Episode 2: Nation in the city

How is the nation flanked? How do you encounter the nation in a space that is not meant to be a space of intellectual activity of critical reflection but rather a space of pleasure and enjoyment or a space of necessity where you just go about your daily life? Welcome to Struggles in the City, the podcast to understand power relations in cities. I'm Melody Insomie. I'm working as an academy research fellow at the University of Uvascula in Finland. And our guest today is Delia Dumitrica, associate professor at the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotedom in the Netherlands. Welcome, Delia. Hi, Melodyne. In this episode, we will talk about nationalism in cities. Delia, you're going to share with us inside from your research about the where the nation is represented or how it's flagged in cities and also how that's often done in ways that are mundane or taken for granted. So maybe we can start with a brief definition to clarify what we're talking about. We're talking about nationalism in cities, about displays of the nation in cities. Can you tell us a bit more about what these terms, these phrases actually mean? Traditionally, terms like nationalism have been defined as a political ideology that was able to spur strong emotional attachments among people. However, today nationalism is a little bit more than just a political ideology. It's a way of seeing the political and cultural organization of our geopolitical world. If you want a way of seeing human beings as allegedly naturally divided into groups that share some cultural or ethnic traits. This alleged natural differentiation into groups then becomes a normative requirement that justifies a claim to a territory and to sub-arrenity in political organization. What is interesting to me when I think about nationalism is not that much the political ideological dimension of it, but rather how mundane this political ideology has become, how it is no longer just a means of thinking about the organization of political life. But also a way in which we understand ourselves and the way we encounter others in our daily lives. Now, if you ask me about nationalism, but you've also mentioned the term nation, because if nationalism is a way of thinking about who we are and how we ought to organize ourselves, then the nation is the social category that this way of thinking advocates for. Now, this can be a little bit confusing because we tend to think of nations as these naturally occurring groups or entities, social entities. But from an intellectual perspective, from an academic perspective, as one of the main scholars in the field of critical studies of nationalism put it, Ernest Gellner, he says, "Nationalism builds nations." So, it's not that nations are these historical realities, but rather that they become articulated and understood as social construct and social realities, once nationalism becomes a way of thinking about how to organize ourselves. To put it differently, state-building efforts that are starting from these ideological premises that nationalism recommends are creating the sense of a shared entity, of a shared political and cultural group. Think about how education or mass media or even government institutions, official holidays, reconstructions of historical events, tell us to understand ourselves as members of the nation, as if the nation has always been there, a historical and a natural category or groups of people. I would add, however, that this is not how people encounter the term "the nation" in everyday life. If you and I were to talk about nations in the context of a friendly conversation, if we were not academics perhaps, then nations would be things that we really take for granted. They are part of our material context of our everyday life, street names that recognize national heroes or the food that we eat that we consider to be national food. All of these suggest to us in everyday life that the world in which we live is naturally divided into nations, into groups of people that share certain cultural and perhaps even ethnic traits. Now you mentioned in your, when you were talking about the nation being reproduced, you talked about the media, you talked about education, which is things at least the media part is something that I know both of us have looked at in our previous work. But also in the examples you mentioned, you've talked about street names, voices or the food that made me think of restaurants as well when we think about cities. Can you tell us maybe why city centers in particular as opposed to voices just media representations are an interesting venues or context for you to look at nationalism and display of the nation? Sure, I will try to articulate it because I mentioned earlier that what interests me is not so much nationalism as a political ideology, but rather the way in which nationalism has become a mundane way of thinking about who we are, of thinking about how the people that we interact with who they are and what they represent. So I'm really interested in this question of how nationalism and by extension the very idea of the nation become naturalized, become taken for granted, things that we do not reflect upon but take to be a reflection of a natural reality. So in that context, I am particularly interested or I was particularly interested in how a simple walk downtown through the main areas of a city might prompt us to think about nations as mere reflections of a natural reality, a historical reality. And I was wondering where in our material surroundings, where when we walk downtown, we go for a nice lunch or a nice dinner or we visit a place, where and when do we encounter this very idea of the nation? And how do we encounter the idea of the nation? Is it something that prompts our conscious reflection or is it something that we simply take for granted as a descriptor of something? Yes, so in my research, I'm really interested in how when you go through the downtown areas of a city, how these descriptors of the nation prompt you to take this very idea of the nation for granted? Is that also to say in a way that space when we think of cities, for instance, that we often take them for granted as well, that's something we were talking in the first episode of the podcast, that space is often depoliticized in a way that we don't think of it as something that is necessarily in itself a form of discourse, but it's just something that is out there. So do you think that that's also why cities are interesting to look at when we are interesting in the production of everyday life, meaning because cities are themselves somehow taken for granted? Well, I think that you and I are academics talking about research, but if I am to think of myself as a tourist going to different locations, I do not go there to question things. I go there to discover, to discover the history of a place, to discover what the place has to offer. These moments of reflecting upon what created the space and how perhaps historical, cultural, political phenomena have shaped the development of a space. I think that in everyday life you encounter those moments in very diverse ways, they are not the same as doing research. So in that sense, you asked me earlier why do research about the way we encounter the nation in everyday life in a city as opposed to say mass media representations? Well, cities or walking down the streets in your own city or when you're visiting a new location, those are not meant to be political gestures. They are not meant to be things that we reflect upon. They are mostly part of everyday life. You walk to work, you walk to the place where you buy your bread from, you walk to the supermarket, or you walk in a place that is new for you and then you're interested in discovering the local flavor. In that sense, for me, walking downtown and thinking consciously about when and where the nation is flagged is very important because it's able to capture those moments of unconscious encounters with the idea of the nation as a political reality. So I wouldn't say that space is depoliticized, absolutely not, but I would say that perhaps in everyday life, the political dimension of space is not something that is in the forefront of our attention. It's not something that we're there for, right? Rather, there are particular encounters with the objects in your physical surroundings, surroundings that may prompt these moments of realization that the political and the mundane are intertwined, that in fact, politics is very much part and parcel of the way in which the city itself has been developed and is perhaps experienced by you as either an inhabitant or a visitor. But yeah, I would agree that in terms of everyday life, walking down the street is not necessarily a moment of political encounters or political reflections, right? So in that sense, a walk-down town is a pleasurable activity, is something that you enjoy or something that you do because you have to, and in that context, it's really interesting to ask, how is the nation flanked? How do you encounter the nation in a space that is not meant to be a space of intellectual activity, of critical reflection, but rather a space of pleasure and enjoyment, or a space of necessity, you just go about your daily life? Well, that's actually what I was going to ask you, what did you discover in your research? What were the ways in which the city was flagged? Can you maybe give us some concrete examples so we can visualize it, for instance? How does it materialize? How is it flagged? Well, in my research, which was inspired by a previous project done by one of my colleagues, Michael Skay, who looked at the way in which the nation is flagged, and we use this word flag because it has a very symbolic connection to the very flag that comes to symbolize the nation and the nation's state. So the way in which the nation is flagged unconsciously in our everyday surroundings. And the way in which this can be done is through a variety of objects. In my own research, I chose to look at objects such as business science, you know, the signs that appear on top of a shop or on top of a restaurant. So I looked at business science, but I also looked at things such as window displays because if you walk downtown, then at least in the cities that I have looked at, you're bound to encounter a lot of commercial spaces. So it's very interesting to think about when and where the nation is being used in a commercial display to signal something to attract your interest as a potential customer, but also in terms of the flags that were displayed for a variety of reasons. So if you go for a walk in downtown Madrid, for instance, then you might encounter flags that are hanged alongside a business sign put up by a local business or you might encounter flags that are exhibited by local administration or you might encounter flags that people put up to decorate their balcony or even to decorate their own clothes like on a backpack or maybe you see a jacket that is adorned with the national flag. So you can encounter the nation in a variety of ways when you walk downtown. You've talked about the, you mentioned different actors, the businesses, the administration, people themselves who can flag the nation and then you mentioned that a lot of the ways in which the nation is shown is also through things that we buy and that's also something I've noticed in my own research, not looking at the nation but looking at ethnicity or race voices. And in your research, you talk sometimes about the commercialization of the nation, right? So the idea that in a way or so the lot of the ways in which we make sense of our political, social, cultural imaginaries is through buying and purchasing. And so this commercialization is, that's an important aspect in your, in your research as well, isn't it? Yes, commercialization is part and parcel of how we encounter the nation in downtown areas. Now my research looked at major cities cities that are also potentially cultural and and touristy hubs or at least attract some some some type of tourism. And those are by definition also urban spaces that are highly commercialized that cater not only to the local inhabitants but also to tourists that are coming from elsewhere. In the context of these these these these cities that are quite vibrant culturally but also touristically, what you see is that you no longer encounter just one single nation but you are confronted with the multiplicity of nations that are offered that are on display for you as a tourist or for you as a consumer to enjoy in a variety of ways. Nations can be a gateway to food to cuisine, right? It's a way in which we have come to understand the food that we eat your downtown to sample say Spanish cuisine or maybe Italian food or maybe you want to try a Japanese restaurant. So that is one context in which the nation has become commercialized it has become a sign that recommends particular types of of food and particular gastronomic styles. But you could also encounter the nation as an object that you're supposed to like to wear to adore yourself with. So for instance, maybe you you want a backpack that is made in Finland and has the finished flag on it or maybe you want as I said a bit earlier, a jacket that is adorned in the colors of the national flag. And you encounter them quite incomes because specifically in in window displays in commercial displays these are objects that speak to you and say hey do you want to wear me? Do you want to show your attachment or your interest or your affiliation with this nation by buying me and you know wearing me wherever you go. So in that sense the nation has become a very important advertising strategy. It recommends something that you would like to consume. It signals an object or sometimes a symbolic quality of the object that you're prompted to buy and that you would like to own and to display for the consumption of others as well. So others can see that you have this affiliation. One interesting thing to notice here is that not all nations have the same symbolic power. Food from Japan, Japanese food, Italian food can be very interesting and very appealing to particular audiences in particular contexts. Things that are made in China or objects that are made in Senegal are not equally desirable across all contexts. So what I'm trying to articulate or what I'm trying to draw your attention to here is that some nations have more cultural capital than others and therefore they lend themselves more easily to becoming gateways to consumption. We all know that the Swiss watches are the best. But for instance I have never heard about Turkish watches. So in that sense nations have also gained particular connotations and particular meanings that are then transferred onto objects or services that are being sold to us. So you're talking about the nation as something that's being reproduced so that it's meaningful entity, something that is naturalized that what you were saying at first at the beginning of the podcast, something that we take for granted. But now what you're also saying is it's something that's being reproduced in a way that maintains a certain global order, a certain global hierarchy between powerful and less powerful. We could say maybe a national entity. So there are those two aspects right between the local and the global as well. Yeah absolutely. On the one hand you walk downtown in the downtown of a city and you're exposed, you see a variety of nations appealing to you. You have the Italian restaurant and then you have perhaps the Swiss watches or an advert for Swiss watches. That gives you a sense of a very cosmopolitan urban environment, right? Because you're surrounded by these signs of different of different nations that are associated with objects and services that you could consume. And by consuming them, you yourself become perhaps more open or more oriented towards encounters with difference or at least this is what you'd like to believe. But at the same time, as we discussed earlier, the way you encounter or the nations that you encounter in this process are themselves connected to what you called a global order or a global hierarchy. And depending on the location, depending on where you are or which city you're looking at, the global can look quite differently. Because for instance, one of the things that I've noticed in my research was when I was comparing, say, walking through downtown Bucharest in Romania with walking through downtown Rotterdam. You have certain nations that have already acquired a very strong and powerful cultural capital, Italian restaurants, French clothing styles, right? Those or Swiss watches, let's say, those are quite well recognized across both locations. But then there are also differences that have to do with the location itself. In Bucharest Romania, the cuisine and the food from the Balkan region or from Eastern Europe is also a very important cultural element. And you see, for instance, Feta cheese from Bulgaria or Feta cheese from Greece. And then Bulgaria and Greece become important in particular ways within the Romanian context. In the Netherlands or in Rotterdam, for instance, you might see a lot of references to the former Dutch colonies that also have a cultural capital in their own rights, particularly when it comes to cuisine. But not so much when it comes to, for instance, watches or fashion or clothes, right? So what I'm trying to articulate here is that certain nations become well-known for certain products and for certain services. And that indeed, there is a hierarchy. There is a hierarchy between different nations and what they can offer in terms of quality, in terms of precision, in terms of pleasure. Those hierarchies have some elements that are more universal. But then there are also local hierarchies that are specific to the place. Yeah. And you mentioned at some point how these, the kind of national landscapes that we see in cities, it positioned people in different ways. For instance, certain customers may feel cosmopolitan because they are consuming certain global brands, right? Taking your coffee from certain places and buying certain computers and those kind of things or dresses and so on. What about, because you mentioned the interplay between global and local, how that also positions may be tourist or local and how are those positions in the same manner or, oh, differently, did you see some of that in your research as well? That's a very interesting question. And it makes me think about some of the things that I've noticed, for instance, in Madrid. In Madrid, the different nations that are part of the downtown area appeal to different types of consumers. Some of them are locals and some of them are tourists. But some of them are people who live in Madrid because they are temporary labor. So let me give you an example here. A very interesting type of business that relies a lot upon flags to signal particular countries is mobile companies, right? And they would often be located in downtown Madrid and they would have these big banners or these big billboards that use a variety of flags. But different flags interpret different type of people who are supposed to be in Madrid for different reasons. In some cases, you're a tourist and you want to have, you know, you want to talk to people in other parts of the world and then you might be interested in buying a SIM card. In some cases, you might be from Romania and then you're more likely to be part of the temporary labor, the casual labor force that is quite present in Madrid. And there, the use of the Romanian flag interprets this particular group of people by telling them you can keep your connection to your home country for a cheaper price or in a cheaper package or in a better package. So in that sense, when you walk downtown, some of these nations appeal to you if you are a local and then you want to try something out, something different, but they can also appeal to you in order to maintain your connection to a different country and to a different group, right? And then if you're a tourist, then you're just there to experience the place and what you get is this feeling of a very cosmopolitan place that caters to all sorts of people and brings in all sorts of products and services. Earlier on, you talked about Michael's gay. Is that somebody that has influenced you in your work when you're looking at the display of the nation in cities and particularly in city centers, for instance? Yeah, absolutely. Because Michael came up with this idea of looking at mundane objects within our surroundings that would signal the nation. And I found this to be particularly interesting. He looked at this in the context of the UK, but I wanted to go a step further and to do a competitive project where I would look at the different nations that are signaled across four different locations. So my study looked at Rotterdam, Bucharest, Calgary, and Madrid. And yeah, I really wanted to understand how nations are differently flagged in different locations, but also how there are similarities across the four locations. Another author that has been influential in my work has been Michael Billick, whose book Banal Nationalism really draws attention to the mundane aspect of nationalism. At the time in 1995 when Michael Billick published his book, he made the argument that researchers are more interested in looking at nationalism as a political ideology, but they are paying less attention to how nationalism has become embedded within our everyday life. And I found that particularly inspirational because I don't think that we think about nationalism as a political ideology in the same way as we did in the early 1900s or in the mid 1900s. For us today, nationalism is really, yeah, sometimes it's a work that has bad connotations and we ascribe it to politicians with whom we disagree and it's a bit more like an insult, although lately nationalism has been recovered to also signal a positive, a positive dimension of a politician or a positive outlook of a politician who is interested in defending one particular country against all the others. But what Michael Billick signals is that it's not enough to look for nationalism solely in the political realm. That the political realm is anchored by the realm of everyday life and that we live in a time or in a place where nationalism has become part and parcel of our everyday life experiences. I found that very inspirational and also a way in which I was able to rethink my everyday surroundings, a downtown area of a city and look at it through a new set of eyes and ask when and how is the nation flagged when I walk downtown in a way that I don't perhaps consciously reflect upon in a way that entices me to buy an object because it's made in Switzerland or to sample a cuisine because it is an Italian restaurant and not give it a further thought as to what does it mean that food is Italian and what does it mean that a watch is Swiss? What do these categories even mean? So for me the work of Michael Billick has been really instrumental in coming to think about how the nation is naturalized, how it is made to look as if it is a result of natural historical processes, how it becomes taken for granted basically. Yeah, great. Thanks a lot Delia. We're getting to the end of today's episode and I finish episodes with a more personal question, a little bit more playful question as well. So I would like to ask you about your own favorite city and what makes it maybe your favorite city? Oh, I find this a politically loaded question that is very, very hard to answer, partly because I love living in Rotterdam. I think that Rotterdam is such a cool city, but I have to say that I also love being in Madrid. So in that sense, I am not entirely sure that I can give a straight forward answer, but let's just say that I think that both Rotterdam and Madrid have a lot to offer for different reasons. Great, great. Not choosing one but two, that's good as well. Well, thanks a lot Delia for joining me today and thank you all for listening. Thank you very much. and watch Melodyn for having me on your podcast.