. The significance of national forms of imagination and organisation has been increasingly questioned in an era of rapid globalisation. While theoretically stimulating, those who stress the importance of global mobility and sociability sometimes overlook what well‐established, “thick” attachments to the nation offer to disparate individuals, notably in terms of anchoring subjectivity. This first part of this paper explores how debates around belonging in England continue to define certain “ethnic” groups as more or less national, because they embody certain traits, practices or norms. It is then suggested that those who claim, and are treated as if, they belong “without question” may be offered a key sense of material and ontological security that is underpinned through routine practices, symbolic forms and institutional arrangements. The second section looks to evidence this argument by exploring how challenges to this ontological order, which focus on the agency of “perceived” others in relation to everyday spaces, practices and material objects, are debated and resisted.

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This paper is designed to provide a critical engagement with Michael Billig's seminal thesis of Banal Nationalism (1995), perhaps the most influential study of everyday forms of nationhood. With an increasing number now focusing on the (re) production, dissemination and negotiation of the national through routine texts and practices (cf Foster, 2002;Edensor, 2002;Madianou, 2005;Brubaker et al., 2006;Bratsis, 2006) and others employing the concept of banality in relation to non-national (Gorringe, 2006) and post-national identities (Aksoy and Robins, 2002;Szerszynski and Urry, 2002;Beck, 2006;Cram, 2001), it would seem like an opportune moment to assess Billig's contribution and also the limits of his approach.In the first instance, a brief overview of Billig's work will be provided, including definitions and the main thrust of his argument. The significance of the study to both theories of nationalism and the social sciences in general will be then assessed. In the second part of the paper, I want to adopt a more critical approach by drawing on the work of those who have attempted to 'test' empirically or interrogate Billig's thesis, by focusing on its lack of complexity. Finally I will draw attention to Billig's failure to address effectively the place of the nation in a globalising world and the relationship between hot and banal forms of nationalism. Here, a more dynamic model for the study of the nation at the level of the everyday is offered, one that specifically attends to wider socio-economic and political shifts. Banal nationalism: a brief overviewBroadly speaking, Michael Billig's study of Banal Nationalism (1995) seeks to draw attention to and problematise what he labels as a 'double neglect' in how the contemporary era is understood and theorised (Billig, 1995: 49). First, he notes that much of the writing about nationalism is generally discussed in

This paper explores the reasons why national forms of identification and organization (might) matter in the contemporary era. In contrast to the majority of macro-sociological work dealing with this topic, I develop an analytical framework that draws together recent research on everyday nationalism with micro-sociological and psychological studies pointing to the importance of routine practices, institutional arrangements and symbolic systems in contributing to a relatively settled sense of identity, place and community. The second part of the paper focuses on the hierarchies of belonging that operate within a given national setting. Of particular interest is the largely taken-for-granted status of the ethnic majority and the degree to which it underpins claims to belonging and entitlement that are used to secure key allocative and authoritative resources.

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This paper focuses on public events that celebrate the nation and how they may offer important insights into the study of wider discourses of (national) identity and belonging. Drawing on theories from both anthropology and media studies, it argues that these events should not be simply dismissed as sudden outbursts of patriotic emotion but instead can be used to extend Billig's work on Banal Nationalism (1995) by analysing in more detail the relationship between the banal and the ecstatic. This approach to the study of such events will also echo the calls of those who have argued that we need to move beyond the functionalism of a Durkheimian position (Couldry 2003). This conceptual framework will then be used to provide a definition of what I have tentatively labelled ‘ecstatic nationalism’. In the final section, Sassen's (2000) concept of the ‘strategic lens’ will be used to illustrate how such events may offer a significant opportunity for studying the complex subject of national identity during relatively bounded and liminal moments in an era that has been widely characterised as ‘globalising’ (Featherstone 1990).

The cosmopolitan has re-emerged as a popular figure within the social sciences, primarily as a means of addressing (the potential for) new forms of experience and sociability in an increasingly mobile and interconnected world. Investigations into practical or everyday cosmopolitanism have been useful in grounding some of the more theoretical of these debates but problems remain in terms of both defining and operationalizing the concept. The first section of the paper briefly addresses some key theoretical debates. In the second section, attention is focused on methodological issues, with regard to both data collection and interpretation. In particular, I suggest a move beyond labelling people and practices as cosmopolitan and, instead, emphasize the contradictory and rhetorical aspects of these engagements, drawing on empirical data. In this way, the temporal, conditional and often fragile aspects of such ‘cosmopolitan’ practices can be foregrounded.