Armenian Identity in a Changing World (Armenian Studies Series)

The 16 chapters and 67 subchapters of the book are composed as the main and the forking paths of different ages and lengths that eventually compose the park/garden of the Armenian identity. This park-identity model is outlined in the Preface. We start with the path that defines the four types of genealogical national trees or models of national-identity formation correlating with the Russian, Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani approaches to history and identity. The second and the third paths discuss the strategies of naming and renaming as a kind of "semiotic nationalism" both in medieval and modern times. The fourth path observes a wide spectrum of language nationalism - from language policies to the "alphabet identity" and cult of translation and books in the present-day Armenia. The focus of the fifth, the musical, path is the r'abiz musical style, which has grown into a characteristic of social stratification and into an identity factor. The sixth path discusses the many aspects of faith in Armenia, from the adoption of Christianity early in the fourth century to ethnoprotective mechanisms of national survival and modern neo-paganism. In the seventh path, which deals with the tradition-oriented aspects of Armenianness, an Armenian nationalism is supposed to be constructed in early medieval times to be resurrected in 11th-12th and later in 18th-19th centuries. The eighth path tries to reveal the hidden archaic society under the modern rhetoric - both Soviet and post-Soviet. In particular, the imagined and the real Soviet society are discussed in the context of Armenian culture and identity. The next two paths discuss the royal code in Armenia in a wider context of the mythology of Soviet and post-Soviet leaders.