Award Information
The oft-asserted decline of the nation-state in an increasingly globalized world has been a matter of considerable scholarly debate over the past two decades. Such disputes rightfully destabilized the fixity once embedded in the idea of the nation but fail to account for new national movements, the continuation or resurgence of older nationalisms, and the schisming of existing states. The proposed project builds on the work of scholars researching borders who find globalization has not diminished the role of nation-state but, instead, has reordered our understanding of it. The nation-state, here, is conceptualized as ongoing and contested "bordering" process which allows for the imagining and re-imagining of an internal national community while simultaneously projecting an external national face toward a world audience (Donnan and Wilson 2010; Linde-Laursen 2010; Johnson et al. 2011). Nowhere is the changing nature and continued relevance of the nation-state more evident than in the contemporary Arctic, characterized not only by climate change accompanied by increased resource development and growing international attention but also by decolonization, with Northern peoples becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for recognition and inclusion in state and international forums (Dahl et al. 2010; Nuttall and Callaghan 2000). Greenland’s (Kalaallit Nunaat) independence movement is at the forefront of these trends, driven by nationalist sentiment and supported by the island’s largely indigenous Inuit population. The proposed project focuses on Branding Greenland, the island’s nation-branding campaign, as part of its nation-building efforts, in order to explore new permutations of the nation as part of global political and economic shifts in the neoliberal decolonizing Arctic.