Everyday Nationalism in Unsettled Times: In Search of Normality during Pandemic

Abstract

Pandemics and other crisis situations result in unsettled times, or ontologically insecure moments when social and political institutions are in flux. During such crises, the ordinary and unnoticed routines that structure everyday life are thrust into the spotlight as people struggle to maintain or recreate a sense of normalcy. Drawing on a range of cases including China, Russia, the UK, and USA, we examine three categories of everyday practice during the COVID-19 pandemic that respond to disruptions in daily routines and seek a return to national normality: performing national solidarities and exclusions by wearing face masks; consuming the nation in the form of panic buying and conspiracy theories; and enforcing foreign policies through social media and embodiment. This analysis thus breaks with existing works on everyday nationalism and banal nationalism that typically focus on pervasively unnoticed forms of nationalism during settled times, and it challenges approaches to contentious politics that predict protest mobilization for change rather than restoration of the status quo ante. In highlighting the ways that unsettled times disrupt domestic and international structures, this work also presents a first attempt to link everyday nationalism with growing work on international practices.

Is Nationalism Rising in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic? Individual-Level Evidence from the United States

“…On March 16, President Donald Trump suddenly referred to the COVID-19 coronavirus by the "Chinese virus" intentionally, which ushered in the propaganda war between the US and China [58]. A number of analysts were concerned that these responses manifest a striking trend: nationalism rising globally [1,14,23,27,63,64,66].…”

“…The president of United States, Donald J. Trump, suspended entry of aliens who supposedly present a risk to the US labor market to protect American workers. Thus, a number of observers see a new epoch in the making, one in which nationalism tends to rise globally [1,14,23,27,51,[62][63][64]66]. It is tempting to make inferences regarding the broader trends in the post-pandemic world based on those specific observations.…”

Identity, Nationalism and the Response of Turkey to COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As stated in the introduction, few researchers have recently addressed the issue of the possible effects of the pandemic on ontological security of societies. Goode et al (2020) examined societal responses to the perceived threats to ontological security in the US, UK, China and Russia and displayed how anxieties, conspiracy theories and everyday actions become conflated with nationalist tropes about unity and sovereignty during the pandemic. Mamzer (2020) also emphasized how COVID-19 and restrictions to prevent its spread, disrupted the sense of ontological security and prompted some irrational behaviors such as panic buying whereas Kirke (2020) argued that threats to ontological security has not led to a vacuum of meaning due to political myths constructed by media in the UK which suggest British society as united against the virus.…”

“…In addition to domestic developments, the AKP government is also relying on the pandemic to score foreign policy points and restore its ontological security in international arena. Foreign policy is indeed tied to nationalism in times of health crisis by means of humanitarian aid to other countries through which the donor extends global influence (for a detailed discussion see, Goode et al 2020;Woods et al 2020). Since the beginning of the outbreak, Turkey sent critical medical supplies and aid to more than 50 countries including its NATO allies such as the UK, US, Spain and Italy as well as many others in the Balkans, Middle East and Africa.…”

From Crisis to Nationalism?

“…The crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has also led to an increase in acts and displays of everyday nationalism in European countries. Everyday nationalism is a new approach to observe and study nationalism by focusing particularly on everyday routines and lived experiences with ethnic or nationalist content (Goode et al 2020 : 2–3). Following the constructivist turn, it is posited that everyday nationalism does not regard people as mere passive receptacles of top–down nationalist messages, but also active agents in producing, manipulating, and practicing their own version of nationalism (Goode and Stroup 2015 ; Fox and Van Ginderachter 2018 ).…”