Being Danish: Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life

This book is a major contribution to the sociology and anthropology of identity and to debates about identity in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe. Using extensive archival material along-side ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores 'being Danish', the meanings and practices which produced and reproduced 'Danishness' in an ordinary Jutland town during the 1990s. Among the many issues explored are attitudes to the European Union, the symbolism of the royal house and the flag, the State's contribution to personal identity, the place of Christianity in 'Danishness', and the impact on Danes of the recent arrival of mainly Islamic immigrants. Bringing the story up to date with a discussion of the national political shift to the right since the late 1990s and the affair of the 'Mohammed cartoons' in 2005, the book concludes with a critical examination of the future of 'Danishness'. Since 1992 and the Danish rejection of the EU's Maastricht Treaty, through the recent 'cartoons' crisis, Denmark, although only a small country, has occupied a disproportionately visible place in European and global politics. The only detailed ethnographic study of the full spectrum of modern Danish identity, this book will find a wide market in anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations and European studies.