In search of the authentic nation: landscape and national identity in Canada and Switzerland

While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration

Le voyage inachevé... à Joël Bonnemaison

Geographers were late in developing the analysis of myths. Myths play however a decisive role in the life of societies, since it reveals the true nature of things, the significance of life and what is wrong or right. In contemporary societies, myths took the shape of ideologies. Their analysis is fundamental in order to understand the geography of right and wrong, the role of purification rituals in the life of every society, and the ways through which identities are developed. (Résumé d'auteur