Cultural nationalism

Cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism in which the nation is defined by a shared culture. It is an intermediate position between ethnic nationalism on one hand and civic nationalism on the other.

Cultural nationalism, therefore, will focus on a national identity shaped by cultural traditions and by language, but not on the concepts of common ancestry or race.

"Cultural nationalism" does not tend to manifest itself in independent movements, but is a moderate position within a larger spectrum of nationalist ideology. Thus, moderate positions in Flemish,Hindu nationalisms can be "cultural nationalism" while these same movements also include forms of ethnic nationalism and national mysticism.

Cultural nationalism encompasses the feelings of cultural pride that people have in a society. This society is typically an ethnically diverse makeup of people who have common cultural beliefs and a common language but not a common race or ancestry. An "ethnically diverse" society usually defined as one with multiple ethnic groups that each comprise a substantial percentage of the population. These societies thus have a shared culture even when they do not share the historically common characteristics of a national group. These characteristics mainly being race and ethnicity, the way groups have typically been separated throughout history. Hence, the ideas and feelings of cultural nationalism are built upon shared cultural ideals and norms among a society. These shared ideals and norms may include political ideologies, recognition of holidays, a specific and unique cuisine, etc. The other main idea of cultural nationalism is the shared language of the groups of people. While societies that are ethnically and racially homogeneous usually also share a common language, culturally nationalistic societies typically have a common language and different races of people who also speak a native language from a previous society or country along with that common language.

As previously stated, feelings of cultural nationalism are not limited to ethnically diverse societies, although it is more common and much easier to define as different ethnicities co-existing with each other in such societies create a cultural umbrella. People in an ethnically homogeneous society may feel pride for the society’s political ideologies, for example, but not care for or identify feelings of pride towards the common ethnicity of that society, giving a technical definition of cultural nationalism.

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