{"id":6665,"date":"2014-07-04T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=6665"},"modified":"2017-06-01T00:34:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T05:34:48","slug":"banal-nationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/07\/04\/banal-nationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Banal Nationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In his\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0by the same name, Michael Billig coined the term \u201cbanal nationalism\u201d to draw attention to the ways in which nationalism was not only a quality of gun-toting, flag-waving \u201cextremists,” but was quietly and rather invisibly reproduced by all of us in our daily lives.<\/p>\n

That we live in a world of nations was not inevitable; that the United States, or Sweden or India, exist was not inevitable.\u00a0 I was born in Southern California.\u00a0 If I had been born at another time in history I would have been Mexican or Spanish or something else altogether.\u00a0 The nation is a social construction.<\/p>\n

The nation, then, must be reproduced. We must be reminded, constantly, that we are part of this thing called a “nation.”\u00a0 Even more, that we belong to it and it belongs to us.\u00a0 Banal nationalism is how the idea of the nation and our membership in it is reproduced daily.\u00a0 It occurs not only with celebrations, parades, or patriotic war, but in\u00a0\u201cmundane,\u201d \u201croutine,\u201d and \u201cunnoticed\u201d ways.<\/p>\n

The American flag, for example, casually hanging around in yards and in front of buildings everywhere; references to the nation on our money; the way that the news is usually split into us and everyone else (e.g., US News and World Report); the naming of clubs and franchises, such as the National Football League, as specific to our country; and the performance of the pledge of allegiance in schools and sports arenas:<\/p>\n

So, what? \u00a0What could possibly be the problem?<\/p>\n

Sociologists have critiqued nationalism for being the source of an irrational commitment and loyalty to one’s nation, a commitment that makes one willing to both die and kill. \u00a0Billig argues that, while it appears harmless on the surface, \u201cbanal nationalism can be mobilized and turned into frenzied nationalism.” \u00a0The profound sense of national pride required for war, for example, depends on\u00a0this sense of nationhood internalized over a lifetime.\u00a0 So banal nationalism isn’t “nationalism-lite,” it’s the very foundation upon which more dangerous\u00a0nationalisms are built.<\/p>\n

You can download a more polished two-page version of this argument, forthcoming in <\/em>Contexts magazine, here<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. \u00a0 In his\u00a0book\u00a0by the same name, Michael Billig coined the term \u201cbanal nationalism\u201d to draw attention to the ways in which nationalism was not only a quality of gun-toting, flag-waving \u201cextremists,” but was quietly and rather invisibly reproduced by all of us in our daily lives. That we live in a world of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,254,129,3920,276,293,23622,108,309],"class_list":["post-6665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-holidays","tag-media","tag-nation-united-states","tag-nationalismpatriotism","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-symbols","tag-sports","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/07\/1-2-Copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6665"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70322,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions\/70322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}