"Some of the main limitations of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism become apparent when social scientists try to make sense of the complex ways in which people (including nationalists) construct national identities. Do the frequent references to language in nationalist rhetoric invariably indicate ethnic nationalism in action? Does the prominent use of the State by political leaders signify a preference for civic as opposed to ethnic nationalism? And what about those national discourses that evoke a particular natural environment or landscape? The first part of the paper engages with these questions and proposes an alternative to the classical analytical framework.

The second part moves beyond the issue of identity construction and looks at the social contexts within which nationalist arguments were framed. Here I argue that the roots of much organic (rather than 'ethnic') nationalism have to be sought in the corporatist structures that have remained an important aspect of modern societies. Gellner's insistence that nationalism, while it borrowed its imagery and verbiage from Gemeinschaft, was based largely on the social reality of anonymous, atomized society, is problematic. Nationalism may well have received its main impetus from the forces commonly associated with Gesellschaft, but it had to do its work within contexts in which Gemeinschaft, both as a reality and a powerful ideal, was still very much alive. Existing corporations provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which European nationalism was experienced, imagined, and defined."

"Two factors dispose scholars to exaggerate the differences between so-called eastern and western or ethnic and civic nationalisms. The first is normative in character and relatively easy to correct once recognized: wishful thinking about the intrinsically benign character of 'our' form of nationalism in western liberal democracies. The second is explanatory in character and much harder to correct: reliance on the basic conceptual dichotomies of modern social theory, dichotomies that encourage us to divvy up the two main elements of national community, subjective affirmation and cultural inheritance, between opposing forms of association, such as tradition and modernity or Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. My paper takes aim at this second factor, arguing that we need to develop a new and more flexible understanding of community, free of the influence of these dichotomies, in order to make sense of the nation and its unexpected rise to prominence in modern political life."

Educating the Nation

Prof. Maya Khemlani David, & Mrs. Wendy Yee Mei Tien  (University of Malaya)

Malaysia is a multiethnic society with people of many religions and languages. Ethnic diversity and polarization among the young has made the creation of a sense of national identity not only important but also urgent. After independence, the government drew up a National Education Policy to inculcate and nurture national consciousness among the diverse ethnic groups by promoting a common curriculum and a common language across the different types of schools to foster national unity and national identity. Bahasa Malaysia, the national language is used as the medium of instruction in national schools while in national type primary schools; it is taught as a compulsory subject. Besides the promotion of the national language and educational policies, the promotion of national symbols are often perceived as being able to help develop a sense of nationalism and national identity among the many ethnic groups in the country. The Malaysian flag is often seen everywhere during the ‘Merdeka’ (independence) month to symbolize a sense of patriotism and nationalism. However, it is unclear if the use of the national language and the use of the national symbols (e.g. national flag) have impacted on the formation of nationhood among Malaysians. A research was conducted to compare the impact on two different groups of Malaysians (aged >45 and <30). The reasons for the focus on two different age groups will be explained. This paper will discuss the results and describe what nationalism and a sense of a national identity mean to these two groups of Malaysians.

 In South African history, the half-century that lay between the end of the Anglo-Boer War and the beginning of apartheid rule saw the birth and consolidation of a modern state based on racial exclusivity. Within the bilingual (Dutch/Afrikaans-English) all-white arena it is possible to distinguish between four nation-building projects: • the assimilationist imperialism of Alfred Milner; • the conciliationist nationalism of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts; • the bi-ethnic nationalism of Barry Hertzog; and • the ethnic exclusivist nationalism of D.F. Malan and the Afrikaner Broederbond. Of the three Afrikaner leaders, Hertzog and Malan were prominent activists for Afrikaans whereas Smuts was accused towards the end of his second premiership of never having done anything for the language. Yet contrary to traditional interpretations, the motivation behind Hertzog’s involvement in the so-called Afrikaans Language Movement of the early twentieth century was not identical to that of Malan. Hertzog was in principle opposed to exclusivism on the basis of language and his definition of the nation, however racial, was civic rather than ethnic. Nothing bears stronger testimony to this than his Education Acts which – like those of Smuts – supported the idea of dual-medium schools. Malan and the Broederbond, by contrast, propagated separate educational institutions for speakers of Afrikaans and after it came to power in 1948 the National Party made the use of the mother tongue as the sole medium of instruction in white schools compulsory. This paper argues that the vehemence with which the post-apartheid movement for Afrikaans opposes dual- or parallel-medium education suggests that the ethnic exclusivist Afrikaner nationalist project has prevailed.

History textbooks for the public schools construct and transmit an official version of a nation’s past. In the United States, in the absence of a national system of education, these books act as a sort of de facto national curriculum. Owing to the power they wield, both real and symbolic, they are highly contested terrain, with many pressure groups from both the right and left trying to influence their content. The teaching of history in the public schools was a primary locus of contention in the initial rounds of the ‘culture wars’ in the 1980s and 1990s, and it remains at the center of a great many debates to define national identity, debates which have been further intensified in the wake of September 11, 2001. This paper examines the evolution of this quasi-official image of national identity over the past 25 years through a study of American history textbooks selected for use in Texas (and sold nationwide) in 1982, 1997, and 2003. Analyses focus on the changes in national heroes depicted in the textbooks, the representation of discrimination and racial oppression in American society past and present, and the civic virtues promoted by the books through prose and through association with patriotic imagery. The author argues that the vision of the American nation presented by these textbooks reflects a move away not only from a traditional de facto (at times) genealogical/ethnic conception of the nation, but also from a purely civic conception of the nation.

Multination-States

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the virtues of the ‘multination state’. This concept has been used especially in relation to ‘sub-state nations’ in the West (Catalonia, Scotland, Quebec) but has also been proposed as a solution for divided societies in Eastern Europe. The advocates of multination states argue that traditional liberal theory has taken the concept of civic nation-state for granted and, thus, cannot cope with the demands for autonomy and recognition advanced by sub-state nations. If we agree that the world should avoid a (new) wave of secessions, then the multination state seems to be the only practicable solution.

The paper critically discusses multinationalist theses. It argues that the normative and empirical implications of the distinction between nation-states and multination states are flawed and unclear. By abandoning the liberal concept of civic nation-state, multinationalist theory runs the risk of implicitly (and often involuntarily) endorsing the ethnic conception of the nation. This risk might be less pronounced in the Western ‘sub-state nations’ like Quebec but it is acute in Eastern Europe.

The paper examines three major arguments advanced by the multinationalists: cultural neutrality (i.e. impossibility for a state to be culturally neutral), multiple identities, and the importance of recognising sub-state groups as ‘nations’. By focusing upon the case of Switzerland the paper demonstrates that on each of these issues the Swiss example of civic nation-state contradicts multinationalist theses. This, in turn, creates a tension in multinationalist theory, especially in relation to the ‘shared identity’ problem
 

From the Inside Out: Citizenship and Polyarchy in Multi-National States

 Since the fall of communism, democracy has come to be seen as the ‘only game in town:’ the only legitimate form of political system. Much of contemporary international politics revolves around the problems of promoting, establishing, and protecting democracy. Democracy is considered legitimate because it provides for individual rights and allows the people access to the resources of the state. If ‘we the people’ defines the limits of these entitlements, however, the next logical question is: who are ‘the people?’ Who is included in the group of individuals entitled to democratic rights? For scholars studying democracy and democratization, the assumption has long been that the establishment of democratic institutions requires a certain level of homogeneity—a shared identity and the social bonds this implies. Thus diversity, the existence of multiple collective identities, is a problem to be avoided or, at best, compensated for. In contemporary developed states, the problem of diversity is most often framed as a problem of immigration; the arrival of new groups threatens both the presumed homogeneity of established nations and their democracy. Such arguments take the boundaries of national political communities as fixed and stable. However, recent investigations into nationalism have shown that national identities are constructed and fluid over time. With this in mind, we need a new conception of democracy, which takes into account the constructed nature of ‘the people’ that democracy empowers. This paper attempts to provide such an account by advocating a new understanding of the relationship between nationalism, citizenship, and democracy.

"Confident" Majorities and Power Sharing in Multinational States

"In discussing accommodation in multinational states, many scholars place the burden of concession-making on the majority groups and their elites. Implicit in this literature is a normative assumption that the majority groups/nations, given their size and potential for political domination, must give minority groups/nations some means through which to protect their interests and ultimately group existence. Yet, this view of the situation is a construct not always shared by the members of the majority group itself.

I argue that the extent to which the majority group internalizes this view, as the precondition of acting on it, depends on two sets of factors. First, it depends on the majority sense of moral obligation towards the minority group, and second, on the extent to which members of the majority view the particular accommodation demand as feasible for their own group. The paper develops four possible options, with both of these factors either present or absent, and two combinations where one is present and the other is not.

The theoretical implications suggest the importance of majority group intersubjective understandings of the political dynamics in question, and thus a shift away from analytical overemphasis on minority claims. In terms of policy implications, the paper suggests that it is often as important to strengthen the majority group `confidence' as it is to fortify the political/economic/cultural defense capability of the minorities. Underlying this conclusion is the assumption that majority group dissatisfaction with the common state virtually guarantees instability and is usually the key factor contributing to violent political outcomes."

This paper examines the ethno-cultural and civic orientations of the constitutions of the nineteen post-communist states which, until 1989, had been part of the Soviet bloc, as either ‘satellites’ of the USSR or integral components of the USSR. Out of these, seven joined, in May 2004, the European Union. These were the East European states of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who refused to join the Commonwealth of Independent States, founded in 1991. By joining the EU, these seven states joined the West European world of national states – a world of deep historical consciousness, democratic institutions and free economy. At the same time, they rejected communist internationalist and class conceptions of human solidarity, identity and destiny, and Russian assimilationist ideology and cultural policies. The paper examines the extent to which the state symbols of the nineteen post-communist societies can be considered as evidence regarding the civic and ethno-cultural orientations of these societies. In so doing, it considers, state symbols in relation to a) the civic/ethnic content of the preambles of the post-communist constitutions which establish these symbols; and b) the civic/ethnic provisions of these constitutions. The paper draws on Hans Kohn’s typology of Western/civic and non-Western/ethnic paths to nation formation, as elaborated and qualified by Anthony D. Smith, Ernest Gellner, Rogers Brubaker and Taras Kuzio. It thus tries to establish the relative importance of civic as compared with ethnic principles in the formal making of post-communist nations.

This paper will attempt to answer the question of why some ceremonies are perceived as national and persist through time, while other fail to achieve that status. Why national ceremonies, almost as a rule, have to be annual?
It will be argued that while producers of national ceremonies ‘cannot control the ways in which images of the past are perceived’ (Savage 1994), national ceremonies are designed so as to appear, and would be perceived by the audience, as authentic. Based on Alexander’s theory of cultural pragmatics (Alexander, 2006), the paper will attempt to sketch a model of social interactions where the roles of the producers, actors and audience are examined within a specific cultural context and social structure. According to Jeffrey Alexander in a fused, successful performance of the ceremony, audiences identify with actors, and cultural scripts achieve verisimilitude through effective mise-en-scene. This perception of authenticity becomes the crucial point which determines whether the performance will be successful or not. Performances fail when this re-linking process is incomplete: the elements of performance remain apart, and social action seems inauthentic and artificial, failing to persuade. The level of persuasion will, on the other hand, be conditioned not by a so-called collective memory, but individual perception, formed within a specific social context, of what is authentic.
 

 This paper will explore the recent civic government initiatives attempting to renegotiate ‘Britishness’ and promote a civic notion of nationhood within the ceremonial sphere. The Home Office introduced a Citizens’ Day as a low key initiative in 2006 with the intention of breaking down barriers and offering an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to come together – in a first phase in ethnically divided parts of Britain. Mr. Brown went further suggesting that Remembrance Sunday would make a suitable Britain Day. The recent Citizenship Review (2008) concludes that a National Citizenship Day would provide a focus for the celebration of British values and promote community cohesion and social integration. Closely related to these suggestions we note that Citizenship Ceremonies have been in place since 2004 marking the new status for new citizens and that existing commemorations on Remembrance Sunday have been modified to recognise the contributions of the various faith communities in Britain. Similar civic community building projects to those mentioned above are in place in other in multi-ethnic states inside as well as outside Europe; thus it interesting to ask what these ceremonial initiatives are expected to accomplish? In Britain we need to explore these in relation to the steady decline of Britishness, the shy growth of Englishness and to highlight the challenges to a civic notion of Britishness both from within and from without. Ethnic conceptions of nationhood are associated with more authoritarian attitudes in defining membership of the nation. Thus, recent governmental initiatives must be understood in terms of reinforcing the civic conception of citizenship which is perceived as being more inclusive. The data used has been collected within the ESRC Identities Project exploring to what extent traditional identities are in decline. (Heath et al 2005; Heath & Elgenius 2007).

Ever since its formulation, the dichotomy ‘Eastern (ethnic) v. Western (civic) nationalism’ has been subject to constant academic debate. In a century of its existence, the ‘civic v. ethnic’ dichotomy in the studies of nationalism has often been revised, and each revision added a new flair to it. However, none of these modifications has significantly changed the initial postulates of Meinecke, Kohn and Plamenatz. The dichotomy juxtaposed the genealogical nature of nationalism in the East to the political one of nationalism in the West, by emphasizing the importance of race, blood, descent, language and religion for the former; and the accent on territory, participation, inclusion and constitutionalism in the latter. The explanation of differences between the two models has been grounded in the development of liberalism and individuality in the West, and the affiliation with the group in the East. This is indicative of the distinct historical routes two parts of the world have been experiencing in the past few centuries. Accordingly, this research compares various elements of the theory behind the dichotomy, in order to determine which of them could be useful for historical interpretation and modern policy-making. It seeks to assert that, although some segments of this analytical model can explain the phenomena related to nation formation in the modern world, the dichotomy itself needs to be carefully applied. Otherwise - its form will be misleading of its content.

"Hans Kohn's distinction of Eastern and Western nationalisms has been the one of a remarkable longevity. Our paper questions the reliability of this dichotomy when applied to nationalisms in the context of the present-day liberal democracy. Our case-studies of the Spanish Basques and Russians of Estonia suggest that at the level of the nation-state, nationalisms are perceived as ethnic because of inherent bind between one nation and `its' state. At the same time, when asserted in a context of multicultural Europe, minority nationalisms appear rather civic in their aspiration to redistribute democratic capital more liberally. In addressing these two cases of minority nationalism, we see several lines for comparison. First of all, we believe that respective minority groups have been consistent in providing Eastern-type nationalist response to the policies of cultural homogenisation by the state of their residence. At the same time, however, both groups have demonstrated their civic-mindedness, when appealing for EU interferences and support for their cause. Prior to discussing these similarities, we address the shortcomings of Kohn dichotomy to make clear that in both cases civic and ethnocultural nationalisms are aligned hand in hand. Our paper concludes with the review of Kohn's views, in arguing that while liberal democracy is a common-place aspiration today, we cannot categorise expressions of nationalisms in terms of dichotomy, but need to address the nationalist expressions in the context of negotiating its terms."

The paper critically examines the generation of discourses on Greek identity following the episodes that took place in northern Greece (Michaniona, 2000/2003), when an Albanian student was elected flag-carrier in a commemorative national parade. The symbolic exclusion of this student from the Greek ‘imagined community’ (Greek objections to his holding the flag during the parade) merits analysis as an expression of anti-European nationalist sentiment. Three versions of Greek identity emerged in this context: the first was grounded on civic understandings of identity, and adhered to contemporary principles of an ‘Europeanist’
project that promotes citizenship as a form of belonging. The second version mobilised a Greek civilisational model of belonging that echoed practices of assimilation as an antidote to national exclusion. This civilisational model promoted ideas of national-cultural ‘purity’ that have roots in Greek ethnogenesis. The third version of Greek identity suggested an understanding of the ‘nation’ in terms of racial affiliation, presenting thus nationhood as a ‘natural’ category and foreclosing inclusion of ‘others’ into the ‘nation’ under any conditions. The three versions crossed and interacted during the 2000/2003 episodes, but here are examined separately, because their historical resonance is not identical. The argument put forth is that these discourses of identity betray (a) the problematic economic and cultural position of Greece within Europe and (b) should read as a form of national resistance to processes of ‘Europeanization’ that threaten ‘imagined communities’ embedded in history.
 

"Hans Kohn the prolific writer has made significant contributions towards theorizing on the subject of Nationalism, not least the validity of the ethnic/civic distinction as two types of nationalism, even if this distinction is not always rational or geographically significant, or that the dichotomy can amount to a synchrony within multinational state scenarios. Indeed a monotony also commences with Kohn, whose thought actually equates nationalism with imperialism, a frame of mind that eventually sets out to invent an 'east/west' difference that has also proved to be not universal. By the nature of his busy itinerary in an unscientific terrain, the potential chore of checking against the trail he blazed means it was probably impossible to apprehend the obfuscation along the trail, until analysis would reveal over time. However, any tensions and contradictions within his works are perhaps part of the legacy which spurs on the debate. The paper goes on to discuss Kohn's two contributions towards the ten-point check list regarding the attributes of a modern nation: evidence of ideology or doctrine; and cohesion between the masses and the aristocracy."

The sharp distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nations has been exaggerated. Descriptions tend to be either too ‘thin’ in the case of civic nations or too ‘thick’ in the case of ethnic nations. This is because scholars often underestimate the role of culture in the formation of civic nations and conflate culture and ethnicity in the case of ethnic nations. In reality, most nation-states fall somewhere in between these two extremes. This is because civic nations tend to rest on a shared public culture, which may include some traits that are normally associated with ethnic nations, and many so-called ethnic nations actually rely on a linguistic qualification for naturalization, which encourages acculturation and thereby opens the community to members of other ethnic groups. We shall examine this role of culture in both types by examining the case studies of the United States (usually described as a civic nation) and Latvia (usually described as an ethnic nation). Rather than a strict dichotomy between civic and ethnic nations, we should conceive of different forms of nationhood existing along a continuous spectrum, with civic criteria at one end, cultural criteria in the middle, and ethnic criteria at the other end. As a result, we will be able to appreciate how civic and ethnic nations may differ from one another, but also what they have in common as nations.

Recent literature problematising the dichotomy between civic and ethnic forms of nationhood rejects the notion of a clear typology into which nations can be sorted. Rather, every nation represents a complex amalgam of voluntaristic and organic elements, mobilised toward varying functions. However, there have also been theories suggesting that ‘the nation’, as a social and ideological construct, represents a particular configuration of such elements. Some have argued, for example, that even the most ostensibly civic nations are built around a dominant ethnic core, a set of cultural values acceptance of which becomes a litmus test to membership. This paper explores the flipside of this phenomenon, for it is equally the case that even the most openly ethnic nations endeavour to represent themselves in conformity to the civic ideal-type. Three cases are examined where nations self-defined as pursuing self-determination for a named ethnic or racial group, enacting political/legal regimes privileging that group, nonetheless framed these actions according to voluntaristic, egalitarian principles associated with the civic ideal. Case #1 is the laws and legal decisions surrounding the construction of the ‘apartheid’ system in South Africa; case #2 is Israel’s ‘absentee law’ following the 1948 War of Independence; case #3 is the citizenship law enacted in Estonia following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. These discourses did not merely function to depict these actions in a manner defensible to outsiders. Rather, conformity to the ‘civic’ framework of nationhood was pivotal to the positive self-perception of even the most openly ‘ethnic’ of nations.

Ethnicity is often understood either as a synonym for an ethnic group or as a distinct cultural property of a particular collectivity. Such views start from the proposition that collective cultural difference is not only given but also an ultimate cause of a particular behaviour. Ethnic group solidarity is seen as almost automatic, normal and natural. However both of these perceptions are illusory: a) there is nothing automatic and self-evident in group formation and b) cultural similarity by itself is a feeble explanatory force. Max Weber was already well aware and recent scholarship made it apparent that ethnicity requires successful mobilization of social action to transform mere group membership into a conscious political association. Rather than being an outcome of the explanatory process, ethnicity is a phenomenon that requires explanation. However the dominant contemporary perspectives can not adequately address the processes through which cultural difference is politicised because they operate with the two largely incommensurable concepts of ethnicity: the temporal and the spatial. The main aim of this paper is to critically engage with these two dominant perspectives in order to articulate a more coherent sociological understanding of ethnicity. First I explore the vertical, macro historical view that focuses on the transformation and continuity of culture in time. Second I analyse the horizontal, mostly ahistorical, micro interactional view that centres on the majority and majority relations in a modern social order. Finally I outline an alternative position that attempts to transgress the existing macro/micro, time/space divide by identifying what is universal about ethnicity.

The paper will argue that Kohn provided too simplistic an argument when he put forward that civic identities are ‘good’ and ethnic identities are ‘bad’. Just because it is widely accepted that nation states are a product of Modernism does not mean that Modernist Liberal Democratic principles are causal factors in the differences between civic and ethnic nationalism. The case study of Cornwall will be used to illustrate this, using semi-structured interview data to show that the new discourses about Cornwall which redefine Cornish identity are entirely removed from ethnicity and therefore are ‘civic’ in Kohn’s terms. However for Kohn, ‘universality’ means that the identity could potentially be a part of a movement towards more ‘global’ forms of governance. Cornish civic identity is different to this idea, and is concerned with lifestyle and economics. Any Enlightenment principles retained are connected with a narcissistic interpretation of individual happiness alongside the freedom to engage in economic activities without restraint. In contrast, Cornish ‘ethnic’ identity contains Liberal Rationality, such as the desire for greater democracy and consent to government, individual dignity and humanitarianism, alongside an inclusive interpretation of Cornish national heritage. Further, rather than making claims to superiority, Cornish ethnic identity is more akin to cosmopolitan humanity than the egocentric civic version.

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of culture within the French civic nation-state. On the contrary to common descriptions of the political system in France as insensitive to cultural claims in its definition of citizenship, I will argue that the role of culture in the functioning of the Republic has been historically and theoretically under-estimated. This contribution will especially emphasize the existence and singularity of a specific form of nationalism through culture within the French Republican model. I will unfold my argument in two main steps. Firstly, I will discuss the accounts made on the French system by liberal and communitarian thinkers. I will argue that the main analysts of the French civic nation – even Republicans like Habermas – tend to underestimate the consideration concealed to cultural identities within the Republican model. Secondly, I will develop the idea defended by a generation of French Republicanism specialists, that culture has always been at the theoretical heart of the Republican ideal and conception of citizenship, and that the Republic used a form of cultural nationalism to sustain its unity. More than a tool of sedimentation of civic republican values, culture is the keystone of the Republican definition of national identity in France and allows its legitimacy. My contribution to this debate will insist specifically on showing the clear differences existing between this form of ‘cultural nationalism’ operated by the Republican State and the Volkgeist and Kulturgeist of the ethnic nation defined by Hans Kohn.

The aim of my paper is to rethink political nationalism in the context of Globalization. The thesis I want to defend is that nationalism can find today a new legitimizing principle in the notion of cultural diversity, in replacement of the self-determination principle. But in order for this new principle to achieve this purpose it however needs to be further developed; for it needs to be elevated as a coherent and autonomous world-view capable of competing with the most important world-view of our time, cosmopolitanism.

Despite the vast amount of theories aiming to explain the causes of ethnopolitically motivated violence, criticism has been raised that hitherto the social sciences lack any explanation of ethnic identities, relations between different identity groups and ethno-national conflict that will hold cross-culturally (Horowitz 1985; Fearon and Laitin 2000; Saideman et al. 2002). This need to find theoretical explanations on the outbreak of ethno-national conflict that bear cross-cultural validity serves as point of departure for the analysis at hand.
The theoretical framework investigates formal and non-formal institutions which influence the likelihood of ethno-national conflict, and is tested using cross-sectional and pooled time-series analysis. The statistical research is based on observations in 201 independent countries between 1955 and 2005. It will be argued that rather than treating formal and non-formal political institutions as separate entities, it is the specific interplay between them that has a major impact on the likelihood of ethnic conflict. The more political systems are based on premises of politics as a zero-sum game in its formal institutions – such as through a majoritarian electoral formula and a presidential system of government –, and the lower the degree of social integration in non-formal institutions – such as through dominant culture politics and a fragmented civil society –, the more likely is the outbreak of ethnic conflict. The appearance of politics as zero-sum game and low degrees of social integration are assumed to increase the divide between state and society which heightens the likelihood of ethnic conflict.
 

More countries become co-national in that they arrange their political institutions around distinct separations between ethnic groups. This means implementing political institutions to accommodate the political demands resulting from co-nationhood. There is no shortage of theories of how such co-nations should find ways of organizing their society politically. However, political frames no matter how democratic in design do not guarantee sustainability and thus democratic co-habitation. This paper aims to take Keating’s theory of plurinational democracy a step further by offering the beginning of a theory of co-nationship. This involves first a brief critical overview of existing approaches to nationhood which it is argued fail to represent the true nature of nationhood in complex societies as they fail to capture the non-essentialised groupness of nationhood. Instead it is argued that dynamics of co-habitation produce points of references that allow universal conventions to enter and thus may serve as contact points for co-nationhoods to meet ethically. Second, a framework is offered that generates research on openings of openness in terms of conventions of religion, language, history, territory, culture, rights and responsibility, education, economy, shared sovereignty, geo-politics and more and which would take co-nationhood beyond the essentializing point of closed nationhood and give prominence to a concept of democratic co-nationship. The specific purpose of this paper is thus to offer a research agenda that provides some conceptual tools of co-nationhood and supports an emerging theory of co-nationship.

Who decides who ‘deserves’ a state? Who sets the criteria for state-building? Aiming to answer these questions, the presentation is a comparative assessment of Western European attitudes regarding the nation state and the paradox that seems to prevail within the so-called old states vis-à-vis current state-formation. In recent times the world map has changed dramatically with the appearance of new states. However, the preparedness of western states to welcome the creation of these new countries has not been matched with the same will to accommodate long-lasting calls for self-determination from regions within their borders. The presentation focuses on this apparent paradox where the so-called old western states, although they were formed and largely remain ethnic-based, when their regions demand self-government, among the prevalent centralists’ counter-argument is that a new ethnic-based state would constitute a threat, be outdated and nonsustainable. Still, western states, including those facing protracted intrastate conflicts, embrace the formation of new ethnic-based states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Apparently, Western European states emphasize the need for a civic-based state to deplete self-government demands within some of their regions, while readily advocate and even facilitate the formation of new ethnic-based states as long as they are geographically afar and do not pose a threat. The presentation aims to attest this argument using the examples of France and Spain juxtaposing their attitudes towards their regions demanding self-government and the stance of these countries towards recent state-building.

This paper suggests that ‘Civic Nation Building’ as it has been conceptualized by scholarly works is only a theoretical case with no practical counterpart. To do so the paper engages with previous literature on nation building to discuss the very meaning of ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nation building using as case study the nation building project put forwards by Ukrainian elites since 1991.

Although open to criticism, Hans Kohn’s distinction between a Western (civic) and Eastern (ethnic) nationalism remains a powerful tool on the studies of nationalism, because it allows us to identify the main contents which are usually present on representations of national identity. In this paper we address the continued value of Hans Kohn’s typology. We mainly use data provided by Portuguese historical sources and data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2003 National Identity Study (NIS). In Portugal contemporary definitions of national identity both stress criteria of citizenship and ethnic ones. Although civic criteria were as important as the ethnic, seen in a comparative perspective the Portuguese definitions revealed a (‘western’) country where ethnic ties where particularly salient.
 

The work of Meinecke, Kohn, and Plamenatz developed the ethnic-civic divide by analysing a number of factors in the discourse of nationalist ideologues. Cultural nationalism was considered illiberal and backward and located in Eastern Europe, while its Western counterpart was portrayed as civic, liberal and capable of integrating different ethnies into the national ideal. An alternative to examining nationalist ideology is to focus on the changing nature of the discourse, myths and memories of the nationalist community. The nation-building process requires a series of unremitting revisions of patriotic myths and historical memories to keep the process of nation formation alive. While a number of myths and memories remain central to the nationalist discourse and rituals they vary according to changing historical circumstances. This paper examines the ethnic and civic national myths of the Basque, Catalan and Spanish nationalist movements and the means by which they have been commemorated in political rituals throughout the twentieth century. Rather than a unified bunch of core elements, different aspects are highlighted in accordance to the socio-political context (discovery of America, conversion of Arana, fall of Barcelona, etc). This fragmentation is significant as there is no unifying national myth and Spaniards cannot jointly remember any political event of their recent past. This is the case of the Civil War (1936-1939) and Spain's non-intervention in both World War I and II. Even the paradigmatic transition to democracy, which was peacefully negotiated by political elites, was problematic enough as not to become a national myth in the whole of Spain.

The recent debate on the new Charter of Autonomy for Catalonia has shown that the ‘Catalan specificity’ re-mains an unsolved question in contemporary Spain. However, some new elements have arisen in the debate. First, secessionism has become a relevant nationalist strategy in Catalonia. Second, the Charter proposal made by the Catalan parliament was dramatically cut in the Spanish congress. Third, Spanish nationalism seems exhausted to respond in accommodation terms to Catalan nationalism and is trying to redefine and modernize its national project. The paper examines to what extent contemporary Spanish nationalism is reinforcing the ‘ethnic’ elements of the nation as a response to Catalan demands for self-government. After 25 years of democracy where the references to national myths were burdened by the aggressive nationalism of Franco’s dictatorship, democratic Spanish nationalism is currently building a new consensus on the idea of Spain and its national identity project. In my view these processes show that, on the one hand, ethnic and civic elements are not exclusive of a particular kind of nationalism but they are present in any nationalist project, and, on the other hand, that they are an expression of the competitive character of nationalist projects.

"The main points of this paper are: 1. Kohn's studies of Nationalism were conducted entirely in the sphere of ideas. 2. Kohn's conception of two types of nationalism sprang from his personal experiences with national identity, moral principles and ideological convictions. 3. Once the idea of a 'good' and 'bad' nationalism became central in his thinking, he tended to subsume his historical interpretations to it, and subject movements, leaders, and nations to the test of whether they belonged to the enlightened or primitive, universal or particular, type of nationalism. 4. This obsession with the moral aspect of nationalism stifled Kohn's ability to break out of the conceptual framework with which his pioneering work on nationalism began. 5. One problematic result of Kohn's approach is the idealized version of a spiritual nationalism which he preached, cleansed of politics and roots, stateless, universalist, and in fact not a nationalism at all. 6. This form of a disembodied nationalism was modeled on his own early vision of spiritual Zionism. 7. The reaction against Kohn's moralizing raised theories which explained the rise of nationalism as an almost mechanical process. 8. When the tables turned again and debates about nationalism became partly ideological, Kohn's typology had a comeback in the more sophisticated terminology of ethnic and civic nationalism. 9. The new version of the old typology is equally flawed in its deterministic assignment of national characteristics, and in lacking concrete cases which reflect its ideal types."

Jewish nationalism is an interesting test case within the nationalist movement, offering a perspective on competing forms within one movement: Eastern and Western. During the 1880’s, the Eastern national Jewish movement Hibbat Zion was established. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the political Zionist movement arose, with a prominent Western emphasis. Hibbat Zion was founded by Eastern European Jews, among whom the ethnic, genealogical, and cultural element of the Jewish national movement dominated. By contrast, political Zionism, which arose in Basel in 1897, highlighted the civil and liberal element. Hans Kohn, drew the classic distinction between Eastern and Western nationalism. Based on Kohn’s definitions, I will evaluate the distinction between these two movements by characterizing the leadership within the two streams as well as the varying utopian visions of Western and Eastern Zionism. On either side of the dividing line stand Ahad Ha'am, the ‘Eastern’ Zionist leader, and Theodor Herzl, the ‘Western’ Zionist leader. To highlight the dichotomy between these two streams within the Jewish nationalist movement, I will analyze the conflict that broke out in 1902 surrounding the publication of Herzl’s utopian vision, Altneuland, which described the future Jewish state in a distinctly Western style. Ahad Ha’am, leader of Eastern cultural Zionism, attacked Herzl's Western approach and supported the Eastern Zionist vision. A close look at the controversy will enable me to characterize the vision held by both groups as well as to challenge Kohn’s dichotomy.

Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky was one of the most influential Zionist leaders and thinkers at the first half of the 20th century. Jabotinsky faced the issue of nationalism both in his theoretical writings, as well as in his political career. As a thinker, he combined romantic notions of nationalism with liberal ideas. His views saw the individual as the center of the social and moral order. The nation, however, is crucial in giving the individual the cultural context in which he can fulfill his potential. As a political leader Jabotinsky faced the issue of nationalism both in the Russian empire and in Palestine. He offered political solution to the status of the Jews, as a nation, in both cases. In Russia he advocated non territorial autonomy to all the nations in the Empire. In Palestine, he is one of the first leaders to acknowledge the relations between Jews and Arabs as the main problem of the Zionist enterprise. He is considered a ‘hard liner’, because of his refusal to permit any territorial compromise. However, his draft for a future constitution highlights the civic and group rights of both Arabs and Jews. I will argue that it is possible to find both civic and ethnic elements in Jabotinsky’s writings about nationalism. However, these elements complete, rather than contradict one another. It is therefore possible to find these two elements not only in the same national movement, but in the writing of the same man – a fact that weakens, in my opinion, the dichotomy between the two.

"This paper has a double objective. The first is conceptual clarification. I shall argue that what is usually claimed to be regionalism is but one form of nationalism. I shall question certain stereotypes that abound in the literature, such as assuming that minority nationalists are necessarily ethnic or that any preference short of independent statehood is not nationalism. The second objective is to argue that historical nationalist parties, such as Basque and Catalan parties, and recent ones, such as Andalusian and Canarian parties, are expressions of the same phenomenon, namely, the political mobilisation of nationalism. Nationalist parties, old and new, are being successful, not just in terms of votes, whose numbers are often quite modest. Minority nationalists have managed to alter the political agenda of parties and governments and to impose a centre-periphery cleavage in society. Their actions have brought profound changes to the territorial structure of the state and have pushed state parties to defend nationalist positions in the regions. This success, paradoxically, can have a perverse effect: it makes increasingly difficult to survive on a nationalist agenda when the nationalist cause has been assimilated and institutionalised. Competition with state-parties-turned-nationalists sets limits, in some cases severe ones, to the prospects of success of nationalist parties. Thus, moderate nationalist parties are tempted by more radical agendas, symbolic politics gain strength over more pragmatic considerations and the pressure to engage in nation-building policies and strategies increases. I propose to flesh out these arguments in Spain since 1979."

The paper will present how the conceptions of civic and ethnic nationhood meet and relate in Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy considering the interethnic relations between two national communities living in the area: the Italian majority with its State and the Slovene minority. Members of the Slovene minority are Italian citizens, but they consider themselves as part of the Slovene people, of which the majority lives in the bordering Slovenia. The civic conception is related to the Italian community and the Italian state, while the ethnic one is related to the Slovene national minority living in the provinces of Gorizia-Gorica, Trieste-Trst and Udine-Videm and its kin-state Slovenia. The paper will present the trajectories of nation and state formation in this region in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. A brief historical review will help to focus on some relevant psychocultural and structural dimensions of the interethnic relations between Italians and Slovenes in Regione FVG considering the processes of the Italian and Jugoslav, later Slovene nation-building and the formation processes of the border between these States.
 

This paper critically addresses the various ways in which the civic and ethnic categories have been used and misused in the literature on nations and nationalism. The accentuation and naturalization of differences between ethnic and civic national understandings, and between ‘East’ and ‘West,’ ignores the diversity that
exists within each region, and denies the negotiated coexistence of both models within individual nations. I argue that the problematic treatment of the dichotomy stems from a misunderstanding and misuse of ideal types, and from the common conflation, in the study of nationalism, of ideological representations (discourse), empirical reality (practice), and social scientific analysis (ideal types). If used properly, as value-free constructs that we compare with reality—both in terms of the actual discourses of the nation and the various practices that shape national life—ethnic and civic categories can be quite useful to understand the conceptions of the nation in various cultural, social, political and economic settings. I illustrate my position by using the ethnic and civic ideal-types as heuristic devices to analyze the evolution and transformation of nationalism in Quebec from the 1880s until the 2000s. Based on archival and ethnographic data, I show that while nationalism in Quebec has generally evolved from an ethno-religious type to a civic-secular one, different assemblages of ethnic and civic elements have been present at various historical periods and the tension between the types continue to shape national debates.

Trudeauian pan-Canadianism, which defines the Canadian national identity as a single nation bound by liberal-egalitarianism, ‘sea to sea’ bilingualism, multiculturalism, and provincial equality, has been heavily criticized in English-Canadian academe. The crux of the criticism is the insistence on defining Canada as one nation has exacerbated conflict by ignoring Quebecois and Aboriginal claims to nationhood. As a solution, theorists Philip Resnick and Will Kymlicka, in particular, argue for a multinational definition of Canada bound by mutual recognition, which would ostensibly create a better foundation for long-term unity. In making their case, Resnick and Kymlicka set about convincing English-Canadians to recognize that they share common ‘national’, or at least, ‘linguistic’ interests, to which pan-Canadianism is not necessarily best suited. The presumption is that if English-Canadians were to identify with a more limited ‘English-Canadianness’, this would create space for other collectivities to identify with Canada. Adopting an ethnosymbolic lens and focusing on the relationship between dominant ethnicity and civic and ethnic nationalisms in multinational states, the following paper takes issue with this argument. The suggestion here is that it fundamentally misconceives English-Canadian identity, resulting in a flawed argument that fails to account for why English Canadians have such difficulty articulating an ‘English-Canadianness’ distinct from ‘(pan)-Canadianness’. The paper concludes that pan-Canadianism should be viewed as a source of disunity and unity; insofar as Canada can be considered a success is a result of English-Canadians’ dominance, which allows them a degree of latitude vis-à-vis minority nationalisms, yet also renders their ethnic particularity ‘invisible’, setting the stage for an unselfconscious, universalising pan-Canadianism.

Western observers have been confused by the catastrophic results of attempts to introduce democracy into the ‘Arab world.’ I argue that this confusion is the product of Westerners applying the dichotomy between civic and ethnic nationalism as outlined by Hans Kohn to this area without realistically considering the ethnic situation there. According to this thinking, states (e.g. France, Germany) choose either civic nationalism or ethnic nationalism, and this is associated with democracy or dictatorship respectively; therefore, the overthrow of a dictatorship and the imposition of democracy should automatically lead to the development of stable institutions of civic nationalism. This theory seemed to receive support from developments in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. But this has not worked in the ‘Arab world.’ The explanation for this difference can be found in research in the framework of ethnosymbolism, which has shown that even in cases such as England and France, the institutions of civic nationalism only developed after the state had been built around a core ethnicity. Democracy caught on in Eastern Europe because the area had already been divided into political units (e.g. Poland, Romania, Lithuania, etc.) which were relatively ethnolinguistically homogeneous. ‘Arab nationality,’ on the other hand, is a recent and artificial creation, and its radical religious and linguistic divisions are not reflected in existing political borders. This suggests that democracy will only take hold in the ‘Arab World’ after political borders there have been redrawn along more ethnolinguistically realistic lines.

While the Islamic Republic’s foundational discourse was that of internationalism and borderless Islamic revolution, today the nationalist element is increasingly emphasized in the official conceptualization of Iranian nationhood. The Iran-Iraq War, the unsuccessful project of exporting the revolution and the isolation of Iran are among the contributing factors to this change. Meanwhile, the wave of reformism in the last decade has been accompanied by significant tension in border areas inhabited by non-Persian ethnic groups where unrest, protests and terrorist acts have flared up recently. Minority spokesmen claim that the state is marginalizing the non-Persians, and particularly the Sunnis; and on the other hand, the government claims the unrest is the result of foreign powers’ manipulation, and thus a threat to the integrity of the Iranian nation. By conflating the ethnic groups’ demands for greater autonomy with conspiracies to dissolve Iran, the Islamist leaders are utilizing historical fears in Iran. However at the same time, the ruling elite also seek to portray the ethnic minorities as inseparable segments of a harmonious, multicultural nation-state. Thus there is a two-pronged strategy of repressing dissent and accommodating the conformists, of inclusion and exclusion. An analysis of the language employed in statements by the Islamic Republic’s rulers in portraying two specific cases of ethnic unrest in the Iranian provinces of Khuzestan and Azerbaijan in 2005- 6 presents an interesting study in the nationalist-religious ideology of the establishment and its notions of ‘Iranianness’.

‘De-ethnicization’ denotes both an ideology and the nation-building project currently carried out by the Rwandan government. The attempt is to both forge a new, overarching sense of unified identity, and to suppress any lesser (e.g. ethnic or regional) sub-state identities. In terms of the Kohnian dichotomy, Rwanda remains in the eastern camp of ethnic ideas and projects of a ‘nation’ inasmuch as it is dominated by cultural as opposed to civic/political elements. At the same time as Rwanda does broadly follow the lines of an ethnic nationalism and does remain exclusive internally, the paper does not aim to affirm the validity of an idealized Kohnian dichotomy between ‘exclusive’ ethnic nationalism and ‘inclusive’ civic nationalism. To avoid the trap of a bi-polar and value-laden division, or final and exhaustive definitions of ‘the ethnic,’ and yet preserving the useful insights of Kohn, the paper calls for a re-conceptualization of nation-building projects along the continuum of their relative inclusiveness/exclusiveness, both internally (who shapes the ‘idea of nation’) and externally (who is allowed into the political project of nation-building). The case of Rwanda also does not aim to affirm some deep historical or cultural predisposition of countries for one or the other type. Most certainly, Rwanda does not represent a ‘failure to export the civic model.’ Nationbuilding in Rwanda might be sub-optimal but the optimum is both achievable and to be redefined.

Can the distinction sometimes made between ethnic and civic nationalism be fruitfully applied to cases outside Europe? This paper will take the example of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China to argue that the tensions between these two conceptions of nationhood are not confined to any particular region. Since the end of the nineteenth century, when a notion of nationhood first emerged during the late Qing, there has been a tension between an ethnic version of the nation – based on a conflation of ideas about descent, 'race' and culture – and a more civic version which recognises the huge diversity of human situations in the realm referred to as 'China'. While it is true that we are more familiar with the dominant version of ethnic nationhood enforced by the People's Republic of China, there are alternative histories which we should reclaim to pay respect to the general messiness, but also the extraordinary creativity and adaptability, of most human lives, in particular the many ones that have contested and resisted the ethnic and national lines policed by modern nation-states throughout most of the twentieth century – from the many migrants who left the empire to assimilate fully with local population groups overseas, to the 'King's Chinese' in Singapore who remained detached from all things 'Chinese', and to large sections of the population in Taiwan today. These tensions are not different in kind from the ones which have marked parts of Europe –Germany being a good example – and are related to the politics of the one party-state."

"Latin American nationalism has often been represented as 'civic' from independence until the late nineteenth century and increasingly 'ethnic' from then onwards, with the emergence of mass politics and the rise of US imperialism. While there is certainly some evidence to support this view, I will suggest that it underemphasises both the importance of ethnic elements throughout the nineteenth century and – even more strikingly – the continuing importance of civic elements throughout the twentieth century. This argument will be illustrated by discussion of two main topics: i) heroes; and ii) revolutionary traditions."

The Push and Pull of Ethnic and Civic Nationalisms for North African Immigrants in Europe Panel: The Challenges of Migrant Identity, April 16, 11:30-13:00 North African immigrants living in Britain, France and Spain define their identities through national pasts marked by colonial subjugation and narratives of independence. Despite these ethnic nationalist narratives, North African immigrants are also subject to pressures which promote civic identities, defined through culture and religion, including host-state pressures to integrate, and religious obligations to a broader Muslim Umma. For a small minority this can lead, in combination with a variety of other factors, to extremism and violence. In these cases, tensions between the forces of civic and ethnic nationalisms create dissonances in identity, creating a space for support for and participation in radical violent takfiri jihadism. Through specific examples drawn from North African immigrant experiences in Britain, France and Spain, this paper will examine how radical violent takfiri jihadist recruiters attempt to exploit this dissonance in immigrant identity, by simultaneously emphasising ethnic nationalism and obligations to the universal Umma, in order to ‘radicalise’ members of these populations; populations who are subject to such disparate forces on their identity.

In Japan, where the ideology of ethnic and cultural homogeneity was predominant since postwar period, notions of multiculturalism have been gaining currency since the 1990s. Formerly suppressed minority differences are increasingly displayed in a celebratory manner. Okinawans have been at the forefront of changing negative perceptions of their cultural difference as 'backward' to positive ones trough popular and media culture. The nationwide popularity of Okinawa-featured cultural and media products since the early 1990s, called 'Okinawa Boom', appears to be shift toward the increasing recognition and appreciation of Okinawan difference. At the same time, however, there are concerns that the Okinawa Boom leads to further

 North Korean migrants are one of the most exclusively categorized groups of ‘Korean newcomers’ who most critically display Korea’s past of national division; issues of boundaries of legal and cultural membership in South Korea; and the current trends of transnational movements. Their presence embodies the politics of sovereignty over the Korean peninsula and its hegemonic discourse of homogeneity which are ultimately influenced by South Korea’s conception of nation state. This paper explores two main dimensions of North Korean migrants’ conditions vis-à-vis the South Korean state. The first dimension examines their process of obtaining legal membership; and the second explores their cultural membership through their experiences and narratives of how they consent and dissent the process of incorporation into South Korean society. The South Korean state shows ambivalent dispositions toward North Korean migrants. While they are embraced as part of the greater Korean ethnic community, they are received as particular kinds of ‘Koreans.’ Such ambivalence displays an arbitrariness (or the transitional nature) of South Korea’s boundaries for legal and cultural membership. It further raises questions of national identity and future responses to increasing transnational movements. The direction of South Korea as a nation state, in times of transnational movements, is unclear. An evaluation of notions of citizenship, nationality and ethnicity is imminent in further defining its national identity and conditions of those residing in South Korea especially with increasing communications with North Korea, national global participation as well as increasing border crossers in and out of South Korea.

Following the War of the Pacific (1879 –1883), Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Ancón that dealt, in part, with settling a territorial dispute over the provinces of Tacna and Arica along the newly created border between the two countries. The treaty allowed Chile to administer the provinces for ten years, after which a plebiscite would allow the region’s inhabitants to determine their own nationality. The plebiscite never took place, however, and following nearly a half-century of intense diplomatic conflict, the two countries in 1929 simply divided the territory, with Chile retaining Arica and Peru reincorporating Tacna.

By using as a point of departure Hans Kohn’s classic distinction between the Western, political type of nationalism, and Eastern, genealogical nationalism, this paper examines the processes of nationalism and national identity formation in what became one of the most contentious frontier situations in South American history. The Chilean and Peruvian states, in anticipation of winning the plebiscite, attempted to inculcate their respective national identities in the inhabitants of the region. I argue that Kohn’s dichotomy remains highly useful in understanding the principles used by leaders in Chile and Peru in their ‘official’ appeals for national unity. However, popular responses to those appeals from diverse social sectors in the disputed territory, including those of the working classes, indigenous Aymara communities, and women, require alternative conceptions of nationhood and national identity formation.

The literature on nationalism has a long tradition of critiquing the limitations of the distinction between civic and ethnic conceptions of nationhood, yet without establishing a viable alternative to this dichotomy. Based on a comparative analysis of nationalism in early and mid-20th century Mexico, Argentina, and Peru this paper seeks to conceptualize such an alternative typology. The distinction between liberal and popular nationalism is introduced to identify critical aspects of state-sponsored national discourses found in these countries that are not captured by the civic-ethnic difference. Liberal nationalism combines a political understanding of the nation with an elite-centered, exclusionary view of national belonging. By contrast, popular nationalism complements a cultural understanding of national identity with a more egalitarian view of the national community, depicting the masses as national subjects and protagonists of national history. For the empirical analysis this paper uses primary evidence from school textbooks. The conclusion discusses the usefulness of the liberal-popular typology for the analysis of nationalism more generally.
 

"The Palestinian-Jewish conflict is typically depicted as a clash between two ethnonational movements, fighting over the same piece of land. The resolution would thus seem straightforward: a utilitarian settlement based on a material, mainly territorial, compromise. My paper challenges both the description and prescription. Analyzing the identity-polity complex characteristic of both sides, I argue that normatively, the conflict is profoundly asymmetric: while Jewish identity is genealogical, Palestinian identity is largely geographical. Thus, while Zionism is certainly ethnonational, the Palestinian movement is potentially civic-patriotic. Furthermore, while Israeli Jews are more concerned about the (future) viability of their polity, Palestinians are still engulfed by a deep-set insecurity about the (past-based) validity of their emerging identity.

A negotiated compromise on assets may therefore not be enough. It should be accompanied – possibly, even preceded – by ethical dialogue, a bi-lateral discourse that addresses the asymmetry. Such a dialogue can be either narrative or normative: the former aims at more mutual understanding; the latter, at a common ground of political ethics. My paper illustrates both paths. It suggests that while narrative dialogue may facilitate grassroots rapprochement, normative dialogue is needed to truly transcend the entrenched political rifts. I propose that this dialogue be built on the principle of self-determination."

Spanish and Basque identities experienced a turnover by the beginning of a democratic six-year period, in 1868-1874. The new regime developed a civic policy, which provoked the outbreak of a traditionalist rebellion. The rebels were particularly strong in the Basque territories. As a mobilising argument, Spanish liberal nationalism invented a new ethnic stereotype of the Basques, which became an internal enemy of the nation. This image of otherness was resurrected during the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936). It was extremely instrumental in the Republicans’ confrontation with the joint mobilisation led by Basque traditionalists and ethnonationalists. During the last transition to democracy (1975-1978), the ‘Basque problem’ was used again to imagine the existence of an ethnic group opposed to democratic Spain. The terrorist organisation ETA became the target of this discursive strategy. Throughout these three historical periods, the construction of a ‘Basque problem’ serves to underline how (Basque) ethnicity has influenced the making of Spain as a civic nation. Furthermore, it also illustrates the relevance of the cultural contents for all modern nationalisms in Spain.

  Nationalist Discourse in the Nineteenth Century

Dr. Marcel Stoetzler and Dr. Christine Achinger

This paper will explore two prominent cases of German National Liberals who significantly contributed to the growing hegemony of antisemitism in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, Gustav Freytag (1816-95) and Heinrich von Treitschke (1 834-96). Both were well-known writers (one a novelist, the other a historian), political journalists and editors of significant national-liberal publications (‘Grenzboten’ and ‘Preussische Jahrbücher’). In Freytag's novel ‘Soll und Haben’, the German nation is, on the one hand, pitted against the Poles as colonial 'external enemy', associated with pre-modernity. On the other hand, good ‘German’ modernity is set off against the Jews as ‘enemy within’, representing the negative and threatening aspects of modern society itself, while at the same time also evoking much older anti-Jewish imagery. In Treitschke’s writings, culminating in but not restricted to his contributions to the ‘Berlin Antisemitism Dispute’ of 1879-81, Jewish immigrants to Germany are specifically chided for their Polish background and thus represent both imageries rolled into one, not without paradoxical effects.
The discourses of each were shaped by a kind of de-dialecticized, liberal Hegelianism, which affirmed the rise of bourgeois society, but was wary of rapid political, economic and social change. In the specific form of nationalism they subscribed to, elements of what is usually described as ‘political’, ‘Western’ or ‘civic’ nationalism are intertwined with elements of what would usually be described as ‘romantic’, ‘ethnic’, ‘Eastern’, or specifically ‘German’ nationalism. This observation challenges the assumption that these supposed ‘types’ of nationalism are diametrically opposed.

This paper challenges the common distinction between a Western and an Eastern type of nationalism with regards to Russian nationalism. It argues that the type of nationalism that appears in a specific country has more to do with timing than with place, or social conditions. The paper discusses the appearance of two forms of nationalism in Russia – the civic nationalism of the Decembrists and the cultural nationalism of the Slavophiles. It is generally believed that the so-called Slavophiles first formulated a Russian national identity in the 1 830s-40s. In line with Kohn’s dichotomy, this nationalism has been regarded as belonging to the Eastern, cultural type. In contrast, this paper argues that while slavophilism was indeed based on a cultural idea of the nation, this fact does not distinguish it from nationalism in the West. On the contrary, slavophilism can be seen as a Russian example of the cultural nationalism that grew out of German Romanticism and dominated social and political thought in Europe and the United States in this period. A further challenge to Kohn’s assumption is that it was not the Slavophiles but the Decembrists who brought the idea of the nation to Russia. The notion of the nation which they introduced to Russia in the 1 820s was of a typically Western type, based on a civic notion of nationhood. It was representative of the intellectual tendencies that dominated Western thought in the Age of Revolution. Thus, a historical analysis of Russian nationalism indicates that the civic-ethnic divide needs to be linked to a temporal context. It also suggests that intellectual thought should be studied in an international rather than a national context and that the world of ideas has to be granted a considerable degree of autonomy from socio-economic conditions.

While theoretical discussion on nationalism tends to make a sharp distinction between civic and ethnic conception of nationhood, the present paper argues that such duality is too simple and schematic to offer an adequate analytical tool of the late 19th and early 20th Century Central European nationalism, especially in the case of Austria-Hungary. Although German liberals would initially define the German nation as open to everyone who accepted the basic liberal notions of Kultur (culture) and Bildung (education), regardless of their ‘ethnic’ or linguistic background, simultaneous competing notions of nationhood developed, based on language and/or religion. Hungarian liberals were rather more successful in that respect, turning the state educational system and bureaucracy into a well-oiled machine for assimilation. Yet both German and Hungarian concept of the nation would later change into one based on a much narrowly define social group, conditioned by religion or race. The second part of the paper focuses on the case of Slovene nationalism in the same time period and the role religion (in the Catholic case) and/or language (in the Catholic and Liberal cases) played in national identification. Yet, even in the era of narrowly defined and supposedly inherited national identities such categories were defied in several instances, a brief overview of which shall follow. Finally, the paper argues that perhaps a more refined theoretical apparatus is needed, in order to make sense of the intricacies of national, religious and political allegiances of the time.

Prof. Don Doyle(University of South Carolina)

The popular expression ‘anyone can become an American’ overlooks the brutal exclusion of non-whites in US history, but it summarizes an essential American belief that national belonging ought to be voluntary and open to newcomers. Paradoxically the Age of Nationalism that coursed through Europe and the Americas during the 19th century coincided with the largest international migration in human history. Millions of migrants not only changed citizenship, they also changed national identity. Instead of being treated as fixed primordial traits, language, religion, and other ethnic characteristics came to be understood as matters of choice in America's immigrant mélange.

Immigration to the United States, and its role in the creation of American nationalism, is a topic that has garnered an enormous amount of interest from scholars across many fields of sociological, cultural, political and historical enquiry. This paper explores how military service influenced the immigrant experience between 1861 and 1865 and the ways in which American nationalism was reconfigured around the figure of the soldier. The main focus of the paper will be on the Civil War, but comparative examples will be drawn from the Mexican War (1846-48) and the Spanish-American War (1898), to trace how warfare, immigration, ethnicity and race became reconceptualised within American nationalism; how the ideal of the ‘citizen soldier’ was modified to incorporate or exclude the ‘non-citizen’ soldier; and the extent to which, in the American case, blood sacrifice established more contested ground than scholars have yet appreciated.

Nationalism in the Himalaya

Given the debate between Civic and Ethnic Nationalism, my paper will argue for an alternative form of Nationalism. In this respect, both Ernest Renan and B.R. Ambedkar gain great importance. Both writers strove to construct a Nationalism that is coexistent and accountable to democracy by staying outside the two poles of Nationalist discussion. Both strove for a balance between the Cultural/Ethnic and Civic elements of the Nation without prioritizing one or the other. Finally, they argued for a Nationalism capable of including a larger political community by establishing and developing the dialogical link between Nationalism and Democracy. This alternative route to Nationalism is pursued by creating a more dual relationship between Democracy and Nationalism. In other words, creating a Nationalism that is always more accountable to a political community organised on the basis of equality. The dual relationship between Nationalism and Democracy avoids the pitfalls of both Civic and Cultural Nationalism by centralising concepts such as Reason, Selfdetermining agency, Democratic rights and institutions, and Citizenship. These concepts provide key ingredients to the creation of a certain moral universe (akin to Buddhism, as posited by Ambedkar) that will help construct institutions able to balance and hold accountable the inherent egocentrism and exclusive nature of Nationalism.

The present paper endeavours to analyse the use and scope of Western positivistic legal tools in the creation of the Nepali nation. This paper suggests a two-level analysis. Firstly, a historical analysis of Nepal’s political and legal developments shall be presented to investigate the rationale behind the use of law as a social engineering and homogenising tool promoting an identifiably Nepali national identity. Secondly, the paper shall focus on the current debates concerning constitutional change in Nepal. The debates about the demise of the 1990 Constitution in early 2007, and the forthcoming elections of a Constituent Assembly need to be investigated in the light of the growing politicisation of ethnicity in the country. The overarching demand for inclusion stems from the discontent of Nepal’s ethno-linguistic, religious, and regional minorities with their historical subordination. The marginality of many groups within the Nepalese polity has been legitimised by the constitutionally-sanctioned narratives defining the Nepali nation until 2006, namely Hinduism, the Shah monarchy, and the Nepali language. Such narratives have been perceived as an imposition of the dominant Parbatiya Hindu high castes. In this regard, Nepal’s Grundnorm has become the main battleground for identity politics, and – at the same time – its primary vehicle. Ultimately, the present paper aims to link the study of nation-building in Nepal with the theoretical debate the ASEN Conference concerns itself with. The Nepali experience seems to be somewhere between the civic and ethnic models of nationalism enunciated by Kohn, and this is what this paper aims to illustrate.

"The Tibetan nation is a nation that has had to live and thrive in India, and also, to a lesser extent, in Nepal and Bhutan, instead of in Tibet, for the last fifty years or so. But, as Lord Acton put it, exile is the nursery of nationality, which implies that, at first, exile can be seen less as an impediment than as a blessing for the nation, also in the Tibetan case. Yet, the specificity of the exile nation is a strong desire to regain, or, in the Tibetan case, to gain, an independent state. Indeed, in a world mostly composed of nation-states, the exile nation, which can at first be considered stronger than other nations, if we follow Lord Acton's argument, soon becomes an abnormality. Hence this strong desire to fit in the norm and move from the status of nation-in-exile to the status of nation-state. But the question remains as to the type of nation that the exile nation can, or, more exactly, has to, choose. I wish to contend here that, as a nation for itself, the exile nation has to be ethnic, while, as a nation to the outside world, the exile nation has to be, or at least, appear as, civic. I will use the Tibetan case to try and analyse the inherent tension as to the type of nation, and, consequently, as to the form of nationalism, to be retained by exile nations in general."

This paper discusses the practical implementation of the Jewish Labour Bund’s national program through an examination of its social and cultural activities in interwar Poland. The Bund’s national program both reconceptualized national relations according to Marxist (but non-Bolshevik) principles and advanced an original conception of the Polish Jews’ cultural and political status based on a secular understanding of Jewish national-cultural identity. The program’s central demand was that the Polish state must grant Jews — and all other national minorities — a national-cultural autonomy, that is, a limited self-government restricted to issues pertaining culture, language and education. In so doing, this program challenged the dominant paradigm of nationalism by demanding that Poland officially accept its character as a multinational state. Whereas nationalism (Jewish, Polish or otherwise) assumes that the political and national units must be congruent (each national group must live in and have control over its own sovereign state), the Bund’s notion of national-cultural autonomy rests on the idea that state and nation need not be congruent. While mobilizing the masses of Jewish workers to achieve changes in the Polish state’s constitution, the Bund actively endeavoured to promote Polish-Jewish national identity by developing a Yiddish socialist subculture. This subculture included a wide range of trade-unionist, cultural, educational and recreational activities, such as a school network, a publishing house, local workers’ libraries, women’s organizations, children’s and youth organizations, choirs and theatre troupes, health and mutual aid organizations, a daily newspaper, several journals, leisure and sport organizations, and the Bundist network of trade unions. In this paper I will discuss some of the Bund’s cultural activities and organizations, show how they were informed by the party’s national program, and explain why the Bund’s cultural efforts constituted a national-cultural autonomy in the making.

The distinction between Western and Eastern nationalisms (political/civic the first, genealogical/ethnocentric the second one) is not easy in European areas – as Spain and Carpathian basin – in which the development of the main nationhood – respectively Castilian and Hungarian – is in historical interaction with other nationalities and different phenomenons of peripheral nationalisms.

In the Spain framework, the regional nationalism of Catalans is inclusive phenomenon. By the time of big industrialization (end of XIX century) Catalonia have a lot of immigration (not only of Castilian people) and shows a trend of an inclusive aptitude, with language and way of life. On the other hand, by the beginning of Basque nationalism (at the end of XIX century, in the same period of urbanization/industrialization) the genealogy and the blood are the basic elements versus the Spanish people flows.

In the area of Carpathian basin – as former St Stephen crown of Hungary – Transylvania is a multinational region with a traditional autonomy. After the First World War, the regional soul of `Transylvanism' stands out among Hungarians but based on Transylvanian 'Nations'. In this perspective, the idea of 'Nation' is defined not by race but by culture and territory. This inclusive and 'regional' civic conception is popular until 1940, when the division of Transylvania let the political space to the ethno-nationalists in Hungary and in Transylvania too, particularly in the Land of Szeklers.

The paper explores the analytical utility of the typology of ethnic and civic nationhood by comparing the nation formation processes in Britain from the 18th century and in Japan from the late 19th century. In particular, the paper focuses on the comparison of the processes of integrating a periphery into the core: the Scottish Highland in the case of Britain and Okinawa in the case of Japan. The comparison will be based on a secondary analysis of contemporary documents written either in support of or against such integration in Britain and Japan. The documents and commentaries on them will be analysed to determine to what extent different conceptions of nationhood (a predominantly civic one in the British case and a predominantly ethnic one in the Japanese case) can account for differences in the processes and attitudes to integration of the periphery in each case. The paper will then examine the effects of differences in imperial ideology and different phases of racialist thinking to assess the utility of the distinction between ethnic and civic nationhood in understanding nation-formation processes. 1 The concept of Jus Soli (lat. ‘the law of the soil’) underlies the allocation of citizenship based territorial membership. For example, unconditional Jus Soli allocates citizenship to all persons born on the territory of a country. The concept of Jus Sanguinis stands in opposition to Jus Soli as it allocates citizenship purely based on descent. Since the Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (RuStG) of 1913, German citizenship had been granted strictly based on Jus Sanguinis to those of German descent only.