Signs of Nations Studies in the Political Semiotics of Self and Other in Contemporary European Nationalism

Signs of Nations presents a comprehensive diagnosis of national identity in the context of European integration, focussing on Britain, Denmark and Germany in comparative light. Seeing nationalism as a dual structure ? part invention and discourse, part sentiment and popular imagination ? the author applies a semiotic approach to the understanding of nationalism, informed by an interdisciplinary methodology and based on detailed reading of original data. Providing illuminating insights into the mental archaeology of national and 'European' orientations, these in-depth readings are a corrective to more traditional ways of inferring the structure of 'imagined communities' from public discourses and attitude surveys. Among the findings of the book are that the three national identities are significantly different in their basic value patterns; that the implosion of the political dimension of nationalism in Britain and Germany is catapulting these identities into feelings of hopelessness and more local sympathies; and that European nationalism is undergoing a process of maturation, mediated through increasing discontinuities between state and nation.