Cultural identity overrides ideological unity in determining state cohesion

Evidence

In the post-Cold War world, culture is both a divisive and a unifying force. People separated by ideology but united by culture come together, as the two Germanys did and as the two Koreas and the several Chinas are beginning to. Societies united by ideology or historical circumstance but divided by civilization either come apart, as did the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia, or are subjected to intense strain, as is the case with Ukraine, Nigeria, Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, and many others. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 44 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Thus, cultural identities tend less to be truly organic expressions of belonging or affiliation than marriages of convenience encouraged by the political ideologies of the time. Those liberal characters who are not denounced as hypocritical tend to be well meaning but misguided in their attitudes to cultural difference. Deedee packs her students’ curriculum with representative texts from black music and culture. Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye provide a soundtrack to her teaching of the U.S. civil rights struggle, and she encourages her students to treat canonical and popular texts as interchangeable. Interestingly, though, whereas popular culture provides a valorized means of youth identification in The Buddha of Suburbia, it is treated with more suspicion in The Black Album. On the one hand, Shahid and Chad bond over their pop-music tastes. On the other, Kureishi’s determination to define art and culture as an antidote to religious fundamentalism requires that he reassert the liberal humanist reading of the European canon as personally liberating and culturally vitalizing. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 174 (#complicates, via linked claim)

This has produced a racialized struggle over control of the national space, which takes place in the political arena. It is objectified in political competition for control of the governing institutions of the state among competing racial political organization, including political parties and trade unions. The struggle for the nation, therefore, is a struggle for domination of the national political space. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3266 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: National unity is a falsehood masking class division within states — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 339; Inclusive clientelist patronage across ethnic elites can dampen inter-ethnic rivalry — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 75; Shared Arab cultural identity does not translate into political bloc action (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural affinity now outweighs shared ideology as a political glue #corroborates (0.95) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 44
• Cultural identities are political marriages of convenience more than organic belonging #complicates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 174
• National identity struggles reduce to competition for state-institutional domination #complicates (0.76) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3266
• A strategic political identity can unite people across skin-color differences #complicates (0.74) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 244