W5C3: nationalism & minorities Flashcards
Nationalism:
“an ideology which holds that cultural boundaries should be congruent with political boundaries; that is to say, that the state ought to contain one people “of the same kind”’ (Eriksen 2023: 287).”
Every state should be a nation state, everyone in Japan should be Japanese
Nationalism tends to appear as a traditionalist ideology, glorifying a presumably ancient cultural tradition. But, nationalism does not predate modern civilisation. Quite modern, French Enlightenment and German Romanticism
Gellner on nationalism
European nationalism emerged as a response to industrialisation and people’s
disengagement from ‘primordialities’ like kin, religion and local communities.
- Industrialisation entailed a greater geographical mobility, and made people participate in social systems of a much larger scale than they had known earlier. Gellner largely sees it as a functional replacement of older ideologies and principles of social organisation.
- A fundamental difference between kinship ideology and nationalism is the fact that the latter postulates the existence of an abstract community; that is, as a nationalist or patriot, one is loyal to a legislative system and a state which ostensibly represents one’s ‘people’, not to individuals one knows personally.
Anderson, imagined communities:
Feels like a community, but there is no way to know everybody. Therefore an ‘imagined’ community
- Print-capitalism: the very fact that there is a print that allows you to spread news/images around the country. Helps with the imagination of the community/ ‘At a cultural level, print media and standardised education imply a certain homogenisation of representations’ (Eriksen 2023: 290). Standardisation of language and worldview.
- Image maps: thinking about our countries in the imagined borders
- Language: shared language, promoted intentionally and unintentionally
- Museums: history
- Census: counting people etc.
Nationalism is a functional ideology
Nationalism is a functional ideology for the state in that it creates loyalty and facilitates large-scale operations, and it is functional for the individual in that it replaces obsolete foci for identification and socialisation, notably the family. The nation may be seen as a metaphoric kin group. People become citizens through processes of modernisation.
Invented traditions (Hobsbawm)
Shared past is also in a way invented. People have an interest in inventing traditions
People have at some point constructed it, telling others they’ve been doing it for years.
Long-distance nationalism:
nationalised feelings don’t just reside within states, but also in diaspora for example.
Nation state, definition:
‘Above all, the nation-state is based on nationalist ideology. […]
Further the nation-state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence,
[a monopoly on] the enforcement of law and order,
and [a monopoly on] the collection of taxes.
It has a bureaucratic administration
and written legislation which covers all citizens,
and it has -at least ideally- a uniform educational system and a shared labour market’
(Eriksen 2023: 291)
There is a connection between an ideology of shared descent, language or religion and a state apparatus
Nation building and homogenisation
Nation-building entails cultural homogenisation through shared legislation, official language, educational institutions and a common labour market.
Minority issues are the trueborn child of the modern state, where ambitions to standardize and unify are greater than other large scale political entities. Ethnic plurality was less of an issue in earlier state formations
Groups that do not fit easily in nation-states:
- Failed consumers (Bauman)
- Ethnic minorities
- Indigenous groups
- Refugees
Failed consumers (bauman):
- “citizenship is increasingly defined in terms of consumption rather than democratic participation“ (Jaffe & De Koning 2016: 87). Implies successful consumers as well
- ‘Being recognized as a “good citizen” is often implicitly premised on an individual’s capacity to be a consumer (rather than, for instance, an individual’s role as a labourer, soldier or parent). Example of ‘buy American’
- Failed consumers ‘are people with no market value; they are the uncommoditized men and women, and their failure to obtain a status of proper commodity coincides with (indeed, stems from) their failure to engage in a fully fledged consumer activity. They are failed consumers –the walking symbols of the disasters that await fallen consumers, and of the ultimate destiny of anyone failing to acquit herself or himself of the consumers’ duties’ (Bauman 2007: 31-32).
ethnic minority, definition
‘An ethnic minority may be defined as a group which is politically non-dominant, and which exists as an ethnic category’ (Eriksen 2023: 294)
- This means that (1) minorities are created when the compass of the social system increases;
- (ii) minorities may often become majorities if they are able to delimit the system in new ways (set up a new state or political union;
- and (iii) ethnic groups which are minorities in one place may become majorities in another.
Three principal strategies in dealing with minorities:
- Segregation: minority group physically separated from the majority, often accompanied by the notion that members of the minority are inferior
- Assimilation: minority melts into the majority, can be enforced or chosen. More difficult when there is a phenotypical component
- Integration: compromise option, participation in the shared institutions of society, combined with the maintenance of group identity and some degree of cultural distrinitiveness
Most empirical cases of majority-minority relationships display a combination of these three
Emancipation: the case of construction of mosques:
‘Emancipation is a process whereby a minority group attempts to acquire a place within a nation-state, thereby developing a certain political consciousness. […] Muslims do not organize themselves because of the religious duties, but because they have goals that are related to their position in society. […] The acquisition of mosques is one of these contentious fields, related to ideas about how public space is conceived’ (Sunier 2005: 321).
Indigenous people / the fourth world and the nation state
‘Indigenous peoples all over the world are placed in a potentially conflictual relationship to the nation-state […], to the state as an institution. Their political project frequently consists of securing their survival as a culture-bearing group, but they rarely if ever wish to found their own state’ (Eriksen 2023: 282).
Either considered as not part of the nation state or especially part of it.
Definition of refugees:
‘a refugee is a person, who owning to a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and/or membership in a social group, is outside their country of origin and cannot safely return to it’ (Hepner 2020: 214).
