Making sense of everyday nationhood: Traces in the experiential world

This chapter takes up the notion that the nation is quietly but persistently reinforced by banal national symbols by considering how nationhood emerges through the experience of the everyday spaces in which we dwell and through which we move. In doing so, it draws on recent investigations into the role of atmosphere in constituting and inflecting our experiences, asking how this might open up ways of thinking about nationhood in terms of our sensory, imagined and perceived environments. Using an auto-ethnographic account of daily routine to unfold my arguments, I suggest an approach to the nation that attends to how we trace through, perceive and make sense of it as part of our everyday worlds.