The Israel BBQ as national ritual: performing unofficial nationalism, or finding meaning in triviality
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The Israel BBQ as national ritual: performing unofficial nationalism, or finding meaning in triviality Hizky Shoham1,2,3
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract Concerned with how nationalist cultural codes are embedded in everyday life, studies of “nationalism-from-below” mistake nationalist meanings for the contents of official messages. Rather than studying the reception of spectacles and symbols produced from above, the article suggests looking at unofficial nationalism and focusing on the nationalist meanings of traditions and customs—especially those related to ritual and food—that are common to broad strata of the population but have almost no state involvement. Using the anthropological history of Israeli Independence Day as an exemplary case, and focusing on how people spend their country’s national day, the article examines the failure of official nationalism to design the holiday’s popular traditions. Next it surveys the development of what has become the popular mode of celebrating the day—the picnic and cookout. In due course, this practice was ritualized and iconized as representing “Israeliness,” an identity that is more ambivalent than the seamless images circulated from above. I argue that the meanings of unofficial practices, because of their triviality, lie not in the symbolic codes they enact, but rather in the synchronicity that ritualizes and iconizes a “way of life,” forms national solidarity, and imbues the performance with nationalist meanings. Keywords National days · Holidays · Social performance · Nationalism · Solidarity
* Hizky Shoham [email protected] http://biu.academia.edu/HizkyShoham 1
The Interdisciplinary Program for Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies & The Center for Cultural Sociology, Bar Ilan University, 5290002 Ramat Gan, Israel
2
The Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Israel
3
Yitzhak Nissim 2, Apt. 9, 4973464 Petah‑Tikva, Israel
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H. Shoham
Introduction: nationalism produced from below This article suggests using the performance theory of cultural sociology to re-theorize nationalism from below as “unofficial nationalism.” In addition to, in parallel to, or as an alternative to the official nationalist meanings circulated from above by the State, its elites, and its institutions, the nation-state’s core social group performs its own “folkloric” and unofficial version of nationalism that is often initiated from below and is shared by various groups in society. The political and intellectual elite may deny the nationalist “quality” of this version; more frequently, it disapproves of and denigrates it as shallow and empty. The scholarly literature tends to do the same, even when focused on nationalism from below. To unearth the unofficial nationalist meanings that are poorly articulated in the official nationalist documentation and symbolic system, we can study the nationalist meanings of popular traditions performed as part of national day celebrations, such as the Israeli cookout that is used here as a case study, using the holiday as a
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