Abstract
This chapter takes up the notion that the nation is quietly but persistently reinforced by banal national symbols by considering how nationhood emerges through the experience of the everyday spaces in which we dwell and through which we move. In doing so, it draws on recent investigations into the role of atmosphere in constituting and inflecting our experiences, asking how this might open up ways of thinking about nationhood in terms of our sensory, imagined and perceived environments. Using an auto-ethnographic account of daily routine to unfold my arguments, I suggest an approach to the nation that attends to how we trace through, perceive and make sense of it as part of our everyday worlds.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ahmed, S. (2010). Happy Objects. In M. Gregg & G. Seigworth (Eds.), The affect reader. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press.
Anderson, B. (2014). Encountering affect: Capacities, apparatuses, conditions. Farnham: Ashgate.
Antonsich, M. (2015). The ‘everyday’ of banal nationalism—Ordinary people’s views on Italy and Italian. Political Geography. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2015.07.006.
Antonsich, M., & Skey, M. (2016). Affective nationalism: Issues of power, agency and method. Progress in Human Geography. doi:10.1177/0309132516665279.
Bille, M. (2014). Lighting up cosy atmospheres in Denmark. Emotion, Space and Society, 15, 56–63.
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
Bissell, D. (2015). Virtual infrastructures of habit: The changing intensities of habit through gracefulness, restlessness and clumsiness. Cultural Geographies, 22(1), 127–146.
Closs Stephens, A., Hughes, S., Schofield, V., Sumartojo, S. (2017). Atmospheric memories: Affect and minor politics at the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings. Emotion, Space and Society, 23: 44–51.
Closs Stephens, A. (2016). The affective atmospheres of nationalism. Cultural Geographies, 23(2), 181–198.
Crang, M., & Tolia-Kelly, D. (2010). Nation, race, and affect: Senses and sensibilities at national heritage sites. Environment and Planning A, 42, 2315–2331.
Dwyer, O. (2004). Symbolic accretion and commemoration. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(3), 419–435.
Edensor, T. (1998). Tourists at the taj: Performance and meaning at a symbolic site. London: Routledge.
Edensor, T. (2002). National identity, popular culture and everyday life. London: Bloomsbury.
Edensor, T. (2012). Illuminated atmospheres: Anticipating and reproducing the flow of affective experience in blackpool. Environment and Planning D, 30(6), 1103–1122.
Fox, J., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2008). Everyday nationhood. Ethnicities, 8(4), 536–576.
Higgins, C (May 24, 2010). The fourth plinth: Message in a bottle. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2010/may/24/art-fourth-plinth. Accessed 14 August 2016.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Abingdon: Routledge.
Longhurst, R., Ho, E., & Johnston, L. (2008). Using ‘the body’ as an ‘instrument of research’: Kimch’i and pavlova. Area, 40(2), 208–217.
Marshall, D. (2004). Making sense of remembrance. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(1), 37–54.
Massey, D. (1994). A global sense of place. In Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage.
Merriman, P., & Jones, R. (2016). Nations, materialities and affects. Progress in Human Geography. doi:10.1177/0309132516649453.
Militz, E., & Schurr, C. (2015). Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan. Political Geography, 54, 54–63.
Muzaini, H. (2015). On the matter of forgetting and ‘memory returns’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40, 102–112.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les Lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24.
Olsen, B. (2010). In defense of things: Archaeology and the ontology of objects. Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Rhys, J., & Carwyn, F. (2007). Placing and Scaling the Nation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25(2), 332–354.
Skey, M. (2011). National belonging and everyday life: The significance of nationhood in an uncertain world. London: Palgrave.
Skey, M. (2014). The mediation of nationhood: Communicating the world as a world of nations. Communications Theory, 24(1), 1–20.
Sumartojo, S. (2013). The fourth plinth: Creating and contesting national identity in Trafalgar Square, 2005–2010. Cultural Geographies, 20, 67–81.
Sumartojo, S. (2014). ‘Dazzling relief’: Floodlighting and national affective atmospheres on VE Day 1945. Journal of Historical Geography, 45, 59–69.
Sumartojo, S., & Wellings, B. (Eds.). (2014). Nation, Memory, and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Bern: Peter Lang.
Sumartojo, S. (2015). On atmosphere and darkness at Australia’s Anzac Day dawn service. Visual Communication, 14(2), 267–288.
Sumartojo, S. (2016). Commemorative atmospheres: Memorial sites, collective events and the experience of national identity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(4), 541–553.
Sumartojo, S., & Stevens, Q. (Eds.). (2016). Anzac Atmospheres in Drozdzewski, D, de Nardi, S and Waterton, E Memory, Place and Identity: Commemoration and Remembrance of War and Conflict. London: Routledge: 189–204.
Tanizaki, J. (1977 [2001]). In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage Books.
Wood, N. (2012). Playing with ‘Scottishness’: Musical performance, non-representational thinking and the ‘doings’ of national identity. Cultural Geographies, 19, 195–215.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sumartojo, S. (2017). Making Sense of Everyday Nationhood: Traces in the Experiential World. In: Skey, M., Antonsich, M. (eds) Everyday Nationhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57097-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57098-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)