• What is the national identity?
• Elements of national identity
• Importance of national identity
• Examples of national identity

We explain what national identity is, its elements and various examples. Also, its importance today.

National identity allows citizens to weave a common imaginary.

What is the national identity?

The identity national is the feeling of belonging to a community historical, cultural, linguistic and social, which corresponds to a greater or lesser extent with a country, region or political community. More easily said, it is a sense of identity (of belonging), based on the idea of nation, that is, in opposition to what is considered alien or foreign.

The existence of a national identity implies the manifestation of certain feelings of love, pride and commitment to the national political community. These feelings arose in the Modern age during the advent of nation-states, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

National identity is part of what some philosophers have called the "imagined community", in the sense that the values Nationals can be embraced by people of very different ethnic, religious, cultural or social origins, but who were born on the same soil (or sometimes not even that).

In other words, national identity is transmitted to those born in the geography of a national state and forms part of the national discourses, that is, of the rhetoric of the nationalism. Thus, it allows citizens of a country to weave a common imaginary, that is, to tell themselves (and others) the same history regarding its origins and culture that they consider as their own.

Elements of national identity

Religion is an important part of cultures and countries.

National identity encompasses a different set of elements, which can be associated together or separately with "being national" or with the set of defining features of their collective identity. These elements are usually:

• Idiom. Although an individual can learn to speak as many languages ​​as they want, there will always be one that they handle more fluently and with which they associate more deeply, which in principle should be their mother tongue. National identity not only takes into account the language spoken, but also the variant of it that is practiced, since the same language can have very different geographical realizations.
• Religion. Religion is an important part of cultures and countries, which may be secular or have an official religion, but are heirs whether they want to or not of a cultural tradition linked to religion: the Catholic nations of the West differ in many respects from those of the other. Protestants, and they are all morally different from the Buddhist nations of Asia, for example.
• Ethnicity and race. Although the nations of the 21st century present margins of migration important and diverse, which have brought them racial and cultural variety, it is true that the idea of ​​nation was born very closely linked to that of race, that is, with shared blood, with the similarities in the color skin and features. This, however, does not always have the same value within the national identity: in many Latin American nations, such as those of the Caribbean, the intense miscegenation produced during their colonial history made it impossible to determine a racial criterion as "their own."
• Traditions and history. In this category we include various aspects of culture, ranging from forms of gastronomy, celebration of national rituals, folklore, traditional stories, proverbs and puns, musical types, artistic preferences, and a gigantic etcetera of inherited cultural values.
• Patriotic symbols. This is the name given to the set of signs conventionally chosen to represent a national identity: a flower, a bird, a hymn, a flag, a shield, etc.

Importance of national identity

In the context of globalization, the existence and necessity of national identities has been enormously questioned. In fact, in some cases it has given way to a global consciousness, to the feeling of belonging not to a nation, but to the whole world to a greater or lesser extent.

This is partly due to the fact that, throughout recent history, the exaltation of national sentiment (chauvinism) has almost always led to armed confrontations, criminal regimes or has served to disguise despotism and corruption.

However, on the other hand, the commitment to defend national interests depends on national identity. Otherwise, there is the possibility of being alienated by stronger cultures, ignoring or despising the own and loving instead the foreign (malinchismo).

Examples of national identity

The Bavarian identity is expressed through music, dance and traditional costumes.

Some examples of national identity can be:

• The Bavarian tradition. Southern Germany has a very strong regional identity, which has even served as a common place to represent the whole country. This representation involves the typical Bavarian costume, with shorts and a characteristic hat for men, long and low-cut dresses for women, generally in a bucolic atmosphere and accompanied by beer (for the Octoberfest).
• The Buenos Aires identity. In the Argentine capital, the town From Buenos Aires, the Italian migration forged in such a way the local traditions in terms of gastronomy, typical dances (tango) and language (the cocoliche and the typical porteño accent), that they forever marked the capital's identity. Although it does not represent the identity of the entire nation, in foreign countries it is usually identified with the Argentine.
• The identity of indigenous peoples. Despite not constituting a single nation, but a very dissimilar set of nations subjected by the Spanish Empire during centuries of colonization, the Latin American indigenous peoples are and are not part of the entire Latin American identity, since they have their own strong identity of group, in which their surviving languages, their inherited traditions and a certain sense of the social linked to the ethnic have a place. It is a very complex case on which many scholars of Latin American culture reflect in depth.