Cultural production and nationalism
Cultural production and nationalism refers to the complex relationships between cultural forms and the ideological force of nationalism.
Cultural production (cf. cultural reproduction) is the social processes involved in the creation and perpetuation of cultural forms, values, practices, and shared understandings.[1] Cultural forms can include literature, visual arts, music, and scholarship; in the 19th century, nationalism was an especially potent influence on all of these fields.
19th Century[edit]
In the 19th century, established national groups would use cultural productions to assert and strengthen a sense of national unity and destiny. Likewise, less politically-consolidated groups, especially those pursuing the goal of nationhood, used these productions in the same ways, though often with a note of determination.
Natural admiration for excellence and justifiable pride in a predecessor's achievements is sometimes difficult to sort out from other intentions. Dante was a great poet, the Societa Dantesca Italiana did great work in editing and publishing a usable and affordable text, but the Divine Comedy was certainly used by the newly-unified Italian government to encourage a more homogeneous, Tuscan-influenced dialect for the whole peninsula.
Academia[edit]
This relationship between ideology and serious work is particularly ambiguous in the academic fields of historical importance. As much as 19th-century science is often treated as the inventor of conceptions of evolution and race, which had serious negative (political and social) consequences, many 19th-century historians pursued what they intended as reasonably objective research projects in the history of their own and other regions, either to end by themselves using the results to support nationalistic goals or to see their work used that way by others.
More politically-consolidated nations sponsored historical research projects that produced results of permanent value—such as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica ("Monuments of German History", MGH) project. Running through hundreds of volumes (and is still publishing), the MGH is a vast series of edited primary source material essential for scholarly work on late antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, the term "German" in the title was interpreted in the broadest possible sense, and its initial royal patronage made the connection clear between a perceived unity of Germanness in history and 19th-century Germanness.
Other cultural forms[edit]
Literature included:
- the Kalevala
- Ossian
- Dante
- folklore collections
- the Brothers Grimm
Visual arts included:
- the Nazarene movement
- Gothic revival
- art history and nationalism
Music included:
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ Chandler, Daniel, and Rod Munday. 2011. "cultural production." In A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford University Press, as adapted in "cultural production." Oxford Reference.
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