National identity: banal,personal and embedded

ABSTRACT. This article examines the theoretical problem of understanding the relationship between personal and social dimensions of national identity. It does this by relating ethnographic data collected during a study of a merger between a Scottish and an English bank to three conceptual frameworks. First, it considers Michael Billig's thesis of ‘banal nationalism’. Then it addresses Anthony P. Cohen's concept of ‘personal nationalism’. Finally, it adapts a conception of the relationship between personal and social identity found in the recent work of Derek Layder. Based on this it argues that national identities, like all identities, are rendered salient for persons when they seem to address personal issues of power over one's life, and that the various social organisational settings through which people realise control over their lives (in this case, the bank) are thus crucial contexts for understanding people's attachments to identities, national and otherwise.     

Ideological others and national identifications in contemporary Poland

Sexual minorities in Poland are excluded from the traditional understanding of “Polishness” premised on conservative, Catholic values. This article examines how ethnic Polish citizens who identify as non‐heteronormative navigate their relationship to “Polishness” at a moment of heightened nationalism. Through 31 interviews with Polish sexual minorities, I show that while national identification is a struggle for some sexual minorities, others work to reframe what “Polishness” means to them. I argue for further research examining the ways that stigmatised members of the ethnic majority—what I term ideological others—understand and navigate their relationship to national identity. The study contributes to the literature on everyday nationhood and national identity by attending to national identification among stigmatised members of the ethnic majority.     

Investigating everyday acts of contributing as ‘admission tickets’ to belong to the nation in Norway

This article examines the centrality of contributing to questions of belonging in Norway. Building on the diversity of individuals living within a shared national space, the study identifies how everyday acts of contributing were conceived of by the participants as ‘admission tickets’ to belong. The study further investigates the participants' motivations and desires for contributing and unveils how, given their migration background (internal, international or non‐migrant), they respond to expectations of contributing from different positions of ontological security. The participants reveal ontological (in)security at different geographical scales, and they seek to manage this less secure position of national or local belonging through their acts of contributing in everyday life.     

Nairn's England and the progressive dilemma: reappraising Tom Nairn on English nationalism

In British political and intellectual circles, there is a longstanding disagreement between those envisaging an opportunity for the development of a radical English patriotism and those resistant to the idea of a progressive English imaginary. Despite their antithetical quality, both divergent frameworks were explored in the work of Scottish nationalist and New Left intellectual Tom Nairn, long before mainstream social science preoccupied itself with the ‘English Question’. Notwithstanding his later espousal of Englishness as a contribution to democratic renewal, Nairn's earlier notion of an inherently regressive nationalism remains the dominant frame for many intellectuals and politicians confronted by the challenges of increasingly politicised English identities. Whilst he has been only one of a number of thinkers and writers who have informed and contested political thinking on this question in the UK, the influence of his early work upon liberal and left circles has been underestimated, an oversight that this article addresses.     

Kinned to be Norwegian: transnational adoptees' positioning in relation to whiteness and the negotiation of nationhood

Embedded in ongoing discussions on everyday nationhood in the context of migration‐related diversity, this article explores how Norwegian transnational adoptees, as border subjects, negotiate their national belonging and identities by positioning themselves in relation to whiteness. By doing so, it further explores the relationship between race and nation. The analysis demonstrates that transnational adoptees position themselves as white when encountering the norm of whiteness, which the author argues in favour of understanding as continued process of doing race. While phenotypic differences trigger a process of racialisation through which transnational adoptees can easily be placed in a minoritised position, adoption provides them with unique access to whiteness, mostly along the negotiable and intertwined dimensions of kinship and the notion of ‘origin’, referred to as the place where they grew up. The article argues that individuals' positioning along majoritisation/minoritisation processes is another important dimension to understand one's multiple and fluid national identity and belonging in migration‐related diversity. The analysis also furthers the discussions on hierarchy of belonging by highlighting the relevance of kinship in intersection with race.     

National indifferences during everyday nationalism: Experiencing the nation in Finland in the aftermath of the Second World War

Our article discusses the adaptability of the concept of national indifference to the context of post-war Finnish society and everyday nationalism. This period witnessed a transformation of previously exclusive and aggressive nationalism into a tempered and relatively inclusive version. Within this historical context, national indifference became an entangled category that could not be clearly attributed to a specific group of people but which carried with it a gradual change in subjective attitudes and consciousness. The case of post-war Finland demonstrates that just as nationalism changed its shape over time, becoming subtly embedded in everyday life, so too did national indifference. The article thus argues that an increase in the level of national indifference could actually make space for national integration and, furthermore, that any given expressions of nationalism, as well as the lack of them, must be studied against the background of people's experiences, which lend historically conditioned meaning to national sentiment and indifference alike.     

Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).     

Ruptures and continuities in nationhood narratives: reconstructing the nation through history textbooks in Serbia and Croatia

While the (mis) use of history to fuel particular constructions of the nation is well‐documented in the literature, the ways in which nationhood narratives and national ideologies evolve and transform over time are rarely explored. When ruptures – such as state failure or civil war – occur, interpretations of history and nationhood narratives cannot be completely rewritten. Rather, they need to follow up upon previous, established versions, relying on anchoring motives that offer a minimum level of continuity. Relying on a systematic analysis of over forty years of history revisionism in Serbia and Croatia (1974 to 2017), I demonstrate the discursive ways in which nationhood narratives evolved over time and space: from the dismantling of the former common Socialist narrative, replacement with new ethno‐national narratives, the bumpy transformations through the democratic transitions, to the gradual consolidation into the ‘new’ reconstructed nationhood narratives prevailing in the two countries today.