Who's afraid of banal nationalism? Qui a peur du nationalisme banal? En Fr

Résumé En

Michael Billig’s Banal nationalism has become a cornerstone text for the “everyday nationhood” research agenda (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008). More generally, it has become a central reference for all researchers who emphasize the daily aspect of the relationship with the nation understood by citizens in settled democracies; and those who emphasise the bottom-up dynamic in the perpetuation of national identities. Although this research agenda has the advantage of being very inclusive, this might be at the expense of some confusion regarding what is understood by national identity or nationhood. In particular, we could question why and how the critical charge of banal nationalism has been overlooked, and instead replaced by methodological considerations. There seems to be a quite general agreement today (with the notable exception of the late Anthony Smith) that we need to find ways to understand how nations, in settled democracies, are maintained in everyday life. However, we should not forget that nationalism is an epistemic object as any other, and research on it should thus be based on general knowledge, concepts and theories from social sciences. If they become too inward looking, research fields and networks run the risk of impoverishment. In this case, the obvious political dimension of nations and nationalism should drive us to build on social and political theory in order to clarify our research objectives, concepts and designs.