Class 7: Nations and Nationalism

• Class 7, SEES_0117, Dr. Jessie Barton Hronešová, jbronesova.wordpress.com
• Class code: 166649

Announcements

• A quiz to be held; questions can be asked after the mock
• March 18th at 1pm (on time!), bring a laptop
• Ensure any questions are clarified
• Do not miss tutorials

Study of Nations and Nationalism

• Key questions include what nations and nationalism are
• How nations originate and where to trace their origins
• How nationalism works, mobilizes and appeals to people
• What are the functions of nationalism and the latest additions to it

Nation as a Concept

• In the Medieval world, legitimacy was rooted in the divine rule of kings and ecclesiastical authority
• In 1648, modern states emerged with the Peace of Westphalia, as territorial units joining diverse groups (+ cuius regio, eius religio)
• Enlightenment introduced ideas of rights and sovereignty
• J.J. Rousseau's concept of volonte generale embodies the people, leading to popular sovereignty
• J.S. Mills advocated self-determination against despotism
• After the French Revolution, concepts of "the people" and "nation" were debated

19th Century Nationalism

• The 19th century was the century of national origins
• Diversity was seen to undermine social consensus impacting institutions (Habsburg & Ottoman Empires)
• Nationalism served as a tool against despotism (J.S. Mill)

"Objectively" Existing Nations (Essentialist Approach)

• "National awakening" in the 19th century assumed the nation always existed with shared attributes (language, culture, history, territory)
• Nations were awakened by movements against imperial oppression
• Nations seen as having bloodlines traceable in blood links
• National identity merged with ethnicity and race
• Walker Connor links to ethnic nation

Subjectively Formed Nations

• Nations are formed by decisions about their identity (e.g., language in Switzerland, Canada, Indonesia)
• Human agency is needed in defining a nation
• Ernest Renan: A nation is a great solidarity constituted by sacrifices made and the willingness to make them
• Renan describes a nation's existence as a daily plebiscite
• Rupert Emerson: A nation is a "body of people who feel that they are a nation," emphasizing self-identification
• Anthony Giddens: Nation is formed by institutions

Key Approaches to Nations and Nationalism

• Key ways to understanding nations and Nationalism

Primordialism

• Nations and national identity are innate, defined by birth through blood, religion, shared language, or customs
• Clifford Geertz asks: "What is a Country if it is Not a Nation?"
• States possess primordial links to an innate nation
• Practical applications include religion, blood-links, language, culture
• Examples: Yugoslavia (Tudjman, Milosevic); Russia (Putin)
• Nations are seen as innate, natural, and self-operating

Constructivist Modernism

• Rejects the idea of nations as natural, ancient, and eternal
• Nations are constructed in the modern era (19th century) to serve specific aims
• Ernest Gellner: Facilitate industrialization (functionalist approach)
• Karl Marx: Further interests of the bourgeoisie
• Miroslav Hroch: Role of elites and types of elites
• Eric Hobsbawm: Secure cohesion and legitimize authority through invented tradition
• John Breuilly: Secure control of the state (instrumentalist)
• Benedict Anderson: Facilitate a sense of belonging and solidarity

Conflict Theory

• Karl Marx: "The working men have no country"
• Nationalism is an elitist project and nations are economic units
• Nationalism is a by-product of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and involves 'false consciousness'
• Nationalism suppresses class consciousness and allows the bourgeoisie to project their interests onto society
• Nationalism creates a hierarchy where national identity is prioritized over class identity
• In feudalism, nationalism leads to urbanization and if elites are 'foreigners'

Ernest Gellner

• Gellner saw the nation as a modern concept arising from necessity and industrial society; not biological
• The nation becomes a cultural entity, culture as a system of ideas and ways of behaving and communicating
• Nationalism is "a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent" (1983, 1)
• Nationalism arises in modern industrial society, where industrialization standardizes social and political processes

Modernization Theory

• Ernest Gellner saw nations as having a function in society that led to industrialization and modernization
• Industrialization is a prerequisite for nationalism
• Agrarian societies are characterized by low mobility, little cross-class communication, multilingual peasantry, and multi-tasking
• Industrialization involves high mobility, cross-class communication, and high specialization with increased communication obstacles
• Standardization uniformity is reached with language, education, and nation

Cultural Turn: Benedict Anderson

• Pre-Enlightenment limited people's access to the Bible and to knowledge monopolized by clergy
• Kings ruled by divine right
• Print Capitalism knowledge spreads faster through newspapers
• The Reformation translated the Bible and standardized language through books
• Later vernacular languages become powerful
• Print capitalism creates imagined bonds
• Education, military, customs, and traditions maintain imagined communities
• National identification replaces religious affinity

Perennialism

• Historical continuity is emphasized and supported by archaeology and history
• Stresses the age and lasting existence of nations
• Nations represent a modern type of solidarity that has always existed in various forms
• Nations draw upon preexisting elements such as genetic, linguistic, religious, territorial, and kinship (ethnicity)
• Antony Smith argues for a deep continuity between ancient cultures/ethnic communities and modern nation-states
• ethno-symbolism is a middle approach between modernism and primordialism

Degrees to which Nations are Invented

• Shows a spectrum from pure primordialism with blood links to pure instrumentalist constructivism

What is Nationalism?

• Table shows how various scholars views of Nationalism
• Aspiration to ensure that a nation has a political outpost state, territory, self-rule

Critical Scholarship: How Nationalism Manifests/Is Performed

• Rogers Brubaker - nationhood: nation is a category of practice
• "Institutionalized nationhood": e.g. in ex-Yugoslavia
• Focus on discourses, representations and social practices rather than reified groupism
• Michael Billig – banal nationalism: signs of nationalism on public buildings
• Fox and Miller-Idriss Everyday nationalism: "talking the nation”
• Ruth Wodak – discursive nationalism: Ratifying figurative discourses, mass communication

Nationalism and Democracy

• Nationalism is particularistic, democracy is universal
• Ringmar shows nationalism is associated with membership and identification and they often interact
• People want the principle of nationalism
• The idea of nationalism is impossible without the idea of democracy
• Democratic laws may be consensual products of rational decision-making

Feminist Critique of Nationalism

• Western feminists posited that 'Women have no Fatherland'
• Call for transnational solidarity of women against the oppressive nationalist projects that equate nation with family
• Nationalist projects always control women's bodies
• Women's role in building of the nation is seen primarily in terms of reproduction (Yuval-Davis) biopolitics (Foucault)
• Feminists in colonized states often concur that national independence is one of their most urgent goals
• Nationalism can be useful to challenge the Eurocentrism of Western feminism

Recap

• Discussion of whether nations have always existed or were created
• Constructivism dominates but also discussions on what factors matter
• Instrumentalists: Nations are invented fully by elites
• Modernists: Human development is needed by nations
• Ethno-symbolists: Nations are modern, but reach back to proto-identities

Tutorials

• Synthesis
• Quiz Recap
• Warwick Debate
• Readings

Synthesise In One Text

• Walker Connor: Nations are linked to ancestry
• Anthony Giddens: Nations need territory
• Rogers Brubaker: Nations are a category of practice