1. Theories of Nationalism & Ethnicity

2. Theoretical Debates What is an ethnic group and a nation?
Why do ethnic groups and nations exist?
When did ethnic groups and nations appear?

3. Why Did the Ethnic Group Arise?
Instrumentalist
Ethno-Symbolist
Primordialist
Key segment of group
Elites, ruling class
Romantic Intellectuals, Masses
Entire Community or Social Organism
Motives Behind Ethnic Groups
Elite Wealth, Power, Status
Meaning, Security, Belonging + instrumental motives
Instinctive Kinship, Maximization of Group Fitness
Source of Ethnogenesis
Elites in competition with each other
Intellectual-driven historicism and consciousness-raising, Warfare, culture contact
Evolutionary struggle in prehistory
Ethnic Groups Origin
Modern period (post-1789)
In History (after 6000 BC)
Pre-History
Process of Ethnogenesis
Invention of the modern state or competing sub-state elites, who determine people's identities from above
Created by intellectuals (religious or secular-romantic), but informed by traditional culture and mediated by popular sentiment
Emerged organically as peoples met through migration and war
Why Did the Ethnic Group Arise?
Why Did the Ethnic Group Arise?

4. When Did the Ethnic Group Arise?
Modernist
Perennialist
Primordialist
Ethnic Groups Origin
Modern period (post-1789)
In History (after 6000 BC)
Pre-History
Pre-Modern Social Structure
Cosmopolitan Elite strata,
localized masses (i.e. no imagined &/or integrated communities of territory and genealogy)
Great difference: some vertically-integrated ethnic groups, some more loosely integrated units, some un-integrated, Groups rise and fall
Ethnic groups ever-present throughout history, in all times and places
Process of Ethnogenesis
Invention of the modern state or competing sub-state elites
Created by intellectuals (religious or secular-romantic), but informed by traditional culture and mediated by popular sentiment
Emerged organically as peoples met through migration and war
Major Theorists
Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Anthony Giddens
Anthony Smith, John Armstrong, Walker Connor, Adrian Hastings
Pierre van den Berghe,
Joshua Fishman,
Stephen Grosby

5. Primordialism – Pierre Van den Berghe
Collective nepotism – or cooperation
Relatedness ‘read’ off cultural markers
Evolutionary success of ethnic cooperation

6. Ethno-Symbolism – Anthony Smith
Social facts, moving through history
'Essentials' of culture and lifestyle DO shape self-understandings and constrain invention
Culture as a motivating force

7. Instrumentalism - Eric Hobsbawm
State and national political elites create ethnic groups to divide working class or otherwise advance their own claims for wealth, power, status.
Motives are not biological or cultural, but political and economic.
Nations were created after 1780

8. Modernism – Ernest Gellner
Nations created in modern period, post-1789
Prior to local id, local genealogy, religious/imperial conception, no territorial self-conception

9. Modernism – Ernest Gellner
culture played a stratifying role for elites, no vertical integration
Kingdom, principality, empire means of keeping a small elite living off producers
elite literacy in international modes

10. Modernism – Anthony Giddens
Nation is a ‘Power-container’ created by the state
Nations were created in the modern period through state systems

11. Perennialism – Adrian Hastings
Nations have a much longer history than even Smith allows
England in the time of Bede was already a nation
Religion and vernacular languages helped create national identity

12. Perennialism – Anthony Smith
Nations Created on the Basis of Pre-Modern Ethnic Groups
Romantic Intellectuals, not the ‘Ruling Class’ were key

13. Perennialism vs. Modernism
Modernists argue that:
There is a lack of record of popular sentiment
There is a record of discord within ethnies: China, North America, Italy, Georgia
We see the rise and fall of groups, the change of peoples' names over time in particular area
There is elite competition within groups

14. Perennialism vs. Modernism
Perennialists argue that:
reference to others (natio, ethnos, gens) since antiquity
elite writings mention ethnie, nation, from classical, biblical times
language vernaculars spread early in Europe
regna, myths focused on common customs and myths of descent
military clashes could involve whole communities: zulu, mongol, norman, isrealites, swiss
regional variants of class strata cultures (orthodox, latin, muslim) existed

15. Genealogy or Politics? Europe in the 9th Century