Nations and nationalism

Question 1

What is an ethnic group?

Answer 1

A group of people who share a common cultural and historical identity, typically linked to a belief in common descent

Question 2

What is a nation?

Answer 2

A group of people bound together by common culture or political community

Question 3

What is nationalism?

Answer 3

Idea that the political and national unit should be congruent i.e. nation-state

Question 4

What is ethno-nationalism?

Answer 4

where a nation is defined in terms of ethnicity

Question 5

What scholars described a nation as a cultural community?

Answer 5

Ernest Geller - Product of industrialisation

Anthony Smith - Historically embedded

Question 6

What scholars described a nation as a political community?

Answer 6

• Rousseau - French Revolution 1789 - liverte, egalite, fraternite
• Eric Hobsbawm - invented traditions
• Benedict Anderson - ‘The Imagine Community’

Question 7

What are the points of Gellner’s theory of nationalism as a social construct?

Answer 7

• Link between ethnicity and state
• Nationalism and sentiment
• Assimilation and integration

Question 8

What are the points on Anderson’s theory of nationalism as a social construct?

Answer 8

• Self-defined group
• Ideological construct
• Anomaly of modern society
• Fraught with tension
• Birth, death and war - e.g. pro natalist policies

Question 9

What are the points of Smith’s theory of nationalism as primordial loyalty?

Answer 9

• Premodern ethinic communities, which he called ‘ethnies’
• Historically embedded cultural communities
• Nationalism is the link of ‘ethnies’ to political sovereignty

Question 10

What are examples of cultural homogenisation?

Answer 10

• mass education
• print media
• standardisation of skills

Question 11

Features of creating the nation/nationalism

Answer 11

• Defined by its members (usually urban middle classes)
• State social engineering (banning of minority languages)
• solidarity between rich and poor

Question 12

What is liberal nationalism?

Answer 12

• National self-determination
• non-violation of state sovereignty
• Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points for peace

Question 13

What is conservative nationalism?

Answer 13

• Social cohesion
• public order
• patriotism
• ‘enemy without’
• must protect the socially cohesive unit in order to protect ourselves

Question 14

What is expansionist nationalism?

Answer 14

• aggressive
• militaristic
• hierarchial (one nation is better than the others

Question 15

What is anticolonial/postcolonial nationalism?

Answer 15

• struggle against colonial rule
• linked to socialism
• religious fundamentalism

Question 16

What are critiques of nationalism in terms of conflict?

Answer 16

• Ethnic cleansing
• Genocide
• Ireland/NI
• Israel//Palestine
• Can we have succesful multi-ethnic states?

Question 17

What are critiques of nationalism in terms of marxism and feminism?

Answer 17

• idea of national identity makes it less likely for class differences to be solved
• nation is gendered itself
• nation is a way of keeping particular gender constructs in place