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What is nationalism and why should we study it?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Abstract
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- Copyright © The IO Foundation 1986
References
1. Waldron, Arthur N., “Theories of Nationalism and Historical Explanation,” World Politics 37 (04 1985), p. 427CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I agree with Waldron's core argument that the vague invocation of “nationalism” in explaining events in the non-European world is unsatisfactory, because the “adjective ‘nationalist’ has been attached to people, movements, and sentiments in a way that is taken (usually without explanation) as distinguishing each of them meaningfully from some other variety.” Indeed, as tie says, struggle comes first, and then nationalism, and to understand why there is a struggle we must understand its political source (p. 433). That, however, is not what interests me. I am concerned with a single general situation—patterns of rationalization in the post—Enlightenment world-and many specific events, i.e., the behavior of selfidentified groups in coping with that world. Nationalism is one (and only one) way in which such groups do identify themselves. No more general claim is suggested.
2. The concept of rationalization, of course, is adapted from Max Weber. The best discussion of Weber's often confusing and contradictory treatment of the concept is Stephen Kalberg, “Max Weber's Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Processes in History,” American Journal of Sociology 85 (03 1980)Google Scholar. Kalberg is especially helpful in showing the relationship Weber established between his four types of rationality (theoretical, practical, formal, substantive) and the four types of social action (traditional, affectual, value-rational, means-end rational) (p. 1161). Strictly speaking, we are concerned with the types of social action. What matters for nationalism is that it combines, in its various types, all four types of social action in various volatile mixtures that call into question the final victory of any rationalization formula. I am indebted to Kenneth Jowitt for the crisp definition of the combined value rational/end-means rational formula of social action.
3. My reasoning owes a lot to Keohane, Robert O., “Reciprocity in International Relations,” International Organization 40 (Winter 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4. In Weber's work the “formal rational” type is usually juxtaposed to other types of rationalization which feature tradition and religion as core features of legitimate authority. One (overly simplified) way of reading Weber is to treat “rational” principles of social order as flatly opposed to religious ones. Does it follow that religion is totally incompatible with rationalization that relies on nationalism? Terrance G. Carroll examined four ideal-typical nation-states (liberal, Marxist, social democratic, and conservative) in order to determine whether each is able to practice the kind of adaptation I discuss, if its population is strongly identified with one of the major traditional religions. He concludes that nations strongly identified with liberal and/or Marxist values cannot at the same time practice adaptation while traditional religions hold sway. He confirms the strong version of Weber's thesis. However, he also confirms the weak version by showing that modernization can be compatible with Shi'a Islam and Catholicism. Sunni Islam offers more difficulties, Hinduism is neutral, while Buddhism is held to be incompatible with modernization. Carroll, , “Secularization and States of Modernity,” World Politics 36 (04 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5. Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1953Google Scholar); Nationalism and Its Alternatives (New York: Knopf, 1969)Google Scholar.
6. The typology of nationalist ideologies developed by Carlton J. H. Hayes influenced the one used in this review. See his Essays on Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1926)Google Scholar; The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York: R. R. Smith, 1931)Google Scholar; Nationalism: A Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1960)Google Scholar. Among the many works of Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1944) pioneered many of the dichotomies that still characterize the literatureGoogle Scholar. The sharpest juxtaposition of Western (early) and of non-Western nationalism is Kedourie, Elie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson, 1960)Google Scholar, and Nationalism in Asia and Africa (New York: Meridian Books, 1970)Google Scholar.
7. Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Self-Determination Revisited in the Era of Decolonization (Harvard University, Center for International Affairs, Occasional Paper No. 9, 1964)Google Scholar; Fallers, Lloyd A., The Social Anthropology of the Nation-State (Chicago: Aldine, 1974)Google Scholar; Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976).Google Scholar The classic statement of Third World national identity in terms of cultural encounters between Western settlers and indigenous intellectuals is Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon, 1967)Google Scholar.
8. Typical works include: Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review (09 1961)Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W. and Foltz, William, eds., Nation-Building (New York: Atherton, 1963)Google Scholar; Doob, Leonard W., Patriotism and Nationalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N. and Rokkan, S., eds., Building States and Nations, 2 vols. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1973)Google Scholar; International Interactions 11, 2 (1984), entire issueGoogle Scholar. Public opinion data on issues relating to nationalism are published regularly in Eurobarometre (Brussels: European Communities). For examples of studies combining quantitative and qualitative treatments most effectively see Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, and Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar.
9. For example, Shafer, Boyd, Nationalism: Myth and Reality (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955)Google Scholar; Snyder, Louis L., Varieties of Nationalism: A Comparative Study (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden, 1976)Google Scholar and Global Mininationalisms: Autonomy or Independence (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982)Google Scholar. The problem of the compatibility of socialism and nationalism is exhaustively explored by Talmon, J. L., The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar, and Davis, Horace B., Nationalism and Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967)Google Scholar.
10. In a review of Smith's earlier work, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), Gale Stokes argues that although Smith succeeded in erecting the most complete and sophisticated typology of nationalist ideologies, he falls short of exploiting this success by stating a theoryGoogle Scholar. Stokes, as I do too, finds Gellner's, Thought and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) to be closer to theoryGoogle Scholar. Stokes is still concerned with identifying the features or attributes that characterize the “true” nation and that distinguish nationalism from other political ideologies, a task I deliberately foreswear. See “The Undeveloped Theory of Nationalism,” World Politics 21 (10 1978)Google Scholar.
11. “Social Forecasting: The State of the Art,” as quoted with approval by Fallers, Lloyd, Social Anthropology, p. 134Google Scholar. Fallers offers contrasting studies of nation building in Turkey and Uganda in order to isolate the patterns of syncretism that emerged when traditional values collided with Western ones. He illustrates nicely the discipline required to avoid retrodiction that merely tells the history of the country and to escape the hubris of predicting the future.
12. For a more fully articulated but similar set of definitions linked to propositions consistent with my general argument, see Francis, E. K., lnterethnic Relations (New York: Elsevier, 1976), pp. 381–405Google Scholar.
13. Collected Works of Paul Valiry, ed. Mathews, Jackson, vol. 10 (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1962), p. 14Google Scholar.
14. Gurr, Ted Robert and McClelland, Muriel, Political Performance (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971)Google Scholar.
15. On Switzerland see Schmid, Carol L., Conflict and Consensus in Switzerland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar; this books contains ample quantitative evidence on language and nationalist symbols. On Belgium see Lijphart, Arend, ed., Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1981)Google Scholar. Kenneth Jowitt shows how these variables manifest themselves in quite different forms in “market” as opposed to “ordered” societies, in which interpersonal competition is legitimated in terms of its contribution to the organic unity of the entire society (as in Leninist polities). See his The Leninist Response to National Dependency (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978)Google Scholar.
16. For a convincing demonstration that game-theoretic formulations can illustrate the outcomes of encounters between language centralizers and speakers of minority languages see Laitin, David D., “Political Linguistics and Catalonia after Franco” (Paper read at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 08 1985)Google Scholar.
17. I have discussed the argument that follows more fully in The Obsolescence of Regional Theory (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1975)Google Scholar; “Why Collaborate?” World Politics 32 (04 1980)Google Scholar; and “Words Can Hurt You: or, Who Said What to Whom about Regimes,” International Organization 34 (Spring 1982)Google Scholar.
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