| | | i }s. L BEING DANISH Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life Richard Jenkins Cape ft Paasity i Gey hf a | 17 7 Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen 2012lentigy in Bary Life published 2011 8 and Richard Jenkins, 2012 (Copy editor: Jordy Findaais Cover design: Eling Lynder Setin Charter and printed by Narayana Press ISBN 978 87 635 3841 1 ‘Museum Tusewlanum Press 126 Njalsgede 1DK.2300 Copenhegen § Denar vewnnmpide ESS rece corosstONE ETHNICITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE HIS STUDY OF EVERYDAY life in the Danish town of Skive ~ an approxi- mate Anglophone pronunciation of which is ‘Skeeva’~ is based in the first {instance on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork that I carried out there between 1996 and 1998. Fieldwork often never really ends, however, and have made many short trips back and forth to Skive since. A further eight ‘weeks in Denmark, spent largely in Copenhagen, in the springs of 2008 and 2009, enabled me to bring myself up to date in terms of recent national politics and policy-making, From its earliest inception, the basic aim of the research was to explore ‘the processes and situations — both routine and more exceptional - by and in ‘which ethnic identifications are produced and reproduced and, more gener- ally, the place and significance of ethnicity in local people's lives. In eonerete terms, this general interest developed into the collection of data about some specific topics: + internal differentiation within Denmark; + the relationship between local and national identification; + the ‘question of Europe’; ‘+ the national symbolism of flag and monarchy; “+ the state's burecucratisation and oversight of identity; + the role of childcare and education in forming people who know how to ‘be Danish’; + the contribution of Christianity to ‘being Danish’; and«= the implications, in a place such as Skive, of the relatively recent per» manent settlement of significant numbers of visibly different, largely Islamic refugees. rhe emphasis throughout has been on looking at ‘being Danish’ as something that people dio, in the course of their everyday lives. THmpirical material does not stand alone, however: social theory informs the discussion at every turn, In the first instance, theoretical considerations shaped and steered the field research (insofar as an uncertain enterprise such ws field research can be steered). In the second, theory provies the frame~ ‘work within which the material has been analysed and presented. The pur- pose of socal theory is to help us to understand the heman world: the word ds made, imbued with meening, and experienced by human beings, the world from a human point of view. In trying to understand this human world, so- ology aiid anthropology have consistently explored two over-arching tho» ‘retical interests: relationships between individuals and the collectivities to ‘Which they belong, on the one hand, and sociel change, on the other (Jenkins 2002a: 15-38). Bach of these themes looms large in this study. Because these ‘core themes are matters of real people in real situations, doing real things, in concert or conflict with each other, theory should be grounded in gener~ ‘alisations about the reel practices of real people. Generalisations of this kind allow us to make meaningful comparisons between actual times and places, ‘and becween people who, on the face of things, live very different lives. “The great pioneer social theorists ~ Mars, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, and ‘Mead — knew that theory's purpose is to help us to understand humans in. their actual relationships with other humans; this ean only be done on the ‘basis of systematic empirical inquiry: The most outstanding social theorists” of recent times ~ Erving Goffman, Frederik Barth, Mary Douglas, Pierre Bourdieu, Dorothy Smith and Clifford Geertz, to nominate a personal short list have recognised this, (0. This does not mean that theory is merely the servant of empirical research, but, cathe, that the ideal relationship between. the two is reciprocal and close, in which they shape and reshape each other. “This is the spirit in whieh { have approached this study of ethnicity in the ‘everyday lives of Danes. BRING DANISH A basic model of ethnicity Tdentifcation is the lasifcation of people, the everyday business of ‘wht! upon which lo depends wing vat’ whe, we ae jo this, the human world as we now it would be impossible of cus veal and nonerbal, entiation combines ea of segs and iference ~ closeness and distance ~n ode to leit self and ovhers on a ‘sola map’ of relationships and colletivtes. Iisa double edged imagina, tive proces, in tha it imbues the human world with meaning, through elas. sileation, and simultancously constitutes that world as something to closiy Inimagining the human word we erate something tha, ins comseauenes renee neers ee eer en nee ere nT eae ‘As a generic human process, identification operates in broadly simil ways whether individually or collocively:identiies emerge ott ofthe inter. action between internal selfdentifeation or group identifeation, on the one hand, andthe external categorisation done by others, onthe othet Theres no such thing as unilateral identification: chores aay at least an aulence, hich can validate selfidentieation or not. Nors sel ot group identifica tion paramount. Imbalances in power and access to resources ~ arguably the norma situation in the human world ~ mean thet sometimes external ceo cnc the day, to the point where it is incernalised by those Ethnicity was defined by Barth in 1969 as ‘the social organisation of cul: ture difference’, It is identification on the basis of membership of collectivities that are differentiated from each other by shared ‘ways of life! ot ‘culture’ language, knowledge, belies, customs, everyday practices, artefacts, and s0 on, This is not a matter of ‘objective’ similarities and diferences — ls of traits that characterise this or that ethnie group ~ but, rather, a matter of the clasifcations of ‘who's who! that are current among the patilpant hi sey sao, Tha groupe that agente very sma anon observer my beaming the mos: orl in procaining he ehisdiance wm each other, and vice versa, Norwegians and Danes, for example, might appear to be ‘the same’ to an anthropologist from Mars, but that is not quite how they see each other /ERYDAY LIFE 7‘There is a substantial middle ground of sociological and anthropological agreement about ethnicity. Allowing for some individual difference of opinion and emphasis among the authors concemed, it is possible to formulate & ‘basic mode! of ethnicity UJenkins 2008a: 14) that commands a considerable amount of support: [Ethnicity is a matter of perceived ‘cultura’ differences and similarities. Iithnicity is © process of ethnic identification; ethnicity is nota ‘thing’ that people ‘have. Hehnic identification is done and done again, produced and reproduced, made and remade, during interaction, particularly, dlthougt not exchisively, interaction between people who identify each other as members of different groups. + Individually or collectively, change to ethnic identification is possible, However, ethnic identifications are not infinitely malleable or lui, ether: a range of factors, depencting on context, may make ethnic identification more or less robust. «+ Tchnicidentilicaton is simltaneously individual and collective, In Geert’s swords, ethnicity is ‘personal identity collecively ratified and publicly expressed’ (1973: 268). Put another way, if ethnic group identification id not aso involve personal self-dentiication, there would probably be nothing to talk about. “This is the social constructionist perspective on ethnicity that informs this study. As a broad intellectual framework it might almost be called the ‘normal science’ paradigm in the field. Several other supplementary perspectives on ethnicity, which do not command quite such general agreement, deserve a brief mention because they informed the Danish research and figure in my other writings on the subject (lenkins 2002b, 20084): + Bthnicity locates people in time; there is always a collective narrative, a history. In this context, ‘history’ includes both what did happen ~ ac cording to the best lights of historical research ~ and what is believed to hhave happen 4 ‘BEING DANTSI Group identification is symbolically constructed, The arbitrary characte of symbols, and their capacity to condense conflicting meanings any narratives, enable people with diferent beliefs and underscandings the world, who may even behave very differently, to identify with share symbols (Cohen 1985). Thus ethnic group identification does not neces sitate consensus or conformity In addition to its routine significance in everyday processes of identifica tion, external categorisation is central tothe production and reproduction of ethnic hierarchy and inequality: Typically working through the alloca tion of resources or penalties, categorisation by powerful Others shape the experience and meaning of being an ‘%X' or a ‘Y. Categorisation ear even shape the emergence and persistence of particular ethnie grou identifications, as in colonial and post-colonial Aftica and India (Coht 1988: 224-54; Lents 1995, 2000). + The robustness and resilience of ethnic identification i, in part atleast a reflection of the salience of ethnicity during the eetly socialisation o: children, If children grow up in a context in which ethnic identificaior is a visible and tangible presence in their lives, the strong likelihood ix that for them ethnicity will be a primary identification (Jenkins 2008b 84-8), somewhat stubborn and resistant to change + We can distinguish hetween nominal and virtual ethnic identification: the first is the name, in this context ‘Danish’, and the second the experience of being identified, by self and others, as Danish, There are two sides te this, one historical, the other a matter of diversity. Being Denish’ in 1864 ‘was not the same as ‘being Danish’ in 1920, 1940, 1945, 1973, 1992 ot 2005: nominal identification may endure over time but the virtualities of identification change, In addition, at any one time, individual Danes experiences of being Danish, and what that means to them, will difer, at least slightly. I will return to these issues in the closing chapter. Other issues on the sociological and anthropological agenda with respect to ethnicity offer considerable scope for disagreement. Three, in particula, have a place in this discussion, because they provide this account of being Danish? with empirical and analytical points of departure, These are: first, ETMNICITY IN GVBRYDAY LIFE 5the relationship of ethnicity to other similar idioms of identification; second, the influence of ethnic identification on behaviour; and third, the nature of ethnic groups. I will briefly discuss each of these in turn. Idioms of ethnic identification What counts as ethnic? What counts as ‘cultura? similarity and difference? Pat of the answer to that question appears to be obvious in everyday com- mon sense, albeit taken for granted and not thought-through: ‘everyone? would probably agree that Sikhs, Zilus, and Inuit, for example, aze ethnic groups (although being asked to explain why might be a more difficult ‘question}. But what about Britons and Danes, for example: are they ethnic groups? Althotigh many Britons and Danes might reject being described as ‘ethnics’, there is considerable sociological and anthropological agreement that national identities axe, in fact, variations on the ethnic theme (e.g. Eriksen 2002). What, however, of other idioms of collective identification that might also be thought to involve some differentiation and assimilation along lines of ‘culture’? Thave argued elsewhere that there is a continuum of idioms of collective identification, from the very local and communal to the regional and na- tional, all of which may involve notions of ‘ways of life’ or ‘culture’ and can, therefore, defensibly be regarded as ‘ethnic’ (Jenkins 2002, 20082: 42-53). Although on the face of things this continuum appears to be primarily a ‘matter of territorial scale and abstraction, the significance of land and space in ethnic identification is well understood; even diasporas are defined by their relationships to lost homelands. This suggests that if we do not locate these varied idioms of identification on a shared continuum, we risk putting ethnicity into arbitrary quarantine, set apart from a host of other identities ‘out of which it is constructed in everyday life and to which it contributes. ‘The data presented in Chapters ‘Three and Four make empirical sense out of this theoretical proposition. ‘The relationship between ethnicity and ‘race’ is a more problematic issue. Although ‘race’ appears to invoke ‘objective’ biological embodiment and her! 2 BEING DANISH tage as its primary criterion of identification, rather than ‘culture’, the eth- nographic and historieal records tell different story. The generic concept of ‘race’ is every bit the ‘cultural’ product of a specific time and context, as are the beliefs and knowledges with which it is associated. What's more, specific ‘racial’ categorisations do not always depend on criteria of visible difference (otherwise Nazi Germany, for example, would not have needed to go to such great lengths to establish the Sewishness’ of some of its vietims). Not do ap- parent visual differences always produce ‘race’: itis only ever particular vis- ible differences (there is no ‘race’ of ‘red-haired people with green eyes, for example), Pethaps most telling, differences in ‘ways of life’ are always part of ‘racial’ categorisations (hence sippery euphemisms such as ‘ethnic minor. ity), ‘Race’ and ethnicity are thus not easy to disentangle: historically and in contemporary everyday life there are many good reasons to define ‘race! as a context-specific register of ethnic identification, albeit, perhaps, dispropor- tionately constructed by extemal categorisation (Jenkins 2008a: 77-86), A question that I posed eatlier - are Britons and Danes, for example, ‘ethnic groups? — brings into sharper focus the relationship between ‘race? and the other idioms of ethnic identification that I have been discussing, ‘It was implicit that the question only applied to ‘white' Britons and Danes: after all, non-white’ Britons and Danes are, by everyday, popular definition, definitively ‘ethnic. Throughout this book I treat ‘white’ Danes as an ethnic group, and refer to them as ‘ethnic Danes.. The inverted commas are there as a reminder that not all Danes will accept this expression; nonetheless, 1 cannot think of a better expression to capture the realities of everyday identification in Denmark, ‘The affinities between idioms of ethnic identification such as locality, com- ‘munity, region, nation, and ‘tace’ become even clearer if we look at ideologies lentification. An ideology is a body of propositions ~ perhaps religious, political, or scientific ~ that purports to both describe the world as itis and also, crucially as it should be. Ideologies do not have to be intellectual or formal: there are many everyday ideologies. Ideologies of ethnic identifice- tion can include localism, regionalism, nationalism, and racism, which may often draw on and feed off each other (Jenkins 2008a: 86-9). All of these will appear in the chapters that follow. Evangierry IN EVERYDAY LIME 7Motives and interests oes ethnicity matter? Is ethnic identification a human prime moves, that shapes, or even causes, human behaviour? Brubaker and MaleSevié have zecently, and independently, expressed serious doubts on this score. Ina ‘world in which it may be taken for granted, as self-evident, that a person’s «ethnicity explains or justifies his or her actions, no matter hovr foul, scepti- cism oa this score is reasonable. This scepticisin comes in two versions that are particularly relevant here. The frst says that ‘identity’ is, at best, a useftl tactical smokescreen behind which Lurk other, less noble motivations (the pursuit of, usually base, interests), The second says that, despite the high public visibility of ethnic, and particularly national, identity in polities, in the media, and in the construction and organisation of public space, when we look at everyday realities, considerations of ethnicity or national identity do not seem to be at the forefront of what ‘ordinary’ people do. With respect to motivations, there is an immediate problem, in that individual motivations are difficult to discern with confidence.* Even. in intimate or long established close relationships, our significant others can surprise us, and regularly do. In part, this i the well-known epistemological issue of ‘other minds’, Although we can make reasonable, informed working inferences about what others are thinking ~ on the evidence of what they say and their other actions ~ we can do no better than that. That we may appear, at least to ourselves, to be right much of the time doesn’t solve the problem. The sheer complexity of human behaviour makes a farther contribution to the difficulty, Individual behaviour is a cocktail of conscious decision-making, thoughtless habit and emotional drives, that is shaped by knowledge, world-view, means-end calculations, health and well-being, access to resources, the impact of other people’s behaviour, and other fac- tors besides. It is not easy to disentangle these, even if one could perceive them all clearly and accurately. Finally, the fact that people regularly say ‘one thing but do another further muddies the waters when it comes to gauging their motives. So, expressing confidence about why people do things - what they are really doing - is, at best, a matter of probabilities; particularly when their account oftheir actions conflicts with the anthropologist’ or sociologist’s ac- count, This isn’t to say that anthropology and sociology must be subordinate to comimon sense, or that we are debarred from reaching conclusions about ‘iy people do this or that (Jenkins 2002a: 27-31), but simply that, as social scientists, we should be aware of the epistemological issues and be as clear as possible about the grounds for our analyses and explanations. This comes into relief in discussions about which matters most, the apparent imperatives of identity or the pursuit of other interests.* To offer just two examples: were the actions of the Serbian government during the early 1990s, or of Ulster Protestants over many years, motivated by irresistible desires to preserve the ‘Serbian nation’ or the ‘Protestant people of Ulster”? Or do factors such as the pursuit of economic interests or the attempted preservation of power by local élites explain events better? In fact, these may be the wrong questions. It isn’t clear that identifica- tion and interests, of whatever kind, can easily be separated. How I identify myself has a bearing on how I define my interests. How I define my interests ‘may encourage me to identify myself in particular ways. How other people identify me has a bearing on how they define my interests, and, indeed, their own interests, My pursuit of particular interests might cause me to be identified in this way or that by others, How I identify others may have a bearing on which interests I pursue, And so on. Even the calculated pursuit of individual material advantage - perhaps the defining case of ‘naked? inter est — cannot be understood without also considering organisational and other identifications, such as occupation, job, status and reputation, end shared understandings of desired outcomes and optimal behaviour that are closely related to identifications such as ‘rich’ ot ‘poor’, Allowing for the above, individuals may sometimes pursue interests that ‘appear to run counter to their public identification(s), ethnic or otherwise; people with the ‘same’ identities may profess to have very different interests; sometimes a person’s pursuit of individual interests may conflict with theie collective identification(s). The basic point is that classifications of self and ‘others ~ in this case, ethnic identifications - can never be utterly disinterest- ed; they are potentially too consequential for that. In this sense, ifmo other, ‘identification and the specification and pursuit of individual and collective betnniory iy evaRvnAY Tare 7cerests ate likely to be reciprocally entailed in each other, How they stand inrelationship to each other is, however, a matter for empirical investigation, fs in my account ofthe Danish 1992 European Union referendum in Chapter Five, Moving on to the asymmetry between the ordinary lives of ordinary people, for whom ethnicity or retion may not seem to have much experi ‘ental significance, end the high-profile poiticel salience of those identifica: tions and their attendant ideologies, the above caveats about motives and interests apply: Brubaker et als superb detailed study (2006) of relations between ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Romanians in the Romanian town of Cluj seems to document a disjuncture between the passion and intensity of the public polities of ethnicity and the business and routines of everyday life. in many respects, much the same might be said for the present study of Skive, in Denmark. In neither case, however, are matters quite that simple. in the frst place, lets take Brubaker's argument ~ and mine, summarised above —that ethnicity is a cognitive matter, producing and reproducing local Classifications of ‘who's who!. If this isthe case, then shared maps of ‘who's who’ ave as much a part of public politics as they are of the everyday human world, There are not two separate discourses, one ideological, political and public, the other mandane and everyday, one of which impinges ~ or not = on the other. Nor are there two separate institutional or experiential spheres: ethno-nationalist polities are part of everyday life. In the second place, although knowing who's who in ethnic cerms might not look ag if it is hugely important in everyday life, it actually facilitates or- inary, mundane interaction. This might not always be obvious ~ i probably ‘works best when it isn’t ~ but the avoidance of sensitive issues and conflict, and the maintenance of civil inter-ethnic interaction and relationships, is to some extent dependent on being able to classify others ethnically Ifyou don't know to whom you're talking, how can you avoid saying the wrong thing? Mote basically, since ‘who's who is bound up with ‘what's what ~ the everyday business of the human world ~ daily life simply wouldn’t be possible without some sense of the identities of self and others, which includes ethnicity. In the third place, everyday life is not homogeneous. Identification is something that people do, rather than ‘have’, and it is therefore not fixed. perNa DANISH Despite the apparent consistency and definiteness of public discourses and official messages about identity in practice ethnic and national identifleat are likely, to some extent, to be situationally negotiated. How one identies and presents oneself, or identifies others, may vary from context to context, in a number of respects. Whether, and to what degree, ethnic identification is salient at all is context-variable. Given complex and related identifica- tory idioms of locality, community, region, nation and ‘race’, which of these identifications takes centre stage may also vary. In one context, an individual may most visibly be a Clujean townsman, in another an ethnic Hungarian, in yet another a Romanian citizen, And ethnicity doesn't exist in isolation, An individual's other (non-ethnic) identifications may come into play in diferent ‘ways in different settings, potentially silencing or amplifying ethnicity in the performance of the moment. This doesn’t mean that there is no consistent personal identity; it simply suggests that identification is best understood as multifaceted, ‘The discussion in this section suggests that the most sensible questions are not whether ethnicity matters in everyday life, or whether it shapes behaviour, but, rathes, how much does it mater ~ and it may not ~ and in whac ways? “These are not questions to which general theoretical answers can be given. As in Brubaker’s Romanian study, and the present Danish one, they can only be answered empirically in local contexts. Those contexts have histories, and history matters. Everyday life in Cluj or Skive today is very different from what it was in 1944, when the Germans occupied both towns. Cluj at that time was called Kolosvar, and its Jewish townspeople were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. Skive had no Jews. Who knows what either town will look like in 2044? Ethnic groups and boundaries _ a 2 collection of anthropological essays called Bthnic Groups and Boundaries appeared, edited by Fredsik arth. The Tntoduction (Barth 1969) ‘among the most influential theoretical statements in the field. Swimming against the current of the conventional wisdom of the time, this volumeargued that ethnicity is, potentially at least, negotiable. It is produced and reproduced during interaction at and across ethnic boundaries: self-identi- fication and the categorisation of Others are effectively one process. Senses of ethnic identification emerge while actors are going ebout their ordinary everyday ‘non ethnic’ business. This Barthian model is fundemental to ‘the basic model of ethnicity’ that informs the present study. Barth challenged the model of definite, clear-cut corporate groups that dominated anthropology and sociology at the time, He noted that mem- bers come and go between groups; that group boundaries are osmotic, not watertight; and that groups persist despite the continuous turnover of their memberships through birth and death, or recruitment and resignation, Membership turnover is, in fact, normal. What constitutes an ethnic group is not internal cultural similarity, but the sense that members have of theiz cultural difference from members of other groups. He later revisited the last point (Barth 1994), recognising that shared ‘cultural stuff, and a sense of that sharing, also contributes to ethnic identification. However, because much of the research subsequently inspired by Barth’s work concentrated ‘on boundaries and boundary maintenance, rather than on problematising the nature of groups, a reified, corporate model of ethnic groups lingered al ‘most by default (lenkins 2008a: 21-2). Following Barth's original argument, however, group boundaries and groups themselves should be understood as perpetually emergent produets of interaction and, as such, somewhat fuzzy” around the edges. ‘These issues have been revived recently, most visibly in Brubaker’s no- tion of ‘ethnicity without groups’.” He argues that ethnicity cannot be the influential force that many suppose it to be, because ethnic groups as they are conceptualised in social science ~ as bounded, internally homogeneous and clearly differentiated from other groups - simply do not exist, What do exist in ‘ethnic situations’, according to Brubaker, are individuals (who may be political ethnic entrepreneurs), organisations (which may identify them- selves in ethnic terms), and ‘groupness’ (the common-sense, often ideological belief in the reality of ethnic groups). The issue here is lergely « matter of definitions. Ethnic groups in the mould of the definition that Brubaker criticises probably do not exist; cer- n tainly there is no place for them in the model of ethnicity that frames the present account. But that is not to say that ethnic groups do not exist. 1f 1a phenomenon is believed to be real, that belief will have some influence on behaviour, and it therefore has real consequences, and some reality. In this social constructivist sense, the reality of an ethnic group is constituted precisely in and by ‘groupness’, and all communities are ‘imagined commu. nities’ (Anderson 1983). This broad perspective accords with another, more minimal social science model ~ which is widely accepted, and chimes with Barth's take on the matter — in which a group is simply a human collectivity the members of which recognise its existence and their membership of it, ‘There are no implications of homogeneity, definite boundaries, ot collec- tive action, Krom the point of view of this definition, Brubaker’s distinction between apparently non-existent ‘groups’ and apparently real ‘groupness? makes little sense, ‘Taking further Brubaker’s observations about the reality and roles of en- trepreneurs and organisations ~ which are, after all, groups, and relatively clearly bounded groups at that ~ the point, given a constructivist perspective con the social realty of groups, is to explore empirically the processes whereby ethnie groups, and ‘groupness’, are put together, and what their significance is in context. A group does not just happen: whether itis an ethnic organisation ‘or a more amorphous ethnic neighbourhood or network, itis not a naturally ‘occurring phenomenon, it has to be continuously made and remade. How this is achieved in practice will vary from case to case, and is a matter for systematic inquiry rather than a priori theoretical specification, ‘The fact that this is what Brubaker and his collaborators actually do in their Romanian study suggests that it is not possible simply to define away the social reality of ethnic groups. Social groups of all kinds must be kept in their proper analytical place — as ill-defined, fuzzy, practical and symbolic ‘constructs ~ but their ‘social reality’ still has to be respected, and their pro- duction and reproduction investigated. This is what 1 intend to with respect to ‘ethnic Danes’ runicrry 16 BYBRYDAY Line iEveryday life ‘The confidence with which Ihave talked about ‘everyday life’ in this chapter so far might suggest that itis a straightforward concept, the meaning and use of which is clear and uncontroversial within sociology and anthropology. ‘And, indeed, many of the sociologists and anthropologists who discuss ‘every- day life’ do have a clear idea of what they mean by the expression. Many who use the concept, however, do so without much in the way of reflection or definition. And there are many others who either never think about it at all, of, being concerned with large-scale pattern, wouldn't offer the concept theoretical houseroom. So, we are talking about a particular approach to the study of the human world, which is not always explicitly thought-out and ‘which not all social scientists accept. One intellectual genealogy of the notion of ‘everyday life’ in sociology and anthropology, concerned with documenting and analysing generic micro-social processes, can be traced through Goffman (1969) and Schutz (1967; Schutz and Luckmann 1973), to distant ancestors in the Chicago School and Simmel, Arialtemative lineage, offering a critique of the content of everyday life, can be followed through de Certeau (1984), Heller (1984) and Lefebvre (1991-2005), back to Simmel, Freud and Marx. The notion of ‘everyday life’ also has some affinity with another, often equally taken for granted, notion, which has even deeper historical roots: ‘civil society’ (Geliner 1994; Urry 1981). This is the domain of ordinary citizens and their formal and informal social arrangements, as opposed to the institu- tions of the state (although the distinetion between the two, as we shall sce throughout this book, is not always clear or obvious). Finally, from yet another perspective, we might also highlight the apparent centrality of ethnographic fieldwork to the development of a distinctive ‘everyday life? esearch approach (Gullestad 1989). To bring the processual and the critical together, sociological and an- ‘hropological concerns with everyday life involve the exploration ~ whether ethnographic or not, because there is no monopoly of method ~ of the fine- Stained routines and practices of undramatic, unremarkable lives and settings (for a comprehensive overview, see Highmore 2002). The point of doing so lies in what Gullestad called the routine relationships between ‘small facts end large issues’ in ‘everyday life’. If we wish to understand how the macro patterns that are to be found in large-scale quantitative data are produced and reproduced, how they are made and changed, there is no substitute for exploring in detail the lives of real people, from whose real behaviour those data are an abstraction, To nod in the direction of C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1958), ths is to explore the complex relationships between history and biography, public issues and private milieus, What then of ethnicity in everyday life? As I have already argued in sev- cral places, ‘who's who’ and ‘what's what’ are everyday matters, part of what makes the human world go round. Taken for granted worldviews, unruly emo- tions, personal and shared histories, experience of advantage and disedvati tage, the formal categoties and practices of government and bureaucracy, and the influences of ideology, these all conteibuce to how people, individually and collectively, define and understand who they are and what their interests are, and how they identify others and their interests. These are all everyday mat. ters ~ government, bureaucracy and ideology are no exceptions ~ which are embedded in everyday interactions between people, taking place aver time, within local situations and settings. These situations and settings are often both locally contingent and infin- enced by factors originating elsewhere, over which little or no local control may be possible. As such, they are, at least potentially, sites for change and new departures. Apropos change, the mundane experiential and classifica- tory aspects of ethnicity are an important counterweight to the grand claims of ethnie essentialism and the rhetoric of ideologies of ethnic identification such as nationalism; this is very clear in Brubaker et al’s study (2006) of the gaps, and poor fit, between ‘everyday ethnicity’ and nationalist polities in Cluj. These gaps may open up possibilities Even nationalism ~ puffed up, dressed up, and polished in parades, uni- forms and speechitying as it often is ~ may be an utterly everyday matter Comparing Mauritins and ‘rinidad, Eriksen (1993) contrasts the formal nationalist ideology of the state with the informal nationalism encountered in the daily life of civil society. Writing about Belize, Wilk (1993) contrasts offcal nationalism with the ‘viscera? nationalism revealed in beauty pageants MOIGETY In EVERYDAY LiPE oior cooking. Similarly, Billig (1995) identifies ‘banal nationalism’ ~ although the word ‘banal’ may unintentionally misrepresent the degree to which such things may matter ~ in everyday practices, such as the routine fying of na- tional flags, that remind citizens of their nation, of their place in it, and of {ts place in the world. Well-worn distinctions between nationalism and national identity are also relevant. Borneman (1992), writing about Berlin before the Wall came down, distinguishes ‘nationalism’, a public ideology of identification with the state, from ‘nationness’, a tacit sense of being the kind of person, or living the kind of life, that's appropriate to membership of a particular state ‘At the very micro level, Linde-Laursen talks about the ‘nationalization of trivialities’ (1993): Danes and Swedes ‘do’ everyday life ~ such as washing the dishes ~ differently, and use these distinctions to symbolise national boundaries. When Duara, talking about early-modern China (1993), con- trasts the ‘discursive meaning’ of the nation, presented in ideology and rhetoric, with its ‘symbolic meaning’, found in ‘rituals, festivals, kinship forms, and culinary habits’, he is addressing similar issues. The meaning of a nation for its members must be understood, at least in part, in the context of everyday local relationships between state and civil society Jenkins 2008a: 164-7). Recognising a distinction between state and vernacular nationalisms underscores the importance of maintaining a historical perspective: the relationship between the state and everyday civil society is a product of history, and nations emerge, in part, out of that relationship, as it is worked ‘out in different contexts. However, we must be carefull not to draw a sharp line between everyday life and polities or the state. Politics and the state are the everyday worlds and lives of those who do politics and the state: Politicians, journalists, civil servants, and so on, Not only that, but polities and the state are part of everyone else’s everyday lives: in the media, in the workings of bureaucracy, in conversations on buses and trains, around Junch tables, in bars and cafés, and on family sofas. If nations and states don't mean something in the everyday lives of their members, they don’t ‘mean very much. ‘Everyday nationalisms’ are vernacular local narratives, Perspectives on the world by means of which people make sense of complex 6 BEING passe ‘and changing experiences. National identity can exist in the absence of nationalism; nationalism without some everyday sense of the nation is, however, unthinkable. Paradoxes of identification ‘We need to understand better the everyday relationships between identifica- tions and interests, institutions and emotions, and between different iden- tifications. Once we ask which identities matter, in which ways, how much, and why, we are necessarily dealing with local, everyday matters ~ whether those localities are village streets or corridors of power~ and historical specificities. This is where ethnicity may begin to loom large, in people’s lives and in our analyses. Historically-specific local matters may, however, exemplify generic para- doxes, For example, although similarity and difference are, formally, concep- tual polar opposites, neither makes sense without the other - whether logi- cally or in everyday life — and they come together in identification (Jenkins -2008b: 16-27). Pursuing this line of thought further, one way to understand {dentty and identification is ftom within a basic existential paradox: we stand alone as embodied, self-conscious human individuals, but we can only come to that self-consciousness in the company of others, each of whom is in the same position as we are. Identification builds a bridge between individuality and collectivity, giving every one of us a name and a place to stand on each ic of that divide. Other significant paradoxes ate bound up with identification, As aiready touched upon, the question of whether identifications or interests have more influence on behaviout has something to do with the propensity for people {o say one thing while doing another, or to say and do different things at different times (Holy and Stuchlik 1983: 55-80). That paradox is an every- day commonplace and has many implications for our understanding of ‘Mentifcation. We are all minor shape-shifters, from place to place and time to time, and one aspect of an individuals portfolio of identifications may contradict or sit uncomfortably beside another. As Goffinan showed us in ETiiuarry in avEnYDAY LiPe aehis classic work on impression management and self-presentation (1969), in these respects setting, performance and audience are everything. ‘That ethnic identification is inherently paradoxical is a theme running ‘throughout the present study, Four paradoxes, each of whieh has been intro- duced already, are particularly worth attending to. In no order of precedence, these are: + Although identification is an active process in which we engage through- out our lives - and therefore identity is in prineiple, and regularly in practice, negotiable and changeable — identities that are firmly established and reinforced in early life may be highly resistant to change. This means that while some ethnic identifications, for example, may exhibit a degree of flexibility, others are robust and resistant to change. + Although individual and collective identifications can be understood ‘theoretically in broadly similar ways (enkins 2008b), they are not the same nor are they interchangeable. We cannot read off from one to the other In particular, collective identifications such as ethnicity or national identity do not determine what individuals will say or do in any given circumstance. + Although appeals to attachments such as ‘the nation’ of the ethnic ‘com- munity’ may figure prominently in public rhetoric, the calculation and pursuit of locally defined individual or shared strategies may not sit easily ‘with that rhototie, People often say one thing ~ and may perhaps even ‘mean it - while doing another. + Finally, though ethnic identification of one kind or another may feature in political ideology and rhetoric and other ‘grand narratives, fundamen- tally it is a mundane everyday process, ‘The idol of the nation always ‘has feet of clay If this were not so, ethnicity would not be produced and reproduced at all, and there would be nothing for us to talle about. ‘These paradoxes resonate with generic questions such as what is ethnic ‘identification, and does ethnicity matter? That second question, in particular, needs to be rephrased now, as how, and under which circumstances, does ethaicity come to matter, if it does? Questions and paradoxes such as these wm 0 PaNtsH only make limited, if any, sense in the abstract, Eventually, anthropology and sociology come down to the details of real cases. In this chapter I have set out a general theoretical framework within which wwe can understand better the nature of ethnicivy, and how it works, in real life settings. In addition, { have highlighted three more specific issues that 1 will explore using the research material from Denmark: et * the ways in which local, regional, national and ‘racial’ identifications are connected to each other in the construction of ethnicity the significance of ethnic identification in the everyday liv ive who live in Skive; and See eee the production and reproduction of ‘the Danes’ as a meaningful group, These concerns can be summarised as an empirical interest in ‘being Dan- ea an everyday process, and in ‘Danishness’ as an everyday, vernacular Meola construct. Before proceeding to explore in detail chose aspects ee ing a and of ‘Danishness’ that I outlined in this chapter’s second ysraph, in the next chapter I will introduce th conduct of the field research. ec 19Chapter One Al of the following theorists owe considerable debts to Barth's re-orientation of the field in 1969: Banks (1996), Brubaker (2004), Calhoun (1999, 2001), Cohen (1982, 1985, 1986), Cornell and Hartmann (2007), Eriksen (2002), Jenkins (2002, 2008a) and MialeSevié (2003, 2004). Some of the authors listed here ‘may not agree about their inclusion under the same roof, nonetheless, their similatties are more striking and more sign See Jenkins (2008a: 20-4, 49-51, 77-89) and Wade (2002) See, in partculay, Brubeker (2004: 28-63; Brubaker and Cooper 2002) and Melesevié (2002, 2003). On the ‘other minds’ problem, and the relationship between what people say and what they otherwise do, see Holy and Stuchltk (1983) and Jenkins (2004: 30-7). ‘The question of the relationship between ethnic identifeation end the pursuit of rnon-ethnie’ politcal or economic interests isan old one; see Barth (1969), Sherif (1967) and Tajfe (1981) for different points of view. More recently, see Goldstein and Rayner (1994), Jenkins (2006b), Martin (2995), and Ruane and Toda (2004). InNorher Ireland, for example, the subtle, and often invisible, everyday practice of ‘telling’ who's who ~ Protestant or Catholic ~ allows interaction to proceed with reasonable care and without gratuitous offence being given, Tr may have ‘other malevolent uses as well ofcourse, Concerning the realty, or not, oF groups, see Brubeker (2002, 2004: 7-27), MaleSevié (2002) and Jenkins (20028: 73-84, 2002c, 2006). "The debate be- ‘ween Calhoun (2003a, 2003b) and Brubaker (2008) is also important.