Nationalism

Today:
● What is nationalism and its components

● How is nationalism reproduced?

● Anderson’s theory of nations as ‘imagined communities’

● Chatterjee and nations post-decolonisation

● The significance of nationalism today

 What is nationalism?
Typically defined as one’s own identification with a nation and support for its
interests, often at the exclusion of other groups.

Core assumptions of nationalism:

● The world is divided into sovereign, and distinct, nations

● Each nation has its own destiny and ‘national consciousness’
● The state should reflect and support the values and image of the
‘nation’

A reminder that nationalism comes in many different forms and degrees. It

is a flexible umbrella term, not a concretely defined ideology.
Ways in which nationalism is reproduced?
 Billig and ‘Banal Nationalism’
Billig, (1995), ‘Banal nationalism’

● ‘Banal nationalism’ describes how nationalism becomes naturalised in the routine habits of
everyday life.
● We don’t even look twice when we see flags, use coins, or read newspapers which use language
such as ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘here’.
● These become so routine that we are not even consciously aware as to how they reproduce
narratives of nationalism. They are small but constant reminders of national identity.
● Democracies, rather than eradicating nationalism, continue to embed it into the national
consciousness.

‘We are Americans’ speech

 Anderson and ‘Imagined Communities’
Anderson, B.R.O. (1991) ‘Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and
spread of nationalism’

● Anderson saw the nation as an ‘imagined political community’. It is imagined

because we cannot hope to personally know every person in that
community, ie. the nation.
● Therefore the nation has no real definition; it has no concrete meaning.
● People are bound together through their imaginations; ‘it invents nations
where they do not exist’

How far do you agree?

 Chatterjee and post-colonialism
● Anderson presented a European centric view of the rise of nationhood; he argued that capitalism,
which incentivised the creation of the print press and therefore distributed literature, formed the
origin of political communities like the nation. People were bound together by a common
language, a unifying force.
● Chatterjee in ‘The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories’, 1993, argues
differently.
● Chatterjee discusses the unique formation of decolonised nations compared to the West. He
wanted to decolonise ideas about nationhood.
● He observed how intellectual and political elites actually reasserted their own unique spritiual and
ethnic identity in the face of the Western colonialist. These elites wanted to join the modern
world, but at the same time, retain their authentic cultures.
● Still, projects post-colonialism retained characteristics from Western imposition. Therefore
conceptions of the nation and the state have remained constrained; the ‘imaginations’ of the
community continue to be swamped by the history of the colonial state.
Ethnic conflicts - Africa
Ethnic conflicts - Yugoslavia
Ethnic conflicts - Israel/ Palestine
Nationalism in Europe
Nationalism in Europe
Nationalism in the US
Are nations the solution? Are they
more divisive than unifying?
 Today:
● What is nationalism and its components

● How is nationalism reproduced?

● Anderson’s theory of nations as ‘imagined communities’

● Chatterjee and nations post-decolonisation

● The significance of nationalism today