Making Identity Count outlines a method for the interpretive and quantitative study of national identity. It argues that constructivist international relations (IR) theories of identity have not yet been tested in large-n quantitative work because an intersubjective data set has never been produced. Instead, existing quantitative work reduces identity to language, ethnicity, or religion. However, these variables do not capture the intersubjective content of national identities. Other methods for measuring identity such as surveys or content analysis do not employ an inductive “ethnographic sen ... More

Making Identity Count outlines a method for the interpretive and quantitative study of national identity. It argues that constructivist international relations (IR) theories of identity have not yet been tested in large-n quantitative work because an intersubjective data set has never been produced. Instead, existing quantitative work reduces identity to language, ethnicity, or religion. However, these variables do not capture the intersubjective content of national identities. Other methods for measuring identity such as surveys or content analysis do not employ an inductive “ethnographic sensibility” that allows subjects speak and salient identities to emerge. This volume argues that interpretivist ethnographic sensibility and quantitative concerns with replicability can be fruitfully combined in a method of discourse analysis to produce a large-n intersubjective database of national identity. The empirical chapters present the first step of this project: examples of transparent, replicable discourse analysis of national identity that can be used as the basis for quantitative operationalizations of identity. The volume presents results from nine country reports: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India (Hindi), India (English), Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The results are used to theorize a constructivist account of hegemonic transition and draw out the implications of the results for the future of Western democratic neoliberal hegemony. The volume concludes that while there is strong support for the democratic elements of Western hegemony, mass texts all over the world express concern with the negative effects of neoliberal capitalism.