NATIONS AND NATIONALISM
- Official nationalism - This form of nationalism arose historically as a reactionary response to popular nationalisms from below, directed against rulers, aristocrats and imperial centres.
- The speed of change and the power of the Future also had the effect of fundamentally altering people’s ideas about the past.
- linguistic nationalism - The underlying belief was that each true nation was marked off by its own peculiar language and literary culture, which together expressed that people’s historical genius.
- Oral literary traditions - were written down and disseminated through print as popular literacy slowly began to increase.
View of Liberal Multiculturalists
Nations
Hybridity and Multiculturalism
- Multiculturalism and nationalism are compatible.It balances cultural diversity against a common citizenship.
- Moral, cultural and lifestyle choices can be left to the individual, while common political allegiance help bind people together
Nationalism Revived
- From the Latin word nasci – "to be born"
- a complex phenomena shaped by a collection of factors:
- culturally- group of people who share a common language, religion, history and traditions
- politically- group of people who regard themselves as natural political community, classically expressed through the quest for sovereign statehood
- psychologically- group of people bound together by shared loyalties or allegiances, often expressed in the form of patriotism
- The most significant implication of increased migration is social and cultural diversity.
- More societies accepted to embrace their multicultural character.
- The advance of multiculturalism led to campaigns for minority rights..
- Cultures can thus learn and enrich each other, strengthening cultural understanding but blurring national distinctiveness.
View of Conservatives
Nations as Cultural Communities
- Rise of cultural and ethnic nationalism.
- ethnic unity and strengthening the idea of cultural distinctiveness
- Increase in national self-assertion
- nationalism became a driving force for economic and political development, based on strength, unity and pride.
- Nationalism has developed as a reaction against globalization, as a form of resistance.
- Multiculturalism and nationalism are incompatible. Multicultural societies are conflict-ridden.
- Ethnic and cultural diversity are therefore enemies of national unity and political stability.
- In developing countries, ethnic minorities acquire disproportional economic power. In developed countries, ethnic minorities are confined to low status and low income jobs.
- A nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history, and traditions, although nations exhibit various levels of cultural heterogeneity.
- Commonly takes the form of national self-affirmation.
Johann Gottfried Herder
- the innate character of each national group was ultimately determined by its natural environment, climate and physical geography, which shaped the lifestyle, working habits, attitudes and creative propensities of a people.
- language- embodiment of people’s distinctive traditions and history
Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism
- ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’
- Philippine nationalism - very similar to those in Cuba and continental Latin America
- Meiji nationalism - similar to the late nineteenth-century official nationalisms we find in Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia and Imperial Great Britain
- Indian nationalism is morphologically analogous to what one finds in Ireland and in Egypt
- Creole nationalism—arose out of the vast expansion of some of these empires overseas, often, but not always, very far away.
- ‘overseas’ settlers - from the Southeastern coastal regions of the Celestial Kingdom were the core constituencies for these nationalism
Nation in a Global World
Migration
Causes:
- A consequence of conquest and invasion, followed by settlement and colonization
- Traveled by choice for economic reasons.
- Religious or political persecution.
2 reasons why there has been a significant acceleration in the rate of migration:
- Growing number of refugees which resulted from war, ethnic conflict and political upheaval.
- Economic factors and developments, particularly those linked to economic globalization.
Conservative Nationalism
- each nation possesses a volksgeist
- Nations are an organic or ‘natural’ entities characterized by a distinctive language, culture and ‘spirit’
Ernest Gellner
- nationalism is linked to modernization and to the process of industrialization
- industrial societies promoted social mobility, self-striving and competition, and so required a new source of cultural cohesion
- Nationalism therefore developed to meet the needs of particular social conditions and circumstances
- It is concerned with the promise of social cohesion, public order and stability embodied in the sentiment of national patriotism.
- Sees the nation as an organic entity emerging out of basic desire of human to gravitate towards those who have the same views, habits lifestyles and appearance as themselves.
- Sees immigration, supranationalism and globalization of culture as a threat to national identity
Liberal Nationalism
- It is based on the fundamental assumption that humankind is naturally divided into a collections of nations, each possessed of a separate identity.
- The central theme of this form of nationalism is a commitment to the principle of national self-determination
- The characteristic theme of liberal nationalism is that it links the idea of the nation with a belief in popular sovereignty.
- Goal of Liberal Nationalism: The construction of a world of sovereign nation-states.
- ‘Popular Nationalism’ - widespread consciousness of nationhood in the late 19th century; fashioned by the invention of national anthems and flags
- Benedict Anderson - modern nation as an artifact, an ‘imagined community’, they exist more as mental images, constructed for us through education, the mass media, and political socialization
- Nations have in common is that, in theory, they were founded on a voluntary acceptance of a common set of principles or goals, as opposed to an existing cultural identity
Expansionist Nationalism
- This form of nationalism has an aggressive, militaristic and expansionist character.
- Associated with Chauvinism, the irrational belief in the superiority or dominance of one’s own group of people.
- 19th century European imperialism-national prestige was linked to the possession of an empire
- World war I and World War II resulted from expansionist nationalism.
The Nation State
Anthony Smith
- highlighted the continuity between modern nations and premodern ethnic communities— ethnies
- nations are historically embedded
- ethnicity is the precursor of nationalism
- Cultural nationalism commonly takes form in national self-affirmation
- Since the final decades of the 20th century, the age of nationalism is over because its task had been completed: the world had become a world of nation-states.
- Nation had been accepted as the sole legitimate unit of political rule.
- These changes have been fuelled largely by the quest for national independence.
- Nation State- offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity.
Nationalism
The beliefs that the nation is the most basic principle of political organization.
- Based on 2 core assumptions:
- Humankind is divided into distinct nations
- The nation is the only legitimate unit of political rule.
Varieties of Nationalism
- Liberal Nationalism
- Conservative Nationalism
- Expansionist Nationalism
- Anticolonial Nationalism
Anti-Colonial Nationalism
- Colonialism helped to forge a sense of nationhood shaped by the desire for “national liberation”.
- The political geography of much of the world today was transformed by anti colonialism.
- Some countries which achieved independence:
- India-1947
- China-1949 (After an 8-year war with the Japanese)
- Indonesia-1949 (After a 3-year war with the Netherlands)
- Nigeria-1960 (After a war with UK)
- Algeria- 1962 (After a war fought against the French)
- Kenya- 1963
- The quest for political independence was linked to a desire for social development and for an end to their subordination.
Nations as Political Communities
- emphasizes civic loyalties and political allegiances
- bound together primarily by shared citizenship because citizenship has greater political significance than ethnic identity
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau - father of modern nationalism; his stress on sovereignty expressed in the idea of ‘general will’ = common good of society; animated by ideas of democracy and political freedom
- Eric Hobsbawn - nations are ‘invented traditions’, believed that historical continuity was a myth and that nationalism creates nations
Group 1