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Nationalism and Modernism
Prof Anthony D Smith, Anthony Smith
- 288 Seiten
- English
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Nationalism and Modernism
Prof Anthony D Smith, Anthony Smith
Ăber dieses Buch
The first major study in over three decades to explore the essential arguments of all the major theoretical interpretations of nationalism, from the modernist approaches of Gellner, Nairn, Breuilly, Giddens and Hobsbawm to the alternative paradigms of van den Bergh and Geertz, Armstrong and Smith himself.
In a style accessible to the student and the general reader Smith traces the changing view of this hotly discussed topic within the current political, cultural and socioeconomic arena. He also analyses the contributions of such historians, sociologists and political scientists as Seton-Watson, Reynolds, Hastings, Horowitz and Brass. The survey concludes with an analysis of post-modern approaches to national identity, gender and nation, making it indispensable reading to all those interested in gaining full and authoritative knowledge of nationalism.
HĂ€ufig gestellte Fragen
Information
1 The rise of classical modernism
The roots of classical modernism
Early forerunners
Intellectual foundations
- 1 It is important to stress at the outset that none of these traditions were concerned more than peripherally with the analysis of nations or nationalism. In the case of the Marxist tradition, this might be ascribed to the early period in which the founding fathers wrote; though in the world of 1848, nationalism was already a powerful, if limited, force in Europe. This lack of concern must rather be attributed to the conscious decision on the part of both the founders and their followers, in reacting against German idealism, to relegate environmental and cultural influences to the background, and concentrate on the explication of the role of economic and class factors in the evolution of humanity. This in turn meant that, in relation to the explanatory role attributed to class conflict and to the contradictions in the mode of production in the successive stages of historical development, ethnic and national principles and phenomena had to be accorded a secondary or even derivative role, becoming at most catalysts or contributory (or complicating) rather than major causal factors. There was also a crucial ethical consideration. Given the inbuilt propensity of human evolution to self-transendence through stages of political revolution, and given the fundamental role of class conflict in generating revolution, there was no place for any other factor, especially one that might impede or divert from the âmovement of historyâ, except insofar as it might contribute to hastening that movement in specific instances. It was in these circumstances that Marxists identified particular nationalist movements in strategic terms, judging their âprogressiveâ or âregressiveâ character in relation to a given revolutionary situation. It was from this perspective that Marx and Engels passed favourable judgments on Polish and Irish nationalism, as they were likely to weaken Tsarist feudal absolutism and British capitalism respectively and hasten the next stage of historical evolution; whereas nationalist movements among the âbackwardâ small nations of the western and southern Slavs could only evoke their contempt or disapproval, as they were judged likely to divert the bourgeoisie or proletariat from their historic task in the evolution of Europe (Cummins 1980; Connor 1984).
Neither Marx nor Engels, Lenin nor Stalin, Luxemburg nor Kautsky, endeavoured to present a theory or model of nations and nationalism per se, not only because these phenomena were viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility, even by those who conceded their political significance, but because the âscienceâ with which they were concerned was intimately linked to a specific worldview and political strategy that sought to reduce all phenomena, at the explanatory level at least, to their economic basis, deriving cultural and political identities and movements from the class alignments thrown up by a specific stage in the development of the mode of production. It was in this context that the âformalismâ associated with Marxist analysis became prominent: the idea that nations provided the forms and vessels, while class formations and their ideologies provided the content and ends to which the next stage of history aspired. This type of reductive reasoning has left a strong imprint on some latterday approaches to the study of nationalism, even where the theorists no longer accept the worldview and strategy in which it was embedded, and even when they eschew the cruder forms of economic reductionism and ideological formalism found in some of Marxâs followers.6
Equally important for the legacy of the early Marxist tradition has been its historical and global emphasis, and its Eurocentric bias. For Marx, Engels, Lenin and their followers, nations and nationalism were intrinsic to the development of the modern capitalist era. They were to be understood as manifestations both of European capitalismâs need for ever larger territorial markets and trading blocs, and of the growing distance between the modern capitalist state and bourgeois civil society and the levelling of all intermediate bodies between state and citizen characteristic of advanced absolutism. Of course, these themes were not confined to Marxists, and they remained relatively undeveloped in the early Marxist corpus. But it is fair to say that with the rediscovery of the early Marxâs writings and their debt to Hegel and the Left Hegelians, they assumed a new importance at the very moment when a significant number of scholars were increasingly turning their attention to the theory of nationalism. Similarly, the current interest in the concept of âglobalisationâ which can in part be traced to Marxist concerns with the development of late capitalism, has been increasingly linked to the role of nation-states and nationalism in advanced industrial society and as such reasserts the Western and modernist bias characteristic of the Marxist tradition (Davis 1967; Avineri 1968; Nairn 1977). - 2 The influence of the second tradition of crowd psychology and Freudâs later social psychological work has been more pervasive but also more limited. It would be difficult to point to particular theorists of national identity and nationalism who have made explicit use of the crowd psychology of Le Bon or the herd instinct of Trotter, or even of the analyses of Simmel, Mead, Adorno and the later theories of Freudâdespite the work of Leonard Doob or Morton Grodzins. On the other hand, many of their insights have permeated the thinking of recent scholars of nationalism. Perhaps the most obvious case is that of Kedourieâs portrait of the social psychology of restless, alienated youth resentful of parental traditions and the humiliations of authority. But we can also discern the influence of an earlier crowd psychology in some of the functionalist analyses of mass-mobilising nationalism as a âpolitical religionâ in the work of David Apter, Lucian Pye and Leonard Binder, and of crowd behaviour in social movements in the work of Neil Smelser. There is also a measure of influence exerted by the later Freud, as well as Mead and Simmel, in recent theories that emphasise the role of significant Others in the formation of national identities and the oppositional framework of inclusion and exclusion in nationalism.7
What these approaches have in common is a belief in the dislocating nature of modernity, its disorientation of the individual and its capacity for disrupting the stability of traditional sources of support. It is in these respects that the influence of certain kinds of earlier social psychology contributed to the overall picture of nations and nationalism presented by classical modernism. More generally, social psychological assumptions drawn from a variety of sources can be found in the most unexpected placesâamong social anthropologists and sociologists as well as historians and political scientistsâbut these are not confined to those who adhere to the modernist framework (see Brown 1994). - 3 The third major influence derives from the work of Max Weber. Strongly imbued with the prevailing tide of German nationalism, Weber never managed to produce the study of the rise of the nation-state which he intended to write; yet his writings contain a number of themes that were to become central both to classical modernism and its subsequent development. These included the importance of politic...
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The modernist paradigm
- 1 The rise of classical modernism
- Part I Varieties of modernism
- Part II Critics and alternatives
- Conclusion: problems, paradigms and prospects
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index