Nationalism Lecture 3: Theories I Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman Swiss - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Nationalism

Lecture 3: Theories I

• Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) Seilergraben 49, Room G.2 lcederman@ethz.ch http://www.icr.ethz.ch/teaching/nationalism Assistant: Kimberly Sims, CIS, Room E 3, k-sims@northwestern.edu

Theories of nationalism: Main Debates

Nationalist primordialism

Essentialism

Anti-nationalist ideology

Constructivism Perennialism Modernism

Essentialism

Cultural Raw Material Political Identities

1 : 1

Articulation, Rediscovery Ethnic cores See Cederman, “Nationalism and Bounded Integration”

Essentialism

• Essentialism claims that nations are based on

ancient cultural “raw material” and that there is a one-to-one correspondence between ethnic cores and national identities.

• Variations:

– Primordialism holds that the nation is natural – Perennialism contends that the nation is pre-modern – Methodological essentialism reifies the nation for analytical reasons

Constructivism

Cultural Raw Material Political Identities Selection & Mobilization Ethnic boundaries

Constructivism

• Constructivism argues that national

identities are actively invented and modified by nationalist entrepreneurs selecting and mobilizing cultural traits for political purposes.

• Variations:

– Instrumentalism – Bounded-institutionalist theories

Bounded Institutionalism

Cultural Raw Material Political Identities Institutional “lock-in”

Gellner’s constructivism

• Targets:

– Nationalist primordialism: “Sleeping Beauty” – Perennialism: “Dark Gods Theory” – Anti-nationalist ideologies (Marxism & Liberalism): “Wrong-Address Theory”

• Gellner’s response:

– Nations are not natural – Nations are not old – Nationalism is an integrated part of modernity and cannot be wished away Ernest Gellner

Gellner’s philosophy of history

Industrial Society Pre-Agrarian Society Agrarian Society

“Agro-literate” polity with horizontal elite

• n top and insulated

peasant communities at the bottom Vertically integrated large- scale society unified by culture Stateless society

The logic of nationalism

• High culture replaces structure

(Thought and Change, 1964)

• Key to high culture: educational

system

• “Not the guillotine, but the doctorat

d’état is the main tool and symbol of state power. The monopoly of legitimate education is more important, more central than the monopoly of legitimate violence.”

Gellner’s typology

Center No education Education Pre-nationalist situation Classical liberal nationalism Ethnic nationalism Diaspora nationalism Periphery No education Education