Nationalism in everyday life is something fluid and dynamic. However, not a few groups limit nationalism to narrow and frozen meanings. The boundaries are usually placed on past romanticism, patriotism against the enemy, paranoia against the threat of the nation, possessive love for the country, or a passion for ideological rivalry.
These notions are valid in the context of that particular time, but not forever. However, not a few people also want these understandings to be perpetuated and preserved because there is a hidden purpose. However, are these beliefs accurate and sufficient to navigate the future?
The answer is relative, depending on the factors behind the birth and maintenance of nationalism in an era. However, before discussing this issue, it is necessary to first state how the printing press stimulates the growth of nationalism and how the pattern differs in several countries.
The moment when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439 was a revolution. The world before Gutenberg was a solitary world in which individuals were very limited in imagining and imagining their surroundings and the conditions of those around them who might have the same fate as him.
The Gutenberg printing press allowed ideas, stories, news, events, and news to be shared with many people. Since then, the individual’s imagination about himself and his surrounding relatives who may have the same identity or fate begins to experience attachment. The availability of facilities for creativity encourages the birth of nationalism.
In his book, Imagined Communities (1995), Benedict Anderson says, “A nation is an imagined political community. It is imagined because most members of the group will never know, meet, or even hear of other family members. Even so, there is a communal image in their minds.” Imagination triggered by newspapers opens up collective awareness about the basis of collective kinship, which is confirmed socio-politically. However, the inauguration process is a steep road with different precedents in each society.
In Europe, language-based kinship needs to be contested with the old religious-based political model. Apart from the language base in France, the imagination of kinship grew sparked by Napoleon’s patriotic experience and the dark experience of feudalism. In Indonesia and other Southeast Asian regions, nationalism grew not because of language but patriotic experience against colonialists in a specific territory.
The similarity of fate encourages the collective desire to establish themselves in one nation model or social ties layered with political sovereignty. The different bases of nationalism in various regions imply that nationalism is not stagnant. Nationalism is dynamic, which in the prism of Arjun Appadurai’s thought (1996), depends on ethnoscape, technoscape, financescape, mediascape, and Ideoscape.
Ethnoscape relates to the status, composition and demographic position of race, identity, religion, and ethnicity. Interaction with multiple identities stimulates a particular social concern, awareness and imagination. Technoscape concerns technology in facilitating speed across territorial boundaries. From that crossing emerged the exchange of information, identity, and even significant new experiences for the imagined form of kinship imagination.
Financescape deals with market mechanisms, commodity shifts and circulation, and the identity of economic drivers. Mediascape is the ability of electronic devices to facilitate the exchange of information in various forms. Finally, Ideoscape or state authority relates to ideology and varied movements that seek to seize part or all of state sovereignty.
For example, the experience of the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars in France were ideoscape and financescape factors for nationalism in France. Hundreds of years later, when Syria and several Middle Eastern countries experienced a humanitarian crisis, many European countries, including France, received refugees from there. The European ethnoscape is changing. Some political contestants play nativist nationalism as an electoral card and populist policy.
In America, where youth associations are cosmopolitanism and progressive movements like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ activism are springing up, Donald Trump is ‘revitalizing’ old American values by using white, Anglo-Saxon racial sentiments. Protestant (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant/WASP). Another Trump strategy is the antagonism of Latinos and Negroes on charges of ‘criminals,’ ‘drug smugglers, ‘ and ‘rapists’.
Trump’s famous slogan, “Make America Great Again,” emerged as an accumulation of ethnoscape and ideoscape play to redefine American nationalism. However, the cases of France and America show that the meaning of nationalism can be changed by social dynamics and certain actors or intentions through one or more of its principal factors.
Pre-independence Indonesia got its nationalism from two directions. The first is from scholars. And second, from grassroots press activism. Study scholarships for the indigenous elite from the colonial government were originally directed for ethical and political purposes so that the indigenous elites side with the colonial government. However, elites such as Hatta and Sjahrir experienced inner turmoil in the Netherlands. So they settled about their identity, nationality, and social exclusion.
After returning from the Netherlands, these thoughts and turmoil turned into the energy of nationalism which negated the power of the colonial government in the Dutch East Indies. On the other hand, newspapers such as Bromartini (1855), Surat Chabar Betawie (1858), Bintang Timoer (1862), Djoeroe Martini, and Bianglala (1867) helped stimulate the collective imagination of grassroots communities, especially those from the second class (ethnic Chinese and Arab) and third grade (native) (Abidin, 1980).
The intellectual elite and the grassroots community are united by a patriotic experience in the battle saga against the Dutch and Japanese colonies in various parts of the Dutch East Indies. The epic battle, the spirit of patriotism and the passion for the revolution are some of the primary tokens of early Indonesian nationalism. However, the central discourse of nationalism came from ‘foreign threats’ and ‘national resilience’ due to the dynamics of the ethnoscape of that period.
The affirmation of the passion for nationalism was also given and debated by three groups: nationalists, Muslims, and communists. Youth movements such as Boedi Oetomo and the like fueled the consolidation of grassroots youth during the deliberation of the intellectual elites. Second, Islamic organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah provided ethical and religious justifications for communal resistance to the colonies. Finally, the communist group also underlined the issue of solidarity, wealth distribution, and evaluation of the economic system.
These donations are shared experiences which then become collective memory. In the early days of independence, the passion for nationalism stemmed from ethnoscape and ideoscape factors: social identity got communal bonding from feelings of threat to shared sovereignty. This then changed during the New Order.
Note: translated by editor from https://www.duniasantri.co/membaca-ulang-nasionalisme-indonesia-di-awal-kemerdekaan