Nationalism in Europe. Past and Present (book review)
Luis Moreno1996, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, 1 (4): 143-5 (ISSN: 1353-7113).
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Forget the `nation`: post-nationalist understanding of nationalism
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2000
There is a great failure and mental morass concerning theory and political practice of nation and nationalism, including not only traditional approaches but late nationalism studies as well. The reason is a long-standing and widely shared quest for adequate de nition of what does not exist, in reality, as a collective body. Nation is a powerful metaphor which two forms of social groupingspolity (state) and ethnic entity (the people)are ghting to have as their exclusive property. In its latest manifestation, it is an argument for geopolitical engineering and for questioning the legitimacy of weaker collective actors on the part of the winners. There is no sense in de ning states and ethnic groups by the category of a nation. The latter is a ghost word, escalated to a level of meta-category through historic accident and inertia of intellectual prescription. A suggested 'hard scenario' for breaking the methodological impasse is a 'zero option', when both major clients for being a nation will be deprived of a luxury called by that label. The process of dismantling the non-operational category should be started with the intellectual courage to forget the nation as an academic de nition and extend this logic into the domain of politics and everyday discourse.
Review of 'Nationalism and Multiple Modernities' 2014
Atsuko Ichijo, Nationalism and Multiple Modernities: Europe and Beyond. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 143pp. £55 (hbk).
A critique of nationalism
1996
The reemergence of nationalism in Europe is characterized by its strong appeal to values outside modernist spheres of reference. Its success is a symptom of profound dissatisfaction with modernist ideals, resulting in, in the words of William McBride, a sort of global malaise. 1 Juergen Habermas' analysis of the changes in Europe is, as I shall show, inadequate, especially for Eastern Europe. The new nationalism defies an analysis like his that is too rationalistic and couched in Enlightenment ideals such as morality for morality's sake, a rather conceited conception of reason, and an abhorrence (or at least a commitment to uncompromising domination) of nature. I will try to explain how the history of nationhood in Europe is influencing the current resurgence of nationalism as the new direction of society. It will be interesting to note the difference between unified Germany and Eastern Europe. The Germany's tradition included a very strong appeal to mythology which did not translate well into the reasonableness of enlightenment but did translate well into postmodernism. The case study of Yugoslavia as a victim of nationalist forces, which gained the upper hand as a consequence of the lack of any other forces, will serve to demonstrate the "newness" of the nationalism there. Habermas 1 " Rethinking Democracy in Light of the East European Experience," in The Social Power of Ideas, pg. 125
Conclusion: Speculations on the Future of Nationalisms
2008
By way of concluding this book, I want to recapitulate the multiple accounts of nationalism that crisscross through the preceding chapters. At one level, the chapters describe nationalism, its rise, its different manifestations, and its important facets. Clearly, as the chapters reflect, there are disagreements about what various scholars have to say about nationalism and its patterns. At another level, then, are the questions of how to approach nationalism and what broader themes are encoded within its idiom, such as race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. A culturalist approach to nationalism is shaped by, but also critical of, what are loosely described as modernist theories of nationalism. Partly shaped by Anderson and Hobsbawm's insights, the culturalist approach sees nationalisms as modern phenomena that are conceived, but are not unreal. I also want to emphasize that this is not to simply acknowledge that nationalisms are culturally constructed but to push the argument further: that nationalisms need to be continually imagined, reproduced, and reiterated in order for them to appear normal and natural. Therefore, a second point is that both the banal as well as the spectacular moments of nationalisms can provide important insights. The persisting influence of nations and nationalisms is not merely a factor in moments of crisis or spectacles such as independence-day celebrations in former colonies and the USA, for that matter. If anything, nations and nationalisms are woven through the fabric of everyday life. Third, a culturalist approach departs from modernist theories in two related ways: it argues against a single theory of nationalism and its origins; and it challenges Euro-Americancentered perspectives on nationalism that either disregard non-western
“Typologies and phases in nationalism studies: Hroch's A-B-C schema as a basis for comparative terminology,” Nationalities Papers, vol. 38, no. 6 (November 2010), 865-80.
Nationalities Papers
Nationalism: A Chronological Reading
Temaşa Erciyes Üniversitesi Felsefe Bölümü Dergisi, 2022
As it is not possible to name any particular founders or pioneers in nationalism studies, instead of primordialist and modern interpretations, this paper reads nationalism in chronological order by dividing them into four sections. The first section focuses on how nationalism started to be defined as a concept by referring to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Sturm und Drang movement, Immanuel Kant's definition of freedom, the importance given to language by Johann Gottfried Herder and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract, whereas the second one deals with the awakening of nationalism with reference to the French Revolution, John Stuart Mill's seeing nation as a portion of mankind, Ernst Renan's definition of the nation as a spiritual thing, and Marxism's undefinition of the term. The third section discusses the acceleration of nationalism studies by mentioning Carlton J. H. Hayes' classification of modern nationalism, Hans Kohn's classification of nationalism into western and non-western and Edward Hallett Carr's division of the history of international relations into three periods, and the last section analyses the period when nationalism studies is at its peak by giving references to the definitions of nationalism by Ernest Gellner as political principle, Elie Kedourie as an invented doctrine, Anthony David Smith as an ideological movement, Eric Hobsbawm as invented tradition, Benedict Anderson as imagined communities and Michael Billig as banal.
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The concept of nationalism in discussions on a European society
Journal of Political Ideologies
In scholarship, nationalism has been found to be an integral ingredient of any sense of nationhood. In everyday public use, nationalism is used as a term of disapproval. The stubborn discursive border between the two uses of the concept of nationalism evokes questions about the historical preconditions of creating an ism concept based on the roots 'nation' or 'national'. In the period often called 'the age of nationalism', from the French Revolution to the First World War, nationhood was essentialized in ways that did not allow nations to be explained as constructions of any ism. 'Nationalism' gained popularity from the 1890s onwards as a critical concept directed at ideas and actions that broke against what was seen as the legitimate role of a nation. Defining the role of nations and nationhood took place in a series of political contests utilizing the concept of nationalism. Debates on Europe and 'European society' created one of the contexts of these contests. In current scholarly discussion on the idea of a European society, the critique of 'methodological nationalism' has been targeted at the nation-state-bound notion of society. However, in much of policyoriented research and policy planning, the references to nationalism only contain views and actions found to be reactions against globalization and European integration. 'Nationalism' does not apply to efforts to improve 'our' national and European competitiveness nor 'our' joint EU policies of external bordering.
The role of language in European nationalist ideologies
Pragmatics, 1992
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Changing Societies & Personalities, 2020
REVISITING NATIONALISM
alter the arrangement.) (1) This Westphalian Peace, as is widely believed, heralded the system of nation-states in Europe. However, this peace should be understood in the sense of Orwellian doublespeak. The Westphalian system ushered in a new series of national wars for hegemony in Europe and in colonies -and through a number of local wars, Napoleonic campaign, Franco-Prussian war , this process went on upto the two world wars in the twentieth century, and even beyond that up to the present time.
Stefan Berger and Eric Storm, "Introduction: Writing the History of Nationalism - In what way, for whom and by which means" in: Stefan Berger and Eric Storm eds., Writing the History of Nationalism (London: Bloomsbury 2019) 1-18.
2019
Right from the beginning of the renaissance of nationalism studies in the 1980s particular bodies of theory influenced conceptualizations of nation and nationalism in a major way. And yet, much historical work that was being produced during the last four decades did not reflect in a major way on the interconnection between specific bodies of theory and particular ways of framing both nation and nationalism. In this volume we would like to foreground bodies of theory that have had a major impact on nationalism studies in order to allow students of history to see that, depending on which theory you find most convincing, you will end up with quite different ideas about the meaning of nations and nationalism. This chapter introduces the volume, provides a short overview of the different chapters and concludes with a short reflection on the challenges for future research of which the denationalization of history writing is probably the most important.
New approaches to nationalism
Modernism/modernity, 1995
Whatever nationalism is, whether ideology, civic religion, popular sentiment, or mass psychosis, its influence on modern society, politics, and art has been profound, perhaps more influential than the political movements of liberalism, fascism, and communism, all of which it underlay, interacted with, and powerfully defined. Whether analysts view nationalism as a beneficial or detrimental historical force, they tend to agree that this potent and multifarious phenomenon warrants sustained and rigorous analysis. The recent burst of academic studies is, in part, the product of that consensus. The current wave of nationalist movements around the globe not only provides powerful additional evidence for this assertion, but also presents interesting difficulties for those who study the topic. The three works under review here provide an opportunity to consider the challenges of analyzing nationalism in what is an increasingly nationalistic moment. In their respective strengths and weaknesses, these books confirm that our efforts to come to terms with nationalism as an historical artifact are always entangled to some extent with our sense of it as a contemporary political problem, and therefore, that we need to find ways of dealing with that entanglement in an honest and productive manner, so that we can elucidate nationalism without unwittingly perpetuating the errors that characterize its history.
"DO COMPARATIVE AND REGIONAL STUDIES OF NATIONALISM INTERSECT?" (2005)
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2005
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