Totems and rituals on global stage

This thesis examines the performance of the national identity of Canada, a country struggling with its identity, on a global stage at the Olympic Winter Games of Vancouver 2010. Partly due to the globalisation, one sees the emerging search for and emphasis on nationality. To separate themselves from the unifying process of globalisation, nations and its citizens are looking for aspects that make them unique and which bind them together as a community. A clear national identity is important for people because humans always want to feel part of a group. Emile Durkheim was one of the first sociologists who wrote about this importance of the feeling of belonging to a community (2008 [1912]). However, even in this modern time of globalisation people choose to live together in separated groups and keep looking for aspects that make them special and bind them together and that exclude other communities. Nations can be an example of such communities. However, countries are not based on restricted facts but are created through inventions and conventions. Therefore, Anderson calls nations imagined communities (2008 [1983]). Because the concept of countries is not based on facts, also the feeling of national belonging is not a stable, given, or restricted fact. This feeling has to be occasionally reaffirmed, which can be done through the performance and portrayal of rituals and totems. These are collective representations through which members of the community feel themselves connected with this community (Durkheim, 2008 [1912]). For the maintenance of a society it is important that these rituals and totems are regularly performed in front of its members. The hosting of the Olympic Winter Games can be seen as a good occasion for this performance of national identity. The purpose of this thesis was to study how and which aspects of the Canadian identity were performed at the 2010 Olympic Games. I made use of inductive content analysis to analyse my data. The data consisted of four different significant elements of the Olympic Games: the bidding-process for the Vancouver Games, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and the commemoration of the Vancouver Games. Throughout the data Canada is portrayed as a multicultural, inclusive, tolerant, sport-minded and sport-loving, modern and well-developed country with beautiful and diverse nature and very strong winters with a lot of snow and ice. However, this portrayal is not in line with the reality because a brighter image of Canada is performed at the 2010 Games. This idealisation is created to include and exclude particular groups and events and this shows that the creation of national identity is a process of remembering and forgetting. Through the performance of the Canadian identity at a global stage, the portrayed image of Canada is reaffirmed both for an international and domestic audience. My results shows that the hosting of the Olympic Games is a good opportunity for a country to portray and perform its national identity and thereby reaffirm feelings of national belonging.