voluntarist’. Surprisingly, these dimensions cut right across the ethnic-civic
dichotomy as traditionally conceived. The notion of voluntarism, for instance, is
commonly associated with a civic understanding of nationhood but the voluntarist
dimension in Jones and Smith’s study also includes language, an element that is
usually grouped in the ethnic category. Likewise, the idea of ascription (i.e. of
fixed traits) is attributed to the ethnic model of the nation but Jones and Smith’s
ascriptive dimension also incorporates born, citizenship and lived, political items
that are commonly said to belong to a civic identity. The authors however concede
that the items may have been understood differently in the various national contexts.
Thus, whereas place of birth (born) may have been associated with the state and its
territory in countries like France and the USA which are commonly believed to
have strong traditions of civic nationhood, the same item may have been
understood as a substitute for descent in countries with reputedly stronger ethnic
visions of the nation. In addition, proficiency in the dominant language (language)
might have been understood as an indicator for integration into the larger (civic)
community in migrant nations like Australia and the US, while it may have been
regarded as referring to native language (i.e. an ascribed characteristic) in countries
that have no tradition of immigration. For these reasons, Smith and Jones decided
to omit any reference to the ethnic-civic distinction in their characterization of the
two aforementioned dimensions. Interestingly, their analysis also revealed that in
most states the ascriptive dimension carried greater weight than the voluntarist
dimension. They therefore conclude: „our findings suggest an unanticipated
homogeneity in the ways that citizens around the world think about national
identity’ (Jones and Smith 2001a, p. 45), despite „distinctive discourses and
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