Coping with deviance

Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century

Bibliographic Data

ID6306604
AuthorsOliver Zimmer (0000-0002-1133-5821, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume17
Issue4
Pages756-774
Publication date2011-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNations and Nationalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1345-5078 • E-ISSN: 1469-8129
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00518.x
OpenAlexW2161953939
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited14

This article highlights two processes that shaped Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century. The first concerns the competition between different nation-states and the nationalist visions these contests engendered. In a Europe dominated by the norm of the culturally and ethnically homogenous nation, the Swiss authorities, public intellectuals and various political representatives were desperate to display an image of national authenticity to the outside world. The result was a nationalism that combined voluntaristic and organic elements. In the second and main part of this article, the focus turns on citizenship; it is conceived not only as a social and legal institution, but also as a cognitive prism through which people defined their membership in the national community. Remarkably, the authority in granting national citizenship to foreign nationals remained firmly in the hands of the cantons and, above all, the Swiss municipalities. In practical terms, this meant that the Gemeinde provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which nationhood was primarily experienced, imagined and defined. While Switzerland represents a particularly strong case of a communalist polity, it should not be treated as unique. Instead, it should alert us to a potentially fertile yet little-explored area of research: what might be called the communal embededdness of the national(ist) imagination

Citizenship · Ideology · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Central European national history · European Political History Analysis · Gender Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Law

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