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. 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

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

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. Modernist Theories and the Nation
State 'made use of' patriotic sentiment for the first time (P. Anderson)
State 'invents' nations where they do not exist
State 'creates' a culture and associated sentiment with no real reference to what went before

11. Classical Modernists
Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Karl Deutsch
Emphasis on rational interests of capitalists and state bureaucrats
Anderson, Gellner and Giddens suggest that pre-modern identities were either local or universal
Deutsch: shared culture is functional for the running of a smooth state and economy

13. Neo-Modernists Giddens: reflexivity Brubaker: institutionalism
Breuilly: route to state power
Tilly: role of international high politics
Mann: role of military in integrating across class

14. Modernism the leading paradigm among scholars
Modernism the leading paradigm among scholars. But is this because it is true or because it is counter-intuitive and more optimistic?

15. Modernist Theories Have in Common
emphasis on state as prior, nation as appendage or functional for state
emphasis on processes of modernity, esp. industrialism, capitalism
emphasis on role of political or economic elites
capitalist, industrialist, institutionalist and warfare models

16. Modernist Theories Have in Common
assume that attachment follows top-down institutionalisation pressures
downplay or deny existence of pre-modern ethnic groups, nations
deny non-instrumental attachments among movement leaders and intellectuals
deny that symbols of nation originate in pre-modern ethnie. (seen as contingent and non-correlative with the latter)

17. National 'Deepening' and 'Straightening'
state processes:
education, official language, school texts
civic ceremonies, parades, commemorations, monuments, holidays
census, maps, records, border checks, passports
flags, anthems, insignia, symbols
laws, constitution
police, conscript army, government institutions
common economy, roads, communications

18. ‘Imagined Communities’: The Template Spreads
Western model exported from France to the rest of Europe (with Napoleon) and the Americas (Bolivar, San Martin)
Colonialism brings the model to the world as ex-colonial borders become the basis for many new states
Idea of Nationalism (Rousseau)

19. 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

20. Anthony Smith & Ethnosymbolism
LSE Sociologist, with background in Classics. Taught by Gellner & Seton-Watson
Also a contemporary of Kedourie
Anthony Smith writes Theories of Nationalism (1971) and The Ethnic Revival (1981)
Mainly examine ethnic nationalism and the role of romantic intellectuals – esp. 19th century

21. 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

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

23. Real landmark work is the Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986)
Claims that ethnicity existed somewhere at all times since Antiquity
Nations not purely created by the state, but on the basis of pre-modern ethnic cores

24. Premodern social space more dynamic than in the Gellner-Giddens model
Ethnie, States, some ‘ethnic states’ like Israel and Armenia which approximate nations

25. Nations use the proper name, sense of territory, ‘myths, symbols and memories’ of the antecedent ethnie (even France)
Why the need to appeal to an ethnic past if unimportant – why not that of an empire or class?
Does this not constrain the freedom of future nationalists?

26. Role of Non-Instrumental Motives, Class a non-issue
Romantic Intellectuals, not the ‘Ruling Class’ were key
Bourgeoisie not necessary

27. John Hutchinson’s Contribution
Idea of layering of symbolic resources
Different ideological, class and regional fragments of society highlight different aspects of the mytho-symbolic inheritance

28. 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

29. 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

30. Primordiality or Politics?
What is happening to ethnic identity as politics ebbs and flows?
How are political changes manifested in terms of identity and historical narrative?