reading mark on Banal Nationalism (2)

    Billig considers nationalism as a kind of ideology, and so discovers the 'banal' characteristics of nationalism in established Western countries.
    I agree with him in the sense that nationalism is not disappear in an established state. Actually we live in the wolrd of nation-states, and so nationalism will also spread throughout the world.
    Nevertheless, contemporary sociologists are seldom treat nationalism as a pervasive phenomenon. When they speak of the 'society' , they no longer have in mind a 'bourgeois society' or a 'human society' beyond the state, but increasingly the somewhat diluted ideal image of a nation-state (Elias, 1978: 241), however, they always consider nationalism as a special subject which is dangerously irrational, surplus and alien.
    In my thesis, I'll try to consider nationalism as a pervasive phenomenon. Of course, it may have different kinds, but it is pervasive through the world's nation-states. Under this assumption, to study the relationship between Chinese nationalism and Chinese modernization (I'll specify this later).
    In addition, to see nationalism as ideological constructions and stress its 'banal' characteristics is to stress the agent aspect of the hegemony, and so omit the structure aspect. Under the critical realism model, I hope to study both of the agency and structure aspects of hegemony process for Chinese nationalism.