Dancing on the graves: Independence,hot/banal nationalism and the mobilization of memory

Nationalism is frequently considered as an extreme, ‘hot’ phenomenon related to often violent nation/state-building processes. Billig’s Banal Nationalism turned the attention to how nationalism is also ‘flagged’ and routinely reproduced in existing states. This article studies the mobilization of these forms of nationalism and suggests that independence is a useful notion in bridging the hot/banal divide and for tracing the ‘hot in the banal’. Whereas for separatist movements independence is primarily a goal aspired to, in existing states independence/sovereignty is used to bring together hot and banal forms of nationalism which are mobilized in reproducing the discourses/practices related to the purported national identity. This paper first outlines a heuristic framework for conceptualizing independence and its key dimensions in relation to hot and banal nationalism as well as state-territory building. Secondly, the paper will study empirically the merit of the notion of independence regarding nationalism research via four themes: (1) the role of independence in Finland’s state/nation-building process, spatial socialization and in mixing hot and banal nationalism; (2) the use of the ‘independence card’ by (nationalist) parties; (3) the mobilization of nationalist practices/discourses in the performativity of Finnish Independence Day; and (4) the resistance that the independence celebrations have incited. This study shows that the idea of independence in this context is inward-looking, draws on Othering, and is flagged in media and spatial socialization (e.g. education) using particular iconographies, landscapes, events, and memories related above all to wars. Rather than expressing hot or banal nationalism these discourses/practices effectively merge the two, challenging any simple dichotomy between them. The performativity of Independence Day in particular displays this blending.     

The apparitions of the Virgin Mary of Medjugorje: the convergence of Croatian nationalism and her apparitions

Abstract. This article concerns the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in one of the most popular, ‘active’ apparitional sites in the world: Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The connection between nationalist discourse and apparitions has often been observed and noted in the literature on nationalism; however, the examples of this connection are scattered in the literature and the question why the apparitional phenomenon so easily lends itself to co‐option into nationalist discourse has never been addressed. This article explores this question by showing that what binds the two phenomena together is the idea of ‘chosenness’ and ‘specialness’, which in turn can be theoretically linked to discussions about national election in the literature on nationalism. This article illustrates the convergence of nationalist and apparitional discourses by drawing on a selected number of examples of how the apparitions in Medjugorje have been appropriated by Croatian nationalist discourse.     

Conflict and Complement: An Exploration of the Discourses Informing the Concept of the Socially Inclusive Museum in Contemporary Britain

This paper argues that there are a number of competing discourses informing debates about the idea of the ‘socially inclusive museum’ in Britain today. It identifies three major discourses present from the 19th century to the present day—the governmental, the representational, and the economic—and explores the relationships between them. It is proposed that recognition of the respective ideological and historical contexts of these different discourses will help us to understand some of the recent confusion and disagreement over the nature and merits of the ‘socially inclusive museum’. The article concludes by proposing some issues for future research.     

Narratives of nationalism in Eritrea: research and revisionism*

Abstract. Eritrean politics is increasingly captured in competing narratives of nationalism. ‘Official’ narratives emphasize Eritrea's purported stability, orderliness, and uniqueness. This discourse defends and supports the current government's policies. In contrast, recent research challenges those policies, and contributes to a nationalist counter‐narrative. This article seeks to investigate the discursive power of conventional narratives and the implications of new research for accounts of state and nation‐building in Eritrea. The Eritrean case – one of the newest states in the world – intersects with and informs a number of broader debates on nationalism and nation‐building: the impact of globalization, secessionism, and war as well as the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. The penetration of state and nation‐building projects into every sector of Eritrean life means that all social research is deeply politicised. Journalists and researchers have long been key players in the contested process of conceptualising Eritrean nation‐hood, and this continues in the post‐liberation period. Research thus both buttresses and challenges official discourses, even where it is not explicitly framed in terms of nationalism.     

How to gauge banal nationalism and national indifference in the past: proletarian tweets in Belgium's belle époque

Michael Billig's theory of banal nationalism involves the assumption that the absence of an explicit discourse on the nation should be interpreted as the unmindful presence of nationalism and that the mass media faithfully represent or reflect the discourses of ‘ordinary people’. Recent historical research of ‘national indifference’ in imperial Austria has inverted the correlation between the ubiquity of nationalist discourses and their impact in society. This article assesses these conflicting frameworks and refutes AD Smith's critique of everyday nationalism research as necessarily ahistorical and presentist. This case study of the rank‐and‐file of the social‐democratic Belgian Workers' Party at the close of the nineteenth century uses a unique source of working‐class voices: the so‐called ‘propaganda pence’ or ‘proletarian tweets’ from the Flemish‐speaking city of Ghent. Hot, explicit nationalism was absent from these sources, which begs the question: is this proof of banal nationalism or national indifference? A historically contextualized analysis of the absences shows that workers expressed national indifference towards Belgian, but not towards Flemish ethnicity. In Rogers Brubaker's terms: Flemish ethnicity was a relevant social category, but only in a very restricted number of social contexts could it become a basis for ‘groupness’ or political mobilisation in daily life.     

Regulating Body Boundaries and Health during the Second World War: Nationalist Discourse,Media Representations and the Experiences of Canadian Women War Workers

This article examines the intersections of gender, wartime nationalist rhetoric and the production of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies in both the Canadian workplace and the home during the Second World War. Analysing government, industry and media discourses in relation to oral history interviews with thirty‐eight women aircraft workers, we discuss women's distinctive role in shaping the health and morale of the social body during wartime, to ensure the maintenance of family, nation and the Allied war effort. While health in wartime was defined in terms of worker productivity for both men and women, anxiety about women's expanded roles heightened the emphasis on moral respectability as a marker of the ‘healthy’ female body. This was further complicated by the wartime emphasis on women's responsibilities to boost morale as part of their role in maintaining health and productivity for both men and women. Through such examples as workplace regulations and domestic advice, we examine the increased monitoring of women's individual and collective bodies and the intensified demands on female war workers as they crossed between the public and private spheres. We use our oral histories to examine women's embodied memories of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies within a regional context and their responses to government, industry and media discourses.     

Constructions of Australia in pro‐ and anti‐asylum seeker political discourse

ABSTRACT. Whilst there has been a proliferation of research on the role of nationalism in the exclusion of asylum seekers, less attention has been paid to how nationalism can be mobilised in accounts opposing, rather than supporting, harsh anti‐asylum seeker regimes. This paper compares the ways in which ‘Australia’ is constructed and used in parliamentary speeches on asylum seekers by both refugee advocates and those seeking harsher asylum seeker laws in Australia. This dual focus is particularly important as it highlights the flexibility of nationalist discourse, in that the same constructions of the nation may be used for both exclusive and inclusive purposes. Whilst typologies of inclusive and exclusive nationalisms, such as Smith's (1991) ethnic/civic typology, focus on the content of nationalist ideologies, we argue that the inclusivity or exclusivity of nationalism can best be determined by examining the subject positions, political solutions and social realities they make possible, and who these discourses benefit and oppress.     

Consuming icons: nationalism and advertising in Australia*

ABSTRACT. In extension of Billig's (1995) and Edensor's (2002) contribution to the literature, this paper examines an often overlooked element in ‘mundane’ nationalism, company advertising. Through the development of a typology of advertising strategies, it examines the role of companies as nationalist actors, and highlights how advertisements can engage with and impact on wider national discourses. Nationalist company advertising is classified into types, depending on how associated the company is with nationalism in popular discourse, and whether the advertising campaign involves the company's participation in broader nationalistic political projects. The types developed in this typology include (1) ‘ordinary marketing/achieving nationalist credentials’, (2) ‘ordinary marketing/established nationalist credentials’ and (3) ‘activist marketing/achieving nationalist credentials’. Case studies from the Australian context are used to illustrate these types, how the different types use nationalism, and their varying impact on shaping wider nationalistic discourses.     

Incorporating the time and space of the ethnic ‘other’: nationalism and space in Southeast Turkey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries*

Abstract. This paper aims to develop a model for the ethno‐nationalist incorporation of the space and time – that is of the geography and history – of ethnies considered as ‘others’ by the ethno‐nationalist core of an emerging nation‐state. It contends that one of the reasons for the recurring power and emotive force of nationalist discourse and practice stems from the disjunction between the complex history of a locality – exemplified in its material culture – and the homogenised present, which various strategies of ethno‐nationalist incorporation have brought about. Based on the analysis of the empirical evidence of the case of the city of (Sanli) Urfa in Southeast Turkey, it argues that a ‘spatial perspective’ focusing on the locale might facilitate unveiling hitherto understudied aspects of local nationalisms, as well as the rather dark sides of most nation‐building projects such as large‐scale population exchanges or ethnic cleansing.     

‘Scientific’ nationalism

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged in the Flemish mass media by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N‐VA). I focus on the ‘new nationalism’ that N‐VA politicians advocate as a means to ‘banalise’ a hot Flemish nationalism. I establish that N‐VA spokespeople and especially their chairman Bart De Wever invoke discursive alliances with established scholars such as Anderson, Hroch, Calhoun and Billig. On the one hand, these alliances are used to sell their nationalism as a non‐ideological or non‐discursive project. On the other hand, the analyses of these intellectuals are used as manuals to ‘banalise’ a hot nationalism. The concept of ‘scientific’ nationalism refers to the entextualisation of scientific discourses in order to legitimate and banalise the nationalist project of the party as ‘in line with science’.     

Rehoboth Baster,Namibian or Namibian Baster? An analysis of national discourses in Rehoboth,Namibia*

Abstract. The point of departure of this article is a conception of nations as discursive constructions of ‘us’/‘here’ in relation to ‘them’/‘there’. The empirical analysis examines three national discourses in Rehoboth, Namibia: (1) a discourse on the ethnic Baster nation; (2) a discourse on the Namibian nation‐state and (3) a discourse on the nation‐state containing a variety of ethnic nations (‘the rainbow nation’). The first discourse is characterised by a primordial belief about Rehoboth Basters, their homeland and their ties to this homeland. This conception is challenged by the discourse on the Namibian nation‐state. Here, it is argued that ‘ethnic nations’ are the creation of colonialism; with Namibia's new independence, it is seen as necessary to tear down previous ‘ethnic nations’ and build up a new, united nation‐state. The rainbow discourse attempts to integrate the other two discourses through ideas about overlapping nations, where the boundaries that separate ‘us’/‘here’ from ‘them’/‘there’ overlap and are inclusive rather than exclusive.     

The Multiple Functions of Criollo,Gaucho and Indigenous Symbols in La Historieta Patoruzú, 1936–50: The Conflicts of Peronism,Nationalism and Migration

This article considers the comic book Patoruzú in light of the cultural expressions of Argentine criollismo between the 1930s and 50s. It begins by examining the political and class conflicts that informed the meanings of criollo symbols, and how Dante Quinterno’s creation interacts with them. Perón’s political organisation, for example, constantly resorted to discourses and images of a gaucho and rural nature in order to propagate the ideals of nationalist corporatism. From one perspective, the drawings, storylines and characters of Patoruzú articulate the arguments set forth by Perón in his battles with neo-colonial and oligarchic forces. However, as Anthony Cohen and Stuart Hall argue, mass-media products and popular national symbols are dialogic; they enter into a dialogue with different competing discourses. Thus the comic book is also analysed in respect of the different and conflictive uses and potential interpretations of criollo symbols. One such conflict, it is proposed, resides in the understudied effect of modernisation and urbanisation on the rural criollo migrants, who moved to the provinces of Buenos Aires in large numbers in the 1930s. The comic book, therefore, is not understood simply as an expression of Peronist ideals, but as a footprint of the complex political and identity conflicts of the period.     

Small state imperialism: the place of empire in contemporary nationalist discourse

Many modern European nations can trace their heritage back to one of the large multinational empires that once encompassed much of the European landscape, and nationalising elites often refer back to their place in these empires for the materials upon which their nation was purportedly built. In this article we examine some Belarusian nationalising elites and their references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to demonstrate a recent trend in East European small‐state national identity construction, which we refer to as ‘small state imperialism.’ Small state imperialism exhibits realist characteristics and paints the small nation's place in empires of the past as privileged and aggressive, and in this way deviates from the oppressed but morally superior image one typically expects of a small nation. This interpretation is not limited to Belarus; in a number of East European states a similar imperialist turn has taken root in nationalist discourses.     

For the Good of The Nation: ‘Strategic Egalitarianism’ in the Singapore Context

In this article, I introduce the concept of ‘strategic egalitarianism’ in relation to women's co‐optation into nationalist projects in Singapore. By strategic egalitarianism, I mean the granting of equality to women that is contingent upon meeting particular pragmatic nationalist objectives. For example, the granting of equal educational and employment opportunities by the government in the 1960s was necessitated by Singapore's economic survival as a newly emerging nation. By the 1980s, another pragmatic national concern dealing with rapid decline in population growth emerged, requiring that women prioritise the role of motherhood. A complicating factor in the procreationist discourse is the government's eugenic policy that favours the ‘right’ kind of women, in particular, to bear the ‘right’ kind of babies for the continued vitality of the nation. In the course of this article, I examine the problem with strategic egalitarianism, which shifts its ground depending on the nationalist goals of the day, and the implications this has for Singapore women.     

Imperial modernity,national identity and capital punishment in the Samarcand Arson Case, 1931

ABSTRACT. This article draws upon the fascinating and little known 1931 Samarcand Arson Case involving the possible execution of adolescent white female inmates at a juvenile reformatory in North Carolina. Marked by nationalist discourses, the spectacle generated by this case indicates much about how white New South advocates construed national life and sought to construct a white ‘civilised’ collective identity, defending their region from Northern charges of Southern barbarism and asserting their place within the imperial politics of American nation building. The decision not to execute any of the sixteen defendants was informed by a series of interconnected ideas about sexuality, national danger, ‘civilisation’ and ‘race,’ suggesting that the presumed ‘legal chivalry’ extended to the young defendants was not a simple matter of gender bias, but involved a nuanced set of reasons related to negotiations of national belonging through racialised alliances.     

The rediscovery of ‘the national’ in the 1990s – contexts,new cultural forms and practices in reunified Germany

This article examines how and in which societal and political contexts nationhood is expressed and symbolised in reunified Germany. This ‘rediscovery’ of nationhood since the 1990s mixes new and old motifs of the cultural repertoire of ‘the national’ for different purposes. Three main contexts triggered a rediscovery of ‘the national’ after 1989: reunification, immigration and the retrenchment of the social state. I argue, by analysing ethnographic material and political discourses, that these contexts, on the one hand, rearticulate old forms of ethnic and cultural nationalism and, on the other hand, create new images and symbols of an open civic society and immigration country. There are ‘playful’ forms, such as campaigns of nation branding, that symbolically include the ‘productive’ and ‘useful’ immigrant into the national project. Moreover, such campaigns serve to legitimatise the downsizing of the national state that – according to a neoliberal attitude – relies on a new community spirit of entrepreneurial, ‘activated’ citizens who ‘help themselves’. Thus, focusing on these pluralised renationalisation processes makes evident how polyvalent ‘the national’ still is. It can be employed by those who attempt to ‘reunite’ the East and West Germans, by businesses to sell their goods and ideas and by almost any political orientation, be it right‐wing or left‐wing.     

Transnational abductions and transnational responsibilities? The politics of ‘protecting’ female Muslim refugees abducted from Spain

This article examines evolving gendered protection narratives surrounding four ‘abduction’ cases in which Sahrawi refugee girls and young women living in Spain were ‘abducted’ by their birth-families and forcibly returned to the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps between 2002 and 2009. By exploring Spanish state and civil society responses to these girls' ‘abductions’, I argue that there has been a major shift in the ways in which legitimate responsibility and authority over Sahrawi refugee women as Muslim female forced migrants have been conceptualised and invoked by Spanish actors. I therefore assess the gendered nature of competing claims of responsibility to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women both within and outside of the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps, exploring the motivations and implications of different actors' in/actions towards these girls and women. With Polisario claiming to represent and act as a liberal ‘state’ committed to protecting the rights of its ‘refugee-citizens’ in some instances, while denying politico-legal responsibility in others, the question of ‘who’ or ‘what’ claims the legitimate authority to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women and girls is thus accentuated by such cases. By exploring shifts in Spanish public and political discourses of responsibility over the past decade on the one hand, and the accentuation of competing discourses as presented by Spanish, Polisario and Algerian actors on the other, this article highlights the complex nature and implications of the ‘intimate’ Spanish civil society networks that ensure the physical and political survival of the Sahrawi refugee camps. Ultimately, I argue that Sahrawi girls and women have become hypervisible in Spain, being conceptualised as women who ‘belong’ to the Spanish nation that in turn has a responsibility to ‘protect’ ‘our’ Sahrawi women from ‘their’ culture.     

The importance of national parks to nation‐building: Support for the National Parks Act (2000) in the Scottish Parliament

In 2000 Scotland finally introduced legislation to enable the establishment of its first national parks, 50 years after England and Wales. This paper considers interpretations of this event and reflects on the importance of national parks to nation‐building. Grounded within a framework which holds landscape to be an important signifier of national identity, these issues are explored through a case study of the Cairngorms National Park. This study found that it was the ‘nation‐building’ agenda which was a key factor in securing the unanimous support of the Scottish Parliament for the National Parks Act (2000) but that this agenda hid competing definitions of what shape Scotland's landscapes should be. This suggests that the National Parks Act appealed as a form of institutional, as opposed to cultural, nation‐building.     

Religion and ethno‐nationalism: Turkey's Kurdish issue

One approach within the Islamic camp treats Islam, which emphasizes overarching notions such as the ‘Islamic brotherhood’ and ‘ummah’, as incompatible with ethno‐nationalist ideas and movements. It is, however, striking that in the last decades, several Islamic and conservative groups in Turkey have paid increasing attention to the Kurdish issue, supporting their ethnic demands and sentiments. Even more striking, the leftist, secular Kurdish ethno‐nationalists have adopted a more welcoming attitude toward Islam. How can we explain such intriguing developments and shifts? Using original data derived from several elite interviews and a public opinion survey, this study shows that the struggle for Kurdish popular support and legitimacy has encouraged political elites from both camps to enrich their ideological toolbox by borrowing ideas and discourses from each other. Further, Turkish and Kurdish nationalists alike utilize Islamic discourses and ideas to legitimize their competing nationalist claims. Exploring such issues, the study also provides theoretical and policy implications.     

Erotic Attachment,Identity Formation and the Body Politic: The Woman‐as‐nation in Canadian Graphic Satire, 1867–1914

Using depictions of ‘Miss Canada’ in editorial cartoons and political campaign posters published in English Canada between 1867 and 1914 as a case study, this article argues that the repetitive deployment of feminised and eroticised images of the nation summoned particular gender, sexual and political identities into being and entangled viewers’ psychic investments in masculine, heterosexual and nationalist subjectivities. It also considers how Miss Canada's normative representation as white conflated racial whiteness and Canadian‐ness, and how images hailed viewers into racial subjectivities that were leashed to national identity. Rather than querying how or why the woman‐as‐nation trope elicited nationalist sentiment in an already‐constituted subject, this analysis examines how imagery provoked viewers’ identification with subject positions that were co‐constituted with nationalism. Impassioned and even violent nationalism becomes more comprehensible when we consider that the woman‐as‐nation was capable of producing attachments to national identity that, for some, were inseparable from and tantamount to psychic investments in gender, sexual and racial identities. While Canadian scholars have recognised that Miss Canada was a significant popular culture icon during the long nineteenth century and acknowledged this icon's embeddedness in gender, sexual and national discourses, studies have tended to describe Miss Canada's role in consolidating hegemonic ideologies and power relations and underestimate visual culture's constitutive capacities. The extent of Miss Canada's hetero‐erotic coding has also largely escaped historians’ notice. Although a few scholars have explored visual culture's role in Canadian national identity formation during this era, this study makes a unique contribution by foregrounding the productive work of popular imagery in co‐constituting and entwining national and sexual subjectivities.