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

J Paul Goode,Elizaveta Gaufman,David R Stroup

doi:10.1017/nps.2020.40

J Paul Goode, Elizaveta Gaufman + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.40

Copy DOI

Abstract

AbstractPandemics 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.

Highlights

During the long pandemic season of 2020, the most common question has been, “When will things get back to normal?” Arguably, the most common question has been, “How do things get back to normal?” followed closely by, “Will things ever get back to normal?” and, “Do we really want to go back to normal?” Answering any of these questions is not just a function of epidemiology, as they involve an implicit suggestion that there is an agreed-upon sense of what constitutes normality
The reality of a life constrained by lockdowns, quarantine, and selfisolation leaves people trapped in worlds which are familiar yet just different enough that they cling to the select few routines they consider essential to their identities—not unlike the ways that migrants cling to the routines they associate with their national identities
Scholars working on banal nationalism and everyday nationalism have argued that there is a continuous relationship between everyday nationalism and mobilized nationalism—that is, between the ways that nationalism is activated as a mobilizational frame during contentious political cycles and, vice versa, when nationalism is demobilized and fades into a background as a form of legitimation for new regimes (Goode 2020a; Jones and Merriman 2009; Skey 2009)

Summary

Introduction

During the long pandemic season of 2020, the most common question has been, “When will things get back to normal?” Arguably, the most common question has been, “How do things get back to normal?” followed closely by, “Will things ever get back to normal?” and, “Do we really want to go back to normal?” Answering any of these questions is not just a function of epidemiology, as they involve an implicit suggestion that there is an agreed-upon sense of what constitutes normality. People frequently express their sense of a lost normality in terms of the everyday practices and routines associated with daily national existence, such as working, shopping, voting, studying, or socializing.

Results

Conclusion