Paths to Post-Nationalism ─ A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity

Nationalism informs our ideas about language, culture, identity, nation, and state—ideas that are being challenged by globalization and an emerging new economy. As language, culture, and identity are commodified, multilingualism becomes a factor in the mobility of people, ideas, and goods—and in their value.

In Paths to Post-Nationalism, Monica Heller shows how hegemonic discourses of language, identity, and the nation-state are destabilized under new political and economic conditions. These processes, she argues, put us on the path to post-nationalism. Applying a fine-grained ethnographic analysis to the notion of "francophone Canada" from the 197os to the present, Heller examines sociolinguistic practices in workplaces, schools, community associations, NGOs, state agencies, and sites of tourism and performance across francophone North America and Europe. Her work shows how the tensions of late modernity produce competing visions of social organization and competing sources of legitimacy in attempts to reimagineor resist reimagining—who we are.

Paths to Post-Nationalism will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in multilingualism and nationalism, particularly in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, ethnic studies, sociology, and political science.

Monica Heller is Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.