National DOXA, Crises and Ideological Contestation in Contemporary Austria

Based on a qualitative analysis of relevant news media, this article provides a historically contextualized account of the construction and contestation of Austrian national identities. It argues, in Bourdieu-ian fashion, that successive crises since the mid-1980s have transformed a previously non-reflexive habitus/doxa—the taken-for-granted (though not ideologically homogenous) “cultural universe of the undiscussed”—into a contested “universe of discourse.” Focusing on the realms of sport, language/national symbols, and the environment, the analysis reveals discursive struggles around previously “banal” and now consciously negotiated national identities.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Special Research Fellowship, which made the research underlying and the writing of this article possible.

Christian Karner is a Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. He specializes in the sociology of ethnicity, nationalism, and religion. His recent and forthcoming publications include work on Hindu nationalism, Austrian national identities, religion and globalization, and “Traveller” identities.

Notes

1. See, for example, John Fitzmaurice, Austrian Politics and Society Today (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 122.

2. Duncan Morrow, “Jörg Haider and the New FPÖ: Beyond the Democratic Pale?,” in Paul Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right (London and New York: Pinter, 2000), p. 33.

3. Paul Hainsworth, “Introduction: The Extreme Right,” in Paul Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right (London and New York: Pinter, 2000), p. 1. Herbert Auinger makes this case even more strongly, suggesting that Haider is—rather than an Austrian “anomaly”—symptom and product of European “bourgeois normality” and its responses to (past and present) “otherness”: Herbert Auinger, Haider: Nachrede auf einen bürgerlichen Politiker (Wien: Promedia, 2000).

4. For an analysis of the sanctions, as well as of some of the underlying motivations for Austria's EU partners, see Michael Merlingen, Cas Mudde, and Ulrich Sedelmeier, “The Right and the Righteous? European Norms, Domestic Politics and the Sanctions Against Austria,” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2001), pp. 59–77. The sanctions were lifted following the recommendations of a report compiled by the so-called “three wise men” mandated by the EU-14 and the European Court of Human Rights: Martti Ahtisaari, Jochen Frowein, Marcelius Oreja, “Report” (Paris: 8 September 2000).

5. Illustrative examples of this common homogenizing tendency—taken from studies conducted by Austrian-/non-Austrian academics and an investigative journalist respectively—include the following: Wolfgang Eisman (ed.), Rechtspopulismus (Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2002): revealingly, the subtitle of this edited collection raises the question if right-wing populism is a peculiarly Austrian “sickness” or part of European normality (“Österreichische Krankheit oder Europäische Normalität”); secondly, a reviewer of a seminal analysis of anti-Semitic prejudice, Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrmination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism (London: Routledge, 2001), calls it an “important book for anyone with interests in … today's Austrian/ European crisis” (Ron Scollon, back cover): significantly (and this critical review of the review must not distract from a truly excellent book), racist prejudice is thus mis-portrayed as the metonymic crux of a complex crisis, reactions to which are—as the following analysis will show—far more varied than the reviewer implies; thirdly, Nick Ryan captures some but by no means all Austrian discourses about the country's World War II past, when he wonders “if they're suffering from some form of collective amnesia.” Homeland (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2004), p. 249.

6. Other papers analyzed in what follows include the two quality dailies Der Standard (widely seen as left-leaning, liberal and intellectual) and the more conservative Die Presse, the weekly magazine News (with a reputation of belonging to the tabloid genre), and coverage by the state-owned Austrian broadcasting network (ORF or Österreichischer Rundfunk).

7. Peter Thaler, The Ambivalence of Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nation-Building in a Modern Society (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001), p. 39; Norbert Mappes-Niedik, Österreich für Deutsche (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2002), p. 167. Reisigl and Wodak similarly point out that the Kronen Zeitung is in “relative terms … the most popular newspaper in the Western world.” Discourse and Discrimination, p. 102.

8. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992).

9. Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

10. Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).

11. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage, 1992).

12. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992).

13. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).

14. Beck, Globalization, pp. 23–5.

15. Tim Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2002).

16. Billig, p. 42.

17. Edensor, pp. 20, 71, 88–98.

18. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

19. David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 25.

20. Steven Vertovec, The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 64–73.

21. David Parker, “The Chinese takeaway and the diasporic habitus: space, time and power geometries,” in Barnor Hesse (ed.), Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions (London: Zed Books, 2000), pp. 73–95.

22. Rudolf De Cillia, Martin Reisigl, and Ruth Wodak, “The discursive construction of national identities,” Discourse and Society, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1999), p. 153 [italics in original]. In a more general vein, Micheal Billig argues that “ordinary ways of speaking and experiencing the world—or the habitus … —will be suffused with nationalist meanings, creating an environment in which it appears natural to possess national identities”: ‘socio-psychological aspects of nationalism: imagining ingroups, others and the world of nations,” in Keebet von Benda-Beckman and Maykel Verkuyten (eds), Nationalism, Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in Europe (Utrecht: European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations), p. 93. In a recent collection of essays that reflect (on) the multi-dimensional, complex, continually negotiated (social/ethnic/family) identities of individual Austrians, a former Austrian Vice-Chancellor also inadvertently summarizes his own experience of the national habitus in referring to places, food, memories and feelings “beyond conscious awareness” (jenseits des wachen Bewusstseins): Erhard Busek, “Abstammung allein kann es nicht sein,” in Barbara Coudenhove-Calergi (ed.), Meine Wurzeln sind anderswo: Österreichische Identitäten (Wien, Czernin Verlag, 2001), pp. 9–21.

23. Bourdieu, pp. 164–73. Also see Crossley's elaborations on doxa as “what we know without knowing that we know; what we abide by and adhere to with, at best, only a vague and inarticulate sense of doing so;” Crossley further observes that doxa may have been or become a ‘subject of discursive struggle,” that “conditions of political crisis disturb [its]taken-for-granted nature,” and that doxa “reflects the interests of dominant groups”: Nick Crossley, “On Systematically Distorted Communication: Bourdieu and the Socio-Analysis of Publics,” in Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts (eds), After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 100–101.

24. Edensor (pp. 20–21) elaborates on the national habitus as “national structures of feeling … the unreflexive construction of national identity, its embeddedness in the everyday.”

25. In Outline, Bourdieu defines “objective crisis” as the “necessary condition” for the “questioning of doxa,” for “bring[ing] the undiscussed into discussion” (pp. 168–9). In a variant of the Bourdieu-ian model (and given Austria's, by international standards, continuing relative affluence), I here talk about social actor's perceptions and definitions of what they regard to constitute a crisis induced by change. A sense of “relative crisis” can be inferred from two recent Austrian surveys, the first of which documented widespread and continuing skepticism of the EU (‘studie: Österreicher ‘skeptisch” gegenüber EU,” http://www.orf.at [9 December 2004]); a day later, another study suggested that 61 percent of Austrians considered national health care, environmental policies and the pension system to still compare favorably, in relative terms, with the rest of the European Union (“Österreicher sehen sich im EU-Vergleich vorne,” http://www.orf.at [10 December 2004]). As the following analysis shows, however, there are undeniably widespread perceptions of such (relative) crises, underlying some of which there are social/structural changes—particularly neo-liberal adjustments to the forces of globalization—that certainly can be described as “objective” in Bourdieu's sense of the word.

26. Useful historical summaries and analyses include the following: Walter Kleindel, Die Chronik Österreichs (Dortmund: Chronik Verlag, 1984); Ernst Hanisch, Der lange Schatten des Staates: Österreichische Gesellschaftsgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1994); Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Austrians (London: HarperCollins, 1997);

27. Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

28. See, for example, Hugo Portisch and Sepp Riff, Der lange Weg zur Freiheit (Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1986).

29. Adopting Benedict Anderson's famous terminology in Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), this project has entailed the increasingly hegemonic “imagining” of the Austrian nation as (culturally) different and distinct from its German neighbor. While I will, in due course, cite statistical evidence documenting the increasing dominance of this discourse of Austrian particularism in the period between the end of World War II and the 1980s, mention must here again be made of Thaler'sAmbivalence as among the most detailed historical analysis of post-war Austrian “nation-building.”

30. Thaler, p. 119. The pan-Germanic discourse should be seen as a version of romanticism, which—in its definition/construction of languages as surface manifestations of under-lying, primordial, ascribed, and essentially unchanging cultural essences—has been the ideological driving-force for nationalist discourse and movements in Central Europe (and beyond) for the past 150 years.

31. Ernst Bruckmüller, “Das Österreichbewußtsein,” in Wolfgang Mandl (ed.), Politk in Österreich (Wien: edition va bene, 1992), p. 262.

32. Stuart Hall, “Introduction; Who Needs “Identity”?” in Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 1–17.

33. Quoted in Auinger, p. 52.

34. Surveys conducted between the 1970s and 1990s revealed that between 60 and 70 percent of respondents named “Germany as the country most similar to their own”: Thaler, p. 79.

35. Albert F. Reiterer (ed.) Nation und Nationalbewußtsein in Österreich: Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung (Wien: Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1988), pp. 118–19.

36. Ernst Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich: Kulturelles Bewußtsein und gesellschaftlich-politische Prozesse (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1996 [1984]), p. 70. It should be noted that these various dimensions reveal both pride in aspects of the Austrian state and considerable affective attachment to cultural history, practices and assumed characteristics. As such, they arguably cross-cut the civic-/ethnic nationalism distinction and, notwithstanding my terminological preference for national (rather than ethnic) identities in this article, corroborate the suggestion that the concepts of “the nation” and (dominant) “ethnicity” share a number of family characteristics: see Steve Fenton, Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 13–24.

37. The working definition of discourse informing the following analysis draws on a school of thought known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), according to which written and spoken language constitute forms of social practice; as such, language is shaped (without being fully determined) by existing power structures, which discourse in turn helps to either reproduce (if ideologically hegemonic) or subvert (if critical/ideologically oppositional); see, for example, Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (London: Longman, 1989); Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity, 1992); Lilie Chouliaraki and Norman Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press); Reisigl and Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination; Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak (eds), Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

38. Crossley, p. 101.

39. See Josef Haslinger, Politik der Gefühle (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1995), pp. 26–7.

40. For detailed analyses of the Waldheim controversy, see Richard Mitten, The Politics of Antisemitic Prejudice (Oxford: Westview Press, 1992), and chapter 3 in Reisigl and Wodak.

41. Criticisms of/commentaries on a lack of Austrian Vergangenheitsbewältigung (loosely translated as a process of confronting the Holocaust) have been proposed by “internal” commentators: see, for example, Anton Pelinka and Erika Weinzierl (eds), Das Grosse Tabu: Österreichs Umgang mit seiner Vergangenheit (Österreichische Staatsdruckerei: edition S, 1987); Gerhard Botz and Gerald Sprengnagel (eds), Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte: Verdrängte Vergangenheit, Österreich-Identität, Waldheim und die Historiker (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 1994); Hans Rauscher, “Eine geschlossene Verdrengungskette,” in Hans-Henning Scharsach (ed.), Haider—Österreich und die rechte Versuchung (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2002), pp. 22–45); also some of Austria's best known writers: see, for example, Thomas Bernhard, Heldenplatz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988); Elfriede Jelinek, Die Ausgesperrten (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1985); and international commentators: for example, Melany Sully, A Contemporary History of Austria (London: Routledge, 1990) and Fitzmaurice, alike.

42. There is a large body of literature concerning the construction and maintenance of a public myth of (Austrian) WW II victimhood based on a selective reading of the Moscow declaration of 1943: see, for example, Günther Bischof, “Die Instrumentalisierung der Moskauer Erklärung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,” Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 20, No. 11 (1993), pp. 345–66; Hanisch; Helga Embacher, Albert Lichtblau, and Günther Sandner, Umkämpfte Erinnerung: Die Wehrmachtsaustellung in Salzburg (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1999).

43. Sully, p. 114.

44. See Christian Karner, “Austro-Pop' since the 1980s: Two Case Studies of Cultural Critique and Counter-Hegemonic Resistance,” Sociological Research Online, Vol. 6, No. 4 (2002), www.socresonline.org.uk/6/4/karner.html.

45. I here adopt a working definition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung as a form of self-critical historical consciousness aimed at analyzing Austrian history “without self-pity” and giving rise to an awareness of Austrian perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust: Felix Kreissler, “Nationswerdung und Trauerarbeit,” in Pelinka and Weinzierl (eds), p. 131. Recent additions to the large (and steadily growing) body of relevant literature mentioned above also include work on the (extent of the) prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the immediate post-war years as well as the effects of Austrian Vergangenheitsbewältigung (or an earlier lack thereof) on the sciences and intellectual discourse: Hellmut Butterweck, Verurteilt & Begnadigt (Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2004); Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Österreichs Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus (Wien/New York: Springer, 2004).

46. See, for example, Alexander Pollak and Nina Eger, “Antisemitismus mit Anspielungscharakter,” in Anton Pelinka and Ruth Wodak (eds) “Dreck am Stecken”: Politik der Ausgrenzung (Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2002), p. 187–8.

47. Margit Reiter, “Antisemitismus von Links? Traditionen—Kontinuitäten—Ambivalenzen,” in Heinz P. Wassermann (ed.), Antisemitismus in Österreich nach 1945 (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2002), pp. 96–128.

48. Evelyn Adunka, “Antisemitismus in der Zweiten Republik: Ein Überblick anhand einiger ausgewählter Beispiele,” in Wassermann (ed.), pp. 17–19; 29–33.

49. Michael John and Matthias Marschik, “Ortswechsel: Antisemitismus im österreichischen Sport nach 1945,” in Wassermann (ed.), pp. 188–202.

50. Anton Pelinka, “struktur und Funktion der ‘Aschermittwochrede’ Jörg Haiders,” in Pelinka and Wodak (eds), pp. 61–74. Richard Mitten, “Die Juden, die er meint…,” in Pelinka and Wodak (eds), pp. 93–133. Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl, “… Wenn einer Ariel heisst…,” in Pelinka and Wodak (eds), pp. 134–72.

51. Hella Pick, Guilty Victim: Austria from the Holocaust to Haider (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000), p. 201. Recent statements of official commitment to self-critical Vergangenheitsbewältigung have included the now former Interior Minister's suggestion that every Austrian pupil should visit the former concentration camp Mauthausen at least once (‘strasser will Jugendliche zu Mauthausen-Besuch animieren,” http://www.orf.at [3 December 2004]); also, on his return from the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the current president reflected on Austria's post-war engagement with the Holocaust by stating that there had been many ‘shortcomings and mistakes” but that, over the last decade, an important process of (self-) critical rethinking had begun (“Fischer: Vergangenheitsbewältigung um ‘vieles besser’”, http://www.orf.at [28 January 2005]).

52. For a detailed discussion of the debates preceding the decision to join the EU, see Andreas Bieler, Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union: Austrian and Swedish Social Forces in the Struggle over Membership (London: Routledge, 2000).

53. See, for example, Anton Pelinka, “Die rechte Versuchung,” in Scharsach (ed.), pp. 46–66. Brigitte Bailer, Wolfgang Neugebauer, and Heribert Schiedel, “Die FPÖ auf dem Weg zur Regierungspartei,” in Scharsach (ed.), pp. 105–27. Fritz Plasser and Peter A. Ulram, “Protest ohne Parteibildung,” in Scharsach (ed.), pp. 128–43.

54. The most infamous (and widely quoted) of those statements included a reference to the Austrian nation as an “ideological miscarriage” and the “orderly” employment policies of the Third Reich; see, for example, Haslinger, p. 48.

55. For an analysis of Haider's and the FPÖ's rhetorical/discursive strategies, see Ruth Wodak, “Echt, anständig und ordentlich,” in Scharsach (ed.), pp. 46–66; also see Martin Reisigl, “Dem Volk aufs Maul schauen, nach dem Mund reden und Angst und Bange machen,” in Wolfgang Eismann (ed.), Rechtspopulismus: Österreichische Krankheit oder Europäische Normalität (Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2002), pp. 170–74.

56. There is, of course, a continually growing literature on this topic. See, in particular, Jean-Yves Camus, “Die radikale Rechte in Westeuropa,” in Eismann (ed.), pp. 40–55; Hainsworth, pp. 1–17; Morrow, pp. 33–63; Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Europe among other things: closure, culture, identity,” in Benda Beckman and Verkuyten (eds), pp. 71–88.

57. Anton Pelinka, Zur Österreichischen Identität: Zwischen deutscher Vereinigung und Mitteleuropa (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1990), pp. 147; 151.

58. Anton Pelinka, Austria: Out of the Shadow of the Past (Boulder/Colorado: Westview Press, 1998), p. 96.

59. Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 338–65.

60. Pelinka, Austria, pp. 138; 155; 172. Also see Max Haller (ed.), Identität und Nationalstolz der Österreicher: Gesellschaftliche Ursachen und Funktionen, Herausbildung und Transformation seit 1945 (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1996).

61. “Grosses Vertrauen der Österreicher in Sozialpartner,” http://www.orf.at [23 January 2004].

62. See, for example, Günther Nenning, “Mut zur Neutralität” (Kronen Zeitung, 8 January 2004, p. 6) in which this former politician and now newspaper columnist called for renewed political commitment to Austria's neutral status, claiming that 80 percent of the population continued to support it.

63. Peter Ulram and Svila Tributsch, Kleine Nation mit Eigenschaften: Über das Verhältnis der Österreicher zu sich selbst und zu ihren Nachbarn (Wien: Molden Verlag, 2004), p. 37.

64. “ ‘Gedämpfte’ Erwartungen der Österreicher,” http://www.orf.at [3 December 2003].

65. “Österreicher wollen Kurswechsel,” http://derstandard.at [4 November 2003].

66. “Österreicher sehen EU-Mitgliedschaft so negativ wie noch nie,” http://derstandard.at [13 July 2004].

67. Working within the discourse analytical framework outlined in note 38, the following discussion is based on a systematic analysis of the discursive building blocks—or “interpretative repertoires,” Margaret Wetherell and Jonathan Potter, Mapping the Language of Racism (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992)—aimed at delineating national boundaries and hence at continually (re-) producing/constructing a national community in juxtaposition to various excluded others; as already stated, I focus on the articulation of such discourses in the context of particular controversies and as employed in media coverage of sports, various symbols of the nation, and environmental concerns.

68. “Schwarze Woche für uns Österreicher,” http://wcw.krone.at [26 November 2003].

69. Moreover, this analysis resonates with the existing literature on the parameters, realms and dimensions of everyday national identities: See Billig; Edensor; Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating national identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

70. Billig, pp. 11, 119–27.

71. Edensor, p. 78. While much of such national performance in and through sport tends to occur beyond conscious reflection and hence on the level of habitus, Edensor adds that—drawing on J. MacClancey (ed.), Sport, Ethnicity and Identity (Oxford: Berg, 1996)—dominant representations and interpretations are certainly “open to negotiation and contest.” In the Bourdieu-ian terminology adopted in this article, the undiscussed and taken-for-granted (i.e. doxa) is thus subject to transformation into an inherently heterogeneous “universe of opinion.”

72. Charles W. Ingrao, “Foreword,” in Thaler, Ambivalence, p. vii. For a more general discussion of football as a widely privileged arena for “imagining,” articulating and celebrating national identities, see Koen Stroeken, “Why the world loves watching football,” Anthropology Today, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2002), pp. 9–13.

73. Much-celebrated striker, national icon, and—at the time of writing—manager of Austria's national team.

74. The stadium in question is located in Graz, Austria's second biggest city; Schwarzenegger grew up in the north-western outskirts of Graz (i.e. Thal bei Graz).

75. Walter Pohl, ‘schlechte Verlierer,” Kronen Zeitung, 4 January 2003, p. 18.

76. Reiterer, pp. 80–81.

77. While skiing undoubtedly takes center-stage, media interest in Austrian achievements in other winter sports is also pronounced and ubiquitous beyond the tabloid media. Recent examples included coverage of the national ice-hockey team's largely unprecedented successes, e.g. “2:0 Sieg gegen Deutschland,” http://sport.orf.at [5 February 2004] and a keen interest in (Austrian) ski-jumping, e.g. Michael Unverdorben, “Adler flogen aufs Podest,” Salzburger Nachrichten, 30 December 2003, p. 21.

78. Also see Josef Langer, “Nation—schwindende Basis für soziale Identität? Eine Studie über 17–19 jährige Schüler und Schülerinnen,” in Haller (ed.), Identität und Nationalstolz der Österreicher, pp. 327–81: Based on empirical research among Austrian students aged 17 to 19, Langer argues that even though the significance of “the nation” to young people's social identities is declining, sport (and skiing in particular) has the continuing power to evoke “collective”/national emotions.

79. “Unglaublich: Maier siegt in Kitzbühel,” http://derstandard.at [27 January 2003].

80. De Cillia, Reisigl, Wodak, p. 165.

81. “Traumstart für Österreich,” http://sport.orf.at [3 February 2003].

82. Kronen Zeitung, 17 February 2003, p. 1.

83. Known as the “Transitstreit,” this intra-EU conflict will re-appear in subsequent sections.

84. Kronen Zeitung, 15 December 2002, p. 1.

85. I here draw on Anderson's seminal definition of all nations as “imagined communities,” as ideological constructs formed in certain historical and political circumstances and with the aid of particular technologies; more accurately, Anderson argues that the convergence of capitalism and the printing press, i.e. “print capitalism,” was the necessary—and peculiarly modern—condition for nations to emerge.

86. See, for example, Thaler.

87. Ruth Wodak, Rodolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl, and Karin Liebhart, The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 192–3.

88. Michael Pommer, “Das TV-Deutsch ruiniert unsere Sprache,” Kronen Zeitung, 5 September 2001, pp. 8–9.

89. Thomas Schrems, “Deutsch-Deutsch ist uns Powidl,” Kronen Zeitung, 30 July 2002, p. 9.

90. Summarizing Nenning's various ideological incarnations (drawing on socialism, environmentalism, “a version of Catholicism,” and self-critical patriotism), Reiterer describes Nenning as a prominent Austrian intellectual (and antithesis to the far more controversial novelist Elfriede Jelinek), who “has understood that the nation constitutes a[n ongoing] political project … and has attempted to provide it with [discursive/political/ ethical] content” (den politischen Projectcharakter der Nation nicht nur erfaßt, sondern auch mit Inhalten anfüllen wollen); see Albert F. Reiterer, “Intellektuelle und politische Eliten in der Nationswerdung Österreichs,” in Haller (ed.), Identität and Nationalstolz der Österreicher, pp. 318–19.

91. Nenning, “Mutterleib,” Kronen Zeitung, 21 August 2002, p. 16.

92. Nenning, “Blunzngröstl,” Kronen Zeitung, 8 January 2003, p. 4.

93. Oliver Tanzer, “Österreich versäumte Einsprüche,” http://oesterreich.orf.at [22 October 2003].

94. “Wien ist anders” [letter to the editor], Kronen Zeitung, 23 October 2003, p. 34: “Es ist schön, wenn man sich für seinen Dialekt und seine Muttersprache so einsetzt. Sprache ist eben auch Kultur.”

95. Christian Ide Hintze, “Den Konfitüreknechten den Kampf ansagen,” http://derstandard.at [23 October 2003]: “Hände weg von der Marmelade! … Schluss mit dem EU-Sprachdiktat!”

96. “Marmelade wieder erlaubt,” http://www.diepresse.at [6 March 2004].

97. For a theoretical reflection on such local consequences, see—for example—Beck, Globalization.

98. “Streit um ‘unsere Besten,” http://derstandard.at [8 August 2003].

99. For example, Roland Kopt, “Na so was! Seit wann ist Mozart Deutscher?,” Kronen Zeitung, 7 August 2003, pp. 10–11.

100. “Österreicher empört: Mozart kein Deutscher,” http://www.diepresse.at [8 August 2003].

101. “Best of Österreich,” News, 28 August 2003, p. 45.

102. Edensor, National Identity, pp. 103–37.

103. “2350 Arbeitsplätze” [letter to the editor], Kronen Zeitung, 19 July 2002, p. 22.

104. Kleine Zeitung, 20 July 2002, p. 1.

105. Kronen Zeitung, 19 July 2002, p. 23: “durch den Beschluss der kapitalistischen Willkür eines Multinationalen Konzerns.”

106. Hugo Portisch, Jahre des Aufbruchs, Jahre des Umbruchs (Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1996), pp. 412–29.

107. See, for example, http://www.uni-protokolle.de/Lexikon/Besetzung_der_Hainburger_Au.html [accessed 2 August 2004].

108. “EU-Wahl: Grüne warnen vor der “nationalen Karte,” http://www.orf.at [14 May 2004].

109. See, for example, Harriette Marshall, “Discourse analysis in an occupational context,” in Catherine Cassell and Gillian Symon (eds.), Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research (London: Sage, 1994), pp. 91-106.

110. I here borrow Wetherell and Potter's terminology; see Mapping the Language of Racism.

111. Günther Nenning, Anders gesehen (Wien: Ueberreuter, 2002).

112. If interpreted as examples of “thinking globally, acting locally,” there may be no apparent contradiction between these discourses. However, their analytical separation serves the purpose of drawing attention to the tendency (discussed in what follows) to define natural resources—such as air, water and food—as collectively owned national “possessions.”

113. “Das ist die Regierung den Opfern schuldig: Hochwasserhilfe statt Abfangjäger,” Kronen Zeitung, 14 August 2004, p. 1.

114. Nenning, “Wir sind unschuldig,” Kronen Zeitung, 18 August 2002, p. 6.

115. Nenning, “Ausplünderung,” Kronen Zeitung, 4 September 2002, p. 10.

116. Nenning, “Restrisiko,” Kronen Zeitung, 15 July 2003, p. 10.

117. Sabine Salzmann, “‘Unser Wasser nicht in das Ausland verkaufen,” Kronen Zeitung, 30 August 2003, pp. 12–3.

118. Nenning, “Unser Wasser,” Kronen Zeitung, 29 January 2003, p. 4: “Unser Wasser, unser größter Schatz, ist bedroht wie noch nie. Die „Krone” wird Österreich nicht im Stich lassen. Sie wird, mit allen guten Österreichern, für unser Wasser kämpfen.”

119. Peter Gnam, “‘Kernenergie’ ist das Unwort des Jahres,” Kronen Zeitung, 9 January 2002, pp. 2–3.

120. Christoph Budin, “Gen-Essen kommt auf den Teller,” Kronen Zeitung, 3 September 2003, p. 9: “Aufgrund dieser unverständlichen Entscheidung der Brüsseler Bürokraten ist der Weg für “verseuchtes” Essen auf unsere Teller frei!”

121. E. Schönauer, “Ost-Lkw verpesten die Luft,” Kronen Zeitung, 16 January 2003, p. 8.

122. Nenning, “Blockade!!!,” Kronen Zeitung, 3 November 2003, p. 4.

123. “Endgültige Niederlage für Österreich im Transitstreit,” http://derstandard.at [26 November 2003].

124. “Zahnlose Ökupunkteregelung ab 2004,” http://derstandard.at [19 December 2003].

125. “Klage bis Kontrolle: Was wir gegen Lkw-Lawine tun,” http://wcm.krone.at [27 November 2003], [italics added].

126. “Kommission droht Österreich mit Klage,” http://derstandard.at [6 January 2004].

127. “Unsere Luft wird immer schmutziger,” http://wcm.krone.at [9 July 2004].

128. “EuGH verurteilt Österreich,” http://www.orf.at [9 July 2004].

129. According to a recent survey, 40 percent of voters would now support the SPÖ, 39 percent the ÖVP, 12 percent the Greens, and a mere 8 percent profess their (continuing) support for the FPÖ (‘sonntagsumfrage: SPÖ knapp vor ÖVP,” http://www.orf.at [13 September 2004]).

130. A telling first (-hand) impression of the many significant differences between the four main parties can be gleaned from their respective websites: http://www.fpoe.at, http://www.gruene.at, http://www.oevp.at, http://www.spoe.at Mention must also be made, however, of significant ideological differences within each of the four parties; recent manifestations of this have included much-debated splits within the FPÖ as well as, at the time of writing, diverging opinions within the ÖVP concerning the legal recognition of homosexual partnerships.

131. “Koalitionsstreit: FPÖ muss Neuwahl fürchten,” http://www.orf.at [2 February 2005]].

132. See, for example, a collection of essays written by women opposed to the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition shortly after its formation: Die Sprache des Widerstandes (Wien: Milena Verlag, 2000).

133. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, Valie Export und Elfriede Jelinek im Spiegel der Press: Zur Rezeption der feministischen Avantgarde Österreichs (New York: Peter Lang, 1992); Thomas Lichtmann (ed.), Nicht (aus, is, über, von) Österreich: Zur österreichischen Literatur, zu Celan, Bachmann, Bernhard und anderen (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993); Karner; Konstanze Fliedl (ed.), Das andere Österreich(München: dtv, 1998); Bernhard; Peter Turrini, Ich liebe dieses Land (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001); Jelinek;

134. The Viennese weekly Falter and a range of local street magazines (such as the popular and outspokenly critical Megaphon published in Graz) are but two cases in point.

135. Austria has been described as having an under- or late-developed civil society: See, for example, Bruckmüller, pp. 42–3, or Pelinka, Zur Österreichischen Identität, p. 24; the (recent and continually emerging) initiatives, institutions and artistic/political channels just mentioned have gone a long way towards redressing this imbalance.

136. Eva Male, “Was sagt uns der Marmelade-Krieg?,” http://www.diepresse.at [31 October 2003].

137. Dieter Kindermann, “Rückkehr zur alten Schreibweise,” Kronen Zeitung, 12 August 2004, p. 3.

138. Nenning, “Nur Mut, ihr Ösis,” Kronen Zeitung, 18 August 2004, p. 6.

139. Peter Pelinka, “Ein neuer Schildbürgerstreich,” News (34), 19 August 2004, p. 40.

140. “Das linguistische Manifest,” http://www.orf.at [13 August 2004].

141. “Österreicher empört: Mozart kein Deutscher,” http://www.diepresse.at [8 August 2003]. For a similarly critical rejection of unambiguous and exclusive identity claims, see Busek's declaration that—given the contradictory forces shaping all biographies—“positioning” (Verortung) Mozart is as difficult an exercise as it is to position anyone else: “Abstammung,” p. 20.

142. Wolfgang Zinggl, “Was ist eine Kulturnation?,” Der Standard, 13 April 2002, p. 6.

143. Helmut Spudich, “Der Transitvertrag: 1991–2003,” http://derstandard.at [9 January 2004]: “Aber es hat nicht erst die EU den Verkehr erfunden und nach Österreich gebracht. Was gerne ignoriert wird: Nur etwas mehr als zehn Prozent der Lkw auf heimischen Straßen kommen nicht aus Österreich, sondern aus unseren Nachbarländern. Österreichs Lkw-Flotte ist im Schnitt älter und damit für Mensch und Umwelt belastender als die meisten ausländischen Lkw. Österreich ist ein Exportland, das seinerseits in anderen Ländern für Transit sorgt. Und Österreich ist einer der Hauptnutznießer der Osterweiterung, die uns auch in den nächsten Jahren einen weiteren Transitzuwchs bescheren wird.”

144. Morrow, pp. 50–52.

145. Ulram and Tributsch, pp. 119–20.

146. “Wähler mit keiner Partei zufrieden [sic],” Kronen Zeitung, 16 October 2002, p. 1.

147. “Wenn Schwarz-Blau wirklich kommt: Wozu haben wir dann gewählt?,” Kronen Zeitung, 18 February 2003, p. 1.

148. It should be pointed out, however, that Haider began to lose the Kronen Zeitung's support, which he had enjoyed for years, relatively soon after the 1999 elections: Pick, p. 188.

149. For example, “Österreich ist Osteuropa-König,” Kronen Zeitung, 7 December 2002, p. 4.

150. For a discussion of nationalism and religious fundamentalism as forms of “resistance identities,” see Castells, The Power of Identity.

151. See, for example, Beck, Risk Society; Beck, Globalization; Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).

152. See, for example, Hainsworth; Morrow; Camus.

153. Castells, End of Millennium.

154. It must be stressed that such discursive heterogeneity is also in keeping with Bourdieu-ian theory: Bourdieu argues that the “competing possibles” of orthodoxy and heterodoxy characterize the universe of discourse, into which “crisis situations” (and the resulting “awakening of political consciousness”) transform the previously unscrutinized universe of doxa (pp. 168–70).