Building on Iceland's ‘Good Reputation’: Icesave, Crisis and Affective National Identities

Abstract

The paper claims that crisis is a fruitful way to analyse the interrelationship of local and global, neoliberalism and the nation-state, which scholars have explored for the past few years. During the Icelandic financial crash of 2008, the failed Internet bank Icesave became a source of intense disputes between the British and Icelandic governments. My paper uses Icelandic discussions of the bankrupt bank to explore how individuals negotiate their imagination of the global and the national and how national identity can be reaffirmed in the context of crisis. The discussion shows that the Icesave debate is based on reification of national communities as well as critical reflection on increased power of transnational institutions and global elites. The paper, furthermore, emphasises how crisis itself can be seen as constituting a field within which to exercise power, as well as a prism to investigate and understand national identities in a globalised world.