In an era cross-cut with various agendas and expressions of national
belonging and global awareness, "the nation" as a collective reference
point and experienced entity stands at the center of complex identity
struggles. This book explores how such struggles unfold in practice at a
highly symbolic battlefield site in the Danish/German borderland.
Comprised of an ethnography of two profoundly different institutions - a
conventional museum and an experience-based heritage center - it
analyses the ways in which staff and visitors interfere with, relate to,
and literally "make sense" of the war heritage and its national
connotations. Borders of Belonging offers a comparative, in-depth
analysis of the practices and negotiations through which history is made
and manifested at two houses devoted to the interpretation of one event:
the decisive battle of the 1864 war in which Otto von Bismarck, on his
way to uniting the new German Empire, led the Prussian army to victory
over the Danish. Working through his empirical material to engage with
and challenge established theoretical positions in the study of museums,
modernity, and tourism, Mads Daugbjerg demonstrates that national
belonging is still a key cultural concern, even as it asserts itself in
novel, muted, and increasingly experiential ways.