Lexington Books Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation

Twenty years ago Ukraine gained its independence and started on a path towards a free market economy and democratic governance. After four successive presidents and the Orange Revolution, the question of exactly which national model Ukraine should embrace remains an open question. Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power provides a comprehensive outlook on Ukraine as it is presented through the views of intellectual and political elites. Based on extensive field work in Ukraine, Karina V. Korostelina describes the complex process of nation building. Despite the prevailing belief in a divide between two parts of Ukraine and an overwhelming variety of incompatible visions, Korostelina reveals seven prevailing conceptual models of Ukraine and five dominant narratives of national identity. Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power analyzes the practice of national self-imagination. Karina V. Korostelina puts forward a structural-functional model of national narratives that describes three major components, dualistic order, mythic narratives, and normative order, and two main functions of national narratives, the development of the meaning of national identity and the legitimization of power. Korostelina describes the differences and conflicting elements of the national narratives that constitute the contested arena of nation-building in Ukraine. Review With its sophisticated theoretical foundation and methodological rigor, this timely study by Karina Korostelina provides a valuable framework for understanding the divergent, often antagonistic understandings of national identity in Ukraine that block effective state and nation building in that pivotal, troubled state.--Thomas Sherlock, United States Military Academy About the Author Karina V. Korostelina is associate professor and director of the Program on History, Memory, and Conflict in the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.