Citizenship Education and National Identity: teaching ambivalence

The article is concerned with issues of national identity in a multicultural society (Sweden) and the role of citizenship education in creating a national identity. After having witnessed the terrorist attack and the traumas from Oslo and Utoya (22 July 2011), and the suicide bombing in Stockholm on 11 December 2010, certain words, such as national identity and patriotism, make the project of writing on national identity from a Scandinavian perspective not just urgent but somewhat problematic. What the author terms national identity and democratic patriotism in the article is intended to combat all forms of chauvinistic ethno-nationality, on the one hand, and, on the other, fundamental ethno-religious identity. He argues for a particular way of understanding national identity that transcends ethnicity but also acknowledges it, by elaborating on the conception of 'democratic patriotism'. In this respect, his discussion of this issue is framed by the discussion of social integration and its importance to citizenship education, where his intention is to discriminate between the kind of national identity that refers either to aspects of political domination or a cultural hegemony, or both, and democratic and critical understanding of national identity in relation to pluralism and contingency (i.e. concerning respect for difference and otherness). The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical and empirical arguments for a didactical professional attitude and the practice of reciprocal communication in this sense where meanings of national identity are discussed, tested and challenged in class. In light of the ongoing debate, the article is a revisiting of concepts and a debate over concepts of national identity and belonging: how national identity can be identified, and what might be done to affirm a constructive, democratic national identity beyond both nationalism and multiculturalism.