he suggested that it may be the only such place. He explained:
Really, really proud, Im not at all. But, lets put it this way, if I look at the
past,11 what I really liked was the fact that we played in the nals of the [2002]
World Cup. I felt a little proud during that. But otherwise, Im not really
proud of Germany. Sports may be an accepted outlet for feelings of national
pride, but, as in Tobiass case, they also inspire qualication for why such
pride is being exhibited.
Perhaps what these German respondents expressed best was a very
complicated afnity for their nation. Even some of the respondents who
were most adamant about their lack of patriotism explained that Germany
was very dear to them or expressed other forms of loyalty to their nation.
This complication was also evident when we examined the comments of
respondents who latched onto the language of pride most strongly. Antonio, a
twenty-ve-year-old political science student, came out rather unequivocally
as being proud of his nation. He explained that he was proud:
. . . of my country. My country and my culture. I am proud that I was born a German
because I accept my countrys history and all the breaks and tears in that history. They
brought me to this point I have been allowed to be raised and inuenced by all these
breaks in this country. And thats important, for me to develop, for me to be able to
reect.
Although Antonio did not hesitate to claim national pride, his reasons for
doing so are rather complex. In essence, his pride comes from the humility he
has learned from the atrocities once committed in Germanys past. Antonio
sees this as a benet; he is grateful for the fact that history has inuenced his
upbringing and made him and his country what they are today. Klaus, the
twenty-two-year-old construction worker who struggled to nd the correct
vocabulary (switching from proud to patriot to patriotic feeling), also
connected pride to the past in an unexpected way, arguing that it is those who
are proud of their country who hold the responsibility to pass on the lessons
of the past. In fact, he argued that if one has a patriotic feeling, then one also
has the duty to comprehend . . . what happened then in World War II and one
also has the duty, as a citizen of this country [als Staatsburger diesem Land], to
always remind the next generation and those who come after that.
Conclusion
Many of the Germans we interviewed were the same people who could be seen
on the streets of Berlin and the rest of Germany celebrating their nations

participation in the 2002 World Cup nal, and again when the country hosted
the 2006 World Cup (see Majer-OSickey 2006). The celebrations that took
place across Germany when the German team reached the nal of the World
Cup and when they were hosts four years later surprised many including
those involved. For the rst time since many could remember, Germans found
themselves celebrating in a manner that, up to that point, they had only
witnessed on television taking place in other lands. With an abruptness that
challenged Germans sense of their normal relationship to pride, the streets
were suddenly full of ag-waving Germans singing national anthems. Taken
at face value, most foreign observers would assume that they were witnessing
unbridled national pride. What they were missing, however, were the deeply
conicted feelings about national pride that accompanied many of the
revellers on the street.12
Certainly there were scores of people celebrating Germanys World Cup
accomplishment who would quickly identify themselves as not at all proud
to be German. In many ways, this seeming paradox reects the very breadth
and complexity of the emotions about the nation that Germans have
expressed in this study: feelings of ambivalence, indifference and rejection
of national pride, as well as some wistfulness about a denied sense of pride or
a genuine yearning for pride. Yet, despite all of this baggage, when it came to
the World Cup, most Germans rooted for Germany.
That Germans rooted for Germany is not necessarily an indication that
they really are patriots and are just not admitting it. Rather, it illustrates how
much ordinary citizens relationships to the nation exist in many shades of
grey. The data here suggest that most Germans are neither proud nor not
proud, but rather are continually processing multilayered feelings that leave
most of them unwilling to claim pride but prepared to root for Germany.
Some may complain about a pride taboo, even expressing desire for such
pride, but many of the same respondents are ultimately unable to bring
themselves to use the word pride without immediately qualifying their
thoughts. In contrast to the clear and dened statements made by public
elites in national debates like the one described at the outset of this article, our
respondents discussions about the nation indicate how complex national
membership can be within the consciousness of ordinary individuals.
The presence of Germans multilayered feelings about their nation captures
the complex and contested nature of German national pride, and cuts to the
core of the challenge that Germans face in establishing a relationship to the
nation, however they dene it. They grapple with the balance of competing
group identications and loyalties, especially when they may come into
conict with a larger state narrative that continues to reject pride. In a
myriad of ways, individuals constructions of national identity happen
throughout a lifetime and reect an ongoing struggle to reconcile contra-
dictory emotions about the nation. Rather than simply being handed down
by a nation-states hegemonic institutions, national narratives are mediated in
the consciousnesses of individuals as part of a process of national identity

construction that is perpetually ongoing. Listening to Germans speak about

their nation, it does not appear that most are seeking out national pride, but
some may want the option to have it.
Can these ndings be extended beyond Germany? We believe there is
reason to suggest that members of other nations may also experience
ambivalence and complexity in their renderings of their relationships to their
own nations (Condor 1996, 2000). Germans have a particularly complicated
relationship to the nation as a direct result of the extreme form that German
nationalism took in the 1930s and 1940s, but shameful legacies are a part of
many nations histories through genocide, colonial histories, slavery and
civil rights abuses, military atrocities or other horrors committed in the name
of a national, ethnic or religious collective. Many Americans have struggled
with contradictory feelings about the US role in the Middle East, Iraq and
Afghanistan, or shame at the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even as they
expressed a sense of solidarity and attachment with other members of their
nation in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
And while Germany also has the added complication of the legacy of a
divided nation and its current relationship to the European Union, there are
other places from Lebanon to Canada to Burundi where religious sectarian-
ism, secessionist movements, regional loyalties or ethnic tensions complicate
national identities and narratives. Therefore, while the ndings from our
interviews with Germans cannot be extended automatically to other cases, we
suggest that similar patterns are possible perhaps even likely in other
places. Clearly, further research is needed to investigate whether and to what
extent the ndings in this study can be replicated elsewhere.
What the ndings in this study suggest clearly is that even seemingly clear
expressions or rejections of national pride are usually quite complicated.
Ordinary citizens often experience, understand and express national pride in
their everyday lives in ways that are far more complex than prior studies have
acknowledged. The ways in which individuals express national identities and
their sense of place within the nation can be contradictory and confusing, even
to themselves. Such ambivalence, which has been touched upon in more
general terms in the sociological literature (Merton 1976; Smelser 1998) has
not been attended to adequately within the literature on nations. Even in cases
where one nds startling uniformity in how people dene and understand the
nation (Phillips and Smith 2000), we argue that deeper layers of complexity
exist as a result of the ways in which individuals mediate contradictory
national narratives, histories and state actions as they dene their own
relationships to the nation. Some citizens understandings of national pride
are thus deeply and inextricably intertwined with conicted feelings towards
and/or conscious ambivalence about the nation. Understanding national
identity and national pride requires that we explore in greater depth the
complexity of national pride in individuals lived experiences. Such a
perspective is aligned with recent work on cognitive perspectives on nation-
hood, which suggest that nations, like other categories such as race or

ethnicity, are not things in the world but ways of seeing the world (Brubaker
et al. 2004; 47).
The German case, as we argued in this articles introductory paragraphs,
reveals the ways in which individuals views on the nation may vary from elite
and ofcial perspectives. The Germans we interviewed did not absorb the
prevailing anti-nationalist narrative uniformly, nor did they always express
clear and consistent alternatives to that narrative. They did not t neatly into
predened categories of national identication with impermeable conceptual
and emotional borders; instead, they mediated contradictory emotions across
categories (see also Kiely et al. 2005). Their active interpretation and
interpolation of historical and contemporary narratives and events helps
them to justify their opinions and rationalise inexplicable emotional responses
to national or international threats, tragedies or political issues.
In summary, we contend that individuals cannot be understood to hold
monolithic conceptions of national pride or national identity. Layers of
contradictory and complex understandings of the nation coexist within single
individuals. It may be, at times, a strong and romantic image reecting
attachment to the nation but sometimes it can also be a rejection of that
same image. Additionally, we argue that we ought to focus more system-
atically on the perspectives of ordinary people in our efforts to understand
national pride as advocated by a growing literature on everyday nationhood
(Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008a, 2008b). It is not sufcient, we argue, to look
only at larger state narratives or elite, ofcial or state-wide representations of
national identity. It is critical to understand the processing and reinterpreta-
tion of ofcial narratives by ordinary individuals and the ways in which
those individuals may hold contradictory and complex views. While a larger
body of work on the nation has appropriately recognised the unique position
of the nation-state in convincing its members of the legitimacy of national
pride (demonstrating, for instance, how the state seeks to unite the imagined
community by providing a narrative about pride, creating a national identity
and a context for the collective memory of past wrongdoings), this article
expands this work by recognising the important work that individuals share in
creating the imagined community.
Such an approach also highlights the complex processes that individuals
undergo as they process national narratives and ofcial messages about the
nation. While prior scholarship has tended to position individuals as either
receiving national narratives or resisting those narratives, we suggest that
focusing on the complexity within individuals makes clear that the relation-
ship between individuals and the state is not always or only a linear one.
Individuals interpretations of national narratives, their processing of those
narratives and their relationships to the nation are complex, complicated and
at times contradictory. By incorporating these layers of complexity into our
understanding of how nations are imagined and formed, we contend that a
more complete picture of the processes involved in the construction of nations
and their reimagining over time emerges.

Notes
1 The debate came hard on the heels of several other national debates about the question of German
national identity. See, for instance, CDU entscharft Debatte um Leitkultur, Der Tagesspiegel, 3
November 2000; CDU bleibt bei Begriff der Leitkultur, Berliner Zeitung, 5 November 2001.
2 Dietrich, S., Kein Diener des Volkes, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 March 2001; Fried, N.,
Schroeder zeigt Jurgen Trittin die gelbe Karte, Suddeutsche Zeitung, 21 March 2001; Rudolph,
H., Patrioten auf der Pirsch, Der Tagesspiegel, 20 March 2001. See also Stunde der Patrioten, Der
Tagesspiegel, 20 March 2001. The debate made the news elsewhere in the world as well (see Cohen,
R., Schroeder joins debate, taking side of pride in Germany, New York Times, 20 March 2001).
3 See, for instance, Stunde der Patrioten, Der Tagesspiegel, 20 March 2001; Auch Walter Jens
ist stolz, ein Deutscher zu sein, Berliner Zeitung, 29 March 2001; Stolztrager, Suddeutsche
Zeitung, 21 March 2001. The television station n-tv hosted a show with CDU Vorsitzenden
Wolfgang Schaeuble on the topic: Are you proud to be a German? on 26 March 2001.
4 By ordinary individuals, we refer here to those normally deemed to be on the receiving end of
state, institutional and intellectual efforts to shape national identity, as compared to elites or
intellectuals. We specically contrast what these ordinary citizens say with the public statements
of elites. While elites may also struggle in private with complex understandings of national
identity, our data do not include interviews with elites and therefore we are unable to discuss how
elites might discuss the nation in private. For recent research on the distinction between public
and private assertions of national identity, see Gill (2005).
5 For a notable exception, see Suny and Kennedy (1999).
6 See also Oschlies, R., CSU: Rau fehlt der Nationalstolz, Der Tagesspiegel, 20 March 2001.
7 For a greater understanding of the complexities behind the categories of ethnic and non-
ethnic Germans, see Miller-Idriss (2009), Peck (1996) and Rathzel (1990).
8 We recognise that a number of key words such as Stolz, Patriotismus, Patriot, Nation,
Deutschland [pride, patriotism, patriot, nation, Germany] have a different signicance in English
than in German (particularly because of the burdens of Nazism). Therefore, we were sensitive to
the usage of such words in the respondents answers and noted, where appropriate, points at
which such terminology took on a particularly weighty or meaningful signicance. In all cases we
translate words consistently (for example, we always translate Stolz as pride).
9 See Beste et al. (2001) for such semantic distinctions in a German national opinion survey on pride.
10 It should be noted that other Germans used the American model of national pride as an
example of what Germans should not be like (Rothenberg 2002).
11 Given the context here, it appears that the past refers to previous World Cup games rather
than German history.
12 Indeed, that complexity was visible if one looked closely enough. Throughout Berlin, many of
those ag-waving Germans carried former East German ags that symbolised, on a practical
level, their support for a former East German on the national team and, on the political level, their
feelings of continued alienation from both the national political structure and their former West
German compatriots. At a quick glance, all ag-wavers seemed in unison when it came to support
of the Germans, but a longer look complicated this image signicantly in ways that reveal the
layers of complexity within individuals expressions of national loyalty or pride.
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Ambivalence, Pride and Shame in German Nationalism

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Ambivalence, Pride and Shame in German Nationalism

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NATIONS AND J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N AS

Ambivalence, pride and shame:

ABSTRACT. This article examines complex everyday expressions and understand-

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Institutional and individual perspectives on nationhood

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ag-raising ceremonies or the collective performance of national anthems in

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everyday experiences that has attended directly to nationalism or national

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presented pride as an unwelcome or even right-wing extremist expression of

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Data and methodology

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Findings and discussion

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empirical measurements or approaches that do not allow respondents to

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a certain we-feeling . . . because a person cant exist without a we-feeling, clearly. A

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These respondents expressed a very complicated afnity for their nation. In

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construction that is perpetually ongoing. Listening to Germans speak about

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Abrams, L. and Brown, C. 2010. A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland.

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Apple, M. 1995. Education and Power. New York: Routledge.

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