National identity and national history: role of historical narratives on the identity construction
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Over three studies (qualitative, survey, and experimental research) in two industrialised countries with different cultural and historical backgrounds, Korea and Australia, the thesis provides evidence that people's perceptions of national history play an important role in constructing national identity.The thesis showed that people's national identification takes on different meanings due to a national difference in history of Korea and Australia, and because of individual differences in perceptions of their nation's past history, especially the extent to which their national history was seen to have a coherent continuous structure.In order to examine more richly textured psychological meaning of national history, the thesis examined people's perception of culturally specific contents of their national history, and established that there are multiple narratives by which people understand their national history in both Korea and Australia.Two main historical narratives were national progress (narrating political or economic developments) and cultural contrast (narrating conflicts between the tradition and modernity) narratives.The national progress narrative, however, took a different form in Korea and Australia: economic development was emphasized in Korea, whereas social progress was emphasized in Australia.Moreover, these historical narratives play a role in the construction of national identification.That is, different historical narratives encourage people to pay attention to different aspects of national history, leading them to construct their national identity differently.It was revealed that the evaluation of social and economic changes contributed to national identification positively in the national progress narrative, but negatively in the cultural contrast narrative.Finally, the thesis demonstrated that people's perception of national history is susceptible to situational cues to some extent, resulting in situational variability in identity construction.People's historical perceptions could be manipulated with an exposure to different historical narratives, which in turn affected the process of identity construction.These findings shed light on the important and dynamic role of people's perception of national history in the construction of national identity.
Author: Shang‐Hui Shin
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1482174243