ABSTRACT
It is nowadays widely acknowledged among social scientists that identity, both individual and collective, is a social construct. In this view, an individual's sense of belonging to a given collectivity is constantly produced and reproduced by social practices, which can thus be seen as creating and/or maintaining that collectivity. Further, it is increasingly recognized that the primary instrument of this creation and maintenance of identity is discourse. In any society, elites use various forms of discourse to present the social relations which secure their dominance as the most reasonable and natural, rooted in the historical tradition or objective laws. The existence of the respective nation and its status as a primary source of identification for its members are generally presented as natural. At the same time, there are usually alternative discourses employed by counterelites or other social groups, which try to delegitimize and deconstruct the dominant discourse and the social relations it supports. The ensuing competition between the dominant discourse and its rivals causes a permanent reshaping of the discourses and, therefore, of the nation itself. 1
An alternative discourse may challenge established social borders and the prioritization of identities. In multiethnic states, leaders of an ethnic group often strive to implant the priority of belonging to the group in the consciousness of its members. If successful, this entails the creation of a new nation and often leads to a redrawing of political boundaries. But there are also situations where collective identities are adjusted to a change of political boundaries, or to other disruptions of the correspondence between a collectivity and a discursive field aimed at its (re)creation.
