National Matters

Materiality, Culture, and Nationalism
Herausgeber: Zubrzycki, Geneviève

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Genevi¿ Zubrzycki is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Mai 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 499g
• ISBN-13: 9781503601697
• ISBN-10: 1503601692
• Artikelnr.: 47288679

Autorenporträt

Geneviève Zubrzycki is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Matter and Meaning: A Cultural Sociology of Nationalism  Geneviève
Zubrzycki
chapter abstract
The volume's introduction first discusses theoretical cues and gaps in the
literature on nationalism before arguing that the recent material turn in
the social sciences and the focus on materiality can help fill those gaps.
It then turns to a description of individual chapters, a discussion of
overlapping themes, and the articulation of the volume's contributions.
1Artisans and the Construction of the French State: The Political Role of
the Louvre's Workshops  Chandra Mukerji
chapter abstract
The French state, arguably the first modern state, subordinated high nobles
at court with a cultural program. Artisans housed at the Louvre, men of low
rank working backstage to power, designed the image of Louis XIV as the Sun
King, and made Versailles an immersive environment populated in art with
gods and heroes of the ancient world. With painting, sculpture, interior
decoration, and theater, they created seductive dreams of imperial glory
that far outshone political reality. They presented France as heir to Rome
and already in a process of classical revival. They made the king and state
seem capable of creating a great empire. The nobility at court learned a
new political logic through a cultural experience of it.
2In, On, and Of the Inviolable Soil: Pottery Fragments and the Materiality
of Italian Nationhood  Fiona Greenland
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on the relationship between fragmentary objects and
national culture in Italy. Drawing on theories and analytical methods from
cultural sociology, archaeology, and anthropology, it engages with the
following questions: (1) Given the focus on complete objects in the study
of material culture and nationhood, how might we construct an analytical
framework for fragments? (2) Why did pottery fragments become embedded in
processes of Italian nationhood formation at the state and regional levels
in a specific historical moment (last quarter of the nineteenth century)?
In the course of generating answers to these questions, the chapter also
outlines the principle of beni culturali (cultural goods) in the state's
management of cultural objects with historic significance. It concludes
that ancient pottery effects a symbolic double-hit: it is found in the
sacralized national soil and made of that soil.
3Raw Materials: Natural Resources, Technological Discourse, and the Making
of Canadian Nationalism  Melissa Aronczyk
chapter abstract
This chapter analyzes the genealogy and reactivation of Canada's most
enduring origin myth, the "National Dream," which tells the story of a
modern nation joined literally and symbolically by technology. Drawing on
recent scholarship on the material and visual embodiment of national
consciousness, it explores the material conditions that made possible the
articulation of a distinct Canadian identity in the first place and then
argues that the exploitation of the tar sands in Canada is positioned by
corporate, government, and labor interests as a moral referendum on
Canadian independence and a determining feature of contemporary Canadian
national identity. This framing of the controversial exploitation of that
raw matter sits well with state leadership seeking to reinvest the mythic
National Dream with meaning in order to legitimate itself and mobilize
civic support to its program.
4Simultaneously Worlds Apart: Placing National Diversity on Display at
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts  Peggy Levitt
chapter abstract
Creating successful multicultural societies and a global community that can
respond to global problems is the challenge of the day. If museums in the
past helped create national citizens, do they now help create global
citizens too? How is the nation displayed in relation to the globe and what
is it about the countries and cities where museums are located that helps
explain their curatorial choices? This chapter answers these questions by
analyzing where Boston's Museum of Fine Arts falls on the
cosmopolitan-nationalism continuum-a position produced by the intersection
between national and urban cultural politics and the globalization of
culture, an encounter that not only transforms museums but to which they
are important contributors.
5A Brief History of Sweat: Inscribing "National Feeling" on and through a
Football Jersey  Claudio E. Benzecry
chapter abstract
This chapter shows how the jersey for Boca Juniors, one of Argentina's main
soccer teams, went almost unchanged from 1926 to 1980, and how the
continuity guaranteed the recognition of the team, its colors, and what it
stood for. The continuity of the jersey in time also made for a longer
chain that connected different generations of players and of fans. In
telling the story of how the jersey for Boca Juniors changed thanks to the
intervention of brands by transnational corporations, this chapter aims to
also answer what happens to the lineage of the team, its genealogy, and the
bonds formed between and among team members and their fans. The chapter has
a subsidiary objective as well, to explain not only what gets lost with the
new jersey, but also the new lines of action afforded by the object in its
new configuration.
6That Banal Object of Nationalism: "Old Stones" as French Heritage in the
Early Days of Public Television  Alexandra Kowalski
chapter abstract
The chapter offers an object-centric analysis of banal nationalism in
mainstream heritage culture. How do banal objects come to feature in
national imaginations in addition to extraordinary ones, and how do these
two categories relate to each other symbolically? Which kinds of social
bonds do these ordinary objects create and support? And what does an
object-centric approach contribute in return to our understanding of
ordinary, "cold" types of nationalism? The chapter answers these questions
through a semiotic analysis of the popular show Chefs d'uvre en péril,
produced and broadcast on French public television (the ORTF) between 1964
and 1974, at the dawn of the heritage age.
7The Mythical Power of Everyday Objects: The Material Culture of Radical
Nationalism in Postsocialist Hungary  Virág Molnár
chapter abstract
The chapter explores the intersections between markets and new forms of
nationalism in contemporary Hungary by looking at the manufacturing, sale,
and consumption of radical nationalist consumer objects. It argues that the
increasing rightwing radicalization of Hungarian politics has been fueled
by an expanding industry that effectively commodifies these sentiments. The
analysis focuses on two key areas of radical nationalist cultural
production: book publishers that specialize in printing and disseminating
nationalist literature, and clothing brands that market explicitly
nationalist fashion items. By tracing the symbolic economies of new forms
of radical nationalism, the chapter highlights an important dimension of
everyday nationalism. This analytical lens also helps to demonstrate that
contemporary rightwing radicalism is not a codified political ideology but
a more fluid subculture in which expressive symbols, material objects,
rituals, everyday consumption, and lifestyle patterns are essential
carriers of political convictions and markers of group boundaries.
8Engaging Objects: A Phenomenology of the Tea Ceremony and
Japaneseness  Kristin Surak
chapter abstract
Nations are made real not only through concrete symbols, icons, and
institutions, but also through lived experiences. Yet the production and
reproduction of nations at a phenomenological level remains little
explored. This chapter examines how cultural practices engage objects to
sense, enact, and even embody the nation. To explore these processes, it
takes up the tea ceremony as a site that facilitates a concentrated
experience of Japaneseness within Japan. It examines how the material
components and practices of the tea ceremony bear similarities to-yet are
fundamentally different from-mundane counterparts in everyday life. This
disjuncture, as the tea ceremony transforms the ordinary into the
extra-ordinary, demands an attentiveness that sustains what many
practitioners call a "Japanese experience."
9Traces and Steps: Expanding Polishness through a Jewish
Sensorium?  Geneviève Zubrzycki
chapter abstract
Before World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe.
With the Holocaust and a country left in ruins, Jewish life all but
disappeared from that country. This chapter analyzes non-Jewish Poles'
material discovery of Jewish traces and the recovery of Polish Jewish
history, as well as the performance and consumption of Jewishness in
various venues. It argues that for many activists involved in acts of
salvage remembrance and performance, postwar Jewish absence has come to
represent the loss of a multicultural Poland. Their activities are meant
not only to recall past Jewish presence on Polish lands, but to re-member;
to attach a prosthetic Jewish limb to the Polish national body to expand
the symbolic boundaries of Polishness.
10A Temple of Social Hope? Tempelhof Airport in Berlin and Its
Transformation  Dominik Bartmäski
chapter abstract
In the fall of 2008 one of the oldest city airports in the world, the
iconic Berlin Tempelhof, was closed and with it an eventful chapter of
German history. The airfield was reborn in the spring of 2010, albeit in a
different capacity as a public park. It quickly became a celebrated leisure
space in Berlin, one of the most spectacular parks in the world. How was
this remarkable transformation possible? What made such a radical
reshuffling of land use and social meaning feasible and successful? In
order to answer these questions, this chapter refocuses analytical emphasis
from political intent to phenomenological content. Understanding urban
places, especially their transformations and meanings, requires accounting
for their experiential aspects in relation to the city- and time-specific
cultural context. A phenomenological analysis sensitive to materially
mediated experiences is presented as a necessary component of cultural
sociological explanation of such cases.