In the preceding chapters I argued that a conception of culture as practice, process and project can open up space for a contemplative mode of thinking and a reflexive understanding of who we are and how we relate to others. There seems to be a marginal consensus in the literature that the ‘container view of culture’, along with the nationalist narrative about the rootedness of human beings in the homeland, forecloses possibilities for a re-organisation of political life in ways that facilitate the inclusion of and the venturing forth towards the other. The consensus is only marginal, because although several scholars criticise ‘thick’ understandings of the nation and wish to disassociate themselves from chauvinistic, exclusivist and xenophobic nationalism, they are, nevertheless, unwilling to depart from the nationalist trajectory. Even those who dispute the normative relevance of national culture and national identity for political belonging (see below) are reluctant to make the case for a genuinely postnational understanding of political community and citizenship. Instead, scholars seek to develop thicker, thick, thin, thinner versions of civic nationalism by attributing variable importance and differing weight to matters of ethnicity, culture, political loyalty and to liberal democratic values. By so doing, they tend to assume that ethnic and civic understandings of national identity are situated on a continuum, where it is possible to oscillate between the ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ poles and to stop at intermediate positions.

Despite its appeal, however, the ‘swinging pendulum’ metaphor does have limitations.