Nationalism: Themes, Theories, and Controversies [1st ed.] 9789811593192, 9789811593208

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Introduction: Resurgent Nationalism (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 1-10
The Contested Terrain of Nations, Nationalism and National Identity (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 11-37
The Modern Origins of Nations, Nationality and Nationalism? (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 39-67
The Premodern, Cultural Origins of Nations and Nationality? (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 69-95
Nationalism and Populism in the Age of Globalization (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 97-131
Conclusions: The Emotional Power of Nationalism (Lloyd Cox)....Pages 133-147
Back Matter ....Pages 149-153

Citation preview

Nationalism

Themes, Theories, and Controversies Lloyd Cox

Nationalism

Lloyd Cox

Nationalism Themes, Theories, and Controversies

Lloyd Cox Department of Politics and International Relations Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-15-9319-2 ISBN 978-981-15-9320-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

While writing this book, the world was plunged into a global pandemic. This has torn at the national seams of global economic and cultural life. It has again highlighted the contradictions between global economic integration and environmental interdependence on the one hand, and the political fragmentation of the planet into national states and identities, on the other. The pandemic has made manifest the continuing relevance of nationalism for understanding the world in the Twenty-First Century, about which this book makes a modest contribution. Like many, I became vaguely aware of coronavirus sometime in January 2020. It was not like 9/11 or a presidential assassination, where one can vividly recall the exact place and time when one heard the shattering news. It was more like an imperceptible increase in the volume of what had been background noise, which would soon grow into a media cacophony. After China, serious outbreaks engulfed South Korea, Iran, and Italy, and quickly moved into Spain, France, Germany, and Great Britain. Around the same time, the United States and Australia recorded their first cases of coronavirus, a word that only a month previously had been associated exclusively with Wuhan. But now it was not just a word. Thousands were dying in multiple countries, hospitals were becoming overwhelmed, and the spread of the virus was accelerating. The reassuring words of politicians could no longer conceal the gravity of the situation. In March, whole

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countries began to lock down their citizens or take other serious mitigation measures. The movement and motion that greases the wheels of capitalist commerce began to slow. A global health crisis was morphing into an economic shock that threatened to sink the entire world into a severe depression. A tragedy was unfolding that affected the lives of everyone everywhere, albeit in very different ways. The political response to the pandemic has taken diverse forms. These range from shoulder-shrugging indifference and promises that it would disappear, in the United States and Brazil, to comprehensive and sustained lockdowns, in New Zealand, India, and the Philippines. Regardless of the differences, all of these responses, even the most laissez faire, share two related features. First, they all entail the mobilization of state resources to meet the public health and economic consequences of the virus. Contrary to what some had once supposed about the state-eroding effects of globalization, states remain indispensable institutions for coordinating societywide action to meet social challenges, including crises. Second, this stateled mobilization is articulated in the name of the nation. ‘We are all in this together’ is the catch-cry of national political leaders everywhere, despite the manifest inequities in who gets and is more likely to die from the virus. The ‘We’ that state leaders appeal to, and on whose behalf they assume to speak, is the nation. They beseech their citizens to fight the virus together and make sacrifices for the nation. And their citizens have, at least in the early months of the virus, largely accepted the national challenge. The real-world inequalities that the virus and its economic consequences have so starkly revealed, are seemingly transcended by an abstract national togetherness, equality, and unity. There could be few clearer illustrations of the enduring power of nationalism. The pandemic has also exacerbated economic nationalism, which was growing long before anyone had heard of Covid-19. This is most obviously the case with the trade war between the United States and China. It intensified in the first half of 2020, and the nationalistic rhetoric from both sides increases the possibility of diplomatic incidents that could trigger military conflict. Economic nationalism is paralleled by what some have referred to as ‘vaccine nationalism.’ States partner with pharmaceutical giants in a race to develop effective treatments and a coronavirus vaccine. But they make it clear, or at least some of them do, that their own nationals will be given preference for receiving the treatments and vaccines

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should they be successfully developed. Finally, the pandemic has strengthened national borders, dramatically slowed migration and, much international polling suggests, hardened attitudes towards would-be immigrants. In so doing, it merely continues and deepens the sort of anti-immigrant nationalism that has grown in the years since the global financial crisis. All of this underlines the contemporary significance of nationalism, an appreciation of which is essential for any rounded understanding of the history and future trajectory of world politics. Thankfully, many intellectual resources exist that can facilitate such understanding. These range from the classic contributions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social thinkers, through those that exemplified the renaissance in nationalism studies in the 1980s and 1990s, to more recent works by scholars exploring the bases of nationalist populism. This book provides a short but critical analysis of the themes, theories, and controversies that have marked debates in this literature. It does so with a view to developing more original ideas about nationalism, and where its study should be directed. As with any academic work, this book crystallizes ideas that have been formed in conversations and interaction with others, though, needless to say, I take responsibility for the final product. Many of the arguments and interpretations in this book took embryonic form in my Ph.D. Dissertation, patiently supervised by Johann P. Arnason, an incredible scholar about whom one cannot speak highly enough. The examiners of the thesis—John A. Hall, Barry Hindess, and Goran Therborn—provided invaluable feedback that sharpened my thinking about nationalism, for which I thank them. More recently, I have benefitted from many conversations with my colleagues Govand Azeez, Aleksandar Pavkovic, and Jumana Bayeh, and my co-writers on other projects, Steve Wood and Brendon O’Connor. Thanks also to my colleague Jon Symons, who read the draft of an earlier chapter. Finally, I owe a huge dept of gratitude to my family, who make life joyous even in an age of uncertainty. My wonderful daughter Ruby was a baby during an earlier iteration of this project, and now her little brother Jimmy has been stomping around the house while I wrote this book. They are both treasures. But most of all I thank my wife Georgia for supporting me through what was, in the context of Covid-19

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lockdowns, a bit of an ordeal. You are the greatest, and this book is for you (though you don’t have to read it!). Sydney, Australia August 2020

Lloyd Cox

Contents

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Introduction: Resurgent Nationalism References

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The Contested Terrain of Nations, Nationalism and National Identity The Sociological, Linguistic and Political Origins of National Ambiguity Classical Approaches to Nations, Nationalism and Nationality Contemporary Approaches to Nations, Nationalism and Nationality Nation, Nationalism and Nationality: An Analytical Vocabulary Conclusion References

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The Modern Origins of Nations, Nationality and Nationalism? Uneven Capitalist Development and Nationalism Miroslav Hroch on the Specificity of Nationalism Gellner on Nationalism, Industrialization and Modernization The Political and Modern Specificity of Nationalism?

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Is Nationalism Exclusively About the Modern State and Politics? Conclusion References

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The Premodern, Cultural Origins of Nations and Nationality? Ancient Nations Before Nationalism? Medieval Nations Before Nationalism? Anthony Smith on the Ethnic Origins of Nations Modernity and the National Field Conclusion References

69 71 77 83 88 93 94

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Nationalism and Populism in the Age of Globalization Globalization and Nationalism: A Zero-Sum Game? The Nationalist Populist Revolts Brexit and ‘Taking Control’ Trumpism and White Ethno-Nationalism Explaining Nationalist Populism Conclusion References

97 99 110 113 116 121 125 126

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Conclusions: The Emotional Power of Nationalism Nationalism and Emotions Final Thoughts References

133 137 143 145

Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Resurgent Nationalism

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, world politics has been repeatedly convulsed by nationalist conflict and contention. The Global Financial Crisis that began in 2008 reinforced this trajectory. The growth of far-right nationalist populism in Europe, the white ethno-nationalism of Trump in the United States, the resurgence of great-power nationalism and rivalry in Asia, and the resilience of nationalist secessionist movements in diverse parts of the planet, are just some of the manifestations of heightened nationalist politics. More recently, the coronavirus pandemic underlines the power of contemporary nationalism. This introductory chapter provides some historical context for these developments, and for the renaissance in nationalism scholarship that has sought to understand them. It identifies the key themes and controversies around which debates in the field have turned, not least the definition and historical periodization of national phenomena. The chapter concludes by outlining the book’s key objectives, its organizational logic, and the content of each chapter. Keywords Nationalism · Nationalist conflict · Globalization · Covid-19 and nationalism · Nationalist populism

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8_1

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It is a curiosity of contemporary intellectual history that the global turn in the social sciences coincided with a sharp increase in theoretical and substantive work on nationalism. In 1983 Benedict Anderson could comment that plausible theory about nations, nationalism and nationality was conspicuously meagre. Yet only eight years later, in the preface to the second edition of Imagined Communities , he noted that the study of nationalism had been ‘startlingly transformed – in method, scale, sophistication and share quantity’ (1991: xii). Contributions in the English language alone, including important works by Armstrong (1982), Breuilly (1982), Gellner (1983), Hroch (1985), Smith (1986), Chatterjee (1986), and Hobsbawm (1990), had rendered the traditional literature on nationalism largely obsolete. Since then, the quantity of work on nationalism and national identity has proliferated, with numerous contributions expanding the historical depth and theoretical sophistication of their study (Beiber 2020; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Greenfeld 2019; Malesevic 2013, 2019; Skey and Antonsich 2017; Wimmer 2013, 2018). All of this is hardly surprising. It reflects a reality in which nationalism and national identity have remained important bases of political solidarity, conflict and instability since the end of the Cold War, despite what some had supposed about the universalizing and homogenizing thrust of globalization (Malesevic 2019: 2–5; Ozkirimli 2017: 1). This is confirmed by even the most cursory glance of major political developments over the past three decades. In 1994, for instance, 18 of 23 wars being fought in the world had arisen out of conflicts based on nationalism and/or ethnicity. At the same time, three quarters of the world’s refugees had been displaced by such conflicts, and eight out of thirteen United Nations’ peace-keeping missions were for the purpose of keeping peace between ethno-nationalist adversaries (Gurr cited in Hechter 2000: 3). This was at a time of brutal nationalist conflict in the states of the fragmenting Yugoslav Federation, ethno-nationalist bloodletting in Rwanda, and continued nationalist contention in states as disparate as Indonesia, Russia, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. By the end of the century, over three quarters of wars where there were more than 1000 deaths in battle were waged either by secessionists or ethno-nationalist groups struggling for power within existing states (Wimmer 2013: 2–3). Atavistic national identities, some with a genuinely venerable lineage and others of more recent provenance, defied the cosmopolitan promise of a more globally interconnected world.

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The proximate source of much, but not all, of nationalism’s efflorescence in the 1990s is not difficult to identity. The collapse of ‘already existing socialism,’ and with it the break-up of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia along national lines, accounts for much of the increased nationalist contention and violence in that decade (Vujacic 2015; Beissinger 2009). Those conflicts continue to cast a long shadow over contemporary political space. But as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the old Soviet Empire recede in the historical rear-view mirror, it is clear that this was not simply Hegel’s ‘owl of Minerva’ flying at dusk, as Eric Hobsbawm had optimistically predicted (1990: 183). Instead, the new century brought political developments that confirmed the political and cultural salience of nationalism in diverse parts of the planet. The attenuation or even collapse of state power in parts of Africa and Asia, for example, opened up political conditions of possibility that were particularly fertile for ethno-nationalist mobilization and secessionist movements, as cases in tropical and subtropical Africa and the Horn of Africa—from Burundi and the Congo to Sudan and Eretria—attest (See Part VI of Pavkovic and Radan 2011: 455–528). Something similar could be said of the Middle East in the wake of the political rebellions that convulsed the region from Yemen to Egypt to Syria in 2011, and the conservative backlash against them in the months and years that followed. While much of the western media coverage of these events focused on Islamist movements and pan-Arab transnationalism, the political demands of protestors were more often couched in the redemptive language of nationalism rather than religion (Hanieh 2013). As Marc Lynch astutely observes, ‘the early Arab uprisings were both national and transnational, local and regional … But even during such moments of pan-Arab sentiment, the potency of national identity could be seen in the ostentatious waving of national flags and chanting of national slogans by Egyptian and Jordanian protesters’ (Lynch 2015 no pagination). Similarly, the conservative reaction to the rebellions was framed as saving the nation. Across the Atlantic, left-wing populists in much of Latin America in the 2000s and 2010s also found a renewed appreciation for the mobilizing power of nationalism, particularly when it was directed against the United States and its local supporters (De la Torre 2013; Madrid 2008; Eastwood 2006). Appeals to ‘the People’ were invariably made in the name of the nation, notwithstanding the socialist accent that leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales gave those appeals. If populist rhetoric was transgressive in some respects, it was deeply

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conservative in its reverence for the nation. It could hardly be otherwise in circumstances where ‘the masses’ are still in the thrall of nationalist ways of comprehending the world. The attraction of nationalism was not, however, limited to disadvantaged populations in less developed states. Its exacerbation was also felt in many advanced western states. Nationalist movements in the Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom, for instance, became more politically active and electorally successful, culminating in a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, in which 45 percent of the population voted to secede from the Union. That would be followed two years later by the Brexit vote, where British nationalists, many of whom did not easily fit into customary Left/Right binaries, were able to persuade 52% of voters to leave the European Union. This was paralleled in Spain by demands for independence referenda and a growing militancy among Catalonian and Basque separatists, with the former being brutally supressed by Madrid in the period 2017–2019. Perhaps even more significant than these longstanding nationalist contentions has been the growth of far-right, anti-immigrant nationalist populism through much of Europe, Scandinavia, North America and Australasia (Kaufmann 2018; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018). The success of such movements and parties is not only measured electorally, as important as this is; their success is also reflected in the pressure that they have put on more traditional, centre right conservative parties to protect their right flank by adopting some of the nationalist rhetoric and policies of the Far Right. Meanwhile, the United States witnessed the political earthquake of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in November 2016, on a platform of America First-ism and economic nationalism (Abramowitz 2018; Dionne et al. 2017). Trump successfully pedalled a recycled nationalist nostalgia for an era of alleged American greatness abroad and white, male, heterosexual supremacy at home. A significant part of his appeal was his explicit repudiation of economic globalization, immigration and elite cosmopolitan values, in favour of a narrow national provincialism. Regardless of what one might think of Donald Trump and his brand of anti-elitist, racialized narcissism and toxic masculinity, one must concede that his nationalist message was attractive to a large bloc of American voters. No snapshot of contemporary expressions of nationalism would be complete without also noting the re-emergence of Great Power, nationalist rivalry. For a brief historical moment in the 1990s, the United States had been the world’s sole superpower. A decade later this was already

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beginning to change, with China emerging as a global economic growth engine, and the Chinese Communist Party proselytizing the nationalist slogan, ‘never forget national humiliation’ (Wang 2012). This was accompanied by a more assertive diplomatic and military stance on the global stage after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which in turn enflamed nationalist sentiment in its near neighbours, not least of all Japan. A recuperating nationalist Russia would soon follow suit, though lacking the new prosperity of China or the global reach and power of the former Soviet Union out of which it emerged. Leaders of lesser powers such as India, Brazil, Mexico, Iran and Israel would also deploy the nationalist playbook to mobilize their populations and enhance their political fortunes, often fusing nationalism with various forms of religious identity. Finally, the Covid-19 crisis that engulfed the world as this book was being completed underlines the contemporary power of nationalism. As the virus began spreading beyond its point of origin in Wuhan, China, states began closing their borders under the guise of national selfpreservation. The supposedly frictionless world of neoliberal globalization and unfettered flows of commodities and tourists rapidly succumbed to the global pandemic. In a development rich in irony, the speed with which the virus spread underlined the depth and breadth of global interconnectedness, while simultaneously begetting an intense economic nationalistic response throughout much of world. The pre-coronavirus trade dispute between the United States and China is now deepening, as is the heat of the nationalistic rhetoric in which it is articulated. It risks transmutation into a more dangerous confrontation, as governments in Beijing and Washington deflect criticism at home and abroad by attacking each other, while wrapped in their respective national flags. In the first two decades of the Twenty-First Century, then, the nation and nationalism are back with a vengeance, if indeed they had ever gone away. All of the developments sketched above have elicited a renewed interest in their forms, functions, causes and consequences, of which this book is but one manifestation. Despite the renewed interest, many of the conceptual and definitional problems that have long surrounded discussions of nations and nationalism remain unresolved (Bieber 2020: 5–10; Hroch 2015: 1–3; Roshwald 2006: 1–3). If anything, the field has been rendered even more confusing by the multiplication of competing accounts over the past four decades. There remain long-standing controversies around the

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ontological status of nations; whether they are ‘real’ or merely conceptual; whether they are specifically modern or have pre-modern roots; and whether they should be regarded as cultural or political entities or some combination of the two. Moreover, the nation is routinely conflated with the state, with individual states often being mistakenly referred to as nations (Bieber 2020: 1). These confusions are manifested in the linguistic convention of the ‘nation-state,’ which implies a territorial, cultural and political symmetry between nation and state that seldom if ever exists. The term nationalism is hardly clearer. It is still disputed as to whether it refers to a political doctrine (Kedourie 1960), a belief system (Motyl 1990), a set of practices (Brubaker 1996), or a type of political mobilization (Breuilly 1993). In addition, the debate about whether nationalism is an expression or a cause of nations remains one of the key controversies in the literature. These differences are manifested in debates around the meaning of national identity. The answer to the question, ‘identity in respect of what?’ remains opaque in a context where ‘nation’ has multiple, fiercely contested meanings. This book addresses these issues and more, by exploring the key themes, theories and controversies that are central to both classical and contemporary approaches to nationalism. Its main objective is to provide readers with a concise, critical overview of social science scholarship on nationalism, with a view to developing some insight into its contemporary efflorescence. The focus is on theoretical and empirical works by sociologists, political scientists and historians who have made important contributions to our understanding of nationalism. Here I have had to make judgments about which thinkers best exemplify particular positions, and the relative importance of these positions in the overall debate. I have also had to make difficult judgments about how much space to devote to particular debates and authors, made more difficult by the concision required in a book of modest length. No doubt my personal preferences have shaped these judgments, though I have conscientiously sought to include works that have both scholarly merit and are influential, even where I do not agree with the views enunciated. In so doing, the aim is not to simply provide a catalogue of ideas and theories about nationalism, but to critically analyse their strengths and weaknesses, out of which I develop original contributions to the debates canvassed. In pursuing these objectives, the book is divided into five chapters additional to this introduction. Chapter 2 provides a conceptual house cleaning, by analysing confusions that have bedevilled the field, and by

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providing an account of the sociological, linguistic and political conditions that have contributed to such confusions. It continues with a critical appraisal of classical and contemporary approaches to nationalism, paying particular attention to definitional themes and controversies. Out of this discussion, an analytical vocabulary of the ‘national field’ is developed that informs subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 moves from conceptual, definitional themes, to controversies around the history, periodization and theory of nationalism, and more particularly their alleged modernity. It asks the question, are nations and nationalism inherently modern phenomena, and analyses some of the most important contributions of those who have answered in the affirmative. The material is divided into accounts that have emphasized the novel socio-economic aspects of modernity as being the key explanation for nationalism (capitalism and industrialism), and those that have emphasized the novel political features of modernity (state centralization, war, and the rise of mass, democratic politics). In outlining the strengths and weaknesses of these contending positions, I argue that state centralization, war and capitalism were and are organically connected, and that they all contribute to any rounded explanation of the emergence of nationalism. Chapter 4 continues discussing the themes with which the previous chapter grappled, but with a focus on arguments that posit the premodern, cultural origins of nations and national identity. Here the terminology of one of the doyens of nationalism studies, Anthony Smith, is adopted, with various permutations of ‘perennialism’ and ‘ethnosymbolism’ being subjected to critical scrutiny. The material is organized around accounts that posit the existence of ancient national identities extending back to Antiquity, those that argue for the medieval European roots of national identification, and the position of Anthony Smith himself who has argued that the origins of modern nations and nationalism are to be located in the pre-modern, ethnic cores or ‘ethnies’ that constituted the culture and identity of dominant elite groups. I argue that the focus on culture, and myth and symbolism more specifically, is crucial for understanding the politics of modern nationalism, but that claims about the pre-modern origins of national identities should be rejected. Chapter 5 moves from the big historical debates about nationalism, to more contemporary political and cultural debates about the relationship between nationalism, globalization and populism. It is argued that globalization and nationalism share an elective affinity whereby the latter has been exacerbated by an intensification of the former. This chapter

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discusses this dialectic, with a particular focus on its political ramifications, as manifested in the recent surge of far-right, nationalist populism in Europe and the United States. I suggest that the bifurcation in the literature between those who emphasize the economic roots of this nationalist turn, and those who couch their explanations in terms of cultural identity, is unhelpful. Rather, capitalist-driven economic inequality, and the anxieties with which it is associated, is inextricably linked with growing ethnic diversity in many parts of the western world, which has created its own anxieties around the futures of particular identities. The brief concluding chapter is more programmatic in character. It is argued that if our understanding of nationalism is to seriously advance in the coming years, it will be necessary for scholars to draw upon and creatively adapt the growing research into collective emotions, and their connection to the more instrumental bases of social and political life. It is only by grappling with the emotional appeal of nationalist identification, and exploring this in its relationship to rather than as an abstraction from group interests, that the resilience of national particularism in the TwentyFirst Century can be fully appreciated. Given the explosion of nationalist sentiment that we are presently witnessing, there are few issues that are more politically important.

References Abramowitz, A. (2018). The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump. New Haven: Yale University Press. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Armstrong, J. A. (1982). Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Beissinger, M. (2009). Nationalism and the Collapse of Soviet Communism. Contemporary European History, 18(3), 331–347. Bieber, F. (2020). Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Breuilly, J. (1982). Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the State (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1986). Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books. De la Torre, C., & Arnson, C. (2013). Latin American Populism in the TwentyFirst Century. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Dionne, E. J., Ornstein, N. J., & Mann, T. E. (2017). One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Eastwood, J. (2006). The Rise of Nationalism in Venezuela. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Eatwell, R., & Goodwin, M. (2018). National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. London: Penguin Books. Fox, J. E., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2008). Everyday Nationhood. Ethnicities, 8(4), 536–576. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Greenfeld, L. (2019). Nationalism: A Short History. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Hanieh, A. (2013). Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Hechter, M. (2000). Containing Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. (1985). Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. (2015). Das Europa der Nationen [European Nations: Explaining Their Formation] (English edition). London: Verso Books. Kaufmann, E. (2018). White Shift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. London: Allen Lane. Kedourie, E. (1960). Nationalism. London: Hutchinson University Press. Lynch, M. (2015, June 3). Rethinking Nations in the Middle East. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/06/ 02/rethinking-nations-in-the-middle-east/. Accessed 23 July 2020. Madrid, R. L. (2008). The Rise of Ethnopopulism in Latin America. World Politics, 60(3), 475–508. Malesevic, S. (2013). Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organization, Ideology and Solidarity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Malesevic, S. (2019). Grounded Nationalism: A Sociological Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Motyl, A. J. (1990). Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Ozkirimli, U. (2017). Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pavkovic, A., & Radan, P. (2011). The Ashgate Research Companion to Secession. Farnham: Ashgate. Roshwald, A. (2006). The Endurance of Nationalism: Ancient Roots and Modern Dilemmas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skey, M., & Antonsich, M. (Eds.). (2017). Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, A. (1986). The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Vujacic, V. (2015). Nationalism, Myth, and the State in Russia and Serbia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wang, Z. (2012). Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Wimmer, A. (2013). Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Contested Terrain of Nations, Nationalism and National Identity

Abstract The definition of nations, nationality and nationalism are fiercely contested, and remain ambiguous and opaque, despite the proliferation of a sophisticated nationalism scholarship over the past forty years. This contestation and ambiguity, it is argued, does not arise exclusively or even mainly for intellectual reasons. Rather, they derive from sociological, linguistic and political factors that circumscribe the intellectual parameters within which debates about nations and nationalism occur. These are examined in the context of their historical development, with their political and intellectual effects being identified. The chapter continues by discussing some of the most important classical (nineteenthand early twentieth-century) approaches to these issues (Marx, Mill, Renan, Durkheim and Weber), identifying their strengths, weaknesses and contemporary relevance. The final part of the chapter classifies and critically analyses five contemporary approaches to conceptualizing nations, nationalism and national identity. This analysis and immanent critique inform the elaboration of my own analytical terminology, which is summarized in the concluding remarks. Keywords Defining nationalism · National self-determination · Marx and nationalism · Imagined communities · Discursive formations

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It is common to begin any discussion of the definition of national phenomena by noting the contested character of key terms, and the conceptual confusions that result. What is less common is to enquire into the grounds for such contestation and confusion. This neglect is unfortunate. If greater clarity around concepts is sought, as it should be, this necessitates understanding the sources of unclarity, which are not purely or even mainly intellectual in origin. With this in mind, the first part of this chapter briefly considers the sociological, linguistic and political factors that have circumscribed the intellectual parameters within which debates about nations and nationalism have occurred. I continue by discussing some of the most important classical (nineteenth- and early twentieth-century) approaches to these issues, before classifying and analysing five contemporary approaches to conceptualizing nations, nationalism and national identity. This analysis informs the elaboration of my own analytical terminology in the final part of the chapter.

The Sociological, Linguistic and Political Origins of National Ambiguity The diverse sociological forms that national phenomena have taken, and the disparate social conditions that have engendered these forms, defy easy definitions and theoretical generalizations. There have existed and still exist nations without states, states without nations, national minorities within states, territorially intermixed nationalities, nationally homogenous states, nations based on civic principles, and nations based more on shared ethnicity and descent. These have emerged under conditions of rapid industrialization and urbanization, as well as under conditions of economic underdevelopment and social and territorial dispersal. These highly variegated national forms and conditions are paralleled by an array of different nationalisms. We can identify nationalisms based on myths of blood and soil, as well as those based more on civic principles of rights and duties with respect to an existing state. There have existed unification nationalisms aimed at uniting politically fragmented nationalities, and irredentist nationalisms aimed at retrieving and redeeming national territory that is ostensibly under foreign control. Anti-imperialist, liberation nationalism dominated much of the history of the Twentieth Century (Chatterjee 1986), while ‘banal nationalism,’ ‘grounded nationalism,’ or ‘everyday nationhood,’ reinforces the enduring power of national

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identification within advanced western states in the first decades of the Twenty-first Century (Billig 1995; Malesevic 2019; Skey and Antonsich 2017). This sociological diversity has been reflected in ordinary language use, where nation and nationalism have taken on a variety of connotations that have in turn influenced scholarly reflection. In her helpful summary of the linguistic and historical development of these terms, Liah Greenfeld (2019: 1–10; 1992: 3–9) suggests that the origins of the word nation and its various English and European language cognates can be located in the Latin term natio—‘something born.’ This was originally a derogatory term used by Romans to refer to non-Romans living in their midst. After centuries of European development, ‘nation’ took on a recognizably modern form in sixteenth-century England, where it became synonymous with ‘the people.’ In the era that followed, there were further shifts from the vernacular meaning of nation as a people with shared descent and culture, to nation as a collective living within a bounded territory with political rights and duties, to nation as a synonym for state or country (Hroch 2015: 2–3). These meanings would all find corollaries in scholarship on nations and nationalism, which was and is parasitic on ordinary language usages. For example, the widespread identification of nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s with some sort of social pathology (as a result of the rise of extreme right-wing variants of nationalism in Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan) was expressed in scholarship of the time, reinforcing this identification. Thus, there were widespread attempts to distinguish between (good) patriotism and (bad) nationalism (e.g., Hayes 1931; Kohn 1944), where the latter was viewed as a ‘deviation from a hypothetical ‘straight line’ of human history’ (Balibar 1991: 47); a distinction that still manifests itself in scholarship. Given these interactions, we can say that the development of an unambiguous vocabulary pertaining to national phenomena has been hindered by what Anthony Giddens once described as a ‘double hermeneutic’, where social science concepts and theories ‘circulate in and out of the social world they are coined to analyse’ (1987: 19). In other words, a term in ordinary language usage is deployed by intellectuals whose definitions partially reflect but also react back on, and modify or reinforce, the original use of the term. This then influences further scholarly reflections and so on. Nowhere is this dialectic more obvious than in the writing of national histories. The very object of the exercise implies an acceptance of some quotidian assumptions about the nation as expressed in linguistic

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convention. It implies an acceptance that nations are real, substantial communities whose histories can be known by abstracting them from the ‘external’ fields in which they evolve and are involved. Further, it implies an acceptance that nations have or are corporate personalities moving through time, and that their essence can be identified. Here the present is linked in a linear way to a national past, contingency is transformed into necessity, and what defines this nation, as well as the nation in general, is assumed to be self-evident. Etienne Balibar usefully encapsulated this process: The history of nations, beginning with our own, is always already presented to us in the form of a narrative which attributes to these entities the continuity of a subject. The formation of the nation thus appears as the fulfillment of a ‘project’ stretching over centuries, in which there are different stages and moments of coming to self-awareness, which the prejudices of the various historians will portray as more or less decisive … (1991: 86)

Consequently, ambiguity is rendered as non-ambiguous, and narrating the nation becomes an exercise in self-justification, with all that this entails for the exercise and maintenance of political legitimacy. This raises the final reason for the ambiguity that inheres in definitions of national phenomena: definitions have been influenced by the exigencies of political power. Once the principle of national self-determination became universalized as a key pillar of political legitimacy in the Twentieth Century—with the communist Lenin and the liberal Wilson both agreeing that nations should be self-determining, which entailed a formal right to statehood—the question of what constituted a nation or a national ‘self’ became an increasingly important political question. If nations could be identified according to some agreed criteria, then claims to national self-determination could be more readily evaluated. The corollary was that claims to nationhood and therefore statehood which did not accord with the specified criteria, could be denied on the basis of some supposed objective truth. Clearly, those with greater power were more able to make their definitions of a nation stick, and were able to translate their definitions into institutional forms, and official recognition of those forms. Leaving aside for the moment the conceptual problems with this approach, the main political and moral problem is that it can all too

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easily rationalize national oppression. This is especially the case when the attributes that supposedly define a nation are deployed in checklist fashion to determine the legitimacy of nationalist claims. The absence of some or even one of the supposed essential features of a nation can be used to disqualify some peoples from being acknowledged as having national rights. This can then be used as a pretext for national oppression. The most obvious historical example is Joseph Stalin’s use of his famous definition of a nation as, ‘a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture’ (1945: 11). This definition was first used to deny that Jews constituted a nation with national rights, and later to deny national rights to a host of other minorities within the Soviet Union. Even while upholding the formal right of nations to self-determination, the exercise of this right was frequently denied in the Soviet Union because it could be shown that some national minorities did not conform to Stalin’s definition. For instance, while Baltic Germans and Latvians in Tsarist Russia shared a common territory, language and economic life, they were said to not conform to the ‘psychological makeup manifested in a community of culture’ clause. On this basis, they were denied the status of nationhood and hence denied the right to exercise national self-determination (Alter 1994: 8). This in no way implies that nationality was ‘frozen’ by communist repression, only to be ‘unfrozen’ and reanimated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as Beissinger (2002) and Brubaker (1996) have persuasively argued, statesanctioned forms of nationality were institutionalized in Soviet political organization, which formed an important, though not exclusive, basis for nationalist mobilization since the collapse. Interestingly, in the Russian Federation today nationalist contention remains an important source of political friction, and Putin deals with it much as Stalin once did; by denying nationhood and therefore national rights to linguistically and culturally distinct minorities, and mobilizing force against them when necessary. The checklist method for determining nationhood has not been limited to dictators like Stalin, or their indirect, authoritarian political progeny like Putin. Very similar arguments have been deployed by a wide variety of authoritarian and democratic regimes. At one time or another most colonial powers appealed to similar arguments to legitimize a continuation of colonial rule. In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, for instance, Palestinians are not recognized as a distinct nation by Israeli

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authorities, which forms an important part of the justification for the denial of statehood (Kimmerling and Migdal 2003: 169–213). Previously, European powers in the Middle East, Africa and Asia created administrative units without regard to pre-existing cultural, linguistic, religious and territorial identities and boundaries, and deployed divide and conquer strategies to secure their own rule. They then used actual and potential ethnic fragmentation and conflict, along with a host of racist arguments, as a justification for clinging to colonial rule. The ‘natives’ of colonial territories did not constitute nations, did not warrant their own states, and would tear each other apart in the absence of ‘benevolent’ colonial rule. Many of the post-colonial regimes that formed on the territories bequeathed to them by the legacy of colonialism made similar arguments to deny self-determination to national minorities within their borders (Young 2001: 166). This was not only a practice of the past. Today, regimes from Turkey and Israel to Sri Lanka and Indonesia continue to label national minorities as either something other than nations or as ‘non-viable’ nations, to justify the continued subjugation of oppressed peoples. Taken together with the sociological and linguistic factors outlined above, these political considerations pose significant difficulties for the development of unambiguous definitions and plausible theoretical generalizations about nations and nationalism. These difficulties were already manifest in classical approaches to national phenomena, in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

Classical Approaches to Nations, Nationalism and Nationality It was not until the second half of the Nineteenth Century that nations, nationalism and nationality became distinctive foci of systematic intellectual enquiry. The language of nation emerged earlier than this—being evident in the sixteenth-century works of Machiavelli and Shakespeare, for example—but not generally as an object of systematic scholarly reflection. A philosophical discourse centred upon sovereignty, citizenship, and the normative bases of political community, but also displaying a presentiment of thinking about nation and nationality, had characterized the works of many eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot, Hegel, Kant, Rousseau and Voltaire (Llobera 1994: 151–176). Furthermore, around the same time German Romanticism—expressed in

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the works of Herder, Fichte, Schlegel and Arndt—emerged as a counterpoint to the dominant Enlightenment conceptions, by emphasizing the significance of national cultural and linguistic difference (Heater 1998: 9–24 and 119–133; Smith 1971: 16 and 181). Yet all of this was more by way of a celebration of national diversity than an analysis of nationalism as such. Thereafter, Friedrich List developed cogent arguments in defence of economic nationalism, leading at least one scholar to view him as ‘the Marx of nationalism’ (Szporluk 1998: 31). As important as these early explorations of national principles and particularity are, they did not systematically deal with nations and nationalism as phenomena whose historical and sociological roots could be explained. Nation was more subject than object. It was the subject of normative political prescriptions, philosophical speculation and political and economic improvement in a new, enlightened world. But it was not the object of systematic social scientific endeavour, even for those who, like Smith and Herder, became preoccupied with the ‘wealth of nations’ or the philosophical and anthropological implications of national linguistic and cultural pluralism. This changed through the Nineteenth Century, as the practical consequences of nationalist politics began to be more strongly felt in Europe and its colonial periphery. During this period, several thinkers stand out as making important contributions to the analysis of nations and nationalism. Marx and Engels occupy a significant place in nineteenth-century thinking about what they characteristically referred to as ‘the national question.’ This is not because of the perspicacity of their insights about national phenomena. Indeed, a generation of Marxist thinkers in the late Twentieth Century bemoaned nationalism as Marx’s and Marxism’s ‘great historical failure’ (Nairn 1975: 3), and enjoined us to, ‘recognize that there is no Marxist theory of the nation’ (Poulantzas 1980: 93). Despite these harsh judgments, and despite there being no extended theoretical treatment of nationalism in their writings, there are numerous sources within Marx’s and Engels’s work that deal with the national question, which for them was a political question that demanded an answer. The answer that they gave was contradictory. In their early writings on the subject, emerging out of the experience of the 1848 European revolutions and counter-revolutions, they resurrected Hegel’s dubious distinction between ‘historic’ and ‘non-historic’ nations (Rosdolsky 1986). The latter were deemed unviable and consigned to an inevitable demise. Engels infamously described non-historic nations

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as ‘nothing but the residual fragments of peoples,’ who ‘are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of independence’ (Marx and Engels 1977: 234 and 367). In a similar tone, he described the Swiss as a nation of, ‘hidebound peasants and disgusting philistines’ (Marx and Engels 1977: 47), and ‘the last bastion of brutal, primitive Germanism, of barbarism, bigotry, patriarchal simplicity and moral purity … [which] should at last be destroyed’ (Marx and Engels 1977: 373). Notwithstanding allowances made for rhetorical flourishes in the heat of political upheaval, such invective manifests the flawed understanding of national phenomena that Marx and Engels had in 1848. The ‘non-viable,’ ‘residual fragments of peoples’ not only survived, but also gained statehood in the aftermath of the First World War, and remained central to European politics right up to the present century. In contrast with this view, Marx and Engels evinced a more conciliatory position towards nationalism in their later writings, commencing around 1860. This was articulated most clearly in their position on the national oppression of Ireland and Poland. In both cases, they argued that it was the duty of all communists and progressive democrats to not only support national self-determination, but to positively encourage its exercise. As Engels forthrightly stated the case, the Poles and the Irish had ‘a duty to be nationalistic before they became internationalistic’ (Marx and Engels 1971: 332). The reason was two-fold. On the one hand, colonialism could and did retard capitalist development, and thus historical progress, as it clearly had done in two of Britain’s oldest colonies—Ireland and India. As a consequence, the emergence of class consciousness, and therefore the possibilities of socialism, would also be retarded in the colony. On the other hand, the material and ideological trappings of colonialism limited class consciousness in the metropole, with workers encouraged to identify with ‘their’ oppressor nation. Socialists and the working classes of oppressor nations, therefore, should solidarize with the nationally oppressed and support and even encourage their demands for self-determination. As Marx summed up in his famous aphorism: ‘any nation that oppresses another forges its own chains’ (Marx and Engels 1971: 163). For this reason, Marx enjoined workers and progressives of all stripes to take up the cause of the nationally oppressed as part of their own liberation. As a crucial element of communist internationalism, Marx and Engels’ mature view on the national question is more plausible, and morally and politically defendable, than their earlier embrace of the crude language

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of non-historic nations. But as a ‘theory’ of nationalism it is altogether inadequate, as contemporary Marxist thinkers have themselves recognized. Marx and Engels have little to say about the defining features and historical origins of nations. They say even less about why identifying with the nation is such a powerful emotional pole of attraction for people of all classes. Part of the problem, repeated by later Marxists, is the tendency to simply dismiss nationalism as bourgeois ideology, instead of enquiring into its cultural and political origins, emotional appeal, and capacity to motivate collective action. This explaining away rather than explaining nationalism, left Marx and Marxists ill-equipped to understand the enduring power of nationalist thought and practice. It was a weakness shared with their liberal contemporaries. Interestingly, national self-determination was also defended by the leading liberal thinker of the Nineteenth Century. John Stuart Mill, in his 1861 Considerations on Representative Government , identified nationality as the necessary presupposition of legitimate government. For Mill, a people could be said to constitute a nationality, ‘if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others … [and] desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively’ (1972: 391). He viewed the coincidence of the boundaries of nationality and those of government as being, in general, ‘a necessary condition of free institutions,’ a ringing early endorsement of the principle of national self-determination. Mill’s position sparked a debate that has still not been resolved. The issue at stake was and is whether the coincidence of cultural and political boundaries undermines or contributes to political absolutism and authoritarianism. While Mill argued that it was the former, Lord Acton suggested that national homogeneity within a state was an instrument of authoritarianism. He contrasted this with national diversity within a state, which is ‘the best security of its freedom,’ because it tends to facilitate the development of checks and balances and multiple associations, by which Acton seems to mean something approximating what we would today call civil society (see Connor 1994: 4–25). In contrast to Acton, for Mill it was the absence of national self-determination that implied authoritarianism and political absolutism. Above all, this was because political regimes could more readily depend on the loyalty of a multinational army, sections of which could be expected to have no sympathy with the populations upon whom they were periodically unleashed. Historically, such armies are said

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to be the ‘executioners of liberty,’ as illustrated by the multinational states of Mill’s era—principally the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires. Their absolutism was aided and abetted by being able to exploit national divisions in the population. Mill took this as positive proof of his position. In the context of nineteenth-century empires and power politics, Mill certainly had a persuasive point vis-à-vis Acton. But if we apply his political prescription championing national self-determination to more recent periods of mass migration and multicultural states, the implications of his position are more contentious. The problem turns on the question of what is the ‘self’ referred to in self-determination. Mill would answer, as we saw above, that it is a people united by common sympathies and a desire for a government of their own, which should be, ‘government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively’ (Mill 1972: 391). What is problematic about this formulation is the term ‘exclusively.’ In a world where few if any states are nationally homogenous, and where intermixed nationalities and cultural minorities are the rule rather than the exception, the exclusivity of the national-self invoked by Mill necessarily involves limitations on the rights of others to contribute to governing. Instead, the levers of government are reserved for the exclusive use of those belonging to a self-defined nationality, who may use those levers to advance their own interests at the expense of national minorities within the state’s territory. The seemingly innocuous liberal doctrine of national self-determination, then, can have very illiberal, unintended consequence. In 1882, another liberal, French Historian Ernest Renan, placed myth and ritual at the centre of the answer to his question Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? He answered that it is ‘a grand solidarity constituted by the sentiment of sacrifices which one has made and those that one is disposed to make again …’ In a word, the nation ‘is an everyday plebiscite’ (cited in Hutchison and Smith 1994: 17). Such a daily plebiscite is also, Renan observed, ‘a perpetual affirmation of life,’ which links the past, present and future through shared memory of national sacrifice. It is this that is ‘the essential condition of being a nation’ (cited in Hutchison and Smith 1994: 17–18). This linking of the past with the present and future transforms contingency into destiny and individual fatality into collective continuity (see Anderson 1991: 11). This is a central feature of nationalist thought, as well as being a key theme in many scholarly works on nationalism. It is a theme that was also developed by Renan’s compatriot Emile Durkheim.

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Although Durkheim wrote little of an explicit nature on nations and nationalism (apart from some polemical pieces during the First World War), his entire work is, in a sense, guided by, ‘the idea of the nation as a moral community with its conscience collective’ (Smith 1998: 15). Within his larger corpus of work, it is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915) that has the greatest relevance for thinking about nationalism and its social reproduction. It was there that Durkheim argued that all societies, irrespective of their level of economic development or social differentiation, needed to reproduce themselves through the periodic reaffirmation of collective beliefs, sentiments and values, as expressed through public rituals and rites held at regular intervals. As with elementary forms of the religious life, nominally secular national states in the contemporary era invest such rites and rituals with a sacred character that is radically opposed to the profane life of everyday interactions and social intercourse. In a telling passage, Durkheim asks rhetorically: What essential difference is there between an assembly of Christians celebrating the principal dates of the life of Christ, or of Jews remembering the exodus from Egypt or the promulgation of the decalogue, and a reunion of citizens commemorating the promulgation of a new moral or legal system or some great event in the national life? (1915: 427)

During and after the French Revolution, revolutionary fervour reflected in new public ceremonies transformed ideas like ‘the Fatherland, Liberty and Reason’ into sacred things. In so doing, a ‘religion tended to become established which had its dogmas, symbols, altars and feasts’ (Durkheim 1915: 214). Nationalism, in this view, becomes a functional equivalent for religion. It performs similar integrating functions and the reproduction of shared beliefs and values, which are essential to the coherence of all societies. The great merit of both Renan and Durkheim is their emphasis on the importance of myth, ritual and collective memory in the constitution of national identity, without which nations would and could not exist. They are both more sensitive to the cultural elements of nationalism than many of their contemporaries as well as some modern scholars. But that strength is also a weakness in so far as they underestimate the ways in which nationalism is implicated in the exercise of power. They give little indication of the instrumental purposes to which nationalism can be put by political entrepreneurs and state leaders, and they lack a convincing

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account of the connection between the nation and the state, and culture and politics. The same cannot be said of the final thinker discussed in our survey of classical approaches to nationalism. Modernity and its consequences were the central objects of Max Weber’s important insights into nations, nationalism and the related concept of ethnic group (1978: 385–398). For Weber, a key development in European modernity that sets it apart from pre-modern societies is the conjoining of nation and state. He defines the nation as, ‘a community of sentiment which would adequately manifest itself in a state of its own; hence, a nation is a community which normally tends to produce a state of its own’ (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1978: 176). Identification with this community of sentiment can be and usually is shaped by diverse phenomena. Among other elements, Weber invokes religion, race, ethnicity, customs, language and collective memories. Such objective factors are necessary for the emergence of a national consciousness, but they are not sufficient. For Weber, the subjective element of sufficiently large numbers of a community believing that they are a nation, with that belief finding expression in the existence of or the demand for a state, is also required to be able to meaningfully speak of a nation. In other words, objective conditions must be given a particular meaning and political form to count as a nation. As Weber sums up, ‘the “nation” is usually anchored in the superiority, or at least the irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group’ (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1978: 176). When these ‘culture values’ are oriented to a state we may speak of the existence of a nation. And herein lies the political character of the concept nation. It is a value concept to be sure, belonging to the class of phenomena that Weber, following Tonnies (1963), called Gemeinschaften, but it only attains its specificity in relation to the state, which is a necessary feature of any modern Gesellschaft . In practice, the two phenomena are mutually supporting, with national sentiment bolstering state power, and state power preserving the cultural distinctiveness of the nation (Beetham 1985: 129). Weber was right to insist on the organic connection between state and nation in the modern era, an insistence that should be preserved in any adequate understanding of contemporary nationalism. He is right to be alert to the modern politicization of culture which, in the Europe of his day, was expressed in growing nationalist parochialism and rivalry,

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made manifest in the catastrophe that engulfed Europe in the years 1914– 1918. That said, critics are correct to observe that Weber conceded too much to nationalist thought and mythologizing, especially in respect of the supposed objective features of Kultur out of which nations were said to spring This perhaps goes part of the way to explaining his personal, nationalist politics. Weber does not provide an adequate account of the conditions under which some cultural identities become politicized and nationalized, while others are subsumed within the contours of other nations. Nor does he provide an account of the social mechanisms of identity formation, including the collectivization of emotions, and why these sometimes take national form. Finally, while capitalism and industrialism feature in Weber’s broader works, he does not provide an adequate explanation for their connection to the rise of nationalism. In this brief summary of classical nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury thinking on nations and nationalism we can already discern some common themes as well as differences, which repeatedly resurface in later debates. With respect to the commonalities, we can note that the nation is typically conceived as a large ‘solidarity group,’ in that its members solidarize with co-nationals on the basis of shared language and sentiments of belonging. Furthermore, these sentiments are premised on the perception of a shared history, taking form as a stock of collective memories linking the present to the past, which are periodically reaffirmed in public rituals. Finally, although the nation might be a form of communal identification, properly belonging to the realm of Gemeinschaft, for most of these early thinkers the nation only realizes its full specificity in relation to an existing or envisaged state, with which it shares a symbiotic relationship. That nations should be governed by ‘their own’ state, is the key principle of nationalist politics.

Contemporary Approaches to Nations, Nationalism and Nationality In the decades between the contributions cited above and the wave of scholarship on nationalism that broke in the 1980s and 1990s, sociologically-informed historians dominated the field (Smith 1998: 16). I do not have the space to discuss their work, but it is worth making the point that, in general, they insisted on the historical modernity of nationalism, and argued that Europe provided the template for its subsequent, non-western manifestations. These propositions constituted the

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point of departure for a variety of contributors to more recent debates. The positions that they took depended crucially upon how they defined their terms of reference. Most controversial has been the definition of nation, which logically, though not necessarily chronologically, precedes that of nationalism. In the decades after the publication of John Armstrong’s Nations Before Nationalism (1982), Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) and Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism (1983)—the years that the renaissance in nationalism studies can be said to have commenced—a number of approaches to defining the nation emerged. These can be usefully grouped into five distinct, though not mutually exclusive, approaches (Cox 2007: 3147). In the first, nations are defined according to shared, objective features, such as common language, culture and collective memories connected to a territorial homeland. The second approach, by contrast, views the subjective dimensions of nationalist belonging as sufficient for defining a nation, claiming that nations exist when, and only when, an identifiable community believes them to exist. The third approach suggests that nations are invented categories arising from the ideology and practice of nationalism, rather than being real, substantial collectives with shared, objective features. The fourth approach suggests that while nations may be invented this does not imply fabrication. Nations are ‘imagined communities’ but imagination does not imply that nations are illusory. The fifth and final approach combines aspects of the previous two, but views the nation as a ‘discursive formation’ or ‘symbolic frame,’ where the social collective to which they refer is inseparable from the discourse of nationhood. In these five approaches some of the key conceptual debates on nations and nationalism have formed. Historically, the first ‘objectivist’ approach has been dominant in the social sciences. Countless scholars of nationalism have sought to distil the essence of the concept nation, as a prerequisite to examining nationalism and nationality. Nations are defined in terms of a number of essential features that are shared by a give population, such as language, culture, history, and a contiguous territorial homeland. These become the basis for the veneration of or the placing of demands on an existing state, or the striving for a new state. The presence or absence of these attributes can then be used as a template for determining the existence of a nation, and/or for evaluating the legitimacy of political claims made on behalf of an imputed nation.

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There are numerous examples of this approach. Guibernau defines the nation as ‘a human group conscious of forming a community, sharing a common culture, attached to a clearly demarcated territory, having a common past and a common project for the future and claiming the right to rule itself’ (1996: 47). From a different theoretical perspective, Anthony Smith arrives at a similar definition. For him, a nation can be defined as ‘a named human population which shares myths and memories, a mass public culture, a designated homeland, economic unity and equal rights and duties for all members’ (1995: 56–57). Similarly, Hroch defines the nation as ‘a large social group integrated not be one but by a combination of several kinds of social relationships (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, historical), and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness …’ (1996: 79). In each of these definitions, the specific features that are said to constitute a nation are not, for my purposes here, as important as the general approach. This is an approach that presumes that there are real, substantial collectives to which the term nation refers, and that these collectives can be identified with reference to a number of objective characteristics. There are a number of problems with this approach. To begin with, it has been criticized for reifying the nation. That is, it treats the nation as a real, observable entity, which has the continuity of a subject and which embodies the distinctive character, culture, and political aspirations of a clearly delineated people (Brubaker 1996, 2006: 15). This obscures the contingency of the formation of national phenomena, as well as suppressing the internal cleavages and variability in their subsequent development. While I do not concur with all of the assumptions behind this criticism (for reasons outlined below), it is right to be sceptical of the incautious use of the term nation to refer to some observable, clearly delineated community. Much of what gives the nation its specificity is not observable, while many of the supposedly objective features of a nation that can be observed are not, in fact, specific to the nation. Furthermore, none of these tangible characteristics necessarily produce national solidarity (Hechter 2000: 13), while national solidarity can and has been generated in the absence of some of the objective features that are said to define the nation. Consequently, the first approach is bedevilled by many limiting cases where a given population meets some of the objective definitional criteria but not others. Are they to be disqualified from being defined as a nation because of this? For example, there have been populations, understood by

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themselves and others as nations, that do not share a national language. Switzerland is an obvious case. There is clearly a Swiss national identity, attached to a stock of collective memories and sharing a contiguous territory, but there is no Swiss language, nor even the common usage of a single ‘foreign’ language: what there is, is the usage and institutional recognition of four languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch), all of which originated in adjacent states (Wimmer 2002: 223–225). But it is unclear why this should disqualify the Swiss from being a nation when most Swiss are actuated by national sentiment and would define themselves, and be defined by others, as being part of a nation. This raises a more general question about the relationship between purportedly objective criteria and national consciousness. Why is it that national consciousness is only sufficient to define a nation when it is linked to a stipulated inventory of other supposedly more objective criteria? There seems to be no intellectually compelling reason, when history shows that the link between national consciousness and other ‘objective’ features has taken such variegated forms. Indeed, most forms have exhibited a very imperfect fit between given objective features and national consciousness, with attributes such as ‘a mass public culture’ and ‘economic unity’ (Smith), a ‘demarcated territory’ (Guibernau) and a common language (Hroch) sometimes being absent even where national consciousness was ubiquitous. As a consequence, some thinkers have argued that the objective features said to constitute a nation cannot be appealed to as any sort of basis for a unified definition. Instead, a second approach to defining the nation argues that nations can only be meaningfully defined with reference to people’s subjective states, as it is these that ultimately underlie all instantiations of the nation. Hugh Seton-Watson encapsulated this core proposition decades ago when he stated that, ‘a nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one’ (1977: 5). Walker Connor provided a sophisticated elaboration of this position. He suggests that nation is difficult to define because the essence of that to which it refers is intangible: ‘This essence is a psychological bond that joins a people and differentiates it, in the subconscious conviction of its members, from all other people in a most vital way’ (1994: 92). This view leans on the assumption that what people believe is, is either ultimately more important than what is, or actually becomes what is.

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This second, subjectivist approach to nations is vulnerable to a number of criticisms. In the first instance, all of the usual criticisms of idealism and subjectivism also apply to this approach. One needn’t be a vulgar materialist to recognize the flaw in the idealist and subjectivist claim at the heart of this second approach—that people’s subjective ideas determine their reality and lived experience. Such a view neglects the economic, political, cultural and institutional conditions that shape and constrain the ideas that people hold about themselves and the groups with which they identify. Thus, a ‘psychological bond’ that joins and differentiates people according to nationality must be located within a broader institutional and social context that circumscribes the content of the bond. Moreover, if nations are defined exclusively in terms of subjective states, the connection between social identity and group formation is lost. In connection with this, Michael Hechter has made the telling argument that social identities ultimately rest upon group formation, rather than being their basis (2000: 97). That is, to identify with a group, including a group understood as a nation, requires the prior formation of the said group, as manifested in social relationships and networks of belonging. Hence, national identity presupposes the existence of a national grouping that is the basis of the psychological bond that Connor, for instance, insists is the defining feature of a nation. National identity requires a nation with which to identify. The third approach to defining national phenomena argues that nations are invented categories rather than real communities. The most well-known early statement of this position is Ernest Gellner’s aphorism that, ‘Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents them where they do not exist’ (1964: 169). Their invention, Gellner argues at length, is necessitated by the structural transformations brought about by industrialization. Basically, nations perform the function of integrating atomized populations and preparing them for participation in the new, more specialized, division of labour (Gellner 1983: 55). Something very similar is argued by those who assimilate nations and nationalism to the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). In this view, held by many Marxists, the nation is essentially a fiction that serves the structural and ideological needs of a capitalist economy and its ruling class (Nairn 1975). All such approaches emphasize the fabricated character of the nation and subsume it to phenomena whose ontological status is assumed to be more primary, be it industrialization or capital accumulation.

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If for the moment we set aside the problems of functionalism, which are often associated with this third approach, a key criticism has been why the allegedly ‘fictitious’ entities that we call nations have been so effective for forging identities, securing sacrifices, mobilizing solidarity and triggering powerful emotions that shape human behaviour. In particular, this approach has difficulty in accounting for the tremendous human sacrifice that has been made in the name of nationality over the past two centuries, in times of war as well as in times of peace. To claim that millions of people have been prepared to die and kill for fictional communities taxes the credibility of those making the claim. Moreover, saying that nations are invented by nationalism neglects the extent to which pre-modern cultural communities can be shown to have historically contributed to the formation of modern, national ones. I would not here argue for a continuity of pre-modern and modern national identities, as ‘ethnosymbolists’ tend to, but there is a strong case that pre-modern cultural forms contributed to the formation of nations. Related to this is the false counter-posing of national communities to real communities. Benedict Anderson identified this problem in Gellner when he said that the latter assimilates invention to fabrication and falsity, rather than to imagination and creation. Anderson continues: 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 be their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. (1991: 6)

The point then, is not that nations are invented and therefore false, but that they are imagined, though this does not make them any less real than imagined groups of other scale. This brings us to the fourth approach to defining the nation, which has been most famously encapsulated in Anderson’s (1991) notion of an ‘imagined community.’ For Anderson, the nation is imagined as a community that is inherently limited and sovereign. Nations are imagined because their individual members—despite never knowing, meeting or hearing of the vast majority of their fellow members—envisage a common bond linking their lives and destinies in a crucial way. Yet this common bond is always imagined as limited because even the largest nations have definite boundaries and exist within a universe of other nations. The

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nation is imagined as a community because it abstracts from inequalities and other differences between its members, and re-presents them as being involved in a ‘deep horizontal comradeship’ (Anderson 1991: 7). This definition is premised on a view that national phenomena are ‘cultural artefacts’ that are more usefully treated as belonging with kinship and religion than with self-conscious political ideologies like Liberalism and Socialism. The reason, Anderson asserts, is that nationalism remains intellectually unelaborated compared to other political ideologies, and because of its emotional appeal and capacity to mobilize people on the basis of that appeal. This emphasis is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because it gives prominence to the affective, unconscious, cultural and quotidian character of national sentiment, which other, instrumentalist analyses often fail to acknowledge. Yet this very emphasis is also a weakness, as Anderson underestimates the political and ideological power of nationalism and the way that it is strategically deployed by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic groups. While any theory of the nation should emphasize the cultural and expressive dimensions of nationalist imaginings, as Anderson does, this should not be at the expense of recognizing and focusing on its connection to power. As Mark Beissinger has observed, nationalism is not only about imagined communities, ‘it is much more fundamentally a struggle for control over defining communities—and particularly a struggle for control over the imagination about community’ (1998: 175). Despite these reservations, Anderson’s approach is insightful, avoiding many of the pitfalls encountered with the three previous approaches. It needs to be more firmly grounded, however, in an appreciation of nations as networks of actual social allegiance and interaction—albeit ones that are imagined in particular ways—but without succumbing to the problems of defining nations in terms of some list of fixed, objective criteria. The fifth and final approach to defining nations has affinities with Anderson’s approach, but emphasizes the importance of language and symbolism. Delanty and O’Mahony (2002), for example, argue that nations are best thought about as ‘symbolic frames’ that structure thinking about communities in particular ways. Similarly, Craig Calhoun defines nations as ‘discursive formations,’ which are constituted by ‘the way of talking and thinking and acting that relies on these sorts of claims to produce collective identity’ (1997: 5). In both analyses, what is important is not any particular empirical properties that a ‘nation’ might have,

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but the symbolism and discursive claims that nationalists make in the name of the nation. While these claims will differ from case to case, they share, in Calhoun’s terms, a pattern of ‘family resemblances’ that make for a ‘rhetoric of nation’ (1997: 4–5). He posits ten characteristic features of the rhetoric of nations. These are boundaries; indivisibility; sovereignty or the aspiration to sovereignty; an ascending notion of legitimacy; popular participation; direct, categorical membership; shared culture; temporal depth; common descent; and a special historical relationship to a territory. The word nation, Calhoun continues, ‘is used sensibly and commonly understood when it is applied to populations which have or claim most of the characteristics listed. Which six, or seven, or eight characteristics will be most important will vary from nation to nation’ (1997: 6). What is crucial is the pattern of family resemblance formed by having a ‘preponderance’ of them. Rogers Brubaker (1996, 2006) developed a similar position to Calhoun, but has proposed a more forceful, elaborated and, I would suggest, extravagant articulation of this approach. As his argument confronts the question of the ontological status of the nation head on, it is worth dealing with it in more detail. Explicitly defending an antirealist ontology, Brubaker begins by questioning the taken-for-granted assumption that nations are real, substantial and enduring entities. He suggests that attempting to define the nation presupposes the existence of some real entity called a nation that can be defined. The problem with treating nations as real entities is that categories of practice are adopted as categories of analysis: It takes a conception inherent in the practice of nationalism and in the workings of the modern state and state-system – namely the realist, reifying conception of nations as real communities – and it makes this conception central to the theory of nationalism. (1996: 15)

Brubaker argues that while we should try to account for this social process of reification, which is central to all nationalist thinking, we should avoid reproducing and reinforcing it in theory. To reproduce the realist conception of nation in theory would be to risk reproducing, in transmuted form, the naturalizing myths that sustain nationalism. This is not to dispute the reality of ‘nationhood’ and a sense of ‘nationness;’ it is merely to insist that this reality should be re-conceptualized, and that the study of ‘nationhood’ and ‘nationness’ should be de-coupled from

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the study of nations as real, substantial entities, collectives and communities. Instead, Brubaker argues, the concept ‘nation’ should be treated as a practical category, institutionalized form and contingent event, rather than as substance, collectivity or real entity. Doing so would help capture the reality of nationhood and nationalism, ‘without invoking in our theories the very “political fiction” of the “nation” whose potency in practice we wish to explain’ (1996: 16). I am persuaded by Brubaker’s suggestion that nationalism should be thought about in terms of nation-oriented idioms, practices and possibilities that arise in particular fields, and that nationalists routinely reify the nation, as do many scholars. However, Brubaker’s anti-realist ontology, and its implication that nations are ‘political fictions,’ is not persuasive. We can begin by noting that most if not all social science concepts are also ‘categories of practice,’ that entail a degree of reification. The concepts of state, society and bureaucracy, for instance, are also categories of practice, which people reflect upon and presume are real, and which help orient their behaviour. State, society and bureaucracy do not refer to observable ‘things’ or substances, but we customarily talk about them as if they are real, and theorists, including Brubaker, adopt them as categories of analysis. No one has ever seen, touched or heard a state, a society or a bureaucracy, even if they have encountered the material accoutrements of state power, been subject to and observed the effects of societal conventions, or been frustrated by bureaucratic processes and procedures. To adopt observability and ‘thing-likeness’ as one’s main criterion of realness reflects a narrow empiricist conception of reality. As scientific realists in the physical and social sciences have often noted, empiricist ontology may be adequate as a basis for identifying Humean, constant conjunctions between observable events, and making inductive predictions on the basis of past observations, but it is impoverished as a basis for developing theoretical explanations (see Sayer 2000: 32–66; Collier 1994: 70–106). Empiricism ignores, or at least downplays, enduring structures and generative mechanisms, underlying and producing observable events (Bhaskar 1989). So too do non-empiricist, anti-realist ontologies of the sort to which Brubaker is committed. They do so precisely because such structures and generative mechanisms are considered merely conceptual, rather than real. We need not commit ourselves to the causal efficacy of this or that structure or generative mechanism to see the implausibility of treating all such phenomena as merely conceptual and therefore unreal. While notions like state, society

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and bureaucracy are conceptual, they refer to real entities, processes and relations, which can be shown to be real by their demonstrable effects in constraining and enabling social action. Anyone who doubts the reality of the state and holds that it is merely a concept will be quickly disabused of this notion if they defy a court order, transgress property rights maintained by the state, or resist arrest. The police person’s baton is no more real than the state that empowers the police person to coercively use the baton. It is just that the reality of the baton is of a different order and level of abstraction than the state. The former is an observable, hard material object that can crack heads; the latter is an ensemble of power relations, processes and positions that can determine if and when heads should be cracked. For social scientists, the usefulness of the concept of state and other sociological concepts derives from the reality of the ensemble of social relations that the concepts represent. This digression serves to underline the point that concepts need not be observable to be real, and that it is permissible, even essential, for categories of practice to be adopted as categories of analysis. So it is with the nation. Nations are categories of practice, as Brubaker insists. But it is precisely because they are such powerful categories for shaping practices, motivating action, inspiring emotion and constraining thinking, that they are also indispensable categories of analysis.

Nation, Nationalism and Nationality: An Analytical Vocabulary The discussion in the previous two sections helps to crystallize some guiding principles for defining the nation in particular and national phenomena more generally. Definitions should avoid trying to posit some fixed list of essential, objective criteria. To the extent that it is necessary to identify some criteria, we would do better to think about them in terms of patterns of family resemblance, as Calhoun does. But unlike Calhoun, and even more so Brubaker, we ought not assume that such patterns only constitute a ‘rhetoric of nation’ or ‘categories of practice.’ Claims about the existence of nations may perform both of these functions, but they also refer to a sociological reality that can be specified and which has causal effects. As Mark Beissinger has suggested, ‘a nation must be understood as both a claim and a condition.’ Furthermore, ‘… it is not because people “think the nation” that we believe that nations exist, but

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rather because people “behave the nation”’ (1998: 171). These sociological conditions and behaviours only acquire their specific form in a nation if they are oriented to an existing or envisaged state. On this basis, I propose to define the nation as an imagined community of self -identified people, sharing a common stock of cultural practices, myths and memories that has as the object of its demands and aspirations an existing or envisaged state, in a territory identified as a homeland. Here the common stock of cultural practices can include, among others, shared language, religion, beliefs and values, perceptions of common descent, and a national literature, art and music. But these can take different combinations, and it is unnecessary for any one of them to be present in order to identify a nation. What is crucial, and here I follow Calhoun, is the pattern of family resemblance formed by having a ‘preponderance’ of them (1997: 4). The definition of nationalism and nationality flows from that of the nation. Nationalism can be defined broadly as the sum of those beliefs, idioms and practices, oriented to a territorially delineated nation and embodied in the political demands of a self -identified people, which may or may not be realized in a nationalist movement and state ‘of their own’ (Cox 2007: 3143). By nationality, I refer to the collective and individual identification with a nation, which expresses itself in the beliefs, idioms, and practices that constitute nationalism. These are all part of a more encompassing national-field, constituted by overlapping ideational, discursive and practical elements that assume a world divided into discrete nations and nationalities. In terms of the ideational elements, the national-field is characterized by a number of core ideas, expressed in the beliefs of a people that identify themselves as belonging to a nation. These include: (1) the belief that nations are real, substantial entities, occupying space, moving through time and deserving of the loyalty of national subjects; (2) the belief that a people with distinguishable characteristics, a common history and a shared present and future constitute a nation and can be distinguished from other nations; (3) the belief that the nation is a community, embracing a ‘deep horizontal comradeship,’ regardless of actual inequalities and exploitation (Anderson 1991: 7); and (4) the belief that political legitimacy and civic obligation derives from the nation, which is or should be the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a state. These beliefs are produced, reproduced and disseminated discursively, through a myriad of symbolic and idiomatic means that usually but

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not always presuppose a common language. The ubiquity of national flags, national anthems, national history education texts, national literature, art, music, and maps, all help instil, as well as express, beliefs of the sort outlined above, which perpetuate national imaginings (Skey and Antonsich 2017). Similarly, the reproduction of national myths by oral, printed and electronic means reinforces the sense of shared community and history that sustains nationality. Indeed, a powerful case can be made that forms of mass communication are necessary conditions for the emergence of specifically national identities, which are premised on the recognition of co-nationals as abstract equivalents (James 2006; Anderson 1991; Deutsch 1955). Finally, the discursive elements of the national-field are manifested in practices. The production and reproduction of invented traditions, the public reaffirmation of national values through periodic rituals and commemorations, and the participation of national subjects in events and activities that celebrate ‘their’ nation, all contribute to the sense of nostalgia for and continuity with the past, which nourishes nationalism in the present. Hence, the national-field is not only constituted by ideas and discourses, which it is often presented as being, but also by the recurring practices of national subjects.

Conclusion The literature on nations and nationalism has increased dramatically over recent decades. This has reflected changing political and social realities in which nationalist conflict has been exacerbated under conditions where globalization has deepened and intensified. Despite many notable contributions to the analysis of national phenomena, the most important of which I have discussed in this chapter, there are still no widely agreed-upon definitions. This is a consequence of the protean character of national forms and the diverse conditions under which they emerge. The ambiguity in the ordinary language use of nation-related terms has also had a pernicious impact on the quest for analytical precision, as has the exigencies of political power. Nevertheless, a rich body of work on nations and nationalism has matured over the last century and a half, which provides a promising foundation for a more adequate treatment of these phenomena in the Twenty First Century.

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References Alter, P. (1994). Nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Arnold. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Armstrong, J. A. (1982). Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Balibar, E. (1991). The Nation Form: History and Ideology. In E. Balibar & I. Wallerstein (Eds.), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (pp. 86–106). London: Verso. Beetham, D. (1985). Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beissinger, M. (1998). Nationalisms That Bark and Nationalisms That Bite: Ernest Gellner and the Substantiation of Nations. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 169–190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beissinger, M. (2002). Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. London: Verso. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, R. (2006). Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1986). Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books. Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Baskar’s Philosophy. London: Verso. Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cox, L. (2007). Nation-State and Nationalism. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (Vol. VII, pp. 3143–3152). Malden MA: Blackwell. Delanty, G., & O’Mahony, P. (2002). Nationalism and Social Theory: Modernity and the Recalcitrance of the Nation. London: Sage. Deutsch, K. (1955). Nationalism and Social Communication: An Enquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Durkheim, E. (1915). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin. Gellner, E. (1964). Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Gerth, H. H., & Mills, C. W. (Eds.). (1949). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Giddens, A. (1987). Social Theory and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenfeld, L. (2019). Nationalism: A Short History. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Guibernau, M. (1996). Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hayes, C. J. H. (1931). The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism. New York: Richard. R. Smith. Heater, D. (1998). The Theory of Nationhood: A Platonic Symposium. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hechter, M. (2000). Containing Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. (1996). From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation Building Process in Europe. In G. Balakrishnan & B. Anderson (Eds.), Mapping the Nation (pp. 78–97). London: Verso. Hroch, M. (2015). Das Europa der Nationen [European Nations: Explaining Their Formation] (English edition). London: Verso Books. Hutchison, J., & Smith, A. (Eds.). (1994). Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, P. (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In. London: Sage. Kimmerling, B., & Migdal, J. S. (2003). The Palestinian People: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kohn, H. (1944). The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background. New York: Columbia University Press. Llobera, J. (1994). The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe. Oxford: Providence. Malesevic, S. (2019). Grounded Nationalism: A Sociological Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1971). Ireland and the Irish Question. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1977). Collected Works (Vol. 7). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Mill, J. S. (H. B. Acton, Ed.). (1972). Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations of Representative Government. London: Everyman’s Library. Mill, J. S. (1861). Considerations on Representative Government. London: Parker, Son, & Bourn. Nairn, T. (1975). The Modem Janus. New Left Review, 94, 3–29.

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Poulantzas, N. (1980). State, Power, Socialism. London: New Left Books. Rosdolsky, R. (1986). Engels and the “Nonhistoric” Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sayer, A (2000). Realism and Social Science. London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage. Seton-Watson, H. (1977). Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism. London: Methuen. Skey, M., & Antonsich, M. (Eds.). (2017). Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging After Banal Nationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, A. (1971). Theories of Nationalism. London: Duckworth. Smith, A. (1995). Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, A. (1998). Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge. Stalin, J. (1945). Marxism and the National Question. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing. Szporluk, R. (1998). Thoughts About Change: Ernest Gellner and the History of Nationalism. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 23–39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tonnies, F. (C. P. Loomis, Trans.). (1963). Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ). New York: Harper & Row. Wimmer, A. (2002). Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). (1978). Economy and Society (Vol. 1). Berkeley: University of California Press. Young, C. (2001). Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Africa. In M. Guibernau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (pp. 164–181). Cambridge: Polity Press.

CHAPTER 3

The Modern Origins of Nations, Nationality and Nationalism?

Abstract A key debate in the literature on nationalism has focused on its relationship to Modernity, and whether nationalism is an expression or a cause of nations and national identification. The dominant position within the literature historically has been that nationalism is very much a product of Modernity, and that it invents nations rather than being their expression. Those who advance this position can be further classified into accounts that emphasize the socio-economic aspects of Modernity (capitalism and industrialism), and those for whom state building, war and democratic enlargement are the proximate sources of nations and nationalism. This chapter elaborates a close reading of some representative thinkers in both iterations of the modernist position. In terms of socio-economic accounts of modernity and nationalism, the works of Tom Nairn, Miroslav Hroch and Ernst Gellner are subject to critical scrutiny. The more political and state-focused account of nationalism is explored through an examination of the relevant works by Michael Mann, Andreas Wimmer and John Breuilly. The chapter concludes by taking stock of the strengths and weaknesses of the modernist position. Keywords Capitalism and nationalism · State-building and nationalism · War and nationalism · Ernst Gellner · John Breuilly · Andreas Wimmer

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8_3

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Arguments about how to define national phenomena are embedded in and influenced by a broader debate concerning the origins of specifically national phenomena. This debate is often couched in terms of evidence and arguments about when, precisely, nations and nationality first emerged, and whether they were causes or consequences of nationalism. The differing answers given to these questions constitute one of the main divides in the literature. The answers given have profound implications for conceptions of the relationship between modernity and the nation, the relative weight accorded to the expressive and instrumental aspects of nationalism, the link between citizenship and nationality, the specificity of national as opposed to other forms of collective identity, and the impacts of globalization, capitalism, state centralization and war on national phenomena, and vice versa. A consideration of the debate about origins, therefore, is a useful way into the substantive literature on nationalism. The debate about the origins of nations and nationalism has been usefully framed by Anthony Smith (2001) as being essentially between ‘modernists,’ ‘perennialists’ and ‘ethno-symbolists’, with older ‘primordialist’ accounts having long ago fallen into disrepute, and thus being superfluous to contemporary debates. Within each of these approaches to origins is a great diversity of accounts, some of which will be outlined in greater detail in this and the following chapter. For now, we can simplify the distinction by saying that modernists insist on the modernity of nations and nationalism, which they claim are closely connected to the rise of the modern state, interstate warfare, democratic participation, capitalism and industrialization. Perennialists and Ethno-symbolists, by contrast, argue that nations and nationalism have their roots in premodern forms of ethnic identification, which provide the social and cultural soil out of which nations grew. In this chapter I will analyse the various permutations of the modernist position, continuing with a consideration of the ethno-symbolist challenge in the following chapter. I approach the task by undertaking a close reading and critique of representative authors rather than simply dealing with generic positions. The reason is that the key contributions on nations and nationalism differ significantly with respect to the detail of their arguments, and hence cannot be readily dealt with in generic terms without doing violence to the content of their accounts. I will proceed by first outlining and critiquing some representative modernist positions that emphasize the socio-economic aspects of modernity and

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nations, and continue with a discussion of contributions that give more weight to politics.

Uneven Capitalist Development and Nationalism A recurring theme in the work of Marxist authors in the early Twentieth Century, was the uneven nature of capitalist development and the consequences of this unevenness for forms of political resistance. In the final decades of the Twentieth Century, some of this thinking was repurposed for understanding the history and contemporary manifestations of nationalism. Tom Nairn (1975, 1977, 1997) was one such thinker. In a path-breaking essay first published in 1975, Nairn attempted to provide a belated materialist account of nationalism, though one that eschewed a pious attitude towards Marx and orthodox Marxism. He proceeds by first critiquing the ‘piece of global folklore’ according to which nationalism is determined by endogenous forces inhering in different societies. He suggests that this approach reflects the ‘false consciousness’ of a world still in the thrall of nationalism. Far from being internally determined, the real origins of nationalism lie ‘in the machinery of world political economy.’ More precisely, they lie in the uneven development of capitalism on a global scale, which, Nairn rightly points out, is the only sort of development that capitalism knows. As a consequence, ‘the most notoriously subjective and ideal of historical phenomena is in fact a by-product of the most brutally and hopelessly material side of the history of the last two centuries’ (1975: 8). Nairn’s argument is that uneven capitalist development generates relations of political and economic domination between core and peripheral states, which in the periphery are manifested as a discrepancy between expectations of material improvements and the realities of continued deprivation. The relative exclusion of the periphery from the fruits of capitalist modernity led educated elites, intellectuals and the middle classes, such as existed, to mobilize against foreign domination. But if such mobilization was to have any chance of success, broader sections of the dominated population had to be invited into fulfilling the historical mission of resistance, and ‘the invitation-card had to be written in a language they understood’ (Nairn 1975: 12). That language needed to articulate the cultural particularity of the dominated population, drawing upon commonalities of language, custom, history and shared myths. Where they did not exist, they had to be invented, excavating the past

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to furnish resources for the struggle into the ‘developed’ future. This explains the Janus-faced character of nationalism: ‘As human kind is forced through its straight doorway, it must look desperately back into the past, to gather strength wherever it can be found for the ordeal of development’ (1975: 18). Nairn subsequently published a book of essays that qualify some of the views enunciated above. He states that, ‘[in] retrospect “uneven development” seems a pathetically inadequate way of trying to cover such varied and occasionally cataclysmic shifts [as those associated with the rise and spread of nationalism]’ (1997: 16). Nevertheless, elsewhere in the book he more or less repeats his earlier arguments word-for-word, asserting that, ‘[development] could only be uneven; the unevenness could only generate a continuing reaction, the politically driven mobilisation of those excluded, “left behind,” colonised or sentenced to become heritage trails’ (1997: 50). Meanwhile, he maintains the relevance of the ‘Janus-face’ metaphor, but insists that the forward gazing aspect of this visage is more prominent than it was when he published his original article. This goes against the grain of most opinion, and is difficult to sustain in the face of the ethno-nationalist violence of the decade in which he wrote those words, and what has occurred in the two decades since. Regardless of the additions and qualifications in Nairn’s work, therefore, it still seems that ‘uneven development’ is important to his understanding of nationalism, even if it sits more uneasily with the nationalist Nairn of the 1990s than it did with the socialist Nairn of the 1970s. The analysis of Nairn was for a time very influential, and with good reason. He developed a powerful hypothesis which, prima facie, goes a long way to explaining one of the most obvious and beguiling features of the contemporary world—the connection between its economic unity on the one hand, and its political fragmentation, and the ideologies that express that fragmentation, on the other. In so doing, Nairn opened up fertile lines of enquiry that can still be fruitfully developed. In particular, his emphasis on the uneven, contradictory nature of capitalist development on a global scale must figure prominently in any rounded account of nationalism. So too must his insistence on the efficacy of nationalism for mobilizing strategic political and economic interests. Nevertheless, at the heart of Nairn’s analysis is a glaring weakness: it is premised on an unreconstructed economic reductionism, which mechanistically views culture and politics as a reflection of global economic development.

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Economic reductionism is pitched more forthrightly in Nairn’s earlier work. Thus, when he says that the ‘subjective’ and ‘ideal’ phenomenon of nationalism is ‘a by-product of [the machinery of the world political economy] the most brutally and hopelessly material side of the history of the last two centuries’ (1975: 8), he is implying that it is epiphenomenal. By treating nationalism as a ‘by-product,’ he suggests that the ‘real product’ is the world political-economy which, presumably, should be the main focus of any investigation of nationalism, rather than nationalism itself. What Nairn concedes with one hand—that traditional Marxian economism has proved inadequate for understanding nationalism—he takes away with the other, merely transposing economic reductionism onto another plane. As I alluded to above, Nairn partially retreated from the economic excesses of his earlier position, accepting Perry Anderson’s call for a ‘more differentiated approach to the study of nationalism’ (Nairn 1997: 16). Nonetheless, the residues of the earlier position still haunt his later work, and the theme of uneven capitalist development as a sufficient explanation for nationalism resurfaces in places. I have no problem accepting that capitalist development is uneven, and that this unevenness has been very important in the generation of nationalist sentiments and movements. Indeed, I would insist on it. But uneven development in itself cannot be the primary explanation for nationalism and its origins. Rather, uneven economic development is a necessary but insufficient condition that needs to be linked to mediating variables that tie world political-economy to national and subnational political processes, with the causal arrows running in both directions. As I have argued elsewhere, ‘[t]he abstraction “uneven economic development” turns out to be an exceedingly blunt analytical instrument in the absence of knowing how it manifests itself empirically and how it interacts with other cultural and political variables within states’ (Cox 2011: 196). In conclusion, while Nairn offers some important insights into the relationship between world capitalism and national phenomena, he does not provide a sufficient explanation. His ‘machinery of world politicaleconomy’ is a flawed instrument for understanding the diversity of nationalism’s manifestations. It is flawed not just because of the substantive content of his analysis, but because it is pitched at such a high level of abstraction that in claiming to explain everything it ends up explaining very little. This cannot be said of a Marxist historian who has made a

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significant contribution to our understanding of nationalism, explicitly eschewing abstract theorizing—namely, Miroslav Hroch.

Miroslav Hroch on the Specificity of Nationalism The work of Hroch (1985, 1996, 1998, 2015) reflects the sensibility of the historian of nationalism, rather than the social theorist. Hroch bemoans an ‘over-production of theory’ (1998: 93), and recommends a more historically grounded, comparative approach to the study of national phenomena. His work is inspired by historical materialism, though the content of Hroch’s work differs substantially from more orthodox strains of the Marxian paradigm, and is more empirically focused. Hroch insists, in both his earlier and later work, that any rigorous approach to the study of national phenomena must begin with the ‘“nation” rather than with nationalism’ (1985: 3). His reasoning is that the nation is a historically constituted, objective reality, whose elements are subject to empirical investigation, while nationalism is imbued with a subjective content that makes any quest for a consensus definition unattainable (2015: 1–3). If nations are ‘invented’ by intellectuals, as so many scholars argue, it is only because objective preconditions for the formation of a nation already exist. By contrast, ‘the irrational and foggy notion of nationalism’ (1998: 91) is not susceptible to historical investigation as it is essentially a ‘state of mind’ derived from the existence of a nation, rather than being a primary factor of nation-formation. Nationalism and national consciousness are surface manifestations of an essence derived from ‘the stable connection of the individual with a series of objective social relations’ (1985: 4). The sum of these social relations constitutes the nation, which Hroch defines as: … a large social group characterised by a combination of several relations (economic, territorial, political, cultural, linguistic and so on) which arises on the one hand from the solution found to the fundamental antagonism between man and nature on a specific compact land-area, and on the other from the reflection of these relations in the consciousness of thought. (1985: 5)

Of these relations, three are irreplaceable: a ‘memory’ of a common past; a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling more effective communication within the group than outside it; and a conception of the equality of

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members of the nation organized as a civil society (1996: 79). The task of the historian is to understand the origins and trajectory of this historically constituted objective entity, and to compare its concrete instantiations as a basis for making controlled generalizations. Hroch asserts that the development of exchange relations and the capitalist market were the most important and decisive preconditions for the development of modern nations, irrespective of other differences between them. He suggests that the growth of capitalism was associated with a centralization of the means of production, which resulted in political centralization, and a homogenizing of linguistic diversity. As a consequence, the ‘content’ of national development was determined principally by economic development, though political, territorial and linguistic relations determined its ‘form’ (1985: 6). It is these non-economic relations, therefore, which become the focus for understanding national diversity and different paths to nation-formation. Hroch (1985, 2015) discerns two contrasting socio-political situations from which nations emerged. The first was characterized by the development of a unified state under the domination of ‘one ethnic culture.’ These were the early-modern states, mainly in Western Europe, including England, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, which were subsequently transformed into civil societies with a nominally equal citizenry. This transformation, an organic part of the bourgeois revolution against the old ruling class, was coterminous with the emergence of national identity, and can be roughly dated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The second situation, extant in Central and Eastern Europe, was characterized by the ‘exogenous’ domination of a ruling class with a different ethnicity from those over whom it ruled. It is the latter situation in which Hroch is principally interested, with his focus being on nineteenth-century ‘national revivals’ among Norwegians, Czechs, Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, the Flemish, Croatians and Danes. He suggests that, ‘the onset of the modern stage of nation-building can be dated from the moment when selected groups within the non-dominant ethnic community started to discuss their own ethnicity and to conceive of it as a potential nation-to-be’ (1996: 80). Three structural phases can be identified between this starting point and its successful conclusion in the formation, and then international recognition, of an independent national state. Phase A denotes a period of scholarly enquiry in which ‘learned researchers’ try to disseminate an awareness of linguistic, cultural and historic distinctiveness among the

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non-dominant ethnic group. Phase B emerges when a ‘group of patriots’, mainly intellectuals, try to win over a majority of their ethnic group to the cause of forming a nation and demanding a state of their own. This is the phase when a national consciousness establishes deeper roots in the community that is the object of patriotic agitation. Phase C signals the success of the earlier phase of national agitation in establishing a ‘mass movement,’ with a broad cross-class mobilization on the basis of national identity. It is during this phase that the movement becomes differentiated into various wings—conservative-clerical, liberal and democratic—with their own distinctive national programmes. On the basis of this periodization, Hroch compares the factors that facilitated the transition between different phases. He singles out three processes as being decisive for the transformation from phase A to phase B: first, a social and/or political crisis of the old order; second, discontent among wider layers of the subordinated ethnic population; and, third, a loss of conviction in traditional moral and religious belief systems. Yet if this manifested itself in widespread national agitation, it did not automatically entail the emergence of a mass movement. For a successful transition from phase B to phase C, certain other prerequisites seem to be necessary. In addition to a crisis of legitimacy, which was also characteristic of the earlier transition, there must exist a basic volume of vertical mobility, a high level of social communication and, most importantly, ‘nationally relevant conflicts of interest (Hroch 1996: 88). Such conflicts express themselves in the centrality of political demands, including those for independence, during phase C. While the bulk of Hroch’s work focuses primarily on the ‘small nations’ of nineteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe, he used the framework sketched above as the basis for making comparisons with the ‘new nationalisms’ of the post-communist world (Hroch 2015; also see Cox 2011: 197–198). He identified a striking resemblance between the aspirations of these nationalisms and their nineteenth-century counterparts. In the 1990s and 2000s, linguistic and cultural demands resurfaced with increased vigour, as did political demands for democratic participation and, in some instances, national independence. This corresponds to demands for civil rights and ethnic autonomy during the ‘classical’ period of nineteenth-century national agitation. Moreover, a rapid change of ruling classes, and the ascendency of a capitalist class modelled on those in the West, characterized the emerging ‘post-communist conjuncture.’ This closely paralleled nineteenth-century nationalist movements, when

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an emerging bourgeoisie was struggling to become the hegemonic class, under the auspices of the nation. Finally, a deepening social crisis, and the construction of a ‘personalized image of the nation,’ shaped the character of nationalist movements in both periods. None of this is to suggest that the new nationalisms represented a thawing of ‘deep-frozen’ nationalist sentiment—a view that Hroch describes as being, ‘closer to the world of fairy-tales than historical processes’ (1996: 89). Indeed, in examining post-communist nationalist movements in the 1990s, Hroch shows how nationally relevant conflicts stem from very different structural conditions in the two periods—economic growth and modernization in the Nineteenth Century, economic disintegration and decline in the post-communist world at the end of the Twentieth Century. His point is not, therefore, that the new nationalisms had direct precursors in the Nineteenth Century, but that they shared an important family resemblance, which may help illuminate the specificity of the present and past. While Hroch’s work certainly does help illuminate contemporary nationalist movements, it is not without problems. These stem mainly from a residual economism. It is misleading to label Hroch an economic or class reductionists in the usual meaning of these terms. He has a more variegated and empirical approach to national phenomena than orthodox Marxists, discussing the multiplicity of their historical determinants, and showing that the promotion of nationalism has not been limited to one class. Hence, Hroch’s rebuke of Ernest Gellner’s superficial labelling of him as a class reductionist has merit (Hroch 1998: 100). Nevertheless, a residual economism remains, which vitiates his overall analysis. This is manifested in his according of primacy to capitalist exchange relations and the capitalist market in nation-formation. He views early-modern European political and linguistic centralization as being a consequence of economic centralization. As we have seen, economic development is said to determine the ‘content’ of national development, while non-economic factors determine the ‘form.’ This summation sits uneasily with other aspects of his analysis, which suggest that shared history, linguistic and cultural ties, and an imputed equality of members, are fundamental to the existence of a nation. There are additional problems with Hroch’s content/form distinction. Historically, it is not at all clear that capitalism preceded political or even linguistic centralization. As we will see, strong evidence can be adduced that political centralization was the precondition, and perhaps even the

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main cause, for the emergence of capitalism in Europe rather than elsewhere (Hall 1985; Mann 1986; Tilly 1990). In England, France and Spain, politically decentralized feudal authority had, for all intents and purposes, ended by the Fifteenth Century, and maybe even earlier, being replaced by an increasingly absolutist form of rule, which was by definition highly centralized (Anderson 1974; Poggi 1990; Spruyt 1994). Unless one has such a broad definition of capitalism as to render it meaningless, these developments occurred before the emergence and consolidation of fully formed capitalist social relations. Similarly, while linguistic centralization occurred later than political centralization, the public use and spread of centralizing, ‘national’ vernacular languages proceeds from the Sixteenth Century, again when capitalism was only in its infancy. Thus, European history seems to evince a different view from the one that Hroch describes. Consequently, it is not at all clear why Hroch insists that on the theoretical plane capitalism constitutes the ‘content’ of nation-formation, while language, politics, territory and culture constitutes its ‘form.’ If his distinction between form and content corresponds to the distinction between an underlying essence and a superficial appearance, with the former determining and animating the latter, then he is on shaky ground, both in terms of his own lights and in terms of the history of nationalism. As Hroch himself points out, it is non-economic phenomena that are ‘irreplaceable’ in determining what does and does not count as a nation (1996: 79). So why are these not part of the ‘content’ of national phenomena? Furthermore, there are numerous twentieth century examples where a nation and nationality were not associated with capitalist exchange relations. In what sense can capitalism be said to constitute the content of these national phenomena? If Hroch’s distinction does not correspond to the essence/appearance distinction, it is unclear why he makes such a distinction at all. These theoretical problems are related to a broader ontological problem that I have with Hroch’s account. This is his insistence that ‘nations’ rather than nationalism should be the main focus for scholars, because objective, material relationships constitute the former, while the latter are ‘ideal’ derivations that are not susceptible to historical investigation. There are two problems here. First, while I agree that there are certain categories of objective relationships that exist in the world that people call nations and that actuate their behaviour, I would argue that it is not their material objectiveness

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that determines their ‘nationness,’ but the perceptions, values, ideas and nation-oriented idioms and practices of a given population that determines what objective relations constitute the nation. That is, there are not objective relations that of themselves constitute nations or even the embryos of nations, in the absence of subjective identification with those relations. What there are, therefore, are particular objective relationships to which large groups of people attach a national meaning and label. Hence, objective and subjective elements that are constitutive of nations may be analytically distinguishable but are inseparable in reality. Second, if the first point is accepted, it becomes clear that the nation is not more or less material, objective and real than is nationalism. The nation is just as much about ideation as it is about material relations, while nationalism is as much about material relationships and objective practices as it is about ideas. It is mistaken to think, therefore, that only the former is susceptible to historical investigation while the latter, as an ideal derivation of the former, is not. Nationalism is not disembodied ideas and doctrine. Nationalism is constituted by ideas and doctrine that are embodied in practices, institutions and political movements, and which find a multitude of observable, ‘material’ expressions, making it every bit as susceptible to historical investigation as other forms of national phenomena.

Gellner on Nationalism, Industrialization and Modernization Ernest Gellner’s influential work on nationalism developed in explicit opposition to Marxian economism and Kedouriean idealism. In a range of works spanning more than thirty years, he emphasized the centrality of culture, while remaining within a functionalist and modernist paradigm (Gellner 1964, 1983, 1994, 1997). As with any thinker whose ideas are shaped over an extended period of personal biography and world history, however, his views changed and tensions and contradictions can be identified in his overall corpus. In particular, his final works are marked by important qualifications to positions enunciated earlier. This tended to soften the functionalist and uncompromisingly modernist cast of his work (O’Leary 1998: 71–73). Despite these refinements, there are a number of core propositions around which Gellner’s theory of nationalism continued to revolve.

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For Gellner, nationalism and nations are both contingent and necessary (Beissinger 1998:169–170). They are contingent to the extent that their specific manifestations are the ‘could have been otherwise’ outcomes of particular historical circumstances. This is the sense in which Gellner originally referred to nationalism as inventing nations, rather than being an expression of their awakening to self-consciousness (Gellner 1964: 168). Nations and nationalism are necessary, however, in that they are inextricably bound up with the transition from agrarian to industrial societies and, more specifically, with the needs of the latter for cultural homogeneity. Gellner’s clearest, most elegant and yet comprehensive statement of this view is to be found in this 1983 book, Nations and Nationalism. He begins that book by defining nationalism as a principle of political legitimacy that holds that ethnic and political boundaries should be congruent. In other words, political rule should be exercised by members of the same cultural group as those who are subject to that rule. This principle was necessarily absent in pre-agrarian and agrarian societies. In the former, the lack of a state precluded the development of a territorial politics premised on a shared culture. In the latter, the emphasis on cultural differentiation as a marker, enforcer and legitimization of social stratification militates against the constitution of political units in terms of cultural similarities. Rulers were typically preoccupied with accentuating their cultural distinctiveness, while those over whom they ruled were for the most part indifferent to ‘their’ culture, as it was relatively invisible in the context of quotidian, face-to-face communication within the largely self-enclosed community. When this is considered alongside the territorial decentralization of many agrarian societies, ‘there is little incentive or opportunity for cultures to aspire to the kind of monochrome homogeneity and political pervasiveness and domination for which later, with the coming of the age of nationalism, they eventually strive’ (Gellner 1983: 13). This changed with the transition to industrial society, and its characteristic fusion of a polity with a ‘high culture.’ Gellner considers industrial society a society of and for perpetual economic growth. Because of this, industrialization is characterized by rapid social change, which is manifested in but also a reflection of an increasingly complex division of labour. This does not, generally speaking, allow people to rest in the same occupational and/or social roles all of their lives, much less across generations. Consequently, the division of labour in industrialized societies both necessitates and engenders a high degree of social mobility. This in turn demands a universal, standardized

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and generic education system, staffed by specialists, so that people can adequately fulfil plural roles, as well as communicate with the anonymous persons with whom these roles will bring them into contact. As Gellner says, the education system functions to sustain and reproduce the division of labour, by enabling ‘frequent and precise communication between strangers involving a sharing of explicit meaning, transmitted in a standardized idiom and in writing when required’ (1983: 34). As a result, the state’s monopoly over legitimate education is now more important than its monopoly over legitimate violence, and provides the key to understanding the roots of nationalism. It is the main clue to understanding why state and culture must be linked, which is, not accidentally, nationalism’s central principle. The modern state’s attempts to homogenize its population through a standardized education system expresses the objective needs of a social order based on industrialization, a complex division of labour and social mobility. It is not so much that nationalism imposes homogeneity, but that the objective need for homogeneity under modern, industrialized conditions is reflected in nationalism (Gellner 1983: 39 and 46). In the transition from Agrarian to Industrial society, the need for homogeneity is realized in the nationalism of a literate, educationdependent ‘high culture’ or, as Gellner sometimes calls them, ‘garden culture.’ These cultivate and are sustained by literacy and by literacypromoting specialized personnel and institutions. It is true that high cultures also dominated the societies of the Agrarian Age, but their dominance takes new forms in industrial society. In particular, their literary idioms and styles are preserved and universalized across the whole of society, while the older doctrines of legitimacy and exclusivity with which they were previously associated lose their authority (Gellner 1983: 50). Such high cultures may in turn engender counter-nationalisms. This is an effect of uneven industrialization. Here Gellner develops a frequentlyquoted fable about fictional entities that he labels as ‘Ruritania’ and ‘Megalomania.’ The latter is driven by the needs of industrialization to culturally homogenize its population through the imposition of standardized language and education. But this is experienced as humiliating and oppressive by culturally distinct and territorially concentrated minority populations, whose identity as ‘Ruritanians’ is shaped by their encounter with Megalomania. This tension can be resolved either through Ruritanians assimilating to the alien language and culture of the Megalomanians, or by seeking a ‘political roof’ of their own (Gellner 1983: 66). The

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latter course involves efforts to reinforce Ruritanian identity, and to politically organize among the minority population to demand and achieve a state of their own. In other words, Megalomania’s striving to brand its flock with a uniform culture frequently gives rise to its opposite: cultural minorities struggling to preserve their culture and identify as a nation, even if this involves the sacrifices of fighting to secede from what is experienced and framed as a national oppressor. As Cox sums up, ‘[t]he functional requirements of an industrial economic order, then, find expression in both state-promoting and state-opposing (secessionist) nationalism (2011: 198). Notwithstanding its elaboration, these propositions constitute the core of Gellner’s theory. They have been subject to a range of criticisms, to which Gellner has given a range of responses of greater or less persuasiveness (see O’Leary 1998: 51–71). Here I want to concentrate on three standard criticisms of his work: namely, its functionalism, its linking of nationalism to industrialism, and its relative neglect of politics. Numerous scholars have commented on the pitfalls of the functionalism that is said to characterize Gellner’s positions (Anderson 1996; Laitin 1998; O’Leary 1998). The textual evidence demonstrating Gellner’s deployment of functionalist explanations—that is, the explanation of a phenomenon’s existence in terms of the needs that it is said to satisfy—is not difficult to locate. For instance, Gellner comments that the roots of nationalism are to be located ‘in the distinctive structural requirements of industrial society’ (1983: 35). He specifies this functional link comprehensively when summarizing his argument: So the economy needs both the new type of central culture and the central state; the culture needs the state; and the state probably needs the homogenous cultural branding of its flock … In brief, the mutual relationship of a modern culture and state is something quite new, and springs, inevitably, from the requirements of a modern economy. (1983: 140)

Formulated as such, Gellner’s theory is susceptible to the usual charges made against functional explanations. Such explanations posit consequences as causes, and thereby obscure the causal mechanisms connecting an alleged societal need to phenomena that are said to meet that need. This means that a functionalist explanation has ‘only a tenuous connection to what it is supposed to explain’ (Hindess 1987: 117). In addition, human agents, in so far as they enter into functionalist explanations at

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all, are typically viewed as the passive bearers of societal functions, which are the impersonal expressions of the structural needs of systems and sub-systems. Human agency is, therefore, largely extinguished. Finally, phenomena that functional explanations misleadingly claim to explain can invariably be understood in straightforwardly causal terms, which makes functional explanations redundant. In response to such criticisms, Gellner accepted that his position could be characterized as functionalist, but went on to say that, ‘it is not at all clear why [functionalism] should be a badge of shame’ (1996a: 627). His reasoning was that the criticisms typically directed at his position were based on an unwarranted conflation of functionalism with teleological explanations, and that his theory was in no way teleological. On the contrary, it was ‘straightforwardly causal,’ and the mechanisms instantiating nationalism’s proximate causes could be spelt out in terms of the (largely unspecified) political and economic forces that created a highly complex divisions of labour, social mobility, and work that is communicative rather than physical. This leads to a standardized, spoken and written idiom, and ‘reduces persons who are not masters of that idiom (or not acceptable to its practitioners) to the status of humiliated, secondclass members’ (1996a: 630). This produces collective identification with others who are in the same position, and may beget political organization and the demand for a state on the basis of that identity. In short, these various links in a causal chain engender nationalism, which can also be shown to have an ‘elective affinity’ with industrialization. Formulated in this way, it would seem that Gellner is not so much offering a functionalist explanation, as ascribing a function to nationalism, whose actual emergence can be explained with reference to identifiable causal mechanisms. Brendan O’Leary (1998) similarly reformulated Gellner’s theory, though he seems to accept the standard criticisms of many of Gellner’s original formulations as being functionalist. As such, he seeks to reconstruct the theory in a non-functionalist manner, replacing Gellner’s functionalist explanation with a ‘filter explanation.’ On this view, elites may recognize the functionality of a homogenous national culture for modernizing their societies. They embrace nationalism as a means to this end. Paidric Pearse and Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, ‘embraced nationalism because they believed it would liberate the Irish and Indian nations, and free them to develop their educational, economic and political systems (O’Leary 1998: 52). This approach rescues Gellner’s theory from the criticisms of functionalism enunciated above, in

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that it posits a causal mechanism linking an alleged societal need (effective communication among an entire population to meet the needs of a prospective industrial society) to the phenomenon that is said to meet that need (nationalism). Furthermore, it resurrects human agency as a central variable in the development of nationalism. A second line of criticism of Gellner is his linking of nationalism with industrialism, which is perhaps the most fragile aspect of his theory. The problem is that industrialization has been absent in many, perhaps most, situations where nationalism has emerged. Late eighteenth-century Irish nationalism, nineteenth-century Balkan nationalism, the ‘Creole Pioneers’ of the America’s (Anderson 1991: 47–65), early nationalist movements in Eastern and Central Europe, early twentieth-century Middle Eastern nationalism, and the nationalism of numerous colonized peoples throughout the rest of the Twentieth Century, are obvious ripostes to Gellner’s key argument. Despite his insistence that there is an elective affinity between nationalism and industrialization, there seems to be a stronger prima facie case that there is an elective affinity between nationalism and an absence of industrialization. Gellner has responded in three ways to such arguments. First, he has argued that industrialization ‘casts a long shadow’ over the pre-industrial world, and that peoples, particularly elites, can anticipate its consequences and the benefits of nationalizing their societies (O’Leary 1998: 73). Second, he has distinguished between the emergence and subsequent diffusion of nationalism, suggesting that his theory is more concerned with the former than with the latter (1996a: 632). Finally, he has stated that he uses the term industrialization in its broadest sense, ‘which includes the earlier commercialization of society, which only becomes ‘industrial” in a narrower sense (power machinery, large scale production) later …’ (1996a: 638). The first of these responses is compatible with the reformulation of Gellner’s theory, as suggested by O’Leary. It has more difficulty, however, in explaining how and why the nationalism of elites resonate with and spread to the mass population, without going beyond the ‘long shadow of industrialization’ explanation. To understand this shift requires considering the reasons why the mass of the population is receptive to nationalism. This requires a consideration of culture, but also ‘taking into account the partial destruction of localism in these societies by the enormous development of state bureaucracies and national armies’ (Mouzelis 1998: 159).

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The second response seems fair enough, though there does seem to be good evidence that national consciousness and identity, though not fully formed nationalist movements, emerged before the onset of industrialization in late eighteenth-century Europe (Beiber 2020; Gat 2013; Greenfeld 2019). Even Gellner finally conceded, contra Smith, that some nations have ethnic ‘navels,’ even if most have their navels invented for them, or are without navels altogether (1996b: 369). This raises the third and final response, which is to say that industrialism is synonymous with modernity. This certainly makes for a more defensible theory, but the problem remains of how to conceive of and explain the emergence of modernity. Gellner’s weakness here is twofold. On the one hand, he has little to say about the link between capitalism, modernity and industrialization. Economic growth and industrialization, so central to his account, are left as under-examined, under-theorized and unexplained variables, which is indefensible in a theory claiming to explain the origins of nationalism in these terms. On the other hand, he neglects the role of the state and ideology, both in the transition to modernity and in the engendering of nationalism. This brings us to the final weakness in Gellner’s theory: its frequently noted apoliticism. In one sense, of course, Gellner’s theory is about politics, in so far as it seeks to understand the conjoining of states with culture. And yet his account remains relatively insensitive to the significance of political struggle in the emergence and consolidation of specific national forms, polities and identities (Beissinger 1998: 170–171). This neglect of politics reveals itself in several ways, which O’Leary has usefully summarized (1998: 63–71). First, Gellner is insensitive to the ways in which secessionist politics may be dampened down by various forms of political accommodation, ranging from cultural autonomy and arbitration, to federation and consociation. Thus, the stark choice that he poses between assimilation and secession is unnecessarily limited and pessimistic. Second, Gellner’s views on political motivation seem, on the whole, to be culturally or materially reductive. The reasons why people embrace nationalism is seen to be largely a result of cultural and material grievances, with little consideration of the consequences of state politics for the generation of opposition nationalist movements. Third, he largely neglected the role of power politics in the determination of which cultures became nations, and which were subsumed within more powerful polities in the initial genesis of national phenomena. Fourth, Gellner is largely indifferent to the symbiotic relationship between the emergence of

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nationalism, egalitarianism and democratization. While he acknowledges the importance of egalitarianism in fostering social conditions conducive to nationalism, this is not linked to a systematic analysis of its connection to democracy, and therefore citizenship. Finally, Gellner’s dismissive attitude to nationalist doctrine means that he is insensitive to the relatively autonomous role of nationalist ideas in engendering particular forms of nationalist practice. When these political weaknesses are considered alongside those outlined previously, it seems that Gellner’s contribution, for all of its suggestiveness, intelligence and humour, falls short of providing an adequate account of the genesis of nations and nationalism. While many of his insights can and should be preserved and developed when approaching the national field, they need to be complemented by analysis that, ‘brings politics back in.’ The accounts of Michael Mann, Andreas Wimmer and John Breuilly claim to do just this.

The Political and Modern Specificity of Nationalism? Michael Mann (1986, 1992, 1993), Andreas Wimmer (2002, 2013, 2018), and John Breuilly (1993, 1996) share a perspective that nations and nationalism are inherently modern and are best understood through the lens of state politics. While their accounts differ in important respects, they all develop causal/historical accounts of the rise of nationalism in a context of the growth of the modern European state and inter-state system. Although not reducing nationalism to state formation, they insist that nationalism can only be understood in relation to the modern state. Economic and cultural accounts, they suggest, are insensitive to the specificity of nationalism, because they neglect the centrality of politics. Michael Mann’s analysis of the rise of nationalism has two key parts: the first concerns the causes of European state formation; the second concerns the link between state formation, the multi-state system and nationalism. With respect to the first part, Mann emphasizes the politically and territorially fragmented character of European medieval society, which had a propensity to generate the political rivalry and warfare that was at the heart of state centralization. He argues that the necessity of improving military capabilities vis-à-vis enemies caused the costs of waging war to increase over time, providing the impetus for states to extract greater fiscal and manpower resources from the territories over which they ruled.

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The extent to which they were successful in extracting resources provides an explanation for, and an index of, their growth and consolidation into larger territorial units with greater infrastructural power and penetration. This first part of Mann’s argument is closely tied to the second part, which is focused on nationalism and is thus more central for our purposes. Mann argues that nationalism is ‘an ideology which asserts the moral, cultural and political primacy of an ethnic group (real or constructed),’ which, ‘allows for two main sub-types of nationalism, cultural and political …’ (1992: 137). The origins and substance of this ideology can only be understood in the context of the emergence of the nation, which Mann defines as, ‘an extensive cross-class community affirming its distinct ethnic identity and history and claiming a state of its own’ (1993: 215). Nations first emerged in late eighteenth-century Europe and America, though Mann concedes some ‘pre-modern’ history of the nation. This history is embodied in two ‘proto-national’ phases—the religious and the commercial-statist. Each of these was crucial for the spread of discursive literacy, which seems to be a necessary condition for the consolidation of nations and the spread of nationalism. The religious proto-national phase began in the sixteenth-century Europe and lasted until around 1700. It was characterized by the spread of vernacular languages of power centres, driven by protestant churches, at the expense of peripheral dialects and transnational Latin. Mann suggests that the most important legacy of this phase is the mobilizing of what he calls ‘intensive power.’ What he means by this is power that insinuates itself into the fabric of everyday life, which the state had hitherto been unable to do: ‘By inculcating literacy, churches were beginning to link the intimate, moral sphere of social life with broader, more secular social practices’ (1993: 217). This laid the basis for increased vertical integration between classes within a contiguous territory. The commercial-statist proto-national phase began around 1700 and lasted until the late Eighteenth Century. The limited sense of national community that had emerged in embryonic form in the previous period was accelerated as commercial capitalism and state modernization further expanded literacy, pushing the shared literacy and language of dominant classes downwards. The development of states and capitalism, and with them discursive literacy, increasingly effaced more particularistic localities, regions and identities. However, it was not until what Mann terms the ‘decisive military phase’ that nations and nationalism can be said to have fully emerged (1993: 249).

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The military phase of nation-building and nationalism began in the last third of the Eighteenth Century. While nations developed in varying forms, depending on the specific configurations of economic, ideological, and political power relations within states they all received a tremendous spur to their growth and consolidation by the increasing militarism of this phase. Militarism was reflected in the increased frequency and costs of waging war during the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, which placed mounting fiscal pressures on states. This had several consequences. To begin with, states were forced to tax the propertied and non-propertied classes more heavily, often resulting in fiscal crises. The resistance of the former, often with the support of the latter, was increasingly expressed in universal rallying cries invoking the people or the nation, whose meaning shifted from one centred on blood and descent to one based on citizenship. Fiscal crises politicized the ‘people,’ and drove forward what Mann refers to as rising ‘class-nations.’ As he asserts, [s]elf-conscious nations were thus essentially born of the struggle towards representative government’ (1993: 225). The archetypal cases here is revolutionary France in the period 1789–1792, which became a ‘reference society’ for others to emulate. Yet serving as a model for other would-be democrats was not France’s only significance for the consolidation of nationalism. After 1792, with Napoleon coming to power and attacking old regimes, classes in other countries compromised under the banner of the nation, and mobilized their national armies and national stereotypes against the external threat. This further bolstered the ideology that would dominate nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics. The more recent works of Andreas Wimmer (2002, 2013, 2018) amplify many of the key arguments of Mann and other political modernists, but also claim to ‘radicalise’ them and put them on a more rigorous empirical footing. He claims to radicalise the modernist position by showing that nationalism is not just a by-product of modern state formation, capitalism or industrialism, but that ‘modernity itself rests on a basis of ethnic and nationalist principles’ (2002: 1). Wimmer puts the modernist position on a more rigorous empirical footing by deploying large data sets focused on ethnic conflict, intra-and inter-state war, and state formation, to develop and test hypotheses that provide a rich and varied analysis of the emergence and global spread of nationalism. We do not have the space for considering the latter, so will limit our exegesis to his account of nationalism’s emergence in modern Europe.

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Wimmer understands nationalism as a form of political legitimacy that demands that rulers and ruled share the same ethnicity (2013:1). This does not really take off, he argues in his earlier and later works, until the end of the Eighteenth Century. Before then, identification for most people most of the time was primarily with the immediate community in which they lived, rather than with particular ethnic groups. The rulers of dynastic kingdoms, empires, city states and tribal confederations did not rule in the name of ‘the people,’ and hence national politics and labels do not apply to them. But between these earlier political forms and later national ones, there was a period of transformation where the foundations of national identification and nationalism were laid. Wimmer is focused on how this transformation occurred. He accepts the analyses of Tilly (1990), Mann (1986) and others, who view early-modern state centralization in Europe, and the rise of territorial sovereignty, as being driven by the demands of military conflict. As state centralization advanced, military mobilization reached deeper into the populace and ‘produced a hitherto unseen military loyalty of and political support by the masses’ (Wimmer 2013: 79). In other words, war created a ‘new contract between rulers and ruled,’ where taxation and military service was the price paid for increased political participation and public goods: The idea of the nation as an extended family of political loyalty and shared identity provided the ideological framework that reflected and justified this new compact. It meant that elites and masses should identify with each other and that rulers and ruled should hail from the same people. (Wimmer 2013: 4)

The new compact between rulers and ruled that underpins modern nationalism is first established in Britain, the United States and France, which enhanced the political legitimacy of these states, while promoting their social cohesion and economic prosperity. Their success led leaders elsewhere in Europe, and eventually elsewhere in the world, to adopt the new model of statehood and political legitimacy. Historian John Breuilly’s work, like Wimmer’s and Mann’s, emphasizes the importance of modern states and politics for the emergence of nationalism. Unlike Mann, and to a lesser extent Wimmer, Breuilly defines nationalism as a political movement rather than an ideology. It is a political movement ‘seeking or exercising state power and justifying such

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actions with nationalist arguments’ (1993: 2). These arguments are part of a political doctrine premised on three basic assertions: (1) that there exists a distinguishable nation with a particular character; (2) that this nation has interests and values to which all other interests and values are subordinate; (3) that the nation ought to be independent, which usually entails the demand for political sovereignty. This doctrine is of interest not just for its own sake, but because historically it has actuated large numbers of people in self-conscious political movements, either for or against a state. Hence, it has been primarily a force for political mobilization, coordination and legitimation that, echoing Wimmer, only emerges with the consolidation of the modern state and citizenship. As such, ‘[t]he most important purpose of any general theory of nationalism is to explain why such movements have come to be so important in modern times’ (Breuilly 1996: 149). It is in this sense that nationalism is about politics and modernity. Breuilly rejects any suggestion that nationalism or even national consciousness is pre-modern. Although he acknowledges that many national myths and symbols have an ancient lineage, he argues that nationalist movements transform these. Furthermore, many successful nationalist movements have had very little by way of a long national history of myths and symbols to draw on, and have invented them more or less from scratch (Breuilly 1996: 151). This relates to Breuilly’s distinction between national consciousness and nationalism. While he concedes that national consciousness may have emerged as early as sixteenth-century Europe, he argues that his was not nationalism as he defines it. It was not nationalism because it did not justify political action in nationalist terms. Rather, until the Eighteenth Century, political action was justified in dynastic and/or religious terms, and is therefore more usefully thought of as a ‘prelude’ to nationalism (1993: 75, 1996: 149). The real thing, so to speak, did not actually emerge until the latter part of the Eighteenth Century. It did so in response to a number of transformations in Western Europe. Of these, changes to the ‘generic division of labour’ and the development of the modern state were central. Breuilly contrasts the generic division of labour to the narrower economic division of labour. While the latter is focused mainly on production, the former encompasses ‘coercion, cognition and production,’ which change their relationship to one another under modern conditions (1996: 163). Most importantly, this involves the transition from a ‘corporate’ to a ‘functional’ division of labour. In pre-modern

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European societies, a bundle of (political, cultural and economic) functions were performed by the same institution. Breuilly refers to this as a corporate division of labour. Under modern conditions, by contrast, institutions become more specialized, and functions are ideally concentrated under the auspices of one institution, thus disentangling political, economic and cultural functions. This denotes a functional division of labour. Breuilly argues that the transition from a corporate to a functional division of labour has enormous significance for the emergence of nationalist politics, but with one key proviso: ‘To link this framework to nationalist politics one needs to focus upon one aspect of the transformation. This is the development of the modern state’ (1996: 164). Breuilly reiterates the conventional view that the modern centralized state emerged in the early-modern period (late Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries), out of the monarchical states of Western Europe. As these states extended their control over subjects, and as they came into increasing conflict with one another, they took the form of nation-states with demarcated borders. Initially, however, the idea of the ‘nation’ had only a limited political relevance. This was because these states justified their actions in dynastic and religious rather than nationalist terms. It was only with the emergence of organized political opposition to these states—which was frequently based on and articulated in the name of religious difference—that something approaching the modern idea of the nation can be said to have formed. This new idea could be, and increasingly was, emancipated from its subordination to monarchical principles (1993: 83). Political oppositions could appeal to the nation as a framework within which a variety of interests could be accommodated, which were not identical with the interests of the Monarchy. This informed an increasingly prevalent view that the ‘public’ state should defend the identity and interests of the nation, whose essence was not the Monarchy, but the People; albeit a ‘People’ that was not, in the early-modern period, conceived as the entire population. The rise of the ‘public’ state, which for Breuilly is a necessary condition for the formation of nation-states, must be understood in the context of the breakdown of a corporate division of labour. The decline of corporate ties engendered an emphasis on individuality, as opposed to viewing people as essentially members of groups. This raised the problem of how to maintain harmony between private and public interests. Nationalist ideas provided a potential solution in one of two ways. First, citizenship,

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as defined by legal rights and political representation, could generate a commitment to the state. In this sense, the nation is simply the body of citizens. Second, the collective character of society (common culture) could be emphasized in order to provide a new source of identity in place or those lost with the decline of corporate ties. These two sources of nationality—the civic and cultural—seemingly conflict, but in practice, ‘nationalism has been a sleight-of-hand ideology which tries to connect the two ideas together’ (1996: 166). It is a sleight-of-hand that, judging from the history of the past two centuries, has been all too successful.

Is Nationalism Exclusively About the Modern State and Politics? The argument that nationalism is inherently modern and political is persuasive. Mann, Wimmer and Breuilly provide compelling evidence and arguments that there is an intimate connection between the rise of the modern state, the inter-state system and nationalism. They do so while avoiding the tendency towards economic reductionism encountered earlier, though Mann rightly acknowledges the importance of capitalism for the origins of national politics. Yet while it is difficult to contest that there is an important relationship between the formation of the modern state and inter-state system, and the rise of nationalism, what is contestable is the nature of that relationship. In what follows, I discuss some of the general limitations of viewing nationalism as primarily or exclusively about politics. In the first place, while I agree that the emergence of nations is bound up with the formation of the modern, centralized state, it is problematic to try to give a unified account of the relationship between state formation and nationalism. Breuilly and Wimmer are less vulnerable to this criticism, since they give detailed historical coverage to qualitatively different types of nationalism, which emerge against a backdrop of very different types of states and, in Wimmer’s case, different balances of power between different ethnic groups. Mann, however, tends to work with an assumption that, ‘the struggle towards representative government’ (Mann 1993: 225), as exemplified by France and Britain, is the ideal-type of state/nation/nationalism relationship to or from which other cases either conform or diverge. In so doing, he tends towards a ‘civic’ conception of nationalism that focuses on a particular form of citizenship and sovereignty as constitutive of modern nationalism. This

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homogenizes diversity and conflates very different forms of nationalism and paths to nationhood. This relates to a second criticism of political accounts of the rise and spread of nationalism: namely, their relative neglect of culture. While Breuilly, Wimmer and Mann make obligatory references to culture—in Mann’s case under the rubric of ideology, in Wimmer’s case more often in the language of ethnicity, which is not quite the same thing—for the most part it is absent or subordinate to politics. This is most explicit in Breuilly’s account. Although he notes the ‘sleight of hand’ that tries to connect political and cultural sources of nationalism (1996: 166), his own analysis is premised on an explicit separation of these elements, and an almost exclusive focus on politics. As we saw, the specificity of nationalism for Breuilly is that it is a self-conscious political movement. The problem with defining, as well as analysing, nationalism in these terms is that it excludes or at least under-plays much of the quotidian, takenfor-granted, emotional and largely subconscious substance of nationalist imaginings and behaviour. It treats nationalism as rational, instrumental political behaviour, thus obscuring the non-rational, non-reflective, and expressive bases of so much nationalism past and present. This is not to imply that there is no rational explanation for nationalism, or that politics is not a crucial element of such an explanation. It is merely to say that an adequate explanation must also encompass the non-rational and expressive elements that give nationalism such a strong emotive appeal. Even Mann’s analysis, which makes much of the claim to be nonreductionist and multi-faceted, downplays the role of culture in the emergence and spread of nationalism. Although Mann does develop some nuanced discussions of the role of religion and discursive literacy in his ‘protonational’ phase, these are couched in purely instrumental terms, and it is the ‘decisive military phase’ (1993: 249) to which he attributes primacy in the rise of nationalism. Despite his disclaimer not to be arguing for military determinism (1986: 511), it is what he calls the ‘logic of battle’ (1986: 507), and its consequences for state finances and integration, that explains why nationalism emerged in Europe at the end of the Eighteenth Century. Culture is relegated to a peripheral position in this account, even if we accept that Mann uses ‘ideology’ as a synonym for culture. There is no extended treatment of the ways in which pre-existing cultural beliefs, practices, rituals and symbols articulated with national forms and were deployed for new purposes.

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The final shortcoming with modernist, political accounts of national phenomena—though this criticism does not apply to Wimmer—is that they tend to not situate them in a context of globalization. Instead, the focus is mainly, if not exclusively on intra- and inter-state politics. The global field, if it is considered at all, is viewed as the inert background context in which European state formation, interstate politics, and nationalism takes place, rather than being considered as a dynamic, constitutive source of these developments. While it is true that Mann’s later works developed subtle analyses of non-European civilizations and their influence on European capitalism and state formation (Mann 1999, 2001, for example), the same cannot be said for Breuilly. He barely discusses the global context or the globalizing dynamic of capitalist production and exchange in the emergence of nationalism. He does not go beyond an inter-national analysis whose key ingredients are located within a European interstate system that is abstracted from the global field. The former is portrayed as a self-referential system that can be understood in terms of its own internal dynamics, while the latter is more or less marginalized to the position of background noise, or undifferentiated space for European expansion. To sum up, political accounts of nationalism make an essential contribution to understanding the phenomenon. They rightly emphasize the role of European state and interstate development in the emergence of nationalism, and draw attention to the ideological and political purposes to which nationalism has been put. Yet they are vitiated by a tendency to downplay culture and globalization. Thus, when asked, ‘is nationalism about modern politics?’ I answer yes, but with the qualification that it is about much more than just politics. It is also about capitalism, globalization, communication, culture and identity.

Conclusion The debate about the origins of nations and nationalism constitutes one of the key structural divides in the literature. In this chapter I have considered some key socio-economic and political accounts that are representative of the modernist position. These views emphasize the relative historical novelty of national phenomena, and draw out their connections with capitalism, industrialism and the modern state. While there is much to recommend these analyses, a recurrent problem is their relative neglect of culture. By contrast, a number of analyses have emerged over recent

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decades that emphasize the deep cultural roots of nationalism. These are embodied in what Anthony Smith has described as the perennialist and ethno-symbolist challenge to modernism, to which I now turn.

References Anderson, P. (1974). Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Anderson, B. (1996). Introduction. In G. Balakrishnan & B. Anderson (Eds.), Mapping the Nation (pp. 1–16). London: Verso. Beiber, F. (2020). Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Beissinger, M. (1998). Nationalisms That Bark and Nationalisms That Bite: Ernest Gellner and the Substantiation of Nations. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 169–190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the State (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Breuilly, J. (1996). Approaches to Nationalism. In G. Balakrishnan & B. Anderson (Eds.), Mapping the Nation (pp. 146–174). London: Verso. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cox, L. (2011). Secession from an Economic Perspective: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Economic Interpretations of Secessionism? In A. Pavkovic & P. Radan (Eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Secession (pp. 191–205). Farnham, Surrey, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Gat, A. with Yakobson, A. (2013). Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gellner, E. (1964). Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gellner, E. (1994). Encounters with Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gellner, E. (1996a). Reply to Critics. J. A. Hall & I. Jarvie (Eds.), The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellne (pp. 625–687). Amsterdam: Ropodi. Gellner, E. (1996b). Reply: Do Nations Have Navels? Nations and Nationalism, 2(3), 366–370. Gellner, E. (1997). Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Greenfeld, L. (2019). Nationalism: A Short History. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Hall, J. A. (1985). Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West. Oxford: Blackwell. Hindess, B. (1987). Freedom, Equality and the Market. London: Tavistock.

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Hroch, M. (1985). Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. (1996). From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation Building Process in Europe. In G. Balakrishnan & B. Anderson (Eds.), Mapping the Nation (pp. 78–97). London: Verso. Hroch, M. (1998). Real and Constructed: The Nature of the Nation. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 91–106). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. (2015). Das Europa der Nationen [European Nations: Explaining Their Formation] (English edition). London: Verso Books. Laitin, D. (1998). Nationalism and Language: A Post-Soviet Perspective. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 135–137). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1992). The Emergence of Modern European Nationalism. In J. Hall & I. C. Jarvie (Eds.), Transition to Modernity (pp. 137–166). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1993). The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1999). Has Globalization Ended the Rise and Rise of the NationState? In T. V. Paul & J. A. Hall (Eds.), International Orders and the Future of World Politics (pp. 237–261). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2001). Explaining Murderous Ethnic Cleansing: The Macro-Level. In M. Guibernau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (pp. 207– 241). Cambridge: Polity Press. Mouzelis, N. (1998). Ernest Gellner’s Theory of Nationalism: Some Definitional and Methodological Issues. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (pp. 158–165). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nairn, T. (1975). The Modem Janus. New Left Review, 94, 3–29. Nairn, T. (1977). The Break-Up of Britain. London: New Left Books. Nairn, T. (1997). Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited. London: Verso. O’Leary, B. (1998). Ernest Gellner’s Diagnosis of Nationalism: A Critical Overview, or—What Is Living and What Is Dead in Ernest Gellner’s Philosophy of Nationalism. In J. A. Hall (Ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Cambridge (pp. 40–88). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poggi, G. (1990). The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects. Oxford: Polity Press. Smith, A. (2001). Nations and History. In M. Guibernau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (pp. 9–31). London: Polity Press.

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Spruyt, H. (1994). The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990. Oxford: Blackwell. Wimmer, A. (2002). Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. (2013). Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 4

The Premodern, Cultural Origins of Nations and Nationality?

Abstract The modernist orthodoxy that situates the emergence of nationalism in the Eighteenth Century has been subject to sustained criticism by those whom Anthony Smith has labelled ‘perennialists’ or ‘ethno-symbolists.’ This chapter examines and contextualizes the culturalist backlash to modernist theories of nationalism, critically analysing key contributions that posit the pre-modern origins of nations. It starts with accounts that argue that ancient nations can be identified in antiquity (e.g. Roshwald, Gat, Armstrong, Grosby), before analysing those that assert the origins of nations in medieval Europe (Hastings, Llobera). The chapter then engages in a critical discussion of the influential work of Anthony Smith, out of which I arrive at some conclusions about the debate around the origins of nations and nationalism. It is argued that nations and nationality are, along with states, constitutive of modernity, while modernity provides the cultural, political and economic impetus to the constitution of nations and nationality as novel forms of largescale collective identity. They inherit and digest cultural elements from the pre-modern past, but these are fundamentally transformed and serve new cultural and political ends. Keywords Nationalism’s origins · Pre-modern nations · Antiquity and nations · Medieval nations · Collective identity · Anthony Smith

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8_4

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In the 1990s and 2000s, a contentious debate raged in the literature about the periodization of nations and nationalism. This was associated with sharp differences about a range of other issues around national definitions, the form and substance of collective identities, the role of culture and a good deal else. Modernists of the type that were encountered in the previous chapter, were subject to increasing challenges from what Anthony Smith (1995, 2001) has labelled as ‘perennialist’ or ‘ethno-symbolic’ accounts of the origins of nations and nationality. These accounts take modernists to task for mythologizing the modernity of nations, for failing to discern the continuities between ‘modern’ nations and pre-modern cultural collectives, and for neglecting the centrality of myth and symbolism in the constitution of national identity (Gat 2013; Roshwald 2006; Smith 1999). As Aviel Roshwald put it: ‘…rumours of nationalism’s recent birth as a general phenomenon have been greatly exaggerated’ (2006: 10). Critics of modernism argue that nations and national identity have premodern cultural roots, and that it is the longevity and depth of these roots that help explain the enduring power of national sentiment. This is not to confuse perennialists and ethno-symbolists with an older generation of thinking about nationalism and ethnicity that viewed these phenomena in terms of the primordial attachments that they allegedly expressed as well as engendered (e.g., Geertz 1973). This view has been widely discredited for naturalizing and essentializing the nation and ethnicity, which makes it a non-starter for any serious consideration of the origins and development of nations. Perennialists and ethno-symbolists do not share the view that national phenomena are primordial features of human social life, but they do insist that they must be studied over la longue duree if their origins and contemporary salience is to be fully appreciated (Llobera 1994: xii). Where perennialists and ethno-symbolists primarily differ from one another is with regard to the precise historical periodization of national phenomena. For some, nations and national consciousness can be clearly discerned in medieval Europe, while others push the frontiers of the nation back to classical antiquity. Regardless of the differences, they share the view that the modernist orthodoxy is historically shallow and culturally impoverished. This chapter assesses the relative merits of a number of representative perennialist and ethno-symbolic accounts that posit that nations have an ancient lineage. I start with accounts that argue that ancient nations can be identified in antiquity, before analysing those that assert the origins of

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nations in medieval Europe. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion of the influential work of Anthony Smith, out of which I arrive at some conclusions about the debates canvassed in this and the previous chapter.

Ancient Nations Before Nationalism? The title of historian John Armstrong’s influential book Nations before Nationalism (1982) suggests that nations preceded the rise of modern nationalism. Some still-existing nations, he argues, can be identified as far back as Near Eastern Antiquity (Jews and Armenians), while national labels can also be attached to many pre-modern collectives that have not survived into the present. Steven Grosby (1991, 1997, 2001) supported Armstrong’s trail-blazing account, affirming the existence of national identity among ancient Jews and Armenians, as have Aviel Roshwald (2006) and Azar Gat (2013) more recently. While differing in detail, their respective accounts are generally complimentary to one another. The overall aim of Armstrong’s book is to examine the emergence of the collective identity that is today referred to as a nation. In approaching this task, he focuses on the persistence of group identities over lengthy tracts of time, particularly those bound up with the Judaic-Christian and Islamic civilizations. In contrast to many modernist analyses that have sought to define nations in terms of permanent, essential characteristics, Armstrong focuses on the shifting significance of boundaries in the constitution of group identities. He argues that this approach, which derives from the work of anthropologist Fredrik Barth on ethnicity (1969), has three major advantages over essentializing views of group identity. First, because it concentrates on boundaries, it is able to account for the persistence of group identification even when the cultural content and practices of the group changes. Thus, Jewish identity, as defined by the symbolic boundaries that exclude what it is not, has had a recognizable existence for 3000 years, even though the cultural substance of what it means to be Jewish has changed dramatically. Second, the focus on symbolic boundaries de-couples the analysis of group formation from a necessary attachment to a particular territory. This helps us recognize that ‘the phenomenon of ethnicity is part of a continuum of social collectivities, including, notably, classes and religious bodies’ (Armstrong 1982: 6). Finally, the boundary-maintenance approach facilitates the understanding

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of ethnic phenomena that are remote from the experiences of European modernity. These include, for example, the differential articulation of linguistic patterns with ethnic identification, where populations are nomadic or diasporic rather than sedentary and rooted in a particular territory. Related to Armstrong’s emphasis on boundaries is his insistence that symbols, myths, communication, and a cluster of associated ‘attitudinal factors’ are crucial for understanding the emergence of nations in the premodern period. The maintenance of boundaries between ethnic groups is primarily symbolic, with more material delineations being effects rather than causes of symbolic boundaries. To the extent that symbols convey ‘cues’ to members and non-members of a given cultural collective, they act as a type of communication. Armstrong continues: … to an extraordinary degree ethnic symbolic communication is communication over the longue duree, between the dead and the living. Here, as in other facets of ethnic identity, the persistence of the symbol is more significant than its point of origin in the past. Persistence is closely related to the incorporation of individual symbols, verbal and nonverbal, in a mythic structure. (1982: 8)

For Armstrong, identification of structures as mythic in no way implies that they are false. Their truth or falsity is wholly irrelevant with regard to their capacity to arouse emotional attachments among those who simultaneously consume and reproduce the mythic structure or ‘mythomoteur,’ as Armstrong labels them. What is relevant is the power of myth for engendering an intense collective awareness of a ‘common fate,’ thereby, ‘stressing individuals’ solidarity against an alien force … by enhancing the salience of boundary perceptions’ (1982: 9). Therefore, Armstrong concludes, it is the symbolic rather than the material aspects of common fate that are decisive for determining collective identity. On the basis of these arguments, Armstrong devotes the rest of his book to a detailed historical investigation of the long-term persistence of collective identities. Most importantly, he emphasizes the role of religion in the constitution of pre-modern forms of cultural identification. He examines the role of Christianity and Islam, which were particularly well suited to penetrating the masses of a population because of their commitment to proselytizing and their tendency to fracture along sectarian lines. Both attributes necessitated forms of communication that

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were accessible to non-elite groups. This stimulated the use of vernacular languages, which in turn served as symbolic boundary markers of group identity and encouraged the persistence of large-scale collective identities. Of these, Armstrong views Armenia from the Fifth Century, and the Jews for twice that length of time, as constituting pre-modern nations. Ancient Jews and Armenians are also the peoples to whom Steven Grosby has attached national labels, though he places a greater emphasis on the significance of territory than does Armstrong (see Grosby 1995). For Grosby, it is the ancient Jews, from the time of the prophetic movement 3000 years ago, who constitute the proto-type of a nationality. They do so because they instantiate all of those features that for Grosby are definitive of nationality; namely, a common cultural identity, a unified religion and a single God, a unitary legal code and a single authoritative centre of power, and an attachment to a delineated territory. There had existed a belief in ‘all Israel,’ at least among the Jewish elite, since the Deuteronomic reforms. In addition, all Israel was united by the worship of a single God, Yahweh, and an encompassing legal code derived from Jewish scripture and authorized by a centre of power situated in Jerusalem. Finally, the Jews inhabited a trans-local but delimited territory, which they defined as a homeland. As Grosby puts it, ‘a people has its land and a land has its people’ (1991: 240). It is the absence of these features, Grosby suggests, that preclude national labels being affixed to collective identities in classical Greek antiquity and other civilizations. In a later article, Grosby (1997) extended his analysis of ancient nations to Edom, Aram and, more significantly, Armenia. In defending his application of national labels to pre-modern collective identities, he points out that the boundaries separating analytical categories are permeable, and that they rarely correspond exactly to actual collectives. This is as true for modern national states as it is for the collectives of the ancient world (1997: 2). Given this, Grosby argues that it is appropriate to label ancient Armenia in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries as a nation. While it did not exhibit all of the characteristics that we might normally associate with nationality, Grosby cites evidence for the existence of a delineated territory and a shared language. These are said to be sufficient to be able to acknowledge the existence of a recognizable Armenian nationality at least 1500 years ago (1997: 21). Grosby’s and Armstrong’s analyses advance our knowledge of premodern collective identities and the mechanisms by which they are produced and reproduced. In particular, their emphasis on the centrality

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of myths and symbols in the constitution of group identity is sound, as is Armstrong’s focus on symbolic boundaries between groups. Nevertheless, their basic proposition that the concepts of nation and nationality are applicable to pre-modern collective identities is problematic. To begin with, there is a tendency to conflate national categories with ethnic ones. This is overt with Armstrong. While the title of his book promises an analysis of nations before nationalism, the content of the book is more generally and explicitly concerned with ethnic identity, which is the label that he routinely deploys when discussing pre-modern Arabs, Turks and Persians, Gauls, Franks and Germans. Often, he exhibits a conceptual slippage between the language of ethnicity and that of nation. Consider, for example, the following two passages: Because the epoch of Absolutism that immediately preceded European nationalism involved, at least for elites, an exceptionally strong rejection of ethnic differentiation, nationalism is often seen as utterly unprecedented. A longer look suggests that widespread intense ethnic identification, although expressed in other forms, is recurrent. (Armstrong 1982: 4, my italics) At the start it is important to recognize that the conception of the ethnic group or incipient nation as a group defined by exclusion implies that there is no purely definitional way of distinguishing ethnicity from other types of identity. (Armstrong 1982: 6, my italics)

Both of these quotes clearly show Armstrong’s proclivity to slide between the language of ethnicity and that of nationality. In the first, he suggests that ‘nationalism’ is often viewed as unprecedented prior to the onset of modernity, but then presumes to rebut this view with a sleight-ofhand, suggesting that intense ‘ethnic identification’ is recurrent before modernity. That may be so, but this is hardly evidence against the view that ‘nationalism’ is unprecedented before modernity. Ethnic identification is not synonymous with nationalism, for reasons already elucidated. Similarly, in the second quote he equates the ‘ethnic group’ with the ‘incipient nation,’ subsuming them both to ethnicity, which allegedly cannot be distinguished from other types of identity because it is defined by exclusion. An acceptance of this view might divert criticism from Armstrong’s conflation of ethnicity and nationality, but it is a view that should not be accepted. All group identities are partly defined by exclusion, and it is

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the symbolic boundary around a group that determines who and what is excluded as well as included, and under what conditions. Yet we are able to distinguish between different types of identity with reference to the bases of exclusion, which is another way of saying the bases of the differences that define the boundary between the in-group and the out-group, us and them. With racialized identities, for example, it is the social significance attached to phenotype differences that are the bases for inclusion and exclusion and boundary maintenance. These can be distinguished from ethnic identities (which may or may not include a racial element), where the bases for exclusion is the social significance attached to cultural difference, exercised through the sorts of boundary defining mechanisms that Armstrong examines. These can be contrasted with national identities, where exclusion may encompass cultural/ethnic (and sometimes phenotype) differentiation, but is not limited to it. In addition, the boundaries of national identities are drawn by attachments to particular territories and an orientation to an existing or envisaged state, and usually but not always to national languages that are spoken by the entire population of a nation, and not just by elite groups. Finally, national identity only makes sense in the context of a plurality of nations, and I would also argue states, against which each individual national identity derives its sense of distinctiveness and exclusivity. Armstrong and those who have followed his lead are unable to show the existence of any of this in their ‘premodern nations.’ This is the very reason why they slip back time and again to referring to pre-modern nations as ethnic groups. When it comes to terminology, Grosby’s analysis is rather more forthright than Armstrong’s. He has the virtue of avoiding the conceptual slippage between ethnicity and nationality that we have just noted, by explicitly arguing that the language of nation is applicable to antiquity: An examination of these three collectivities [ancient Edom, Aram and Armenia] poses point blank both the question of whether or not nations existed in the ancient Near East and, correspondingly, the problem of the application of the category of nationality to these collectivities. An analysis of these three cases further reminds us that in reality the boundaries separating the categories which we employ in our investigations of various collectivities, ancient and modern, are permeable. Rarely does a collectivity correspond with exactitude to a particular analytic category. (Grosby 1997: 2)

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Grosby’s answer to his point-blank question is, we have seen, that nations did exist and that the category of nationality is applicable to these collectivities. And yet his eagerness to emphasize that analytical categories are permeable raises a number of problematic issues of his own and Armstrong’s analyses, which exemplify the weaknesses of similar positions. It cannot be doubted that analytical categories rarely if ever correspond exactly to actual collectivities. After all, they are abstractions from rather than descriptions of reality. Nor can it be doubted that the boundaries between analytical categories are permeable. How could it be otherwise when the aspects of reality that they are invoked to help explain are continuous, overlapping and interpenetrating rather than discontinuous, discrete and self-contained. Yet while all of this is true (by definition), it is also the case that analytical categories must be circumscribed. They must have boundaries placed around them, beyond which lie other phenomena classified and labelled as different. In reality, the boundary may be fuzzy, but it is only by drawing such a boundary, and by being clear about what is to be included within and excluded from its parameters, that a category of analysis has any heuristic value. Categories do overlap, as do human collectivities; but their analytical separation is the first step in understanding their interrelation. And it is on this point that Grosby’s and Armstrong’s analyses of pre-modern ‘nations’ and ‘nationality’ are at their most vulnerable. They spread their definitional net so wide that they capture all sorts of collective creatures, which bear only the most superficial resemblance to the national fish that they claim to have caught (the metaphor is derived from Gellner 1983). Armstrong’s and Grosby’s analyses neglect precisely that which is most distinctive about the ‘discursive formation’ (Calhoun 1997) or ‘symbolic frame’ (Delanty and O’Mahony 2002) that I have argued is a key defining feature of what nations are. It neglects that nationality is always constructed and framed in terms of a ‘deep horizontal comradeship’ (even if it is initially formed around an elite core) where sovereign, individual members are conceived as abstract equivalents. It also fails to acknowledge that the nation is a frame for existing or projected institutional integration, and that this is itself framed by a larger global arena of institutional interconnections. Moreover, it neglects that nations are partly defined by their relationship to an existing or envisaged state, even for these that opt for cultural autonomy within an existing state rather than political self-determination embodied in a state of their own. Finally, it fails to

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recognize that nations only exist, and can only exist, in the context of a plurality of nations, which are part of a broader global-national field.

Medieval Nations Before Nationalism? Adrian Hastings (1997) and Josep Llobera (1994) share many of the assumptions of the two positions enunciated above, though on the whole they date the emergence of nations to Medieval Europe rather than the ancient Near East. Hastings exhibits some ambivalence on this point— sometimes seeming to accept that ancient Jews were the prototype of a nation (1997: 186)—though he generally emphasizes the determining role of Christianity in the origins and constitution of early nations and nationality. Where Hastings and Llobera differ is over the relative weight accorded to various factors in facilitating the emergence of national consciousness. In general, Hastings account is focused on the role of Christianity and written vernacular languages, while Llobera is more concerned with pre-modern, geo-political legacies and the crystallization of civil society. Hastings’ account is premised on a wholesale rejection of modernism: ‘Understanding nations and nationalism will only be advanced when any inseparable bonding of them to the modernisation of society is abandoned’ (1997: 9). On the basis of this uncompromising anti-modernist stance, he argues that nations ‘naturally’ grow out of ethnicities when the latter shift from exclusively oral to written usage of its vernacular language. Historically, this has occurred where vernacular languages begin regularly being deployed in the production of a literature, especially the translation of the Bible. Once a vernacular language becomes expressed in an extensive literature, Hastings contends, ‘the Rubicon on the road to nationhood appears to have been crossed’ (1997: 12). He goes on to examine how the transition from ethnicity to nationhood evolved in England, which constituted the ‘prototype’ of a nation and nationalism. The origins of the English nation are identified as early as the Eighth Century, where the theologian Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written in 730 CE) expressed consciousness of a territorial, ecclesiastical and cultural-popular unity in England (gens Anglorum). By the time of the reign of Alfred, 150 years after Bede, the emergence of the ‘nation-state’ can be perceived, while by 1066 the nation-state is, we are told, definitely established. Beyond this date, there

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was a steady enhancement of national identity and nation-state institutions, so that by the time of Henry VIII definitively split from Rome in 1533, ‘the national principle alone would reign supreme’ (Hastings 1997: 53). Its victory over more particularistic and localized identities was sealed (from the mid-sixteenth century) by the mass production of vernacular Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer, both of which contained models of a nation as God’s chosen people. For Hastings, Christianity was crucial to the nationalizing process in several respects, and can be viewed as the main reason why nations and nationalism first established themselves as mass phenomena in Europe rather than elsewhere (notwithstanding the possible exceptions that have been noted above). Hastings sums up its importance under seven headings (1997: 187–198). First, it was important in shaping and sanctifying the origins of nations. Hastings elaborates the role of Catholicism in sanctifying the emergence and subsequent development of the Frank/French, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish nations; Protestantism in the cases of the Netherlands and England from the Sixteenth Century; and Orthodoxy in the case of Rus/Russia and Serbia. Second, Christianity was important in the mythologizing of threats to national identity. Episodes such as the Gunpowder Plot, the Siege of Derry and the Battle of Kosovo take on a quasi-religious significance, at once remembered as threats to national salvation and a nation’s religion. The contemporary investment of such a meaning, and its reproduction in public rituals, serves to reinforce the sense of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ both now and in the past. Third, Christianity was important in so far as its clergy played a key role in affirming nationhood across every class. The proselytising and pastoral requirements of the clergy’s work forced priests to preach in the vernacular, which received a tremendous boost with the introduction of printing in the late-Fifteenth Century. This process was occurring simultaneously throughout Europe, and is for Hastings the key mechanism by which the main national identities were stabilized (1997: 193). Fourth, apart from the role of its priests, Christianity more generally encourages the use of vernacular languages. Hastings argues that Christianity presumes the existence, and encourages the use, of vernaculars, as expressed by the Bible’s translation into numerous languages long before the Reformation and printing. Furthermore, the New Testament has many references to ‘peoples’ and ‘nations,’ while the Old Testament offers a model of a nation that increasing numbers of people had direct access to from the Fifteenth Century. Fifth,

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Christianity is important in so far as the Bible provides a ‘mirror though which to imagine and create a Christian nation’ (1997: 195). Once again, it is the Old Testament that is important in this respect as it not only provides a detailed picture of what a nation looks like, but also a vision of how God will deal with it if it is faithless. Sixth, Christianity was an enormous stimulus to nation-formation and nationalism because of the development of ‘autocephalous state churches,’ in both the Orthodox and Protestant traditions. This, ‘vastly stimulates the urge to tie all that is strongest in God’s Old Testament predilections for one nation and New Testament predilections for one church contemporaneously to one’s own church and people’ (Hastings 1997: 196). Seventh, and finally, all of the above are said to coalesce under ‘a nation’s holiness and special destiny’ (1997: 196). Thus, the nation and nationality are, for all intents and purposes, the secular products of a more sublime and elevated vision. This goes a long way to explaining their historical and contemporary power. Like Hastings, Llobera views religion as an important constituent in nation-formation (albeit operating in conjunction with other factors), with the latter deriving its quasi-sacred quality from the former. This cannot be adequately appreciated by the modernist conception of the nation, however, ‘which projects an image of the nation as if it were a reality created ex nihilo’ (Llobera 1994: 3). This allegedly neglects nationalism’s cultural dimensions, and ignores or devalues the historical legacies of pre-modern social forms for national phenomena. By contrast, Llobera views the nation as having a ‘medieval heritage.’ Llobera argues that the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries represented the ‘dawning of an era’ in which territorial principalities increasingly defined the Western European political order. He divides Western Europe into five major domains of state and nationhood after the collapse of the Roman Empire, referring to these as Germania, Gallia, Italia, Britannia and Hispania. While being partially derived from administrative and religious divisions, he accepts that these are somewhat arbitrary categories and that they function more as ideal types to facilitate analysis than as an accurate rendering of cultural-political realities. Nonetheless, he examines the emergence of statehood and nationhood on these bases, and concludes that an incipient national awareness could be identified centuries before the onset of modernity. It was not that Germania became or had to become modern Germany, or Britannia modern Britain, and

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so forth. Rather, Llobera’s point it that under the tutelage of centralizing monarchs, these medieval realities developed in such a way that we can discern an incipient national consciousness of the peoples of modern Western Europe. As Llobera puts it: ‘Modern nationalisms are recreations of medieval realities’ (1994: 85). Having dealt at length with the cultural and geo-political legacies of the medieval epoch, Llobera goes on to consider the structural factors that have influenced the development of European nationalism. He examines the role of capitalism, the state, civil society, and the Church. Of these he gives particular explanatory weight to the last two. Civil society is viewed as a substitute for the concept of class, which is often mistakenly assumed to have a close connection with nationalism. While the bourgeoisie frequently benefited from and was legitimized by nationalism, Llobera suggests, this does not mean that there is an inevitable connection between it, or any other class, and nationalist ideologies and identities. On the contrary, the historical record suggests that nationalist ideas and practices have been associated with a broad variety of classes and non-class groups. Consequently, Llobera accepts John Keane’s (1988: 14) view that civil society is a more fruitful concept for understanding the ‘origins, patterns of development and transformations’ of the nation. He goes on to substantiate this view by examining the Dutch and Italian cases, showing how the drive for national autonomy in each was impelled by a dynamic civil society resisting Habsburg rule. He concludes: The comparative study of Western European cases seems to suggest that even where there is a strong ethno-national identity, the presence or absence of a thriving civil society is a determinant factor in the appearance and consolidation of nationalism, both ideologically and politically … successful nationalism seems to be going hand in hand with a well-developed, dynamic civil society. (Llobera 1994: 131)

The final structural factor that Llobera considers is that of the Church. In many respects his account parallels that of Hastings. He also emphasizes the importance of those churches claiming some independence from Rome, of which the Protestant churches were of course particularly important. The close identification of these churches with ‘their’ states, contributed to the consolidation of national sentiments. Yet it was not only that the Church fostered national sentiments, but that, ‘nationalism tapped into the same reservoir of ideas, symbols and emotions as

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religion; in other words, that religion was metamorphosed into nationalism (Llobera 1994: 146). This is the sense in which Llobera understands nationalism as the ‘God of Modernity.’ As with those theorists arguing for the antiquity of nations, Hastings and Llobera make provocative and important contributions to discussions on the periodization, form and substance of national phenomena. But as with Armstrong and Grosby, their position is flawed, and for many of the same reasons. To begin with, there is a general terminological promiscuity in the works of both authors. This reveals itself in some confusing and highly questionable formulations. With Hastings, for example, we are told that the emergence of the nation-state in England can be dated from the Ninth Century, while it was definitively established sometime between then and 1066 (1997: 36 and 39). This is difficult to defend on either the political or the cultural side of the equation. Politically, the medieval state in this period was highly decentralized, with the exercise of power becoming ever-more diffuse the further one moved from its centre (Weiss and Hobson 1995). The legitimacy of state rule in no way depended on the actual or even imputed cultural homogeneity of a ‘nation,’ and nor were the political demands and struggles of different groups generally expressed in cultural and civic terms. Cultural and political boundaries were over-lapping and diffuse, and the reality or even the ideal of their congruence was altogether absent. The conjoining of nation and state implied by the term nation-state was not only absent in the medieval world, it was not even a possibility in circumstances where politics was organized vertically and culture was highly localized, segmented, and differentiated by class and status groups. There are similar problems with Llobera’s account that are manifested in a tendency to conflate national categories with ethnic ones. Hence, we are told that ‘ethnies are the nations of the Middle Ages or, more precisely, that the medieval period only knew of ethnies’ (1994: 39). Elsewhere, he speaks of ‘ethno-nationalism’ and of an ‘incipient national awareness’ as existing in the Middle Ages (1994: 84), while the more general claim of the book is that nations and nationality are categories that are applicable prior to modernity. These shifts are confusing to say the least. I accept that it may well be the case that ethnic groups or ‘ethnies’ existed in the Middle Ages, but what should not be accepted are the very different propositions that ethnies are medieval nations, and that national categories are in general applicable to the medieval period. Here

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distinct analytical concepts are conflated, thereby neglecting the specificity of nationhood and nationalist idioms. In particular, both Hastings and Llobera violate what to me seems a fundamental tenet of nationalist discourse, practice and being: namely, that it invokes and evokes the whole of a territorially-bounded population sharing a common culture and/or political aspirations, and it is from this whole that political and moral legitimacy is derived. This raises directly the vexed question of whether or not nations can be defined exclusively with reference to elites. Clearly for both Hastings and Llobera the answer is ‘yes,’ and they both accept that their supposed pre-modern nations only encompassed tiny elites. This is problematic for two mains sets of reasons. On the one hand, it implies that collective identity among elites in the Middle Ages was shaped mainly by a shared culture conceived as territorially circumscribed, particularistic and national. This is not at all self-evident, with evidence derived from the likes of Bede being fragmentary and very limited. A much stronger case can be made that medieval elites were bound together by the common cultural experience of religious sentiment and institutionalization defined in overwhelmingly universalistic terms, right up until the early-modern period (Anderson 1991; Tilly 1990; Mann 1993). Moreover, the apex of the medieval elites was connected by webs of dynastic descent spread over vast tracts of territory, encompassing multitudes of culturally distinct populations that merged into one another. Conflicts between elites were about territory, amongst other things, but not about territory conceived in national terms. For these reasons, it is misleading to see in these elites ‘medieval nations.’ On the other hand, identifying the nation with a tiny elite is problematic in that it neglects what I would argue is most fundamental to the national bond: that it is a bond conceived as linking an entire population defined as abstract equivalents. Note here the use of the term ‘conceived.’ There are certainly many modern nations that have first formed around the visions and political demands of an elite. Yet the elite’s vision and demands always encompass an entire people, whether defined in civic or cultural terms, with each individual member being in principle the equivalent to any other member, at least in so far as their national membership goes. In other words, national elites always conceive of the nation as a ‘deep horizontal comradeship,’ to quote Anderson (1991: 7). This is the exact opposite of medieval elite identities, which were defined by their class and status exclusivity, at both the formal and substantive level. The

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very character of this exclusivity meant that horizontal comradeship— existing, imagined, demanded or proclaimed—was ruled out by divinely sanctioned, hierarchical realities and ideals. Culture reinforced stratification and hierarchy, rather than being a force for unifying people despite their many differences, as is the case with nationalist ideology and identity. Given these considerations, it is not ungenerous to see in Hastings’ and Llobera’s treatment of medieval elites a kind of retrospective nationalism. The metaphorical language that Llobera uses in places is most instructive with respect to this tendency. He refers to the possibilities of pre-modern ethno-nationalist ideologies enduring for centuries, albeit at times in a ‘hibernating form’ (1994: xi). In addition, ‘if the sentiment of nationhood may in future times have become dormant (because it was absorbed by an alien state), it could always be awakened in modern times by a variety of cultural and political means’ (Llobera 1994: 3). In this view, the nation is a trans-historical reality, which can be (re)awakened when circumstances are more propitious for its development. Modern nationalism becomes, in Gellner’s well-known words, the ‘awakening of nations to self-consciousness.’ Far from being such an awakening, I would agree with Gellner that modern nations are, ‘the crystallization of new units, suitable for the conditions now prevailing, though admittedly using as their raw material the cultural, historical and other inheritances from the pre-nationalist world’ (1983: 49). These ‘inheritances’ have been extensively surveyed by that other doyen of nationalism studies—Anthony Smith.

Anthony Smith on the Ethnic Origins of Nations Of the ethno-symbolist accounts of national phenomena discussed here, Anthony Smith’s voluminous works give the most credence to key modernist arguments (1986, 1991, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2001). Nonetheless, he has also written what is perhaps the most comprehensive and sophisticated treatise against modernism (Smith 1998), insisting that its main flaw is the failure to take seriously the continuities between modern nations and pre-modern collective identities. For Smith, a nation refers to, ‘a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and legal rights and duties for all members’ (2001: 19). This ideal typical form of nation emerged contemporaneously with modern nationalism, which Smith defines as, ‘an ideological

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movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some members to constitute an actual or potential “nation”’ (1991: 73). On the basis of these definitions, Smith generally argues that nations and nationalism did not exist in the ancient or the medieval world, but are characteristically modern phenomena, emerging in the final decades of the Eighteenth Century. But to leave it at that, Smith suggests, is far too superficial a view of the origins of national phenomena. Modern nations need ‘pasts’ from which they can draw sustenance for the present and future, and ‘pasts cannot be forged out of nothing.’ We should, therefore, ask ourselves, ‘does nationalism write its history as it pleases, or is it also constrained by tradition and the “past” which it records. Is that past, in other words, “full” or “empty?”’ (Smith 1986: 177) Smith’s answer is that it is much fuller than modernists accept. While modernists are, on the whole, correct to emphasize the modernity of nations and of nationalism, they are incorrect to not link them back to pre-modern collective identities. Most important here are the pre-modern ‘ethnies ’ that constituted the ‘ethnic cores’ around which many modern nations formed. In this way, Smith can argue for a relative degree of continuity between modern and pre-modern collective identities, without conflating group identities whose differences are too great to be subsumed under the single concept of the nation. So, what exactly is an ethnie? Smith defines it as, ‘a named population with common ancestry myths and shared historical memories, elements of shared culture, a link with a historical territory, and some measure of solidarity, at least among the elites ’ (1995: 57). Unlike Armstrong, he argues that it is not so much boundary mechanisms excluding outsiders that defines ethnic identity, but the commitment and attachment to shared myths, symbols and values that unite the members of a given ethnic group. While boundaries can and do shift, and while the content of ethnic identity is malleable, their fluidity should not be overstated. They are relatively durable over long periods of time, and it is their durability that is significant for understanding the link between them and modern national identity. Ethnies can be divided into two main types: one that is lateral and extensive, and one that is vertical and intensive (Smith 1986: 76, 1991: 52–68). The former refers to those ethnie composed mainly of elite groups and being geographically widely dispersed. The latter refers to ethnie that are more geographically compact and embracing of lower levels of the social hierarchy. According to Smith, the distinction is important because these different types formed very different ‘ethnic cores’

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around which states and nations later formed. The differences in their sociological character provide important clues, we are told, as to the form that nations and nationality would subsequently take in the modern era. Smith’s basic argument here is that the lateral, extensive type of ethnie formed the ethnic cores of territorially defined nations associated with the rise of centralized states in Europe. In these cases, nationalizing states formed around a dominant ethnic core, which sought to bureaucratically incorporate other ethnic groups into its orbit. England, France, Spain, Sweden, and, to a lesser extent, Russia and Poland, represent the key historical examples of states and modern nations formed around such lateral ethnies, which would later become models for imitation. By contrast, vertical or ‘demotic’ ethnies are only indirectly influenced by centralizing states, because they are typically ‘subject communities.’ As such, many of the nations that would form around them were of the ethno-cultural variety, emphasizing shared descent, language and culture rather than rights and duties with respect to a territorial state. Smith suggests that many modern nations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East formed around such vertical ethnies. The first thing to note about Smith’s account is a degree of ambiguity in his formulations. These ambiguities suggest that there is a weaker and a stronger version of the position that he is endorsing. In the weaker version, Smith seems to be saying no more than modern nations and nationalism draw on pre-existing collective identities, and that these must be taken seriously if we are to develop a rounded account of the origins and contemporary salience of national identities. This seems to be his position when he rejects the ‘perennialist’ view, according to which ancient and medieval nations can be identified, and insists on the modernity of national phenomena: ‘It is ethnie rather than nation, ethnicity rather than nationality, and ethnicism rather than nationalism, that pervades the social and cultural life of antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe and the Near East’ (Smith 1986: 89). In this weaker thesis, it is not so much that ethnic cores are necessary elements of successful nation-formation, but that they enhance the prospects of such formation. There is, however, a stronger version of Smith’s thesis. Here he implies that (1) nations do in fact precede the modern era, and (2) that national phenomena can only exist if they have a pre-existing ethnie to build on. With respect to the first point, Smith asserts that, ‘if the ‘modern epoch’ is taken to commence with the eighteenth century in Europe,

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then there is well-documented evidence for some nations antedating this watershed, and for the emergence, if not of ‘mass nations,’ then of middle-class nations in the late medieval and Renaissance epochs in Europe and perhaps the Far east (Japan, Korea, possibly China).’ Indeed, ‘a few groups approximating to the ideal type of the ‘modern nation’ can be found even earlier—in late antiquity, and perhaps earlier, if we include the ancient Egyptians, Israelites and Persians (Smith 2001: 20 and 22). With respect to the second points raised above, Smith suggests that, ‘[i]f there was no model of past ethnicity and no pre-existent ethnie, there could be neither nations nor nationalism’ (1986: 214). This is not simply a throwaway line for emphasis. Elsewhere, he comments that, ‘for the modern nation, to become truly a “nation,” requires the unifying myths, symbols and memories of pre-modern ethnie’ (1988: 11). To sum up, in the stronger thesis ethnie are not only presented as a necessary condition of successful nation-formation; Smith implies that they are nations, despite his strictures to the contrary. Of Smith’s two theses, the weaker one is compatible with a modernist position. This weaker thesis is difficult to rebut, and its emphasis on culture provides an important corrective to many modernist, instrumentalist accounts. His stronger thesis, however, is more problematic. An immediate objection to the stronger thesis is that there appear to be examples of successful national projects that are not clearly based upon pre-modern ethnic cores. Three obvious cases are white settler nationalism in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. These three cases fulfil Smith’s nationhood criteria, but are linked in only the most tenuous way to pre-modern ethnic identities, if they are linked at all. In the first of these cases, Smith anticipates such a criticism, insisting that the United States’ ethnic roots are revealed in the Anglo-American Protestant traditions of its Puritan founding fathers (1991: 149–150). This may be so, though it is not at all clear that such traditions constitute an ethnie, even as Smith defines the concept, or even that they are pre-modern. Many scholars, Smith included, have rightly argued that the Protestant Reformation is a crucial constituent of modernity, representing what is perhaps the most important historical symptom of a rejection of the traditional, pre-modern European Order. The cases of Australia and New Zealand are even more difficult for the strong Smithian thesis. By Smith’s own lights, Australia and New Zealand are successful nations, and yet large-scale white settlement did not begin until after the French Revolution, and their most powerful founding myths are to be located in the Twentieth

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Century. A key founding myth in both countries is that of the birth of a nation on the blood-soaked beaches of Gallipoli, in April 1915. Beyond the ritual incantations of that event, it seems that the most ubiquitous reproducers of national identity in both countries are sporting contests rather than pre-modern ethnies. This illuminates the extent to which national myths and symbols can be constructed that inspire powerful emotional attachments, despite the lack of pre-modern ethnic roots. This raises another problem with Smith’s strong thesis. He makes a great deal of the argument that the emotional intensity of nationalism resides in, and derives from, pre-modern ethnic sentiments, the longevity of which is the source of their power and appeal. Smith assumes this to be self-evident, but it is not clear why relatively ancient ethnic sentiments should have a more powerful emotional appeal than more recent ones. The emotional appeal of this or that sentiment may itself be learned and constructed, as many scholars of collective emotions have persuasively argued (Ahmed 2004; Plamper 2015; Cox and Wood 2017). This makes the historical longevity of ethnic sentiments contingent, if not irrelevant, with respect to their emotional force and mobilizing power. In addition to these criticisms, Smith’s voluminous works overwhelmingly concentrate on pre-modern ethnies, and have relatively little to say about the national identities in which they are supposedly embodied today. He does not adequately show how pre-modern ethnies are manifested in, and connected to, contemporary nations and nationalist movements. The implications of this weakness have been cogently summarized by Delanty and O’Mahony: The most basic problem with Smith as a theorist of continuity of identity between pre-modern and modern times, as distinct from being an insightful theorist of nationalism in general, is that the grounds for deciding the degree of possible continuity can only be ascertained from investigation of actual modern identities. This is the case because if it is accepted, as it now generally is, that all identities are subject to continuous construction processes then the question becomes an empirical one of the degree to which such construction involves innovation in or maintenance of existing identity patterns. But Smith’s concentration is more on pre-modern identities than on modern ones … to address the question of continuity satisfactorily involves demonstrating that such continuity exists through commensurate consideration of pre-modern and modern identities. (2002: 85)

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The problem is that Smith does not undertake such ‘commensurate consideration.’ Nor does he have much to say about the nature of the mechanisms that link old ethnies and new nations, apart from repeating statements to the effect that many national myths and symbols originate in pre-modern ethnic cores. Part of the problem is that Smith does not adequately distinguish between culture and identity, simply assuming that a demonstration of continuity in the former is enough to prove continuity in the latter. But this cannot and should not be assumed. As Delanty and O’Mahony have pointed out, it is much more difficult to demonstrate continuities in ethnic or national identity from pre-modern to modern times than it is to demonstrate continuities in culture’ (2002: 84–85). Finally, Smith has little to say about the connection between the development of national phenomena and the globalization of European modernity—a silence that is common among ethno-symbolists. Even where he explicitly addresses global issues at length (e.g., Smith 1995), he mainly limits himself to a robust defence of the continued salience of national identities in a globalized world, saying little about their historical connection and mutual constitution. Any rounded account of the nation must examine this mutual constitution. It is to a preliminary sketch of such an account that I now turn.

Modernity and the National Field In an earlier chapter, I argued that the existence of nations is inseparably linked with claims to nationhood. As well as being a form of political practice, ‘nationalism is a particular perspective or a style of thought’ oriented to the idea of the nation (Greenfeld 1992: 4). Therefore, nations cannot and should not be separated from the discourse of nationalism, but are part of a broader ‘discursive formation’ (Calhoun 1997) or ‘symbolic frame’ (Delanty and O’Mahony 2002) characterized by particular (nationalist) ways of thinking about, imagining and reproducing collective identity. Given this, in approaching all of the questions posed, we need to ask: what are the relevant differences between pre-modern and modern ‘ways of thinking about, imagining and reproducing’ collective identities. Are elite identities sufficient to be able to speak of a nation? There are, in my view, three key differences between pre-modern elite and modern national identities. First, pre-modern elites eschewed the horizontal identification that many theorists have rightly argued is central to nationalist

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ways of thinking about and imagining group identity and collective action (James 2006; Calhoun 1997; Anderson 1991). Horizontal identification refers to the in-principle inclusion of members from all strata within a given cultural group as being a part of the collective. Such horizontal identities were anathema to the divinely sanctioned and idealized hierarchical organization of large-scale, pre-modern groups. Whether we look at the ancient or the medieval world, elite identities were organized and imagined as vertical rather than horizontal, with territorial propinquity and cultural similarity not necessarily being grounds for inclusion within a given group. Within Europe from the early-modern period onward (from the midsixteenth century), elite groups began to incorporate and appeal to broader layers of a territorially bounded population (Greenfeld 2019). They slowly began to embrace a more horizontal identity, which set them apart from earlier elite identities. In so doing, they forged identities that differed from their pre-modern counterparts in a second way. They were framed more in terms of categories of equivalent individuals than in terms of networks of descent and community. Craig Calhoun (1993, 1997) has clarified this distinction as one between categorical and network identities. He argues that in the latter, identity is defined by and derives from the webs of relationships between persons and hierarchies of positions. In the former, by contrast, identity is defined in terms of categories of similar individuals, whereby each member of a given group is deemed to be the abstract equivalent of any other member. National identity is prcisely of this sort, and summons up an imagined equivalence of sovereign individuals within and of the nation. While this sort of categorical identification was not altogether absent in the pre-modern world (Calhoun suggests that pre-modern religious identities were based on such abstract categories), it was certainly not the basis for collective identities that have been put forward as representing early examples of nations. These were invariably based on networks of ascribed statuses and interpersonal relations bound by hierarchies of common descent and kinship, which is perhaps one of the reasons why ethno-symbolists so often slide back into the language of ethnicity. The third and final difference is intimately related to the first two: namely, that horizontal and categorical identity, when joined, presuppose the emergence of an ideal of equality between members of the national community. By this, I do not refer to material equality, or even to the ideal of material equality, but to the ideal of equality with respect to one’s membership of the nation. Irrespective

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of material inequalities, one member of the nation is as good as another and it is from the aggregate of these individual members that legitimate sovereignty is derived. Ethno-symbolism is also found wanting in that it is unable to show that the identities that they call national are able to provide, or promise to provide, a cultural frame for institutional integration. Here they fail to pay sufficient attention to the institutionally integrating elements of nations and nationalism, instead focusing almost exclusively on their symbolic dimensions. Once again, this one-sidedness limits their appreciation of the specificity of nation-oriented practices and institutions, and nationalist modes of legitimization. These can be most fruitfully understood in relation to the institutional dynamics of modernity, while still remaining sensitive to pre-modern cultural legacies that help shape national forms. Delanty and O’Mahony (2002) provide a compelling argument to this effect, insisting that different forms of nationalism must be theorized in terms of the modern institutional dynamics that they simultaneously express and consolidate. Their basic thesis is that the emergence of nations and nationalism must be situated in the context of the dialectic of differentiation and (re)integration characteristic of modernity, which as a social project is based on four fundamental institutional dynamics: state formation, democratization, capitalism and intellectualization of culture (2002: 9–19). With regard to state formation, Delanty and O’Mahony argue that in the early-modern period of European history, the cultural form of the nation became the main means of constituting territorial, political units. In particular, they emphasize the ways in which states increasingly sought to control their populations, not only or even mainly through coercion, but through what Foucault (1979) famously conceptualized as processes of governmentality and the constitution of individuals as subjects. Here the institution of citizenship was fundamental, with one of its primary roles being to distinguish between members and non-members of a given polity conceived in national terms. As such, citizenship becomes coeval with nationality, and performs an essential integrating function for newly emergent states. This raises the spectre of democratization, which Delanty and O’Mahony rightly view as a key to nationalism’s success. Their main point is not so much that nationalism necessarily entails democracy—an historically untenable position—but that the emergence of nationalism was coterminous with democracy’s modern rebirth and the values of equality

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and self-determination that it promoted. In other words, nationalism subsumed democracy along with its core values. As Delanty and O’Mahony put it: ‘The ability of nationalism to be able to claim the mantle of the demos, and with it the ideal of equality, has been crucial to its appeal.’ And yet, this association of the demos and equality contains within it deeply subversive possibilities: ‘This idea that appeals to nation categories involves a legitimate re-appropriation, reconstruction or transformation of governance has given consistent impetus to nationalist entrepreneurs and movements’ (2002: 14). In the early-modern period, the most important of these were rising economic classes that sought political power to match their growing economic power. Here particular interests were presented as universal interests, albeit within the limited universe of a state increasingly conceived in national terms. The question of class raises the question of capitalism, which Delanty and O’Mahony view as, ‘the dominant socio-economic project of modernity.’ Their argument here is that capitalism, and the industrial production that it fosters, creates social and economic preconditions for the emergence of nationalism. In particular, they emphasize the socially dislocating and conflict-generating character of capitalism, to which nationalism is an integrative response, with national identity being an alternative vision of community. Moreover, capitalism expands the middle classes within society, but simultaneously engenders conditions that alienate them. This contradiction is manifested in the disjuncture between middle class expectations and their experiences. This is typically realized in increased pressures to economic nationalism, as well as a greater investment in national identity on the part of those most affected—often middle classes whose social position is threatened and whose expectations go unrealized. Finally, Delanty and O’Mahony emphasize the penetration of capitalism into the sphere of cultural production. In particular, they suggest that the type of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995) represented by sports competition, tourism, world exhibitions and the like, play a major role in codifying and reproducing national identity. The fourth and final institutional project of modernity that Delanty and O’Mahony discuss is that of the intellectualization of culture. This has been institutionalized in the universities and secular education more generally, and personified in the form of increasingly autonomous intellectuals, who are instrumental in the codification and promotion of national sentiment. Historians, archaeologists, geographers and demographers have been particularly important in this respect, often being the

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custodians of national culture, in so far as they interpret and construct the objects of their investigations in ways that naturalize the nation. The dissemination of this knowledge requires a discursive medium, and thus the role of popular education in creating a reading public is a crucial adjunct to more scholarly nation-evoking pursuits. Both have in turn been dependent on the technological developments associated with the rise of print capitalism (Anderson 1991), and latterly that of photography, film, video and social media. These have facilitated the capacities of people to ‘know’ their nations, and to imagine them as bounded communities, which has found expression in the aestheticization of nationalism and politics more generally. To summarize, Delanty and O’Mahony view nations and nationalism as intimately related to the four institutional dynamics that they regard as constitutive of modernity. I do not want to get into an argument about the pros and cons of defining modernity in this way, or about the specific list of institutional dynamics that they argue are crucial. While we could no doubt quibble with Delanty and O’Mahony’s particular list of institutional projects that are said to define the modern condition, the fundamentally sound point of their analysis is that the categories of nation, nationality and nationalism are inextricably bound up with modern institutional integration, and cannot be adequately appreciated when abstracted from such processes. Ethno-symbolists obscure this connection when they attach national labels to groups that do not provide, and do not claim to provide, such an institutionally integrating function. This raises the further question about the relationship between the nation and the state. Once again, ethno-symbolists tend to elide what is perhaps the most crucial distinction between national and ethnic communities. The former is necessarily a political community, oriented to an existing or envisaged state, while the latter need not be so. Calhoun points out that nations do not simply advance claims of ethnic similarity, but claims that, ‘certain similarities should count as the definition of political community. For this reason, nationalism needs boundaries in a way premodern ethnicity does not’ (1993: 229). Consequently, nations and nationality are necessarily defined with reference to existing or envisages states. This typically takes one of three ideal-typical forms. First, there is the nationalism of existing states attempting to further homogenize their populations, in order to smooth the path of administrative efficiency

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and political expediency by making political and cultural boundaries congruent. This form includes the subset of irredentist nationalism, whereby states seek to incorporate co-nationals that are presently within the borders of another state. Second, there is the nationalism of stateless nations within states, which seek to make political and cultural boundaries congruent by pursuing secession from a state that is perceived as an alien intrusion. Here the political orientation is to the existing alien state, as well as to the imagined future state that would be a realization of the subject nation’s demand for self-determination. Finally, even in those rarer cases where nationalism takes a more cultural form, eschewing the demand to secede, the given nation still has to politically negotiate its autonomy and recognition with an existing state. In this sense, these cultural nationalisms also represent political communities, and are also defined by their relationship to states, though in a negative way. What all of this suggests, is that nations are not merely contingently related to states, but are necessarily related. This is in contrast to premodern ethnic group. These were not, on the whole, imagined as political communities, and nor did political units, including states, derive their legitimacy from cultural units. Even where there is some evidence that they did—ancient Jews and Armenians being possibilities—they only did so on the basis of elite identities, which we have already discounted from being labelled as national. Moreover, these earlier identities were not, in any relevant respects, constituted by their insertion into a plural universe of other nations and states.

Conclusion The foregoing analysis has suggested that nations and nationality are, along with states, constitutive of modernity, while modernity provides the cultural, political and economic impetus to the constitution of nations and nationality as novel forms of large-scale collective identity. They inherit and digest cultural elements from the pre-modern past, but these are fundamentally transformed and serve new cultural and political ends. Thus, while I can agree with ethno-symbolists that some nations draw on the cultural materials of pre-modern collectives, I cannot agree that this registers a continuity of identity sufficient to attach a common national label. The difference between national and pre-modern identities are much more important than any imputed similarities. Most importantly, national identities are imagined as horizontal, categorical and equal; they

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promise and sometimes deliver a new frame for institutional integration; they are inextricably bound up with and oriented to an existing or envisaged state; and they form within a broader national and international field that is global in scope from around the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. In this sense, the national and the global are mutually constitutive. The relationship between nationalism and globalization is at the heart of more recent debates among scholars of nationalism, and has taken particularly sharp form around debates over the rise of far-right nationalist populism, which is explored in the next chapter.

References Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Armstrong, J. A. (1982). Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Barth, F. (1969). Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Bergen: Universitets-forlaget. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Calhoun, C. (1993). Nationalism and Ethnicity. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 211–239. Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Cox, L., & Wood, S. (2017). ‘Got Him’: Revenge, Emotions and the Killing of Osama Bin Laden. Review of International Studies, 43(1), 112–129. Delanty, G., & O’Mahony, P. (2002). Nationalism and Social Theory: Modernity and the Recalcitrance of the Nation. London: Sage. Foucault, M. (1979). On govemmentality. Ideology and Consciousness, 6, 5–21. Gat, A. with Yakobson, A. (2013). Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gellner, E. (1996). Reply: Do Nations Have Navels? Nations and Nationalism, 2(3), 366–370. Giddens, A. (1985). The Nation-State and Violence Vol. 2 of A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenfeld, L. (2019). Nationalism: A Short History. Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions Press.

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Grosby, S. (1991). Religion and Nationality in Antiquity. European Journal of Sociology, 32(2), 229–265. Grosby, S. (1995). Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of Modern Societies. Nations and Nationalism, 1(2), 143–162. Grosby, S. (1997). Borders, Territory and Nationality in the Ancient Near East and Armenia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40(1), 1–29. Grosby, S. (2001). Nationality and Religion. In M. Guibernau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (pp. 235–256). Cambridge: Polity Press. Hastings, A. (1997). The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, P. (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In. London: Sage. Keane, J. (1988). Democracy and Civil Society. London: Verso. Llobera, J. (1994). The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe. Oxford: Providence. Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1993). The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plamper, J. (2015). The History of Emotions: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roshwald, A. (2006). The Endurance of Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, A. (1986). The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, A. (1988). The Myth of the “Modem Nation” and the Myths of Nations. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 11(1), 1–26. Smith, A. (1991). National Identity. Harmonsworth: Penguin. Smith, A. (1995). Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, A. (1998). Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge. Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, A. (2001). Nations and History. In M. Guibernau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (pp. 9–31). London: Polity Press. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990. Oxford: Blackwell. Weiss, L., & Hobson, J. (1995). States and Economic Development. Cambridge: Polity Press.

CHAPTER 5

Nationalism and Populism in the Age of Globalization

Abstract The renaissance in nationalism studies beginning in the 1980s occurred at the same moment that globalization discourse was becoming ubiquitous. Much of the early writing on globalization assumed that it would have a corrosive effect on national identity and nationalism. This emphatically proved not to be the case, with nationalism intensifying as global connections became denser and more extensive. This chapter disentangles contested ideas about the relationship between nationalism, globalization and populism. It begins by further elaborating on the fuzzy idea of globalization, identifying its key features and outlining four relatively discrete positions on its periodization. The discussion continues with a consideration of the relationship between globalization and the nationalist populist revolts that have marked contemporary political development. Here particular attention is paid to accounts emphasizing economics and inequality on the one hand, and those emphasizing the role of identity, on the other. The chapter ends by problematizing this bifurcation, arguing that it is unhelpful. Keywords Globalization and nationalism · Populist nationalism · Economic nationalism · Populism · Brexit · Trump and nationalism

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8_5

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The renaissance in nationalism studies during the 1980s occurred at the same time that another major shift in intellectual preoccupations was accelerating. It was during that decade that ‘globalization’ emerged as an academic and journalistic buzzword—a linguistic short-hand for processes that were compressing time and space and making the world more globally interdependent. Through the 1990s, its popularity would spread and deepen, so that by the end of that decade David Held and his co-authors could plausibly claim that ‘globalization is a concept whose time has come’ (Held et al. 1999: 1). The ubiquity of globalization discourse abated somewhat during the early years of the United States’ military forays into Afghanistan and Iraq, displaced by a renewed interest in notions of Empire and Imperialism, with the United States as the new Rome (Mann 2003; Ferguson 2004; David and Grondin 2006; Maier 2006). Nevertheless, in the years that followed, globalization and its cognate terms would remain catch-all descriptions of, and imputed explanations for, much that was important in contemporary economics, communications, culture and politics. In recent years, globalization has become the bête noire of nationalist populists of various ideological persuasions—in both the developed and less developed world—as well as being posited as a key factor in their growing popularity (Gamble 2018; Ferguson 2016; Rodrik 2020). This has invoked intense debate about the relationship between globalization and nationalism. When globalization discourse first took off in the 1980s and 1990s, its proponents often assumed that the nation-state and nationalism would decline in the wake of globalizing forces (Guehenno 1995; Albrow 1996; Greider 1997). There were many strands to this strong globalization argument, though they all embraced a similar logic and conclusion. Basically, it was presumed that intensified globalization necessarily entailed the erosion of both national borders and state capacities. As this erosion accelerated with deepening global interdependence, cosmopolitan values would increasingly displace national identification, thus weakening the appeal of nationalist politics. Expressed differently, the universalising thrust of globalization confronted the particularism of the nation-state and nationalism in a zero-sum game, which the latter was bound to lose. This was perhaps one of the reasons why in the 1980s and early 1990s there was little dialogue between the new scholarship on nationalism and that on globalization. But this began to change from the mid-1990s, when it became clear that nationalism was not only resilient in the face of globalizing forces, but seemed to positively flourish in their presence (Smith 1995; Guibernau 1999). Prima facie, it seemed that globalization

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was an irritant to nationalism rather than being a solvent. The galvanization of various nationalist secessionist movements in the 2000s, along with the growing appeal of nationalist populists in the 2010s, culminating in Brexit and the remarkable rise of Donald Trump, confirmed the positive-sum relationship between globalization and nationalism. But the nature of that relationship, and the nature of the causal mechanisms linking one to the other, have remained empirically opaque and theoretically contested. This chapter disentangles these contested ideas about the relationship between nationalism and globalization. It begins by further elaborating on the fuzzy idea of globalization and how it has been periodized, paying particular attention to economic and cultural change since 1970s. The discussion continues with a consideration of the political ramifications of these changes as revealed in the resurgence of right-wing, nationalist populism. The focus is on the European far-right, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump, which are examined with an eye to identifying their shared characteristics. Finally, the chapter moves to a consideration of explanations for the resurgence of nationalist populism, including those emphasising economics and inequality on the one hand, and those emphasising culture and identity on the other. I end by problematising this bifurcation, arguing that it is unhelpful.

Globalization and Nationalism: A Zero-Sum Game? Globalization can be provisionally defined as the sum of those economic, cultural and political processes that contribute to worldwide interconnectedness and interdependence (Cox 2007a: 1950). Understood as such, it is clear that globalization long precedes the popularization of the concept since the 1980s. Some scholars have suggested that globalization in its broadest sense is coterminous with the history of our species’ expansion out of East Africa, the growth and spread of civilizations in the Near East, and the eventual populating of the entire, inhabitable region of the planet (Held et al. 1999: 25 and 416; Robertson 2003: 49–77). For others, with whom I agree, such a permissive use of the term represents an unhelpful, ahistorical abstraction that is descriptively vacuous and bereft of any explanatory value (Rosenberg 2000: 2–9; Waters 1995). But these scholars are also divided among themselves about the periodization of globalization and its key features. Four relatively discrete positions can be identified, which I suggest mark distinct but linked phases in an ongoing

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process of globalization that has always been enmeshed with capitalism, nations and nationalism. One interpretation is to posit the bloody geographical expansion of European powers into other continents from the late Fifteenth Century as being the point of departure for globalization (Beck 1992; Waters 1995). The initial thrust of the Portuguese and Spanish into parts of Africa, Asia and the America’s represented the first, fledgling steps in a process that would, by the Nineteenth Century, culminate in the establishment of a truly global market, and European dominance over much of the World. The three centuries after the voyages of ‘discovery’ by Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama saw the growth of webs of interconnectedness and imperial conquest that would inextricably link the fates of Europe and the rest of the world. The industrial and democratic revolutions accelerated and deepened these developments and sealed the subordination of non-Europeans in a mutually implicating world system marked by vast and growing inequalities. The global character of these processes was not lost on early observers. Two centuries before ‘globe-talk’ became fashionable, Johann Gottfried Herder could in 1774 rhetorically ask: ‘When has the entire earth ever been so closely joined together, by so few threads? Who has ever had more power and more machines, such that with a single impulse, with a single movement of a finger, entire nations are shaken’ (cited in Hopkins 2002: 12). Figures associated with the European Enlightenment similarly recognized that discrete national histories were inextricably entwined with a supranational world history (e.g., Voltaire, Kant and Hegel), which informed their championing of cosmopolitan, universal values. A half century later, Marx and Engels elucidated a remarkable sketch of global capitalist development, which at its core had the imperative of geographical expansion and multiplying, global interconnections: ‘The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere’ (Marx and Engels 1967 [1847]: 83). This had given both production and consumption a cosmopolitan character that had far-reaching social and political implications: ‘In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations’ (1967 [1847]: 84). These passages were as much a window into the future as they were a description of the present, as subsequent phases of capitalist globalization confirmed.

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A second interpretation of the periodization of globalization emphasises the second half of the Nineteenth Century as being crucial. The growth of global networks before that point, this view suggests, ‘rested on a series of overlapping, interacting, but basically autonomous regions, each engaged in a process of self-organization and self-reproduction’ (Geyer and Bright 1995: 1045). By contrast, the second half of the Nineteenth Century represented the period of classical European colonialism in Africa and Asia, and the final subjugation of indigenous populations by white settlers in North and South America and Australasia, where no region of the globe with significant populations could be said to be autonomous and ‘outside’ the global political economy. This was also a period in which revolutions in transport and communication linked the world in ever-denser networks of mutual dependence and social interaction. The telegraph, the steamship and railways compressed time and space, and thus eroded parochial insularity, in ways and to an extent that were unimaginable even a generation before their invention. They constituted a technological infrastructure that underpinned the rapid growth of joint stock companies, oligopolies, cartels and firms whose activities increasingly crossed national borders during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Cross-border trade exploded. Barraclough has estimated that between 1800 and 1913 international trade as a percentage of total world production increased from 3 to 33%, trebling between 1870 and 1913 (cited in Waters 1995: 66). Expressed differently, the volume of international trade expanded by about 3.4 per cent per annum in the four decades prior to the First World War. As a proportion of global GDP, cross border trade was even higher than it is today. Trade grew alongside a global financial market whose institutional manifestation was the denomination of all currencies in Pounds Sterling, regulated by the gold standard (Balachandran 2008). Massive flows of capital circulated through the finance houses and banks of London, and were reinvested in diverse parts of the planet. What is perhaps even more obviously global about this period is the massive flows of people around the world. The four decades before the First World War were more open to rapid human migration than any other in human history. Impelled by the uneven rhythms of global capital accumulation and industrialisation, and by the vicissitudes of political instability and famine, millions of people traversed the planet in search of a brighter future. ThirtyTwo million people emigrated from Europe to the Americas and other white settler colonies, with another two million moving from South Asia

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and China to a multitude of global locations (Kenwood and Lougheed 1989). In doing so, they took with them their labour, languages, cultures and diseases, confirmation that globalization is far from being exclusively about economics, as it is often portrayed as being. A third position in the periodization debate suggests that the decades after the Second World War mark the onset of globalization (Horowitz 2004). After the de-globalizing effects of beggar-thy-neighbour nationalism during the Great Depression, the United States emerged from the War as the world’s preeminent economic, political and military power, notwithstanding the challenge from its much weaker Soviet rival. With around half of global GDP, the U.S. deployed its powers to craft a global order that advanced economic, political and cultural enmeshment among states of the so-called ‘Free World’, with the U.S. itself being the principal beneficiary of these arrangements (Ambrose and Brinkley 1997). It insisted on dismantling the system of imperial preferences of the British and French colonial trade blocs, thus opening up new markets and investment opportunities for U.S. companies. These were often in newly independent nation-states whose national liberation struggles had recently thrown off the yoke of colonialism. The nation-state form was now truly globalized, apart from a handful of colonial anachronisms that persisted into the Twentieth-First Century. The Bretton Woods institutions, whose main architects were U.S. and British government officials, were also key to this globalizing project (Stiglitz 2002). At their heart was a regime of fixed exchange rates and currency convertibility backed by the pegging of U.S. dollars to gold. This in turn was linked to a number of multilateral organizations whose importance would grow in the second half of the Twentieth Century. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created as a lender of last resort for countries experiencing balance of payments difficulties, while the World Bank’s credit would be targeted to large-scale developmental and infrastructure projects in the developing world. The voting rights in both were based on the relative contributions of member states, with the United States holding disproportionate sway, which it deployed to open up markets and lower barriers to penetration by its own multinational corporations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were joined in 1947 by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), whose express purpose was the liberalization of international trade. The eight rounds of negotiations that the GATT sponsored between then and the establishment of its successor, the World Trade

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Organization (WTO) in 1995, were instrumental in increasing absolute and relative levels of trade, thereby intensifying global economic interdependence. Taken together with the establishment of multilateral political institutions such as the United Nations and NATO, these institutions enhanced economic globalization, though mainly on the basis of activity within and between states rather than above and beyond them. Political projects and ideologies focused on import-substituting national development and economic nationalism would remain dominant in much of the under-developed world into the 1970s. But these were now subject to intense challenge from a new globalizing project that undermined the ideological and institutional foundations of the older national developmentalism. The fourth and final position on globalization, which is worth examining in more detail given its relevance to contemporary debates about nationalism, emphasizes the early 1970s as being a watershed moment for advancing world-wide interconnectedness. For some, it is viewed as the beginnings of a new ‘Global Age’ that fundamentally ‘involves the supplanting of modernity with globality and this means an overall change in the basis of action and social organization for individuals and groups’ (Albrow 1996: 4). In this new age, the end of the post-war economic boom and Keynesian political consensus was accompanied by stagflation (stagnant economic growth accompanied by high inflation) and President Nixon’s 1971 decision to end the U.S. dollar’s peg to gold (Armstrong et al. 1984: 292). An emerging system of floating currency exchange rates would increasingly expose national governments to the constraining judgments of global financial markets. These were empowered by a wave of economic deregulation beginning in the late 1970s. Economic deregulation in general, and financial deregulation in particular, was one of the pillars of a neo-liberal orthodoxy that began storming the commanding heights of state bureaucracies and economies in the 1970s and 1980s, starting with U.S.-sponsored ‘free-market’ experimentation under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and then being taken up with alacrity in Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s America (MacLean 2017: 154–168; Harvey 2005: 7–8). Neo-liberalism demanded and progressively achieved the ongoing marketization of diverse areas of social and economic life, in a diverse range of national states. The policy template of course varied in different national settings as the advocates of free market reforms adjusted to local conditions and historical path dependencies, but nonetheless included a core set of prescriptions for

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adjusting national political economies to the supposed new realities of a post-Keynesian world. These prescriptions included placing state-owned enterprises on a commercial footing, privatizing those enterprises once they had been sufficiently rationalized, deregulating labour and financial markets, shrinking state-provided health and welfare services, and using the revenues saved to pay for tax cuts to corporations and high-income earners (Harvey 2005: 70–81). They also included measures to open up domestic economies to international competition, which provided a tremendous impetus to intensified globalization. The incorporation of Eastern Bloc countries into the global capitalist economy in the years after 1989 both reflected and enhanced this ongoing process of liberalization. These states were now on the frontier of neo-liberal experimentation. The combined effect of privatization and the opening up of their economies to cheap imports threw millions into unemployment and poverty. It laid the foundation for various nationalistic reactions that emerged over the following decades. Something similar could be said of trade liberalization in North America and Western Europe. Efforts to systematically reduce barriers to trade had, we observed above, been introduced in multiple rounds of GATT negotiations during the post-war boom. From the 1970s, but in a more comprehensive fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, these efforts were assisted by governments, think tanks, business groups and political parties ideologically committed to the theory of ‘comparative advantage’ (MacLean 2017: 104–118). The nineteenth-century theory championed by David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, and later embraced by neo-classical economics, suggests that all countries have an advantage in producing particular goods and services. They ought, therefore, specialise in the production and exporting of these commodities, while importing goods more efficiently produced elsewhere. The political implication is that states should progressively dismantle protectionist barriers to imports. This has the advantage, it is argued, of reducing the price of consumer products at home while helping to open up markets abroad for the export of one’s own goods and services. Overall economic prosperity grows and, as the cliché goes, the rising tide lifts all boats. Regardless of the veracity of such arguments—and it is not self-evident that all boats are lifted by reduced trade barriers—it is clear that this idea was embraced and put into practice by many states during this period (Harvey 2005: 73–74). Tariffs, import taxes and other protectionist measures had begun to recede in earlier decades, but they were rolled

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back at an accelerated rate from the 1980s. This was aided and abetted by structural adjustment programs of the IMF, which imposed strict conditionality on the extension of credit to countries experiencing economic difficulties. The Latin American debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s were but one set of examples of the so-called Washington consensus at work. To stave of economic collapse, Latin American governments from Argentina to Mexico were compelled to drastically curtail social expenditures and state subsides, while simultaneously opening up their economies to cheaper imports and increased foreign direct investment. Such shifts were part of a more general pattern of increased relative and absolute volumes of global trade and foreign direct investment. Apart from the recessionary years of 1974/1975 and 1981/1982, volumes of interstate trade increased in every year between 1960 and 1990. Human geographers Michael J. Webber and David L. Rigby draw on GATT statistics to point out that by 1991, ‘the volume of world trade was over five and a half times greater than it had been in 1960, representing an average annual rate of increase of 5.8%’ (1996: 35–36). Total world trade would again double by the turn of the century, and increase by a further 150% by the eve of the global financial crisis in 2008. After falling for a year, international trade resumed its upward march, albeit at a slower rate of increase, so that by 2018 total international export trade stood at $US19.45 Trillion, or around a quarter of global GDP. As a proportion of global GDP this was lower than it had been on the eve of the First World War, though its impacts on states were arguably greater given that it was coupled with the proliferation of global commodity or value chains (Bair 2009; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994). This refers to the fragmented production of commodities across many different national jurisdictions, where research, the manufacturing of component parts and their final assemblage are spatially separated and subject to different regimes of regulation, governance, tax law, labour relations and environmental standards. Such a transnational division of labour, driven by the imperatives of competition and the ceaseless demand to reduce costs and maximize profits, is hardly new to capitalism; what is new is its extent, underlined by the vulnerability of the process should one link in the chain be disrupted, as has occurred recently in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. The growth of global trade and commodity chains since the 1970s has been paralleled by increased foreign direct investment (FDI) over the same period, though with growth being anaemic in the decade following

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the global financial crisis. Dunning (1983: 87) estimated that the stock of FDI increased from $US172 billion in 1971 to $US400 billion by 1978, before slowing in the early 1980s. During the second half of the 1980s, however, there were further dramatic advances of FDI, in both absolute terms and relative to growth in international trade. The OECD (1992: 12) estimated that between 1983 and 1990, FDI grew by an average annual rate of 34%, while global merchandise trade grew by 9% per annum. After a brief slowing at the beginning of the new decade, FDI again grew strongly through most of the 1990s. Data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 2019) suggests that the growth of FDI through the 1990s averaged 23% per annum, before falling in the early years of the 2000s. Growth rebounded strongly between 2002 and 2008, averaging 8% growth per annum, with China emerging as a very significant originator and destination of FDI. The decade that followed saw much more subdued growth of around 1% per annum, with the years after 2015 actually seeing falls. In 2018, for example, global inflows of FDI fell from $US1.5 Trillion, to $US1.3 Trillion, a 13% drop (UNCTAD 2019). Much of this drop is explicable in terms of U.S. Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) repatriating capital to the United States to take advantage of Donald Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts. This is illustrative of the increased mobility of capital, which has both enabled and contributed to a national race to the bottom in terms of state revenues and labour and environmental standards. As with the earlier periods of globalization, this latest instantiation of increased global connectedness has been about much more than trade and finance. It has also been marked by growing cultural interpenetration, itself premised on a technological infrastructure that has compressed time and space in ways that greatly enhance movement and communication across national borders (Tomlinson 1999). The global dissemination of news, views and entertainment via rapidly proliferating satellites, for example, increasingly saturated the consciousness of broadening layers of the world’s population with images and ideas derived from beyond their physical locality. This was anticipated by the spread of American film and music earlier in the twentieth century, but really takes off in the 1960s with the deployment of satellite communications. This development inspired media theorist Marshall McCluhan’s coining of the ‘global village’ metaphor, and would become routine over the following decades, at least for those fortunate enough to live in wealthy, developed states

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or the upper echelons of less developed countries (McLuhan and Fiore 1967). Similarly, the dramatic decrease in the costs of jet travel massively enlarged the privileged circle of those who could experience international tourism or tertiary education. For the first time in human history, large numbers of people of relatively modest means could travel to and return from distant, culturally distinct lands. Such travel was not and is not limited to the populations of wealthy, developed countries. The growth of middle classes with increased discretionary income in newly industrialized countries has seen growing numbers of tourists and students travelling from those countries, particularly since the turn of the millennium. This has been accompanied by more permanent migration. Decolonization and the removal of overtly racist immigration restrictions in most western countries after the 1960s saw demographic and cultural diversification of their populations. Family reunion schemes for subsequent generations, along with the push and pull of wars, famines and uneven economic opportunity, brought further demographic change and cultural interpenetration, along with challenges to what were once supposed as settled national identities, as we will discuss below. The effects of all these developments have been heightened by one technological invention that has come to define the global age in which we live. The great enabler and emblem of cultural globalization has of course been the Internet. First developed by the U.S. military in the 1980s, the technology was commercialized in the 1990s and grew exponentially in the following decade (Castells 2001). From the early 2000s it would be coupled with a variety of social media platforms that deepened and extended the trans-nationalizing cultural effects of cross-border communications, which were enhanced with the rapid growth of smart phones from 2007. The networked, node-to-node character of the Internet and social media lent itself to horizontal, cross border cultural encounters unmediated by ideological gatekeepers. Shared communal niches could flourish unencumbered by the restrictiveness of national milieus and parochialism. The Internet would, it was assumed, have a democratizing effect that extended above and beyond national borders. It could plausibly be expected that the cosmopolitan ethos of Silicon Valley would find an expression in new trans-national cultural communities that these technologies enabled. National identification would persist, but be diluted over time.

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While there is certainly something to this technologically-enabled cultural globalization thesis, its early narrators neglected some key realities that mitigated the cosmopolitan promise of the new technologies, or at least underscored their ambivalent effects. In the first instance, what came to be referred to as ‘the digital divide’ was not widely acknowledged in the breathless commentary about the liberating potential of the digital revolution. Millions of people in underdeveloped states did not and do not have routine access to the Internet and other digital media technology. Moreover, access to quality web services and digital technology is unevenly distributed in wealthy, developed states, as has been revealed by the Covid-19 crisis. Many students from working class and disadvantaged backgrounds in Australia and New Zealand, for example, were unable to participate in online learning on an equal footing with their middle-class peers. No doubt the same could be said of other wealthy countries that went into lockdown. Another neglected reality of the digital revolution was the ways in which these technologies could be harnessed to existing power structures. The narrative of liberation and democratization was at odds with the efforts of states, political parties, corporations and private actors to deploy the new technologies for their own ends, in ways that were anathema to democratic enlargement. The most obvious example is the drive by authoritarian governments such as China and North Korea to advance state-led nationalist agendas by controlling the flow of information on the Internet, blocking access to particular sites while promoting other politically-approved sites. While such overt censoring has not been as widespread in liberal democracies, this has not meant that in the West the World Wide Web is a bastion of democratic participation and accountability. On the contrary, it has evolved into a platform where any and every anti-democratic, authoritarian impulse can be readily expressed, and where these impulses can find an effective organizational form. Fundamentalisms of all types have found in the Internet, and digital technologies more generally, tools for the furtherance of their un-democratic visions and objectives. These have included fundamentalist nationalisms pedalling an anti-globalization message. Far from simply promoting global connectedness and cosmopolitanism, the Internet and web-based platforms have helped to reaffirm national solidarities and identities. The diaspora nationalisms of ethnonational groups such as the Tamils and Palestinians, for example, use the Web to organize, propagandize, elicit donations, win international

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support and reinforce national identification. Similarly, anti-immigrant, nationalist political parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Danish People’s Party (DPP) have deployed sophisticated Web and social media strategies to recruit members, enlarge their circle of fellow-travellers and agitate for their nativist political agendas (Norris and Inglehart 2018). In their hands, the very emblem of globalization has become a tool for the preservation of an ethnically and racially circumscribed brand of national identity. In this, they have much in common with those white supremacist and anti-Muslim groups in North America, Europe and Australasia who have used the Web to spread a message of hate while appealing to the sanctity of their (white) nations. On the day in 2011 that he murdered 77 people, for instance, Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik electronically posted a political manifesto that declaimed the supposed defiling of Norway, and European civilization more generally, by Muslims, feminists and cultural Marxists. Equally chilling was the live-streaming of the massacre of 51 New Zealand Muslims by Brenton Tarrant in March 2019. In his own electronic manifesto posted online as the killings commenced, Tarrant described himself as an ‘ethno-nationalist,’ invoked Breivik as inspiration, and praised President Trump as ‘a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.’ The manifesto was shared and feted on far-right, white nationalist websites, no doubt galvanizing other extremists in their grievances towards Muslims, immigration, globalization and much else. The intensification of national particularism by globalized digital networks has been magnified by the growing echo-chamber effect of digital technologies and social media, itself enabled by the ever-more sophisticated use of algorithms that can aggregate personal preferences, attitudes and consumer behaviour, and therefore make predictions about future opinions and behaviour. These in turn become the basis for filtering information to consumers and voters. This was anticipated as far back as 1995, when technology expert Nicholas Negroponte (1995) ruminated on the possible emergence of what he termed, ‘The Daily Me,’ which would allow a person to bypass traditional media sources, and instead curate their own suite of news and communications, indulging their own interests and preferences. Everyone would enjoy what Cass R. Sunstein (2017: 1) refers to as an ‘architecture of control,’ where everyone determines for themselves what they see and hear. The one significant development that Negroponte did not clearly foresee, was that

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others might create the ‘Daily Me’ for you, rather than you doing it for yourself. These others include Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and a host of other social media, who deploy algorithms to collect and correlate information about users. Facebook, for example, by being able to analyze the pages you like, and the opinions of others you like or dislike, is able to build up a very accurate picture of the sort of person you are and the type of political preferences that you are likely to have. The effect of this personalization of information and news that people receive is to filter out topics and views that they are not interested in, or that they do not agree with. Users of social media, especially heavy users, may become increasingly insulated from views and opinions that clash with their own. This creates an ‘echo chamber’ effect, where views and attitudes that we have are constantly reinforced by others who share our worldview. In the same way that gated communities exclude ‘undesirable’ people who do not belong, echo chambers create gated communities of the mind that reinforce ideological segregation. This contributes to a sharpening of political cleavages such that divergent realities and mutually exclusive political universes are created for different categories of people. In a word, it contributes to political polarization that has been so widely observed in diverse locations in recent years, with heightened nationalist sentiment typically characterizing one of the poles. To sum up, this latest phase of economic and cultural globalization, like the earlier phases sketched above, has had ambivalent effects. It has made the world more globally interconnected and interdependent, but has in some respects also strengthened state capacities and national identities. In so doing, nationalism and nationalists have not simply been victims of globalization as its early boosters claimed, but have also been strengthened by globalism. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the recent political successes of right-wing, nationalist populism.

The Nationalist Populist Revolts There is an important sense in which all nationalism is populist, and all populism is nationalist. A defining feature of populism, of both right and left variants, is its appeal to the ‘people,’ and the contrasting of the people to inauthentic others, be they corrupt elites, unwanted migrants or stigmatized ethnic minorities (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; Müller 2016; Eichengreen 2018). Nationalism is similarly animated by its orientation to

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a chosen people, however the latter is defined. If we substitute the word nation for the word people, words often used interchangeably by nationalists themselves, the family resemblance is clear. For both nationalists and populists, it is the people who are or should be sovereign. That being so, the criteria for inclusion or exclusion to the nation/people, and the symbolic boundaries that define and reproduce them, constitute the main points of struggle around which the politics of nationalism and populism coalesce. This is as true for individualistic and civic forms of nationalism as it is for ethnic and collectivist forms. Finally, it has often been observed that nationalism and populism are both ‘thin’ ideologies (Judis 2016; Norris and Inglehart 2018; Mudde 2016). They are, relatively speaking, intellectually unelaborated and bereft of great theorists, as compared with, say, Liberalism or Socialism. Bernard Yack makes the point that ‘there are no great theoretical texts outlining and defending nationalism. No Marx, no Mill, no Machiavelli. Only minor texts by first rate thinkers, like Fichte, or major texts by second rate thinkers, like Mazzini’ (cited in Beiner 1999: 2). It is this relative absence that helps explain the protean character and adaptability of nationalism and, I would argue, populism. As a consequence, different nationalist and populist movements have been readily infused with an array of other ideological elements, lending them a left- or right-wing political cast. Given these similarities, it is tempting to say that the labels nationalism and populism denote a distinction without a difference; that they are in fact synonyms for describing essentially the same phenomena. This is mistaken. Where populism differs from nationalism per se, is in the style in which it is typically articulated and seeks to persuade. Different nationalisms may share this style—in which case their promoters can be sensibly designated as populist nationalists—but they do not necessarily do so. At the heart of the populist style is a performative, symbolic politics that is consciously transgressive. Populist politicians make a virtue of transgressing the norms of conduct to which mainstream, ‘establishment’ politicians must conform. Whether it is Donald Trump insulting all and sundry on Twitter, Rodrigo Duterte publicly demanding the extrajudicial killing of drug users, Hugo Chavez launching his own television show (Alo Presidente), or Pauline Hanson wearing a burka into Australia’s federal Senate chamber, populists refuse to be bound by the conventional political playbook. In addition to helping gain media attention, such transgressive behaviour is designed to make manifest their status as political outsiders, untainted by the corruption and opportunism that

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supposedly infects the existing political establishment (Richards 2017: 118). Doing so helps bolster the populist’s claim to an authenticity so often lacking in disingenuous and untrustworthy political insiders, incapable of straight-talking. For their supporters, populists tell it like it is, even at the risk of offending respectable sensibilities. More generally, performing authenticity allows the populist to differentiate themselves, and those on whose behalf they claim to speak, from cultural, political and economic elites. The populist stands with the people against the elites and, for right-wing populists, the much-despised ethnic minorities and immigrants whom the elites allegedly support through their liberal approach to immigration and welfare. In this, their focus is principally cultural rather than economic, even if economics sometimes intrudes into their confected culture wars and denunciations of elites and ethnic minorities (Mudde 2007: 132–133). This stands in contrast to separatist nationalism in places like Scotland, Quebec and Spain, where economic issues are more prominent and where educated elite leaders call for cross-class, national solidarity. Since 2013, there has been an upsurge of right-wing, nationalist populism in diverse parts of the world. By ‘upsurge’ I do not mean that populist movements have proliferated where they did not previously exist. Many of the groups that we observe in Europe today, for instance, emerged in the 1980s, and sometimes even earlier. In fact, Eric Kaufmann (2018: 215–217) shows that European populist right groups tripled their electoral support in the last fifteen years of the Twentieth Century. But he also shows that they surged even higher from 2013. When I speak of an upsurge in support for these parties, then, what is meant is an increase in their recent electoral support relative to previous periods. Moreover, many of their positions, hitherto occupying the extreme fringes of political life, have moved into the mainstream, often being adopted by more traditional centre right parties. They have, therefore, gained a degree of respectability that they previously lacked, with their electoral successes no longer shocking public opinion in the ways that they once did. This clears the way for winning yet new layers of voters, including those who previously would have been hesitant to overtly support parties widely viewed as racist and therefore beyond the pale. The evidence for this increased success among nationalist populists is not difficult to identify. In the 2014 European parliamentary elections, right wing populist parties had their best ever results, with France’s Front National, the Danish People’s Party, and the United Kingdom Independence Party

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(UKIP) all securing around a quarter of their respective electorate’s votes, and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) winning a fifth of the vote (Kaufmann 2018: 217). In the wake of the European migrant crisis that deepened from 2015, right-wing populists, pedalling unreconstructed nationalist xenophobia and anti-immigrant animus, continued to win significant electoral support in Western and Eastern European states. By 2016, the vote share of these parties in western Europe (not including UKIP) was similar to that of fascist parties in the inter-war period. That year, the FPO’s Norbert Hofer won a plurality of votes in the first round of the Austrian presidential election, and then only lost the second round deciding vote by the narrowest of margins. Significantly, he won more than half of male voters aged between 18 and 29 (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018: 12). The FPO would subsequently enter into a coalition with the mainstream conservative OVP the following year. In 2017, Marine Le Pen similarly made her way into the second round of the French presidential election, securing 34% of the vote. The same year, the radical nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), running on a virulently antiimmigrant platform and strong Islamophobia, had their breakthrough election. They won six million votes and became the largest opposition party in the Bundestag. They would repeat these successes in state elections. Meanwhile, nationalist populist parties in the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Hungary and a host of other European states also increased and consolidated their political support. While care should be taken to not conflate these diverse parties, what they all shared was a hostility to immigration, globalization and cosmopolitan values, and a powerful nationalist nostalgia for supposed past glories. In this, they mirrored the two political earthquakes that punctuated 2016, the consequences of which are now being fully revealed.

Brexit and ‘Taking Control’ The unexpected and poll-defying victories of Brexit and Donald Trump were transformative political moments that underlined the salience of racially-charged ethno-nationalism in wealthy, multicultural societies. In the former, 52% of voters rejected Britain’s existing relationship with the European Union, which was viewed by a majority as curtailing national sovereignty at the behest of an unaccountable Brussels bureaucracy (Clarke et al. 2017; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Goodhard 2017). Beyond that perception, economic benefits of EU membership had failed

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to materialize for many British constituencies, whose living standards had in fact retreated in the face of austerity policies following the global financial crisis. These constituents were susceptible to the pro-Brexit campaign’s populist message that the EU was an elite-led, foreign project that undermined their interests and transferred resources to the continent at Britain’s expense. Nowhere was this clearer than in the UKIP-backed Leave.eu message that membership of the EU had entailed relinquishing control of Britain’s borders. The country and its welfare services, including the National Health Service, were allegedly being over-run by culturally alien immigrants, with more on the way. This was dramatized by UKIP’s ‘breaking point’ poster depicting a mass of brown-faced asylum seekers on the march, presumably clamouring to get into Britain via Europe. Brexit was a way of taking back control of this chaotic situation, UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage repeatedly argued (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018: 35). The implicit contrast was with a previous era of British history when the country was more homogenously white, and unencumbered by the supposed burdens of high immigration and multicultural political correctness. Nationalist nostalgia was married with populist nativism to create a toxic political mix that was appealing to both traditional Conservative Party Euro-sceptics and disaffected Labour voters desirous of slowing immigration. Much of the commentary in the wake of the Brexit result focused on the geographical location and income levels of leave and remain voters. Influential studies by Goodwin and Heath (2016a, b) are representative, deploying the British Election Study data to identify the characteristic drivers of the leave vote. They found that support for leaving the EU ‘was strongest in areas where a large percentage of the population did not have any qualifications and were ill equipped to thrive amid a post-industrial and increasingly competitive economy that favours those with skills and is operating in the broader context of globalisation’ (Goodwin and Heath 2016a: 6). Thus, the leave vote was much stronger in rural districts, small towns and de-industrialised areas in the north of England, and the West and East Midlands, than it was in highly urbanised, service-dominated areas in the south, including London, which were more enmeshed with and prospering from the global economy. Goodwin and Heath’s headline conclusion is that disadvantaged areas of white, ‘left-behind’ voters disproportionately supported Brexit (2016b). While such aggregated geographical data is suggestive, it does not give a complete picture, as it does not tell us which categories of individuals

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within these geographic units voted to leave and which voted to stay. When the individual level demographic data is examined more closely, however, it too shows that economic factors were relevant. Nearly six in ten people from households with incomes of less than 20,000 lb per year voted to leave, while only 35% of people from households with incomes over 60,000 lb voted to leave (Goodwin and Heath 2016a: 9). Similarly, 59% of those out of work voted to leave, while 45% of those in employment did so. The divide around education was even sharper. Only 27% of those with a postgraduate qualification voted to leave, as compared to 75% of those with no qualifications (Goodwin and Heath 2016a: 11). Finally, Brexiteers were sharply divided by age. Nearly six in ten voters over the age of 66 voted to leave, while only 28% of those aged 18–25 did so. The evidence suggests, therefore, that those who voted to leave the EU were, on average, poorer, older, and less educated than those who voted to remain. Given the nature of the choice that they made, we could confidently expect that these cohorts were more nationalist in their attitudes than those who voted to remain; or at least they were more nationalist in the sense that traditional ‘Britishness’ was more highly valued for them than being European. Despite the apparent significance of economic factors for explaining who voted for leave and remain, and despite the dominant media trope that it was ‘left behind’ voters who were decisive for Brexit, there are many who dispute the determining role that is so often attributed to these factors (Kaufmann 2018: 195–200). They rightly point out that although income levels had some predictive value, albeit more minor than is often assumed, education was a far more accurate predictor of how one would vote in the referendum, even when controlling for the effects of income. More accurate still were attitudes towards immigration and immigrants, which also had a statistically significant correlation with levels of education. The less educated voters were, the greater the likelihood that they were hostile to immigration and that they would vote to leave. Both, in turn, were associated with authoritarian attitudes characterised by preferences for order, conformity and strong policing and leadership. Kaufmann (2018: 198) makes the point that knowing someone’s views on capital punishment gives about a seven in ten chance of predicting their vote in the referendum, while knowing their income gives only about a 55% chance, barely better than tossing a coin. Such critiques of economic explanations for the resurgence of right-wing nationalist populism are part of a broader debate within the literature on populism, between those who

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emphasise identity and those who emphasise economic inequality. This debate, to which we will return below, has also been central to attempts to understand Trump and Trumpism.

Trumpism and White Ethno-Nationalism The unexpected election victory of Donald Trump in November 2016 brought into sharp relief the appeal that his America First, nationalist narrative has for a significant section of the U.S. population. Although that section is not a majority—Trump only won 46% of the popular vote—it is sufficiently large and efficiently distributed to make his brand of racialized ethno-nationalism electorally competitive. This ‘brand’ did not instantaneously materialise, fully formed, in the person of Donald Trump, but was decades in the making (Haney Lopez 2014; Campbell 2019; Reifowitz 2019). Its roots are in the 1960s white backlash against civil rights for African Americans, personified by figures such as 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and racist Democratic Alabama Governor and 1968 third-party presidential candidate, George Wallace (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2005: 66–71). The white backlash was deepened by Richard Nixon’s so-called southern strategy in the 1968 presidential election. Through coded racial appeals and manipulation of white anxieties about law and order, Nixon and the Republicans sought to win white southerners away from their traditional home in the Democratic Party (Berman 1998: 5–20). In the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections they were successful in doing so, which then became a template for electoral success by subsequent Republican candidates. From Reagan to George W. Bush, Republicans prosecuted endless culture wars around abortion, sexuality, prayer in school, guns, affirmative action, and the evils of crime and welfare dependence, the latter serving as coded proxies for race in an era when overt racism had become disreputable (Blumenthal 2008; Smith 2007; Frank 2006). Aggravating these ‘anger points’, as veteran political commentator Thomas B. Edsall calls them, was part of a conscious Republican strategy to polarize the electorate and energize the party’s base (Edsall 2006: 50–65). The Republican Party moved inexorably to the right, the weight of its leadership moved south and west, and it increasingly became a party of and for white people, as reflected by its registered voters, its support in elections, its policies and, more recently, its efforts to suppress the voting rights

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of African Americans and Hispanics (Haney Lopez 2014: 1). Consequently, the political geography of the country was turned on its head. The southern states of the old Confederacy had by the 1980s become reliably Republican in presidential elections, with Republican dominance of congressional delegations following in the 1990s (Black and Black 2002: 328–329). Meanwhile, the ethnically diverse and politically liberal Democratic Party dominated the Pacific and north Atlantic coasts and New England, with the Midwest emerging as the main electoral battleground (Black and Black 2007: 123). Over time, social and political polarization deepened around two very different visions of what the American nation is and what it should and could be. The individualistic, constitutionally grounded, civic nationalism that had dominated what was often referred to as ‘the American creed,’ increasingly came into conflict with an ascending ethnonationalism grounded in nativism and white entitlement (see Lieven 2012: 6–13). Partisans of these two visions came to view each other in an increasingly negative light through the 1990s and early 2000s, which made political compromise ever-more difficult (Abramowitz 2018: 164). More recently, the emergence of the Tea Party movement after 2009, and with it the racist ‘birther’ conspiracy designed to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S.’s first African American Presidency, fed into the rise of Trump and Trumpism. Ostensibly a spontaneous, grass roots movement agitating for small government, lower taxes and economic liberty, the Tea Party was in fact inspired and supported by big money conservative think tanks, media, and corporations with deep roots in the Republican Party (DiMaggio 2011: 38–40; Skocpol and Williamson 2013). This was aided and abetted by Republican-supporting Fox News and conservative talk-back radio, which expressed but also fuelled the discontent, resentment and rage of those white audiences that virulently opposed President Obama. The racism and sexism of many Tea Party activists, and their antipathy towards establishment Republicans, did not represent a repudiation of the Republican Party, as is sometimes implied. Rather, it represented a continuity with and a radicalisation of developments in the Party that had been maturing for decades. These would be fully realised with the election of Donald Trump. The former reality TV star and real estate mogul did not so much ‘hijack’ the party, as bring into full fruition the racialized, white ethno-nationalism that had already become one of its defining features.

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Throughout the Republican primaries and the subsequent presidential election, Trump constructed a nationalist political narrative that was not so much a policy platform as a series of talking points designed to resonate emotionally with those he sought to persuade (Dionne et al. 2017; Fording and Schram 2017; Miller 2018). Central to this narrative was the nationalist idea that American ‘greatness’ had been eroded over time, that America ‘no longer had victories’, and that it was only Donald J. Trump who could ‘Make America Great Again’. This was premised on nostalgia for an idealised American past when white, heterosexual male entitlement was the norm, when white Christians were an overwhelming majority of the population, and when non-white immigration was limited by national quotas. This was made clear in Trump’s speeches and tweets. In December 2015, he called for a ‘total and complete shutdown’ of the entry of Muslims into the U.S. (Healy and Barbaro 2015, no pagination). A large section of the Muslim population, he suggested, harboured a ‘great hatred towards the United States.’ The US should therefore be ‘vigilant’ with respect to Muslims already living in the country, the implicit assumption being that they were all potential terrorists to be feared. After becoming President, Trump maintained his vitriol towards Muslims, developing new iterations of his bans on travel from Muslim majority countries when courts ruled earlier ones to be unlawful. In addition to race, immigration, and corruption in government, the other major theme of Trump’s primary and general election campaign, and of his subsequent presidency, was and is his unapologetic economic nationalism. Trump promised and at least partly delivered higher tariffs against international rivals and allies alike. He pulled the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and repeatedly expressed hostility towards globalism. In a 2018 speech to the United Nations, for example, President Trump excoriated global free trade, institutions and values: ‘We reject globalism and embrace the doctrine of patriotism,’ he said, in a clear repudiation of the liberal internationalist posture that has dominated U.S. foreign policy making and diplomacy since the Second World War. He went on to defend his administration’s retreat from global institutions such as the U.N. and the International Criminal Court, stating that the United States ‘will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control and domination’ (cited in Hennigan 2018, no pagination). Trump has repeatedly linked these sentiments championing national sovereignty and America First to the demise of manufacturing

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and jobs in the country’s heartland. His promises to roll back globalization and bring back American jobs—objectives also supported by unions and many political leftists, it should be noted—was a nationalist declaration aimed squarely at white, male workers and lower middle-class voters, disillusioned with mainstream politicians. Importantly, these constituencies formed a relatively larger part of the electorate in those economically challenged midwestern states that proved decisive for Trump’s electoral college victory. As with the Brexit vote discussed above, the demographic variables that shaped Trump’s election victory in 2016 are now widely agreed on. Exit polls show that Trump won overwhelmingly among non-Hispanic white voters, winning 58% to Clinton’s 37% (Washington Post 2016) The gap was even larger for white men, 62% of whom voted for Trump, to Clinton’s 31%. As with leave voters in Brexit, Trump was also disproportionately supported by older voters. He won the 45–64 years old age cohort by nine percentage points, and the over 65s by eight points (Washington Post 2016). But even more consequential were levels of education, which Brian Schaffner and his co-authors view as ‘the single most important divide documented in 2016’ (2018: 12). Two of every three white voters without a college degree voted for Trump. Amongst white men without a college degree the gap was an incredible 71–23% split. While many of those voters could credibly be expected to have low incomes, this was clearly not uniformly so. In fact, the exit polls suggested that Trump lost the votes of those with incomes under $30,000 per year by 13 percentage points, and lost those with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 by 11 percentage points (Washington Post 2016). Even when controlled for race, low income was not a strong predictor of Trump support. Nationally, Clinton was supported by more low-income white voters experiencing economic hardship than was Trump (Cox et al. 2017: no pagination). Smith and Hanley (2018) also observe that the median income of Trump supporters was above the national average, and that they were less likely to be un- or under-employed. The other key component of Trump’s electoral coalition was evangelical voters. He increased the Republican share of these voters by three percentage points over Romney’s 2012 results, winning a total of 81%. While all of these demographic factors are important for understanding trump’s victory, alone they are insufficient as they tell us little about the attitudes and therefore motivations of Trump supporters. Here the centrality of attitudes around immigration, and race and ethnicity more

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generally, for predicting Trump support has been confirmed in numerous studies that have deployed multivariate regression analysis to discern the relative explanatory weight of attitudinal and demographic variables (Sides et al. 2017a, b; Schaffner et al. 2018). David N. Smith and Eric Hanley (2018), for example, ran regressions on multiple demographic and attitudinal variables drawn from the American National Election Study (ANES) in order to identify what divided Trump from non-Trump supporters, but also what divided strong from mild Trump supporters. What they found was that ‘attitudes were the main dividing lines between Trump voters and other voters’ (Smith and Hanley 2018: 198). More specifically, eight attitudes were able to predict Trump support: conservative identification; support for domineering leaders; Christian fundamentalism; prejudice against immigrants, African Americans, Muslims and women; and pessimism about the economy. Many of these attitudes, the authors note, were particularly strong among older, less educated male voters (2018: 205). Of the eight attitudes noted, four distinguished strong from mild Trump supporters. These were pessimism about the economy, support for domineering leaders, Christian fundamentalism and antiimmigrant sentiment. In other words, mild Trump supporters, who were better educated and more affluent, did not share these attitudes with their strong Trump supporter counterparts, but they did identify as conservatives and harboured prejudice toward African Americans, Muslims and women. Overall, Smith and Hanley draw the conclusion that white voters supported Trump in 2016 because they shared his prejudices, while his most enthusiastic supporters also desired a domineering leader, the single most important distinguishing feature between strong and mild Trump supporters. The emphasis on Trump supporters being racially prejudiced and having a desire for a domineering leader—a classic descriptor of authoritarian attitudes—has been confirmed in a number of other studies. Thomas Pettitgrew, for instance, demonstrates that support for Trump ‘correlates highly with a standard scale of modern racism’ (2017: 110). In addition to outgroup prejudice, Pettitgrew argues, Trump supporters tended to be especially high scorers on scales measuring authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (SDO). Matthew MacWilliams (2016), summarizing his findings of a national survey of 1800 registered voters for Politico Magazine, also suggests that an authoritarian predisposition, along with a fear of terrorism, is a trait that is a powerful predictor of Trump support. Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt provide further

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evidence for the authoritarian attitudes of core Trump supporters. They use Europulse survey data from December 2016 to compare and contrast Trump supporters with supporters of Brexit in Britain and the National Front in France. They found that personal economic distress was inconsequential in predicting support for Trump and other right-wing populists, but that authoritarian predispositions were highly predictive. This final point speaks to a key question that has exercised the minds of all researchers trying to understand the contemporary efflorescence of right-wing nationalist populism and its relationship to globalization: whether it can be best explained as a product of economic changes or perceived threats to particular national identities that beget authoritarian responses.

Explaining Nationalist Populism Explanations for Trump’s electoral success, along with explanations for Brexit and the growth of the populist right in Europe, reproduce a more general cleavage in the literature on nationalist populism. On the one hand, many political scientists and sociologists have emphasised the determining role of economic factors, particularly inequality and disadvantage, for creating conditions in which populism is attractive to certain ‘left behind’ layers of the population. On the other hand, there are those who emphasize migration and demographic change as shaping political fields that heighten awareness of and struggles around cultural identities, including national identities. Economic accounts of nationalist populism have, of course, had numerous iterations with differing nuances and details (Lebow 2019; Greenberg et al. 2017; Gest 2016). Nonetheless, some key, recurring themes can be identified around which these economic accounts cluster. They generally start with an interpretation of economic change that is said to have fundamentally altered social realities and political conditions. A common narrative is to highlight the economic crises of the 1970s, which began to unravel the Keynesian consensus that had dominated economic thinking and state governance in the post-war decades. Regardless of the specific causes of these crises—and explanations focused on under-consumption, over-accumulation, falling rates of profit and structural imbalance have all been proffered—by the late 1970s they had contributed to the resurgence of laissez faire economic thinking. Over

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the next two decades this new liberalism would be embraced by governments in many of the OECD states, albeit more enthusiastically in the English-speaking world than elsewhere. The thrust to deregulate, corporatize, privatise, and lower trade barriers, contributed to the globalization of production and consumption—as we saw above in the discussion of the fourth position on the periodization of globalisation—and the financialization of ever-wider swathes of economic activity. One consequence was the widely documented growth of wage and wealth inequality, at a time when workers’ class identities were eroding (Piketty 2014; Bartels 2016; Stiglitz 2013). A decline in union membership was occurring as social democratic and labour parties around the world moved further to the right on economic issues. This had the effect of atomising workers and contributing to their precarity and disillusionment with politics and politicians. Those without manual or intellectual skills that could be readily sold in the labour market—whether by older or younger workers—were particularly vulnerable in an era when welfare state regimes were being eroded if not retrenched. It was these workers, along with less educated members of the precarious middle classes, who were most susceptible to the rancorous appeals of nationalist populists like Trump, Farage and Le Pen. Their denunciations of elites, scapegoating of migrants, and appeals to nationalistic forms of solidarity, resonated with those who had been ‘left-behind’ by globalization and a political process that was unresponsive to their preferences and needs. The global financial crisis from 2008 exacerbated these developments, economic accounts of populism argue, and this is what best explains the resurgence of nationalist populism since the mid-2010s. This economic explanation is challenged by a second broad set of approaches that place the emphasis on populism’s appeal as a defence of particular identities (Kaufmann 2018; Cox et al. 2017; Norris and Inglehart 2018; Jardina 2019). These accounts give a more prominent place to culture and ethnicity, and suggest that economic inequality is wanting as an explanation, for several reasons. First, support for nationalist populism is not unproblematically correlated with periods of economic contraction. Right wing populist parties in Europe had been growing support for many years before the GFC. Jorg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party, for example, arose to national and international prominence on the back of a spike in support in the late 1990s, a period of economic expansion and relative prosperity for Austria and Europe. Support for the Front National in France has waxed and waned and waxed again since the

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1980s, but not in a way that is obviously correlated with economic expansion and contraction, these approaches contend. In 2016, Donald Trump won the Presidency at a time that the economy had been expanding and unemployment had been falling for several years. A second criticism made of economic explanations of nationalist populism is their focus on economically depressed regions. Even if it can be rigorously demonstrated that such regions support nationalist populists at higher rates, this alone, we are told, gives little insight into the economic circumstances of the individuals and households amongst whom that support is concentrated. When regional data is disaggregated to reveal a more granular picture of populist support, a third criticism of economic interpretations arise. Data in the U.S., the U.K., and continental Europe, it was shown above, suggests that support for nationalist populists is not disproportionately concentrated among low income, deprived, ‘left behind’ citizens. The median income of Trump supporters was well above the national median, many prosperous Germans support the AfD and many well-off Tories supported Brexit. It is more accurate to say that support for nationalist populism is a crossclass phenomenon, where education rather than income and wealth is the decisive determinant of support. The more positive case for this second interpretation of nationalist populism rests on the data-driven observation that it is people’s attitudes to immigration and cultural diversity, rather than inequality and deprivation, that is more predictive of their support for populists. In this view, high rates of immigration into the United States, Britain and Europe have rapidly changed the demographic balance and hence debates around the merits of multiculturalism. In the U.S., for instance, around 90% of the population was categorized as white Christian and of European ancestry at the time that country-specific immigration quotas were lifted in 1965. Today that figure is about 68% and non-Hispanic whites are predicted to become a minority around 2050. Flows of migrants and refugees have similarly altered the demographic and religious profiles of Britain and continental European states, albeit not to the same extent as the United States. These developments have been perceived by at least some of the native white populations as a threat to their privileges and entitlements, and to the very character of ‘their’ nations. It is these layers of the population for whom populist narratives—about losing control over national borders and institutions, and being marginalised by ‘floods’ of migrants— resonate most. Nativist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim messages tap

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into deep-seated anxieties and cultural pessimism about the future of hitherto dominant, white, national identities. In this view, then, nostalgic nationalism of the sort embodied by Trump or Le Pen is a reaction to perceived threats to individual and collective identity. A broader perspective on nationalist populism suggests that the bifurcation in the explanatory literature sketched here is misplaced. As with so much in social and political life, monocausal explanations are doomed to offer only half-truths in a world where the explanatory weight of variables shift over time, and where those variables are inextricably connected. While those who stress the importance of attitudes around ethnicity and identity, for instance, are correct that income and deprivation are unreliable indicators of nationalist populists’ support, they are wrong to take this as evidence that economic factors are unimportant for a rounded explanation of the phenomenon. Attitudes to personal finances and the economy can be just as important as the measured reality of personal finances and the economy. These in turn can be causally related to attitudes about immigration, ethnicity and identity in ways that are not immediately apparent. In a study of Trump voters, political scientists Robert Griffin and Ruy Teixeira (2017) establish precisely such a relationship. Their survey of the same voters in 2012 and 2016, found that Trump supporters were twice as likely as Clinton supporters to report that their personal finances had gotten worse over the previous four years (52–26%), and nearly four times as likely to report that the economy was getting worse (59–15%). Moreover, 40% of those who voted for Obama in 2012 but switched to the Republican candidate in 2016, said that their personal finances and the economy were getting worse (2017: 8). Griffin and Teixeira go on to show that this perception among disproportionate numbers of Trump voters of being economically embattled, was systematically related to conservative cultural attitudes on Muslims, immigration, women, and rising ethnic diversity. They conclude that ‘economic concerns made contributions to Trump’s success, both directly and indirectly, through promoting cultural attitudes associated with Trump support’ (2017: 24). In other words, the subjective perception of economic vulnerability can and does express itself in hostility to immigration and minority outgroups, which Trump’s narrative tapped into. White majority populations who might have latent prejudice towards minorities can have those prejudices triggered by economic insecurity. In an economic context of growing inequality, wage stagnation, insecure work and increased constraints on

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social mobility, even those in the middle of the income spectrum can feel that their relative privilege is precarious and subject to reversal, which then increases their sensitivity to populists’ cultural messaging. This relationship between economic insecurity and cultural reaction is supported by the historical record. An influential international study on the rise of xenophobic right-wing populist parties between 1870 and 2014—based on data from 800 general elections in 20 countries— found that such parties typically experienced a surge of support in the wake of economic crises, when insecurity, and perceptions of insecurity, becomes more generalized (Funke et al. 2015). It is precisely at such times that attitudes towards immigration and minority outgroups tend to harden among wider layers of the population, which is certainly what has occurred in Europe and the United States in the decade following the GFC.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen that nationalism and globalization are not two poles of a zero-sum game where one advances as the other retreats. Rather, nationalism as ideology, as movement, and as lived experience has grown as globalization has advanced. The most recent period of intensified globalization since the 1970s has also involved the intensification of nationalism in various guises. One of these has been the resurgence of right-wing nationalist populism in Europe and the United States. After waxing and waning through the final decades of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the Twenty-first Century, Brexit, Trump’s election and the electoral success of various far-right parties in Europe, heralded a renewed significance for nationalist populism. Scholars have tried to account for this by emphasising economic factors such as inequality and deprivation, or cultural factors bound up with changes to demography and ethnic identity. I have argued that both are important, and that the economic context of insecurity helps to explain why populist narratives about immigration and ethnic minorities have greater resonance at particular moments and with specific audiences, than at other times with other audiences.

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CHAPTER 6

Conclusions: The Emotional Power of Nationalism

Abstract The power of nationalism to motivate human action, sacrifice, love and hatred remains undiminished. Yet today’s political, economic and social conditions are very different from those that gave rise to nationalism in the first place. What, then, explains the persistence of nationalism and the enduring power that it holds over people’s hearts as well as their minds? This chapter provides some provisional answers to this question by examining the role of collective emotions in engendering nationalist commitments. It is argued that if our understanding of nationalism and its persistence is to seriously advance in the coming years, it will be necessary for scholars to draw upon and creatively adapt the growing research into collective emotions, and their connection to the more instrumental bases of social and political life. It is only by grappling with the emotional appeal of nationalist identification, and exploring this in its relationship to rather than as an abstraction from group interests, that the resilience of national particularism in the Twenty-First century can be fully appreciated. Given the explosion of nationalist sentiment that we are presently witnessing, there are few issues that are more politically important. Keywords Nationalism and Covid-19 · Emotions and nationalism · Emotional contagion · Affective atmospheres · Emotions and populism

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8_6

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For a large part of the world’s population nationalism is, much of this book has shown, as important as it has ever been. We can of course point to particular social layers for whom nationalism and national identity have lost their appeal—cosmopolitan intellectuals, globe-trotting business elites, internationalist-minded environmental activists, for instance—but these are a minority. For most people, in most jurisdictions, and for most of the time, it is particular communally imagined nations that command their strongest loyalties and form key parts of their identities, notwithstanding the appeal of some fundamentalist religions. The ubiquity and power of national identity can be as strong in state-led nationalism as in state-seeking nationalism. It is manifested in innocuous ways such as international sporting contexts, national anthems, and participating in national rituals and holidays—what Michael Billig (1995) famously referred to as ‘Banal Nationalism’ and which has been reconceptualised as ‘everyday nationhood’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Skey and Antonsich 2017)— but also in more dangerous ways such as national economic rivalry, military competition, and ethno-nationalist conflict over the control of territory and states. The power of nationalism to motivate human action, sacrifice, love and hatred remains undiminished. As Sinsia Malesevic puts it, ‘nationalism has been, and remains, the dominant mode of political legitimacy and collective subjectivity in the modern era’ (2019: 7). The recent covid-19 crisis has brought the contemporary power of nationalism into stark relief. The virus has made manifest the depths of global connectedness, and the shared fate of human beings everywhere, in a way that few developments ever have. But instead of recognising the shared humanity that the pandemic reveals, and instead of pursuing the transnational cooperation that such recognition demands, everywhere there are signs that national self-interest and parochialism inform the most common political responses. And it is not just in the hardening of national borders and restrictions on mobility that nationalist responses are expressed—measures that most thinking people would accept as being necessary to slow the progress of the contagion. More worryingly, many political leaders, particularly those in the United States and Europe, have prioritised their own nations in securing treatments and vaccines that are in development. Indeed, the emergence of a kind of ‘vaccine nationalism’ has been noted with alarm by some medical researchers and journalists (Santos Rutschman 2020; Kupferschmidt 2020). In addition, the pandemic has in some quarters stoked racist, nationalistic hostility towards China and people of Chinese appearance, who stand accused of spreading

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what Donald Trump has derisively called the ‘Kung Flu’. In so doing, it has reinvigorated hostility towards international organisations like the UN and the WHO, which are viewed by many nationalists in the West as either doing China’s bidding, or illegitimately restricting the sovereignty of states, or both. And amidst all this, the virus has accelerated the growth of economic nationalism already underway before anyone had heard of Covid-19. As the coronavirus has spread, then, so too has the virus of nationalism. While the global pandemic has been an unwelcome surprise for many— though not for epidemiologists who have warned of the inevitability of such an outbreak for decades (Garrett 1995; Henig 1994)—the instinctive nationalistic response was to be expected. As we saw in Chapters 1 and 5, nationalism has been on the march in recent years, and therefore the pandemic has occurred in circumstances that are particularly propitious for understanding and responding to it through a nationalist filter. Yet this most recent exacerbation of nationalism into which a global pandemic was cast, hardly represents a qualitative break from the past. On the contrary, nationalism as an ideology and national identity as a lived experience dominated the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and their roots go back even further, being coterminous with the very origins of Modernity in the Sixteenth Century, as we saw in Chapters 3 and 4. Contemporary globalization has strengthened nationalist particularism, but it has hardly created it. Given this, as well as asking what explains more recent manifestations of nationalism, as was done in the previous chapter, we also need to ask what explains the long-term persistence of nationalism. Why does it continue to flourish in conditions that are very different to those in which nationalism and nationality originally arose? At one level, the answer to this question is straightforward and presents few mysteries. Nationalism persists because we still live in a world of states, and states necessarily foster identification with and loyalty to the state, though understood as a nation. This always harbours the possibility of subnational challenges to existing state power, particularly when a territorially concentrated ethnic minority can develop a plausible narrative that they are an oppressed nation, which can only truly be freed by having a sovereign state of their own. In many ways, this dynamic mirrors the original emergence of ‘nation-ness.’ The rise of nationalism and the identities that it mobilised, we saw in Chapter 3, were inseparable from the emergence of Europe’s territorially bounded states and interstate system, themselves deeply entwined

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with the growth of capitalism and its restless drive to geographical expansion. The bordered, territorial state was the ‘power container’ in which shared culture and unified fields of communication, economic production and exchange and capitalist property rights developed, with state elites actively promoting identification with and loyalty to the state (Giddens 1985). This entailed a drive to linguistic and cultural homogenisation based on pre-existing cultural materials—enhanced by public education and the cultivation of national armies, rituals and symbols—which begat resistance from minorities resentful of and disadvantaged by these nationalising efforts. Some of these minorities came to see the advantages of having states of their own, and agitated to foster a distinct national consciousness among those who were culturally and linguistically alike and similarly disadvantaged by the political status quo. They became state seeking nationalists striving to secede. The conditions that gave rise to these state-led and state-seeking nationalisms are today of course very different. And yet the territorial state itself remains the most important and valued institution for concentrating power, bestowing rights and obligations, and organising political space. We still live in a world of states, despite what some had once supposed about the state-eroding dynamics of globalization. As long as this remains the case—and contemporary developments give every indication that it will remain the case for the foreseeable future—we should expect that state-led and state seeking nationalism will endure. It could hardly be otherwise in a world where ‘belonging’ to a state, as manifested in recognised citizenship rights, is the most valued currency of social, political and economic participation. It is as much an essential ‘social bond’ in the modern world as Marx’s callous cash nexus. Stateless persons know this all too well, which is one of the reasons why many of them are state-seeking nationalists, or state-seeking migrants pursuing membership within other national states. But if the endurance of the state and the interstate system go a long way to explaining the persistence of nationalism and national identity as a form of communal association, they alone cannot explain the emotional intensity with which national identification is felt. Why does it continue to have such a powerful hold on people’s hearts, as much as their minds? In these concluding remarks, I will offer some provisional thoughts on explaining the continuing power of nationalism and national identity by considering an area of social scientific research that nationalism studies have tended to neglect; namely, the role of collective emotions in

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shaping national attachments. I ask, what are the key insights of collective emotions research that can be fruitfully applied to analysing nationalism and understanding its persistence and intensity?

Nationalism and Emotions It requires little insight to observe that expressions of nationalism are invariably charged with emotion. Sacrifices on behalf of the nation, including dying and killing in war, presuppose a deep emotional attachment to the object in whose name the sacrifice is made. The memorialization of war is also saturated with emotive symbolism that links the national past with the present and future. Intense feelings of pride accompany the singing of national anthems and the winning of international sporting contests, deep-seated resentments are triggered when one’s nation is perceived to have been attacked or slighted, and many become angry and vengeful at ‘others’ accused of diluting the integrity of the nation. These examples demonstrate the indubitable, affective dimensions of nationalism. Given this seemingly self-evident connection between nationalism and strongly felt emotions, it is a curious fact that serious scholarly attention to this connection has really only emerged over the past decade (Heaney 2013; Closs Stephens 2016; Militz and Schurr 2015). Before that, the emotional dimensions of nationalism were typically subsumed within broader considerations of culture, if they were considered at all. There were some notable exceptions, such as Thomas Scheff’s (1994) work on emotions, nationalism and war, and Mabel Berezin’s (2002) account of ‘communities of feeling’ in Fascist Italy. But for the most part, emotions were downplayed in nationalism studies. Two closely related tendencies in social science practice and theory can help explain this relative neglect, both of which rest on an unwarranted dualism between reason and rationality on the one hand, and emotion and irrationality on the other. First, nationalism studies from its earliest days was bedevilled by binary oppositions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalism, often couched as distinctions between civic and ethnic, western and eastern, or liberal and authoritarian nationalism (e.g., Hayes 1931; Kohn 1944). The second term in each of these pairings was defined as morally and politically problematic, and assumed to be animated by irrational impulses and passionate hatreds that defied rational social scientific understanding (Heaney 2013: 243). The shadow of this dualistic

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way of thinking continued to hang over modern scholarship after the renaissance in nationalism studies in the 1980s, even if contemporary scholars were loath to make explicit moral judgments about different types of nationalism, as their predecessors had done. This mirrored a second more general tendency of social science practice and theory, derived from the Enlightenment, which privileged human reason over human emotion, with the latter being viewed as an impediment to and a corruption of the former. Consequently, intellectual curiosity about what earlier generations of philosophers had typically referred to as the ‘passions’ waned in the Nineteenth Century. They were largely ignored by mainstream social science through much of the Twentieth Century, with only a few important exceptions (e.g., Le Bon’s [1896] work on crowds, Durkheim’s [1915] observations about ‘collective effervescence’, and Canetti’s [2006] analysis of the strategic orchestration of emotions by the Nazi regime). Thankfully, this neglect of emotions began to change around the turn of the Twentieth Century, with social scientists and social philosophers becoming more cognizant of the affective dimensions of the human condition (Barbalet 2002; Goodwin et al. 2001; Berezin 2002; Nussbaum 2001). This new literature emphasised that the expressive, emotional aspects of human experience and behaviour is organically tied to the calculating, instrumental, structural and interest-based dimensions on which social science had long focused. This had important political implications. In a seminal article, David Ost argued that emotions are central to all areas of politics, and that ‘the pursuit of power requires an almost constant mobilisation of emotion in order to solidify partisan identification among the electorate … proffering an enemy that they identify as the cause of grievances held by voters’ (2004: 237–238). Here anger is the master political emotion, as it is tied to the friend-enemy distinction that, following Schmitt, Ost says is at the heart of all politics. In addition to its implications for politics, there was also a growing awareness that emotion is not simply reducible to the embodied and psychic states of individuals, which had been the traditional focus of most psychologists since William James in the late Nineteenth Century. While individual biographies and bodies are important determinants of personal, emotional repertoires, these exist within larger social, cultural and political matrixes that shape and constrain emotion. Much of what people feel under particular circumstances is what social life teaches them that they should feel. Emotional ‘appropriateness’ is as much socialised as are other norms and

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mores. What might appear as, and be felt as, a spontaneous emotional reaction to external stimuli, is more often than not an habituated response conditioned by membership in particular groups. It is groups of various scale, up to and including national states, that condition what scholars refer to as collective emotions—emotions that ‘arise collectively and are shared by large numbers of individuals at the same time’ (von Scheve and Salmela 2014: xiv). Collective emotions, including those associated with nationalism, are produced and reproduced through several mechanisms, which I have discussed more fully elsewhere (Cox and O’Connor 2020; Cox and Wood 2017; see also Mercer 2014). First, group culture and identity shape emotional dispositions and channel the actual emotional responses of those who identify with the group. Second, collective emotions are shaped by processes of emotional contagion, defined by Ross (2014: 10) as ‘the unconscious and unintentional transmission of emotion through a process of display and imitation’. Put simply, humans are more prone to being fearful when those around them display fear, or being angry when others with whom they interact are angry. Third, the intersection of group and personal interests contribute to collective emotions. That which impacts negatively on a given group impacts negatively on those who identify with the group, and is thus prone to elicit a shared emotional reaction. ‘The stronger the identification’, Mercer suggests, ‘the greater should be the impact of the group on the individual’ (2014: 524). Finally, political leadership, especially of the charismatic variety, can galvanize and give direction to collective emotions. Part of being an effective leader entails being able to embody and symbolically convey the emotions of those one claims to represent, or would seek to represent. The populist leader, for instance, does not just stand with ‘the people’ against the elites, but gives voice to their grievances, their fears, their humiliations and their rage. The growing appreciation of such collectivization of emotions is now contributing to understandings of nationalism. The impact of the greater openness to emotions in social science was slow to be felt in scholarship on nationalism. Early contributions by Thomas Scheff (1994) and Mabel Berezin (1997, 2002) were notable for their unfashionable sensitivity to the emotional dimensions of national communities and identities. In a series of thought-provoking insights drawn largely from history and psychoanalysis, Scheff explored the connection between repressed shame, anger and nationalist aggression. He argued that the source of the revanchist German nationalism that

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culminated in Nazi power, for example, could be traced to the sense of shame and anger felt by wide layers of the German population following the Treaty of Versailles. The febrile atmosphere of war and, especially, defeat, also animated Hitler’s inner demons, as evidenced in the pages of Mein Kampf . The interplay between Hitler’s emotional and psychological profile—marked by insecurity, repressed shame, humiliated fury and aggression—and the stigma and resentment felt by many Germans during the Weimar Republic years, was critical to his political success and the vengeful turn of German nationalism more generally (Scheff 1994: 106). In Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Inter-war Italy, Mabel Berezin (1997) similarly elaborated on the notion of a ‘community of feeling,’ which she deployed to great effect for understanding nationalism in Fascist Italy. In a later work she suggested that national communities of feeling are produced through public rituals that ‘serve as arenas of emotion, bounded spaces where citizens enact and vicariously experience collective national self-hood … The repeated experience of ritual participation produces a feeling of solidarity’ (Berezin 2002: 44–45). National solidarity is, by necessity, reproduced through emotional excitation. More recently, scholars of nationalism have built on such pioneering work, typically emphasizing that if the emotional power of nationalism is to be fully comprehended it is necessary to enquire into its basis in lived experience. Angharad Closs Stephens conceptualizes this in terms of ‘affective atmospheres’ to explain how nationalism ‘takes hold and becomes infectious’ (2016: 182). Her exploration of the affective dimensions of the 2012 Olympic Games in London offers a compelling case study of the contagious effects of nationalism as a lived experience. Jonathan Heaney (2013) similarly enjoins scholars of nationalism and emotions to deploy Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, rather than national identity. He claims that it ‘better deals with the emotional aspects of national affiliation and solidarity … habitus is this embodied aspect of the feeling of nationhood’ (Heaney 2013: 256). Whether or not one agrees with his broader critique of national identity as a useful category of analysis, Heaney’s case for understanding nationalism through the prism of habitus is a strong one. Here, ‘the emotional, cognitive and symbolic are united into a (changing, polymorphous) gestalt … The ‘feeling of belonging’ is instilled, emotional identification (as process) with a category or collective, such as ‘the nation’ is explained’ (2013: 257). In this, Heaney follows Sinisa Malesevic, who argues that ‘when dealing with nations the attention should focus on the ideological

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processes through which nationhood becomes our second nature’ (2011: 283). This ‘second nature’ element of people’s lived experience of nationhood is explored at greater length in Malesevic’s (2019) latest work on ‘grounded nationalism.’ In seeking to understand why nationalism became and remains the ‘dominant form of collective subjectivity,’ Malesevic focuses on its grounding in long-term historical trends, organizational capacity, ideological penetration and micro-interactional dynamics. These four pillars of his analysis are mutually constitutive and reinforcing. In terms of emotions, the real promise of Malesevic’s work is his insistence that ‘nationalism is an organisationally and ideologically embedded process that has historically proven to be extremely successful in tapping into the miro-world of everyday life’ (2019: 8). Here he is influenced by scholars who argue that nationalism cannot be adequately understood in the absence of considering its agency-centred reproduction in the micro-practices of everyday life (Billig 1995; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Skey 2011; Skey and Antonsich 2017). For these scholars, nationalism is and must be constantly made and remade on a daily basis, through the quotidian practices, rituals and observations of consciously interacting agents. While Malesevic agrees, he departs from and goes beyond these scholars in insisting that these agency-centred interactions are located within a structural realm of organization and ideology that develops over several centuries, and out of which nationalism emerges. It is the dialectic between these structures and individual, nationalist agency on which scholars of nationalism must focus: ‘… nationalism is generated in the structural sphere but its continuous existence is heavily dependent on the everyday micro-interactional grounding. What is central in this process is how the structural and the interactional grounding come together’ (Malesevic 2019: 14). It is in this ‘coming together’ that nationalism derives its power: ‘from the sense of loyalty and the intense micro-level emotional attachments that human beings develop and maintain with significant others’ (2019: 14). Surprisingly, Malesevic does not explicitly analyze these ‘emotional attachments’ in any detail, which is a ‘grounding’ in his understanding of nationalism that could usefully be elaborated. Nevertheless, his broader point is a sound one: the power of nationalism to motivate and agitate is grounded in lived experience and the emotional universes that encompass shared lives. Scholars need to examine the connection between lived experience and emotional states if they are to better understand the power of modern nationalism.

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The other area of scholarship that is intellectually fertile for understandings of nationalism and emotions is the literature on nationalist populism and emotions (Demertzis 2006; Rico et al. 2017; Salmel and von Scheve 2017). Populism is always, these theories suggest, premised on emotions bound up with insecurity and feelings of threat and vulnerability. Populist politicians promise to deliver their audiences from such threats and the negative feelings they induce. Mikko Salmel and Christian von Scheve develop this theme further, arguing that insecurity is intrinsic to modern capitalist economies for which everyone is dispensable, including those in the once secure, prosperous middle classes (2017: 569). They posit that insecurity frequently expresses itself as fear (of declassement ) and ‘anticipated shame’ of losing status. In an argument that echoes that of Scheff (1994), they suggest that the repression of shame results in resentment and anger at perceived enemies of the precarious self and the groups with which it identifies, including nations. These enemies typically include all those who are perceived to be national ‘others,’ including ethnic minorities, immigrants, refugees, and the unemployed. Those who feel threatened and insecure receive some emotional consolation in their supposed superiority to these groups, while also directing their anger upward at the ‘elites’ who are seen to support these national others. In so doing, they reproduce a particular vision and practice of nationalist belonging and exclusion. This brief sketch of some key contributions to the emerging literature on nationalism and emotion points the way to future research that could be profitably undertaken by scholars of nationalism. To begin with, such research would elaborate existing analyses of the ways in which nationalism is affectively grounded in the quotidian rhythms of life, by more explicitly deploying the growing body of research findings into the mechanisms that collectivize emotions. These include social-psychological and neuroscientific insights into the connection between culture, emotions, habits and identity formation, and also knowledge drawn from the growing body of sociological research into the powerful effects of emotional contagion. The latter focuses on emotional mimicry, empathic understanding, and shared normative frames that shape common emotional repertoires and reactions to given events and circumstances. All of these mechanisms can operate remotely via mass and social media, which are obvious avenues for deeper explorations of the ways in which nationalist ideas are constituted, spread and emotionally intensified.

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Yet these mechanisms of collectivization operating in the realm of the daily, lived experience of nationalism—contributing to ‘affective atmospheres’ or an emotional ‘habitus’—must be linked to rather than abstracted from the larger macro concerns of interests and power. As we saw above, material interests are intimately connected to affective states, with people and groups being emotionally invested in preserving what benefits them. When they feel that their interests are threatened they react with fury; when their interests are enhanced they feel joy and emotional satisfaction; when their interests are valorised by others they feel pride. The emotional valence of ‘national interest’ depends on the extent to which it can subordinate and subsume other types of interest, including class-based interests, under its transcendent mantle. This subsumption presupposes the exercise of state power and political leadership—with the latter routinely emoting on behalf of the nation in order to reproduce itself—which certainly should remain a priority for nationalism scholars, though augmented by the newer understandings of collective emotions that have been outlined. Here emotions become the analytical hinge that connects the micro-worlds of individual agency and symbolic interactions, with the macro-worlds of state power and institutional actors. Finally, future studies of nationalism, in both the theoretical and empirical register, would benefit from the deeper exploration of specific emotions. National rage, shame, humiliation, hatred, pride, envy, and ressentiment have all been invoked by nationalism scholars to explain particular episodes in the history of nationalist struggles, wars and statebuilding. But it has been less common to more deeply examine these emotions themselves, and to theorize the link between their causes and consequences on the one hand, and nationalist beliefs and practices on the other. Doing so would open up new vistas of nationalism research.

Final Thoughts After several centuries of tumultuous development, nationalism remains the dominant form of political legitimacy everywhere, save perhaps a few monarchical outposts in the Middle East and residual French colonies in the Pacific. The nationalist principle according to which ‘the people,’ understood as a nation, should be governed by co-nationals, has assumed global acceptance in liberal democratic and authoritarian states alike. This is reflected in ordinary language use where nation and state are habitually conflated in the ‘nation-state,’ and where routine discussion

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of international affairs implies that it is nations rather than states that interact globally. The mis-named United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, is an organisation whose membership is composed exclusively of states. Historically, with only a few politically contingent exceptions, it has been reluctant to recognise the claims of nations seeking states, even where those nations have, so to speak, established ‘facts on the ground.’ In this, the U.N. merely expresses the interests and preferences of its member states, for whom nationalist claims are only tolerated as long as their own state sovereignty goes unchallenged. Thus, while the legitimising principle of national self-determination is universally endorsed in the abstract, it is near universally violated in practice. State-led nationalism justifies this violation in the name of preserving a national sovereignty claimed on behalf of all the people, even where ‘all the people’ numerically falls short of the entire population within a state’s recognised borders. This highlights the importance of struggles over defining the national ‘self,’ which remains the basis for determining inclusion and exclusion within the state, with all of the rights and benefits that this entails. Struggles over defining national selves have intensified in recent years, as the centrifugal tendencies of deregulated capitalist economies and cultural and political polarisation accelerates. This has been most notable in those countries that have witnessed the growth of nativist, xenophobic nationalist movements and political leadership. These have mobilized against immigrants, Muslims, globalization, and politically correct cosmopolitanism. Nationalist political entrepreneurs have exploited growing economic insecurity, and increased distrust of establishment politics, to forge new constituencies of support. These have rallied against external and internal enemies in the name of defending the supposedly real, authentic nation. Such defence is premised on a deep emotional attachment to a particular national vision. This attachment is mutually affined with an even deeper resentment of and anger towards those who are viewed as threatening the nation. These emotions are felt and expressed by individuals, but their source and contemporary flourishing is to be located in the larger structural processes shaping national and global political economies. Where only a few short decades ago many scholars expected these processes to dilute the appeal of nationalism, it is now clear that this appeal is growing in diverse global locations. Given the nationalizing effects of the global pandemic, and the darkening horizon of U.S.Chinese rivalry, it seems certain that nationalism will become more rather

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than less important in the years to come. It is the role of nationalism scholars to illuminate these dynamics, and to clarify their connection to people’s lived experience and consciousness of the nation, so that they might make some small contribution to mitigating nationalism’s destructive propensities.

References Barbalet, J. (Ed.). (2002). Emotions and Sociology. London: Basil Blackwell. Berezin, M. (1997). Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Inter-War Italy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Berezin, M. (2002). Secure States: Towards a Political Sociology of Emotion. The Sociological Review, 50(2), 33–52. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Canetti, E. (2006). Masse und macht (30th ed.). Frankfurt: Fischer. Closs Stephens, A. (2016). The Affective Atmosphere of Nationalism. Cultural Geographies, 23(2), 181–198. Cox, L., & O’Connor, B. (2020). That ‘Special Something’: The U.S.-Australia Alliance, Special Relationships and Emotions. Political Science Quarterly, 135(3), 409–438. Cox, L., & Wood, S. (2017). ‘Got Him’: Revenge, Emotions, and the Killing of Osama Bin Laden. Review of International Studies, 43(1), 112–129. https:// doi.org/10.1017/s026021051600022x. Demertzis N. (2006). Emotions and Populism. In S. Clarke, P. Hoggett, S. Thompson (Eds.), Emotion, Politics and Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230627895_7. Durkheim, E. (1915). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin. Fox, J. E., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2008). Everyday Nationhood. Ethnicities., 8(4), 536–576. Garrett, L. (1995). The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. London: Virago Press. Giddens, A. (1985). The Nation-State and Violence: Volume 2 of A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., & Polletta, F. (Eds.). (2001). Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hayes, C. J. H. (1931). The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism. New York: Richard. R. Smith. Heaney J. (2013). Emotions and Nationalism: A Reappraisal. In N. Demertzis (Ed.), Emotions in Politics. Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology

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Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978113702 5661_13. Henig, R. M. (1994). A Dancing Matrix: How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses. New York: Vintage Books. Kohn, H. (1944). The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background. New York: Columbia University Press. Kupferschmidt, K. (2020, July 28). ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ Threatens Global Plan to Distribute Covid-19 Shots Fairly. Science Magazine. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/vaccine-nationalism-thr eatens-global-plan-distribute-covid-19-shots-fairly. Accessed on 13 August 2020. Le Bon, G. (1896). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Macmillan. Malesevic, S. (2011). The Chimera of National Identity. Nations and Nationalism, 17 (2), 272–290. Malesevic, S. (2019). Grounded Nationalism: A Sociological Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mercer, J. (2014). Feeling Like a State: Social Emotion and Identity. International Theory, 6(3), 515–535. https://doi.org/10.1017/s17529719140 00244. Militz, E., & Schurr, C. (2015). Affective Nationalism: Banalities of Belonging in Azerbaijan. Political Geography, 54, 54–63. Nussbaum, M. (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ost, D. (2004). Politics as the Mobilization of Anger: Emotions in Movements and in Power. European Journal of Social Theory., 7 (2), 229–244. Rico, G., Guinjoan, M., & Anduiza, E. (2017). The Emotional Underpinnings of Populism: How Anger and Fear Affect Populist Attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review., 23(4), 444–461. https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12261. Ross, A. A. G. (2014). Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Salmela, M., & von Scheve, C. (2017). Emotional Roots of Right-Wing Political Populism. Social Science Information, 56(4), 567–595. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0539018417734419. Santos Rutschman, A. (2020, June 17). How ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ Could Block Vulnerable Populations’ Access to COVID-19 Vaccines. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-vaccine-nationalism-could-block-vul nerable-populations-access-to-covid-19-vaccines-140689. Accessed on 13 August 2020. Sheff, T. J. (1994). Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism, and War. Boulder: Westview Press. Skey, M. (2011). National Belonging and Everyday Life. London: Palgrave.

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Skey, M., & Antonsich, M. (Eds.). (2017). Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging After Banal Nationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. von Scheve, C., & Salmella, M. (2014). Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Index

A Abstract equivalents, 34, 76, 82, 89 Acton, Lord, 19, 20 Affective, 29 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 113, 123 America First, 4, 116, 118 Anderson, Benedict, 2, 20, 24, 28, 29, 34, 52, 54, 82, 89, 92 Antiquity, 7, 85 Armenians, 71, 73, 93 Armstrong, John, 2, 24, 71–76, 81, 84 Australia, v, 86, 108, 111 Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), 113, 122 Authenticity, 112 Authoritarianism, 19, 120

B Balibar, Étienne, 13, 14 Balkan, 54 Bede, 77, 82

Beissinger, Mark, 3, 15, 29, 32, 50, 55 Bible, 77, 78 Billig, Michael, 13, 91, 134, 141 Boundary, 73, 75, 76, 84 Bourgeoisie, 47 Bretton Woods, 102 Breuilly, John, 2, 6, 56, 59–64 Brexit, 4, 99, 113–115, 119, 121, 123, 125 Brubaker, Rogers, 6, 15, 25, 30–32

C Calhoun, Craig, 29, 30, 32, 33, 76, 88, 89, 92 Capitalism, 7, 23, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 48, 55, 57, 58, 62, 64, 80, 90–92, 100, 105, 136 Catholicism, 78 China, v, vi, 5, 86, 102, 106, 108, 134, 135 Christian fundamentalism, 120 Christianity, 72, 77–79

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. Cox, Nationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9320-8

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150

INDEX

Citizenship, 16, 40, 56, 58, 60–62, 90, 136 Class, 18, 19, 22, 27, 41, 45–47, 57, 58, 71, 78, 80–82, 91, 107, 108, 112, 122, 142, 143 Clinton, Bill, 119, 124 Colonialism, 16, 18, 101, 102 Connor, Walker, 19, 26, 27 Coronavirus, v, vi, 135 Cosmopolitanism, 108, 144 Covid-19, vi, vii, 5, 105, 108, 134, 135 Culture, 7, 13, 15, 22, 24, 25, 30, 42, 48–55, 62–64, 70, 81–83, 85, 86, 88, 90–92, 98, 99, 102, 112, 116, 122, 136, 137, 139, 142 D Danish People’s Party (DPP), 109, 112 Delanty, Gerard, 29, 76, 87, 88, 90–92 Democracy, 56, 90 Democratic Party, 116, 117 Discursive formations, 24, 29, 76, 88 Division of labour, 27, 50, 51, 60, 61, 105 Durkheim, Émile, 20, 21, 138 E Economic reductionism, 42, 43, 62 Education, 34, 51, 91, 92, 107, 115, 119, 123, 136 Eighteenth Century, 57–60, 63, 84, 85 Emotional contagion, 139, 142 Emotions anger, 138, 142, 144 collective emotions, 8, 87, 136, 137, 139, 143

fear, 139 resentment, 137, 140, 142, 144 shame, 139, 140, 143 Empire, 3, 20, 59, 79, 98 Engels, Friedrich, 17–19, 100 England, 13, 45, 48, 77, 78, 81, 85, 114, 117 Enlightenment, 16, 17, 100, 138 Equality, vi, 44, 47, 89–91 Ethnic, 7, 8, 16, 22, 40, 45, 46, 50, 55, 57–59, 62, 72, 74, 75, 81, 84–88, 92, 93, 110–112, 124, 125, 135, 137, 142 Ethnicity, 2, 12, 22, 45, 59, 63, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 85, 86, 89, 92, 119, 122, 124 Ethnies, 7, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88 Ethnonationalism, 2, 81, 113, 116, 117 Ethnosymbolism, 7, 90 Europe, 4, 8, 17, 22, 23, 45, 46, 48, 54, 55, 57–61, 63, 70, 71, 77–80, 85, 89, 100, 101, 104, 109, 112–114, 121–123, 125, 134, 135 European, 7, 13, 16–18, 22, 47, 48, 56, 61, 64, 72, 74, 79, 80, 86, 88, 90, 99–101, 109, 112, 113, 115, 123 European Union (EU), 4, 113–115 F Farage, Nigel, 114, 122 Fifteenth Century, 48, 78, 100 France, v, 45, 48, 58, 59, 62, 85, 112, 121, 122 Functionalism, 28, 52, 53 Functionalist explanation, 52, 53 G Gat, Azar, 55, 70, 71

INDEX

Gellner, Ernest, 2, 24, 27, 28, 47, 49–56, 76, 83 Gemeinschaften, 22 Gesellschaft , 22 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), vii, 5, 105, 106, 114, 122, 125 Globalisation, 114, 122 Greenfeld, Liah, 2, 13, 55, 88, 89 Grosby, Steven, 71, 73, 75, 76, 81

H Herder, Johann Gottfried, 17, 100 Hroch, Miroslav, 2, 5, 13, 25, 26, 44–48

I Idealist, 27 Identity, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 40, 45, 46, 51–53, 55, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 70–75, 78, 80, 82–84, 87–89, 91, 93, 99, 109, 116, 124, 125, 134–136, 139, 140, 142 Ideology, 19, 24, 55, 57–59, 62, 63, 83, 125, 135, 141 Imagined communities, 2, 24, 28, 29, 33 Imperialism, 98 India, vi, 5, 18 Industrialism, 7, 23, 52, 54, 55, 58, 64 Intellectuals, vii, 2, 12, 13, 16, 41, 44, 46, 91, 98, 122, 134, 138 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 102, 105 Internet, 107, 108 Invention of tradition, 27 Ireland, 2, 18 Islam, 72 Israel, 2, 5, 15, 16, 73

151

J Japan, 5, 13, 86 Jewish, 71, 73 Jews, 15, 21, 71, 73, 77, 93 L Language, 2, 3, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22–24, 26, 29, 33, 34, 41, 48, 51, 57, 63, 73–75, 77, 78, 83, 85, 89, 102, 143 Le Pen, Marine, 113, 122, 124 Llobera, Josep, 16, 70, 77, 79–83 M Maleševi´c, Siniša, 2, 13, 134, 140, 141 Mann, Michael, 48, 56–59, 62–64, 82, 98 Marxism, 17, 41 Marx, Karl, 17–19, 41, 100, 111, 136 Medieval, 7, 56, 70, 71, 77, 80–86, 89 Memory, 20, 21, 44 Militarism, 58 Mill, John Stuart, 19, 20, 104, 111 Modernisation, 77 Modernists, 40, 49, 58, 64, 70, 71, 79, 83, 84, 86 Modernity, 7, 22, 23, 40, 41, 55, 58, 60, 70, 72, 74, 79, 81, 84–86, 88, 90–93, 103, 135 N Nairn, Tom, 17, 27, 41–43 Nation definition of, 15, 24 historic nations, 17 non-historic nations, 17, 19 Nation state, 6, 61, 77, 78, 81, 98, 102, 143 National

152

INDEX

national identity, 2, 3, 6, 7 national question, 17, 18 national revivals, 45 national self, 5, 134, 140 national self-determination, 14, 15, 18–20, 144 Nationalism banal nationalism, 12, 91, 134 definition of, 24, 33 economic nationalism, vi, 4, 17, 91, 103, 118, 135 grounded nationalism, 12, 141 vaccine nationalism, vi, 134 Nationalist, vii, 2–5, 8, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22–24, 29, 30, 34, 42, 43, 46, 47, 54–56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 80, 82, 83, 87, 88, 90, 91, 98, 99, 108–116, 118, 119, 121–125, 134, 135, 139, 141–144 nationalist populist, 98, 110, 112, 113, 122–124 Nationality, 2, 15, 16, 19, 20, 24, 27, 28, 33, 34, 40, 48, 62, 70, 73–77, 79, 81, 85, 90, 92, 93, 135 definition of, 33 Nationness, 30, 49 Nativism, 114, 117 Neoliberalism, 5 New Zealand, vi, 86, 108, 109 Nineteenth Century, 16, 17, 19, 47, 100, 101, 138 Nixon, Richard, 103, 116 O Objectivist, 24 O’Mahony, Patrick, 29, 76, 87, 88, 90–92 P Palestinians, 15, 108

Palestinian territories, 15 Perennialism, 7 Poland, 18, 85, 113 Political legitimacy, 14, 33, 50, 59, 134, 143 Populism, vii, 4, 7, 8, 94, 98, 99, 110–112, 115, 121–125, 142 Post-communist, 46, 47 Pre-modern, 6, 7, 22, 28, 40, 57, 60, 70–77, 79, 82–84, 86–90, 93 Protestantism, 78 Putin, Vladimir, 15 R Race, vi, 22, 106, 116, 118, 119 Reformation, 78, 86 Reification, 30, 31 Religion, 3, 21, 22, 29, 33, 63, 72, 73, 78, 79, 81, 134 Renan, Ernest, 20, 21 Representative government, 19, 58, 62 Republican Party, 116, 117 Revolution, 17, 45, 100, 101, 108 Russia, 2, 5, 15, 78, 85 S Scotland, 112 Secessionist, 2, 3, 52, 55, 99 Sixteenth Century, 48, 78, 89, 94, 135 Smith, Anthony, 2, 7, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 40, 55, 65, 70, 71, 83–88, 98 Soviet Union, 3, 5, 15 Spain, v, 4, 13, 45, 48, 85, 112 Stalin, Joseph, 15 State, v, vi, 2–7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18–24, 26, 27, 30–33, 40–43, 45, 46, 50–64, 73, 75, 76, 79–81, 83, 85, 90–94, 98,

INDEX

102–106, 108, 110, 113, 117, 119, 121–123, 134–136, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144 Symbolic frames, 24, 29, 76, 88 T Tea Party, 117 Territory, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 25, 26, 30, 33, 48, 56, 57, 71–73, 75, 82–84, 134 the People, 3, 13, 58, 59, 61, 73, 80, 110–112, 139, 143, 144 Trade, vi, 5, 101–106, 118, 122 Trump, Donald, 4, 99, 106, 109, 111, 113, 116–125, 135 Twentieth Century, 12, 14, 17, 41, 47, 48, 54, 87, 102, 106, 112, 125, 138 Twenty-first Century, v, 5, 8, 13, 125 U Uneven development, 41–43

153

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 109, 112–114 United States, v, vi, 3–5, 8, 59, 86, 98, 102, 106, 118, 123, 125, 134

V Vernacular, 13, 48, 57, 73, 77, 78

W War, vi, 2, 7, 28, 40, 56, 58, 59, 102, 107, 112, 116, 137, 140, 143 Weber, Max, 22, 23 White backlash, 116 White supremacist, 109 Wimmer, Andreas, 2, 26, 56, 58–60, 62–64

Y Yugoslavia, 3