Michael Billig: Background to the idea of Banal Nationalism
LUNN talk (27 May 2021)
In this presentation, Billig offers a personal account of how he came to write 'Banal Nationalism' (1995). He talks about why he became dissatisfied with the social psychological, content-free approach to national identity and why he felt that the great works of Anderson and Gellner were overlooking the nationalism of established nation-states. His view was guided by political and terminological considerations, rather than by purely theoretical ones. He still feel that nationalism is an international ideology and that it retains its grip on the contemporary political imagination, restricting the extent to which the world is globalized and cosmopolitan.
Bio: Michael Billig obtained his Ph.D. at Bristol University in social psychology, under the supervision of the late Professor Henri Tajfel. He was a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Birmingham University from 1973 until 1985 when he was appointed Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. Michael worked for more than thirty years at Loughborough and served as Head of Department of Social Sciences and Deputy Dean, School of Human and Environmental Studies. He retired in 2017 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020. He continues to write and publish.