DEBATE ON THEORIES OF NATIONALISM

The word ‘nation’ stems from the Latin verb nasci, ‘to be born’. It

originally meant a group of people who were born in the same area.

It was later employed in reference to students coming from the same

region or country in the medieval universities, guilds of merchants,

corporations etc. Gradually, the ‘nation’ acquired a new meaning

that begun to be used to define the social elite representing any

political or spiritual authority in the medieval order. The present

meaning of the nation began to clarify in the wake of the

democratization process that took place in England in the sixteenth

century, where (and when) the word ‘nation’ was regarded synonymous

with ‘people’. This transformation also granted an elevated

position- especially in political realm- as new bearers of

sovereignty. “For Liah Greenfeld, the location of sovereignty within

the people and the recognition of the fundamental equality among its

various strata, which constitute the essence of the modern national

idea, are at the same time the basic tenets of democracy. Democracy

was born with the sense of nationality.”1 This equation of the sense

of nationality with democracy required equal attention to the state

too. Before the democratisation process took place, sovereignty

became embodied in a state which had acquired a centralised

apparatus, and mostly an authoritarian one. With the French

Revolution of 1789, a new step was accomplished in this direction.

Because, as Walker Connor emphasises, the revolutionary doctrine

made the people and the state almost synonymous by identifying the

people as the font of all political power, L’Etat c’est moi became L’Etat

c’est le peuple. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the1 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p.2

Citizen would proclaim that the source of all sovereignty would

belong to the ‘people’, to the ‘nation’. “While the people’s

sovereignty was embodied in the state, simultaneously the state

bureaucracy attempted to homogenise the population comprised within

its borders and to foster the people’s national allegiance.”2 As a

result, the ‘nation’ eventually revelaled the relation between the

state and its subjects- hence the key formula of the ‘nation-state’.

However, beyond this equation, the theories of –in fact the

approaches to- nationalism reflect that, now the sense of

belongingness to the nation-state does not coincide with

nationalism. While on the one hand, state’s attempts at uniformising

peoples create its counterparts of reactive, derivative

nationalisms; on the other hand, nationalism is simply not of the

same kind as what Connor calls ‘state loyalty’. Similarly, relating

nationalism with state creation, Michael Hechter has proposed a

theory of nationalism based on the stages of state-formation.

According to Hechter, nationalism consists of political activities

that aim to maket he boundaries of the nation- a culturall

distinctive collectivity aspiring to self-governance- coterminous

with those of the state. Therefore, nationalism is a by-product of

the modern state. Pre-modern states ignored it because they were

mainly in the form of empires whose governance units had frontiers

including culturally distant groups. On the contrary, nationalism

emerged when technical developments (in terms of communications,

mainly) made direct rule possible. Hechter calls the first variety

of nationalism that then crystallised ‘state-building nationalism’

because it is reflected in efforts at cultural homogenization. The

other types of nationalism are reactions to direct rule: peripheral2 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 3

nationalism, sustained by resisting ‘state nationalism’ according to

him is the most prevalent one, and then comes ‘irridentist

nationalism’.

By the same token, the sense of being a part of a nation state

and nationalism are different things. While the sense of being part

of a nation state resulting from regularised interactions with

fellow citizens is an essential and entrehched sentiment of

belonging, nationalism is an explicitly articulated devotion to the

nation. Such a devotion may stem first from the democratisation

process; in that case, people allegiance themselves to the nation as

a tool of emancipation, which frees the individual from alienating

hierarchies, political as well as social. Hence this process has

much to do with the rise of individualism, a value system which

emerged in England first and then in France where it wore a specific

form of nationalism. Thus French nationalism is regarded as typical

of the universalistic branch of nationalism; a liberal or civic

kind. Because of the dichotomy created by the individualist nature

and communal essence of nationalism, one of the loci classici of the

study of nationalism has been the contrast between this

universalistic/ liberal/civic brand of nationalism and its their

ethnic or even illiberal opposites. Sometimes this dychotomised

picture was analysed by referring to geographical ingredients by

arguing that while universalistic, civic, liberal nationalisms were

typical of the West, ethnic, illiberal and particularistic

nationalisms belonged to the East. In the same manner, while the

former types of nationalism were regarded as emancipatory and open,

the latter ones were regarded as close, coercive, anti-

individualist. This dichotomy was exacerbated by the absence of

coherent set of beliefs and values, but rather a consciousness

manifested by members of a group that they belong to a particula

nation created a difficulty of disentangling the three key concepts;

nation, nationalism and ethnicity, which, in turn has been the main

cause of lacking a general theory of nationalism. “Too many

comparative or even theoretical boks insist on dealing with nation

and nationalism simultaneously. However, to construct a theory of

the nation and to evolve one of nationalism are not the same thing.

Nations have an institutional dimension that is state-oriented hence

the Notion of ‘nation state’- whereas nationalism is an ideology

(an ‘ism’) which often claims the control of a nation and/or

promotes one’s own identity against Others’. Its foundations,

therefore, are rooted in identity politics.” 3 The problem did not

end here. Because nation-state was treated as an alternative to the

idiocy of rural life and precapitalist parochialism, hence as a

progressive stage in the historical evolution of human societies

both by the liberals and the marxists, existence of nations was

taken for granted without a concrete inclination to genrate a theory

of nationalism of its own which would make a comprehensible and

analytical categorization of the existing nations and nationalism. “

Sociobiological observations indicate that no nation can ever be

thorougly uniform or stable as if it were made out of inanimate and

designed by engineers. The historical evidence clearly confirms the

changing, shifting character of nations, both over time and from one

nation to another. There can, thus, be no such thing as the

‘classic’ form of the nation. As a consequence, analytical problems

3 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 11

arise in the determination of the categorial specificity of

nationality.” 4

Nationalism, as an ideology and a social movement, has been very

much in evidence since the end of 18th century. Yet, it did not

become a subject of academic investigation until well into the first

half of 20th century. Until the Second World War, studies on

explaining the emergence of nations was monopolised by historians

who were bent on tracing its characteristics by means of narrative

and comparison or through purely descriptive typologies. “Up to the

First World War, interest in nationalism was largerly ethical and

philosophical. The scholars of this period, predominantly historians

and social philosophers, were more concerned with the merits and

defects of the doctrine than with the origins and spread of national

phenomena.” 5 From the 1950s, studies began to involve political

sociology, especially of statistical explanations, too, in the

United States and Europe. In fact, political science first addressed

the issue of nation-building, instead of that of nationalism, but

both things were immediately bracketed together, causing enduring

confusion. Yet, social scientists were at least clearer in timing of

the nations compared to historians. “Historians may differ over the

exact moment of nationalism’s birth, but social scientists are

celar: nationalism is a modern movement and ideology, which emerged

in the latter half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe and

America, and which, after its apogee in two worlds, is now beginning

to decline and give way to globel forces which transcend the

4 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, p. 2

5 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 12

boundaries of nation-states.” 6 The next stage of the study of

nationalism, which can be broadly dated from the end of the Second

World War, was heavily influenced by the process of decolonization

and the establishment of new states in the Third World. “The 1960s

saw the burgeoning of interdisciplinary interest in national

phenomena, a sudden increase in the number of studies which treated

nationalism as a subject in itself and, partly as a result of this,

a diversification of theoretical perspectives. It was in this

context that the pioneering works of the modernist approach, namely

Kedourie’s ‘Nationalism’ and Ernest Gellner’s ‘Thought and Change’

were published.”7 From the 1960s onwards, the debate was no longer

confined to historians. With the participation of sociologists and

political scientists, the theoretical literature on nationalism

became much more diversified despite “in the mid-twentieth century,

right up until the late 1960s and early 1970s, an optimistic and

realist view of nations and nationalism prevailed. Whatever their

other differences, scholars and theorists of nationalism seemed to

agree on the psychological power and sociological reality of nations

and nation-states. They spoke of the need to build nations through

such techniques as communications, urbanisation, mass education and

political participation, in much the same way as one might speak of

building machines or edifices through the application of design and

technical devices to matter.” 8 Together, they have challanged

earlier organic and essentialist assumptions of the nation, and have

6 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 1

7 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 52

8 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Naions and Nationalism, pp.2-3.

refined and extended the basic paradigm of modernism beyond its

classical formulation in the nation-building model of the 1960s.

1970s have witnessed a new wave of interest in nationalism. The

input of neo-Marxist scholars who emphasized the role of economic

factors in their accounts was particularly important in that

context. Significant contributions of the period include Michael

Hechter’s ‘Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British

National Development’ and Tom Nairn’s ‘The Break-up of Britain’

among many others. While modernist explanations became the dominant

orthodoxy in the field well until the early 1980s, the debate gained

a new twist in 1980s. What differentiated the works on nationalism

in 1980s from their predecessors was that some of the studies

produced in this period tried to transcend the classical debate,

which is believed to have ignored groups such as blacks, women and

which has been polarized around certain issues such as the modernity

of nations, and failed to address many problems of the analysis of

which might greatly enhance our understanding of nationalism, by

questionning the basic tenets upon which it is based and by adding

new dimensions to the analysis of the national phenomena. Lastly,

the interaction between the studies of nationalism and research

conducted in other fields, like diasporas, multiculturalism,

identity, migration, citizenship, racism, increased. To this were

added the insights gained from alternative epistemological

approaches like feminism or postmodernism. The Works of John

Armstrong and Anthony Smith laid the ground for ethno-symbolist

critique of modernist theories. Ironically, the great classics of

the modernist approach were also published in this period. Ernest

Gellner’s ‘Nations and Nationalism’, Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined

Communities’ and Eric Hobsbawm ‘s ‘The Invention of Tradition’ were

produced in this period. With these srudies, the debate on

nationalism reached its most mature stage.

The origins of the nationalist doctrine are generally traced back

to German Romantic thought. It was German romantics who first

developed the organiz theory of nationalism and provided an overall

accounts of nation and nationalism. “Organic nationalism holds that

the world consists of natural nations, and has always done so; that

the nations are the bedrock of history and the chief actors in the

historical drama; that nations and their characteristics are

organisms that can easily be ascertained by their cultural

differentiae; that the members of nations may, and frequently have,

lost their national self-consciousness along with their

independence; and that the duty of nationalists is to restore that

self-consciousness and independence to the reawakened organic

nation.” 9 Organic accounts of nationalism introduced the concepts

of biology and the primordiality to the study on nationalism. Yet,

the thinkers of this period were also influenced by their

predecessors. Among these, the epistemological dualism of Immanuel

Kant is very important. At the heart of this dualism, there lies a

seperation between the external, that is the phenomenal, world and a

man’s inner world. For Kant, the source of knowledge was the

phenomenal world, but the source of freedom, morality and virtue was

not phenomenal world. Morality, then, had to be seperated from

knowledge, hence the phenomenal world: instead, it should be the

outcome of obedience to a universal law which is to be found within

ourselves. Because freedom was possible when men obey the laws of9 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Naions and Nationalism, p. 146

morality, not in the external world, “this was, according to

Kedourie, a revolutionary definition of freedom. Kant equated virtue

by free will. On the other hand, neither freedom nor virtue depended

on God’s commands. Hence the new formula: the good will, which is

the free will, is also autonomous will.”10 This was revolutionary

in the sense that it made individual the center and the sovereign of

the universe, and self-determination the supreme good. Smith argues that

this makes republicanism the sole possible form of government, for

only in a republican government can the laws express the autonomous

will of the citizens. However, Kant’s disciple Johann Gottlieb

Fichte opposed to Kant’s idea that external world is beyond our

sensations and that things-in-themselves- exist prior to –and

independent of- the perceiving self. Fichte argued that they were

both the product of a universal consciousness and an Ego which

embraces everything within itself as a coherent whole. This

approach, for Fichte, eliminated Kant’s inexplicable contingencies

and made the external world- and hence knowledge which emanated from

it-comprehensible. “A world takes on reality and coherence because

it is the product of a single consciousness, and its parts can exist

at all and share in reality only by taking their place within this

world.” 11 This view was particularly related to politics because it

implied that the whole is prior to, and more important than, all its

parts. This was, in turn, the origin of the famous ‘organic theory

of the state’. Similar to Fichte, Johann Gottfried Herder is an

important historian who holds the idea of ‘organic theory’. He

equates human being with language. For him, each language is a

different way of both expressing universal values, and manifesting10 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p.16

11 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p.17

unique values and ideas. By the same token, customs, traditions,

ceremonies and the like each of which can be considered as sorts of

language. He, consequently define community as the sum total of

these modes of expression. He argues that, plus thia sum total of

these modes of expression, it also has a unity of its own.

Advocating that understanding a society is equal to learning a

language, Herder encounter the ‘organicist’ thought. Besides the

idea of ‘organic theory’, historicist arguments were carried to the

political arena with the help of other ideas. Breuilly suggests that

one of the most important of them is the idea of ‘authenticity.’

This idea is a kind of a search for ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ in a

particular community. Drawing on this idea, Herder rejects the

conquest of one society by another by arguing that societies are

created by nature and nothing is more unnatural than the disruption

of the development of a particular society. The political

implication of this the configuration of national communities as

unique and sui generis formations, and even if they enter into

periods of recess, they will not recover and reclaim their

‘authentic’ selves. These national communities had the right of

self-determination thus establish own state. It was by this fatal

equation of language, state, and nation, that the German version of

nationalism was formulated.

In fact, the principle of self-determintion, that is the idea

that a group of people have a certain set of shared interests and

should be allowed to express their wishes on how these interests

should best be promoted, mostly associated with the French political

thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose ideas played a crucial role in

shaping the German Romantic thought. Rousseau believed that, the for

the natural men, who live in a natural –stateless and chaotic-

order, which he described as ‘state of nature’ the biggest danger

was the possible tyranny of will by his fellowmen; because, natural

men lived for themselves, whereas men as citizens depended on the

community of which they are a part. To guard against this danger,

men needed to change their selfish will with the general will, but

this could only be achieved if they cease to be natural men and

become citizens instead. “By becoming a citizen, man exchanges

independence for dependence and autarky for participation and the

best social institutions are those which make individuals most

intensely conscious of their mutual interdependence.”12

Additionally, he separated patriotism from citizenship by defining

patriotism as an instantaneous feeling whereas citizenship as a

result of rationality. He claimed that men do not unite simply

because they resemble each other. In this sense, cultural

similarities were not sufficient to become a nation: individuals

must see a point in sharing that culture. Rousseau believed that,

becoming citizens laso required some degree of political freedom, to

express their own will. This brings us to another, very important

source of influence on the development of the idea of nationalism,

that is, French Revolution of 1789. It was, in fact, within the

context of French Revolution that the concept of the nation was put

into practice in political and legal terms, for the revolution was

based on the idea of sovereignty of the people, the nation, as sole

legitimate source of political power. Here the concept ‘nation’

expressed the idea of a shared, common, equal citizenship, the unity

of the people Hence the three mottos of French Revolution- liberty,

12 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 20

equality, fraternity- asserted that all members of the nation were

citizens and thus equal before law.

Transformation of these various ideas into a fully-fledged

ideology of nationalism took some time, since even in nineteenth

century, the scholarly interest in nationalism was still somewhat

ethical. Yet at the same time, there occured two branches on the

study of nationalism, making the hitorians more diversified in this

realm. Exponents of the partisan approach were sympathetic to

nationalism and used their works to justify or enhance particular

nationalisms. On the other hand were, Contra partisans, namely

criticals, who have been sceptical of nationalism and have seen it

as temporary stage in the historical evolution of human societies.

Historians such as Renan, Michelet and von Heinrich von Treitschke

continued their influences by taking place in partisan camp. Whereas

the German historian Treitschke’s patriotic nationalism was a kind

of militarism and anti-semitism, since he argued that unity of state

should be based on nationality which was not a purely legal bond,

but should be complemented by blood-relationship-either real or

imagined, and that state was the supreme power: it was state which

formulates the laws and these are binding over all individuals that

make up its population, and because state exerted its power through

war was the main political purpose of both state and nation, Jules

Michelet regarded nation as the only guarantee of individual freedom

by reference to the three mottos of The Revolution of 1789 which had

signalled an era of fraternity, and in this new era there were

neither poor nor rich, nobles nor plebians. The partisan camp did

not consist of historians alone. As a liberal nationalist, The

famous English political theorist John Stuart Mill merged the

concept of republican citizenship with the principle of nationality,

by defining it as a group of people who are united among themselves

by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others

and which make them cooperate with each other more willingly than

with other people, desire to be under the same government, and

desire that it should be government by themselves. Mill argued that,

if and where there exists the sentiment of nationality, there also

exists reason for uniting all the members of the nationality under

the same government. For him, free institutions were almost

impossible in a country made up of different nationalities, thus the

boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of

nationalities. Gellner’s Notion of ‘political and national units

should be congruent’ would be effected from Mill’s republican

citizenship.

Suggesting that individual freedom was better maintained in a

multinational state., the English historian and philosopher Lord

Acton was the leader of critical camp. Accordingly, to insist on

national unity was to lead to revolution and despotism, and

satisfaction of different races was more likely to be possible in

multinational empires compared to national state. This was mainly

because the liberitarian theory of nationality regarded the nation

as the bulwark of self-government, and the foremost limit to the

excessive power of the state. The Marxists were one of the most

important group within the critical camp, which will be analysed in

detail.

In the twentieth century, just after the First World War, there

was an inclination from the abovementioned still-ethnical analyses

and historic accounts of nationalism to a more political and

sociological definitions of nationalism. Altough there were

historians like Carleton Hayes, Hans Kohn, Alfred Cobban, E. H. Carr

and Lous Synder who still were taking the nation for granted, that

is as a given, they, especially Hayes and Kohn, made important

insights to the succeeding generations of the study on nationalism.

Between 1918 and 1945, “We encounter two kinds of studies. First,

there were the histories of particular nationalisms. As Breuilly

observes, these stories tend to become absorbed into their subject:

the very restriction to a national framework implies agreement with

the nationalist argument that there is a nation. …Secondly, there

were the typologies. Most scholars of the period tried to construct

classificatory schemes to order the varieties of nationalism into

recurring types.” 13. This somewhat reflected the urge to avoid the

problem of definition and the difficulty of formulating a theory of

nation. Smith considers Hayes to be the first scholar to adopt a

more neutral stance towards nationalism. For him, until the

eighteenth century, individuals had been patriotic about their

locality, city, ruler or empire, but not about their nationality.

The idea that nationalities are basic units of human society and the

most natural agencies for undertaking needful reforms and for

promoting human progress’ began to gain ground in Europe only in the

eighteenth century. According to Hayes, modern nationalism

manifested itself in six different forms: Humanitarian Nationalism,

which was the earliest form of nationalism and influenced by the

spirit of Enlightement and whose doctrines were based on natural

law; Jacobin Nationalism which was based on the humanitarian democratic

nationalism of Rousseau, and was developed by revolutionary leaders

for the purpose of safeguarding and extending the principles of13 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 37

French Revolution; Traditional Nationalism of Edmund Burke which supported

the idea that nationality and the state had just evolved and that it

was not necessary to discuss their origins; Liberal Nationalism of Jeremy

Bentham who supported that nationality was the basis for state and

government and that each nationality should be a political unit

under an independent constitutional government which would put an

end to despotism, aristocracy and assure to every citizen the

broadest practible exercise of personel liberty; Integral Nationalism

which, by refusing cooperation with other nations, put the national

interests above those of the individual, while on the other hand

pursuing an illiberal and tyrannical way in internal affairs; and

Economic Nationalism which regarded struggle for markets and raw

materials as an integral part of nationalism. Hans Kohn proposed a

rather useful typology which would be benefited by scholars of both

modernist and thno-smbolist branches of nationalism. “Hans Kohn had

made an important distinction between a ‘voluntarist’ type of

nationalism which regarded the nation as a free association of

rational human beings entered into voluntarily on an individual

basis, and an ‘organic type, which viewed the nation as an organism

of fixed and indelible character which was stamped on its members at

birth and from which they could never free themselves.”14 He argued

that nationalism was the fruit of a long historical process,

originated in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries in

Northwestern Europe and its American settlements. Hence he

distinguished between two types of nationalism; namely, the Western

and Eastern nationalisms, in terms of their origins and main

characteristics. Accordingly, in the West, nationalism was the

14 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: : A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism , p. 146

product of social and political factors, thus its birth out of the

spirit of the Enlightement was preceded by the formation of the

national state or coincided with it. Hence it was connected

inherently with the concepts of individual liberty and rational

cosmopolitanism, which made it pluralistic, optimistic and

rationalist. It was benefited by the middle class for their rising

political aspirations. On the other hand, in Asia and Eastern

Europe, nationalism arose later and at a more backward stage of

political and social development. In conflict with the existing

state pattern, it found its first expression in the cultural field

and sought for its justification in the natural fact of a community

held together by traditional ties of kinship and status. Reflecting

the aspirations of the lower aristocracy and the masses Nationalism

in the non-Western world rejected the spirit of the Enlightement:

instead, because it meant collective power and national unity,

independence from foreign domination or (rather than liberty at

home) or the necessity for expansion by the superior nation, the

uniformity of the authoritarian state was glorified. The dependence

on the West, coupled with social backwardness, produced a much more

authoritarian, emotional and regressive nationalism.

Typology developed for Synder’s who opted for a chronological

classification of nationalisms as the period of integrative

nationalism (1815-71) which witnessed unifications of Germany and

Italy, the period of disruptive nationalism (1871-90) which

witnessed enthusiasm created by the aforementioned unifications

within subject nationalities in other countries such as Ottoman

empire and Austria-Hungary, the period of aggressive nationalism

(1900-45) which witnessed identification of nationalism with

imperialism, and the period of contemporary nationalism (1945-)

which asserted itself partly in colonial revolts against European

imperialism. Synder’s theory was criticized in many senses and he

developed his theory in a regional or continental classification. He

regarded nationalisms in Europe as type of ‘Fissiparous

Nationalism’, Africa as type of ‘Black Nationalism’, The Middle East

as type of ‘Politico-religious Nationalism’, Asia as type of

‘Anticolonial Nationalism’, and Latin America as the type of

‘Populist Nationalism’. All these and succeeding typologies are of

importance and have been subjected to criticisms; however, post 1945

world order, diividing up of the world into two political camps and

the process of decelonization intensified the scholarly debate on

nationalism around three blocs; namely, primordialism, modernism,

and ethno-symbolism. “The experience of decolonization, that is the

dissolution of colonial empires and the establishment of new states

in Asia and Africa, coupled with general developments in social

studies, inaugurated the most intensive and prolific period of

research on nationalism.”15 The earliers studies of this period were

produced under the sway of the modernization school, and

contributions of modernization theorists were important in the sense

that they helped to shift the study of the causes and consequences

of nationalism away from its European setting on a broader, global

plane.

Intellectual foundations of the classical modernist paradigm were

uprooted at the turn of the twentieth century under the influence of

Marxist and dependence theories. Altough the Marxist debate and the

following debates such as instrumentalism paid more attention to

nationalism compared to the previous ‘nation-building approach’15 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 48

which focused mainly on the nation-state, they did not make much

room for ideas, because they still shared with theories of the

nation a strong emphasis on material processes. Indeed, they

stressed the role of elite conflicts and inter-elite competition for

capturing the state and/or economic resources in the crystallisation

of nationalism, which made them reductionist. Over-emphasizing the

class solidarities beyond borders, which prevented them from

acknowledging the resilience of nationalist identities, the theory

of nationalism represented a failure for Marxism. “In fact, the

Marxist authors, when they did not ignore this phenomenon, focused

on the impact of nationalism on international relations and

interpreted it in terms of the opposition between imperialism and

anti-imperialism. These two isms reflected the action of capitalist

classes or of native bourgeoisies pursuing their own economic

interests under cover of a basically instrumental national

ideology.”16 The nationalism has always created especially political

and theoretical difficulties for the Marxist school. Especially due

to the excessive explanatory role attributed to class conflict and

to the contradictions in the mode of production in the material

stages of historical progress, 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. “Is nationalism a form of false

consciousness which diverts the proletariat from the goal of

international revolution? Or should we see the struggle of the

proletariat with the bourgeoisie first as a national struggle? If

so, then how do such national class struggles relate to the

16 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 22

construction of international socialism?” 17 Besides these

theoretical problems, Marxists were also faced with political

exigencies. Communist parties had to change their positions vis-a-

vis nationalism for tactical and strategic reasons. Additionally,

Smith criticizes Marxist accounts of nationalism because of its

Eurocentric bias. Accordingly, For Marx, Engels, Lenin and their

followers, nations and the idea of nationalism were inherent to the

development of the modern capitalist era. They were to be understood

as manifestations both European capitalism’s 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.

For Marx and Engels, who were regarded as founding fathers of

Marxist approaches to nationalism, the modern nation was the direct

result of a process whereby capitalist mode of production superseded

feudalism: it was transition to a capitalist economy that forced the

existing social formations in Western Europe to become more

homogenous and politically centralized constructs. They thought that

a common language and traditions, or geographical or historical

homogeneity were not sufficient to constitute a nation. Rather, a

certain level of economic and social development was required, with

a priority given to larger units. However, the most sophisticated

account of nationalism within the Marxist tradition was that of Otto

Bauer. According to Bauer, nation was a community of character that

grows out of a community of destiny rather than from a mere

similarity of destiny. It followed that, each nation had a character

which, in turn, is defined as the totality of physical and mental17 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 25

characteristics that are peculiar to a nation. The nations were far

more contingent entities than nationalists’ communities of language

and shared culture. For him, the emergence of this community

depended on various modernizing processes, including the breakdown

of peasant farming for subsistence and the following uprooting of

the rural population by capitalism, the drawing of isolated rural

areas into regional economic relationship so that dialects could

become more homogenous. There was also a second stage in which a

cultural community that would bridge the gap between the linguistic

and national communities was created, paving the way for the

development of a high culture, and with it, a high language above

all spoken dialects. On the other hand, the most important factor in

the transition from a cultural community to a nation was

‘sentiment’, a sense of the community’s own shared destiny. Bauer

also tried to bridge the gap between national and class by arguing

that the national culture is shaped by the contribution of various

classes. Accordingly, because antagonistic relations were based on

class divisions, in a socialist society, conflicts among different

nationalities would end. In the same way, Once these class divisions

were removed, national distinctions would give rise to cooperation

and coexistence. In other words, as long as national identity is not

distorted by class divisions, the members of the nation would be

able to participate in the national experience in a more intense

manner.

In Marxist camp, approaches of Emile Durkheim, the founding

father of sociology, and of Max Weber are also of importance,

altough socialist theory had little to do with nationalism. Smith

argues that two aspects of Durkheim’s work have been influential on

contemporary theories of nationalism, more specificially the on

moderist paradigm. The first was his placing of religion as the core

of moral community and his subsequent belief that because all

societies feel the need to reaffirm and renew themselves

periodically through collective rites and ceremonies, there is

something eternal in religion. The second aspect was his analysis

was transition from a mechanical to an organic solidarity.

“Basically, Durkheim argued that traditions and the influence of the

conscie collective decline, along with impulsive forces, such as affinity

of blood, attachment to the same soil, ancestral worship and

community of habits. Their place is taken by the division of labour

and its complementarity of roles.”18 This aspect of his work was

particularly influential on some modernist theories of nationalism,

notably that of Ernest Gellner. Weber, on the other hand, was both a

cosmopolite and a dispassionate nationalist. For him, the nation was

in essence a political concept. He defined it as a community of

sentiment which would adequately manifest itself in a state of its

own. In other words, what distinguished nations from other

communities was the quest for statehood. It was this particular

conception of statehood that has inspired subsequent theorists of

nation-states to emphasize the political dimensions of nationalism

and especially the role of modern Western state.

Ernest Renan’s ideas on nationalism were especially important

since they constructed the basis for the twentieth century

nationalism. Rejecting the popular conceptions that defined nations

in terms of objective characteristics such as race, language or

religion, and regarding nation as a spiritual principle, he argued

that nations were not eternal entities with their beginnings and18 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 34

ends. Characteristics such as race, language, metarial interest,

religious affinities, geography and military necessity were not

among the components which constituted a nation. The actual

components were a common heroic past, great leaders, true glory, and

collective forgetting. The analyses of Renan and Bauer reflect the

growing importance of nationalism as a political ideology and

movement, and as a subject of academic investigation in its own

right. The political repercussions of the doctrine of nationalism

and the difficulties it gave birth to required more neutral

analyses.

Despite their relative comprehensive analyses of nationalism,

there was no attempt of late nineteenth and early twentieth century

scholars to fashion a coherent and systematic general theory

applicable to all cases. As briefly mentioned ebove, even the

Marxists could not rescue from being reductionist while generating

the stepping stones of the classical Marxist accounts of nationalism

based mainly on revolutionary uses as well as criticizing the other

approaches to nationalism. “In judging nationalisms by their

revoluionary uses, Marx and Engels had also been swayed by their

German Romantic and Hegelian inheritance, with its stres on the

importance of language and political history for creating nation-

states and their animus against small, history-less, as well as

backward, nations. Their followers took over this contemt for the

unhistorical nations, thereby allowing to the concept of the nation

a certain historical and sociological independence, and blurring the

insistence on the dependence of nationality on the growth of

capitalism and its bourgeois ruling classes.”19

19 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p.10

The point of departure of modernization theories was the

classical sociological distinction between traditional and modern

societies. Drawing on this distinction, scholars of the period

posited three different stages in modernization process: tradition,

transition, and modernity. In this sense, modernization signified a

breakdown of the traditional order and the establishment of a new

type of society with new values and new relationships. Nationalism

had a clear function in modernity; it has provided identity in a

time of rapid change, it has motivated people to work for further

change, iit could provide guidelines in such fields as the creation

of a modern educational system and of s standard national culture.

The traditionalist and functional accounts of nationalism regarded

that all societies must pass from a traditional stage through an

ambivalent, uncertain transition to reach finally the plateau of the

modern, participant and national society and culture. According to

Daniel Lerner, transiton to a Western model of society was

undisputed, the only thing that mattered was ‘pace’. Traditionalists

argued that, this was a natural part of the transition process, it

was an inevitable consequence. Lerner’s account was a typical

example of whole of the theories inspired by the modernization

paradigm. All these assumptions shared the basic assumption that

nationalism was a concomitant of the period of transition, helping

to alleviate the sufferings caaused by that process.

An important starting point of modernization theories is

‘communications’ approach, generally associated with the idea of

nation-building. The most important exponent of this approach was

Karl W. Deutsch. He defined modern nationality as an alignment of

large numbers of individuals from middle and lower classes linked to

regional centers and leading social groups by channels of social

communication and economic relations, both indirectly from link to

link and directly with the center. This process was underpinned by

many functionally equivalent arrangements. More specificially, what

set nation-building in motion were socio-demographic processes like

urbanization, mobility, literacy and so on. These type of

communicaitons had an importance to provide new roles, new horizons

and imaginings to keep the process going smoothly. “According to his

functional definiton of nationality, this latter consists in the

ability to communicate effevtively, and over a wider range of

subjects, with the members of one large group more than with

outsiders.”20 Deutsch advocated that this ability can be measured,

and the size of a nation and its cohesion were directly functions of

the degree of advancement of this process. This can be evaluated by

means of several indicators, such as the speed of urbanisation, the

proportion of the active population in the secondary and tiery

sectors, the number of newspaper readers, students, migrants, people

connected by post etc. for all these are signs of a degree of social

mobilisation. Thus his analysis suggested that transition from a

traditional to an industrial society involved an increased

mobilisation of society. Altough this approach had many defects,

such as its omission of the particular contxt of beliefs,

interpretations and interests within which the mass media operate,

it gave a fresh impetus to the debate on nationalism. “The 1960s saw

the burgeoning of interdisciplinary interest in national phenomena,

a sudden increase in the number of studies which treated nationalism

as a subject in itself and, partly as a result of this, a

20 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 13 in ibid: p. 97

diversification of theoretical perspectives. It was in this context

that the pioneering works of the modernist approach, namely

Kedourie’s ‘Nationalism’ and Ernest Gellner’s ‘Thought and Change’

were published.” 21 Modernist explanations became the dominant

orthodoxy in the field until the ealry 1980s.

Kedourie’s study was regarded as a conservative attack on

nationalism and a milestone in the evolution of theoreticaal debate

on nationalism. Tracing the origins of his doctrine back to the

German romantic thought, he advocated that as a doctrine invented in

Europe at the beginning of the nineteeenth century, idea of

nationalism was faced on the fact that humanity was naturally

divided into nations, that nations were known by certain

characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only

legitimate type of government was sel-government. Kedourie attached

a great role to Kant’s epistemological dualism, the organic analogy

developed by Fichte and his disciples, and historicism inhis

account. However, he advocated that the story does not en here:

revolution in ideas was accompanied by an upheaval in social life.

the turmoil in which Europe was rescheduled, and the French

Revolution were all illustrators of this fact. For him, the revolt

against old ways could explain the violent nature of many

nationalist movements, because the latter, directed against

foreigners, were also the manifestation of a clash of generations

such as Young Italy and Young Turks. These frusturated young men

turned to literature and philosophy which seemed to give way to

another and a nobler world, failing to notice that philosophical

speculation was incompatible with the civil order.

21 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 52

Post-1945 configurations of the approaches to nationalism are

twofold: On the one hand is the distinction between primordialists

and instrumenalists who have completely distinct views on antiquity

and naturalness of nations. On the other hand is the distinction

between the perennialists and modernists who diverge upon the actual

timing of the nation and the sense of nationality as an ideology.

“Speculations about the timing of nations (when is a nation?) and

the emergence of nationalism (when did nationalism become an

influential force and dominant ideology?) has led two contrasting

calendars: modernists date their formation to the rise of modernity,

in whatever form the latter is defined; perennialists see them as

enduring, inveterate, century-long even milennial phenomena,

certainly predating modernity.”22

Primordialism is the earliest approach, not a theory, of nations

and nationalism. “It’s an umbrella term used to descrie scholars who

hold that nationality is a natural part of human beings, as natural

as speech, sight or smell, and that nations have existed since time

immemorial. In that respect, it is not different from the terms

modernist or ethnosymbolist, which are all used to classify various

theories with regard to their common characteristics, therey

enabling researchers to compare them systematically.”23 Appealing to

emotional and instinctive constraints as ultimate explanations of

national mobilisation, they date the origin of nationhood back to

remote epochs, treating them as emotional givens. The conventional

primordialist approach to nationalism sees nations as historic

entities. They have a clear, national identity based on language,

22 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, p. 18

23 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 64

custom and historic memory. It implies a history in which the self

awareness ‘arises’ has a ‘revival’ and so forth. The failure to

achieve the desired and assumed goal, that of an independent state,

is attributed to obstacles: an insufficiently determined or honest

leadership, a lack of sufficient national awareness on the part of

the people themselves, the adoption of inappropiate ideological

programmes, the oppressive character of the dominant state etc. This

is the claim made by all nationalist movements in the world,

including the Kurds. The actual history of ideology and political

mobilization is measured against a national ideal, not the other way

around.

Primordialists do not form a monolithic category. Umut Ozkirimli

makes a classification and calls three variants; namely, the

naturalist approach, the sociobiological approach, and the

culturalist approach. The most extreme version of primordialism,

namely the naturalist approach asserts that national identities are

a natural part of all human beings, just like speech or sight: a man

has a nationality as he has nose and two ears. It follows that, like

his/her family, the nation to which one belongs is predetermined,

‘naturally fixed’. As a result, nations have national frontiers,

hence a specific origin and place in nature, as well as a peculiar

character, mission and destiny. In this sense, as Smith frequently

points out, these naturalist primordialists do not make a

distinction between nations and ethnic groups. Referring to the

antiquity of a particular nation, to theme of golden age, to the

theme of the superiority of the national culture, to the theme of

periods of recess, and finally to the the theme of national hero,

who comes and awakens the nation, ending this accidental period of

decadence, they glorify the uniqueness and eventual victory of a

particular ‘ancient’ nation.

Anthony Smith, the founding father of ethnosymbolism, even

divides primordialist into two categories: perennialists and

sociobilogogists. “Broadly speaking, perennialism refers to the

historical antiquity of the type of social and political

organisation known as the ‘nation’, its immemorial or perennial

character. In this view, there’s little difference between ethnicity

and nationality: nations and ethnic communities are cognate, even

identical, phenomena. The perennialist readily accepts the modernity

of nationalism as a political movement and ideology, but regards

nations either as updated versions of immemorial ethnic communities,

or as collective cultural identities have existed, alongside ethnic

communities, in all epochs of human history. On the other hand,

perennialists refuses to see either nations or ethnic groups as

‘givens’ in nature; they are strictly historical and social, rather

than natural, phenomena.”24 Perennial means continuing or enduring

through the year or through many years and growing continuously,

surviving. Smith regards perennialists as less radical exponents

primordialists who see nations as historic entities which have

developed over centuries, with their peculiar characteristics

largerly unchanged. Smith maintains that perennialists need not to

be primordialists since it is possible to concede the antiquity of

ethnic and national ties without holding that they are natural. One

of the core ideas of perennialism is that modern nations are the

lineal descendants of their medieval counterparts. Modernity has not

affected the basic structures of human assocation; on the contrary,

24 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 159

it is the nation and nationalism which endangers modernity.

Perennialists also advocate that nations may experience periods of

recess in the course of their historical journey; but this bad

fortune cannot destroy the national essence. Smith even imaged a

third category; neo-perennialism. He advocated that “for neo-

perennialists, the sources of nationalism must be sought not in the

blueprints of secular intelligentsia nor interests of the middle

classes in the modern epoch, but in the deep cultural resources of

language, ethnicity, and religion”25, which made him to come to the

conclusion that nations were prior to nationalism and modernity; a

conclusion which would be a basic assumption of his ethno-symbolist

accounts of nationalism.

The sociobiological approach is mainly related with the

adaptation of studies on sociobiology with the study of ethnic ties.

“ It claims that ethnic groups and nations should be seen as forms

of extended kin groups, and that both nations and ethnic groups,

along with races, must be ultimetely derived from individual genetic

reproductive drives.” 26 “Van den Berghe argues that human sociality

is based on three principles: kin selection, reciprocity, and

coercion. The larger and the more complex the society, the more

important become recprocity and coercion. But ethnicity, caste and

race tend to be ascriptive, defined by common descent, generally

hereditary, and often endogamous. Hence they are based exclusively

on kinship and kin selection, Van den Berghe traces such groups from

small tribes; linked by ties of kinship, they made the tribe in fact

25 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, pp. 98-99

26 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 147

a superfamily.” 27According to Pierre van den Berghe, a strict

exponent of this approach, the basic question asked by sociobiology

is ‘why are animals social, that is, why do they cooperate?’

According to him, what sociobiology does is to supply the main

genetic mechanism for animal sociality, namely kin selection to

increase incluive fitness. For him, kin selection means one’s

attachment to his/her family is equal to attachment to a nation.

Accordingly, kin selection, or mating with relatives, is a powerful

cement of sociality in humans too. Both ethnicity and race are

extensions of the idiom of kinship, thus they must be understood as

extensions of kin selection. He adds two additional mechanisms to

explain human sociality; namely, reciprocity and coercion.

Reciprocity can be explained as cooperation for mutual benefit

whereas coercion as the use of force for one-sided benefit.

Accordingly, all human societies continue to be organized on the

basis of all three principles of sociality. However, the larger and

the more complex a society becomes, the greater the importance of

reciprocity. Moreover, while kinsip is more dominant in intra-group

relations, coercion becomes the rule in inter-ethnic (or inter-

racial) relations. Ethnic groups may occasionally enter into a

symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship (reciprocity) but this

is usually short-lived.

Associated with the works of Edward Shils and Clifford Geertz,

the third variant of primordialist approach is the culturalist

approach which. Cultural primordialists focused on the beliefs and

perceptions of the individuals, and argued that what generates the

strong attachments people feel for the givens of social existence is

27 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 147

a belief in their sacredness. Focusing on the subjective definition

and criteria of the nation, this approach has taken the nation as

given not because primordial identities are a given, a priori, but

because people feel attached to certain elements of their culture,

assuming that they are given, sacred and underived. “Edward Shils

distinguished between the public, civil ties of the modern state and

the primordial ties of family, religious and ethnic groups.

Recalling the Durkheimian argument which saw the retention of a

kernel of older kinship, moral and religious ties- the similarities

of beliefs and consciences in a mechanical solidarity- even within

modern, industrial societies with their more individualistic, but at

the same time cooperative and complementary division of labour or

organiz solidarity.., Shils argued that primordial ties of kinship

and religion remained vital even within modern secular societies, as

witnessed by their symbols and public ceremonies.”28 This theme was

taken up by Clifford Geertz who applied the idea to the new states,

but with often old societies, of Asia and Africa where modern states

were emerging on colonial territorial and political foundations, but

their populations were bound together less by the civil ties of a

rational society than by the primordial ties which arose on the

basis of language, custom, race, religion and other cultural givens.

For Geertz, it was these underlying cultural realities that

explained the continuing power of ethnicity, and the sense of

overriding commitment and loyalty to the cultural identities that

they forged.

These primordial, and somewhat historical accounst of nationalism

has been challenged by what is called ‘modernist’ approach of Ernest

28 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 151.

Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson. Before moving to this

approach, a brief summary of the criticisms directed against the

historical primordialist account can be clarified. Primordialist

approach has been criticized most severely for its belief in the

‘givennes’ of ethnic and national ties. This view has been

criticized on the grounds that, if the strong attachments generated

by language, religion, kinship and the like are given by nature, and

thus they are fixed, then how people do always change their

identities? Studies on ethnicity reveal the growing role of

individual choice in the construction of ethnic identities, claiming

that far from being self-perpetuating, they require creative effort

and investment. They are redefined and reconstructed in each

generation as groups react to changing conditions. It follows that

the boundaires of ethnic identites are not fixed. A similar

criticism comes from Brass on the grounds that many people speak

more than one language in multilingual developing societies. Many

illiterate people in these countries, far from being attached to

their mother tongues, are alien to them. Highligting some of the

limitations of the primordialist approach, he conceded that people

form deep emotive attachments which persist into adult life and

which may provide basis for social and political groupings. He also

argues that some primordial attachments arer variable. Many people

are bilingual, change or shift their language or do not think about

their language at all. Religions too are subject to change by

reformers, and to conversions and syncretism. Even place of birth

and kinship may lose their emotional significance for many people.

More specifically, the increase in massive migration has severed a

sense of attachment to their place of birth for many people;

besides, place of birth is not usually of political significance, at

least until recently. Adopting a moderate political instrumentalist

approach, “Like Thomas Eriksen, he distances himself from the

extreme instrumentalists for whom culture is infinitely malleable

and elites free to choose whatever aspect of a culture can serve

their political purposes or mobilise the masses.”29 He sees various

kinds of elites selecting from the range of symbols of the received

ethnic cultural traditions those that servet o unite their

communities and mobilise them for social and political advantage.

The competition of elites and their consequent selections of

cultural resources over the politicisement of the culture and

changing the self-definiton of the community from that of an ethnic

group to one of a nationality competing with others in the political

arena. Similarly, Smith argues that, ethnic ties like other social

bonds are subject to economic, social and political forces, and thus

change according to circumstances. Intermarriages, migrations,

external conquests and the importation of labour have made it very

unlikely for many ethnic groups to preserve the cultural homogeneity

and pure essence advocated by primordialists. “Despite their

protestations to the contrary, there’s a reductionist tendency in

both polar positions: an attempt to explain ethnicity and

nationality as either instruments of rational self-interest, or as

collective outgrowths of beliefs about the primordial. For

instrumentalists as for primordialists, any distinction between

ethnic groups and nations is secondary or irrelevant.

Instrumentalists tend to view ethnicity and nationality as sites and

resources for collective mobilisation by interest-maximizing (and

29 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p.155

often rationally discriminating) elites; hence their analysis is

largerly voluntaristic, elite-driven and top-down. Primordialists

view ethnicity and rationality as groupings formed on the basis of

classifications of self and others in accordance with primordial

criteria, i.e. beliefs about life-bearing and life-enhancing

objects; hence their analysis tends towards a limited cultural

determinism, though ultimately it is based on the slowly changing

patterns of popular beliefs and perceptions.”30

Another critique against the primordial approach has been related

with its conceptualization of ethnic and national attachments as

ineffable and thus unanalysable ties. Brass argued that, knowledge

of ethnic cultures does not enable us to predict either which ethnic

groups will develop a successfulnpolitical movement or the form this

movement will assume. Giving the creation of Israel and Pakistan as

examples he argued that a knowledge of orthodox Judaism or

traditional Islam in India would have suggested that the least

likely possibilities would have been the rise of a Zionist movement

or the movement for the creation of Pakistan since the traditional

religious authorities in both cases were opposed to a secular state.

Similarly, Breully argued that the use of ethnic cultures in a

nationalist manner will transform their meanings, and constructs new

identities anew, even if that construction involves appeals to

history and culture and sees isself as discovery rather than

construction, to which one must pay attention. One another objection

raised against the primordialism has been about its romantic nature

and its tendency to give priority to ethnic and national identities

among other forms of identity. Smith argues that human beings live

30 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 157

in a multiple identities and roles- familial, territorial, class,

religious, ethnic and gender. These categories sometimes overlap

and/or complement each other; and sometimes they clash. It is not

possible to predict which identity will be dominant over the other

at a particular time. Moreover, primordialim was criticized because

of its overreference to emotions and affect. Even the terminology

used reflects this: attachment, bold, tie, sentiment, feelings. This

dimension of primordial identities maket hem different from other

types of idendities such as those of class. Moreover, perennialists

were also criticised for their belief in the antiquity of nations

and nationalism. Altough, as an ethnosymbolist, Smith was closer to

the arguments of perennialists in their sensitiveness to ethnic

pasts and cultures more than modernists, by illustrating some

premodern civilizations, like ancient Egypt and ancient Greeks and

Jews, he reaches to the conclusion that ethnic states are not

necessarily nations. These and other criticims led to the

marginalization of the extreme versions of primordialism in the

literature on nationalism. However, primordialist approach enables

us to explore how meanings were rediscovered and reproduced by

individuals, and how these knowledge systems suggest themselves as

givens, prior to individual tought and action. The concept underlies

the importance of perceptions and beliefs in guiding human action.

The counter approach to primordialism- that is, the modernist

approach, emerged as a reaction to primordialism in 1960s as model

of nation-building which had a wide appeal in the social sciences in

the wake of the movement of decolonization in Asia and Africa.

Modernism and remained the dominant orthodoxy altough it was severly

criticized by the ethnosymbolists since early 1980s. The common

denominator of all modernist claims is the belief in the modernity

of nations and nationalism. According to this view, both appeared in

the wake of French Revolution, and they were products of modern

economic, social and political conditions like capitalism,

industrialism, urbanization and secularism, and thus both were

recent creations. Accordingly, they don’t have a historic character,

and they don’t have peculiar characteristics such as common language

or social character. This assumption follows the idea that territory

is something claimed, but not necessarily precise in its borders or

justly belonging to one people rather than to others, and that,

contrary to the emotional and target-based approach of primordialist

account, there’s no one main goal of a nationalist movement:

national independence can be achieved or not.assitionally, modernist

approach recognizes the relevance and ideological force of political

claims- to territory, definitions of culture, independence- but does

not assume that these are naturally given, but assumes that they are

a part of politics. However, against these very few common points, the

branches of modernist paradigm have very little in common. The

modernist paradigm may be divided into three categories in terms of

the key factors –economic, political and sociocultural- they have

identified. The first is ‘economic transformation’. This approach is

equated with the neo-Marxist scholars of 1960s and 1970s who stress

economic factors in their theories. In these years, “the orthodox

Marxist position was beginning to be challanged with the emergence

of anti-colonial nationalist movements in many parts of the Third

World. The majority of left-wing intellectuals were sympathetic to

thee movements and some were even actively involved in them. It was

increasingly avowed that the fight against ‘neo-imperialism’,

‘economic imperialism’ or ‘international capital’ was first a

national one.” 31 The main difference between the traditional

Marxists and neo-Marxists who make the latter to come to terms with

this conclusion was the ethnic revival in Europe and North America.

Traditional Marxism was ill-prepared to cope with the proliferating

fissiparous nationalist movements who threatened the unity of the

established nation states. The neo-Marxists attached a greater

weight to the role of culture, ideology and language in their

analyses. One of the most important exponent of this approach was

Tom Nairn. He regarded nationalism as the socio-historical cost of

the rapid implantation of capitalism into world history. Nairn’s

views on nationalism have been influenced by dependency school,

especially by the ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein. Basing his ideas on

the conception of ‘uneven development’, and arguing that nationalism

could be understand in materialist terms, he saw nationalism as a

reaction from periphery to core. He argued that the idea of

nationalism was determined by certain features of the world

political economy, in the era between French and Industrial

Revolutions and the present day. On the other hand, the origins of

nationalism are not located in the process of development of the

world political economy as such- nationalism was not an inevitable

concomitant of industrialism but the uneven development of history

since the eighteenth century. According to Nairn, contrary to the

commonsense assumptions which suggested that capitalist development

was to be experienced ‘evenly’, that is that the material

civilisation would develop evenly and progressively, that the

Western European states would have initiated the capitalist

31 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 86 in Zubadia, S. Theories of Nationalism, pp.65-6.

development process and accumulated the necessary capital for

perpetuating this ‘even’ process for a long time, the impact of the

leading countries was experienced as domination and invasion. This

was partially inevitable, because the gap between the core and the

periphery was too great and the new developmental forces were not in

the hands of a beneficent. Because people of peripheral countries

continued to rise popular expectations in line with the logic of

material progress across the domination of the core, the peripheric

elites had no option but to try and satisfy these demands by taking

things into their own hands, which meant a great deal of the

substance of nationalism. The elites had to persuade the masses to

take the short cut. They had to contest the concrete form assumed by

progress as they were setting out to progress themselves. They

wanted factories, schools and parliements, so they had to copy the

leaders somehow; but they had to do this in a way which rejected the

direct intervention of these countries. This meant the conscious

formation of a militant, inter-class community rendered strongly

aware of its own separate identity vis-a-vis the outside forces of

domination. Thus the process was not completed with the emergence of

nationalism in peripheral countries under the impact of uneven

development; once successful, nationalism reacted upon the core

countries and they too fell under its spell. Additionally, this neo-

Marxist view opposed to the orthodox’s Marxism’s conviction that

class is always more important in history than national differences

by claiming that the uneven development and the imperialist spread

of capitalism has insured that the basic contradiction was not that

of class struggle, but that of nationality.

Another important contribution to the literature on nationalism

from the neo-Marxist camp was Michael Hechter. He introduced Lenin’s

concept of internal colonialism to the study of nationalism and

developed the model of ‘internal colonialism’ against what he terms

as assimilatioist ‘diffusion model of development’ that identifies

three stages in the process of national development. Accordingly, in

the first pre-industrial stage, the core and the periphery remain

isolated from one another, thus there exists no relationship between

the two. Moreover, there are basic differences in their economic,

cultural and political institutions. Increased contact between the

core and peripheral regions led to the second stage of national

development which was generally associated with the process of

industrialization. The diffusionist view holds that interaction will

bring commonality and that the institutions of the developing cores

would, after some time, diffuse into the periphery. The cultural

forms of the periphery, evolved in complete isolation from the rest

of the world, would renew, or in Hechter’s words ‘up-date’

themselves as a result of increased contact with the modernising

core. In the third and final stage, regional wealth become equal;

cultural differences would no longer be socially meaningful; and

political processes will be conducted within the framework of

national parties. Hechter argued that this was an optimistic model

of social change. His suggestion of ‘internal colonial model’ held

that an altogether different relationship would ensue from increased

core-periphery contact. The core would dominate the periphery

politically and exploit it economically, and industrialization and

inreased regional contcact wouldn’t lead to national development.

This model assumed that the uneven wave of modernisation over state

territories created two kinds of groups: advanced and less advanced

ones, and resources and power were distributed unequally between the

two groups. The more powerful group, or the core, tried to stabilize

and monopolize its advantages through policies aiming at the

institutionalization of the existing stratification system. The

economy of the core was characterized by a diversified industrial

structure, whereas the peripheral economy was dependent and

complementary to that of the core. On the other hand, the advanced

group regulated the allocation of social roles in such a way that

the more prestigious roles were reserved for its members whereas the

members of the less advanced groups were denied access to these

roles. Hechter called this stratification system the ‘cultural

division of labor’. Objective cultural differences plus economic

inequalities, leading to a cultural division of labour, and an

adequate degree of intra-group communication minimized the chances

for successful political integration of the peripheral collectivity

into the national society, which incrased the likelihood of the

members of the disadvantaged group to assert that their culture as

equal or superior to that of the advantaged group, to claim the

separateness of their nation and to seek independence.

A significant variant of modernism has been furthered by scholars

who focus on the transformations in the nature of politics, for

instance the rise of the modern bureaucratic state, or the extension

of suffarage, to explain nationalism. The most famous exponents of

this approach are John Breuilly, Paul R. Brass and Eric J. Hobsbawm.

Breuilly’s nationalism refers to political movements seeking or

exercising state power and justifying such action with nationalist

arguments. A nationalist argument in turn is a political doctrine

built upon the basic assumptions of, first that there exists a

nation wit an explicit and peculiar character, second that the

interests and values of this nation take priority over all other

interests and values, and third that the nation must be as

independent as possible, which requires at least the attainment of

political sovereignty. He notes that nationalism has been variously

explained in the literature by refernce to ideas, class interest,

economic modernization or culture; however, none of these factors

can help us understand nationalism generally. He contends that all

these approaches overlook a crucial point, namely that nationalism

is above all politics and politics is about power, which, in turn,

is mainly about the control of state. Thus nationalism is mainly

related with power, and this is why nationalism has become an

important ingredient of modern politics. Regarding the relationship

between the idea of nationalism and processes of modernisation, the

latter is important because it involves a basic change in the

generic division of labor. The most important stage of this change

is the transition from a corporate to a functional division of

labour in which each major social function carried out by a

particular institution. Accordingly, economic functions were handed

over to individuals or firms competing in a free market; curces

became free associations of believers, ad political power was

delegated to specialized bureaucracies controlled by elected

parliaments or enlightened despots. Historically, this

transformation was not smooth. It developed at different paces and

in different ways. Third step of Breuilly’s framework is the linking

of this transformation to nationalist politics, which required

focusing on the development of modern state. According to him, the

modern state originally developed in a liberal form. Thus, public

powers were handed to specialized state institutions (parliements,

bureaucracies) and many private powers were left under the control

of non-political institutions such as free markets, private firms,

families. This involved a double transformation; institutions such

such as the monarchy lost private powers, other institutions such as

churches, guilds and lordships lost their public powers to

government. In this way, the distinction between the state as

public, and the society as private became clearer. On the other

hand, with the breakdown of corporate division of labour, there was

now a new emphasis upon people as individuals rather than as members

of particular groups. Under these circumstances, the main problem

was how to establish state-society connection, i.e., how to

reconcile the public interests of citizens with the private

interests of selfish individuals. It was within this context that

nationalist ideas come into scene. Breuilly holds that nationalism,

here, played a crucial role in political and cultural terms. The

political dimension was related with the idea of citizenship.

Accordingly, the society of individuals was at the same time defined

as a polity of citizens. Commitment to the state, according to this

view, could only be generated by participating in democratic and

liberal institutions. The nation was simply the body of citizens and

only the political rights of the citizens- not their cultural

identities- mattered. The cultural dimesion was related with the

collective character of society. He maintains that liberalism’s

inability to cope with collective or community interests was very

crucial in this context. Moreover, many groups were not attracted to

liberalism since the system it gave birth was largerly based on

socially structured inequality. Finally, Breuilly identified three

different functions performed by nationalist ideas: coordination,

mobilization and legitimacy. By coordination he means that

nationalist ideas are used to promote the idea of common interests

amongst a number of elites which otherwise have rather distinct

interests in opposing th existing state. By mobilization he means

‘the use of nationalist ideas to generate support for political

movement from broad groups hitherto excluded from the political

process. And by legitimacy he means ‘te use of powerful external

agents, such as foreign states and their public opinions’.

Paul R. Brass is another strong advocater of the intrumentalist

approach to nationalism. For Brass, as well as for instrumentalists,

elite competition and manipulation provide the key to an

understanding of nationalism. Instrumentalists hold that ethnic and

national identities are convenient tools at the hands of competing

elite groups for generating mass support in the universal struggle

for wealth, power and prestige. In contrast to primordialists who

treat ethnicity as a given of the human condition, they argue that

ethnic and national aattachments are continually redefined and

reconstructed in response to changing conditions and the

manipulations of political elites. Brass’ approach has the following

assumptions. Accepting the variability of ethnic identities, he

holds that the rise of ethnic identities and their eventual

transformation to nationalism are inevitable. Yet, politicization of

cultural identities is only possible under specific conditions, and

adds that ethnic conflicts do not arise from cultural differences,

but from broader political and economic environment which also

shapes the nature of the competition between elite groups. This

competition will also influence the definiton of the relevant ethnic

groups and their persistence, since the cultural forms, values and

practices of ethnic groups become political sources for elites in

their struggle for power and prestige, they are transformed into

symbols which can facilitate the creation of political identity and

the generation of greater support; thus, their meanings and contents

are dependent on political circumstances. All these assumptions

reflect that the process of ethnic identity formation and its

transformation into nationalism is reversible. Because he defined

nationalism as a political development, he argued that depending on

political and ecoonomic circumstances, elites may choose to downplay

ethnic differences and seek cooperation with other groups and state

authorities. This is partly due to the fact that Brass defines

nationalism as a political movement. Accordingly, while the mass

base of nationalism is provided by ethnic competition for economic

oppurtunities, the demands that are articulated and the success of a

nationalist movement depend on political factors such as the

existence of strategies pursued by nationalist political

organizations, the nature of government response to ethnic group

demands, and the general political context. He maintains that

institutional mechanisms in a given polity and the responses of

governments- ranging from genocide to assimilation, and even to

pluralist policies such as right to receive education in native

language- to ethnic demands may be very crucial in determining a

particular group’s capacity to survive, its self-definition and it

ultimate goals. In addition, for Brass, the general political

context may also affect the success of nationalist movements. The

possibilities for realignment of political and social forces and

organizations, the willingness of elites of elites from dominant

ethnic groups tos hare power with aspirant ethnic group leaders, and

the potential availability of alternative political arenas are

important in this sense.

The Marxist historian Eric J. Hobsbawm is another scholar who

stressed the role of political transformations in his analysis of

nationalism. Hobsbawm regards both nations aand nationalism as

products of social engineering, and of invented traditions, namely

the set of practices, normally governed overtly or tacitly accepted

rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate

certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which

automatically implies continuity with the past. Despite their

historical novelty, he argues, invented traditions establish

continuity with a suitable past-and if there’s no suitable past, an

invented past- and use history as a legitimator of action and cement

of group cohesion. Hobsbawm regards the period from 1870 to 1914 as

the apogee of nationalism, during which invention of tradition was

the main strategy adopted by the ruling elites to encounter the

threat posed by mass democracy. Via the development of primary

education, the invention public ceremonies and the mass production

of public monuments, nationalism became a substitute for social

cohesion through a national church, a royal family or other cohesive

traditions, or collective group self-presentations, a new secular

religion. He argues that nations belong to a historically recent

period and it’s irrelevant to speak of nations before the rise of

the modern territorial state. He holds the idea that because nations

are not only the products of the quest for a territorial state, the

origins of nationalism should also be sought at the point of

intersection of politics, technology and social transformation, and

that nations are not only the products of the quest for a

territorial state; they can come into being in the context of a

particular stage of technological and economic development. In

addition to this, in line with the Gellner’s idea that political and

national units should be congruent, he holds that the political

duties of citizens to the nation override all other obligations, and

this is what distinguishes modern nationalism from earlier forms of

group identification which are less demanding. Such a conception of

nationalism overrules primordialist understandings of the nation

which treat it as a given and unchanging.

The last group of approaches in modernist branch emphasize the

importance of social and cultural transformations in understanding

the nature of national phenomena. One of the most important scholars

of this group is Ernest Gellner who takes nationalism as a political

principle as well as a social necessity and looks at the

relationship between power and culture, and hold the idea that

national and political unit should be congruent. “For Gellner, on

the other hand, nationalism is primarily a political principle which

holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent.

It is also a fundamental feature of the modern world since in most

of human history political units were not organized along

nationalist principles.” 32 Gellner’s theory of nationalism carries

the effects of Durkheim and Weber whose tradition was based on a

distinction between traditional and modern societies. Accordinly,

Gellner posited three stages in human history: the hunter-gatherer,

the aglo-literate and the industrial. “Gellner associates modernity

with the spread of industrialisation. The latter brought about an32 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 129

unprecedented, all pervasive change that disrupted the traditional

balance of society, creating new constellations of shared interests.

For Gellner, nationalism was the offspring of the marriage between

state snd modern culture, celebrated on the atlar of modernity. With

the passage from agricultural to industrial society, a ‘high’,

scientific culture, carried by standardised, national languages,

becomes an all-pervasive requisite. However, only the state has the

power to inculcate the new Standard on an uprooted labour force. A

nation is hence defined as ‘primarily a principle that holds that

the political and national unit should be congruent.”33 He does not

expalin the hunter-gatherer phase in detail, since there are no

states in this stage, hence no room for nationalism. In the second

stage, namely the aglo-literate stage, there are some stable

statuses obtaining of which are the most important consideration for

a member of such a society. In such a society, power and culture,

two potential partners destined for each other according to

nationalist theory, do not have so much inclination to come

together: the ruling class, consisting of warriors, priests,

clerics, administraters uses culture to differentiate itself from

the majority of direct agricultural producers who are confined to

small local communities where culture is almost invisible.

Communication in this self-enclosed units in contextual, in contrast

to the context-free communication of the literate strata. Thus, this

kind of society is marked by a discrepancy, and sometimes conflict,

between a high and a low culture, and there’s no incentive for

rulers to impose cultural homogeneity on their subjects: on the

contrary, they benefit from diversity. Thus he concludes that, since

33 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, p. 19 in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism: I

there’s no cultural homogenization in aro-literate societies, there

can be no nations. “Cultural homogenisation generates a new national

consciousness which Gellner calls nationalism. For him, nationalism

is not the awakening of an old, latent, dominant force though that

is how it does indeed present itself. It is in reality the

consequence of a new form of social organization, based on deeply

internalized, education-depended high cultures, each protected by

its own state. It uses some form of the pre-existent cultures,

generally transforming them in the process, but it cannot possibly

use them all. There are too many of them. A viable, higher culture,

sustaining modern state cannot fall below a certain minimal size,

which is that required for the maintenance of an efficient education

system.34

According to Gellner, there’s also a different relationship

between power and culture in industrial societies. In a society

where an industrial and a ‘high’ culture is dominant, contrary to

the aglo-literate societies in which shared culture is not essential

to the preservation of social order due to the ascriptive nature of

status in such societies, culture plays a more active role in.

Industrial societies are mobile ones and they don’t have ascribed

roles. In this way, such a society can be labelled also as

egalitarian because of its mobility, and as a highly-specialized

modern society. Gellner regards nationalism as a product of this

industrial social organization. Accordingly, nations can emerge when

general social conditions make for standardized, homogeneous,

centrally sustained high cultures, pervading entire populations and

not just elite minorities. Engendering nations, nationalism imposes

34 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 19 in ibid: p. 48

a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up

the lives of the majority, and in some cases of the totality, of the

population. Labelling nationalism as a new form of collective

consciousness, he also describes his conception of nation-state.

Such a sentiment does not necessarily imply any ideological,

nationalist leanings. In this sense, Gellner’s theory also falls

into the error of recalling the school of ‘nation-building’: once

again, national integration is the main issue at stake and is seen

as depending upon cultural homogenisation in the context of socio-

economic and state-led modernisation.

Another exponent of the cultural-transformationalist approach is

Benedict Anderson. Focusing on the cultural sources of nations and

more specifically on consciousness of peoples, he defines nation as

a –limited but sovereign- imagined community because the members of

even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-

members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each

lives the image of their communion. Its limited nature stems from

the fact that each nation has finite boundaries beyond which lie

other nations. Its sovereign nature stems from th fact that it is

born in the age of Enligtenment and Revolution, when the legitimacy

of divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm was rapidly

waning: and lastly, its imagined nature stems from its

conceptualization as community because regardless of the actual

inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is

always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradership. According to

Anderson, it is ultimately this sense of fraternity which makes it

possible for so many millions of people to willingly lay down their

lives for their nation. Anderson advocates that nationality and

nationalism are cultural artefacts of a particular kind, thus

understanding them properly, requires finding out how they come into

being, in what ways their meanings have changed over time and why

they have such a profound emotional legitimacy. He argues that

nationalism emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century as a

result of the clash of different historical forces and once created,

they became models which could be used in a great variety of social

terrains, by a corresponding wide variety of ideologies. Anderson

regards religious communities and the dynastic realm as cultural

roots of nationalism as a first condition giving rise to

construction of imagined communities. Accordingly, both of these

systems held sway over much of Europe until the sixteenth century.

The gradual decline, which began in the seventeeth century, provided

the historical and geographical space necessary for the rise of

nations. Accordinly, this space was also benefited by what Anderson

calls ‘print capitalism’. He argues that due to the need of

capitalism to reach markets out of the thin stratum of Latin-readers

coupled with the inherent logic of capitalism to expand through the

outer markets economically and culturally forced the publishers to

produce cheap editions in the verneculars with the aim of reaching

the monoglot markets. “This process was precipitated by three

factors. The first was a change in the character of Latin. Thanks to

Humanists, the literary Works of pre-Christian antiquity were

discovered and spread to the market. This generated a new interest

in the sophisticated writing style of the ancients which further

removed Latin from ecclesiastical and everyday life. Second was the

impact of the Reformation, which owed much of its success to print

capitalism. The coalition between Protestanism and print-capitalism

quickly created large reading publics and mobilized them for

political/religious purposes. Third was the adoption of some

verneculars as administrative languages… Together, these factors led

to the dethronement of Latin and created large reading publics in

the verneculars.”35 Anderson argues that print languages laid the

basis for national conscioussness in three ways. First, the created

unified fields of Exchange and communication below Latin and above

the spoken verneculars by fixing language which helped to build the

image of antiquity so central to the idea of the nation, and third,

by creating a unique language of administration. In short, what made

the new communities imaginable was a half-fortutious, but explosive,

interaction between a system of production and productive relations

(capitalism), a technology of communication (print), and the

fatality of human diversity. “These cultural fissures coincided with

the development of publishing techniques and the emergence of

capitalism in publishing, which was to have a considerable impact.

Novels and newspaper writing indeed involve the concept of imagined

community. And characterisation of national sentiment as a mental

fact underlyng the development of the means of mass communication

can complement Deutsch’s cybernetic model in which little was said

about the nature and the origin of national consciousness.” 36 This

aspect of Anderson’s theory is largerly based on processes of

communication like Deutch’s and addresses the issue of building more

than that of nationalism; hence more relevant for explaining an

important element of nation-making, than for our understanding of

nationalism as an ideology. Thus, in fact, Anderson does not say

35 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 148.

36 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 15

much about the content of nationalism, except that it is rooted in

the past and relies on a linear as well as abstract conception of

time, rather he says something about nationhood.

Anderson’s conceptualization of anti-colonial movements was

highly criticized on the grounds that the anti-colonial movements

were not successors of their European counterparts. For example,

Chatterjee argued that anti-colonial nationalism creates its own

domain of seovereignty within colonial society well before it begins

its battle with the colonizer. It does this by dividing the social

institutions and practices into two domains: the material and the

spiritual. The material is the domain of the economy, statecraft,

science and technology where the West is superior. In this domain,

therefore, the superiority of the West has to be acknowledged and

its success replicated. This spiritual domain, on the other hand,

bears the essential Marks of the nation’s cultural identity. In this

domain, the distinctness of one’s culture needs to be preserved. As

a result of this division, nationalism declares the domain of the

spiritual its sovereign territory and refuses to allow the colonial

power to intervene in that domain. This does not mean that the

spiritual domain is left unchanged. On the contrary, here

nationalism launches its most creative and historically significant

Project: a fashion modern national culture that is neverthless not

Western. If the nation is an imagined community, then this is

exactly where imagination Works. The dynamics of this process,

according to Chatterjee, are missed by conventional histories of

nationalism (thus by Anderson) in which the story begins with the

contest for political power.

The last theoretician of the modernist approach will be discussed

in this work is Miroslav Hroch. He made an empirical quantitative

social-historical analysis of nationalist movements in a systematic

comparative framework. Focusing on the effects of social and

geographical mobility, more intense communication, the spread of

literacy and generational change as mediating factors, he also

related nation-forming to the larger processes of social

transformation, especially those associated with the spread of

capitalism, but did so by avoiding economic reductionism. Finally,

he provided a socially and culturally grounded model of political

development. He argued that, at the beginning of the nineteenth

century, there were eight ‘state-nations’ in Europe with a more or

less developed literary language, a high culture and ethnically

homogeneous ruling elites (including the aristocracy and an emerging

commercial and industrial bourgeoisie). These state nations –

England, France, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, the Netherlands, and later

Russia- were the products of a long process of nation-building that

had started in the Middle Ages. There were also two emerging nations

with a developed culture and an ethnically homogeneous elite, but

without a political roof: the Germans and the Italians. At the same

time, there were more than 30 non-dominant ethnic groups’ scattered

around the territories of multi-ethnic empires and some of the above

mentioned states. These groups, accordingly, lacked their own state,

an indigenous ruling elite and a continuous cultural tradition in

their own literary language. They usually occupied a compact

territory, but were dominated by an exogenous ruling class. Sooner

or later, some members of these groups became aware of their own

ethnicity and started to conceive of themselves as a potential

nation. On the other hand, their success was up to what Hroch calls

three structural phases. In the first phase, which he calls phase A,

activists committed themseelves to scholarly inquiry into the

lingustic, historical and cultural attriibutes of their ethnic

group. They did not attempt to mount a patriotic agitation or

formulate any political goals at this stage, in part because they

were isolated and in part because they did not believe it would

serve any purpose. In the second period, Phase B, a new range of

acivists emerged who intended to win over as many of their ethnic

group as possible to the Project of nation creating. Hroch notes

that these activists were not very successful initially, but their

efforts found a growing reception in time. When the national

consciousness became the concern of the majority of the population,

a mass movement was formed, which Hroch terms Phase C. It was only

at this stage that a full social structure could be formed. For him,

the most important criterion for any typology of national movements

is the relationship between the transition to Phase B and then to

Phase C on the one hand, and the transition to a constitutional

society on the other. He argues that, the experiences of the past

were not only important for the state natins of the West, but also

for the non-dominant ethnic groups of Central and Eastern Europe.

The legacy of the past embodied three significant resources that

might facilitate the emergence of a national movement. The first of

these were the relics of an earlier political autonomy. The

properties or privileges granted under the old regime often led to

tensions between the estates and new absolutism, which in turn

provided triggers for later national movements. The second resource

was the memory of former independence or statehood. Finally, the

existence of a medieval written language was crucial as this could

maket he development of a modern literary language easier. According

to Hroch, whatever the legacy of the past, the modern nation-

building process always started with the collection of information

about the history, language and customs of the non-dominant ehnic

group. With the realisation of the intellectual activity through

first, a social and/or political crisis of the old order,

accompanied by new tensions; second, emergence of discontent among

significant elements of the population; and third, loss of faith in

traditional moral systems, and above all, a decline in religious

legitimacy, even if this only affected small numbers of

intellectuals. On the other hand, these factors did not guarantee

the emergence of a mass movement. Mass support and the success of

the ultimate goal, that is the forging of a modern nation, depended

on some conditions: First, there was a need for a crisis of

legitimacy, linked to social, moral and cultural strains. Second, a

basic volume of vertical social mobility (some educated people must

come from the non-dominant ethnic group). Third, a fairly high level

of social communication, including literacy, schooling and market

relations. And last, nationally relevant conflicts of interest.

The third main approach to nationalism is ethno-symbolist

approach. This approach is occupied by scholars who have more

homogenous analyses on nationalism compared to the modernist and

primordialist accounts of nationalism. Etho-symbolism has gained a

popularity in 1980s as a challange to the modernist arguments on

nationalism, and posited itself as a kind of third way between

primordialist and instrumentalist acoounts of nationalism by paying

more attention to the roles of symbols in formation of ethnic and

national identities rather thanthe role of socio-economic and

political conflicts. Ethno-symbolists mainly focused on the role of

pre-existing ethnic ties and sentiments in the formation of nations.

“Ethnosymbolism underlies the continuity between premodern and

modern forms of social cohesion, without overlooking the changes

brought about by modernity. The persisting features in the formation

and continuity of national identities are myths, memories, values,

traditions and symbols… Of all these myths, the myth of a ‘golden

age’ os past splendor is perhaps the most important.”37

In their determination to reveal the invented or constructed

nature of nationalism, ethno-symbolist scholars argued that

modernists systematically overlooked the persistance of earlier

myths, symbols, values and memories in many parts of the world and

their continuing significance for masses. Thus, they firstly aimed

at uncovering the symbolic legacy of pre-modern ethnic identities

for today’s nations. Against primordialism/perennialism and

modernism, ethno-symbolists like John Armstrong, Anthony D. Smith,

and John Hutchinson proposed a third position, a kind of midway

between these two approaches. According to them, the formation of

nations should be examined in a la longue dureé, that is, a time

dimension of many centuries, since emergence of today’s nations

cannot be understood properly without taking the ethnic forebears

into account. In other words, the rise of nations needs to be

conceptualized within the larger phenomenon of ethnicity which

shaped them due to the fact that ethnic identities change more

slowly than is generally assumed. Once formed, they tend to be

exceptionally durable under normal vicissitudes of history (such as

37 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, pp. 21-22

migrations, invasions, intermerriages) and to persist over many

generations, even centuries. Ethno-symbolists reject the strict

continuism of the perenniaalists and accord due weight to the

transformations wrought by modernity. They also reject the claims of

the modernists bu arguing that there’s a greater measure of

continuity exist between traditional and modern, or agrarian and

industrial eras.

The first scholar, and one the founding-fathers of ethnosymbolist

branch is John Armstrog. His book ‘Nations and Nationalism’ was very

important of being the first study to cast a shadow of doubt on

modernist assumptions. His aim was to explore the emergence of the

intense group identification that today we term a ‘nation’ by

adopting what he calls an ‘extended temporal perspective’ that

reaches back to antiquity. He agrees with Anderson and Hobsbawm on

the grounds that, like other human identities, national identity was

an invention. The only disagreement he pointed was over the

antiquity of some inventions and the repertory of pre-existing group

characteristics that inventors were able to draw upon. “For

Armstong, the group identity called the nation is simply a modern

equivalent of pre-modern ethnic identity, which has existed all

through recorded history. Armstrong argues that thoroughout history,

the distinction between members of the ethnic community and

strangers has permeated every language and provided the basis for

durable ethnic group boundaries.”38 In this sense, contemporary

nationalism is nothing but the final stage of a larger cycle of

ethnic consciousness reaching back to the earliest forms of

collective organization. For him, the most important feature of this

38 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 167

consciousness is persistence. Thus, formation of ethnic identities

should be examined in a time dimension of many centuries. Only an

extended temporal perspective could reveal the durability of ethnic

attachments and the shifting importance of boundaries for human

identity. Emphasis on boundaries suggested Armstrong’s stance vis-a-

vis ethnic identities. Adopting the social interaction model, he

argued that groups tend to define themselves not by reference to

their own characteristics but by exclusion, that is, by comparison

to ‘strangers’. It followed that there can be no fixed character or

esensence for the group; the boundaries of identities vary according

to the perceptions of the individuals forming the group. Thus, it

makes more sense to focus on the boundary mechanisms that

distinguish a particular group from others instead of objective

group characteristics. Conceptualizing ethnic groups by exclusion

implies that there’s no definitional way of distinguishing ethnicity

from other types of collective identity, thus ethnic ties were often

regarded as overlap with religious or class loyalties. Armstrong

placed special emhasis on the durability and persistence of symbolic

boundary mechanisms. For him, myth, symbol, communication, and a

clauster of associated attitudal factors were usually more

persistent than purely material factors. One of the most important

of all these attitual factors for him is the ways of life and the

experiences associated with them. Two basically different ways of

life, the nomadic and the sedentary, were particularly important in

this context, because the myths and symbols they embody create two

sorts of identities based on incompatible principles. Thus, the

territorial principle and its peculiar nostalgia ultimately became

the predominant form in Europe, while the genealogicaal or pseudo-

genealogical principle has continued to prevail in most of the

Middle East. The second factor, religion, reinforced the basic

distinction. The two great universal religions, Islam and

Christianity, gave birth to different civilizations and the

myths/symbols associated with them shaped the formation of ethnic

identities in their own specific ways. The third factor is city.

Here, Armstrong stresses the diverse effects of the Mesopotomian

myth of the polity- what he calls mythomoteur- as a reflection of

heavenly rule. He argues that this myth was used as a vehicle for

incorporating city-state loyalties in a larger framework. For him,

this might constitute the earliest example of ‘myth transference for

political purposes’. Finally, Armstrong introduced the question of

language and assesses its impact on identity formation in the pre-

nationalist era. Contrary to the commonsense assumptions, Armstrong

concluded the significance of language for ethnic identity is

contingent in pre-modern eras, and its significance depended in the

long run on political and religious forces and allegiances. Despite

its exclusive focus on the medieval Europe and Middle Eastern

civilizations, Armstrong work offers a more comprehensive overview

of the process of ethnic identification than other comparable

studies in the field.

The second exponent of this approach, John Hutchinson is

important in the sense that he criticized classical modernist

theories of nationalism, especially of Hobsbawm, and John Breuilly

on the grounds that they regarded nationalism as a purely political

movement, thus underestimated the influence of ethnic roots of on

nationalist movements. Accordingly, Eric Hobsbawm had argued that

nationalism’s only interest fort he historian lay in its political

aspirations, and especially in its capacity for state-making. But,

for Hutchinson, such a usage of nationalism was reductionist and

restrictive. Making a differentiation between political and cultural

nationalism, he elegated cultural nationalism by reference to the

modernist objectives of the political one (to secure a

representative state for their community so that it might

participate as an equal in the developing cosmopolitan rationalist

civilisation) and to that of the the cultural nationalism which

perceives the state as an accidental, for the esence of a nation is

its distinctive civilisation, which is the product of its unique

history, culture and geographical profile. For cultural

nationalists, the nation is a primordial expression of the

individuality and the creative force of nature. Like families,

nations are natural solidarities; they evolve in the manner, so to

speak, of organic beings and living personalities. Hence the aim of

a cultural nationalism is integrative. “Hutchinson draws three

conclusions from his analysis of the Dynamics of cultural

nationalism. The first is the importance of historical memory in the

formation of nations. The second is that there are usually competing

definitions of the nation, and their competition is resolved by

trial and error during interaction with other communities. And the

third is the centrality of cultural symbols to group creation which

are only significant because of their power to convey an attachment

to a specific historical identity.”39

The most important exponent of and the leading scholar of the

ethno-symbolist approach is Anthony D. Smith who defined nation is a

named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths

39 Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, p. 178

and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy

and common legal rights and duties for all members. “Smith has

followed Weber by formulating a definition of the nation as a named

and self-defined community whose members cultivate common myths,

memories, symbols and values, possess and disseminate a distinctive

public culture, reside in and identify with a histrorical homeland,

and create and disseminate common laws and shared customs.” 40 Smith

believed that there were some pre-existing identities that helped

the nation to be formed and created the rules of contemporar

nations. Basing his his approach on a critique on modernist

paradigm, “Smith does not deny that ethnicity, as an independent

variable, can be abused and manipulated. But he stresses that it can

scarcely be created. Therefore, elites can distort and dramatically

alter existing myths. Yet, it is questionable whether, and how far,

they can ‘invent’ them. In their pristine version, instrumentalists

also faild to recognise that key activists in the mobilised groups

may simply be interested in the maintenance of their cultural

heritage, rather than gaining material goals. There may well be no

cynical aspirations there, but a sincere desire to preserve

something from the past, if not merely a positive self-image.”41

Smith conceptualized the meaning of the complex nature of nation by

relying on three basic questions: First, who is the nation? What are

the ethnic bases and models of modern nations? Why did these

particular nations emerge? Second, why and how does the nation

emerge? That is, what are the general causes and mechanisms that set

40 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicityin the Formation of Nations, p. 3

41 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, p. 17

in motion the process of nation-formation from varying ethnic ties

and memories? Third, when and where did the nations arise? For

Smith, the answer to the first question should be sought in earlier

ethnic communities – in his terms ‘ethnies’- since pre-modern

identities and legacies form the bedrock of many contemporary

nations. For him there’re six main attributes for such communities:

a collective proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared

historical memories, one or more differentiating elements of a

common culture, and association with a specific homeland, a sense of

solidarity for significant sectors of the population. These

attributes, for Smith, have some degree of historical and cultural

content; yet, they also have a strong subjective component. This

suggests, contrary to the rhetoric of nationalist ideologies, that

the ‘ethnie’ is anything but promordial. Smith identified two main

patterns of ethnie-formation: coalascence and division. Coalascense

meant coming together of separate units, by which in turn can be

broken down into process of amalgamation of separate units such as

city-states and absorption of one unit by another as in the

assimilation of regions. Division meant subdivision through fission

as with secterian schism or through proliferation, when a part of

the ethnic community leaves it to form a new unit. Smith argues

that, once formed, ethnies are durable. He admits that there are

certain events that bring about profound changes in cultural

contents of ethnic identities such as wars, conquests, enslavement,

influx of immigrants and eligious conversion. Neverthless, what

really mattered is how far these changes reflect on and disrupt the

sense of cultural continuity that binds successive generations

together. For Smith, even the most radical changes reflect on and

disrupt the sense of continuity and common ethnicity due to the

existence of many external forces that help to crystallize ethnic

identities and ensure their persistence over long periods. Basing

his theory above these assumptions, Smith specifies the main

mechanisms of ethnic self-renewal. Through ‘religious reform’,

groups who fell prey to religious conservatism tried to compensate

to introduce reforms by turning to other forms of self-renewal.

Through cultural borrowing, in the sense of controlled contact and

selective cultural exchange between different communities, and

through popular participation, the popular movements for greater

participation in the political system saved many ethnies from

withering away by generating a missionary zeal among the

participants of these movements. The final mechanism of ethnic self-

renewal identified by Smith is myth of ethnic election. According to

Smith, ethnies that lack such myths tended to be so absorbed by

other after losing their independence. Together, these four

mechanisms ensure the survival of certain ethnic communities accross

the centuries despite changes in their demographic composition and

cultural contents. These mechanisms also led to the gradual

formation of what Smith terms ‘ethnic cores’ which would form the

basis of states and kingdoms in later periods. Locating the ethnic

cores helped us a great deal to answer the question ‘who is the

nation?’ Smith observes that most latterday nations are constructed

around a dominant ethnie, which annexed or attracted other ethnic

communuties into the state it founded and to which it gave a name

and a cultural character. Accordingly, the first nations were formed

on the basis of ethnic cores. Being powerful and culturally

influential, these nations provided models for subsequent cases of

nation-formation, and even when there were no ethnic antecedents,

the need to fabricate a coherent mythology and symbolism became

everywhere paramount to ensure national survival and unity. The

existence of pre-modern ethnic ties helps us to determine which

units of the population are likely to become nations, but it does

not tell us why and how this transformation comes about. To answer

the second question, that is, ‘why and how does nation emerge?’,

Smith identified two types of ethnic communiy, the ‘lateral’

(aristocratic) and the vertical’ (demotic) noting that these two

types gave birth to different patterns of nations. Accordingly,

lateral ethnies were generally composed of aristocrats and higher

clergy, though in some cases they might also include bureaucrats,

high military officials and merchants. He called them ‘lateral’

because these ethnies were at once socially confined to the upper

strata and geographically spread out to form close links with the

upper echelons of neighbouring lateral ethnies. As a result, their

borders were ragged, but they lacked social depth, and their often

marked sense of common ethnicity was bound up with esprit de corps

as a high stratum and ruling class. On the contrary, vertical

ethnies were more compact and popular, and their culture was

diffused to other sections of the population as well. Social

cleavages were not underpinned by cultural differences; rather, a

distinctive historical culture helped to unite different classes

around a common heritage and traditions, especially when the latter

were under threat was from outside. As a result, ethnic bond was

more intense and exlusive, and the barriers to admission were much

higher. These two types of ethnic communities followed different

trajectories in the process of becoming a nation. Smith calls the

first, lateral, route ‘bureaucratic incorporation’. The survival of

aristocratic ethnic communities depended to a large extent on their

capacity to incorporate oter strata of the population within their

cultural orbit. This was most successfully realized in Western

Europe where the dominant ethnie was able o incorporate the middle

classes and peripheral regions into the elite culture. According to

Smith, the primary vehicle in this process was the newly emerging

bureaucratic state. Through a series of revolutions in the

administrative, economic and cultural spheres, the state was able to

diffuse the dominant culture down to the society. The major

constituents of the administrative revolution were the extension of

citizenship rights, conscription, taxation and the build-up of an

infrastructure that linked distant parts of the realm. The second

route of nation-formation, what Smith calls ‘vernecular

mobilization’, set out from a vertical ethnie. The influence of the

bureaucratic state was no more indirect in this case mainly because

vertical ethnies were usually subject communities. Here, the key

mechanism of ethnic persistence was organized religion. It was

through myths of chosenness, sacred texts and scripts, and the

prestige of the clergy that the survival of communal traditions were

ensured. But democratic communities had problems of their own, which

surfaced at the initial stages of the process of nation-formation.

To start with, ethnic culture usually overlapped with the wider

circle of religious culture and loyalty, and there was no internal

coercive agency to break the mould. Moreover, the members of the

community simply assumed that they have already constitued a nation,

albeit one without a political roof. Under these circumstances, the

primary task of the secular intelligentsia was to alter the basic

relationship between ethnicity and religion. In other words, the

community of the faithful had to be distinguished from the community

of historic culture, which would pave the way for the greatest myth

of ‘golden age’. Smith identified three different orientations among

the intellectuals confronted with this dilemma: a conscious,

modernizing return to tradition (traditionalism); a messianic desire

to assimilate to Western modernity (assimilation or modernism); and

a more defensive attempt to sytnthesize elements of the tradition

with aspects of Western modernity, hence to revive a pristine

community modelled on a former golden age. In Smith’s ethnosymbolist

approach “intellectuals act as chroniclers of the ethnic past,

elaborating those memories which can link the modern nation back to

its golden age. Philologists, archeologists, poets, literati and,

most of all, historians are the key players in the ethnonational

game. Leoussi adds visual artists, inspired by demotic, historical

and ethnocultural themes. If one extends the category of

intellectuals to include conveyor of ideas rather than mere

producers of ideas, one can see the key role in painters, musicians,

sculptors, phptpgraphers, novelists, play-writers, actors, film

diectors, and television producers in establishing a connection

between the present times and a national golden age. Smith

recognises their strategic use of national symbols, as perhaps even

more potent than nationalist principles’ and ideology. Through them,

the imagined community becomes vividly popular, emotionally awakened

and periodically celebrated.” 42 Intellectuals were not members of a

particular class, nor they were sharing a specific high culture. As

initiators of nationalism, they envisioned, defined, codified and

42 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 22

set the boundaries of the nation. Nationalist intellectuals must

have been literate, but there was no need for a particular

sophistication; what mattered was their capacity to express and

combine a credible national identity, which led people to ask how

far the intellectuals can influence, mobilise and instrumentalise

public opinion. In this sense, a second social category, the

intelligentsia or the professionals gained importance. Smith

identified this category as a group of indivduals exposed to some

form of superior education. Not strictly a class but rather a social

category, they had not merely the will and inclination, but also

especially the power and capacity to apply and disseminate the ideas

produced by the intellectuals. Hence this stratum played an even

more crucial role in the success of nationalist movements. Once the

intelligentsia began to challange officialdom by exploiting its

strategic position, it became a key protagonist of expanding mass

movements. On the other hand, the intellectuals were seen by

ethnosymbolists as ‘bridges’ between past and present, between

ethnic myths and their modern translation into viable, coherent

identities and political programmes. The main task of an ethnic

intelligentsia was to mobilize a formerly passive community into

forming a nation around the new vernecular historical culture it has

rediscovered. In each case, they had to provide new communal self-

definitions and goals, construct maps and moralities out of a living

ethnic past. This could be done in two ways: by a return to nature

and its poetic spaces, which constitute the historic home of the

people and the repository of their memories; and by a cult of golden

ages. These two methods were frequently used by the educator-

inellectuals to promote a national revival. The final question of

Smith was ‘when and where did the nation arise?’ It is at this point

that nationalism entered the political arena. He began by noting

that the term ‘nationalism’ has been used in different ways: “First;

the whole process of forming and maintaining nations; second, a

consciousness of belonging to the naion; third, a languag and

symbolism of the nation; fourth, an ideology (including a cultural

doctrine of nations); and fifth, a social and a political movement

to achieve the goals of the nation and realize the national will.”43

Smith stressed the fourth and the fifth meanings in his own

definition. Hence, his nationalism was an ideological movement for

attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of

a population deemed by some of its members to constitue an actual or

potential nation. The key terms in this definition were autonomy-

referring the idea of self-determination and the collective effort

to realize the true, authentic, national will, unity- unificiation

of the national territory and the gathering together of all

nationals within the homeland as well as brotherhood of all

nationals in the nation - and identity- sameness. Smith has accepted

in part Gellner’s focus on nationalism as replacing the social

cohesion of pre-modern societies, but did not share his radical

modernism, or his dogmatic stress on the relationship between

industrialism and socio-cultural homogenisation. Contrary to

Gellner’s determinism, he has argued that industrialisation is not a

prerequisite for nationalism, as there are instances of nationalist

movements emerging well before the latter’s advent. Gellner himself

acknowledged the Grek and Kurdish experiences, the latter as a case

where ‘a modern nationalism might appear in a region in which tribal

43 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 181 in Anthony D. Smith,National Identity, p. 72

organisation survives, even though Kurdish nationalism was mostly

born as a reaction against the imposition of the Turkish state’s

secular nationalism. Moreover, Gellner’s evolutionism postulates a

view of mankind advancing through a series of evolutionary stages

leading to socio-political paradigm shifts. This Grand-theory is too

deterministic and associated with over-ambitious neo-positivist

paradigms. Smith then moves on to the types of nationalism. Drawing

on Kohn’s philosophical distinction between a more rational and a

more organiz version of nationalist ideology, he identifies two

kinds of nationalism: territorial and ethnic nationalisms (based on

Western, civic territorial, and Eastern, ethnic-genealogical models

of the nation respectively). On this basis, he consructs a

provisional typology of nationalisms, taking into account the

overall situation in which the movements find themselves before and

after independence. He divides territorial nationalisms into two

kinds: Pre-independence and post-independence movements. Pre-

independence movements are based on a civic model of the nation will

first seek to eject foreign rulers, then establish a new state-

nation on the old colonial territory. These are ‘anti-colonial’

nationalisms. Post-independence movements are based on a civic model

of the nation will try to bring together often disparate ethnic

populations and integrate them into a new political community

replacing the old colonial state: these are integration movements.

In the same way, Smith divides ethnic nationalisms into two same

kinds: pre-independence and post-independence movements. The former

are based on an ethnic/genealogical model of the nation will seek

tos ecede from a larger political unit and set up a new ethno-

nation’ in its place: these are ‘secession’ and ‘diaspora’

nationalisms. Post-independence movements are based on an

ethnic/genealogical model of the nation will seek to expand by

including ethnic kinsmen outside the present boundaries and

establish a much larger ethno-nation through the union of culturally

and ethnically similar states. These are irridentist and pan-

nationalisms.

“Has Smith achieved a universal account of ethnic conflict and

nationalism? There remain two major obstacles to a universal

application of ethnosymbolism: its uncertain conceptual basis,

particularly in Smith’s rather too inclusive definiton of the

nation: and its limited engagement with the problem of distortion of

ethnic myths by political elites.”44 Before higlighting the general

criticisms to ethnosymbolist accounts of nationalism, some other

scholars, who emphasize the paradoxical nature of the Eastern-type

of nationalisms which are both hostile to and imitative of their

Western ‘models’, are worth to be mendioned.

The first is John Plamenatz. Smith’s model was based on a pattern

of ideological construction in which the external forces only set in

motion a process of cultural reawakening and homogenisation whose

motive force thus has been the reformist and revivalist current.

Hence this aspect of Smith’s theory remained underdeveloped in the

sense that it missed relation to the other, the architect of the

scientific state. This is a key factor, since all the indigenous

reactions mentioned by Smith, including reformism, stem from this

initial impact. Therefore, Smith says little about the major

elements of reformism and revivalism. The approach of nationalism

developed by Plamenatz is more relevant in this sense. He

44 Athena S. Leoussi& Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, p. 26

distinguises Western nationalism from the oriental type, but he does

not limit oriental types of nationalism to a restricted geographical

area. He rather refers to nationalities and civilisations whose

common point is lack of the enough resources to put up resistance to

Western resistance domination in the imperial colonial form. For

him, this domination was the first and most significant cultural

phenomenon which was regarded by these civlisations as a threat

undermining the very structure. “Drawn gradually, as a result of the

diffusion among them Western ideas and practices, into a

civilisation alien to them, they have had to re-equip themselves

culturally, to transform themselves. In their efforts to assert

themselves as equals in a civilization not of their own making, they

have had to, as it were, make themselves anew, to create national

identities for themselves.”45 Plamenatz suggests that oriental

nationalism is a kind of imitative of the West and hostile to this

model it imitates. This hostility and paradoxical imitative nature

stems from twofold rejection: rejection of the alien dominator and

intruder who is neverthless to be surpassed by its own standards,

and rejection of the ancestral ways which are seen as obstacles to

progress and yet also prouded of as representatives of identity.

This paradoxical imitation would also influence the micro-

nationalisms and ethno-religious nationalisms especially in Middle

East, in post cold war period.

Another scholar who emphasized the relevance of the above

mentioned paradoxical nationalisms is Liah Greenfeld. Greenfeld

regarded nationalism as a phenomenon resulting from the

45 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 30, in John Plamenatz, Two Types of Nationalism, in Eugene Kamenka (ed.), Nationalism: the Nature and Evolution of an Idea, London: Edward Arnold, 1973, p.30.

modernisation of the European societies of orders and of its

contradictions in the context of growing demands for social mobility

from the sixteenth century onwards. She advocated that nationalism

was related to preoccupation with status, and this assumption gave

rise to a very stimulating theory of nationalism. For Greenfeld,

nationalism was born in England in sixteenth century in the garb of

an individualistic civic nationalism, and in East, it developed in

reaction to those from the West under the influence of a

psychological factor, ressentiment, the image of a psychological state

resulting from the suppressed feelings of existential envy and the

impossibility of satisfying these feelings. Applying the

‘ressentiment’ to the cases of France and Germany, Greenfeld has

come to the conclusion that the most important result of the

ressentiment-led nationalism laid in the dependence that was

generated vis-a-vis the ‘model’ on the basis of a solid ‘Golden

Age’.

The last scholar who saw nationalism as a derivative and

selective discourse is Partha Chatterjee. Adopting a critical

approach to the ideology of nationalism, he advocated that the

failure to create identities independent from the dominant

categories of the West stems from the aim of nationalists to

establish a free nation state in the concert of nations. Like any

scientific state, Chatterjee’s colonial state asserted the essential

cultural differentation between East and West and superiority and

domination of the latter. “Nationalist thought at its moment of

departure formulates the following characteristics answer: it

asserts that the superiority of the West lies in the materiality of

its culture, exemplified by its science, technology and love of

progress. But East is superior in the spiritual aspect of culture.”46

In such a situation, Chatterjee argues, Eastern societies replied,

though in a derivative way, by cultural equipment of the society in

such a way to create n invented tradition of Golden Age(s). It was

derivative because it depended on the categories of Western

Orientalism. “Nationalist thought accepts and adopts the same

essentialist conception based on the distinction between the East

and West, the same typology created by a transcendent studying

subject, and hence the same objectifying procedures of knowledge

constructed in the post-Enlightement age of Western science.”47

Lastly, he argued that nationalism was an invented ideology and a

political movement by an intelligentsia suffering from the West’s

socio-cultural domination to enable its members to find a revised

and reinterpreted tradition of the Western-type standards. “This is

also an explanation of the route that followed the reformist turned

revivalist in Smith’s model: by interpreting the ancestral tradition

in accordance with the cultural canons of the invader-here is the

criterion of the selective process mentioned by Chatterjee-, the

reformists could adopt it to new, modern functions of the Scientific

State and raise its prestige, bringing it on a parity with the

dominant culture, while at the same time preserving the essence of

this tradition.”48

Altough the reformist scholars provided grounds of what is

nationalism ‘against’, ethnosymbolist approach has also some

46 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 34: ibid: p. 51

47 Chatterjee, P. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial world: A Derivative Discourse?, p. 121

48 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 34

deficiencies inherent almost in all scholars’ conceptualizations of

nationalism. First of all, this approach has too fragile conceptual

foundations. Somewhat unclearly, Smith defines the nation as a named

human population occupying a historic territory, and sharing myths,

memories, a single public culture, and common rights and duties for

all members. The inclusion of ‘common rights and duties’ in the

definiton seems to refer to citizenship rights, which can only be

fully granted by the existence of a state or autonomous region.

Secondly, ethnosymbolism faces difficulty in explaining the

variability of nationalist movements and their different

motivations. Failing this task, ethnosymbolism risks remaining a

descriptive endeavour. Moreover, like primordialism, ethnosymbolism

was regarded as a source of scholarly romanticism because of its

stress on the role of intellectuals in the passage from ethnie to

nation. In today’s nationalisms, which abuse the fruits of

globalisation, nations rarely depend on intellectuals to articulate

their identities and aspirations. Mass media through which they

obtain direct access to their constituencies, unless, as sometimes

happens, it uses terrorism as a reminder of its existence and goals.

Thus a pure ethnosymbolic approach cannot do justice to the

compelxities of particular national circumstances. It is also

limited in its power to explain how ethnic conflicts emerge and how

nations are mobilised. Finally, ethnosymbolism has not addressed the

wider context, nor the precipitates, nor the different outcomes of

various ways of mobilising ethnic myths and symbols. So far,

ethnosymbolism has largerly criticized for its disregard of the

changes in and adaptations of these myths to the goals of elites.

Furthermore, by dismissing outrigt the role of elite manipulation in

the emational appeal of nationalism, ethnosymbolism has been accused

of leaving out of consideration the dynamics of power. Elites can,

to a certain extent, engage in myth production, what most often

appears to be the case in that they deform and distort existingh

myths beyond recognition. But, in modern times, the control of mass

media is probably the essential precondition for such a change.

Among other things, this limit rules out the manipulative capacity

of non-state actors. The implication is twofold: First, state and

statless nationalisms should be treated separately, because the

latter cannot enjoy the monopoly of information and exert

overwhelming control of the media. Second, in the radio-television

age the role of the intellectuals remains more testimonial and

occasional, as the state can easily dispense of their contribution.

While ethno-symbolist approach has been shown to be applicable and

adaptable to many different cases. It is said to be able to explain

common features lying at the basis of a great deal of sociopolitical

developments, it remains conceptually opaque and politically un-

nuanced.

End of the cold war and the political-ideological bipolarity of

world politics opened a new era in world politics in many senses.

“With the fall of Berlin wall, the sudden end of the ideological and

military struggle between the socialist camp and the free world

returned the national question to the forefront of the European

continent.”49 In line with the transformation in social sciences,

and with the grow of cultural studies, new theories on nationalism

emerged in the pos-cold war period. The pioneering studies of this

era have been those of Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams. These

49 Alain Dieckhoff & Christophe Jaffrelot, Revisiting Nationalism: Theories and Processes, p. 2

new theories focused on questions of youth cultures, mass media,

gender, race, popular memory and the writing of history, and they

reflected and were reflected by the globalizing world developments

such as women’s rights, migration and writing of alternative

histories which deny the homogeneity of natural cultures as well as

advocate the plurality of individual identity beyond the natiobal

identity. In these studies, culture was not regarded as a coherent

and harmonious whole, but as a deeply contested concept whose

meaning is continually negotiated, revised and reinterpreted. In

this sense, culture was not divorced from social fragmentation,

class divisions, discrimination on the basis of gender and

ethnicity, and relations of power: culture was more often not what

people share, but what they choose to fight over. These developments

affected nationalism first by rescuing it from Eurecentric nature,

which was inherent in traditional approaches to nationalism, and

placing greater emphasis on international and external, and even to

intermestic, that is both international and domestic, forces, and

second by increasing the interaction between studies on nationalism

and developing fields such as migration, race, multiculturalism,

diasporas, ethno-religious secterianism etc. Moreover, in the

aftermath os September 11, like many fields of research in

international relations, studies on nationalism were influenced by

the criticial, constructivist and post-modern approaches which gave

importance to micro-level (individualistic) and supra-national hence

intermestic, levels of analysis rather than state-level analysis and

which all intermingled such studies mainly with security studies

especially in the Middle Eastern context. These items will be

evaluated in detail in the following chapters, yet, these

developments have revealed the conceptualization of

interdisciplinary nature of nationalism as a subject of

investigation. Even the Marxist and neo-Marxist scholars who based

their theories mainly on economic analyses and on core-periphery

relations, tried to reformulate their theories by giving place to

experiences of different actors such as women, the experiences post-

colonial societiesand everyday dimension of nationalism as well as

postmodern analyses. Regarding the interdisciplinary nature of the

study of nationalism, scholars of post 1980 period no longer

confined themselves o traditional disciplines and incorporated

insights developed in such areas as race relations theory, discourse

analysis, postcolonial and women studies are of importance. For

example, new approaches to nationalism explored the contribution of

women into several dimensions of nationalist projects, particularly

their role in the biological, ideological and symbolic reproduction

of nationalism. Hence, more subjective inputs have begun to gain

more importance in new studies on nationalism. Additionally,

advocating the reproduction of nationalism, new approaches

criticised the classical approaches’ essentialism based on their

tendency to associate nationalism with those who struggle to create

new states or with extreme right-wing politics, a tendency to see

nationalism as the property of peripheral states which have not

completed their nation-building process yet, and to exclude others,

namely established nation states, from this property. “There are two

distinguishing features of these studies: First, they are all

interdisciplinary in nature, not only in the sense of crossing the

boundaries separating class disciplines but also in their openness

to new fields such as cultural studies, global anthropology, gender

and sexuality, new social movements, diaspora and migration studies,

and so on. Second, they all give pride of place to issues and

questions that have received scant attention in earlier, more

mainstream, studies.”50

Postmodernist analysis on nationalism had two important features:

First is the production and reproduction of natonal identities

through popular culture. “This not only requires focusing on

communication Technologies and popular genres hitherto excluded from

the academic agenda, but also ‘deconstructing’ the meanings and

values promoted through these technologies –hence, unravelling the

power relations that lie behind them.”51 Accordingly, the visual

technologies of television and popular culturral products such as

boks and newspapers reconstructed the hegemonic discourses of

nationalism. In this sense, it is accepted that identities are never

fixed or essential. Rather, they are a positioning. History and the

social context in which individual defines and redefines

himself/herself changes our conception of ourselves. In this

definiton and redefinition, our concept of ‘other’ is also important

because identity is also the relationship between oneself and the

other. This decentralization of identity is mainly related with the

forces of globalization. The products of the Westphalian system,

nation states, and national identities are gradually eroded by the

forces of globalization which increase the interdependence of the

cultures and political and economic governance systems on the one

hand while leading to the formation of strong local identities on

the other. Another theme explored by postmodernist accounts of

nationalism is the importance of the ‘individual’ in the framework50 Umut Ozkirimli, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement, p. 51

51 Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, A Critical Introduction, p. 196

of nationalism, which emphasizes the role of hybrid people on the

national margins, that is foreign workers, immigrants, and ethnic

minorities, and maybe ethno-religious identities, which contast the

domination constructions of the nation by producing their own

counter-narratives. These counter-narratives, he argues, disturb the

ideological manoeuvres through which imagined communities are given

essentialist identities. Regarding the multiple dimension of

individual’s identitiy changed the conceptions of identity in a way

that “we have come to realize that identities are social and

political constructs. They are highly selective, inscriptive rather

than descriptive, and serve particular interests and ideological

positions.”52 Hence identities can no longer be assigned the status

of a natural object. In short, forces of globalization created a new

sense of belonging and identity formation while on the other hand

creating local counterparts, which all threatened the classical

approaches to both nation-building, and the ideology of nationalism.

52 Umut Ozkirimli, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement, p. 55 in Gillis J.R, Memory and Identity: The history of a Relationship, p. 4