Clapping the nation, or, from a global pandemic tonational imaginaries via local solidarities

Jon E Fox*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

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Abstract

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people in England stepped outside their doors once a week to clap the National Health Service. What does this have to do with nationalism? On the face of it, nothing much: clapping exercised local, and not, national solidarities. I will show, however, that local solidarities performed in clapping rituals led to the regeneration of national imaginaries via the symbols on display and the national institutions through which pandemic experiences were channelled. My argument has three parts. First, I show that helping practices during the pandemic shaped local solidarities that found collective expression through clapping. Second, I explain how the local experiences of clapping merged with national imaginaries when performed on a national canvas with symbols that marked an imagined community of national clappers. Third, I argue that clapping was subsumed into a nascent national imaginary via nationally scoped institutions that were exercised to fight the pandemic. Whilst the local has long been appreciated as a site and source for nationalism, I have added how non-national local practices can also be constitutive of nationalism. A global pandemic led to national imaginaries via the local solidarities that were formed by clapping for carers.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1
Number of pages17
JournalNations and Nationalism
Early online date14 Oct 2024
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 14 Oct 2024

Bibliographical note

Jon Fox is a sociologist at the University of Bristol with interests in nationalism, racism, migration and everydaylife. He's interested how the identity categories that define big political issues are invoked and reproduced, andsometimes deflected and challenged, by people in their everyday lives. He's explored these issues around ques-tions of migration, integration and nationalism in the UK, Hungary and Romania.

Research Groups and Themes

  • SPAIS Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship

Keywords

  • institutions
  • local solidarity
  • national imaginary
  • ritual
  • symbols

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