“Consuming” national identity in Western Ukraine

Abstract

This paper represents an attempt to study national identity in the post-Soviet context through the lens of everyday life practices. Building on ideas of banal nationalism and consumer citizenship, and with support of empirical evidence collected in l'viv, Ukraine, this paper demonstrates how national identity becomes materialized in everyday life through consumption practices and objects of consumption. While exploring objects and practices that are not originally national in scope but infused with national meanings by ordinary people, it will be shown how consumption becomes an arena for the expression and renegotiation of national self-portraits. Differences in national meanings among residents of l'viv belonging to two different language groups will highlight the diversity of ways and means by which people express their national sensibilities. By exploring national meanings in everyday consumption practices of Ukrainian citizens, this study aims to provide an alternative perspective on post-Soviet nation-building and contribute to the current debate on the position and identity of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.

National Identity for Breakfast: Food Consumption and the Everyday Construction of National Narratives in Estonia

“…They appear to feel loyalty toward the opportunities the state provides more than to the state itself. As such, it is possible to separate the institutional framework, wherein they live their everyday life, from general societal acceptance and integration (Seliverstova 2017;Seliverstova and Pawlusz 2016).…”

“…2 In our case, use of such an empirical focus to challenge the top-down version of identity construction results in the choice to take into account the everyday as a methodological approach. Seeking continuity from a tradition of the study of the everyday (De Certeau 1998;Lefebvre 1974) authors have attempted to look beyond officially-produced narratives of loyalty and belonging (Nimmerfeldt, 2011;Pawłusz, 2017;Pawłusz and Polese 2017;Seliverstova 2017;Wulf, 2016). Whilst accepting that elites have the latitude to articulate various identity markers and construct an official narrative on national identity and participation, an emphasis has been put on the capacity by common people to renegotiate and even reject these narratives (Perchoc 2013;Richardson 2008;Rodgers 2007;Ehala 2009).…”

“…Accordingly, the choice to involve a relatively large team in the preparation of this study is due to the capacity of each of its members to contribute data or interpretation from different angles. The core material for this article was collected in the frame of a doctoral project that was defended in 2017 (Seliverstova 2017) and was informed by 25 informal semi-structured interviews, conducted in Tallinn in 2014-2015 with representatives of two language groups-Estonian and Russian speakers. 3 The snowball sampling method was used for finding potential respondents, defined as urban citizens representing either the educated middle class or lower-middle-class and born between 1950-1990.…”

Luxury consumption as identity markers in Tallinn: A study of Russian and Estonian everyday identity construction through consumer citizenship

“…It is indeed the 'turn to the everyday' in the study of nationalism (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008;Khattab and Fox, 2016) that leads to the idea that identity is constructed through a multi-vectoral (top-down and bottom-up) mechanism. In the post-socialist region, this new direction prompted reflections on the role of human agency and how identities are renegotiated at the everyday level (Isaacs and Polese, 2016;Knott, 2015;Kulyk, 2011;Seliverstova, 2017b) both formally (through state-centred narratives, see (Jacobson, 2006;Menga, 2015;Siiner, 2006) and informally by ordinary citizens (Cheskin, 2013;Pawlusz, 2017;Strzemanska, 2017).…”

Building a Ukrainian Identity in Odessa: Negotiation of Markers and Informal Nationalism

“…Bringing back agency into identity debates, scholars have explored the role of middle actors such as teachers or local leaders (Kerikma e, 2001;Polese, 2013;Rodgers, 2007;Richardson, 2008;Troitin o, 2013Troitin o, , 2013bWigglesworthBaker, 2016) in the redefinition of identity markers. Bringing this idea further, a new generation of scholars have been looking at the way official narratives on identity, constructed through macroprocesses by a state, can be questioned and renegotiated by everyday ways of living and practicing identity (Fabrykant, 2018;Gaufman, 2018;Kerikma e, NymanMetcalf & Papageorgiou, 2013;Pawłusz & Seliverstova, 2016;Seliverstova, 2017).…”