Reconfiguring the Nation: Contesting History and Identity in a Globalizing World

The globalizing world is bearing witness to heated contests over national identity in post colonial states whose nation building projects are still crystallizing. Based on the insight that we are confronted with a second wave of nation building in the globalizing, post colonial world, one which is shaping an emerging world order in which the West will have to share the stage with rising, non Western actors, a new approach entitled Critical Junctures Theory has been developed as a consequence of funding support for this project. A Special Issue of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations (IJIR) on Critical Junctures Theory is now in press, including an introduction to the new theory and a pilot case study focusing on national development in Turkey, Indonesia, and New Zealand in which revisionist actors, empowered by globalizing conditions, have been attempting to reconfigure present identities and future pathways by citing the past, thus building new configurations of trust and political power. Other articles in the IJIR Special Issue examined nation building in Singapore, the subordination of the European Union to national interests in EU nation civic and history texts, on going ideological and dialogical confrontations in Israel and Palestine, and other topics relevant to the topic of nation building and trust building under conditions of globalization and societal change. Additionally, current empirical research on Indonesian national identity was funded, as well as an examination of enlightenment discourses used to manage the historical and contemporary colonization of New Zealand M ori by the British, together with a summary Handbook Chapter on colonization from the perspective of Critical Junctures Theory. Prepared in collaboration with Baheshir University, Istanbul, Turkey and Arizona State University, Tempe.