The diffusion of international norms of banknote iconography: A case study of the New Taiwan Dollar

There has been a dramatic rise in progressive values imagery on the banknotes of industrialized states over the past few decades. We see this trend as an instance of international norm diffusion and point to two causal mechanisms that have facilitated it: mimesis and professionalism. We hypothesize that national politicians are more subject to the mimetic mechanism, whereas central bank bureaucrats are more subject to the professionalism mechanism. We then probe the value of our theoretical contentions with a case study of the banknotes of the Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan. Using qualitative and quantitative content analysis, we show the convergence of the New Taiwan Dollar with advanced country norms of progressive banknote iconography around the year 2000. Then, using historical process-tracing analysis, we show that this convergence was engineered by national politicians who wanted banknote reform for mimetic and domestic political reasons, and central bank bureaucrats who wanted banknote reform for professional reasons. In short, the changes to these important symbols of national identity were reflections of different state actors' thirst for international belonging.     

East is East,and West is West? Currency iconography as nation-branding in the wider Europe

This article considers European banknote iconography as an indicator of national branding choices from the early twentieth century up to the present. Systematic quantitative content analysis demonstrates that the values and ontologies expressed on Central/East European banknotes have historically tracked closely with the trends visible on their West European counterparts. This pattern is evident not just since the end of the Cold War, but indeed right from the founding of the modern Central/East European states about a century ago. Even during the Cold War, it did not take long for the trends on Western banknotes to appear on Central/East European banknotes as well. Thus, contrary to the conventional assumption of a deep-rooted normative gulf separating the national identity discourses of so-called “New” and “Old” Europe, the article underscores the fact of intense, longstanding normative cross-pollination between them.     

Designing the nation. Banknotes, banal nationalism and alternative conceptions of the state

This paper explores the relationship between national iconography, banal nationalism and conceptions of the state. It begins by reviewing scholarship on visual culture associated with official products of the state: namely, stamps and money. This reveals a preoccupation with content analysis and a tendency to assume state control over the symbolic content of money (and stamps) without clarifying the nature of design processes, the nature of state involvement in these processes, or how ‘the state’ is being conceptualized. The paper addresses these lacunae, beginning with an examination of approaches to banknote design and clarification of the role of the state in these processes. This analysis reveals that non-state actors and institutions are frequently responsible for this key mechanism of official iconographic representation and this, in turn, supports calls for a reassessment of the concept of the state. After outlining an alternative conception of the state, as an idea that produces ‘state effects’ rather than an empirical entity separate from society, the value of this concept is illustrated by showing how it can explain banknote production in the stateless nation of Scotland. The revelation that commercial banks can be co-constitutive of state effects – things like banknotes, national institutions, iconography and identity – challenges presumptions of a discrete state that controls its own representation and the regulation of society.     

Borders and banknotes: the national perspective

Replacing a banknotes series is meaningful for politicians and the general public even today, while most transactions are executed through virtual means. The choice of images carried on banknotes represents the limits of the State's sovereign border and becomes a means of banal nationalism. Moreover, by utilising scopic regimes, the hegemony portrays the cultural and political borders: historical figures from the country's past on one side, and an imagined or physical border, expressed through the illustrations on the back. This paper addresses the latter and examines the case of the State of Israel. The analysis of sites and landscapes that appear on national banknotes can decipher the construction process of a ‘territorial identity’ which, along with struggles for maintaining identity, provides the basis of the nation‐state. Using Williams's typology of selective tradition, we argue that Israeli banknotes demonstrate a mixture of residual and new cultural content.     

Scottish Rights and ‘Centralisation’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract. This article will address the assumption that the essential definition of nationalism is parliamentary political. By highlighting the solitary Scottish nationalist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, this article asks whether a ‘centralised’ state for the Scottish nation should be the model against which nationalism is interpreted. By developing the concept of ‘civil society’ as both ‘container’ and ‘director’ of nationalism, this article will show the influence of a ‘decentralised’ state to conceptions of ‘best-governing’. By stressing the contradictions in the legitimacy of the British state mid-century, it will be argued that Scottish nationalism can not be regarded as merely romantic, nor, as its outcome, can Scottish culture be presented as somehow weak. This article will argue that intellectual thought regarding the state meant that the only form of nationalism at this time was ‘Unionist-nationalism’, more union with England, not less.     

Nationalists rejecting statehood: Three case studies from Wales,Catalonia, and Slovakia

While many nationalism theorists define nationalism in terms of the desire for an independent state, empirical study shows that many nationalists make demands that not only fall short of statehood, but explicitly abjure claims to political independence. We document non‐state‐seeking nationalism with three case studies: Welsh national politics in the decades before the First World War, Catalan national politics related to the 2006 Status law, and Slovak national politics in response to Magyarization at the time of the 1867 Settlement. The phenomenon of non‐state‐seeking nationalism calls into question the utility of initial definitions in nationalism studies. Instead of imposing definitions by fiat, we argue that nationalism theorists should analyze the explicit or implicit definitions of historical actors.     

Too many Scotlands? Place,the SNP,and the future of nationalist mobilization

Scottish nationalism has always had a ‘geographical problem’ in the sense that support for its central goal, the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom, has had much more backing in some regions and localities than it has had in others. In the 1970s and 1980s the geographical pattern to this support, at least as expressed in votes for the Scottish National Party (SNP), seemed very clear. Suddenly the picture changed between 2011 and 2016, to the extent that the whole of Scotland, notwithstanding the overall ‘No’ vote on Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum, seemed to be lining up to some degree or another in the ‘nationalist column.’ As quickly, this proved ephemeral. As of 2017, the future of the central goal of Scottish nationalism is once more in doubt because of a new geography of support and disaffection that seems to reflect a number of recent trends in attitudes towards voting for the SNP. The article maps the course of the older and newer geographies of Scottish nationalism in terms of the overall political economy of the country, given its proponents’ heavy emphasis on economic themes, and the ways this is refracted through place-to-place social and economic differences across the country.     

Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan

While Michael Billig’s ‘banal nationalism’ points to the significance of the trivial reproduction of national representations in everyday routines, feminist political geographers have highlighted how the nation is brought into being through embodied and emotional practices. Building upon and extending these notions of the nation as represented and embodied, the paper argues that the nation also takes shape through bodily encounters and joyful as well as painful affections. In what we call ‘affective nationalism’, the nation emerges in moments of encounter between different bodies and objects through embodying, sharing, enjoying or disliking what feels national. We combine a Deleuzian reading of affect that discloses the mechanisms of material becomings with feminist scholarship sensitive to how bodies affect and are affected differently by materially produced nationalisms. Based on ethnographic field research in Azerbaijan, which we present in three vignettes, we untangle the affective becoming of national bodies, objects and places during a publicly staged ceremony of the collective remembrance of martyr and the celebration of a national holiday within the realm of a family. The paper makes two contributions to researching affective nationalism. First, it enquires into how people identify with Azerbaijan through their capacities to affect and to be affected by what feels national and, second, it explores how affective nationalism can be captured through vignettes of affective writing.     

State production of cultural nationalism: political leaders and preservation policies for historic buildings in France and Italy

Although cultural and political nationalism have often been treated as separate, recent studies argue that they are linked because the state produces policies such as promotion of cultural heritage to further nation building. The article examines the conditions that favour national political leaders adopting policies to protect historic buildings for aims of political nationalism. It compares France and Italy, focusing on the period after 1870. It finds that in both countries, national political leaders have introduced extensive protection of historic buildings when faced with major challenges such as war, regime change or pressures from localism or supporters of cultural nationalism as part of wider strategies to build and reinforce the nation state. But Italy extended protection earlier and more deeply than France, suggesting in a later nation state with strong inherited cultural nationalism but major political weaknesses and, national political leaders may introduce earlier, more far‐reaching and more layered legal protection than in states created earlier and with fewer weaknesses.     

Regionalism and Nationalism in the Railway Cartography of Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany

This article concerns German railway cartography in the mid-nineteenth century and its effects on spatio-political perceptions. The evolution of a railway system in Germany, from isolated single routes into national and ultimately international networks, has been customarily linked to the political issue of unification in 1871. The infrastructural changes triggered the introduction of new maps and map signs, which overshadowed other national and political signs and should not be seen as a simple means to a nationalist end. By examining the developing iconography of railways and railway networks, I argue that railways were a cause of deterritorialization for regions and states and for the vision of a unified Germany.     

National identity and economic development: reiteration,recapture, reinterpretation and repudiation*

Abstract. This article attempts to move beyond assumptions that nationalism is essentially cultural and/or narrowly political, and that it is primarily past‐oriented and defensive. We do this by examining evidence relating to the creative (re)construction of the nation from a contemporary economic perspective. Paying particular attention to Scotland and Wales, we show that the mobilisation of national identity within this process of (re)construction is not exclusive to those who seek greater political autonomy. National identity is also mobilised, often in a ‘banal’ fashion, by non‐political national institutions such as economic development agencies. We argue that, within the strategies and discourses of economic development, historic national characteristics are reconciled with contemporary needs and aspirations through four processes: reiteration, recapture, reinterpretation and repudiation.     

Identity,Gender, and the History of European Nations and Nationalisms

Abstract. The distinction between cultural and political nationalisms has become a commonplace in writings on nations and nationalism. In this article I analyse the relation of culture to politics in the history of modem European nationalist thought from a gender perspective. I argue that gendered forms of national identification and masculinist definitions of the body politic and the national citizen were mutually reinforcing. The article has three main sections. First, I draw on feminist historio–graphy to show that the central event of modem European nationalism, the French Revolution, involved a differentiation of masculine from feminine forms of national citizenship. Second, I use nineteenth-century sources to argue that the ‘separation of spheres’ and an image of the bourgeois family effectively diminished the role of women in relation to the nation. In the final section I show that the history of changing perceptions of the sexed human body is implicit in the imagining of national communities and in the political legitimation of national boundaries and national identities.     

The civic zeitgeist: nationalism and liberal values in the European radical right

This article examines the relationship between nationalism and liberal values and, more specifically, the redefinition of boundaries between national communities and others in the rhetoric of radical right parties in Europe. The aim is to examine the tension between radical right party discourse and the increasing need to shape this discourse in liberal terms. We argue that the radical right parties that successfully operate within the democratic system tend to be those best able to tailor their discourse to the liberal and civic characteristics of national identity so as to present themselves and their ideologies as the true authentic defenders of the nation's unique reputation for democracy, diversity and tolerance. Comparing the success of a number of European radical right parties ranging from the most electorally successful Swiss People's Party, the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List and Party for Freedom to the more mixed French Front National, British National Party and National Democratic Party of Germany we show that the parties that effectively deploy the symbolic resources of national identity through a predominantly voluntaristic prism tend to be the ones that fare better within their respective political systems. In doing so, we challenge the conventional view in the study of nationalism that expects civic values to shield countries from radicalism and extremism.     

The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus-like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical application of the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ (UCD) to the Republic of Kurdistan of 1946. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, we argue that the failure of mainstream theories of nationalism to explain the nation's historical ambiguity lies in their ‘internalism’. Second, we show that UCD overcomes internalism through its plural social ontology and enables a retheorising of nations as interactive products of the geopolitical mediation of historical capitalism's expansion through societal multiplicity. Central to this process was the emergence of nationalism as a defensive and emulative ideology of geopolitical self-preservation. This involved reversing the sociological and political moments of the originary formation of the British imperial nation. We argue that this historical reversal underpins the Janus-like form of nations, including the Kurdish nation. Third, we substantiate the argument through a brief case study of the Republic of Kurdistan.     

Securing disunion: Young people's nationalism,identities and (in)securities in the campaign for an independent Scotland

This paper explores ethnic and religious minority youth perspectives of security and nationalism in Scotland during the independence campaign in 2014. We discuss how young people co-construct narratives of Scottish nationalism alongside minority ethnic and faith identities in order to feel secure. By critically combining literature from feminist geopolitics, international relations (IR) and children's emotional geographies, we employ the concept of ‘ontological security’. The paper departs from state-centric approaches to security to explore the relational entanglements between geopolitical discourses and the ontological security of young people living through a moment of political change. We examine how everyday encounters with difference can reflect broader geopolitical narratives of security and insecurity, which subsequently trouble notions of ‘multicultural nationalism’ in Scotland and demonstrate ways that youth ‘securitize the self’ (Kinnvall, 2004). The paper responds to calls for empirical analyses of youth perspectives on nationalism and security (Benwell, 2016) and on the nexus between security and emotional subjectivity in critical geopolitics (Pain, 2009, Shaw et al., 2014). Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this paper draws on focus group and interview data from 382 ethnic and religious minority young people in Scotland collected over the 12-month period of the campaign.     

Nationalism,party political discourse and Scottish independence: comparing discursive visions of Scotland's constitutional status

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely, the pro‐independence Scottish National Party, and two pro‐union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation's past and future espoused by each political party vis‐à‐vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse and are thus not simply theoretical abstractions.     

Ethnic Nationalism and Subaltern Political Process: Exploring Autonomous Democratic Action in Kashmir

Abstract. This article argues that the emergence and development of subaltern political process is a significant conflict dynamic found in the escalation of ethnic nationalist movements. These ethnie‐defined modes of political participation are in turn an expression of the autonomous nature of ethnic nationalism, but occur ‘underneath’ and often antecedent to the organised violence and militancy which distracts most analyses of these conflicts. The article discusses this process of insurgent political mobilisation as a response to the structural paralysis of the post‐colonial state, using the ethnic nationalist conflict in Indian Jammu and Kashmir as the central case study. In its discussion of this case, the article seeks to argue that the presence of such subaltern political process provides additional empirical evidence of the autonomous nature of ethnic nationalism, and its capacity to carve out alternative options for democratic action and popular participation.     

Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales

The paper focuses on Billig's (Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage) notion of banal nationalism. While Billig's work is to be commended for demonstrating the way in which nationalism is an endemic political ideology in all states – and not merely an extreme or hot political ideology that is based upon “blood and belonging” (Ignatieff, M. (1993). Blood and belonging: Journeys into the new nationalism. London: BBC Books) – we suggest that his work tends, perhaps unwittingly, to reinforce an unwarranted separation of the banal and hot processes that reproduce nationalism. Some empirical work has implicitly and explicitly begun to question the distinction between banal and hotter forms of nationalism. We argue that one way in which such an agenda can be furthered is through a promotion of the idea of everyday nationalism, which combines banal and hot elements in more complex and contingent ways. We elaborate on the benefits of adopting such an approach through an empirical discussion of the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales between 1967 and 1975. We focus, first, on how monolingual English road signs were constructed by Welsh nationalists as part of an everyday landscape of oppression and, second, on the everyday politics of road signs within the spaces of government. We conclude the paper by reaffirming the need to move beyond notions of banal and hot nationalism and to focus on the everyday contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.     

Liberal nationalist versus postnational social integration: on the nation's ethno‐cultural particularity and ‘concreteness’*

Abstract. Liberal nationalists advance two claims: (1) an empirical claim that nationalism is functionally indispensable to the viability of liberal democracy (because it is necessary to social integration) and (2) a normative claim that some forms of nationalism are compatible with liberal democratic norms. The empirical claim is often supported, against postnationalists' view that social integration can bypass ethnicity and nationality, by pointing to the inevitable ethnic and cultural particularities of all political institutions. I argue that (1) the argument that ethno‐cultural particularity demonstrates the need for nationalist integration depends on an implausible reification of national identity at the level of social theory, and that (2) this reification ironically serves to undermine liberal nationalists' normative claim.     

The growth of artistic nationalism in Senegal

ABSTRACT. In the 1960s, Senegal's first national leaders narrowly defined how artists should practise nationalism through their work, particularly in the weaving craft, and enforced this definition through selective state patronage. This ideological and stylistic control echoed state control over economic markets. As subsequent administrations have restructured the economy, leading to a powerful informal business sector, so have independent contemporary weavers redefined artistic nationalism. Using ethnographic and archival interviews, this article examines nationalism in Senegalese weaving, placing the perspectives of contemporary weavers alongside those of two arts administrators who helped to develop state‐sponsored programmes in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that contemporary weavers find inspiration from Senegalese nationalism of the mid‐twentieth century, yet have modified it to encompass individual expression. Because definitions of artistic nationalism in Senegal have shifted, it remains a significant ideology within the national arts scene.