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> Tamilnation Library >
Nations & Nationalism > Nationalism: Theory,
Ideology, History (Key Concepts) TAMIL
NATION LIBRARY: Nations & Nationalism * indicates link to
Amazon.com
online bookshop "....The ideology of nationalism has been
defined in many ways but most of the definitions overlap and
reveal common themes. The main theme, of course, is an
overriding concern with the nation. Nationalism is an ideology
that places the nation at the centre of its concerns and seeks
to promote its well-being. But this is rather vague. We need to
go further and isolate the main goals under whose headings
nationalism seeks to promote the nation's well-being. These
generic goal: are three: national autonomy, national unity and
national identity, and, for nationalists, a nation cannot
survive without a sufficient degree of all three. This suggests
the following working definition of nationalism: 'An ideological
movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and
identity for a population which some of its member deem to
constitute an actual or potential "nation".' p9 From the Introduction
The significance of this topic should not be in doubt to anyone
even mildly familiar with events since the fall of the Berlin Wall
in 1989. Few of the many international political crises of the last
decade or so have not involved a strong component of ethnic
sentiment and nationalist aspiration, while some of them � notably
those in the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East �have been
triggered, and even defined, by such sentiments and aspirations.
These have proved to be the most bitter and intractable conflicts,
the most costly in terms of lives and resources, the most resistant
to the efforts of governments and others to accommodate the
interests of the respective parties, and the most impervious to the
blandishments and threats of friend and foe. But, beyond the headlines, with their descriptions of the
conflict and violence of 'hot' nationalisms, we encounter a more
stable and taken-for-granted structure of 'international' relations,
which shape and channel the processes and events of the modern
world. This is something which is often referred to as 'a world of
nations'. By such a phrase is meant not some essentialist
reification of nations or nation-states, but, rather, a political
map and institutional and emotional framework in and through which
personalities, events and wider processes of change leave their mark
and contribute to the transformations that have forged, and continue
to shape, the contemporary world. Michael Billig (1995) refers to
this map and framework in terms of an everyday, `banal' nationalism,
one that is habitually `enhabited' in society � ingrained into the
very texture of our lives and politics, ever-present, if barely
visible, like `unwaved flags'. But the significance of nationalism is not confined to the world
of politics. It is also cultural and intellectual, for 'the world of
nations' structures our global outlooks and symbolic systems. I am
not claiming for nationalism any significant degree of intellectual
coherence, let alone the tradition of philosophical engagement
characteristic of other modern political traditions such as
liberalism or socialism. Nevertheless, even if it lacked great
thinkers, nationalism � or perhaps we should say, the concept of the
nation � has attracted considerable numbers of influential
intellectuals � writers, artists, composers, historians,
philologists, educators � who have devoted their energies to
discovering and representing the identities and images of their
respective nations, from Herder, Burke and Rousseau to Dostoevskii,
Sibelius, Diego Rivera and Iqbal. The cultural and psychological importance of the nation, and
hence of nationalism, is even more profound. The ubiquity of
nationalism, the hold it exerts over millions of people in every
continent today, attests to its ability to inspire and resonate
among 'the people' in ways that only religions had previously been
able to encompass. This suggests theneed to pay close attention to
the role of symbolic elements in the language and ideology of
nationalism, and to the moral, ritual and emotional aspects of the
discourse and action of the nation. It is not enough to link a
particular national(ist) discourse to specific political actors or
social groups, let alone read off the former from the social
position and characteristics of the latter. Nationalism has its own
rules, rhythms and memories, which shape the interests of its
bearers even more than they shape its contours, endowing them with a
recognizably 'nationalist' political shape and directing them to
familiar national goals. It is these rules, rhythms and memories of nationalism with which
I shall be particularly concerned here, for they provide a bridge
from the outer world of power politics and social interests to the
inner world of the nation and its characteristic concepts, symbols
and emotions. This concern in turn shapes the way in which I have
structured the argument of this book. That argument revolves around
the major, underlying 'paradigms' of understanding in the field, and
the political, historiographical and sociological debates which they
have fuelled. These debates are diffuse and wide-ranging. They
concern not only competing ideologies of nationalism, nor even just
the clash of particular theories. They involve radical disagreements
over definitions of key terms, widely divergent histories of the
nation and rival accounts of the `shape of things to come'. Each of these debates and differences requires separate
consideration. I start, therefore, with terms and concepts,
outlining the main differences in approach to the definition of key
concepts such as 'ethnic.', 'nation', 'nationalism' and `national
state', and offering my own route through this minefield. Next I
consider the ideology, or ideologies, of nationalism, notably the
debate between 'organic' and 'voluntarist' approaches, as well as
the vexed question of a 'core doctrine' of nationalism. Chapter 3 turns to questions of explanation, and discusses the
basic divide between 'modernist' and other approaches. It then
outlines the key features of the four main paradigms of explanation
� modernism, primordialism, perennialism and ethno-symbolism �
revealing their theoretical interrelations. Chapter 4 continues this
discussion by showing how the key theoretical debates in the field over the role of
ideology, rational choice, the modern state and social construction
in the genesis of nations and nationalism derive from these four
paradigms and reveal their respective strengths and limitations. The fifth chapter relates different 'histories of the nation' �
modern, medieval and ancient � to particular theories and their
master-paradigms, and then argues for an 'ethnosymbolic' reading
which links modern nations to premodern ethnies through myth,
symbol, memory, value and tradition. A final chapter considers the
prospects for nations and nationalism in a 'postmodern' epoch of
ethnic revival, globalization and increasingly hybridized identity �
as well as the utility of postmodernist and constructionist
understandings and cultural ethno-symbolic interpretations of the
future of nations and nationalism. My aim throughout is twofold: in the first place, to outline the
key debates in the field as clearly as possible, and, second, to
offer my own ethno-symbolic account. This is clearly no easy task.
Though I outline (and defend) such an approach at various points, I
am conscious of the need to give as much coverage as possible within
the constraints of space to alternative theories and readings, to
provide readers with the necessary information and argument to allow
them to make up their own minds. Similarly, while aiming for clarity
throughout, I am concerned to reveal the full extent of scholarly
divisions and disagreements about the phenomena of nations and
nationalism. There are no easy solutions in this much-disputed field
of study, and it would be idle to pretend that we are on the verge
of some general consensus. At the same time, we possess today much
more information about specific cases and the role of various
factors on which to base our discussions and disagreements; and that
in itself allows a clearer view of the field and its problems, and
hence of the tasks ahead. It is in this spirit that I offer this
brief introduction for those new to the field."
"This
short book (182 pages) aims to introduce the concept of nationalism
to readers and students for whom the field is unfamiliar. It focuses
on nationalism primarily as an ideology, but also as a social
movement and symbolic language, and explores its meanings, varieties
and sources. Inevitably, this entails a consideration of related
concepts, such as the nation, national identity and the national
state. As a result, the scope of this work is broad and necessarily
interdisciplinary: in particular, it draws on the disciplines of
history, sociology, political science, international relations and,
to a certain extent, Anthropology. The latter is included because
some attention needs to be given to the cognate field of ethnicity;
for, as I hope to show, ethnic identities and communities constitute
a large part of the historical and social background of nations and
nationalism.
