Nationalism & Nation State

Question 1

Gellner and Hechter defining nationalism

Answer 1

• Gellner: Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the national unit should be congruent
• In other words, governance should match national identity
• Hechter: Collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit
• In other words, align political/geographic boundaries with the cultural/territorial boundaries of the people

Question 2

Hechter’s Types of Nationalism

Answer 2

1. Nation-Building
2. Unification
3. Peripheral
4. Irredentist
   - Not all examples can easily be placed into one of these types

Question 3

Two views on what a nation is

Answer 3

Two common answers

1. Material: Concrete political community with clear boundaries and defining characteristics
   This is most popular ideas of nations
2. Ideal: Imagined [political] community
   This is prevalent among scholars

Question 4

Anderson’s “Imagined Community”

Answer 4

• Claims that nations are first and foremost ideal concepts that people recognize
• Uses “imagined” because we believe we’re part of the same community even if we live thousands of kilometres apart and never meet or communicate
• Nations are (historically) very new since communities were previously based on who you knew and interacted with
• Now, we share collective identities with strangers

Question 5

How were “imagined communities” formed?

Answer 5

1. According to Anderson, Print Capitalism
   - Printing press & mass education created mass market for printed material
   - Print media presents representation that shape understandings and depict the nation as real and important which causes people to start recognizing and valuing the nation
   - Related to Said’s “Orientalism”
2. According to Gellner, Capitalism
   - Emphasizes capitalism as creating a functional need for a linguistically homogenous population which leads to assimilationist nation-building efforts
3. According to Weber, States
   - The State has interests in nation-building since loyalty facilitates conscription and taxation

Question 6

Weber’s “Peasants into Frenchmen” (1976)

Answer 6

• Until the late 19th/early 20th century, collective identity was very local in France
• The French State created the French nation through various nation-building techniques, including military conscription, transportation, government presence.
• Most important was education. This helped in three key ways:

1. Language: Ideas of nations require some commonality to define the community and language is one of the most important underpinnings of national identity. 50 years of free and compulsory education helped create a French speaking population (the key being expansion of female education
2. Literacy: Allowed people to gain access to print media like national newspapers and famous novels emphasizing the important of the French nation (Bruno’s “Tour de France”)
3. Socialization: Teaching kids they’re french through ideas of patriotism and maps depicting the “nation” to make it more concrete

Question 7

Bruno’s “Tour de France”

Answer 7

• Famous novel used in schools in France until the 1950s
• Millions of copies sold
• Emphasizing the importance of homeland (France) through the story of two young boys traveling together

Question 8

Critiques of Weber’s “Peasants into Frenchmen”

Answer 8

1. Additional factors
   Weber’s explanation ignores factors that had independent effects or allowed the state to build a nation
   a. History: long history of relatively centralized state, few regions with strong autonomy
   b. Culture: relative cultural homogeneity like religion and language, at least among the elite
   c. French Revolution: removed regional elites and centralized the state
   d. Timing: preceded processes strengthening regional autonomy
2. Violence
   Weber doesn’t acknowledge the violence used to create the French nation
   a. Conquest & Assimilation: French state forcibly integrated regions into centralized state and revolts were put down
   b. Symbolic Exclusion: building an in-group involves vilannizing an out-group, in this case Jews
   c. National cleansing: extreme, states eliminating undesirable for national homogeneity

Question 9

Canada’s Nationalism and its pros and cons

Answer 9

• Canada is poorly placed for national homogeneity due to many divisions (linguistic, Indigeneity, immigrant, racial, religious)
• Multiculturalism is promoted as Canada’s nationalism to accommodate cultural needs of diverse communities
• Positive: Respectful of difference, inclusive and non-discriminatory
• Negative: Pays lipservice to divsersity while alowing white anglophones to dominate
  Indigenous: disregarding special status

Question 10

The Nation-State

Answer 10

• Type of polity which became dominant over past 200 years
• In contrast to empires, city-states…suggests that the population ruled by a state is a unified political community and the state rules in the name of the nation
• More of a goal than reality since often contentions over what the national community is

Question 11

Weberian Definition of The State

Answer 11

Political organizations with a monopoly of legitimate use of force within a territory

Three main concepts in this definition:
– (1) formal political organizations
– (2) monopoly of legitimate force
– (3) territoriality

Question 12

Limits to Statehood

Answer 12

• Many states are far from the ideal (NA, Western Europe, Japan coming closest) since they lack a monopoly of force, don’t control territories, not controlled by bureaucratic organizations
• There are Limited States which have broken down and individuals compete for state control (Somalia)
• In other places, regions have limited state presence (Northern Canada)

Question 13

Milibrand’s 6 components of the State

Answer 13

Milibrand points to six key components of the state that offer greater insight into what the state is:
* Government: Leaders of the state
* Administration: Diverse organizations that run the state, i.e. the bureaucracy
* Military and Police: Maintain order, fight wars
* Judiciary: Interpret and enforce laws
* Subcentral Gov.: “the antennae or tentacles” of the central gov. and administration
* Legislature: In democracies, people who make laws are part of the state

Question 14

Two main focuses when studying the state in political sociology

Answer 14

• The Effects of States: Shape a great number of social processes
• The Determinants of States: Consider factors promoting the rise and transformation of states