Nationalism

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Nationalism Its Varieties
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Definitions of Nationalism

• Ernest Gellner Nationalism is the belief that
  the political and the national units should be
  congruent
• Michael Hechter- Nationalism is collective
  action designed to render the boundaries of the
  nation congruent with those of its governance
  unit 

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Types of Nationalism State-Building Nationalism

• Nationalism that attempts to assimilate or
  incorporate culturally distinctive territories
  into a given state. It is the result of conscious
  efforts by rulers to make a multicultural
  population culturally homogenous. (Hechter)

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Why does state-building nationalism occur?

• Geopolitical security
• models of other strong national states
• Need to create loyal citizens
• Need for state legitimation
• efficient way to extract resources
• produces more mobile work and military force

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Class Exercise the (newly independent) Republic
of California
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How do states promote nation-hood?

• public education
• the military
• promotion of new images, symbols, and ideals
  through the media and public imagery
• physical unification and linking of territory
  (i.e. through new roads)
• establishment and maintenance of official
  language(s)
• suppression of other sub-national cultures

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More ways states promote nation-ness

• myth making - creation of past shared
  history/re-writing of history so as to support
  idea of the nation
• glorification of national heroes
• creation of national currency
• promotion of certain kinds of dress
• creation of a common literature

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National Dress Participant in the Glasgow
Highland Games
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Building Nations Linking territory- the steam
train in India and building roads in Britain
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Building Nations National heroes and national
symbols
Britain Shakespeare
U.S. Statue of Liberty
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The symbols of the nation Brazilian football
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Nation-building through the military soldiers in
the Israeli Defense Forces, left U.S. soldiers
on parade, below
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Peripheral nationalism

• Occurs when a culturally distinctive territory
  (or people) resists incorporation into an
  expanding state, or attempts to secede and set up
  its own government. (Hechter)
• Another (better) definition peripheral
  nationalism occurs when a state-less but
  culturally distinctive people seek to establish
  autonomy or self-rule in the name of their
  nation.

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Examples of Peripheral Nationalisms Kurds,
Quebecois, Welsh, Basques
Kurdish new year celebration.
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Why does peripheral nationalism occur?

• Imposition of direct rule (Hechter)
• Competition between local and central elites
• Economic and political discrimination? (sometimes
  but not always insufficient cause!)

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Irredentist nationalism

• Nationalism that seeks to extend the existing
  boundaries of a state by incorporating
  territories of an adjacent state occupied
  principally by co-nationals
• Examples Sudeten Germans (WWII) Serbia under
  Milosevic calling for integration of all
  Serb-inhabited areas of former Yugoslavia into a
  greater Serbia (1990s)

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Unification nationalism

• Merger of a politically divided but culturally
  similar territory or territories into one state.
• Example Italy, 19th century

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Ethnic and Nationalist Conflict

• How do they differ (if at all)?

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Tajiks, Turkmen, Croats, Baluchis, Chinese,
Tamils, Kurds, Turks, Palestinians

• Since the end of World War II, 16.5 million
  people have died in internal conflicts, compared
  with 3.3 million in interstate wars. There have
  been about 122 civil wars since 1945, compared
  with 25 conventional wars. Many are between
  different ethnic groups.

Youths in Kabul, Afghanistan, sift through rubble.
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Aborigines, Quebecois, Basques, Roma, Catalans,
Abkhazians, Chechens

• There are currently about 250 active
  ethnopolitical movements using various forms of
  protest and rebellion.

• Nationalist conflict occurs in all regions of the
  world
• Serious conflicts, 1995-98
• 16 Europe
• 10 Middle East
• 31 Asia
• 31 Africa
• 7 Latin America

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Myths of nationalist conflict (1)

• MYTH Nationalist conflict occurs because of
  ancient tribal or ethnic hatreds.
  (primordialism)
• NO. Nationalist conflicts nearly always occur
  because of economic and political policies
  pursued by modern-day states.
• In other words, so-called nationalist conflict
  is rarely a conflict over ethnicity, and much
  more a conflict about politics.

Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
Photo BBC.
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What are some of the practices that might create
nationalist grievances?

• Centralization (end of indirect rule)
• Ethnocide
• Creation of an official language
• Banning of certain forms of cultural expression
  (language, music, dress)
• Preferential employment opportunities
• Preferential political opportunities for majority
  population

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Myths of Nationalist Conflict (2)
MYTH There is more nationalist and ethnic
conflict today than in any other time, and the
number of such conflicts keeps increasing. NO.
The rate of nationalist conflict rose steadily
from the 1950s to the early 1990s and has since
been dropping.
Source Minorities at Risk Project
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Source Minorities at Risk Project
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Myths of nationalist conflict (3)

• MYTH Nationalist conflict usually occurs
  between two or more different social groups or
  ethnic communities.
• NO. Most nationalist conflicts occur between a
  minority group (or PART OF A MINORITY group, and
  a state (and its forces).

A Russian tank in Chechnya.
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Modes of nationalist conflict

• Conventional politics
• Nonviolent protest and direct action
• Rebellion
• 70 ethnic groups have waged armed conflicts for
  autonomy or independence since the 1950s (not
  including liberation movements of former European
  colonies)

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Note the most common form of nationalist
conflict is NOT violence

• Of 161 groups pursuing self-determination in
  1998-2000, only about 41 (a quarter) used
  violence. The rest used conventional politics and
  nonviolent protest.

Kurdish-rights activist Osman Baydemir on the
campaign trial in Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 2004.
Photo NF Watts
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Resolving nationalist conflict

• State acknowledgement of collective rights and
  provision of institutional means for pursuing
  interests
• Federalism (Hechter)
• independence
• Only 5 new states emerged from ethnic conflict in
  the last 40 years (East Timor, Slovenia, Croatia,
  Eritrea, Bangladesh)

Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.