EuropeanNationalism
Week3:Nationalism:how
primordial,howancient?
7993918, 5 credits
19.01.2017 - 02.03.2017, U37 sh 3
Juhana Aunesluoma, Research director, Network for
European Studies
[email protected]
Office hours: by appointment
Today’s class
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Nationalism: issues of definition
Everyday nationalism (banal nationalism)
Oral presentation: Steve & Krista
The ’great debate’ and the long roots of nationalism(?)
Nationalism (I)
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a process of formation or growth of nations
a sentiment or consciousness of belonging to the nation
a language and symbolism of the nation
a social and political movement on the behalf the nation
a doctrine and/or ideology of the nation, both general and particular
• An ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity
and identity for a population which some of its members deem to
constitute an actual or potential ”nation”. (Anthony D. Smith)
• Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the
nineteenth centur … Briefly, the doctrine holds that humanity is naturally
divided into nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics
which can be ascertained´, and that the only legitimate type of
government is national self-government (Elie Kedourie)
Nationalism (II)
• Nationalism is either a) a form of political mobilization that is
directed at rectifying a perceived absence of fit between the
boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of the state; or b) the
ideology that justifies this. (Coakley, 2012)
• And what could be added to the above political definition: c) the
ideology that maintains the continuity of the claims of the nation to
the state and serves as a justification for the group members’ mutual
solidarity. (Aunesluoma)
Objective andsubjective
factors
• Objective and subjective factors behind nations and
nationalism (Smith)
• (more) objective: community’s institutions, boundaries, language,
religion, customs, traditions, economic life etc
• (more) subjective: ’imagined communities’, ’daily plebiscite’,
constant construction of a nation, nationalism as a form of
discourse
Dimensionsofnationalism
1) nationalism as discourse
2) nationalism as project
3) nationalism as evaluation (Calhoun, 1998)
• Nationalism as a theory of community
• Nationalism as a way of being within the world of nations
• Nationalism as a way of imagining ‘Us’ and ‘Them’
• Stereotypes of national character, identity and history
• Critique of essentialism
• it is problematic to use primary identifiers
• or to think that some single criterion defines the ‘essence’ of something,
for example a nation.
Therhetoricofnation:features
1. Boundaries, of territory, population, or both
2. Indivisibility – the notion that the nation is an integral unit
3. Sovereignty, or at least the aspiration to sovereignty, and thus formal equality
with other nations, as autonomous state
4. An ‘ascending’ notion of legitimacy – the idea that government is just only when
supporter by popular will or at least when it serves the interest of the ‘the people’
or ‘the nation’
5. Popular participation in collective affairs – a population mobilized on the basis of
national membership (in war or in peace)
6. Direct membership, in which each individual is understood to be immediately a
part of the nation and in that respect categorically equivalent to other members
7. Culture, including some combination of language, shared beliefs and values,
habitual practices
8. Temporal depth – a notion of the nation as such existing through time, including
past and future generations, and having a history
9. Common descent or racial characteristics
10. Special historical or even sacred relations to a certain territory
(Calhoun, 1998)
Nationalistsandnationalism
(Billig)
• Languages and dialects
• The modern imagining of different languages
• Waved flags
• Visible, purposeful nationalism, ‘saluted flags’
• Nationalism understood by nationalists as a ‘thing’, a force
behind nation-states or national identities
• Essentialism of nationalism, nations exist as real, concrete
entities, every person must have a nationality
• Remembering and forgetting (E. Renan)
• Good (our) patriotism, bad (their) nationalism
• Differentiation between nationalisms, us and them -divisions
Banalnationalism(Billig)
• Taken for granted, common-sense and unquestioned
• Nationalism is not a ‘surplus’ phenomenon in society confined
to particular social movements (p. 38)
• it is embedded in the social and cultural fabric of nation-states
• Other scholars largely ignored it before Billig wrote his work in
the 1990s
• the concept seeks to make a broad variety of dimensions of
nationalism more visible and an object of analysis
• Examples
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‘unwaved flags’, that is ‘unsaluted flags’
everyday social practices and routines of life
the use of symbols
common (international) language or grammar of nationalism
Importanceofnationalism
(Billig)
• Banal, everyday and ‘continuing’ nationalism, nationalism is
and can be found everywhere
• Ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism
• Making and imagining of nations, states and peoples;
nationalism and the nation-state in the modern era; ‘the
milieu of the nation-state is the modern world’ (p. 19)
• The international world of nations, the system of the nationstates as the dominant paradigm
Criticismagainstthemodernist
explanationofnationalism
Perennialist explanations (or neo-perennialist):
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‘Nations’ existed before modern nationalism in Europe, since the middle
ages in particular in Western Europe (England a good example)
Premodern nations grew spontaneously over centuries, therefore one
cannot begin the history of nationalism in 1789
Nation formation and nationalism is not an elite project, popular
sentiments and ‘deep cultural resources’ are important
• The role of religion and churches
Modernists approach is eurocentric: In Asia nation and state formation
have long roots
The distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism is artificial and
historically inaccurate. National identities have their roots in ethnic
identities
Nations can be found in antiquity as well (for example ancient Egypt)
• But the link between them and subsequent nations and nationalism
is weak)
Aninteractivemap ofEuropean tribes
http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesEurope/Barbarian_Map52BC_max.htm [retrieved
2/14/2016]