Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World

Walker Connor and the Study of Nationalism

Daniele Conversi, Daniele Conversi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134502981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World, world-renowned scholars employ various aspects of Connor's work to explicate the recent upsurge of nationalism on a global scale. In keeping with the growing awareness that the study of ethnonationalism requires an interdisciplinary approach, the contributors represent a number of academic disciplines, including anthropology, geography, history, linguistics, social psychology, sociology and world politics. The book discusses issues such as identity, ethnicity and nationalism, primordialism, social constructionism, ethnic conflict, separatism and federalism. It also features case studies on the Basque country, South Africa and Canada.

1 Conceptualizing nationalism

An introduction to Walker Connor’s work

Daniele Conversi

Vastly neglected until around twenty years ago, nationalism has become the pivotal theme in a number of scholarly, as well as popular, publications. In the wake of the Communist order’s dissolution, the number of published works on various aspects of nationalism has been steadily rising, turning into a sweeping tide and a fashionable industry. Walker Connor is one of the scholars of nationalism and ethnic conflict who has contributed most towards establishing a conceptual grounding for this emerging discipline. His pioneering work has tackled systematically the most relevant problems in the field, while identifying its primary fault lines and clarifying its key concepts. Connor’s prescience in forecasting current international developments is now widely acknowledged, making him one of the most quoted authors in the field over the past thirty years. In the 1970s and 1980s, when few dared to contemplate the underlying strength of nationalism and secession, he advanced some of the most challenging arguments in this direction. When fewer than a handful of savants indulged in writing on the resilience of ethnic roots, Connor was producing a set of seminal essays. Indicative of the continuing relevance of Connor’s contribution is the considerable output of new thinking on the subject that has recently emerged.

This volume brings together a number of specialists who are investigating this area in new ways, adding to the debate pioneered by Connor. Here, a group of the most prominent American and European scholars of nationalism join together to offer a new perspective on themes and issues that have been focal points in Connor’s approach and which remain critical to our understanding of nationalism. The contributions reflect approaches drawn from a wide range of disciplines. Before briefly introducing each chapter, we shall first highlight Connor’s contribution to the socio-political literature by describing some of the key themes he has addressed.

Key concepts in the study of nationalism

Walker Connor was one of the first scholars to address systematically the lack of an appropriate terminology in the study of nationalism, particularly in political science.¹ This was a crucial issue, given also that nationalists themselves thrive on such ambiguities.² The need for a clear and unequivocal definition of key concepts in the field has been essential. The opening chapter of this volume offers one of Connor’s most significant achievements in conceptual clarification.

Political philosophers have pointed to the existence of ‘essentially contested concepts’.³ In the philosophers’ view, such an ‘essentially contested’ character has more to do with the neutrality of these concepts, than with their clarity. Clarity, however, encompasses neutrality: those rare concepts whose definition is universally and univocally accepted are less prone to be misused and tied to the ideological convenience of each scholar and practitioner.

The term preferred by Connor, and since then incorporated in most of the nationalism literature, is ‘ethnonationalism’. This denotes both the loyalty to a nation deprived of its own state and the loyalty to an ethnic group embodied in a specific state, particularly where the latter is conceived as a ‘nation-state’. In other words, ethnonationalism is conceived in a very broad sense and may be used inter-changeably with nationalism. For instance, Connor subsumes within the same spectrum anti-EC feelings in Denmark, Britain or Norway (Connor 1994a: 168, 1994b), as well as anti-immigrant feelings such as emerged, say, in Switzerland in the 1970s (Connor 1994a: 35, 154 and 177) and, generally, racism and xenophobia. As nationalism refers simultaneously to state and non-state nationalisms, the distinction between the two forms of nationalism is blurred: the emotional attachment to lineage, ancestry and continuity is shared by both those who have power and those who are deprived of it.

However, since such a broad usage of the term lends itself to criticism, further clarification is needed. What all the phenomena described above have in common is a deep emotional thrust and, most importantly, the effect of privileging co-ethnics versus outsiders. This involves a strict form of favoritism or, in van den Berghe’s (1987) words, ethnic ‘nepotism’. Such favoritism (and accompanying exclusionary practices) derive from the irrational belief that, descending from common ancestors, we all are related and form part of the same ‘extended family’. Both Horowitz and Smith have explored this powerful link in depth, and both their contributions to this volume highlight this dimension by relating it to Connor’s approach. Ethnicity, then, remains the most central and powerful element in the development of nationalism. But what is ‘ethnicity’?

Ethnicity normally refers to a belief in putative descent: that is, a belief in something which may or may not be real. It is a perception of commonality and belonging supported by a myth of common ancestry. Therefore, it does not necessarily suggest tangible elements of culture. It is somehow immaterial. Connor (1993) has stressed the subjective and psychological quality of this perception, rather than its objective ‘substance’. More generally, ‘identity does not draw its sustenance from facts but from perceptions, perceptions are as important or more than reality when it comes to ethnic issues’ (Connor 1997: 33). The term ethnicity is a relatively recent acquisition in the English language. According to Glazer and Moynihan, its first sociological use dates back to David Riesman’s work in 1953.⁴

In line with coeval mainstream politicians, modernization theorists tended to confusingly substitute the word nation for the very different concept of state. For example, at least up to the 1970s, the concept of nation-building was meant to define a top-down élites-led project of ‘national’ construction almost totally detached from any pre-existing popular feeling or socio-anthropological reality. Connor stripped such an undue appropriation of its ambiguous meaning (1972, 1978), revealing that the term provided an ideological disguise for state-building – often in its most authoritarian form. Any process of nation-building insensitive to ethnic nuances and local subjectivities implies a parallel process of nation-destroying among minority groups.

The tendency to conflate nation and state also led to a confusion between (1) ethnic (national) consciousness/loyalty and (2) civic (state) consciousness/loyalty. For a long time, political scientists avoided the use of the word ‘nationalism’ in reference to either separatist or autonomist movements developing outside, or against, the existing state. The nationalism of stateless nations was therefore labelled in several ways, for instance, sub-nationalism, micro-nationalism, ethnic nationalism, ethnism, ethnicism, ethno-regionalism, parochialism, regionalism, or linguistic nativism.⁵ By contrast, state nationalism was treated as a given, whereas daily practices of ‘banal nationalism’ were blatantly ignored (Billig 1995). Most often, state nationalism was assumed to be intrinsically ‘civic’ (Brown 2000), especially when opposed to the nationalism of stateless nations, which was seen as quintessentially ‘ethnic’, hence ‘primordial’.⁶ Connor has very effectively revealed and denounced this blunder. All the chapters in this volume share an awareness of this terminological conundrum.

Connor (1994a: 42) defines the nation as a self-differentiating ethnic group.⁷ Two main consequences stem from this definition. First, it postulates a continuity between the ethnic and the national dimensions. Second, the emphasis on self-awareness implies a stress on perception and, hence, on the psychological realm. Given this subjectivity, the nation is a self-defining category, that is, it is often not definable externally.⁸ In other words, it is the subjective experience of self-awareness that brings the nation into being. And given the connection between ethnicity and nationalism, it also follows that the most quintessentially modernist construction, the true nation-state, is au fond an ethnic state.⁹

As stressed by Smith in this volume (Chapter 3), most forms of nationalism have been, and are, ethnic. Connor goes further, maintaining that all nationalism is ethnically predicated, and those who employ the term nationalism to refer to a civic identity or civic loyalty are confusing patriotism with nationalism. Ethnos and nation are equivalents: the former derived from ancient Greek, the latter from Latin. It follows that the term ethnonationalism is largely tautological, since ethnicity permeates nationalism anyway.¹⁰

Is hence the nation the modern garb through which previously existing ethnies ‘modernized’ themselves into a world of nation-states?¹¹ If this is the case, we can then subsume within nationalism all possible trends aimed at the survival and self-preservation of an ethnic group. However, as Connor has pointed out, it is impossible to define nationalism in terms of its own goals, in part because the latter are often shifting. If we do that, we end up with endless and imprecise definitions of nationalism.

Challenging the dogma of economism

During much of the Cold War, econo-centric theories permeated socio-political accounts of past and present events. Conflicts were customarily explained as a consequence of backwardness, economic crisis, uneven development or relative deprivation. The prescriptive coda was hence that conflicts could be cured by addressing economic grievances. In the apogee of welfare state politics, economic development became the panacea. This was obviously the flip side of the Marxist dogma reigning in the Eastern bloc. In a classical twist of the human psyche, alleged arch-enemies (liberals and Marxists) ended up resembling each other in their diagnoses and prescriptions. But their titanic clash transformed all other struggles into irrelevant distractions or epiphenomenal appendages.

The powerful direct or indirect influence of Marxism in the social sciences until the 1980s can account for much of the intellectual débâcle. In the 1970s, Connor began what would eventually become an eight-year research undertaking into the relationship between Marxist-Leninism and nationalism. The result was the seminal The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Connor 1984a). As a student of comparative nationalism, Connor felt compelled to undertake this project because, as he stated in the book’s Introduction, ‘The experiences of sixteen states, most of them ethnonationally heterogeneous and accounting in toto for approximately one-third of the world’s population, are simply too significant to be ignored, particularly when these states claim to have the formula for harnessing and dissolving nationalism.’ The formula was called ‘Leninist National Policy’ and, as analyzed by Connor (1984a: 38), consisted of three injunctions:

(1) Prior to the assumption of power, promise to all national groups the right of self-determination (expressly including the right of secession) while proffering national equality to those who wish to remain within the state.

(2) Following the assumption of power, terminate the fact – though not necessarily the fiction – of a right to secession, and begin the lengthy process of assimilation via the dialectical route of territorial autonomy for all compact national groups.

(3) Keep the Party free of all nationalist proclivities.

Connor documented that the Leninists’ first injunction paid handsome dividends. This stratagem was a key element in the assumption and consolidation of power by Lenin, an essential element in the rise to power of Mao-Zedong, and probably the single most important factor in the success of Ho Chi Minh and Tito. By contrast, Connor documented the failure of injunctions 2 and 3. Rather than dissipating within Marxist-Leninist societies, nationalism was growing at both the mass level and within the confines of the parties.¹² It would be difficult to exaggerate the gap between Connor’s analysis and the prevalent opinion at the time. At least until the late 1980s, the overwhelming number of scholars, as well as Western governments and their intellige...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Conceptualizing nationalism An introduction to Walker Connor's work
• 2 Nationalism and political illegitimacy*
• Part I Modernity and emotions
• Part II Case studies
• Part III Applied Connorian perspectives
• Part IV Wider implications
• Index