‘You Are Germany’– ‘I Am Australian’: The construction of national unity through diversity in select examples from Australia and Germany

Abstract

This article explores the construction of national unity through diversity by analysing two case studies from Germany and Australia: the television campaign ‘You Are Germany’ and the song ‘I Am Australian’. It places both examples in a broader context of forging national unity through diversity and argues that diversity has occasionally been hijacked as a nationalist argument to advance national identity and unity. This study explores the different aspects of diversity appearing in both cases under study, identifies those parts of diversity being excluded and asks how national unity is being forged through recourse to diversity.

Keywords:

• diversity
• unity
• ‘Du bist Deutschland’
• ‘You Are Germany’
• ‘I Am Australian’
• national song

Notes

1. Challenging the changes of increasing diversity does not mean that governments would have automatically implemented a ‘just’ approach to dealing with societal diversity. In Australia, for example, multiculturalism has been increasingly dismantled since the incoming of the Howard Government in 1996; Germany, in turn, has no official policy of multiculturalism comparable to Australia.

2. The campaign consisted of several advertising approaches, including advertisements in newspapers and television commercials (http://www.du-bist-deutschland.de, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-R0L4KWdI). There was also a sequel being made to the first campaign, with the aim being to improve the general attitude towards children. Here only the television commercial is discussed.