Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines the concept of everyday nationhood within the school setting, focusing on how material objects, rituals, and interactions shape students' national identification and sense of belonging. Drawing on ethnography in Lithuanian schools, it highlights how national ideologies are performed, reimagined, and contested daily.

Paper Abstract:

The role of schooling in the (re)production of nation-states and nationalism has been a widely discussed topic in the literature. Universal and centralized education, particularly through mandatory schooling, has been shown to promote shared narratives, and symbols that are essential to imagining the national community. Extensive research has demonstrated how structural aspects of education—such as state and school policies, curricula, and textbooks—contribute to the construction and reproduction of national narratives and identity. However, significantly less attention has been devoted to examining how nationalism is shaped and reproduced through everyday practices and interactions, the material school environment, and emotional responses.

This paper investigates the concept of everyday nationhood within the school setting, with a specific focus on the role of materiality in shaping national identification and affective attachments. Drawing on early findings from an ongoing multi-sited ethnography in Lithuanian schools, it explores how material objects—such as flags, maps, uniforms, and other national symbols—alongside school rituals and practices, influence students’ sense of (non-)belonging and national identification.

The paper argues that ethnographic research into everyday school life provides a means to “unwrite” conventional narratives that frame schools as mere instruments for reproducing national ideologies as intended by the state and elites. Such an approach reveals the multiplicity of interpretations, negotiations, and resistances to national discourse that occur within everyday interactions. Furthermore, it examines the tensions that arise when national symbols intersect with diverse student identities, demonstrating how schools function as microcosms in which the nation is simultaneously performed, reimagined, and contested.