ABSTRACT
In recent years many commentators have declared nations to be either dying or dead; globalization has “deterritorialized” nations, they claim, and created a planet populated with increasingly cosmopolitan citoyens du monde. Yet there are significant indications that such pronouncements are premature. Americans, for example, whose nationalism usually goes undeclared, reacted to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in an unabashedly nationalist fashion that was exemplified by the nearly ubiquitous display of flags. Likewise, the end of the Cold War has done little to change the amount of violent nationalist conflict around the globe (Ayres 2000). Instead, Michael Billig’s notion of “banal nationalism,” in which nationalism is hidden behind other identities until a moment of crisis, appears accurate (Billig 1995). Nations do not die but persist, often hidden from view, until circumstances make them necessary. The problem, which Billig does not solve, is to explain this persistence and why it is that, when needed, nations possess the remarkable ability to be both current and relevant.
