Full text of DOI:10.1111/1467-954X.00201

Social identity and emotion: the meeting of
psychoanalysis and sociology
Carolyn Vogler
Abstract
This paper attempts to develop a framework for understanding social identities by
linking together ideas from two disciplines which are normally pursued separately
from each other namely, sociology and psychoanalysis. Drawing on the work of
Craib (1989, 1994, 1998a) Bion (1961) and Scheff (1994a) in psychoanalysis and
Mann (1986, 1993a, 1995, 1997) in sociology, the main argument is that social
identities such as national identity are not just the result of sociological factors such
as social classification, boundaries and processes of identification, they also have
an important emotional dimension which coexists with but cannot be reduced to
the social. In order to understand the persistence and indeed strengthening of
nationalism and national identities in the contemporary world, we need to take
account not just of changes in the inter-relationships between economics, politics and
culture at the global level, but also of the ways in which they may now be coming
to inter-relate with the kind of unconscious psychological processes and strong
emotions such as love, hate, shame and anger, which occur within groups. The paper
begins with a critique of existing sociological approaches to identity followed by an
attempt to develop an alternative approach based on the psychoanalytic concept of
emotional inter-subjectivity. By means of a case study of British trade unions in the
1980's and 1990's, it then goes on to show how unconscious psychological processes
and strong feelings may now be articulating with sociological processes to form a
mutually reinforcing loop which is strengthening and reinforcing nationalism in a
sociological context in which other aspects of society are globalising. Finally, it is
suggested that the reason why sociologists need to take feelings seriously in the
contemporary world is that they may now be combining with sociological changes to
strengthen and reinforce nationalism and the principle of nationality in situations in
which it might be more productive to question it.
Introduction
One of the biggest problems of our time, both in sociology and in political life
in general, is explaining the resurgence at the end of the twentieth century of
apparently `irrational' ethnic conflict and nationalism. Far from heralding the
`end of history' (Fukuyama, 1989) the triumph of capitalism in Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union has been accompanied by an astonishing and
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Carolyn Vogler
unexpected resurgence of ethno-national conflict. Similarly in the West,
globalisation and European integration, seen by many as heralding the end of
the nation state and the emergence of new forms of global and European
identity, also seem to have been associated with increasing nationalism in the
heartlands of Western European states. How then, can we understand and
explain the persistence and indeed strengthening of forms of national identity
which appear to run counter to economic and cultural forces in the
contemporary world?
There is now general agreement in sociology that one of the most important
concepts in enabling us to understand new forms of politics at the end of the
twentieth century is the concept of identity. In order to understand why
individuals participate in political action we need some conception of political
agency which in turn presupposes an understanding of how individuals see
themselves. Identity is now thought to sit at the interface between subjective
positions and social and cultural situations (Woodward, 1997). As Stuart Hall
(1996) puts it, identity is the meeting point, or point of `suture' between on the
one hand, individual subjects with unconscious psychological processes and on
the other hand, social and cultural processes like discourses and discursive
practices.
This paper attempts to go beyond Hall (1997) in arguing that because social
identities are the outcome of an interplay between sociological and unconscious
psychological processes, they also have an important emotional dimension
which coexists with, but cannot be reduced to the social. As Craib (1998a)
points out, despite the shift from structure to culture in conceptualisations of
the social, the link between system and agency has always been somewhat
problematic and unsatisfactorily handled in sociology. Sociology operates with
an impoverished conception of the actor in which action either tends to be
reduced to system or vice versa, but either way the concept of action tends to be
relatively underdeveloped.1 Following Craib (1998a) my aim is to provide a
richer conception of action by adding a psychodynamic dimension which
focuses on the limits of social factors and on why actors (both individually and
in groups) do not necessarily always behave in what might seem to sociologists
to be the most sociologically rational ways.2
The main argument is that in order to understand the persistence and indeed
strengthening of nationalism and national identities in the West, we need a
concept of identity which takes account not just of sociological processes such
as social classification, boundaries and processes of identification, but also of
strong emotions such as love, hate, shame, anger and so on which sociology
either overlooks entirely or reduces to the social. While there is now a huge
sociological literature on nationalism, the emotional underpinnings of
nationalistic conflicts and discourses tend to have been relatively unexplored
by sociologists who focus almost exclusively on the political, cultural and
economic dimensions (Armstrong, 1995). Regardless of whether nationalism is
explained in terms of ethnies (Smith, 1986) uneven waves of industrialisation
(Gellner, 1983) print capitalism (Anderson, 1996) the emergence of the modern
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state (Mann, 1992, 1995) or culture, identity and discourse (Calhoun, 1997;
McCrone, 1998) feelings such as shame, humiliation and pride (ie national
honour) tend to be reduced to sociological factors rather than analysed in
their own right as relatively autonomous from the social.3 Nationalism is
conceptualised as a purely social phenomena in which actors are treated as
black boxes within which what goes on inside is relatively unexplored. I would
suggest however, that in the context of recent trends to globalisation, the
neglect of the psychological dimension may be having a particularly limiting
effect on sociological approaches to nationalism because the emergence of a
relatively integrated global economy and a divided nation state system may
now be providing a sociological context which is highly conducive to the play
of emotions which are coming to strengthen and reinforce nationalism in a
world in which the economy is globalising.
The paper begins with a critique of existing sociological approaches to
identity, followed by an exposition of the work of Craib (1989, 1994, 1998a)
Bion (1961) and Scheff (1994a) which attempts to sketch out an alternative
approach based on the psychoanalytic concept of emotional intersubjectivity.
Finally, I will attempt to illustrate the argument by means of a case study of the
discourse of British trade unions in the 1980's and 1990's, which shows how we
cannot understand the unions' responses to their position in the relatively
integrated global economy and the divided nation state system without taking
account of strong feelings such as shame, anger, rage and so on which now
permeate their identities and underpin the discourse.
Sociological theories of identity and emotion
While there is a rich literature on identity and indeed, also on emotions in
sociology today, this has so far failed to illuminate the emotional dimension of
collective identities in the contemporary world. As Craib (1998a) argues,
the main reason for this is that while different sociological approaches
conceptualise the relation between individuals and society in different ways,
they all tend to be based on a cognitive view of social actors in which feelings
are either overlooked entirely or reduced to the social. This can be seen, not
just in two of the most widely used sociological models of identity, namely
Jenkins' interactionist approach and post structuralism's cultural or discursive
approach but also, paradoxically, in the newly expanding sociology of the
emotions.
While Jenkins (1996) for example, conceptualises both individual and
collective identities as arising from an ongoing dialectic between internal self
definitions (the unique individuality of Mead's `I' and external definitions of
the self taken in from the outside (the attitudes of significant others or Mead's
`me'), when he applies the model to individual self identity he emphasises the
external social dimension to a much greater extent than the individual
dimension and omits the unconscious and emotional dimensions of identity
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Carolyn Vogler
entirely (Craib, 1998a).4 By contrast, post structuralists however, conceptualise
identity as emerging from outside ourselves on the basis of difference rather
than similarity. Drawing on both Foucault's concept of discourse and Lacan's
concept of the unconscious as a system of signification (ie as structured like a
language) Hall (1992, 1996) and Woodward (1997) for example, conceptualise
identities as subject positions constructed in discourse as an effect of
disciplinary power.5 Following Lacan, they argue that although we may
experience ourselves as unified, this is a phantasy formed during the mirror
phase when the infant sees itself reflected in the mirror of the other's look, or
literally in the mirror, and this in turn opens the child's relation to symbolic
systems outside itself, such as language, culture and sexual difference. As Craib
(1998a) points out however, while Hall and Woodward clearly go beyond
Jenkins in recognising the importance of unconscious psychological processes
in explaining subjectivity, they still have a very cognitive view of social actors
which overlooks emotion and reduces the unconscious, together with the
defence mechanisms through which identity is created, to a social product,
namely language.
Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, these tendencies are also evident in the
rapidly expanding literature on the sociology of emotion, which as Lupton
(1996) points out, can be seen as ranging on a continuum from weak to strong
social constructionism. Weak social constructionists such as Hochschild (1983)
for example, recognise that there may by a limited range of natural emotional
responses that are biologically given and therefore exist independently of socio-
cultural influences, although the ways in which they are experienced and
expressed are said to be shaped by power relationships in the wider society
(Lupton, 1996). The main problem with Hochschild's account however, is
that she tends to overemphasise social constraint, actors are seen as passively
responding to the norms of emotion management which constrain and restrict
selfhood in the process of reinforcing social and economic processes (Lupton,
1996). Strong social constructionists however, arguing from a post structuralist
perspective see emotions as purely socially constructed, `by people who are
located in a range of interacting discourses and at certain positions within those
discourses' (Harre and Gillet, 1994). In an attempt to overcome the extreme
social constructionist tendency to reduce emotions entirely to discourse,
Burkitt (1997) suggests that emotions also have a physical as well as a cultural
dimension, although he still agrees with the strong social constructionist view
that emotions originate in discursive relationships between individuals rather
than internally within them.
Like theories of identity then, the newly expanding sociology of emotions is
also based on a cognitive conception of social actors which paradoxically
overlooks feelings (Craib, 1998a). Emotions are either seen as social products
(often produced by discourse) or they are thought to be so constrained by
society there is little or no scope for individual creativity (Craib, 1998a;
Lupton, 1996). While Burkitt does not reduce emotion entirely to discourse, he
still reduces it to society because he sees it as arising solely in the context of real
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social relationships in the present. As Craib (1998a) points out however, this
conception of the link between the internal and external worlds is too simple
because emotions may also arise from unconscious conflicts within individuals
which then come to be superimposed on current relationships. Following Craib
(1998a) I would argue that rather than simply assuming that emotions are a
social product, we need to conceptualise the internal emotional world as
separate from the external social world, with its own dynamics, its own causes
and its own patterns which accompany, but cannot be reduced to society. In
order to do this we need to link sociology and psychoanalysis together. We
need to complement sociological analyses of social contexts with a psycho-
analytic understanding of the way in which the individual psyche is constructed
and operates. The question then, is how should the relationship between the
two disciplines be conceptualised? How can we analyse the emotional and
social characteristics of identities alongside each other in the same model
without reducing one to the other?
Emotional intersubjectivity
Drawing on the work of Craib (1989, 1994, 1998a) Bion (1961) and Scheff
(1994a) I will now go on to propose a way of thinking about the emotional
dimension of social identities and social relationships based on the psycho-
analytic concept of emotional intersubjectivity. While the concept of emotional
intersubjectivity was initially formulated by Craib (1998a) as the foundation
for a new way of thinking about identity in sociology, the same basic idea also
underlies Bion's (1961) work on group processes and Scheff's (1994a) analysis
of the emotional dynamics of international politics. I will therefore begin by
talking about emotional intersubjectivity as it affects individuals and come
onto the ways in which it operates in collectivities later.
Craib: emotional intersubjectivity and identity
In a pioneering attempt to apply psychoanalytic ideas to sociological theories
of identity Craib (1998a) puts forward a new concept of identity which is
fundamentally different from the sociological approaches discussed so far.
The novelty of Craib's (1998a) position is that he sees identities as having an
important emotional dimension which is also part of a wider emotional
intersubjectivity with other people. The central idea underlying his approach is
the psychoanalytic idea that the primary and most basic form of inter-
subjectivity between individuals is emotional rather than cognitive as it is in
sociology. In psychoanalysis, human beings are seen as being linked to each
other by a profound emotional intersubjectivity or emotional communication
in which they continually give and receive emotional messages, although this is
usually unconscious and not recognised by those involved (Craib, 1998a). By
virtue of being human we are all thought to share a range of emotions with
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which we communicate to each other and also share with each other (Craib,
1998a).
Craib's (1998a) approach therefore involves a rather different conception of
both the individual and the relation between the individual and society from
that usually found in sociology. While individuals are seen as existing in a
social context they are also thought to have a subjective inner life, located in
internal psychic space which is relatively autonomous from the social (Craib,
1998a). Far from being determined by society, individuals are seen as
absorbing and processing social forces such as discourses, ideologies, structural
positions or whatever through a complex inner process located in internal
psychic space which Craib (1998a) calls `experience'.
Craib's (1998a) concept of subjective inner life is based on the British Object
Relations School of Psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Klein and
Winnicott. The crux of his argument is that the emotional dimension of
identity is rooted in the unconscious object relations, phantasies and defence
mechanisms identified by Klein as characteristic of very early life. Emotional
intersubjectivity is in fact seen as operating through the defence mechanisms
of splitting, projection and projective identification which in addition to
protecting individuals against anxiety, also operate as unconscious forms of
emotional communication. In Klein's view for example, the earliest and most
primitive form of unconscious emotional communication occurring between
babies and caretakers is projective identification.6 The baby communicates its
needs by putting its feelings into the carer so that the carer experiences the same
feelings within themself and can deal with them on the baby's behalf (Craib,
1989).
Klein then goes on to identify a developmental process in which infants
move from what she calls the paranoid schizoid to the depressive position
(Craib, 1997). In the paranoid schizoid position the infant deals with anxiety by
splitting the world into good and bad and then introjecting its good feelings
and projecting its bad feelings onto an outside object. This then leaves the child
feeling threatened in case the bad feelings come back to attack it from the
outside, so that the rest of its destructive feelings are converted into aggressive
feelings aimed at attacking the already projected threat (Craib, 1989). As the
ego strengthens however, and becomes more able to tolerate some of its own
previously projected feelings there is a crucial shift into the depressive position
as the infant becomes aware that both its love and hate are directed at the same
object ± namely the mother as a whole and separate person (Craib, 1989; 1997;
1998a).7
In Winnicottian theory the depressive position is thought to be intimately
linked to the capacity to symbolise which is in turn associated with the
transitional area and transitional objects.8 For Winnicott, the transitional area
is a vitally important region of the psyche in which internal phantasy meets
meets external reality, within which the ability to symbolise enables us to create
something new. The transitional area plays a crucially important role in Craib's
(1998a) conception of identity because he sees it not just as an area of creativity
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and relative autonomy from external social forces but also as the source of our
personal identity. Rather than simply taking in what is outside us and
reinforcing it in our actions, Craib (1998a) argues that we take it into the
unconscious where it is transformed by our unconscious conflicts and
phantasies into something new and even within the limits of external social
constraint we always have some degree of autonomy in how we respond.
The implication then, is that while the internal and external worlds are
separate and independently constituted with their own causes and their own
dynamics they constellate around each other in a loop in Winnicott's
transitional area. While on the one hand external reality may modify or
change stereotypes (as in psychoanalysis for example) on the other hand,
internal object relations may also come to be superimposed on current
relationships so that the external world is taken over by the internal world and
we respond to others emotionally as if they were disliked parts of our own
selves, rather than separate individuals with their own characteristics (Craib,
1998a). In adult life, splitting and projection for example, occur whenever we
fail to see some threatening or unpleasant part of our own make up in ourselves
but see it readily in other people whereas projective identification occurs when
we behave in such a way as to lead the other person to experience the feared
quality in themselves (Craib, 1989). One of the problems with these processes
however, is that the illusory sense of goodness and idealisation they produce
makes it harder than it might otherwise be to resolve differences and find
compromises in social relationships.9
Bion: emotional intersubjectivity and group processes
Drawing on Bion's pioneering studies of group dynamics I now want to suggest
that emotional intersubjectivity also has a social origin in the processes and
dynamics which occur within groups. Bion's (1961) work shows how adults in
groups can get caught up in processes involving a massive regression to Klein's
paranoid schizoid defences so that under certain circumstances group members
unite to respond to outsiders (and sometimes even to some of their own
members) emotionally, as if they were disliked parts of their own selves (Craib,
1997). In Bion's view, the reason why this happens is that individuals in groups
inevitably experience a conflict between wanting to be part of the group for the
security it brings and also feeling constrained by what he calls the `group
mentality.' The group mentality is defined as the unanimous expression of the
emotional will of the group which stifles independent thought and affects
individuals in a very unpleasant way whenever they think or say anything
which is different from what the group wants to hear. Group members
therefore experience contradictory combinations of feelings because pleasant
feelings like security are always experienced in combination with less pleasant
ones such as hate, frustration and inadequacy. This leads to anxiety which
group members defend against by resorting to one of three basic assumptions,
all of which are based on the defence mechanisms described by Klein as
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characteristic of very early life, namely splitting, projection and projective
identification.
Basic assumptions are tacit assumptions or psychotic premises (Segal, 1995)
about the purpose of the group which are not expressed explicitly but which
give meaning to its behaviour. Group members sharing the same emotions
behave as if they all had the same tacit understanding about the purpose of the
group, namely that it had met for one of three purposes ± fight=flight, pairing
or dependency. These give rise to three basic assumption groups the most
important of which, in the present context, is the flight fight group. In the flight
fight group individuals try to keep the goodness of the group separate from
the badness by splitting off the pleasant feelings (such as security) which they
want from the disliked feelings (such as hate and anger) and projecting the
disliked feelings onto an external enemy or an internal scapegoat which is then
experienced as hostile and destructive, so that the good feelings can be
preserved within the group (Craib, 1989).
The most important thing about basic assumptions is that while they are
inherent in all groups at least to some degree, under certain circumstances they
can undermine the explicit goal oriented task of the group. Bion (1961) argues
that if a specialised work group is able to use the basic assumption
underpinning it to establish organisation and structure, members will
cooperate in work tasks as thinking individuals, but if it is unable to do so,
the group will resort to becoming a basic assumption group in which
individuals lose their capacity for criticism and rational thought and primitive
paranoid forms of thinking emerge which result in a loss of effective contact
with reality. Bion also makes the point rather forcibly that the emotions and
behaviour within a basic assumption group are not simply evoked by the
leader's discourses or political rhetoric. On the contrary, he emphasises that the
leader's power comes from sharing the same emotions as every other member
of the group because they are all affected by the same basic assumption. In a
flight fight group for example, he argues that the leader is invariably someone
with a pronounced capacity for fighting or flight. The implication then, is that
whether they are citizens of nation states or members of political organisations,
individual group members are just as responsible as the leader for the emotions
and behaviour of the group.
In a bold attempt to take Bion's work further, Jaques (1953) and Menzies
Lyth (1988; 1989) suggest that when group relations become institutionalised in
the form of permanent organisations such as businesses, hospitals, nation
states and so on, basic assumptions tend to give rise to paranoid `social defence
mechanisms' which come to be reified in the roles, structure, culture and
discourses of institutional life, undermining the effectiveness of the organisa-
tion's explicit goals. The crux of the argument is that in objectively stressful or
conflictual social situations, the anxiety generated by external social conditions
combines with the psychotic anxiety evoked by membership of the group to
precipitate individual regression to primitive paranoid defences which are then
projected and given objective existence in the social structure and culture of the
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organisation (Menzies Lyth, 1988).10 What happens is that individuals
unconsciously collude with others to project their bad internal objects onto
common external objects so that phantasy relationships are established which
are then collectively reinforced by introjection (Jaques, 1953). Social conflicts
in the external social world therefore come to be reinforced by social defence
mechanisms so that aggression is collectively displaced onto subgroups and
external enemies (Jaques, 1953). This is not to suggest that organisations
become psychotic, because of course defences are only used by individuals, but
it does mean that in objectively stressful social situations, group relations are
likely to be associated with manifestations of unreality, splitting, hostility and
suspicion which magnify the original conflict, making it much more difficult to
resolve, because change threatens to upset not just the economic, cultural and
political interests at stake, but also the underlying social defences against
psychotic anxiety (Jaques, 1977).11
Scheff: emotional intersubjectivity and international conflict
Following Scheff (1994a) I now want to suggest that one of the main ways in
which unconscious group processes drive nationalistic discourses and
exaggerate ethnic and political conflict is through feelings of shame and rage.
Scheff (1994a) sees shame as playing a vitally important role in social
relationships because it is a `social' emotion which signals the strength of social
bonds, both between individuals and between groups. Whereas pride (the
obverse of shame) is said to generate and signal a secure bond, shame is seen
as generating and signalling a weak bond which is threatened by too much
closeness (engulfment) or too much distance (isolation). I would suggest
however, that Bion's analysis of the flight=fight group indicates that
engulfment and isolation are in fact complementary sides of the same
phenomena and that both are ultimately based on the defence mechanisms
of splitting and projection.12
The crux of Scheff's (1994a) argument is that protracted conflict occurs
when one or both sides feel shame because they have been humiliated or
threatened, but the shame is not acknowledged. In Scheff's (1994a) view, the
problem with denied shame is that it leads directly to anger as a way of
avoiding the painful feelings of shame ± and then we feel ashamed of being
angry. When it is completely unacknowledged, he argues that the alternation
between shame and anger can lead to a feeling trap or a closed shame anger
shame loop which generates resentment and hatred because the shame driving
the loop is outside awareness, so that the aggression is compulsive. His main
point is that if the disputants stick to the topic of the dispute and ignore the
emotions (ie the shame) the conflict is likely to escalate because the content of
the dispute will become less important than the hidden emotions which take
over and in turn prevent the protagonists resolving the topic. His discourse
analysis of the causes of the first and second world wars shows for example,
how both French (1871±1914) and German (1918±1945) nationalism were
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Carolyn Vogler
motivated by unacknowledged shame and rage. In the French case however,
there was sufficient verbal acknowledgement of shame in the form of
conceptions of national honour, humiliation and revenge to prevent a descent
into complete madness, whereas in the case of German nationalism shame was
completely unacknowledged, denied, rationalised and projected onto other
groups. Hitler for example, attributed vengeful motives to his enemies, the
French, Negroes and Jews, rather than to himself, which in turn explains his
more or less continuous shame rage spiral.
Finally, like Bion, Scheff argues that far from evoking their followers'
feelings as a result of their own rhetoric, as sociological conceptions of
discourse often assume,13 charismatic leaders are linked to their followers by
the fact that they all share the same strong feelings. In Scheff's (1994a) view,
leaders are perceived as charismatic when they express their publics' shame
anger spiral, because this temporarily at least, makes people feel better by
justifying their rage and reducing their shame. The reason why Hitler for
example, had such a strong hold over the German people was precisely because
he expressed and therefore sanctioned and mitigated his publics' shame and
anger. His expression of rage and projection of German shame onto the Jews,
temporarily interrupted the chain of overt shame and rage, lessening the pain
of the average German by implying it was not their fault (Scheff, 1994a).
Emotional intersubjectivity, social defence mechanisms and sociology
In summary then, I would suggest that the key to understanding why social
conflict often appears to be so intractable lies in the way in which social
identities and social conflicts in the external social world combine with the kind
of unconscious psychological processes and strong feelings which occur within
groups. As Halton (1994) points out, when splitting and projection occur at the
group level they tend to exploit and to occur across existing economic, cultural
and political boundaries in the external social world such as those of
nationality, ethnicity, social class and so on, particularly when these have also
been institutionalised in the form of permanent organisations such as nation
states, ethnic organisations and trade unions for example. Because groups
inevitably arouse anxiety which individuals unconsciously try to defend against
with psychotic mechanisms, cultural identities tend to be underpinned by
internal phantasy so that conflicts in the external social world come to be
experienced in a very polarised way as a battle between the forces of good
and evil, victims and villains, them and us, which considerably reinforces the
original dispute and prevents the protagonists seeing what they have in
common and where a realistic political solution might lie. As Craib (1998b)
argues, it is as if group processes completely absorb individual processes. The
pressure on the group leader(s) to come up with solutions to relieve the group's
anxiety leads to a moralisation of political discourse so that issues are not seen
in realistic terms as practical problems to be solved but emotionally as moral
issues for which someone must be blamed (Craib, 1998b; Segal, 1995).
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Groups therefore respond to social conflict not just in terms of conflicting
interests, discourses or ideologies, but also in terms of psychotic processes or
social defence mechanisms, which give the initial conflict a very powerful
emotional twist so that it ceases to be just about material resources, cultural
differences or power and takes on an additional emotional dimension which
magnifies and exaggerates the initial dispute making it much more difficult
to resolve. This raises the question then, of how these kinds of unconscious
group processes operate in relation to nationalism. Under what sociological
conditions are splitting and projection most likely to strengthen national
identities so that they then become nationalistic in the sense of being
xenophobic and=or intolerant of minorities within the state?
Rearticulating the social and the psychological: national identities and
social defence mechanisms
I would suggest that the easiest way to understand the sociological conditions
in which unconscious psychological processes are most likely to strengthen
national identities is with the help of Mann's (1986, 1993a) IEMP model of
power. Instead of seeing societies as bounded totalities within which social
relations are patterned by a prime mover such as culture or the economy,
Mann sees social relationships as the outcome of four overlapping, intersecting
socio-spacial networks of power, namely ideological, economic, military and
political. The crucial point is that while the economy, politics and culture inter-
relate with each other they are also different and separate from each other, with
their own dynamics, and in the real world their geographical boundaries
seldom if ever coincide.
At a general level, nationalism can be thought of as a cultural discourse or
ideology which holds that states as political units and nations as cultural
groups should be congruent since on the one hand, cultural autonomy is
thought to depend on having ones own state, while on the other hand, it is also
claimed that political legitimacy should be based on the nation, in the sense of
the interests or the will of the people (Calhoun, 1997; Mann, 1992). As Mann
(1995) points out, nations and nationalism first emerged in the eighteenth
century as part of an attempt to democratise the absolutist state so that it
gradually came to represent a territorially bounded citizenry conceived as a
nation. Before the eighteenth century, state boundaries did not correspond
with either economic or cultural groups which were both highly local and
relatively international. On the one hand, states contained diverse religious,
ethnic and linguistic groups and on the other hand cultural, religious and
linguistic ties also extended across state boundaries. Since states were almost
exclusively concerned with external military affairs rather than with the
regulation of social relationships within their boundaries and since ordinary
people had no role in politics, political boundaries were largely irrelevant to
most peoples' lives. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries however, as
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Carolyn Vogler
states expanded their civilian functions,14 extended political and social
citizenship15 and attempted to culturally homogenise their citizenries, they
gradually came to be transformed into nation states16 in which ordinary people
increasingly came to see themselves as members of an exclusive, legally
bounded national community based on social closure against both foreigners
and minorities within, who were often suspected of being in the service of
external enemies (Brubaker, 1992; Mann, 1993a, 1993b; Mommsen, 1990).
I would suggest that because national citizenship is an exclusive club based
on social closure against those not seen as belonging to the nation (whether
inside or outside the state) national boundaries provide a very powerful basis
for the play of unconscious paranoid processes in which members of a nation
are able to rid themselves of bad internal objects and destructive impulses by
projecting them onto commonly shared and accepted external enemies (Jaques,
1953). The emotional power of nationalism and the speed with which states
are able to mobilise nationalism in times of crisis may therefore be rooted not
only in sociological processes such as cultural discourses and the very real
citizenship gains states provided for their members, but also in strong feelings
arising from unconsciously motivated attempts by groups, to use nation states
and national institutions to protect themselves against the recurrence of early
psychotic anxiety. In times of national crisis, the anxiety generated by external
social conditions is likely to combine with the kind of unconscious psychotic
processes occurring within groups to produce nationalist social defence
mechanisms, so that paranoid anxiety is transmuted into fear of known and
identifiable enemies in the external social world who can be fought against in
real life, with the social support and cooperation of comrades in arms rather
than alone in the isolation of the unconscious inner world (Jaques, 1953).
Indeed, it could be suggested that the reason why nation states are seldom
referred to as `it' but are revered and personified as primal authority figures
such as mother or father (Mann, 1993) is not only cultural but also because
of the close connection between national identities and processes of splitting
and projection characteristic of early infancy. While in themselves, national
identities which simply involve seeing oneself as a member of a national
community are not necessarily nationalistic in the sense of being xenophobic or
intolerant of minorities, in conflictual or anxiety provoking social situations
they may easily become so.
Drawing on Mann's (1993a) analysis, I would suggest that when the people
have been brought into the state and states are responsible for providing social
and political citizenship rights, splitting and projection are most likely to
strengthen national identities when the geographical boundaries of different
sociological networks of power do not correspond with each other. As Mann's
(1993a, 1995, 1997) analysis shows, one of the main reasons why nationalism
may be increasing in the contemporary world is that we now have an increasing
geographical disjunction between a divided nation state system, which is the
only source of democratic political participation in the contemporary world
and transnational economic and cultural elements such as an increasingly
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global economy and world religions which challenge or do not fit into
the nation state system (Craib, 1994, Scheff, 1994a; Segal, 1995). Within this
general context I would also suggest that national identities are most likely to
become strongly nationalistic among groups which are confined or `caged'
(Mann, 1993a) in weak or declining nation states, who feel relatively excluded
from the polity (or who want to exclude others) and who are also experiencing
significant economic and social dislocation as result of economic adjustments
in response to market forces at the international level, particularly when
feelings of humiliation and shame are also involved (Scheff, 1994b; Hall, 1995;
Christie, 1998).
Because nationalism takes such different forms in different circumstances,17
I will attempt to illustrate the links between sociological and psychological
processes by means of a case study of the economic nationalism of British trade
unions during the 1980's and early 1990's which I will go on to suggest later,
may show certain parallels, at least in a very general structural way, with
German Nazism during the interwar period. While Nazism and trade union
economic nationalism are clearly very different from each other and arose in
very different social conditions, I would suggest that they can nevertheless be
seen as examples of the ways in which different kinds of nationalistic discourse
may come to be strengthened and magnified by paranoid social defence
mechanisms in which shame about the nation's weak or declining international
position is associated with anger and rage against foreigners and the enemy
within who are seen as to blame.
National identities in the discourse of British trade unions in the 1980's and early
1990's
Economic nationalism is a form of state reinforcing nationalism which
attempts to use the state to insulate the national economy from market forces
at the international level by means of policies aimed at establishing greater
national self sufficiency and a stronger trade balance (Heilperin, 1960; Mayall,
1990). The intention is therefore to bring economic boundaries into closer
correspondence with political and cultural boundaries at the national level. My
main argument is that in the context of an increasingly global economy and a
hostile laissez-faire Conservative government which might seem to point
towards the need for more international solutions to meeting members' needs,
British unions' increasing economic nationalism during the 1980's and 1990's
can be thought of, at least partly, as a social defence mechanism rooted in the
social conditions of the unions. The anxieties generating it however, need to be
understood in a historical context.
As Mann's (1993a) historical analysis shows, the unions have traditionally
been highly dependent on the nation state for class gains. Classes as organised
economic actors emerged within the boundaries of separate nation states rather
than transnationally as Marx expected and the most organised class struggles
over things like universal suffrage, legalisation of the unions, poor law reform
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Carolyn Vogler
and so on, all focused on the state without reference to class relations in other
states (Mann, 1993a). As states increasingly came to regulate and institutio-
nalise class relations within their boundaries, organised labour came to be
territorially confined or `caged' at the national level (Mann, 1993a).18
Historically, there has therefore been a dialectical relation between nationally
organised labour movements and nation states since class struggles have both
depended on, and in turn strengthened, nation states and national boundaries
(Mann, 1993a; Vogler, 1985). Between 1945 and the late 1970's for example,
the unions gained admittance into the state and increasingly came to engage in
political bargaining with governments for social citizenship in the form of
welfare state reformism and economic planning for full employment, based on
the political regulation of capital at the national level. Class struggles have
therefore given labour a stake in the nation and an interest in defending and
increasing sovereignty at the national level. Since they were preoccupied with
domestic politics and had no serious geo-political or geo-economic interests in
relation to either markets or territory, their national identities however, were
inward looking rather than nationalistic (Mann, 1993a).
By the 1980's and 1990's however, the unions were geographically outflanked
by the emergence of genuinely global economic forces which were then able to
limit and indeed reverse the social citizenship powers of the nation state (Mann,
1993b; 1997). Economic forces in the form of trade, multi-national companies
and international finance capital were integrating the national economies of
separate nation states to the point where internationally open but relatively weak
states such as Britain were much less able than in the past to politically regulate
capital at the national level.19 Employees in the advanced and to a lesser extent,
the less advanced countries were also being brought into competition with each
other on a single international labour market on which wages and living
standards varied dramatically, yet they were much less able than during the
previous post war era to use the nation state to protect themselves from market
forces at the international level. At the same time, British unions also faced a
series of hostile Conservative governments which not only weakened them with
anti-trade union legislation but also dismantled many of the main corporatist
arrangements of the 1970's and set about removing political controls over capital
at the national level by means of a deflationary, promarket approach based on
privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation.20 In the context of a world
recession, this combination of economic and political change resulted in major
structural shifts in the British economy and very high levels of unemployment
which affected organised labour particularly badly. Since most job losses
occurred in large manufacturing industries where the unions had traditionally
been most strongly organised,21 trade union membership and the extent of
collective bargaining both declined dramatically. Between 1979 and 1993 for
example, trade union density22 fell from over half (55%) to less than a third
(31%) while between 1984 and 1990, the proportion of employees in plants with
over 25 employees who had their wages partly determined by collective
bargaining fell from 71% to 54% (Taylor, 1994).
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As many commentators have suggested, in these circumstances the only way
in which the unions could have hoped to have regained a measure of control
over trans-nationally mobile capital was by abandoning their dependence on
the nation state and uniting with workers abroad in an attempt to establish new
forms of collective action at the European and the broader international levels
(Levinson, 1972; Mann, 1993b, 1997; Teague and Grahl, 1992; Wendon, 1994).
In practice however, the evidence from case studies of the unions' practical
action during the 1980's and early 1990's together, with my own initial analysis
of the discourse of trade union journals indicates that this only happened to a
very limited degree. While there was an awareness of the increasing importance
of international cooperation and some bilateral contact between union leaders
in different countries, especially in Europe, Wendon's (1994) analysis of GMW,
MSF and the TGWU23 for example, shows that even after 1992, links with
European unions were relatively superficial and orientated to the exchange of
information rather than to the coordination of collective bargaining or pooling
resources for cross national amalgamation.
My own analysis of the journals of these same three unions (together with the
TUC)24 during these years, indicates that while on the one hand they often
advocated greater international cooperation in order to challenge the growing
power of multi-national companies, on the other hand the discourse came to be
characterised by increasing economic nationalism which was strengthened and
magnified by feelings of shame, anger and rage. Rather than identifying with
workers abroad in an attempt to regulate capital at the international level, their
main identity was clearly with the nation. They explicitly claimed to speak for
the nation and to be representing `the national interest' `the true interests of the
British people', `the needs and concerns of the British people' and `the collective
common sense of Britain'.25 Economic nationalism however, was also reinforced
by a strong sense of loss and shame rooted in a very polarised comparison
between Britain's economic position in the past which was imagined with pride
and its position today which was felt to be humiliating and shameful. The main
theme was that whereas in the past `we' were proud because we were a great
nation, `the workshop of the world' dominating the globe economically and in
control of our own destiny, now we are ashamed because we are declining or
sinking to the position of a relatively poor, weak, dependent Third World
country reliant on foreigners for support with no independent control over our
own destiny. Economic decline was therefore experienced as painful, humiliating
and shameful. `The final indignity' for example, was said to be that `we who were
once the workshop of the world now import more manufactured goods than we
export' (GMW Journal July=August 1983). `In less than 100 years', `we' were
said to have `regressed from the workshop of the world to the sick man of
Europe' (TASS Newsbrief vol. 2, 1986) and `by most indicators we are now a
second rate country' (TASS Newsbrief vol. 2 no. 1, 1986). Once an independent
nation and the workshop of the world, Britain was now seen as being little more
than a `dumping ground', `a warehouse' or `shop window' for other people's
goods (GMW Threads June, 1991: 6).
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Shame however, easily turned to anger with Britain's enemies who were seen
as to blame. Rather than admitting the reality of economic interdependence
and questioning their dependence on the nation state, the unions blamed
foreigners and the enemy within (ie the Conservative Government) who were
experienced as threatening, hostile and destructive. They felt threatened and
humiliated not just by cheaper imports from the Third World but also by direct
investment by the Americans and Japanese who were described as arrogant,
aggressive, unaccountable, machismo and domineering. As MSF put it `... US
and Japanese business policy reflects a machismo approach which has little
interest in equality' (Aerospace: A strategy for the Future). American and
Japanese multi-national companies were perceived as `predators', trying to
`invade' and `annex' whole swathes of the British economy in order to gain a
foothold in Europe through the UK Ð and the Government was hated for
supporting their `invasion' and `take over' from within. The Government was
seen as deliberately `wrecking' British industries by starving them of cash,
turning them into lucrative prey for foreign investors and then allowing foreign
multi-nationals free reign to pursue their global strategies at Britain's expense,
(MSF Newsbrief vol. 2 no. 1, 1986). Despite her `flag waving and patriotic
posturing', Mrs Thatcher was seen as `presiding over nothing less than the
betrayal of our economic and political independence'. She was accused of
`sacrificing our national pride and independence' `on the alter of the almighty
dollar' and `doing more to undermine British sovereignty than any prime
minister since Neville Chamberlain ...' (TUC Presidents Address to Annual
Congress, 1986: 431±432).
By the 1990's the unions' national identities had therefore become much
more emotional, outward looking and aggressively nationalistic, rather than
simply national as in the past (Vogler, 1985). The question then, is how can
we explain this rather paradoxical combination of a nationalistic discourse
underpinned by feelings of shame and anger which locked them even more
strongly into the nation state, in the context of a globalised economy in which
there was then so little to be gained at the national level? I would suggest that
the unions' traditional instrumental attachment to the nation state came to be
strengthened and reinforced by social defence mechanisms which locked them
even more firmly into the national mould and made it even harder for them to
move towards more international solutions.26 In a situation of unpredictable
global capital movements, job insecurity, mass unemployment and attacks
from the Government, the intense anxiety generated by external social
conditions was likely to have combined with high levels of anxiety within the
unions as groups (particularly in a situation of such large membership losses)
to prevent individuals, including national union leaders, from thinking and
push them into paranoid processes which were in turn associated with the
emergence of a nationalistic and moralistic discourse. Rather than admitting
the reality of international interdependence and questioning their dependence
on the nation state, the feelings pushed them into blaming international
elements and the enemy within, which in turn deflected their attention away
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from what they might have had in common with foreigners and the real
problems of dealing with the insecurities and dislocation resulting from
operating on a politically unregulated international labour market on which
wages and living standards varied so greatly.27
In short then, I would suggest that far from being free floating and purely
cultural phenomena, national identities and discourses can be thought of as
forming a bridge between the material and the psychological worlds since they
are rooted both in political, economic and geopolitical processes in the external
social world and in unconscious psychological processes and strong feelings.
Discourses construct identities which in stressful or conflictual social situations
come to have great emotional power because they also come to be underpinned
by social defence mechanisms which may help to contain anxiety in the short
term, but at the expense of any real change in the longer term. While in the
short term the unions' nationalist social defence mechanisms for example, may
have helped to contain the anxiety arising from the contradiction between a
global economy and the need for employment and welfare policies at the
national level, in the longer term they appear to be counter-productive because
they contribute towards trapping the unions in predominantly national
organisational forms and preventing them moving towards more international
arrangements which may now provide a more effective means of regulating
capital than the nation state.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude with two points. First, uncomfortable though it may
seem, there may be certain parallels between the way in which sociological and
psychological processes appeared to be combining to reinforce trade union
nationalism during the 1980's and early 1990's, and the situation in Nazi
Germany in the 1930's and early 1940's. In terms of the social context firstly,
one of the most important things about the Nazi era in Germany was the
conjunction of a divided nation state system and transnational or international
elements such as transnational finance capital, international socialism
(Bolshevism) and an international religious group ± the Jews ± which
appeared to the Nazi's to challenge or not fit into the nation state. As Scheff
(1994a) points out, the 1930's was also a period of great national weakness and
humiliation for Germany following its defeat in the First World War. The
German nation was humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, under which it had
to accept sole responsibility for starting the war and it was also expelled from
the League of Nations as unworthy. Germany was therefore labelled,
stigmatised and isolated from the world community (Scheff, 1994a). At the
same time, world economic crisis combined with rapid industrialisation within
Germany created very severe economic upheaval and social dislocation within
the nation, which also reinforced a sense of inferiority and relative back-
wardness vis-a-vis more advanced nations (Almog 1990 Christie 1988).28
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As Scheff (1994a) shows in his analysis of Hitler's appeal to the German
people, under these circumstances German nationalism came to be under-
pinned by paranoid social defence mechanisms in which unacknowledged
shame,29 resentment, rage and hatred came to be projected onto the Jews as a
symbol of all that was foreign and threatening to the German state, such as
transnational finance capital and international Bolshevism for example
(Almog, 1990 Friedlander, 1997). German nationalism therefore came to be
associated with a new form of racial or `redemptive' anti-semitism in which
Judaism's international linkages were perceived as an offence against the
nation state (Christie, 1988; Friedlander, 1997). As Christie (1998) points out,
the core of anti-semitism was that an international Jewish conspiracy was
undermining the foundations of the nation state. Jews therefore came to be
seen as racial outsiders with no place in a world of nation states (Christie,
1988). This is important in the context of trade union nationalism today
because although the discourses are very different, the fact that they are both
underpinned by similar feelings and unconscious psychological processes
means that the language and images used by the unions to describe multi-
national companies and the Conservative Government in the 1980's and 1990's
are sometimes vaguely reminiscent of European anti-semitism in the 1930's, at
least in a very general structural way. In rather the same way as the Jews were
seen as being rootless cosmopolitans or universalists who used countries for
their own interests and were incapable of loyalty to any nation (Almog, 1990;
Christie, 1988) multi-national companies were seen as thoroughly unpatriotic
and a fundamental threat to the nation, and the Conservative Government
were hated for being in league with them.30
The second point is that far from being a thing of the past as many
sociologists today argue, the combination of a relatively integrated global
economy and a divided nation state system may now be providing fertile
conditions for an emotionalisation of national identities which runs counter to
the internationalising tendencies inherent in the global economy. As Mann (1998)
puts it, the problem is that we now live in a global society in the sense that there is
now a single economic power network, but this is not a unitary society or an
ideological community or a state. Nations have been brought into competition
with each other in an international environment in which there is no overall
political regulation at either the European or the global levels. While on the one
hand the international economy has been associated with more genuine
internationalism than in the past (Mann, 1998) the lack of political regulation
at the global level leaves plenty of room for increased instability, competition and
hostility (Scheff, 1994a). The reason why sociologists need to take feelings
seriously in the contemporary world is that they may be combining with
sociological changes to strengthen and reinforce nationalism and the principle of
nationality in a world in which it might now be more productive to question it.
City University
Received 11 November 1998
Finally accepted 11 October 1999
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stephan Feuchtwang, Michael Mann, Ian Craib, Tony Woodiwiss, Duncan
Gallie, Cynthia Cockburn and the journal's anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
Notes
1 As Craib (1998a) argues, Giddens' concept of structuration for example, tends to dissolve
structure into action yet at the same time is also based on a limited cognitive conception of the
actor which overlooks feeling and emotion.
2 I am grateful to Tony Woodiwiss for suggesting this formulation of the issue during verbal
discussion.
3 In John Hall's (1995) analysis for example, the emotional power of nationalism is seen as a
direct result of political and economic factors such as defeat in war, economic uncompetitive-
ness or blocked social mobility whereas for Calhoun (1997) it is more the result of claims to
national superiority (ethical imperatives) embedded in the discourse of nationalism.
4 Jenkins (1996) argues that even our deepest and most basic sense of selfhood is really a social
product taken in from the outside during socialisation in early childhood. He argues that before
the acquisition of language, infants are open to forceful and consequential identification from
the outside which will affect them all their lives because at this stage in their development they
lack the resources and competence to successfully counter external definitions by others.
Identities acquired before the acquisition of language are therefore said to be more external and
authoritative than those acquired later and also much more resistant to change.
5 Drawing on Foucault, post structuralists put forward a new conception of `the subject' or
`subjectivity' which is not the same as the individual human person. In contrast to individuals,
subjects are seen as socially or symbolically constructed categories. Disciplinary power was seen
by Foucault as a new type of power which in contemporary society, operated primarily through
discourses which constituted and constructed, rather than simply reflected reality. For a
discussion see Barrett (1993) Bradley (1996) Hall (1992, 1996) and Lupton (1996).
6 Projective identification also occurs in psychoanalysis during transference.
7 As Craib (1989) points out, the baby's anxiety is thought to change from a fear of destruction to
a fear that the newly accepted bad feelings will outweigh the good feelings and the baby will
destroy the person who is loved with its hatred.
8 Craib (1989: 149) notes that Segal's development of Klein's work echoes Lacan's analysis of the
emergence of symbols and language, except that Segal sees symbols as a replacement for the
mother as a phantasised ideal object rather than for oedipal desire, as is the case with Lacan.
9 Object relations theorists disagree over the extent to which splitting and projection are a
response to purely internally generated feelings of rage and destructiveness as they are for Klein,
or whether they also result from bad experiences in the outside world such as for example, bad
parenting. Alice Miller's (1983a, 1983b) work for example, shows how people such as Hitler
who have experienced harsh and violent childhoods, are particularly susceptible to more
extreme forms of splitting and projection in later life.
10 Menzies Lyth's (1988) classic study of student nurses for example, shows how those who
could not adapt to the hospital's paranoid social defence system tended to leave nursing.
Paradoxically `leavers' tended to be more mature individuals who were rather less likely (as
individuals) to deal with anxiety through splitting and projection.
11 As Menzies Lyth (1988) points out, plans for organisational change which seem appropriate
rationally often do not work in practice because they do not take into account the anxieties and
social defences underpinning the existing organisational culture and structure which plans for
change usually threaten to upset. In her view, the problem with social defence mechanisms is
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that they prevent unrealistic or pathological anxiety being differentiated from realistic anxiety
related to the actual social situation, so that anxiety tends to remain permanently at a level
determined more by phantasies than reality and realistic anxiety cannot be dealt with in a
constructive way (Menzies Lyth, 1988).
12 The main problem with Scheff's (1994a) analysis is that he does not explain the unconscious
psychoanalytic mechanisms underpinning engulfment and isolation ± he simply equates them
with Durkheim's altruistic and anomic suicide. I have therefore attempted to impute them on
the basis of Craib's and Bion's work.
13 See for example Stillar (1988) who argues that the text (ie discourse) weaves us together and is
an important way in which we create identification. Burman and Parker (1993) similarly argue
that emotions and identity are constructed in discourse.
14 Mann (1995) emphasises the provision of national communications infrastructures such as
canals, roads, railways, post offices, telegraphs, schools and so on which increased the density of
social interaction within state boundaries and therefore helped to strengthen the nation as an
experienced community.
15 In T.H. Marshall's sense of access to three sets of rights, namely civic rights (such as equality
before the law and free speech) political rights (such as the right to vote and organise politically)
and social rights (namely the right to a basic level of economic and social welfare in the form of
Keynesian full employment policies and national welfare states).
16 Even though few states have ever really been culturally homogeneous, Mann (1993b) uses the
term nation-state rather than national state which he justifies on the grounds that most states
still base their legitimacy on the nation as a cultural concept. Following Mann, I will also use
the term nation-state rather than national state. For a discussion of these terms see McCrone
(1998).
17 As Mann (1993a, 1995) points out, it is conventional to distinguish between state subverting,
state reinforcing and state creating nationalism although the first two are now much more
important than state creating nationalism which was typical of the nineteenth century Prussian
or German state. State subverting nationalism, which is usually cultural or political, is
characteristic of oppressed minorities who want to acquire their own separate state whereas
state reinforcing nationalism (which may be economic, political, cultural or some combination
of the three) occurs when groups attempt to use an existing state to achieve either increased
political participation (reform) the amalgamation of territories, the exclusion of a minority or
greater protection from threatening economic, political or cultural forces outside the state.
18 Under pressure from nationally organised labour movements states introduced social and
welfare legislation restricting the way in which capital was able to use labour (eg The Factory
Acts, Health and Safety legislation, restrictions on working hours etc) and also increased the
amount of national income passing through their hands in order to redistribute between classes
and groups within their boundaries (for a discussion see Vogler, 1985).
19 Between 1983 and 1988 for example, world trade grew at a compound annual rate of 5% while
global FDI increased by over 20% per annum in real terms (Julius, 1990). For a country of its
size, the UK now has a very high level of both inward and outward investment, ranking second
only to the USA with its very much larger domestic economy. From the unions' point of view,
the problem with international interdependence is that when capital is able to operate in an area
which is wider than nation states, class struggles which weaken capitals operating within the
nation are counter-productive since they reduce the nation's international competitiveness and
thus the level of investment and employment within the nation.
20 As Gamble (1988) points out, the removal of virtually all political controls on inward and
outward investment also acted as and additional stimulus to the complete internationalisation
of the British economy.
21 Between 1979 and 1993 the proportion of jobs in manufacturing industries fell from 31% to
20% while the proportion of jobs in the service sector increased from 58% to 67% (Taylor
1994). The growth of new jobs however, was largely concentrated in smaller enterprises in the
private service sector often employing female part-time workers who have traditionally been
much more difficult to organise (Taylor, 1994; Purcell, 1993). During the same period, public
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sector jobs also fell from 7.1 million to 5.6 million (Taylor, 1994). Unemployment therefore rose
more steeply in Britain than in other countries and in a very short period of time Britain moved
from being a country with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD to one of the
highest. Between 1971 and 1986, unemployment rose from approximately 2% to 11%, although
in just two years, between 1979 and 1981, it doubled (Gallie and Marsh, 1984).
22 Trade union density is measured as a proportion of the employed workforce (Taylor, 1994: 29).
23 The Manufacturing Science and Finance Union (MSF), The General and Municipal Workers'
Union (GMW) and the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU).
24 Although I studied a representative sample of unions in all the main sectors of the economy, the
case study presented here (Vogler forthcoming) is based on an analysis of the journals of three
large manufacturing unions (MSF, GMW and the TGWU) plus the TUC. Union journals are
of course, mainly written by national union officials for lay officials and the general
membership. My main empirical question was who or what were the unions (national officials)
referring to when they used the word `we' and who do they regard as `they' or `them')? My
claims about changes in the discourse since the 1970's are based on a similar analysis
undertaken previously which covers the 1970's (Vogler, 1985).
25 While Britain is in fact a multi-national state, a sense of Britishness adheres to the state. As
McCrone (1998) points out, Scottish and Welsh identities have traditionally been nested within
a broader British identity.
26 Internationalism is also inhibited by two important sociological factors. The first is that the
unions' international organisations are all inter-national rather than supra-national since they
consist of separate nationally sovereign trade union centres which lack a central organisation
capable of over-riding their separate national constituents to establish common interests at the
global level. Despite their inter-national organisations, the unions are therefore relatively
isolated (in Scheff's (1994a) terms) from their counterparts abroad. The second is that as yet
there are no genuine supra-national political units through which capital could be politically
regulated at the international level in the way that states have traditionally regulated economic
forces within their own boundaries. Existing international institutions do not even remotely
resemble supra-national organisations. They are composed of sovereign states concerned with
establishing their national interests in the international arena rather than with transferring
sovereignty to a transnational unit. The UN and the ILO for example, are interstate
organisations which are unable to alter the structure of the international system or the nature of
relations between states, while the EU is primarily an economic network with little or no
political economy (Mann, 1998). As Mann (1998) points out, its multi-agency regulatory bodies
are restricted to ad hoc tinkering with capitalist markets, they are unable to plan or confront
them head on.
27 If national trade union officials had been interviewed alone, as individuals, they may well have
expressed more internationalism than was evident in the discourse in the journals. The problem
however, was that the social defence mechanisms reflected in the discourse tended to prevent
much change in the way in which the unions operated as organisations. This is rather akin to
Menzies Lyth's (1989) finding that when she spoke to nurses individually they deplored the
practices used to protect them against the anxiety of their working situation such as
depersonalisation of patients and so on, but in their working situation, they were trapped by
them and relatively powerless against them.
28 This is not intended to be a comprehensive explanation of Nazism, I am simply pointing to
certain factors which may have been particularly conducive to the play of unconscious paranoid
processes and strong feelings. There is in fact great debate among social scientists on the origins
of Nazism, for a discussion see Botz (1993). As John Hall (1986) points out, politics and the
nature of the state were also crucially important. Germany had a half modern semi-
authoritarian state and the country lacked a strong political centre capable of holding society
together so that it was politically polarised between the Communist and Nazi parties.
29 For an analysis of the shame rage sequences in Mein Kampf see Scheff (1994a). While both
discourses were underpinned by shame and rage, the feelings underpinning Nazism were very
much more extreme than those underpinning the unions' economic nationalism in the 1980's
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and early 1990's. This may be partly because the social context was very different but also
because, as Scheff (1994a) points out, in Nazism the intense shame and humiliation were almost
completely unacknowledged, so that the anger and rage were much more intense and
compulsive than in the case of the unions' economic nationalism today.
30 I am not making a direct comparison between the so called Jewish conspiracy and multi-
national companies since the later of course are real material entities which can cause
considerable economic and social disruption whereas the former was a complete myth ± the
Jews were perceived by the Nazis as symbolising threatening economic, political and cultural
forces outside the nation. I am grateful to Cynthia Cockburn for drawing my attention to the
possibility of confusion on this point.
References
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Carolyn Vogler
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