Illustrations

PREFACE

Our understanding of the history, culture and politics of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia is enhanced by an investigation into the affiliations that transcend religious, linguistic and national bonds. In modern Europe, countries such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Austria and, more recently, Germany, Italy and Spain possess a complex identity connected to a continuous process of immigration. If we consider Europe as a whole, we notice that it is characterised by linguistic and ideological interchange, parallels between religious traditions and a shared notion of civilisation and codes of behaviour passed down through history as evidence of a common cultural heritage.1 All these reflect the fluid identity of individuals, groups and nations. The discovery of these shared characteristics enables us to reject the doctrine of our Romantic predecessors and their emphasis on what divides, versus what unites us. We understand that both individual and collective identity are heterogeneous rather than specific, viewing them through the prism of plurality instead of singularity. The relationship between the local and the universal prompts us to be wary of coercive ideologies promoted by majority or minority groups.

Marc Bloch has described history as the sum of countless fruitful encounters between people and the narrative of their multiple experiences. He adds that life and science have been enriched by these brotherly connections. In any case, the rewriting of history cannot draw only on a single interpretation, a so-called ‘accurate story’, because there are multiple versions of the past.2 History is not a linear narrative, but a collection of interconnected stories. In his study on the heterogeneity of Central European cultures, Moritz Csáky suggests it is important to take into consideration contradictory dates, facts and ideas and those that occurred through chance. His definition of collective identity takes into account the complexity of social, political and cultural life, implying that to conceptualise the past and the present, we must include diverse elements that go beyond the political and national as they may contradict communitarian and ‘distinctly national’ ideas.

The study of the evolution and fluid connotations of concepts such as freedom, culture, identity, community, people, nation, homeland, history, ideology and politics alerts us to the way language and ideas have been perpetually renewed as a result of social and political dynamics over the past two centuries.

By studying the ever-changing connotations of these terms, we become aware of the way that a new society appropriates such concepts and, by reinventing them, replaces the old order and undermines its credibility. By interrogating and evaluating its history, a society reconstructs itself. The theoretical legacy of the past is investigated by decoding such concepts and their equivalents so they can be reconsidered from the perspective of contemporary social science. For example, the concepts of kin, people and nation have taken on different connotations during various historical periods and reflected moments of emancipation, glory and tragedy. The majority of these connotations were not developed solely in the political realm, but were shaped by cultural and social phenomena in a specific context. As the discourse of identity is reinvented from one decade to another – for example, there has been a transition from the concept of the nation to the idea of a unified Europe – it will require fresh historical, political, philosophical and anthropological interpretations.

There are many linguistic cultures that analyse the diverse meanings of concepts, language and messages. For example, a