Reconceptualising Nationalism: Why Does it Matter?

Speaker:  Dr. Atsuko Ichijo, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Department of Criminology, Politics and Sociology, School of Law, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Kingston University London

Abstract

Drawing from my forthcoming Nationalism and Subjectivity (Oxford University Press), the paper makes a case for reconceptualising nationalism as a way of mitigating deeply entrenched western centricity in conventional theories of nationalism. It outlines what is problematic of the established paradigm of the study of nationalism and proposes a subjectivity-focused definition of nationalism. The paper then looks into what such a reconceptualisation of nationalism can achieve using the case of Song China (960-1126). According to the established, modernist view of nationalism, nationalism could not have emerged in Song China because it had not gone through processes of modernisation be it industrialisation, democratisation, the development of market-based capitalist economy or the establishment of a centralised, bureaucratic state. However, it has been pointed out Song China experienced various developments which some historians consider modernisation and the Song literati were, for the first time in the long history of China, deeply immersed in articulating who the (Han) Chinese were and how they should be governed. Acknowledging their collective self-reflection as an expression of nationalism would help overcoming a deeply embedded habit of mind in current scholarship that the West got there first and therefore their experiences is paradigm defining. This will then allow us to ask why nationalism that emerged in the West in the late eighteenth century became dominant while Song Chinese nationalism did not without normative considerations, which would result in a more accurate understanding of how our world has come about.

Speaker's Profile

Dr. Ichijo is a graduate of BA in Liberal Arts of ICU. She has subsequently completed her MA in Sociology from the University of Tokyo, and her PhD (Ethnicity and Nationalism) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interest and recent publications focus on the field of nationalism studies.

Date: Thursday, May 15, 2025

Time: 15:25-18:05 (JST)

Venue: H-275

Language: English

Registration: Please use the QR code or Link (except for IRL 215 students)