Hot and Banal Nationalism: The Nationalization of ‘the Masses’

‘Love your China’ and evangelise: religion, nationalism, racism and immigrant settlement in Canada

“…Nationalism can be described as 'the body of ideas legitimating the nation-state that emerged in eighteenth century Europe and America and by the mid-twentieth century had swept through the modern world' (Juergensmeyer 2006, 182; see also Billig 2006Billig /1995Hobsbawm 1990;Ozkirimli 2000). However, orthodox theorisations have associated nationalism with 'others who struggle to create new states or with extreme right-wing politics' (Billig 2006(Billig /1995also Ozkirimli 2000), or what Hutchingson (2006) calls 'hot nationalism'. Billig analyses a commonplace but rarely recognised banal nationalism, or everyday nationalism, which comprises 'the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced' (Billig 2006(Billig /1995.…”

The National in Everyday Life: A Critical Engagement with Michael Billig's Thesis of Banal Nationalism

“…Conversely, as John Hutchinson has argued (2004, 2006), we cannot presume that nationalism, once established and largely routinized, continues to exist, un‐remarked upon, in perpetuity. Instead, he writes, ‘the nation is a process, and a non‐linear one, that is reversible’ (2006: 300) and identifies a number of factors, war, ‘natural’ disasters, migration and ideological threat, that may cause hot outbursts of nationalist fervour (riots, civil conflict or war) or (to stretch our analogy a little further) the gradual heating of (largely) taken‐for‐granted national identities.…”

“…The first is that nationalism and globalization ‘need to be reconstructed as co‐original and in co‐evolution rather than two opposing forces’ (Chernilo, 2006: 16). The second is to conceptualize, ‘nation‐formation as a dynamic and potentially reversible process’ (Hutchinson, 2006: 295) that in particular periods and places may become stabilized and naturalized. In these latter cases, as Michael Billig has observed, this national framework informs everyday ways of thinking, imagining and acting, in the process generating ‘essentialist conception[s] of both society and social agency’ (Laclau, 1990: 89).…”

Performing national‐identity: the many logics of producing national belongings in public rituals and events

“…While the articles in this themed section refer to different societal and temporal contexts and address a variety of ultra‐nationalist world‐views and occurrences as well as performances of banal nationalism (Airriess et al. ; Billig ; Hutchinson ), they all deal with the ritualisation of politics and political rituals celebrating national, ethnic or religious identity (Friedland ). All four articles contribute to our understanding of national identities as forms of social life (Billig ) through their focus upon aspects of ceremonial and ritual behaviour at mass public events that can serve as fundamental catalysers for cohesion and value commitment among groups of participants and which, ultimately, aim to produce a unique version of ‘we‐ness’.…”