Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

Abstract

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).

Espacios para una cultura desde abajo: asociacionismo donostiarra e imágenes de la nación durante el franquismo

“…Para concluir, coincido con Moreno Almendral cuando afirma que habría que tener en cuenta a una mayoría silenciosa calificada de apolítica, que dio forma a su sensibilidad nacional española de forma más profunda y duradera en experiencias diferentes a las instancias más formales y claramente relacionadas con el régimen 62 . A los ejemplos que menciona -la misa, la mili, la tertulia, la televisión, la radio o el partido de fútbol dominical-, yo añadiría la participación en actividades recreativas y culturales como las presentadas en estas páginas.…”

Epistemic justice and everyday nationalism: An auto‐ethnography of transnational student encounters in a post‐war memory and reconciliation project in Kosovo

“…It also sits with the everyday nationalism debates' subsequent conceptual shift towards a focus on human agency (summarised in Knott, ). The focus on our students' and our own “microhistorical acts of nation‐making” (Moreno‐Almendral, , p. 651) recognises the participants as cognizant agents of their interactions and presentations of self in the deliberative spaces which the project created, both in response to, and independent of, wider structural and institutional constraints. Along the way, we also apply Skey's (, pp.…”

Nation in action : making Chinese in the rural borderland between China and North Korea

“…This chapter reviews work in the field of nationalism and ethnicity that inspires this dissertation and elaborates how the concepts of everyday nationhood and ethnicity are applied in this study. The dissertation draws on two recent developments in nationalism and ethnicity -the study of nationhood and nationalism as a dual phenomenon from both above and below (Brubaker et al 2006;Hobsbawm and Ranger 2012) with an emphasis on the everyday life setting (Fox 2017;Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008;Moreno-Almendral 2018), and the cognitive turn in nationalism and ethnicity studies (Brubaker et al 2004). This study treats ethnicity, race and nationalism as processes and focuses on three aspects: ethnicization, racialization and nationalization.…”

“…for a deeper understanding of the role of ordinary people in the construction of nations. Here seen as dual phenomena, nationalism and ethnicity have since been re-examined in everyday life settings(Brubaker et al 2006;Fox 2017;Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008;Moreno-Almendral 2018).…”

“…"everyday nationhood and ethnicity", I examine ways to discover nationhood and ethnicity in an everyday life setting(Brubaker et al 2006;Fox 2017;Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008;Moreno- Almendral 2018). I propose a new empirical study situated in the North Korean-Chinese borderland, focusing on the residents of rural Yanbian who are predominantly Chinese nationals with the ethnic Korean minority status.…”