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The author argues that the classical distinction between civic and ethnic forms of national identity has proved too schematic to come to terms with the dynamic nature of social and political processes. This has caused difficulties particularly for those historians and social scientists studying particular national movements rather than concentrating on a handful of thinkers and intellectuals or taking a broadly comparative approach. As an alternative to the classical model, the author proposes to distinguish between, on the one hand, the mechanisms which social actors use as they reconstruct the boundaries of national identity at a particular point in time; and on the other, the symbolic resources upon which they draw when they reconstruct these boundaries. (Nations and Nationalism, ECMI)

Examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada & Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified: (1) the nationalization of nature portrays particular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity; & (2) the naturalization of the nation rests on a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. Two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in Canada & Switzerland are identified: (A) the affinity between wild landscape & the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature; & (B) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity & the polyethnic composition of the two societies. 98 References. Adapted from the source document.