What can the concept of friendship contribute to the study of national identity?

Abstract

This article argues that understanding national identity requires a reappraisal of friendship as a political sentiment. Although studies of nationalism underscored the transformation of face-to-face interactions into ties between 'distant others,' they failed to acknowledge how sentiments of friendship may be involved. First, following theorising in political philosophy, the Aristotelian paradigm of civic friendship is conceptually applicable to modern civil society based on characteristics such as volition, commitment and sentiment. Second, feminist scholarship has delineated how an implicit discourse of male fraternity underlies the historical realisations of the modern social contract and mediates the notions of both patriotism and nationalism. Finally, networks of male associations and transformations in collective affection from small settings to large-scale societies contributed to the magnification of a politics of friendship. Consequently, rather than viewing fraternal friendship as a relic of traditional societies, it should be studied as a unique aspect of modern nationalism. © ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.