Nationalism: a political principle which holds that the state (political formation) and the nation (people) should be congruent; i.e. maps directly on to the other, occupies the same space
- for every nation (people) there should be a state
- he was not satisfied by Weber's definition of the state (as having the monopoly on exercising violence), as plenty of quasi-legitimate violence is carried out: division of labour, institutions specifically concerned with keeping social order (wearing uniforms/badges of authority so that others may not impersonate these roles)
Examples of nations ruled by non-nationals
- Netherlands under Spanish rule in 17th century: Philip II of Spain, most famous Dutch paintings found in Madrid
- George I was from Bavaria, did not learn to spleak English, spoke broken Latin to his Parliament
Not all peoples have a state
- e.g. Australian aboriginal peoples, although they have been encapsulated
- not necessary for all peoples to have a state, because, say, they may be an acepahlous society and the position of ruler is foreign to their social structures
- EU as a super state
Most nation state boundaries were made after the 18th century
- before then, empires were the dominant force; Roman empire and Egypt as ancient states
- Roman empire spanned from N. Africa to Middle East, to Hadrian's Wall - eventually to break up for the Byzantine, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian (etc.) empires
Gellner cont'd - agro-literate empires
- when most of the population was illiterate, the only language used by the educated scribes was that of the ruling class, not rural dialects
- sheep, cows and pigs were kept on the farms by the common Anglo-Saxon man, whereas mutton, beef and pork were on the tables of the French/Norman aristocrats (this is how the names for these objects have come about)
- scribes were often clergymen; forbidden to marry so that they may be recruited without any familial ties
- loyalty to the ruler, not to the common person (esp. wife and children); similarly:
- all men that lived within the Chinese Imperial City, but the emperor, were castrated so that they could not reproduce Mandarins
- first man below Roman emperor in Britain, Nero, was his slave - also castrated
Eventually countries were formed by separating from empire powers after wars of liberation
- the nation-state causes nationalism when they go through an industrial revolution - bureaucratic nationalism and homogenisation
- transferable skills, general level of education achieved by exo-socialisation: the state makes a certain educational system compulsory - rather than children learning specialised knowledge and skills
- a state (power) cannot be effective if not all speak the same language - dictionaries direct the study of language vocabulary and use
- printing press allows people all over the nation to share ideas, esp. as it made written word cheaper to distribute and so leading to the growth in literacy
- standardised measuring units makes markets fair
- standard coinage and currency, with a representation of the ruler
Country bumpkins with their own language, or merely dialect, move to the industrialised towns in search of work and often found it difficult to communicate in the town
- so they must learn the local language
- but their dialect is kept alive in folk songs: nostalgic for the rural towns they had come from and made miserable by the conditions of the new town:
-- solidarity: banding together of people in the same situation, but not necessarily of the same ethnicity, tho may include folk from neighbouring rural backgrounds
-- nationalism - some aggrevaion towards the oppression by the ruling class
Criticisms of Gellner's theory
- model is too materialist and mechanical - too simple?
-- could be credited to him being an anti-communist and an expert on communism?
- inflexible - remove one component and the theory is defied
- people are not fully mobile: must cosider social constrictions (bonds and ties), wealth and opportunity restrictions as factors
- Greece - disparate communities came together without Greece going through an industrial revolution
-- justification for conscription is to turn men into Greeks, not preparation for conflict
- might nationalism have been a catalyst to industrialisation instead?
- Anthony Smith - Gellner's point was not that there weren't culture clusters that rose to nationalism but the congruence of nation and state
- Connor - patriotism vs nationalism, similar but difference should be noted; ethnonationalism
- 'ethnicity' was not a alive as a concept during the time that Gellner speaks of (postcolonialisation era) but he did not ignore it as it appears in his diagram
- Gellner does not mention particular events to exmplify his model/theory, but then anth could be said to be a generalising science (as well as being transdisciplinary)
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