Wikidata

Wikidata:Property proposal/nationality (cultural identity)

< Wikidata:Property proposal

nationality (cultural identity)

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Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

   Not done
Descriptionthe cultural, identity-based nationality (Q231002) a person is described as having (in contrast to a person's legal country of citizenship (P27)).
Representsnationality (Q231002)
Data typeItem
Template parameter"nationality" in en:Template:Infobox person; "nationality" in c:Template:Creator
Domainhuman (Q5)
Allowed valuessubclass of nationality (Q231002), like Ukrainians (Q44806), Indonesians (Q14535097) or Canadians (Q1196645)
Example 1Mahatma Gandhi (Q1001) → Indians (Q862086)
Example 2Albrecht Dürer (Q5580) → Germans (Q42884)
Example 3Adolf Hitler (Q352) → Germans (Q42884)
Example 4Václav Havel (Q36233) → Czechs (Q170217)
Example 5Robert John Pryse (Q20890211) → Welsh people (Q188353)
Example 6Barack Obama (Q76) → Americans (Q846570)
SourceRKDartists (Q17299517), Union List of Artist Names (Q2494649), and others.
Robot and gadget jobsimport from RKDartists (Q17299517) and Union List of Artist Names (Q2494649), for example.
See alsocountry of citizenship (P27), ethnic group (P172), country for sport (P1532)

Motivation

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This property would be a subproperty of ethnic group (Q41710) meant to indicate a person's nationality based on their shared cultural identity with a group of people from a particular nation. This property would allow us to describe a person's nationality independent of their legal status as an official citizen of a country as in country of citizenship (P27). It would also allow more clarity and specificity than just using ethnic group (Q41710), which is typically associated with race, language, and religion. Qono (talk) 20:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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person country of citizenship (P27) ethnic group (P172) Qono's proposal comment
Mahatma Gandhi (Q1001) British Raj (Q129286), Dominion of India (Q1775277) Gujarati people (Q1282294) Indians (Q862086)
Albrecht Dürer (Q5580) Duchy of Bavaria (Q47261) maybe Germans (Q42884)? Germans (Q42884)
Adolf Hitler (Q352) Austria-Hungary (Q28513) to Nazi Germany (Q7318) Austrians (Q237534), Germans (Q42884) Germans (Q42884)
Václav Havel (Q36233) Czechoslovakia (Q33946), Czech Republic (Q213) Czechs (Q170217) Czechs (Q170217)
Robert John Pryse (Q20890211) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) maybe Welsh people (Q188353)? Welsh people (Q188353)
Barack Obama (Q76) United States of America (Q30) African Americans (Q49085) etc. Americans (Q846570)
Sepé Tiaraju (Q949500) Brazil (Q155) maybe Guaraní people (Q46429)?
Solomea Krushelnytska (Q267058) Austria-Hungary (Q28513), Soviet Union (Q15180) maybe Ukrainians (Q44806)?
Nikita Khrushchev (Q35314) Russian Empire (Q34266), Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (Q2305208), Soviet Union (Q15180) Russians (Q49542), Ukrainians (Q44806)
  • Comment: I think something along these lines may be useful but am worried about the term "nationality" which tends to have quite different connotations in Britain and the United States. For Brits, it is equivalent to what the Americans call citizenship while in the U.S. it is frequently understood as the country of origin of the individual or even his family. For example, it is not unusual for an American to say his nationality is Irish if his parents come from Ireland, even if he was born in the U.S. I think on a multilingual basis, nationality is liable to be widely misused and misunderstood. Perhaps something like "associated nationality" would be more widely understood and cause fewer problems.--Ipigott (talk) 07:10, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, I am following an invitation from the article Nationality where we had a recent discussion about what the lead of nationality should focus on. We have arrived at nationality that it means in international law member of a state. With that we could clearer differentiate betwenn nationality as ethnicity and as national identity, as well as the legal distinction between nationality as member of a state VS citizenship (which are in some countries and on principle not the same). I do not quite understand the discussion here about "country of citizenship" if it is understood as nationality in the sense of international law/"member of a state", because that would be for me misleading since you dont need citizenship to be a national (as in international law), see the example of American Samoa. Also "nationality (cultural identity)" doesnt make sense to me because for nationality a cultural identity is a very specific type of nationality based on culture, as in Austria being a "culture nation" (which is not a legal concept in Austria, as much as nationality is not, nationality in general is only again in the sense of international law, but for that a german word akin "member of state" is used and not the german Nationalität).
That said if you try to introduce a way to seperate nationality as national identity, from as legal international term, as well from ethnicity, be my guest, but it would need very good clarification. The easiest in my opinion is to have maybe seperate items such as "Nationality (international law)", "Nationality (national identity)" and "Nationality (ethnicity)", but the latter being very similar to and could be just dealt by ethnicity.
But the differentiation at the current article Nationality is still very under work (even if less under discussion), so I dont know if there should be more differentiation at the article before any seperating out can be attempted. But on the other hand it might help facilitate that, but at the same time it might be another pitfall in the long history of "nationality".
As far as I understand the discussion here it is all about the possibility to clearly categorize (mostly historic) persons. As an Austrian, Hitler is an obvious example for me: he is above listed as "country of citizenship" to be Austrian-Hungarian and Third Reich (I dont know how long/if he was national/citizen -the same in Austrian law- of the Republic of Austria as well), my critique here again is this item should be called in that sense "state membership". "Ethnic group" is somewhat clear, but the third category tries in my opinion to seperate out "ethnic group" between ethnicity and national identity or in german "volk". So Volk is this much discussed german term. In German law Volk is a legal term for individuals in the sense of membership to a Volk (Volkszugehörigkeit). In other words Volk is a term of national identity, its a way to identify people who are members of different states, but share national identity, as with Germans in western Poland. But for example people from german Switzerland do not share a national identity with Germans, even if the ethnicity is German. The same goes for Hitler (even if he wanted to change the following), he was an ethnic German (as most Austrians are), but he was member of the Austrian Volk in the sense of national identity (this he wanted to change with creating only one racial/ethnic nationalist german nation and national identity). That said Austrian national identity (Volk) is mostly a product from post WWI and WWII, because before that it was not a nation state but a part of a multi-national monarchy defining it self as a splinter german state/nation (Deutsch-Österreich) within the federated austrian-hungarian monarchy. So national identity has very much to do with the claim of a nation state, opposed to ethnicity. Long text short for your purposes I would keep "Ethnic group" (enter here for Hitler: German) and have one that is "National Identity" (enter here for Hitler: Austrian/German).
Well I hope I could give some more texture to the issue. PS: if you talk abou Beethoven, Mozart is another example of heatedly discussed person and his nationality (in short: state membership = Salzburg/=/Holy Roman Empire; ethnicity = German; national identity = German (and retrospective Austrian, since he is part of Austrians development as a regional body (today state), but thats the difficult part and cause for discussion, because its retrospective).
I have to add that I am new on Wikidata and do not really know the difference between items here and articles on Wikipedia.Nsae Comp (talk) 07:46, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose, per previous discussion. Also some of the issues raised above are not nearly as clear-cut as the table wants to indicate. Obama may identify as "African American" - but he's of mixed ancestry. There are many people who are of mixed ancestry and either wants to celebrate that mix, or want to deny a portion of it. How does this property help that? Or does it create more confusion and obfuscation? - Kosboot (talk) 14:33, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Kosboot, "African American" would be reported as his 'race' or 'ethnicity' or 'ancestry', but not his 'national identity'. (It can't be, because there is no "Africa America" in our list of nations.) I think it's safe to say that the national identity of every US president was "American". w:en:Josephine Baker was born an African American, but her national identity was French later in life. National identity is about your internal "emotional" identification with a country. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Kosboot: This proposed property is not meant to refer to one's ancestry, but rather the national cultural context that a person was primarily influenced by. Qono (talk) 22:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Qono: So the way to test the validity of the proposed property is to find individuals for whom this property would be ambiguous. I think someone mentioned Beethoven who was born in Germany but spent most of his life in Vienna. Or Gertrude Stein who spent the majority of her life in Paris. Or Josephine Baker who even became a naturalized French citizen yet still participated in activist activities in the U.S. And think of the host of people who were forced out of their countries and lived somewhere else, perhaps naturalizing, but still engaged with their original country. - Kosboot (talk) 22:36, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Kosboot: I think that the answer in all of these cases is to simply record the nationality as stated by reliable sources. The Encyclopedia Britannica says Beethoven is German, as does ULAN, RKD, and Grove Music Online. If another reliable source said he was Austrian, so be it: that should be recorded as well. I think this is where the arguments against don't make sense to me. It's not up to me or any editor to decide what nationality a person is, but just to record what reliable sources state about a person's nationality. As it right now, this is hard to do on Wikidata. Qono (talk) 22:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Qono: I think that's exactly what NOT to do - particularly recognizing all the criticisms that have been leveled at Wikipedia that it perpetuates racism or even less controversial issues by merely repeating them. No, no, no. What should be instead are identifiers for places that the person (or organization) lived, and identifiers for where the person had citizenship if that is known. Thus I strongly and vehemently oppose. - Kosboot (talk) 23:12, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
            • @Kosboot: Much respect for being on the lookout for systemic bias. This is beyond the scope of this proposal, but I would address the issue at the source level as Wikipedia does, not the property level. That is, if a source is deemed biased by the community, it shouldn't be used or it should be flagged somehow. Banning any property that merely has the potential to be described by biased sources is too broad a restriction, I think. Qono (talk) 23:33, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I   Support having a property for this idea, but I think it should be called national identity. As an example, how do you accurately describe a person who was illegally immigrated into the United States from northern Mexico as a young child? The parents are Mexican (Mexican citizenship, Mexican legal nationality, Mexican mestizo ethnicity). The child has Mexican citizenship, Mexican legal nationality, and was raised to believe that s/he had been born in America and encouraged to self-identify as belonging to the US. This is not an unusual situation, and I don't think that the current set of properties allow us to correctly record this situation. In another example, there are many EU citizens who change their legal citizenship and legal nationality without changing their internal sense of identity. Those should be recorded as "citizenship: Romania (1970–2010), Germany (2010–present), ethnicity: Roma; national identity: Romanian" whenever there are sources to support each of those items. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support both distinguishing "country of long-term residence and notability" from "country of legal citizenship" and using the former category for all instances where we are assuming a nationality based on residence but with no sourcing for birth citizenship or naturalization. I think far too many of the Wikidata claims of citizenship are under-sourced and that this would provide a way out of that. I do not support using a property like this for, say, people who have lived in the US their entire lives but have an Italian grandmother and think that because of that they should be counted as Italian. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:11, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @David Eppstein: I wouldn't support that use of the property either. This isn't about whether or not somebody "feels" Italian, in your example, but whether or not reliable sources consider them Italian based on their life circumstances, which is usually another way of saying "country of long-term residence and notability". Qono (talk) 22:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose, or weak support if this new thing would be called as national identity, since nationality - especially in the modern times - is identical with citizenship, as well legally. Btw. on the table above, there are more mistakes, Austro-Hungarian citizenship never existed, the subject was Austrian or Hungarian, exlusively. Hitler has been an Austrian citizen before gathering German citizenship, so his parameter has to be changed to Cisleithania similarly like the case of Solomiya Krushelnytska, who was also an Austrian citizen. Moreover Hitler is erroneously put on the Austrian ethnic group, since such ethnicity did not exist then, Austrian national conscience has been built and only came to existence after 1945, so this has to be removed.(KIENGIR (talk) 08:15, 22 July 2020 (UTC))[reply]
Well, not necessarily, given the high number of non-average cases.(KIENGIR (talk) 22:47, 22 July 2020 (UTC))[reply]
  •   Weak oppose Nationality is a very propagandistic concept. After new states are formed people go and rewrite history so that hundreds of thousands of dead people suddenly have a different nationality. The prospect of edit-wars about whether thousands of Catalan individuals should have nationality:catalan have the potential for a lot of drama on Wikidata. This discussion completely ignores those concerns and how they would be resolved. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose. This seems like the property-version of that most annoying of questions some people have to endure: “Yes, but where are you really from?” This discussion offers plenty of evidence against this idea, such as various attempts to define some platonic "Germanness" in Hitler, of all people, with a suprising lack of explicit awareness of why that is a particularly bad idea. Then, we already see the first instances of this being used to declare some to be second-rate citizens because they "change [...] citizenship [..] without changing their internal sense of identity", which is a political talking point popular with those obsessed with drawing neat lines between themselves and others, but liable to fall back to crude stereotypes such as an equivalence between Romania (country) and Roma (people). Let's stop this before we get to measuring skulls and the recessive inheritance of Canadianess. Matthias Winkelmann (talk) 20:59, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Matthias Winkelmann: I don't understand how this would be used to declare some to be "second-rate citizens". If there are reliable sources that state a person's nationality based on their life and the cultures in which they lived (and not purely their country of citizenship), how is it problematic to record the assertion of those sources? My understanding is that property declarations aren't Wikidata saying "X is true about this person", just that "This source says that X is true about this person". What is the issue there? Qono (talk) 22:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • Matthias Winkelmann, as the person who gave the example of the Roma people, I want to say that I chose it specifically because being ethnically Roma is not equivalent to being Romanian. I had assumed that would be obvious to every educated person, so I thought it was unnecessary to tell people what they (and you) already knew. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest possible oppose Seriously, women were not legally allowed to be citizens throughout most of history. Married women in particular, which most women were, were defined as a single legal entity with their spouse. So if you were born in x country and you married someone from y country, you automatically were no longer xian, but now yian, regardless of whether you could speak that language, practiced any of those customs, or identified as yian, or whether you lived in y country (ever). This isn't ancient past, women in the US lost their citizenship upon marriage until 1922. If they lost it prior to that time, getting it back required an oath of allegiance or court order. Women in Ireland did not have citizenship in their own right until 1935, Canada 1945, Britain 1948, El Salvador and Norway 1950. The Convention on the Nationality of Married Women was not passed by the UN and its signatories until 1957. Women's history is already obscured by lack of academic study and preservation of sources, but we certainly don't need to add to the problem of uncovering women's histories by labeling them with nationality. And, further, how would one go about doing that? It isn't as if it was published or widely available data that Jane Doe married and lost her citizenship. Most sources simply settle for indicating where she was born, regardless of her legal status. SusunW (talk) 23:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose. This would make sense where ethnic group is highly formalised, for example in African political biographies. However, I can forsee the most obvious uses being in ethnonationalist "claims" to particular historical figures with dubious sourcing. There's also the vagueness problem: is Adolf Hitler to be listed as German or Austrian? And does it matter to the average reader? Brigade Piron (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support, it makes sense in Czech language and history - 120 years ago there were many people which were all citizens of Austria-Hungaria, but some of them were Germans, some Czechs, some identified as Moravian. But word ethnicity is not good for this, ethnicity sounds like something which can be distinguished on (first) look - gypsiesromani, jews, black, arabic, southern-european... JAn Dudík (talk) 08:16, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @JAn Dudík: Using racist slang like gypsies while arguing we need more nationalism on Wikidata, doesn't really motivate me to be in favor of nationalism. Can you explain what makes a Austrian-Hungarian to be of German or Czech nationality and define the concept better? Why aren't Romani their own nationality? They have their own language. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:21, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • @ChristianK:, It was not meant in racist way - I used the word i know. They have own language, but not all of them knows and uses it.
      • Austria-Hungary was big, I speak only about Czech part - some of them identified like Czechs (even if they speak german) and some like Germans "({Q|Q16102016}}" - according language. They all together were Austrian. But there was big natinal movement in late 19th and early 20th century and Czechs wanted to identify like Czechs - but this was not ethnicity, and not only by language.
      • Karel Klostermann (Q84648) identified himself as Czech even if some (minority) of his works were written in german and was german origin ("ethnicity").
      • eg. Jan Neruda (Q156321) was Czech writer, citizen of Bohemia, part of A-HG.
      • Sigmund Freud (Q9215) was by ethnicity Jew, by nationality is sometimes written as Austrian.
      • Franz Kafka (Q905) was by ethnicity Jew. By language German, byl nationality maybe german, maybe czech (according to source).
      • JAn Dudík (talk) 12:18, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • A key question to be answered is what makes a minority that has it's own language a nationality. Whether Romani, Basque, Catalan or Uyghurs what decides whether they are nationalities? It seems to me like there a lot of motivation for rewriting the status of thousands of dead people for political ends to argue for groups like that being recognized as nationalities.
As far as Franz Kafka (Q905), EnWiki avoids saying anything about his nationality. DeWiki seems to see him as German. He seems to me like exactly the kind of person where things get complicated. For him in particular you likely have enough sources to still have good statements but there are plenty of people with a lot less sourcing. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 15:13, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose Because I don't think anyone has given yet a convincing explanation of the difference between "nationality" and "ethnic group". I think the best is to add the aliases "nationality", "national identity", "ethnicity" to "ethnic group". --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:07, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  Not done Evident strong opposition. JesseW (talk) 02:26, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Property_proposal/nationality_(cultural_identity)&oldid=1380184065"
  NODES
COMMUNITY 1
Idea 3
idea 3
INTERN 9