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Algunos errores ortograficos pero un analisis sobre el rol de la etnicidad y la religion en la formacion de las naciones
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Emely Medina-Rodríguez
Political Science 643
Zvi Gintelmen
The roles of ethnicity, religion and institutions in the formation of nations
The literature for our class has identifies different many factors that
contributed to the formation of nations. In this paper I will explore these factors
separately and how they interact with each other in the process of forming nations.
The main topics I identify in the literature are: the ethnic composition and heritage
of a national community, the religious components of a nation and the institutions
that compose the state. My intention in this essay is to construct a better
understanding of how institutions interplay with ethnicity and religion, as well as
how ethnics and religion interact with each other in the formation of national
identity and the process of creating a nation.
Ethnic community is identify by Smith (1991) as a community
distinguishable by very specific aspects, some of them being, “collective name, myth
of common ancestry, share historical memories, elements of common culture,
association with a specific homeland and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors
of the population”. He has also explained that ethnicity can be seen in three different
ways; as a primordial quality, as a situational tool or as instrumentally. As a
primordial, ethnicity is seen as natural, timeless or as an extension of human
biology. In the other hand ethnicity can be seen as situational, where being part of a
group is a matter of choice, perceptions, attitudes and sentiments. Looking at
ethnicity as situational also suggest it is mutable, individual and contextual. But
Smith also explains ethnicity can be use instrumentally, meaning that it can be used
for ulterior motives. Ethnicity is not seen as an essential good in its self, but as a
means to an end.
By this third definition of ethnicity we can start making connections with
parts of the literature on ethnicity and the formation of national identity. Ernest
Gellner argues that culture, national myths and the overall sense of nationalism is
essentially the general imposition of high culture on society. Thus using culture,
myths and symbols instrumentally for the retention or gaining of power in society.
Even thought Smith explains ethnicity is derivate from common culture Gellner
understands common culture to be an invention put together instrumentally for the
benefit of the dominant classes seeking to legitimized their power in society. The
literature identified how the dominant group used institutions for the creation and
legitimization of national identities.
Both Anderson and Smith identified particular ways ethnic identity is
reproduced among the national society. Anderson explains in more detail how
dominant classes and the bourgeoisie have used capitalist economy for the
maintenance of an ethnic identity. He argues that print-capitalism and the used of
vernacular language in printed materials helped evening the local customs creating
thus an mew imagined community. He further explicates the interactions between
“system of production and the productive relations (capitalism) and technology of
communications (print)” gave birth to “the bases for national consciousness” and
“helped to build the image of antiquity” ethnics and national identity are based.
In the other hand Smith explains the state apparatus helped the dominant
class create a “new and broader cultural identity for the population” (55). State
institutions such as the legal system, economic system, the educational system and
the militia helped in the formation of an ethnic community. This institutions
maintained the symbols, myths, values, traditions and memories which ethnic and
nationality is embedded. He explains this institutions are not the creators of an
ethnic identity but it does maintains the culture and helps maintain a unify polity. A
good example of how this institutions have done this can be seen in Andersons
discussion of print-capitalism. Education is another institution helping “to socialize
future generations to be citizens” of the new nation (Smith 1991). These institutions
provide uniformity between members of an ethnic or national community, thus
helping in the formation of nations.
But this discussion cannot be treated as including the total complexity of the
interplay between state institutions with ethnicity. Verdery gives us excellent
examples of the power the state has to determining who is included as part of the
nation and who is excluded. He explains how the state treats the multi-ethnical
problem is his exploration of the USSR. In his exploration of German minorities in
Rumania we can see how socialist policies undertone the ethnic identification of
German minorities. Institutional policies working in excluding and undermining the
German minorities made changes within the group, how they identify and their
solidarity to the German communities in Rumania.
Brubaker explains a different role on institutions in the formation of nations.
Here the institutions use ethnicity in a more practical manner, and not in its more
“spiritual” manner. He explicates that “the soviet institutions of territorial
nationhood and personal nationality constituted a pervasive system of social
classification, principle of vision and division of the social world, a standardized
scheme of social accounting, a interpretative grid for public discussion, a set of
boundary- markers, a legitimate form for public and private identities” (48). With
these examples we can see how permissive or restrictive state institutions can be in
the topic of ethnicity. We can see that ethnicity in these cases is contextual and
instrumental.
The literature also identifies religion as another important factor in the
creation of nations. We can see religion intertwined with ethnicity in the creation of
myths, memories and traditions of a nation. Also, we can see tradition being used as
an instrument to unify a polity even in ethnically diverse communities. The state has
also used religion instrumentally by acquiring an official religion or even using
national identity as a worshipable icon in itself. The interplays between religion,
ethnicity and state institutions are diverse and historically contextual, but
nevertheless they are used constantly in the creation and maintenance of a nation.
Religious icons and religious myths have been used by nations to set the
bases of their national and ethnic identity. Religious institutions have function as
keepers of traditions, they “record, preserves and transmit ethnic myths, memories
and symbols” through the cultural communities. This religion’s task intertwines
with ethnicity and national identity in some cases to the extent of near fusion. In
countries like Malaysia there is nearly no distinction between being Malay and being
Islamic (Nagata). But religion can be particular to an ethnic group as in the case of
Jews, or as in the Malay case religion merges with ethnicity as a consequence of
history and migration. In some cases this two factors are hard to separate because
one feeds the other.
The literature identifies two important ways the state has used religion for
the creation and maintenance of nations. First, religion is used by the state when is
included as an organized state religion. Secondly, the state uses of religious sense in
the formation of the national sentiment. Hayes argues that nationalism has been
used in a religious sense in times where popular religiosity has been tone-down by
the state or by the historical context. The socialist regimes in the USSR or the
modern industrial and post-industrial era are good examples. Ethnical and national
identity replaced peoples’ necessity to belief, gave people myths and a destiny or
collective faith in their nations (Hayes 165). In the other hand the state has used
organized religion to help “ensure the survival of certain ethnic communities across
the centuries, despite many changes in their social composition and cultural
content” (Smith 1991). An organized religion holds together the traditions, customs,
symbols and artifacts that can get lost through generations or migratory fluxes.
Together with the judicial and educational institutions, religion helps to give
continuity to nationality and helps maintain communal solidarity in the nation.
Although the literature for our class is a great compilation of examples and
theories about ethnicity, religion and the formation of nations, there is one
particular topic I did not saw being discuss in deep. That is how ethnicity and
religion manifests in cultures that have been colonized. What are the consequences
of the overlapping of indigenous cultures and fully formed nationalities. The
literature focuses mostly in the development of nations in Euro-Asia, even thought
there is discussion about ethnics and religion, I think it will be a good exercise to
also see how pre-Columbian societies in their process of forming a nation.