This study analyzes school history textbooks to discuss how the Jordanian national narrative constructs the nation through exclusion. It argues that the Jordanian identity is achieved dialectically by simultaneously advocating for multiple identification with pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism; a strategy that makes it possible for that narrative to exclude the majority of Jordan's population, the Palestinians. Theoretically, the article argues that national identity is polycentric; it is not unidimensional. It applies the polycentric approach to expand the theoretical scope of the study of Arab nationalism. In addition, the article offers a practical analytical tool to the analysis of identity in history school textbooks.
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Riad M. Nasser (2004) studied this question.