Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In this review piece, we would like to offer a number of reflections on Banal Nationalism and, in particular, responses to it, three decades on.First, we would like to provide some context for the development of the Banal Nationalism thesis and then outline some of its key arguments.Here, in particular, we address a central argument of the book that has been perhaps overlooked.That is, how nationalism operates as a wider ideology at the global level, providing powerful justifications for how individual societies, as well as relations between them, should be ordered.The relative lack of attention given to this view stands in contrast to much of the empirical work inspired by banal nationalism, which tends to focus on particular features or social relations in a given (usually national) setting (see Duchesne 2018, 2019 for a critique).Subsequently, we address the various approaches that sought to critically engage with Billig's work.These studies emphasised variability within national settings and argued for a more dynamic model to emphasise the transition from banal to hotter forms of nationalism, and vice versa.Then we turn to Jones and Merriman's (2009) paper on hot, banal and everyday nationalism as a way of opening up, and then critiquing, what seems to have subsequently become the established way of thinking about banal versus everyday nationalism.This is the argument that the former is only about top-down, institutional forms of taken-for-granted nationalism, while the latter is about agency and ordinary people's everyday activities or utterances.Having sought to outline the weaknesses of such a dichotomy, in the final section we offer a number of concluding remarks. | Banal Nationalism-Context and ContributionCoinciding with the 25th anniversary of Banal Nationalism's publication, Billig was interviewed by the editor of Political Geography and was asked how he came to write the book (Dodds 2016).Around the same time, he was invited to deliver talks about the origins of the book.Some of these talks, which were not published, can be seen online (e.g., Billig 2020, https:// www. youtu be. com/ watch? v= vG4lF 7xfQbM).In the interview and the talks, Billig said that in the early 1990s, he had become interested in studying nationalism.His background was in social psychology.Because social psychologists tend to propose universal theories for explaining human behaviour, Billig felt that social psychology may not be best placed for understanding historically specific types of phenomena such as nationalism or fascism.With growing excitement, he read the classic books about nationalism by Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm.These pioneering theorists saw the rise of nationalism as something historically specific, which they linked to the creation of the nation-state.Here was an understanding of nationalism and fascism that was not based on universal theories of human nature.Anderson, Gellner and Hobsbawm warned against looking for nationalism in times other than modernity or, at least, very early modernity.However, as he read these great books from which he learnt so much, Billig began to worry that these historians might have been a bit too historical.All three books concentrated on the rise of the nation-state and described how nationalist movements
Source: Nations and Nationalism
DOI: 10.1111/nana.70015
Authors: Michael Billig, Michael Skey
Institution: Loughborough University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,750
OpenAlex ID: W4414028997