Social%20Movements%20Theories%20and%20Nationalism

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Social Movements Theories and Nationalism
Insights from theories of social movements can be
applied to Nationalist Movements, and can help to
frame theories of nationalism

• Three theories of Nationalism
• (a) Primordialist
• (b) Modernist
• (c) Ethnicists

• 1. Two approaches to Collective Behaviour
• Symbolic Interactionist
• Functionalist
• 2. Resource Mobilization
• 3. Political Opportunities
• 4. Identity Theories

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1. Collective Behavior (CB)

• Although a preoccupation with political unrest is
  immemorial, typically the beginning of a concern
  with social movements is put at the end of the
  nineteenth-century with Gustave LeBon (LeBon
  1960).
• LeBons concern with crowd behaviour was based on
  a negative assessment of the danger of phenomena
  that he considered essentially irrational.

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Symbolic Interactionism and Social Movements

• Among symbolic interactionists, Blumer focused on
  individuals motivation to join social movements
  and on social-psychological dynamics of activism.
  
• In this tradition (Ralph Turner, Louis Killian,
  Joseph Gusfield). The original assumptions have
  then been modified, whilst the concern for
  interaction has remained. The assumption of an
  abnormality of protest has been abandoned. The
  stress on grievances as an explanation for the
  emergence of a movement has been expanded to
  include a wider array of factors.

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Symbolic Interactionism and the Creativity of
Movements

• The early Collective Behaviour tradition was not
  univocally negative in identifying the role of
  movements. There was also, the acknowledgement of
  the creativity of social protest.
• Blumer stressed the emergence of new norms in
  movements and hence their contribution to
  cultural change.

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Structural Functionalist and Social Movements

• Parsons and Smelser, from a macro perspective,
  looked at social movements in functionalist terms
  as an answer to social strains.
• Although employing very different approaches,
  both SI and SF assumed that social movements are
  the result of a breakdown of social integration.

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Smelser

• The Parsonian model, applied to social movements
  by Smelser, assumed an integrative role of
  values. Institutions translate values into
  articulated social functions, and
  institutionalization implies the codification of
  general values into specific norms and reciprocal
  expectations.
• This absence of conflict and assumption of
  integrative dynamics has been criticised by
  social movement researchers.

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Theories of Nationalism

• The rise of the nation is often dated to the time
  of the French Revolution
• However, there is a debate on what is its
  relation to the state and to modernity
• Some see it as mainly the outcome of elites
  instrumental attempt to shape social change
• Others see this instrumental use as based on
  persisting pre-modern ethnic sentiments

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(a) Primordialists

• Historians like Frantisek Palacky, Eoin Mac Neill
  and Nicolae Iorga saw nations as evolving
  primordial entities. They recognised that before
  the 18th century nationality was subordinated to
  religion and dynastic principles, but still
  thought that nations existed before the emergence
  of the idea of popular sovereignty.

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(b) Modernists

• Since the 60s primordialists have been
  criticised by various authors such as Carl
  Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, E. Hobsbawm and Benedict
  Anderson.
• They see the nation as a modern institution, and
  argue that the raise of the nation as a
  widespread political model is only two centuries
  old.

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(c) Nations and Nation-States

• For modernists the nation can only be understood
  in relation to the nation-state. The
  nation-building process is a political one and is
  rooted in the interests of state-builders.
  Nationalist elites invented nations (Breuilly).
• Historically, nations are significantly different
  from previous units
• They are artefacts of new print technologies,
  territorial integration through transports, the
  bureaucratic state, industrialisation

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Ethnicist Approaches

• Some theorists (i.e.Anthony Smith, John
  Armstrong) accept the recent and political
  manufacture of nations but argue that it was only
  possible on a pre-existing basis a body of
  myths and symbols which persist over long time.
• They argue that states require more than
  citizenship to sustain emotional commitment and
  solidarity.