nation and nationalism

7/23/2019 Nation and Nationalism

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Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991, pp. 5-7.

"In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - - and imagined as both inherentlylimited and sovereign.

"It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never knowmost of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mindsof each lives the image of their communion. Renan referred to this imagining inhis suavely back-handed way when he wrote that 'Or lessence d'une nation est quetons les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oubli bien des choses.With a certain ferocity Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.' The drawback to this formulation, however, is that Gellner is so anxious to show that nationalism masquerades under false pretences that he assimilates 'invention' to 'fabrication' and 'falsity', rather than to 'imagining' and 'creation'. In this way he implies that 'true' communities exist which can be advantageously juxtaposed to nations. In fact,all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. Javanese villagers have always known that they are connected to people they have never seen,but these ties were once imagined particularistically-as indefinitely stretchab

le nets of kinship and clientship. Until quite recently, the Javanese language had no word meaning the abstraction 'society.' We may today think of the French aristocracy of the ancien rgime as a class; but surely it was imagined this way only very late. To the question 'Who is the Comte de X?the normal answer would havebeen, not 'a member of the aristocracy,' but 'the lord of X, 'the uncle of theBaronne de Y,'or 'a client of the Duc de Z.'

"The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassingperhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of thehuman race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet.

"It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destorying the legitamcy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.

"Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceivedas a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes i

t possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not somuch to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

"These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (scarcely morethan two centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of nationalism."


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Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications, 1995.

"... there is something misleading about this accepted use of the word nationalism. It always seems to locate nationalism on the periphery. Separatists are oftento be found in the outer regions of states; the extremists lurk on the margins of political life in established democracies, usually shunned by the sensible politicians of the centre. The guerrilla figures, seeking to establish their new homelands, operate in conditions where existing structures of state have collapsed, typically at a distance from the established centres of the West. From the perspective of Paris, peripherally placed on the edge of Europe. All these factorscombine to make nationalism not merely an exotic force, but a peripheral one. Inconsequence, those in established nations at the centre of things are led to see nationalism as the property of others, not of us.

"This is where the accepted view becomes misleading: it overlooks the nationalism of the Wests nation-states. In a world of nation-states, nationalism cannot beconfined to the peripheries. That might be conceded, but still it might be objected that nationalism only strikes the established nation-states on special occasions. Crises, such as the Falklands or Gulf Wars, infect a sore spot, causing bodily fevers: the symptoms are an inflamed rhetoric and an outbreak of ensigns. But the irruption soon dies down; the temperature passes; the flags are rolled up; and, then, it is business as usual." (p. 5)

"... the term banal nationalism is introduced to cover the ideological habits wh

ich enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced. It is argued that these habits are not removed from everyday life, as some observers have supposed. Daily, the nation is indicated, or flagged, in the lives of its citizenry. Nationalism, far from being an intermittent mood in established nations, is the endemic condition." (p.6)

"The central thesis of the present book is that, in the established nations, there is a continual flagging, or reminding, of nationhood. The established nations are those states that have confidence in their own continuity, and that, particularly, are part of what is conventionally described as the West. The political leaders of such nations whether France, the USA, the United Kingdom or New Zealand are not typically termed nationalists. However, as will be suggested, nationhood provides a continual background for their political discourses, for cultural produ

cts, and even for the structuring of newspapers. In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag whichis being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.

"National identity embraces all these forgotten reminders. Consequently, an identity is to be found in the embodied habits of social life. Such habits include those of thinking and using language. To have a national identity is to possess ways of talking about nationhood. As a number of critical social psychologists have been emphasizing, the social psychological study of identity should involve the detailed study of discourse. Having a national identity also involves being si

tuated physically, legally, socially, as well as emotionally: typically, it means being situated within a homeland, which itself is situated within the world ofnations. And, only if people believe that they have national identities, will such homelands, and the world of national homelands, be reproduced.

"In many ways, this book itself aims to be a reminder. Because the concept of nationalism has been restricted to exotic and passionate exemplars, the routine and familiar forms of nationalism have been overlooked. In this case, ourdaily nationalism slips from attention. There is a growing body of opinion that nation-states are declining. Nationalism, or so it is said, is no longer a major force: gl


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obalization is the order of the day. But a reminder is necessary. Nationhood isstill being reproduced: it can still call for ultimate sacrifices; and, daily, its symbols and assumptions are flagged." (pp.8-9)

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983, pp. 6-7

"In fact, nations, like states, are a contingency, and not a universal necessity. Neither nations nor states exist at all times and in all circumstances. Moreover, nations and states are not the same contingency. Nationalism holds that theywere destined for each other; that either without the other is incomplete, andconstitutes a tragedy. But before they could become intended for each other, each of them had to emerge, and their emergence was independent and contingent. Thestate has certainly emerged without the help of the nation. Some nations have certainly emerged without the blessings of their own state. It is more debatablewhether the normative idea of the nation, in its modern sense, did not presuppose the prior existence of the state.

"What then is this contingent, but in our age seemingly universal and normative,idea of the nation? Discussion of two very makeshift, temporary definitions will help to pinpoint this elusive concept.

1. "Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture, where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations and waysof behaving and communicating.

2. "Two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are theartefacts of men's convictions and loyalties and solidarities. A mere categoryof persons (say, occupants of a given territory, or speakers of a given language, for example) becomes a nation if and when the members of the category firmly recognize certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of their shared membership of it. It is their recognition of each other as fellows of this kind which turns them into a nation, and not the other shared attributes, whateverthey might be, which separate that category from non- members.

"Each of these provisional definitions, the cultural and the voluntaristic, hassome merit. Each of them singles out an element which is of real importance in the understanding of nationalism. But neither is adequate. Definitions of culture, presupposed by the first definition, in the anthropological rather than the normative sense, are notoriously difficult and unsatisfactory. It is probably bestto approach this problem by using this term without attempting too much in theway of formal definition, and looking at what culture does."

Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Neither objective nor subjective definitions are thus satisfactory, and both aremisleading. In any case, agnosticism is the best initial posture of a student in this field, and so this book assumes no a priori definition of what constitutes a nation. As an initial working assumption any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a 'nation', will be treated assuch. However, whether such a body of people does so regard itself cannot be established simply by consulting writers or political spokesmen of organizations claiming the status of 'nation' for it. The appearance of a group of spokesmen forsome 'national idea' is not insignificant, but the word 'nation' is today used


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so widely and imprecisely that the use of the vocabulary of nationalism today may mean very little indeed.

Nevertheless, in approaching 'the national question' 'it is more profitable to begin with the concept of "the nation" (i.e. with "nationalism") than with the reality it represents'. For 'The nationas conceived by nationalism, can be recognized prospectively; the real "nation" can only be recognized a posteriori.'

This is the approach of the present book. It pays particular attention to the changes and transformations of the concept, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. Concepts, of course, are not part of free-floating philosophical discourse, but socially, historically and locally rooted, and must be explained in terms of these realities.

For the rest, the position of the writer may be summarized as follows.

1. I use the term 'nationalism' in the sense defined by Gellner, namely to mean'primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.' I would add that this principle also implies that the political duty of Ruritanians to the polity which encompasses and represents the Ruritaniannation, overrides all other public obligations, and in extreme cases (such as wars) all other obligations of whatever kind. This implication distinguishes modern nationalism from other and less demanding forms of national or group identification which we shall also encounter.

2. Like most serious students, I do not regard the 'nation' as a primary nor asan unchanging social entity. It belongs exclusively to a particular, and historically recent, period. It is a social entity only insofar as it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the 'nation-state', and it is pointless todiscuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to it. Moreover, with Gellner I would stress the element of artifact, invention and social engineering which enters into the making of nations. 'Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent ... political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes preexisting cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates preexisting cultures: that is a reality.' In short, for the purposes of analysis nationalism comes before nations. Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.

3. The 'national question', as the old Marxists called it, is situated at the point of intersection of politics, technology and social transformation. Nations exist not only as functions of a particular kind of territorial state or the aspiration to establish one - broadly speaking, the citizen state of the French Revolution - but also in the context of a particular stage of technological and economic development. Most students today will agree that standard national languages, spoken or written, cannot emerge as such before printing, mass literacy and hence, mass schooling. It has even been argued that popular spoken Italian as anidiom capable of expressing the full range of what a twentieth-century languageneeds outside the domestic and face-to-face sphere of communication, is only being constructed today as a function of the needs of national television programming. Nations and their associated phenomena must therefore be analyzed in terms o

f political, technical, administrative, economic and other conditions and requirements.

4. For this reason they are, in my view, dual phenomena, constructed essentiallyfrom above, but which cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people, which are not necessarily national and still less nationalist. If I have a major criticism of Gellner's work it is that his preferred perspective ofmodernization from above, makes it difficult to pay adequate attention to the view from below.


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That view from below, i.e. the nation as seen not by governments and the spokesmen and activists of nationalist (or non-nationalist) movements, but by the ordinary persons who are the objects of their action and propaganda, is exceedingly difficult to discover. Fortunately social historians have learned how to investigate the history of ideas, opinions and feelings at the sub-literary level, so that we are today less likely to confuse, as historians once habitually did, editorials in select newspapers with public opinion. We do not know much for certain.However, three things are clear.

First, official ideologies of states and movements are not guides to what it isin the minds of even the most loyal citizens or supporters. Second, and more specifically, we cannot assume that for most people national identification - whenit exists - excludes or is always or ever superior to, the remainder of the setof identifications which constitute the social being. In fact, it is always combined with identifications of another kind, even when it is felt to be superior to them. Thirdly, national identification and what it is believed to imply, can change and shift in time, even in the course of quite short periods. In my judgment this is the area of national studies in which, thinking and research are mosturgently needed today.

5. The development of nations and nationalism within old-established states suchas Britain and France, has not been studied very intensively, though it is nowattracting attention. The existence of this gap is illustrated by the neglect, i

n Britain, of any problems connected with English nationalism - a term which initself sounds odd to many ears - compared to the attention paid to Scots, Welsh,not to mention Irish nationalism. On the other hand there have in recent yearsbeen major advances in the study of national movements aspiring to be states, mainly following Hroch's pathbreaking comparative studies of small European national movements. Two points in this excellent writer's analysis are embodied in myown. First, 'national consciousness' develops unevenly among the social groupings and regions of a country; this regional diversity and its reasons have in thepast been notably neglected. Most students would, incidentally, agree that, whatever the nature of the social groups first captured by 'national consciousness',the popular masses - workers, servants, peasants - are the last to be affectedby it. Second, and in consequence, I follow his useful division of the history of national movements into three phases. In nineteenth-century Europe, for which

it was developed, phase A was purely cultural, literary and folkloric, and had no particular political or even national implications, any more than the researches (by non-Romanies) of the Gypsy Lore Society have for the subjects of these enquiries. In phase B we find a body of pioneers and militants of 'the national idea' and the beginnings of political campaigning for this idea. The bulk of Hroch's work is concerned with this phase and the analysis of the origins, composition and distribution of this minorit agissante. My own concern in this book is morewith phase C when - and not before - nationalist programmes acquire mass support, or at least some of the mass support that nationalists always claim they represent. The transition from phase B to phase C is evidently a crucial moment in the chronology of national movements. Sometimes, as in Ireland, it occurs beforethe creation of a national state; probably very much more often it occurs afterwards, as a consequence of that creation. Sometimes, as in the so- called Third W

orld, it does not happen even then.

Finally, I cannot but add that no serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist, except in the sense in which believersin the literal truth of the Scriptures, while unable to make contributions to evolutionary theory, are not precluded from making contributions to archaeology and Semitic philology. Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so. As Renan said: 'Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.' Historians are professionally obliged not to get it wrong, or at least to make an effort not to. To be Irish and proudly attached to Ireland - even to be proudly Ca


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tholic-Irish or Ulster Protestant Irish - is not in itself incompatible with theserious study of Irish history. To be a Fenian or an Orangeman, I would judge,is not so compatible, any more than being a Zionist is compatible with writing agenuinely serious history of the Jews; unless the historian leaves his or her convictions behind when entering the library or the study. Some nationalist historians have been unable to do so. Fortunately, in setting out to write the present book I have not needed to leave my non-historical convictions behind.

nation and nationalism

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