reading mark on Banal Nationalism (1)

Studying nationalism as an Ideology
    In his book Banal Nationalism, Billig states that in general, Western academics today find it easier to recognize nationalism in ‘others’ than in themselves. Nationalism can be seen almost everywhere but ‘here’. And in Western, in the absence of an overt political challenge, this ideology might appear banal, routine, almost invisible (p15).
    Therefore, he criticizes many Western social scientists ignore the banal characteristics of nationalism and their projecting theories of nationalism. These approaches tend to define nationalism in a restricted way, as an extreme/surplus phenomenon. For such social scientists, nationalism is equated with the outlook of nationalist movements and, when there are no such movements, nationalism is not seen to be an issue (p16).
    Nevertheless, this is not the situation in China. Chinese nationalism is much more visible and sensitive than Western countries based on Billig’s statement. We can see it everywhere, although its performances are variety. And Chinese people always define their sentiment as nationalism or patriotism. Actually, they indeed equal nationalism with patriotism.
    Can Chinese nationalism be called ‘banal nationalism’? Broadly speaking, I think nationalism in each country has the banal characteristics if nationalism is broadened as a concept to cover the ways that established nation-states are routinely reproduced. And people in each country are familiar with the “unwaved flag”.     However, Chinese nationalism is more manifest, overt, articulated and often fiercely expressed. I am wonder whether we can call Chinese nationalism as “manifest nationalism”?
    Since Chinese nationalism is much more manifest, in contrast to the Western situation, Chinese social scientists always pay much more attention on their own nationalism, not others.

    Billig also criticizes the naturalizing theories of nationalism. It tends to depict contemporary loyalties as ‘needs for identity’, ‘attachments to society’ or ‘primordial ties’, which are theoretically posited to be universal psychological states, and not peculiar to the age of nation-states (p17).
    To see nationalism as an ideology, Billig argues that “An infinite variety of psychological acts is required for the reproduction of nation-states. These psychological acts should not be analyzed purely in terms of the motives of the individual actors. An ideological analysis of psychological states stresses that the acts, and, indeed, the motives of the individuals, are constituted through socio-historical processes, rather than vice versa.” (p17)
    I agree with Billig in this part. Just as Gellner has argued, nationalism belongs to the era of nation-states. There can be no nationalism without nation-states; and thus, nationalism is a historically specific form of consciousness.
    However, whether or not nationalism is an ideology is a big question to the nationalism theorists. Many scholars regard nationalism as a kind of ideology taken-for-granted, and one of the paradigms to study nationalism is the ideological versions, such as Elie Kedourie, and more recently Bruce Kapferer and Mark Juergensmeyer, who tend to see nationalism as a belief system, a form of religion surrogate or secular religion, and to link its emergence and power to changes in the sphere of ideas and beliefs.
    On the other hand, the intellectual critique to such idea is also serious. Anderson (1983) considered the concept of nationalism as philosophical poverty and even incoherence. And it is echoed by Freeden, who argues that nationalism fails to meet the criteria of a comprehensive theory; instead, at best, it may be a distinct thin-centred ideology or a component of other, already existing ideologies, such as liberalism, conservative, socialism, and even fascism (Freeden, 1998).
    Nomatter whether nationalism is a kind of ideology or not, it is true that Chinese government never consider nationalism as its own official ideology. What they talk about is patriotism, or loving the Chinese nation, instead of promoting so-called nationalism. However, the Chinese government does have its official nationalism, and always try to guide the populace nationalism sentiments according to its willing directions. Their hegemonic strategies are always latent, and are seems natural to its people.
    So can we describe Chinese nationalism as: manifest nationalism, latent hegemony?