Commercial Nationalism ― Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell

One of the crucial sites of contestation in current approaches to communication for social change is the status of the national identity in an era characterized by the tensions between the globalization of capitalism and myriad resurgent nationalisms. Commercial Nationalism intervenes in discussions of the fate of nationalism and national identity by exploring the relationship between state appropriation of marketing and branding strategies on the one hand, and, on the other, the commercial mobilization of nationalist discourses. The book's unique contribution is to consider an emerging formation characterized by the following complementary (and related) developments: the ways in which states come increasingly to rely on commercial techniques for self-promotion, diplomacy, and internal national mobilization, and also the ways in which new and legacy forms of commercial media rely on the mobilization emerging configurations of nationalism for the purpose of selling, gaining ratings, and otherwise profiting. We see this formation as a unique reconfiguration of the formation of nationalism associated with the contemporary context. Often these processes are approached separately: what is the economic role of nationalism and how do media participate in the formation of national identity?

Zala Volcic's research has focused on a critical cultural studies based approach to popular media. She has published numerous books, including Serbian Spaces of Identity (2009), and co-authored Crossing Cultural Boundaries (with Shuang Liu and Cindy Gallois, 2011/2014).

Mark Andrejevic is the author of several books, including Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (2004); iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (2007) and Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know (2014), that explore the social, cultural, and theoretical implications of data mining and predictive analytics. His current work explores the logic of automated surveillance, sensing, and response associated with drones.