Nations and Nationalism 2025 Book Debate: Aram Hur, Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia (2022). Cornell University Press.

The topic of nationalism has historically been dominated by certain disciplines and the study of particular regions. As regards the former, arguably the subject's core disciplinary home is sociology, with scholars like Max Weber, Anthony Smith, Craig Calhoun, Rogers Brubaker, Andreas Wimmer and many others not just dominating scholarship but also setting agendas and posing major questions that have heavily influenced the study of nationalism to the present day. As for the latter, the study has naturally focussed a great deal on the emergence and transformation of nationalism in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, with only occasional and tangential discussion of other parts of the world. It is thus a great relief to see Aram Hur's new book, Narratives of Civic Duty, which not only clearly positions itself both as a major text in nationalism studies but also within political science, a discipline that has only recently begun to recognize nationalism as a core topic of concern.1 Similarly, Hur's focus in her book on nationalism in East Asia, with a particular interest in Korea and Taiwan, adds to other recent attempts to correct the Eurocentric bias of nationalism studies such as Shelef (2018), Singh (2015) and Tudor and Slater (2021). Moreover, Narratives of Civic Duty is well-written and uses mixed methods, making it a worthy subject for a Nations and Nationalism book debate. The rest of this introduction will attempt to summarize the book very briefly, followed by short summaries of the two critiques by Atsuko Ichijo and Yookyeong Im and Aram Hur's response. Narratives of Civic Duty examines a core concern within political science, namely, what explains variation in the degree to which people have a sense of civic duty. This duty, which includes acts such as voting, paying taxes, running for office and serving in the military, is necessary for societies to function and democracies to thrive, yet there remains a great amount of controversy about how and why civic duties are taken seriously in some contexts and not others. Hur's book focusses on how nationalism generates civic duties and uses case study evidence from South Korea and Taiwan to show how national attachments have been key in promoting civic obligations. In this sense, the book adds to other recent literature such as Tamir (2019), which focusses on how nationalism can generate positive outcomes and promote progressive ends. Atsuko Ichijo is the first commentator on Hur's book, and she praises its insights into the mechanisms of nationalism and its effects on political outcomes. However, she argues that the book does not clearly define nationalism, which can be a slippery concept in the literature. Ichijo also comments on the need for further discussion on ethnic vs. civic nationalism, particularly in cases such as Korea, which are relatively ethnically homogenous. Third, she asks for more detail on how national stories emerge. Fourth and finally, Ichijo asks for an update on how the book's analysis covers Taiwanese politics over the past decade. Yookyeong Im is the book's second commentator, and she too has praise for how it develops a nuanced and empirically grounded argument. Im's commentary focusses on the need for more historicity and historical contextualization in understanding the national stories that South Koreans tell themselves, including a focus on how Korean-language words for 'country', 'nation' and 'state' are used and misused.2 Like Ichijo, Im also discusses the need for more definitional clarity, here focussing on civic duty and democracy, and suggests a closer focus on how and when military service in particular functions as a measure of both civic duty and masculinity. Hur's response starts by situating the book in the long-ago world of 2022, before such major political events as Trump's re-election and South Korea's martial law crisis (both in 2024). She then discusses conceptual precision as regards both civic duty, democracy and nationalism, with attention in the latter case to its civic and ethnic variants. Next, Hur focusses on the process of generating national stories, including their historical context in the case of South Korea and the Korean War. Finally, Hur discusses how the politics of Taiwan and South Korea have changed since the book was completed, not just as regards South Korea's 2024 political crisis but also ongoing Chinese aggression in the case of Taiwan and other international factors. She touches upon the gendered politics of South Korea's sharp fertility decline, which can be tied to different types of national narratives for women and men that fail to connect to each other. Finally, Hur concludes with a call for more focus on what she calls the 'brighter side of nationalism', which has profound implications in a world where democracies are often threatened and require citizens to perform their civic duties to save them. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.