Imagined communities: Banal nationalism in Barcelona “Locutorios”

Abstract

Despite the huge competition that has emerged as a result of the on-going increase in the available ways one can connect to telephone and computer networks, Barcelona call shops, known as “locutorios,” are relatively successful small businesses. As a result of our research using a collective ethnographic fieldwork of “locutorios” in Barcelona, we articulated Michael Billig’s concept of banal nationalism and Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined community to show that national imagined communities can be found in these public spaces of connection. The remarkable relevance of national identifications in these spaces, which paradoxically symbolize globalization as few other places do, is not only that they occur without apparent conflicts, but they also allow for coexistence and facilitate the emergence of new imagined communities.

Keywords

• Call Shops
• Banal Nationalism; Imagined Communities; Information and Communication Technologies; Ethnography; Migration
• Banal Nationalism
• Imagined Communities
• Information and Communication Technologies
• Ethnography
• Migration