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/483/ Reading Club: Why Invent Traditions? (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-28 16:59:38
Imported:
2025-04
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Content

On the mass-production of loyalty.

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We are exceptionally making this episode of the Reading Club freely available. See the full syllabus here: 2024/25 Reading Club. If you'd like to join, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership.

***

The second reading in this block on Inter/Nationalism in the 21st Century is The Invention of Tradition (eds. Eric Hobsbawm & Terrence Ranger, 1983), specifically Hobsbawm's chapter "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870-1914".

How much did ordinary people buy into invented national traditions?

Why did industrialisation allow for mass-producing traditions?

Does the sense of belonging fostered then still exist today?

If nation-states don't require active participation any more, what does this mean for the mass-production of loyalty?

Are things like social media campaigns, national holidays for diversity, or even global events like the Olympics the new “mass-produced” traditions?

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Comments

@maltOmalk

Great ep, will up my subscription to get more reading clubs. Recently in Australia there was a moment in which popular veneration for an old invented tradition clashed with enforced observance of a newer invented ritual. ANZAC day is the most important patriotic holiday in Australia. The legend of our troops' contribution to WWI is generally considered the nation's founding myth. Observance of ANZAC day by ordinary people attending dawn services has remained strong over the decades, despite the dwindling number of surviving ANZACs and low enrolment in the armed forces. Dawn services take place at towns and cities across the country. The national broadcaster reckons there were 50,000 at Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance this year. The Aboriginal "welcome to country" that preceded the Melbourne dawn service was interrupted by hecklers protesting the notion of veterans being "welcomed" to the country they fought for. It was a spectacle that dominated the national news for much the final week of the federal election campaign. From reports, the ANZAC Day heckling seems to have been planned and the cops say they identifed a known neo-nazi as the ringleader. There is a general sense of embarrassment that it required the exhibitionism of a Hitler-lover to make us realise that an aspect of our daily life has reached peak cringe. The "welcome to" or "acknowledgement of" country kicks off every cultural or corporate or official event. Acknowledgements can be heard at weddings, funerals and birthday parties. This month I've heard an acknowledgement at (among other places) a childcare info session, a comedy show, a football match, and innumerable times at work, including several times at our work planning day (often you'll hear the "acknowledgement" several times at one event, because nobody wants to miss out or be seen to have forgotten it). By contrast, the "welcome", when delivered by a member of the local tribe, usually has a certain gravity. Like many invented traditions you spoke of, the welcome to country claims continuity with ancient tribal customs. However, the welcome's glow is tarnished by our collective acknowledgment fatigue. A sense of hucksterism has also grown up around the welcome ritual, since the honour of delivering the welcome is usually accompanied by a fee - corporate gigs can be particularly generous. Inevitably, the distribution of these honours among certain members of the community and not others contributes significantly to factionalism within the Aboriginal middle class. After listening to your discussion I reflected on the ANZAC Day controversy and realised that the acknowledgment/welcome ritual plays an important outsourcing function on behalf of the neoliberal state. While the state keeps failing to create institutions capable of "closing the gap" between Aboriginal and other Australians, it has succeeded in disciplining citizens and private institutions to adopt symbolic gestures of reconciliation and propping up an industry of entrepreneurial welcomers. It says a lot about the effectiveness of this kind of tacit state power - which is captured not in legislation but reproduced in organisational policies - that only a fringe dwelling Hitlerite dare say publicly what probably millions of us think every day. Few Australians could observe the deplorable disadvantage faced by Aboriginal Australians and deny that our nation needs a proper accord with the original inhabitants. However, the ubiquity of the ritual is patronising and tokenistic. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Some corporate entities, sensing the global vibe shift, have quietly revisiting their welcome/acknowledgment policies. Perhaps there will be an effort by the state to supplant the daily ritual with an invented reconciliation tradition that will achieve a similar cultural resonance to ANZAC Day. At least people who object to the ANZAC legend can just stay home.

Andrea

I was pretty struck by the fact that an Italy loving podcast as this one didnt mention that clapping started in Italy, the first country where lockdown was instituted, less than one week after quarantine has been declared in lombardy. Then, regarding more traditional nation-building traditions, there's Italian Liberazione on the 25th of April. Interesting fact about Italian national holidays, after the fall of fascism, all previous national holidays tied to 19th century Risorgimento have been erased and we now only have national holidays related to Republican Italy. Liberation day remains a very popular celebration, strongly linked to 1st of May celebrations (also very popular), marking a week of vacations and celebrations. The 2nd of June is the institutional national Holiday, celebrated with military parades and boring speeches by the president of the republic, but it is not popular at all. It goes without saying that given the origin of Liberation day (the liberation of northern Italian cities by Italian partisans, most of which communist, between 21st and 27th of April), it is a very contested festivity, with right wingers trying to abolish it and boycotting the celebrations. It is still sort of a socially functioning and productive national tradition in the sense that the more right wing the government and the more dismissive the declarations of right wing politicians, the more attended are the demonstrations. What I think pushes this tradition close to the classical state/nation-building classification is the fact that antifascism (meaning the *literal* one) is the founding feature of the republic of Italy (which constitution is, I think, the only one outside the eastern block saying it is "founded on labour", thus the connection with the first of May). Also, the fact that, contrary to Germany, popular participation in the resistance (overinflated in the post WWII narratives, sure but not as much as France where the resistance is basically a bluff, as Hobsbawm himself said) gave it a genuine legitimation from below and from the left. It does not refer to some sort of atavic spirit or essence, but it is very much soaked in national mythologies.