Being Danish : Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life - Second Edition

This book is a major contribution to the sociology and anthropology of identity and to debates about identity in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe. Using extensive archival material alongside ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores being Danish, the meanings and practices which produced and reproduced Danishness in an ordinary Danish town during the 1990s. Among the many issues explored are attitudes to the European Union, the symbolism of the royal house and the flag, the States contribution to personal identity, the place of Christianity in Danishness, and the impact on Danes of the recent arrival of mainly Islamic immigrants. Bringing the story up to date with a discussion of the national political shift to the right since the late 1990s, the book concludes with a critical examination of the future of Danishness. Since 1992 and the Danish rejection of the EUs Maastricht Treaty, through the affair of the Mohammed cartoons in 2005, Denmark, although only a small country, has occupied a disproportionately visible place in European and global politics. The only detailed ethnographic study of the full spectrum of modern Danish identity, this book will find a wide market in anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations and European studies. This second edition brings the book further up to date with a discussion of recent developments, including the 2011 Danish general elections which saw a political shift back to the left. The author furthermore reflects on the responses and reviews that that the publication of the first edition fostered.